Character Creation: Era: Hitman

You know, part of the problem with my self-imposed "10 characters a month" goal is that when we get down to the last couple of days of the month and the goal is still within sight, but real life intrudes and cuts into my book-readin' time, I've pretty much done all of the quick games. A "quick" game, here, meaning a game I either know the system and setting well (and that's pretty much just WoD 10 years ago), or a game that's very short and that I know the system. 

But fortunately, I still have a couple more Era games.

The Game: Era: Hitman
The Publisher: Shades of Vengeance
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game, I ran Era: Kaiju once
Books Required: Just the one 

The other thing is that I've been watching a Youtuber named Bo Duke who does videos playing Hitman in freelancer mode with different restrictions, and I think I'm gonna replay Hitman once I'm done with the game I'm currently playing. That is, of course, irrelevant. 

OK, so, anyway, in this game you're playing assassins working for the Assassins Guild. If you can complete a job and escape, the Guild cleans up after you, but if you fail, they hunt your ass down. Also Assassins are people who have a genetic mutations that gives them superpowers? I guess we're drawing on Wanted (the movie, at least, I've never read the comic) as well as Hitman. 

Well, let's do this! Step One is Background, starting with Experience Level. Let's go Newbie. I've just been recruited, I'm fresh-faced and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and so on. This gives me a point of Stamina. I also need a backstory, something I can sum up in a single sentence. Let's take a little inspiration from Amanda Peet's character in The Whole Nine Yards and say that my guy has never wanted to be anything other than an assassin, ever since an Assassin took out his middle school science teacher (he's still not sure exactly why, he just knows the dude was an abusive dickhole and he deserved to get domed). 

I'm also meant to consider History, but like...didn't I do that with Experience Level? This all feels about right for an Era game. Moving on! Oh, hang on, I want a name. Enoch Larsen, that sounds pretty badass.

Step Two is Assassination Style. Let's see, I've made a few assassin characters for the project - hollowpoint, Killshot, Black Seven - but I've never made a sniper (though my ACE Agents character kinda was), so let's do that. 

Step Three is my Quirk, my flaw that gets in the way. I'll say Enoch's is that he Gets Too Close - that is, he's tried setting up targets by getting into their lives and learning their routines, but darn it, that just makes them too hard to kill! Better to drill 'em from the next zip code.

Step Four is Attributes. They're split up into three groups, and then I get 6/5/4 points to prioritize. Well, for Enoch, I think we'd better prioritize Dexterity, Wits, and Willpower, so let's put my 6 into Reaction, my 4 into Defense, and the 5 into Potence. I shall then put two points into Intelligence and Charisma, 1 into Strength, three into Willpower, one into Stamina, and two each into Dexterity, Wits, and Luck.

Step Five: Skills. Same basic idea, they're broken into Personal, Technical, and Interaction, and I get to put 11/7/4 into them. Well, normally I'd just Interaction as my dumping ground, but I actually want Enoch to be pretty personable, so I'll put my 7 there. I'll put my 11 into Technical, and that leaves 4 in Personal.

Oh, this is funny. The Personal Skills are reprinted under Interaction. Nice going, guys. Well, anyway, for Interaction I'll put three in Persuasion, two in Seduction, one in Esteem, and one in Intimidation. 

Under Technical, I'll put 5 into Gunnery, two into Computer, and one each into Drive, Engineering, Explosives, and Medicine. 

And then in Personal, I'll put two into Stealth and two into Investigation. 

Step Six: Derived Traits. Size is 5, Encumbrance is 5, Notoriety is decided by the GM so I'll skip it, Health and Pain are both Stamina + Size (8 in my case), Initiative is Wits + Willpower (7), Speed is Strength + Dexterity + Size (10), Defense is the lower of Wits or Dexterity (they're both 3 in my case).

Step Seven: Kinetic Powers. These are the superpowers I mentioned. It's not well explained; I get 8 points and it looks like I spend them during the session? Or maybe I buy them now but pay to use them in-game (you have to do both from the same pool of points)? That makes more sense, so I'll do that. 

I think I'll actually just buy the first level of Temporal Manipulation, letting my speed myself up briefly. Useful for getting past guards and into sniper nests, or nicking the last donut before someone notices.

Last thing would be Gear. I have 500 monies, and if I want a sniper rifle that's all 500. Dude. 

And that's it! Enoch is early 20s, military haircut (he's not military, it's just easier to put on a wig over), dope black suit because that's what the guy who killed his teacher wore. I think it'd be cool if his teacher was an Assassin who flubbed a job and that's why he got shot, and maybe Enoch gets to complete the job he flubbed or something. 

Character Creation: High Noon at Midnight

Yee-haw, pardners! I'm a demon!

The Game: High Noon at Midnight
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: Never used this book, but I've run Cypher System games 
Books Required: High Noon at Midnight and the Cypher System book

High Noon at Midnight is one o' them there sourcebooks, detailin' a whole new genre for the Cypher System (see also It's Only Magic and The Stars are Fire). This one zeroes in on the "Weird West," which was probably most famously RPG'd by Deadlands. But High Noon doesn't just combine westerns with horror, you could just as easily do Cowboys vs. Aliens. It's really just about the genre mashup. As with most of these books, reading it makes me want to run it, which is always a good sign. 

There are a lot of things you could do with this book, but for my purposes I'm going to use the Ghost Range setting. It's not a million miles from Deadlands, inasmuch as it's a wild west setting with some supernatural and horror-based elements, but it's set on not-our-Earth, so it avoids the messier aspects of the Wild West (to wit, no Civil War, no indigenous genocide, that kind of thing). 

PCs are assumed to be the sort of folks that would take on jobs for pay, so I think what I'll do is look at the setting-specific descriptors and foci and see what appeals.

Ooh, I kinda like Trailblazing as a descriptor. I can see playing a character who prefers to be out alone in the wilderness, happens upon the other PCs, and is too decent of a guy to not get involved. The obvious choice for type is explorer, though I do think that's a little redundant. Eh, let's just double down today. I'm a Trailblazing Explorer that...hmm. Are there new foci here? 

There are, and there are a couple that I really like. One of them is "Blazes Paths," and while I do like it, I think tripling down might be a touch much. I think I want Strikes Like a Rattler. 

So. My guy is Arnan Church. Arnan took a job running mail from Midnight (the main city in the setting) to some of the outlying homesteads and towns, but took a wrong turn and wound up wandering in the wilderness, dehydrated, and nearly dead. He fell off his horse and managed to hit a nest of rattlers, and got bit a bunch of times, but he never killed or harmed any of them. Wasn't their fault, way he saw it.

Some snake-spirit or serpent god or what have you thought that was right kind of him, and let him get up and get back on the horse, on the understanding that he never harms a snake. Arnan feels that was perfectly fair.

OK, neat, so Arnan is a Trailblazing Explorer who Strikes Like a Rattler. So, starting with type, I get 10 Might, 9 Speed, 9 Intellect, and 6 more points. Well, I feel like Speed should be the highest one, so I'll put 4 points there and two points into Intellect. I get Edge 1 in Might, I can carry two cyphers, cool cool.

I get four abilities from Explorer. I want Block, which lets me avoid the next melee attack against me (it's called "block" but it's based on Speed). Danger Sense, likewise, eases initiative, that makes sense.

Definitely want Improved Edge so I can have Edge in Speed. And then I'll take Physical Skills and be trained in Climbing and Balancing.

Cool, over to descriptor. I get +2 to Might, and I'm trained in perception, wilderness navigation, and identifying creatures and plants. Downside, I've got inability in anything that requires sustained attention.

And then finally, I get a couple of cool snakey powers. I can make my punches venomous, and I can grow scales that give me armor. I could swap out one of those with a power that lets me move quickly (slither!). You know, I think I like that better than the venom-punch for Arnan. 

That's basically it, everything else is gear. I know I have a hand compass, and I'm sure I can have a six-gun (I'd also like a rifle, but whatever). 

Arnan is a tall drink of water, lanky and slim, and his ankles and wrists just look too thin for his body. He used to have really nice blue eyes, but they've gone amber since the incident with the snakes. He has a rattlesnake embroidered on the sleeve of his duster, and he's got a habit of shaking his revolver and letting the bullets rattle if he wants to scare someone. 

D&D: Walking Anti-Hagward

The adventurers are heading east to Osclaimid (still). Having left the burning body of a big ol' formorian, Zook still warty and ugly from its curse, they trudge on.

They stop for the night as the terrain becomes woodsier; it'll be forested for a while and then get swampy, they think. Everyone beds down to sleep, other than Dara, of course, who meditates quietly. After a couple of hours, she spots someone walking in the woods, a tall, elegant, luminous, elf woman. 

Dara turns into a squirrel and follows, and sees that the woman is walking slowly and aimlessly through the forest. She doesn't look hurt or scared, or really much of anything. Dara turns back into her natural form and gets in front of her, asking if she needs help. The woman walks around her without changing expression, and keeps walking. Dara follows, and the woman leads her deeper into the woods. She's out of sight of the camp when the luminosity around the elf peels off into three distinct glowy blobs of light. The float over to her, and release magical energy, stunning Dara and nearly knocking her down.

Not fancying her chances against three whatever-these-ares, Dara runs. The lights follow, and they're much fast than she is, but she manages to get within sight of the camp and yell for help. One of the lights gets close enough to zap her, but she remains standing.

But the yell worked! Zook and Keenan wake up, and rouse the others. Fearg slowly picks himself up, and not for the first time Aisling worries about him - he normally leaps up and grabs a weapon when there's danger. But she doesn't have time to worry about that right now. She charges into battle and flings magic missiles at the glowy lights, and Fearg runs up and hurls a javelin...but misses and hits Dara. Zook pops up behind Aisling and wiggles his wand of magic missiles, striking the lights, and they all three vanish. 

Fearg walks up to Dara and apologizes ("this is why I should stick to hitting things with my pick"). They all head back to the camp and Dara explains what happened. Aisling identifies the lights as will-o-the-wisps, evil little spirits that prey on lone travelers. Maybe they made the elf woman as an illusion? But in the legends, that's not what they do, they just lure people into bogs or off cliffs and then eat their souls. 

The adventurers decide they should follow the elf woman. Zook and Fearg, both suffering from some kind of curse, go back to the camp to sleep, while the others track down the elf maiden. They find that when they stop her physically, she patiently waits until someone lets her go and then keeps walking. She isn't going in a consistent direction, though, just walking in the woods. In the end they decide to walk her back to the camp. 

When they get close, she sets off the alarm spell that Zook cast. Zook starts, and Fearg, again, just groans and rolls over. Everyone beds down, though Dara finds she has to stay up and keep an eye on the elf, otherwise she'll just stand up and wander away.

In the morning, they make a more concerted effort to communicate. Aisling also remembers a story that Dara told them when they were in a tavern in Fiadh a long time ago, about an elf maiden who drank a potion hoping to numb the pain of betrayal and wound up feeling nothing, wandering the forest forever ("where'd you hear that story?" "I thought I made it up, I don't know, I was drunk"). Aisling plays a song, and the elf very briefly acknowledges her and points off into the woods. The adventurers decide to head in that direction and see what they find.

After most of a day's travel, they find something. A group of trees has grown together in the rough shape of a hut, and there's even a door at the front. Aisling walks up and knocks; no answer. She tries the door, and then feels a drop of drool from above.

A bunch of tentacles ending in eyeballs appear, attach to a big fleshy body with a nasty, fanged maw! Clara wastes no time; she leaps up into the tree and punches the damn thing. It snaps at her, and then aims eyestalks at her and Aisling. Clara shakes off whatever it tries to do, but Aisling suddenly feels confused, unsure what to do. She looks around for a target, and fires her crossbow at Keenan. Fortunately, she misses ("what the hells, Aisling?" "I DON'T KNOW!"). Dara calls down a moonbeam on the creature and it sizzles, and Zook hastes Clara. It turns out not to matter much; Clara picks her shot and punches straight into the monster's immense eyeball ("ew, eye-juice"). It slumps dead, and Clara jumps down. Keenan hands Aisling's crossbow bolt back ("lose this?").

They check the door; it's locked. Aisling tries to pick it, but can't; she doesn't really have the right tools. Fearg offers to kick it down, and though they're still worried about traps, they all get behind him. He kicks the door right off the hinges, but breaks his ankle in the process ("could I trouble you for a healing word, love?"). 

The heroes investigate the hut, and they pretty much immediately make it as a hag's lair. For one thing there's a batch of stew on the fire that smells...foul. Zook stirs it and sees fingers ("yep, it's people stew, urgp"). There are a baker's dozen potion bottles around, all labeled with flowery titles - "Angelic Rancor." "Anarchy Water." "Impulse."

Zook searches the room carefully and finds a small, boring, wooden box on a low shelf. He opens it, and a milky-white flash of light zooms out and flows into the elf-maiden's nose. She gasps, and the light comes back to her eyes. "Oh...I'm still here?"

"Not 'still,' I think," says Aisling. "What's your name?"

The elf says her name is Brébhinn, and she doesn't have much memory of wandering in the woods. The characters want to hear her story, but don't want to hang out here. Aisling advocates burning this place down, potions and all, but Keenan doesn't want to leave them here - what if they're useful? "Nothing good comes from hags," Aisling reminds him. 

Keenan grabs a random potion - "Azer's Tears" - and checks it for color, viscosity, and scent. "Potion of fire-breathing," he says. "Drink it and you breathe fire, like a dragon. BROOSH." The others asks if he's sure, and he says that there's really only three ways to know what a potion does: make it yourself, drink it, or cast a spell to identify it. In the end they decide to throw all thirteen potions in their bag of holding and blow the place up.

Zook and Keenan both throw a fireball into the hut and leave it burning. They travel on, and make camp at sunset, just as the ground is starting to get softer. On the way, Brébhinn tells them her story:

"I had a lover, Piaras. One day he went out hunting, and I followed to bring him wine and food. But I found him...with someone. People always said I felt too deeply, and I did, and I ran into the woods and eventually I found that hut. The hag, Missy Rot, answered, but of course she looked like a kindly old lady. I told her I wanted to stop feeling this pain. 'If I fade away, let me fade away,' I said...and she gave me a potion, and that's the last I remember."

Clara gives her a couple of historical references and they figure she's been wandering in the woods for sixty years or so. On the plus side, for an elf that's not too much? But on the minus side, that hag is most assuredly going to be a problem. The same hag the characters fought in Cian? It's hard to know. Aisling asks Zook to cast his tiny hut spell so that they rest without being disturbed, and they all bed down.

In the morning, Aisling wakes to find Fearg in the corner stretching. "You seem more yourself," she says. Fearg agrees - he's not slept well since they left Cian, and he's had disturbing dreams. The heroes are immediately reminded of Zook's experience with the night hag's curse, and note that they fought three hags back in Cian. They killed one, but two escaped, and if they've met up with Missy Rot, they may have formed a coven and becoming much more dangerous.

Zook drops the spell and they prepare to move, but the terrain is different now. The trees are bigger and more imposing, and the sky is a sickly bruise-purple. "This," says Fearg, drawing his pick, "is what I've been dreaming about."

They hear cackling from the woods. "I see you, Brébhinn. Now you're running with thieves and vandals?"

"Yes," says a voice from another side of the clearing. "And they killed my sister."

"Show yourselves," says Zook, and the night hag steps out of the woods. 

"Oh, yes," she says. "One bright morning changes all things." 

Chill: The One Thing You Can't Replace

Here we are back in Alaska! 

Recall that last time, the envoys had encountered the ghost of a World War One soldier named Benedict Martin, who had put a bullet in the hip of Khalil Barnes. With Barnes in the hospital overnight, the envoys decide to rest up and get back to the investigation in the morning.

And indeed, the following morning, Amelia Rostov and Kayla Vanderhoven hit the library and research who Benedict Martin might be. They wind up discovering that he was born in Seward in 1899, and died in 1968, long after the Great War. He married a woman named Judith Chauncey and they had four kids together. They wind with constructing a family tree for him:

This doesn't have birth/death dates, but the envoys did find them

They share this with the other envoys, and Tulugaak Hanta realizes that he knows Avery Martin. She was a year behind him at Seward High School, meaning she's a senior now. So how did the photo of Benedict and (presumably) Judith wind up in Alex McNulty's house? 

Arlo Miller picks up Khalil from the hospital, but shortly thereafter, the envoys all get alerts on their phones from Dr. Bellman. "Don't know if this is related to anything you're doing, but there's an active shooter situation at Seward High." The envoys all race over there, Amelia and Kayla arriving first. The situation doesn't look bad - no violence evident, the cops aren't getting ready to storm the place, and it looks to the envoys like things are winding down. Amelia talks to an EMT that she knows and learns that, to his knowledge, there was a shot fired but no one was actually hurt, people just saw a man walking around outside with a rifle. 

The other envoys arrive, and while they're waiting for the cops to empty out the school, Khalil and Kayla walk around the building a bit. Khalil glances around the side of the building and sees the weird, non-Euclidean, hallucinatory sightlines that he sees when the Unknown is about. They find footprints, resembling military boots but out of date, and the prints have blood and mud in them. There's no blood or mud in the area, though. Khalil takes some quick samples and he and Kayla watch as the prints fade away. Tulugaak touches the wall of the school and learns the locale of security cameras, and unfortunately none of them are pointing at that side of the building. But there's a classroom window looking right out there, and if Tulugaak's memory is right, it's Mrs. Mueller's senior English class.

When the school does get evacuated, Tulugaak spots Mrs. Mueller and goes to talk to her. He chats a moment, but she never saw the guy, just pulled her students away from the window when they did. Tulugaak spots Avery Martin and he and Khalil go to talk to her. 

Avery says that she saw a man with a big rifle walking around outside. She thinks he might have been wearing camos? But the weird thing is, he turned to the window and caught her eye, and she thinks he looked familiar. 

Khalil shows her the picture on his phone of the framed photo of Benedict and Judith and asks her if he looked anything like this, and Avery is flabbergasted, both because yeah, he did, but also because that photo disappeared from her house a couple of years ago! She'd had a party without her parents knowing and the next day, that picture was gone. She mentions that the same thing happened to one of her volleyball teammates, actually - she had a party and the next day an old photo was gone.

Khalil promises to get the photo back if he can, and the envoys regroup. They figure that they need to talk to Alex. It seems pretty clear that he stole at least a couple of these photos, but they don't know why. And even if he did, why is Benedict showing up now? That photo has been in Alex' house for a couple of years, after all. They have Tulugaak go and get Alex and bring him to a burger place for lunch, and stage a bit of an intervention.

The envoys explain that what shot Khalil yesterday was a ghost, and it was the ghost of a man in a photo that Alex took. Alex, after some prodding, admits that he was kind of fucked up in high school, and used to steal old photos from classmates at parties - they are, he says, something that you can't replace. The envoys note that everyone does stupid things in high school (Kayla relates her experiences with stealing cosmetics as a teen), but the Alex asks if this ghost killed his mom.

The envoys confirm that he did, but Khalil emphatically states that this is not Alex' fault. There's no possible way he could have known this would happen. Everyone decides to go back to Alex' house and check out the physical photo a bit more. 

They arrive at the McNulty house, and everyone goes inside. Amelia and Arlo stay downstairs, while other folks go up and check out the framed photo. Khalil pops it out of the frame and looks at the picture, and on the back, finds "B.M. + J.M. 1920" written in ink, but also a small, discolored rectangle, about the size of a little piece of Scotch tape. Something was affixed to this photo.

He looks around the room and finds a small lock of hair between floorboards. Khalil calls downstairs for folks to find some tape...and then feels a raindrop. Amelia notices fog rising up from the floor downstairs. Tulugaak heads out of the room into the hallway, and nearly runs straight into Benedict, who cracks him in the jaw with the butt of his rifle. He feels a tooth chip and pushes forward, attempting to tackle Benedict, and Khalil emerges from the photo room with his .45 drawn. He puts a bullet in the ghost, and Benedict falls to the floor, gasping, and melts away.

Meanwhile, Amelia attempts to get up the stairs quickly, but misses a step and tumbles back down. Kayla catches her to make sure she doesn't seriously hurt herself, and then creeps up the stairs, too, activating Eyes of the Dead to see if Benedict is still around. She doesn't see him, but he's melted away into a yellowish gas. Tulugaak, Kayla, and Khalil all cover their faces and head downstairs, where Amelia has already enacted a ward.

Alex is panicking a bit, looking through drawers for tape. The envoys figure they need to tape the hair back onto the photo, but they've left the photo upstairs. Hearing that they need to get it, Tulugaak runs back upstairs (and Kayla follows), and finds that the room with the photos is full of a thick fog. 

Kayla slips into the room and hunches down into the fog. She sees Benedict hunkered in the corner, peering over a nonexistent trench with his rifle. When Tulugaak enters the room, Benedict fires off a shot and hits Tul in the shoulder (Tul immediately gets a spike of adrenaline and doesn't feel a thing. Arlo comes up the stairs and into the room ("maybe next time you wait for me") and activates Sphere of Protection. The fog vanishes within the sphere and Tul grabs the photo. Benedict takes another shot, but it crackles harmlessly off the sphere. Arlo waves Kayla and Tul out of the room and they rush downstairs; Arlo follows slowly, maintaining the protection.

Downstairs, Amelia tapes the lock of hair back onto the photo and puts the photo back in the frame. Everything upstairs goes quiet, and the envoys slowly creep back up. 

They find Benedict in the photo room, his spectral form flickering between his Army uniform and the suit he was wearing in the photo. They enter the room carefully and engage him in conversation. Benedict is confused; he remembers being at war, but remembers coming back? Maybe? Khalil shows him the picture and reminds him that it was taken after the war, in 1920. He came back, he married Judith, he had four kids and multiple grandkids, and he didn't pass away until 1968. 

(Arlo draws a Line of Defense around him, just in case he panics.)

Benedict says that something still feels wrong, and the envoys tell him that they'll make sure the photo gets back to his family. Benedict, hearing that, slows down, and says that he's tired. Khalil tells him that he can rest now. "You did good, soldier." 

"I never really liked being a soldier," says Benedict. "But I did like being with Judith. You know. Being a husband." And he fades away.

Amelia takes Tul to the hospital so Dr. Bellman can work on his shoulder, while Khalil, Kayla, and Arlo go to the Martin household. They knock, and Avery answers. She's overjoyed to see the photo, and thanks the envoys - hopefully her parents just won't notice. She takes the photo, and the envoys regroup at the hospital.

"Well," says Dr. Bellman, "nice work. Hopefully that helps the ghost pass on, and doesn't just put him back to sleep." 

Amelia nods. "No way to know."

"Other than taking the hair out again, I guess." 

"Nope."
 

Character Creation: The Secret World

It's funny, because I just picked a Savage Worlds game to do something fairly quick today and stumbled upon something that goes much deeper, which is very much in keeping with the game itself.

The Game: The Secret World
The Publisher: Star Anvil Studios
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game in particular, but the system and the vibe are pretty familiar 
Books Required: The Secret World and some version of SWADE

The Secret World is or was an MMORPG that I never heard of, that these folks licensed and turned into an actual RPG. Basically, you're playing someone recruited by the "Bees," a secret society composed of people from other secret societies, fighting against evil entities called "the Dreaming Ones" that are ending the world. It shares some similarities with Chill, Conspiracy X, and maybe Covenant (and, just to have one that doesn't start with "C", Witchcraft). It looks pretty cool, actually, and I may have to give it a closer read at some point.

Anyway, in The Secret World, characters are members of one of three secret societies: the Illuminati, the Templars, or the Dragon. I gotta say that the Dragon is the most interesting to me because it'd be the hardest to make a character fit into a group. The Dragon is all about chaos; the thinking being that when things are too calm that's when evil can slide in. I think it would be fun to make a character with some very sophomoric views of chaos and how it's necessary for diversity of thought and evolution, much like you see folks who don't think it through talking about how they think revolution would be a good idea. I don't know that I'd really want to play this character in a group because I think they might be a little insufferable, but for my purposes today I think it's fine.

OK, so, let's flesh out the concept a little more. My guy's name is Karl Wilberg, Austrian-born chaotician (yes, like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, I was just rewatching it). Karl believes that chaos is a good thing, depending on what you want, and since the world is literally ending, letting things settle is just going to allow the people who want to quietly fuck up the world do it without oversight or opposition. 

That's not a bad concept, which moves me along to Archetype (chargen in this game is slightly different than standard SWADE). I think I want Karl to be a Magus.

Right, next step, Hindrances! I can take the stand 4 "points", so let's do that. I'll take Unstable Magic (if I get Backlash, everyone around me gets Shaken). Karl seems like the sort of fella who'd have a Death Wish, so I'll take that one. Ruthless sounds about right, too; it's not that Karl is ambitious per se, but he's kind of nihilistic. 

Over to Attributes. I get a d4 in everything and then 3 more points. I think I'll just raise Agility, Strength, and Vigor to d6 and call it good. Oh, wait, no, I'll spend two of my "points" from Hindrances and put Smarts at d8.

Skills! I get the spread in the box, d4 in my other Core Skills, and 9 more points to throw around. Well, I want a d8 in Academics, so that's 3 right there. I feel like some combat would be good? Maybe just a d4 of Shooting? I'll bump Notice and Athletics to d6. That's what, 6 spent, 3 left. I'll spend 2 to jack Common Knowledge to d8, and then I'll spend the last one on a point of Research.

Derived statistics Edges because those derived thingies should go last! I think I want Chaos Magic Specialist; whenever I use a Chaos Magic power I get a point of Armor. 

Gear, but I don't much care about that. I do have two points remaining, though. I feel like Karl probably knows a bit about Gambling, so I'll put a d4 there, and then I'll take Driving at d4, too.

Derived traits now. Karl has no Fighting so his Parry is 2. His Toughness is 5, his Pace is 6, and this game has a special Trait called Destiny which is broken down into Shadow and Luminance, but as they both start at 0 it doesn't much matter for my purposes.

Karl looks pretty buttoned-up, dresses somewhat conservatively, wears glasses (but mild prescription, he can see without them, hence no Hindrance). But the Buzzing tells him to introduce a bit of chaos into the world sometimes, and he doesn't argue. I think he can generally contain himself when on mission with other Bees, but that's mostly because he knows when a group of Bees are involved chaos isn't far behind anyway.

Pugmire: The Death of Boomer (Sorta)

Last time, our intrepid Pioneers kicked in a door and found themselves confronted by three deadly foes - Amelia Fold, Max Pitbull wearing the body of Boomer Pitbull, and the goddamn Nagayaga! As they brace themselves for a deadly fight, suddenly time slows, and they hear a cough from above them.

They look up, and see a pair of golden eyes in the darkness. The eyes get closer and they can see a snoot as well. It looks like a gigantic dog's head is looming over them. Specifically it looks like the head of a Transylvania-Hound. 

The strange being says that it was the one that asked them to CLEANSE THIS PLACE when they first got to the castle. It says that it can't help them as much as it would like to, due to "that cat-snake thing," but it can do something, whereupon it leans down and licks them all. They all feel revived and refreshed, and then time restarts, and the battle is joined!

Dire Newfoundland gestures at Peppa Papillon and encases her in a sanctuary, protected from harm and attacks. He then points at "Boomer" and calls upon the magic of Man, yelling "GET DOWN!" Boomer flops onto the ground, growling but unable to resist the command.

Boomer - the real Boomer (OK, from here on out, the real Boomer is "Boomer" and the fake one is "Max", though last night we took to calling them "Boomer Max" and "Boomer Prime"; sadly there was no "Boomer Plus") rages, draws the longsword he's carrying, and charges over to Max, stabbing him in fury. Petunia Pibble calls upon magic and increases gravity in the area, crushing Max to the ground and further immobilizing him (and the Nagayaga, just due to proximity). 

Amelia Fold appears from the shadows and hurls fire at the Pioneers, scorching them a bit, but Gelert Sausagedog runs over and hurls a dagger at her - and then, thinking quickly, throws his bag of Pawprint Powder at her, seeking to keep her from disappearing into the shadows again. The Nagayaga stares deeply at Dire, trying to instill fear, but since Peppa cast a protective spell just before the battle began, the attempt fails!

Boomer continues whaling on Max with his sword, and Peppa calls up her spirit Yorkies (since the spell doesn't target anyone it doesn't interfere with the sanctuary) and steps forward, letting them chew up Max and the Nagayaga. Amelia casts another spell, this one dousing the Pioneers in ice. Petunia slips and winds up on her tail, and her gravity spell slips, allowing the Nagayaga to act - but with Dire in its face, all it can do is claw at him ineffectively. Dire lashes out with his warhammer, striking the cat-snake soundly, while Sausagedog closes with Amelia and slices her up. 

Max, now free of the gravity spell, pushes himself to his feet, trying to rage, calling upon the immense strength of this stolen body...but Boomer doesn't let it get that far. He whirls the longsword around...and decapitates his own body. Max' - Boomer's - head goes bouncing away, and Boomer, still raging, scoops up his maul and goes after the Nagayaga. He doesn't register what the death of his body means. If his body is dead, they can't use the Inversion Wheel to reverse this!

Of course, Peppa can raise the dead, so long as no more than a minute passes. The Nagayaga seems to realizes this, too, and slithers past the dogs to grab the head. But Dire figures out this strategy and grabs the snake's tail, and yanks it back, away from the head! Amelia snarls and throws a thought storm, paralyzing everyone except Peppa (including the Nagayaga), and then runs over and stabs Boomer with her hooked swords. The paralysis doesn't last, though, and soon she's facing off against several very angry dogs. Dire crushes the Nagayaga's skull with his warhammer, and Amelia realizes the danger she's in. She calls up a wall of stone that pushes them back (but traps her on the same side of the wall as Sausagedog).

Meanwhile, Petunia arcane lassos the head ("ew") and runs back to the body and holds it in place, and Peppa runs over and casts revivify.

Boomer's body lives again! But now Max is back in control. He rages and pushes himself to his feet, grabbing his longsword off the ground. He hacks at Boomer, for all the good it does. Dire runs over and punches him in the snoot, knocking him out again. Petunia lassos Boomer over the wall to get at Amelia, but Amelia unleashes a barrage of seeking stingers and Boomer falls, dying. Sausagedog strikes at Amelia, and she looses a second round, dropping Sausagedog as well! As she steps up to finish Boomer off, Petunia pops around the wall and casts beast mode, turning Amelia fold into a harmless, non-uplifted cat. 

Dire grabs it and wraps it in a cloak, and everyone takes a breath. Petunia takes a moment to figure out how to work the wheel, and then they strap Boomer and Max in and yank the lever! 

Boomer feels his mind and soul yanked from his body and pinned up against the wheel, until his body spins around to it and snaps into place. They unstrap him and he clears his throat - he's got a nasty scar around his neck from where he cut off his own head. Max, for his part, is back in his old body and still strapped to the wheel, unable to muster the strength to move. And Amelia is still wrapped in robes, yowling and spitting.

The spirit of the castle appears, and asks that they take the Inversion Wheel away ("it's sectional, you can break it into four pieces"). Dire is in favor of smashing it, but Peppa reminds him that as Pioneers, they're meant to preserve these kinds of things, so they can get help to return it to Pugmire. The castle-spirit informs them that although they've killed the Nagayaga's body, even now it gestates within the dreams of an unfortunate victim, and will be reborn if they don't stop it. The spirit has no idea who this person might, though. 

The Pioneers go back down to Houndton and turn both Amelia Fold and Max Pitbull in to the authorities (Dire notes that they could just huck them off a cliff, but Petunia and Peppa both point out that there's a difference between killing someone in battle and just straight-up murdering them; Dire might not entirely agree, but he's committed to being a Good Dog). Amelia is convicted of multiple crimes, including consorting with the Unseen, and is likely to be sent to Pugmire and/or the Monarchies to face further justice. Max...well, here it's not so simple. He's obviously done some awful things, but he's also the head of House Pitbull, and that grants him some juice. Without an heir apparent, he might go free.

Boomer, though, feels that he's died enough and that maybe his place should be here, undoing the damage that Max has done to his family name. He takes over the Pitbull Manor and, with his influence, Max remains in jail. Boomer thanks his friends for the grand adventures they've shared, but retires from the Pioneers. He also renames "Maxville" to "Snacksville." 

A few months later, a younger Pitbull approaches Boomer with a book and shows him that Max kept records of all of his progeny, even the ones he said didn't have the "eye of the warrior." Max Pitbull was Boomer's biological father! "But then who's my mother?" he asks.

The book does have that information. Her name was Rhea Staffordshire. She fled with Boomer after Max declared him unfit to survive, and there's no record of what happened to her, although the records do show that Max sent a hunting party after her. Boomer nods sadly. 

The Pioneers return to Pugmire with the Inversion Wheel, and get ready to begin their next adventure together - to find and truly destroy the Nagayaga! 

Misspent Youth: Tonic For What Ails Ya

Last night we had our first episode of our new Misspent Youth game! Check it out.

Our Authority Figures:

• Mal: One of the Slumbering, an orphan. People trust him, he's pretty ubiquitous
• Edith, the Bag Lady: An old woman who hangs out on the fringes of society and seems to know a lot, but she has the Graveyard Mark on her
• Melody: A teenager who's part of the Silver Spores. She's a very dedicated recruiter and happy to use unsavory tactics - guilt, flirtation - to bring in other teens
• Aunt Lydia: A very prim, proper, buttoned-up woman who is capable of administering the Torpor Timeout
• Gil: The kind of local "district commander," somewhere in the power structure of the Tangle, and one of the Tendrils

Our Friendship Questions:

• Sandy asks Perry: "What do you keep asking me to bring back from foraging?" Answer: "Some sturdy twigs and the stretchy bendy plants from the lake."
• Perry asks Sparky: "Why did you let me go on the raid last night?" Answer: "I wanted to keep you safe."
• Sparky asks Quinn: "What can I do to help your leg heal up?" Answer: "It's fine, and it wasn't your fault."
• Quinn asks Tate: "How was I the cause of that scar you have?" Answer: "Before you knew I wasn't a loyalist, we got in a fight and you pushed me down and I hit my head."
• Tate asks Sandy: "Why don't you ever wear the bracelet I gave you?" Answer: "I'm in the woods a lot and I don't want it to get snagged and lost."

Scene One: What's Up

I set us up, and chose the Friendship Question from Perry to Sparky: "Why did you let me go on the raid last night?" Answer: "I wanted to keep you safe."

The clique is in the clean room that they use as a hideout. The raid last night was to the building where Gil keeps an office, and it wasn't successful. As the YOs talk, it becomes clear that Quinn and Tate tried to get in through a window but it was too small for them - Perry would have fit, though ("told ya"). Sandy was meant to be watching the perimeter but there was obviously some confusion about that. 

They decide that maybe they need to be sneakier and focus on intelligence gathering, learn a bit more about these mushroom things, and use distraction. They therefore decide to go back again tonight - with all five of them. They creep up to the building and break in, and as they're moving through the place, they hear the janitor coming down another hallway. 

Tate stands up and confronts the janitor, unleashing a stream of bullshit about how he was here for a school-related thing and got lost and locked in (Pride). The janitor seems to listen, but then Tate notices a tiny stalk of fungal matter emerging from his nose. Quinn stands up and shoves the janitor back, knocking him down (Outrage), and calls to the others to get what they need so they can get out of here. The janitor stumbles back, falls with a guttural "oof", and spews a bunch of spores into the air. Perry stands up and wins on Tate's Pride Conviction, and keeps everyone moving and focused, pulls their scarves over their faces, gets the info they need, and gets everyone out. 

Our Kickoff: The clique steals a bunch of intel on the Tangle's power structure.

Scene Two: Fighting Back

Sandy's player sets us up, and chooses Gil as the Authority Figure.

The clique takes all this info back to their clean room and goes through it, using a map of the area and little mushroom figurines to represent known Tendrils and little gnomes to represent themselves. Sandy notes that back in the day, people made spore-prints of mushrooms to learn about them and how they spread - perhaps they could do something similar? Sparky notes that Thorsen, a depot manager, reports to Gil, according to the intel they found. They decide to stake Thorsen's place out tonight and see if they can get a spore-print or something. 

The clique converges on Thorsen's house and watches him through his windows; he walks around his place, drinks water, sits on the couch and looks at a book - normal human stuff. Then they see Gil coming down the street. Gil stands in front of Thorsen's door, but doesn't knock. Thorsen stands and lets him in, and the two of them sit on the couch next to each other, not talking. "Are they...communicating?" whispers Perry. They get closer and the offenders realize that both men are growing fine, white hairs on their faces, almost like mold...

Figuring they need a distraction, Quinn goes around the back of the house and pounds on the door. Both men stand up and wipes the "mold beard" from their face, and Thorsen moves to the back door. Sparky stands up and knocks on the front door to separate them (Hubris), and Gil answers it. Sparky asks Gil if he's seen the rest of the baseball team - they were pulling a prank and kind of got separated. Gil looks around without really "looking," and then says he's happy to help Sparky find them, and extends a hand. 

Meanwhile, at the back of the house, Thorsen opens the door. Quinn stands up (Sneaky) and runs behind a bush, but makes sure Thorsen had enough time to see the movement, hoping to lead him on enough for the others to get their samples. Thorsen moves after her, and Gil starts moving around the house. Tate stands up (Bad Seed) and turns on the sprinklers, dousing both of them in water, hoping to wash some spores away and maybe confuse them. It works, momentarily, but now they know where Tate (or someone, anyway), is. They start moving towards him. Sandy stands up and wins on Sparky's Hubris Conviction, and runs right in, scoops up some spores with some adhesive, and everyone gets the heck back to the clubhouse.

Our first Beat, then, is Discovery: "The Youthful Offenders get a spore-print." The Question is: "What are mushroom-people made of?"

Scene Three: Heating Up

Perry's player sets us up and chooses Edith, the Bag Lady. 

Back at the clubhouse, the YOs look over the info they've collected and the samples they've found. Sandy does a little experimentation - putting some of the white mold with food dye to see if water destroys it - but she doesn't have the equipment she needs. Sparky points out that the high school has some of the stuff she could use, they could just go steal it. Everyone's game for that!

The wait for nightfall and head to the school, sneaking in and heading for the science lab. On the way, though, they see a janitor closet door slam shut. (Perry: "Are we just at war with all the janitors?") Quinn, ever the subtle one, opens the door and they find Edith, the bag lady, hiding in there. She tries to claim to be a janitor ("I was just in here...janiting"), but eventually confesses that she is hiding because of the Mark (she rolls back the collar on her shirt to show them, but they can't see anything).

They tell her that if she comes with them, they can put her in a place where the Tangle can find her, and she agrees to that. But as the YOs are gathering equipment, Edith starts to get agitated and talk about the Tangle, about how she can't escape it and she's just dirt to them. Realizing that she's becoming dangerous, Sandy stands up (Smart) and tries to get the stuff they need quickly and get out. Edith starts heading for the door, and Sparky stands up and wins on Sandy's Smart Conviction. He talks Edith down by appealing to her logical brain (whatever there is of it), and they all get back to the clean room.

Scene Four: We Won

Sparky's player sets us up, and choose Melody, the Silver Spore recruiter.

It's a couple of days later. The YOs are having lunch out in a park, and are talking about what they've found, the spore-prints, and the various things they've learned. As they do, though, they look over and see Melody sitting under a tree, writing in a journal. Quinn tells her to mind her own business, and Melody says that they're obviously up to no good and they shouldn't be doing all this nasty stuff. Quinn kicks the journal out of her hands and gets in her face, and Melody starts making a scene, which starts attracting attention from Tendrils (there are always Tendrils hanging around, and you don't always notice them right away). 

Sandy stands up (Pleasing) and tries to talk Melody down. Melody isn't receptive at first, but then Tate stands up and wins on Sandy's Pleasing Conviction. He tells Melody that if she persists, she's going to make Sandy very sad. And does she really want to do that? Make Sandy sad, when she's so pretty and smells so nice? Melody relents, and walks away, perhaps feeling some doubt about her role in recruiting people to the Tangle for the first time. However...

Scene Five: We're Fucked

Quinn's player sets up this scene directly on the heels of that one, and chooses Aunt Lydia. Lydia is sitting at a picnic table not far away, and she's been watching the YOs this whole time, specifically Quinn. Quinn starts walking away, and Lydia stands up and follows, splaying her fingers out to the sides. The YOs notice Tendrils in the area turning their heads to watch her.

Tate stands up (Influential) and runs up to Quinn and walks with her, lending his air of respectability. The Tendrils back off a little, but Lydia keeps following, and releases some spores. Tate and Quinn start to feel sleepy. Sparky stands up (Optimistic) and joins them, rallying them to stay awake and active, and they keep moving. Perry stands up (Always Underestimated) and runs up to Lydia, getting her attention and distracting her. She looks down at him and strokes his face (and he feels his cheek go numb), and says that she'll be happy to help him get wherever he's going. She reaches out a hand...but Sandy stands up and wins on Perry's Conviction! She runs over to get Perry, and in doing so manages to get a sample of the spores Lydia's dropping. Everyone scatters, and Lydia is left empty-handed.

Second Beat: Discovery (spore-print from Lydia). Answer to the Question: "Mushroom-people are different species of fungus, not a single species with different specialties."

Scene Six: Who Wins

Tate's player set this up, choosing Sparky's question to Quinn: "What can I do to help your leg heal up?" Answer: "It's fine, and it wasn't your fault."

The clique is back in the clean room, and Sandy is busily working on the samples with her new equipment. Edith is there, too, staring at the map and occasionally mutters "gnomes." Quinn is soaking her leg in an herbal bath to help the bruising heal up. 

Sandy goes over to Edith and looks at the Mark on her neck, and puts a piece of adhesive over it to maybe pull a sample or just cover it. But Edith immediately starts complaining that it hurts and asking her to get it off. Sandy pulls the tape slightly, but it hurts even worse, and she sees little yellow bits of fungus appearing under it. There's not supposed to be any fungus in the clean rooms, so what's happening here?!

Sandy stands up (Smart) and lubricates it with some aloe, but the fungus eats the aloe and turns blue. Edith pulls away and the tape comes loose, and some of the droplets of infected aloe fly through the air and land in the herbal bath! Quinn stands up (Outrage) and kicks over the bath, and the infected water starts spreading over the floor, but Sparky stands up and wins on Quinn's Outrage Conviction. He angrily dumps some disinfectant alcohol into the water and then slams a mop down, snapping about how the need to be careful here, and manages to get it cleaned up before anything terrible happens.

And eureka! The mix of aloe and alcohol proves to be a strong deterrent to the Tangle, maybe even enough to kill some of them! The YOs win this episode. 

Scene Seven: Dust Settles

I set this up, and chose Quinn's question to Tate: "How was I the cause of that scar you have?" Answer: "Before you knew I wasn't a loyalist, we got in a fight and you pushed me down and I hit my head."

The clique is back at the school on the front steps. Tate notes that this is where he hit his head and got his scar. Quinn apologizes again, but Tate notes that she couldn't have known and besides, that's how they got started with this. Quinn agrees and says that if they hadn't had that fight, they might not have this stuff, and waggles the vial of "Tangle Tonic" that Sandy's made each of them. 

But then they spot a Tendril leaning on the flagpole (like I said, they're everywhere), and it spots the vial. It opens its mouth and leans its head back, maybe sending out a message to others! Perry stands up (Thrills) and flings his vial of Tonic at the Tendril's feet, splashing it. It reaches up behind it and starts pulling itself up the flagpole!

Tate stands up (Bad) and pulls a bolt on the flagpole, and it crashes to the ground. The Tendril opens its mouth, presumably to start releasing spores, and Quinn stands up (The One to Set It All On Fire) and pours the Tonic into the Tendril's mouth. The Tendril reaches out its hands to its sides, and its fingernails split, revealing the long, curling tendrils that end in fruiting caps...

Sparky stands up and loses! As he's running over to help, he steps on one of the Tendrils hands. It squishes like stepping on a rotten mushroom and a bunch of spores go airborne, carried away on the breeze. The Tangle knows about the Tonic now.

Aftermath

But, the clique has a new Exploit: The Tendril Tonic! They're not entirely sure what all it can do and whether it'll have different effects on different Tangle species, but we'll find that out next episode! 

Character Creation: Overgrowth

Hundreds of years before the dawn of history lived a strange race of people called...the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing...

The Game: Overgrowth
The Publisher: Madness Heart Press Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

Actually this game has nothing to do with Stonehenge, or druids as they're usually imagined (or with Spinal Tap, for that matter). It's just what it says on the cover. You're playing "Druids," nature-themed wizards fighting against a group of thinly disguised corporations from our world (instead of Amazon we have "Kongo," instead of Tesla we have "Edison-X" run by Elliot Mosk). It's basically the same flavor of eco-terrorism RPG as Werewolf: The Apocalypse, only we're wizards instead of lycanthropes.

It looks a decent game. Yeah, it's got one of those performative "NAZI FASCISTS AREN'T ALLOWED TO PLAY THIS GAME" paragraphs up front, but whatever, that doesn't take up much room. System is a pretty simple "roll some d6s and get 4 or better" kind of affair. When you fail, your BadAss rating goes down and if it hits zero you're dead. Overgrowthall, it looks perfectly playable. Would I run it? Dunno, maybe. Let's see how much I like making a Druid.

PDF isn't bookmarked, boooo.

Cool. I'm meant to start out as a person who was driven from the civilized world into the wilds and there communed with the spirits of nature, becoming a Druid. Do I wish to do something aquatic? Seems like I go back to that particular well a lot. Nah, let's go to another biome I find compelling and say that my guy ran off into a pine forest. 

To back up a little: Toby McBride was a young idiot camping with a bunch of other young idiots. They got lost while hiking (they were all woefully unprepared for this hike), and after the Blair Witch jokes stopped being funny, someone (not Toby) decided it'd be a good idea to light a signal fire. Problem is they were in a goddamn pine forest. The fire blazed out of control, destroying a lot of acreage of national park, Toby got separated from his friends, and wasn't seen again for months. When he finally emerged, he was part of the forest. 

So next we pick a Sorcery School, which is just kinda what you have magic power over. You can be as specific as you want, but I think I'm going to say that Toby's Sorcery is all about "pine forest." That'll give me lots of cool conifer-based magic to throw around.

OK, so next we do Methods. There are four Methods: Other, Self, Environmental, and External. Other lets you affect other people, Self affects you (duh), Environmental affects the natural world and what's around you, and External lets you create stuff within your sorcery's domain. If you're thinking that these categories are kind of ill-defined, well, yeah. 

Also, the book says each one will be assigned a numerical value, but doesn't say what. There's an example of chargen, and it explains how each of those Methods would work with his bug-based magic, but doesn't give numbers.

Ah, here we go. On the next page, the book explains that our BadAss score (which starts at 2) plus the sum of all of our Method scores can't exceed our "starting points," which is a number provided by the Tyrant (the GM). Supposedly that's normally going to be 10. Just for fun, let's check the GM section and see if there's any guidance on that. NOPE. OK, 10 it is. Actually 8, since I have to use 2 points on BadAss. Do I feel like being an all-rounder? Eh. Let's put 1 into Other, 2 into Environmental and External, and 3 into Self.

Is that it? There's a blank on the sheet for "Patron" and a d66 table for "Patrons and Sorcery Schools," but I don't see "Patron" explained anywhere. I'd search the text, but the book is laid out as graphics so you can't search for words, which is really fuckin' annoying. 

Well, since the book doesn't bother include Patron as part of chargen, it can't be that important.

Anyway, I think Toby is now in his 30s, tall, thin, brown hair that has almost green highlights if the light hits it right, and a fresh piney scent. 

One-Shot: Feng Shui 2nd Ed: Tomb-Rollers!

Yesterday we played a one-shot of Feng Shui 2nd Ed. I have, of course, run this game before - we played a campaign that last just about a year and a half, ending almost nine years ago. 

Anyway, for this game, I ignored the Chi War entirely and was very happy to have done so. We open our story in Los Angeles, at an abandoned lazer tag arena, now the hideout of the notorious street gang known as the Neon Death Monkeys! 

(If you've seen Batman Forever, imagine the gang Robin's fighting when he steals the Batmobile.)

These Monkeys don't know their days are numbered, however, as a group of unrelated warriors are converging on them...

The skylight (lazer tag arenas have skylights, right?) explodes downward and a man carrying a bow and multiple quivers descends! He is Zhou Yu, the Archer! He is a warrior from the Han dynasty, presently possessing the body of his great-great-etc grandson, Zhou Hu, an Olympic archer. Brought forward in time to rectifying a spiritual imbalance - bringing Zhou Lu, his evil, time-traveling mother, to justice, he looses an arrow and pins a Monkey to a wall! 

The Monkeys respond and one of them, wearing a black suit and a string tie, points at Yu and yells "SHOOT HIM!" (Tactical brilliance, right here.) Some of the Monkeys do, but then a window bursts inwards on the other side of the building and a man in a skull mask appears - Skruller, the Masked Avenger! He shoots one of the Monkeys, and a bunch more run for the exits!

The loading bay doors open, revealing the lean, imposing figure of Reanu Keeves, the Killer! He's been hired to kill the three leaders of the Monkeys - Sneaky Luco, Magenta Marmoset, and Benny the Bite - on behalf of some mysterious employer. All he knows is that they stole something from said employer, an ancient sarcophagus. He just wants to finish this job and go home to feed his beloved pet tortoise. He shoots down a Death Monkey and strides quietly into the room. 

He is followed, however by Wombat Leonard, the Bounty Hunter! Wombat is on the hunt for Magenta Marmoset - they have history (Magenta cut off her ear and stole her koala jacket in a previous encounter). Brandishing her shotgun, Lucille, she calls out Magenta...and Magenta answers, slipping on her brass knuckles and heading for Wombat. 

One final hero enters the fray - Bruce, the Big Bruiser. Bruce is a simple man, a bartender and a roustabout...but was recently diagnosed with a terminal disease. Figuring that his time on Earth is limited, he's decided to do some good for community, and what better way than to fuck up the Neon Death Monkeys? He wades into the fray swinging a bat. 

The Monkeys respond! Some of them shoot at Yu, wounding him, and he drops to the ground. A few pull bats and try to beat on Skruller, but his body armor absorbs it. A couple of have switchblades and poke at Bruce, but he laughs as such trivial injures. Magenta runs along the tops of the thin arena walls and lands in front of Wombat, attempting to punch, but misses, and Wombat and Reanu shoot her! Luco unloads an Uzi at Yu, but Yu rolls and pins him to the wall with a pair of arrows.

The final leader, Benny the Bite draws a machete and closes on Skruller, but again, Skruller is too well-armored. Luco fires wildly at Yu and misses, but hits the sarcophagus (which Yu had landed near). There comes a crack, and evil magic starts to escape. Yu looks on, worried, but continues planting arrows it mooks.

Reanu calmly walks through the carnage, capping off Monkeys, and sees that both Luco and Magenta have been dispatched. He climbs up on a raised vantage point and aims a rifle at Benny, shooting him in the back as Skruller battles him (Benny tries to bite through Skruller's armor with his metal teeth, but that doesn't work, either). Yu leaps up and lands next to Reanu, informing him about the danger of the sarcophagus, but Reanu has a job to do. CRACK.

Benny falls dead, and the last of the Death Monkeys follow a moment later. But the sarcophagus cracks open and disgorges a stream of huge, white moths with skull-like markings on their wings. They flow out of the arena and fly next door...into the Golden Wheels Roller Rink! 

The heroes watch this helplessly, and take a moment to reload and reconnoiter (Yu pokes himself a few times and closes up some bullet wounds). But a moment is all they can afford as people start running from the rink, screaming in terror! More trouble is in the offing, and the five of them head across the street (Reanu perhaps reluctantly, as no one's paying him for this...and yet, a childhood incident involving moths spurs him on). 

The heroes enter the rink to chaos! The patrons have been changed into tomb-walkers...only they're on skates, so more like tomb-rollers! Their skin has gone white and papery, their eyes pure black, and they are covered in thin layers of dust! "We can't let them escape," mutters Skruller. 

"All right, then," says Wombat. She leaps the counter and blasts the Skate Rental guy. He picks up a pair of skates and lashes out! Reanu vaults the half-wall leading to the rink and guns down a few more, while Bruce picks up a goddamn Coke machine and smashes four of the tomb-rollers with it! Skruller steps on a pair of loose skates and rides them all the way down a corridor, shoot tomb-rollers along the way. The Concession Stand guy hisses and runs towards Skruller, a fire extinguisher conspicuously on his back, and claws at the avenger's mask.

An old man (now a tomb-roller) with ill-fitting dentures leaps at Yu, and Yu kicks a cart laden with disinfectant cans at him. He shoots the cans and a cloud of pine-smelling mist erupts in the face of Dentures McGee, but he emerges from the smoke and coughs up a gout of tomb dust at Yu! Meanwhile, an old lady moves with surprisingly speed and claws at Reanu. He leaps up into the lighting and shoots at her, but Old Crazy Mildred scuttles up the wall like a spider at him! He fires again, and she lands on her ass.

The DJ booth erupts to life! The musical stylings of DJ Geritol are bad enough to sap the energy from the heroes! Wombat, having won her battle with Skate Rental Paulie, leaps into the DJ booth and switches the music. Skruller takes down Concession Stand Joey, but his fire extinguisher explodes, injuring Skruller but dropping more tomb-rollers. Reanu leaps down and finishes off Old Crazy Mildred, and Bruce smashes up the last couple of tomb-rollers. 

A hush falls over the roller rink and the heroes regroup. Yu pokes a bunch of them, healing their wounds, and Wombat heads back to the lazer tag arena to find her damn jacket. She does...but also realizes that the sarcophagus is missing! 

Reanu reflects that this only makes sense; he was hired by one Amon Villius to kill the thieves that stole it in the first place. Yu notes that the relief on the side of sarcophagus depicted a death god - a Roman death god named Orcus. Wombat does a bit of detective work and finds a phrases associated with Orcus: cum Orco rationem habere - to reason with Orcus, or to face death. But she's seen that phrase before! It lines a stone archway in an old building in the city!

The heroes head out for their final battle, and find the archway, covered in tomb moths and glowing with purple energy. Skruller rigs up a makeshift flamethrower and torches the moths, but the glow remains. The heroes step through into a strange realm of black stone. A host of undead Roman soldiers await them, and seated on a dais, flanked by an immense warrior with a maul and a skinny emo twink with a mop of black hair sits Orcus himself. "Which of you is Villius?" he booms. "He promised me a tribute." 

The heroes ready their weapons. 

"Oh, you are the tribute!" Orcus stands. "Excellent! Warriors! Kill the tribute!" And the battle is joined!

Orcus charges off the dais and runs into battle with his greatsword, squaring off against Bruce, the obvious warrior of the five. Reanu leaps to a huge stone slab for a better vantage point, but the emo guy scampers up next to him and slashes at him with twin daggers! Skruller torches one of the warriors with his flamethrower and a bunch more run off into the Underworld, and Wombat names Orcus as her quarry and fires Lucille. Bruce battles Orcus, while Yu backs up and hits Orcus with arrows, and Maximus, the big guy, charges into battle and clocks Skruller with his hammer! 

Orcus spins with this sword and knocks Wombat, Bruce, and Skruller back, and Emotus slashes open Reanu's shirt. Blood flows, and Reanu stumbles - will he ever see his tortoise again!? But the sustained assault on Orcus wears him down, and Yu fires what should be the fatal arrow at the death god...but one of his warriors leaps in the way!

Realizing that they cannot kill Orcus while his minions still fight, Skruller torches more of them, sending the survivors running. Reanu kicks Emotus to the stone slab, lands with a foot on his abdomen, and shoots in him the head. He falls, gracefully, landing on the cold, black ground, blood forming the shape of a dove around him. 

The remaining minions gone, Wombat turns Lucille on Orcus, and shoots him down. The god of death falls dead, and his throne goes black and starts to suck in everything around it.

The heroes run...but Bruce picks up Orcus' sword. He feels a pull to the throne, and realizes that if he goes back, he is only going back to die. He takes the sword up, and sits on the throne as Bruce, God of Death! 

The others node respectfully as they leave the death realm. Yu is the last one out, and sees a woman appear from somewhere in the dark and take Bruce's hand - his mother, Zhou Lu, still trying to become a goddess. 

The four of them emerge into the Los Angeles night, and go their separate ways. Reanu heads home to stitch up his wounds and feed Speedster, his tortoise. Wombat goes to get some taquitos and find her next quarry. The Skruller heads back to his hunting grounds to find the Neon Death Monkeys who escaped their first battle. 

And Yu heads back to his apartment, where his venerated ancestor spirit leaves his body...but informs him that the imbalance is not yet corrected. (dramatic music sting) 

Character Creation: The Dawnline

And in an almost complete reversal of yesterday, we have...

The Game: The Dawnline
The Publisher: Voidspiral Entertainment
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

Buddy of mine gave me this game, along with a few others including Zafir, that he'd backed on Kickstater but didn't have any particular desire to play (this happens when you have disposable income, I'm told). I skimmed through it and wasn't particularly interested, so it sat on my shelf until today, when I discovered our Misspent Youth game got postponed a week (sob) so I had time to read a game and make a character. And I was pleasantly surprised.

I wasn't just pleasantly surprised because Miguel Santos, who did some art for Growling Door back in the day, including for Jack's Trick, the very last thing we put out, did some of the illustrations and I dig his stuff. No, I like it because it's got a cool premise and it fucking supports that premise. In brief: On this world, called Janus, you need to keep moving west into the dark, ever staying in the narrow twilight, because you go too far into the dark and the monsters eat you, and you go east into the Light and you burn to a crisp or just vanish (no one knows). It's not unlike The Well, actually, in that the protagonists' society is impermanent and there's constantly danger about. 

Anyway, the PCs are vampires who are protecting a nomadic community in exchange for blood - they don't need to kill and they can't accidentally infect, just a nibble here and there for their services. I think there are perhaps more character options than their need to be (vampire families and powers and role) and the terminology is perhaps a little precious (you'll see), but you know what? Reading this game, I thought about running it. Reading E.V.I.L., I thought about running better games. So.

I'm meant to start with a concept, and I have something that I kind of think is fun. The sort of trade language that shows up here in Janus is called "jeskure", and it's a form of sign language. As such, if you do something really awful involving trade (sell people tainted medicine, I dunno), one punishment they might levy is chopping off a hand. As such, there's a stigma about being down a hand; a lot of people think it means you can't be trusted. 

So I think my guy lost a hand in a completely not-punishment kind of way (maybe the Sirens attacked his village and he lost his hand in fight). His village got scattered to the winds, and he wound up nomadic until he found another village, but he was immediately branded a criminal and a scoundrel and nothing he could say made up for it (didn't help that his village's dialect and that of the one he found weren't very similar). After a few months of living on the margins of society, barely getting enough to eat, and doing the work of three people, he went to one of the village's vampire protectors and asked to be turned. At least that way he'd be too valuable to kick out. The vampire agreed, turned him, and then left (for a couple of in-setting reasons, it gets uncomfortable for vampires to be around their progeny). I shall name my vampire Mistue (names in this game are just kind of weird twists on existing names, I dunno, that sounds OK to me). 

Right, next step? Actually we can do steps in whatever order, and I think Lineage (basically clan, if you're more familiar with a different vampire game) makes the most sense. There are a bunch of these, so let's see what feels in-concept.

There are a couple that I feel would be fun to mix with this character's background, but Driadh, vampires that are usually mindless and feral and so tend to get attacked on sight and rarely guard villages, feels like an intensification of the "fuck you" that has been Mistue's life so far, so let's go with that. That means I get 3 points to split between Rampant and Bloodwright powers, and then 2 more wherever I want. Guess I should look at the powers.

Man, these are weird. The system works heavily on Conditions, but there's a handy page at the back that explains them. Well, I want one level of Bloodwright because it allows me to heal others, and the Rampance powers look fun, so I'll put my other two there. I'll then put one of my freebies into Dreadlight (saps opponents' Will) and one into Masquerade (makes me Shrouded). 

Cool, what next? Role, I think, which is how I look after the village. There's one called Halfmask that appeals, because their role is basically to nobly sacrifice oneself for the village, but actually I like Hand of Dust better. They hand things like butchery and garbage disposal - and probably lopping someone's hand off if that needed to happen.

Attributes? Sure, why not? I get 6 Hit Points, 1d6 + 3 Initiative, and 3 Willpower, and then 8 points to spend (1 for 1 for first two, 1 for 3 for HP). Let's spend 3 on Hit Points, 1 on Initiative, and 4 on Willpower. I think I want Willpower high for some of my Powers.

Skills! I get 14 to spend on Combat Skills and 15 to spend on Exploration. Let's start with Combat!

Well, this is pretty simple. We've got three Attack Skills (Cut, Shoot, Supernatural) and three corresponding Defense Skills (Parry, Dodge, Resist). Can I have a slingshot affixed to my stump? Bet I can. Let's put 4 into Shoot, 3 into Dodge, 2 into Cut, 3 into Parry, 2 into Resist, 1 into Supernatural. I get to pick an Attack Skill that gets a bonus when I'm outnumbered; I'll say that's Shoot.

Exploration Skills! I get 15 points...oh, hell, I had these reverse, so I spent an extra point on Combat. Um. Let's say 1 Resist instead of 2. Anyway, Know the Dark needs to be high because I spent time on my own, so let's go ahead and put 4 there. I haven't been immortal that long, so how about 3 points into Mortal Thoughts. 8 left, let's just split them evenly into Senses and Skulk.

Just Gear left, but I'll actually do it this time. I get a shooting weapon, a cutting weapon, a supernatural weapon, and a piece of armor. I know for the shooting weapon I want a slingshot that's affixed to my right wrist, with elastic made of some monster's sinew. For the cutting weapon, I'll say he has a curved dagger, given to him to mete out punishment as part of his Hand of Dust duties. For the supernatural weapon...boy, I wish there were some examples here. Um. I think Mistue has a tangle of thorns around his left arm, it grew there after he was turned. He can concentrate and force it to grow up around his hand like a gauntlet. 

Armor...I think a scavenged set of thick leathers that he assembled during his nomads "days".

And I think that's actually it (there's another "Gear" step, but it involves parsing the stuff system more than I feel I want to). Mistue (/mɪstwe/) is tall, dark, and kind of a mess - his armor doesn't fit, he has a slingshot taut on his stumped wrist, and he flinches if you raise your voice. I think his endgame might be going feral and running out into the Dark to be a Lurk, or finally standing up for himself and reminding villagers - sternly if necessary - that he didn't lose his hand as punishment for anything. 

Character Creation: E.V.I.L.

Add this to the pile of games that I was excited about when I backed them.

The Game: E.V.I.L. - Every Villain Is a Loser
The Publisher: Afterthought Committee
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

Love the aesthetic, somewhere between the art-book style of the Mork Borg games and a Seanbaby post. Love the premise, you're playing henchmen of an Evil Villain, but with the understanding that villains are losers and heroes are bastards (more on this in a moment). But the game itself kind falls flat for me, and I wasn't sure why this morning after I read it, but then during the day I reread Misspent Youth (as I'm running it tomorrow) and it kinda clicked. 

Misspent Youth is another game with strong philosophical underpinnings and a solid premise. But where that game succeeds for me and this one fails is that Misspent Youth has a well thought-out game system and a structure. Yes, the premise of the game is "you're playing youthful offenders striking back against an oppressive authority" but you can play that premise in anything - that's such a broad idea that you could use it as the framing device for nearly any RPG I've ever seen. But what makes Misspent Youth special is that the game system supports that premise, and makes it laser-focused. You don't roll for everything, you roll to see if you and your friends can beat the system, and you either do it by holding your innocence and idealism or you do it by selling out. I've run two full games, I'm running a third now, because even without a setting of its own, it's a powerful play experience (see also: Dread, Bluebeard's Bride, and I'd even argue GUMSHOE games generally do a great job of supporting the play experience they want). 

And then there's this fuckin' game. It's GMless...unless you want a GM. You're playing...the henches? But also the villain? There are example villains, and villains have goals and even awards that can give you in-game bonuses, but like, are we playing the villains? Someone actually asked that on the Kickstarter and the answer was this very wibbly "well if it's GMless then yeah you all play the villain" (but at least they answered). 

The game uses percentile dice, but I don't know why. It feels like it really wants to be an OSR game. The sensibility is very much "here's a premise, isn't that cool?! Go play it! We did the hard work!" No, you didn't. You made half a game, and it's kind of a heartbreaker. 

Oh, heroes and bastards and so forth. The game takes the view that superheroes are inherently fascist and supporting of the status quo, which, like, I see where they're going. 

And here is where we're going

Again, I don't necessarily disagree. I do like superhero stories of a more traditional bent, but my favorite ones are the ones where heroes struggle against situations that, if left unchecked, lead the death (or whatever) of innocent people. That isn't necessarily "nationalist". Spider-Man stopping a mugger isn't being a fascist. (Now, you could argue that Spider-Man webbing up the mugger and calling the police plays into this dynamic and that's probably what the author is arguing, but again, I think there's a place for the more hero-centered angles as well as the deeper deconstruction of what "fighting crime" means.)

But if that's the kind of philosophical thing you want to get into in your humor game, OK, sure. Then write a game experience that doesn't rely on telling the players what to think, but instead directs them to think about these things through the game.  

Anyfreakingway. Let's make a hench. 

I have four stats: Energy, Villainy, Influence, and Luck (EVIL, you see). I get 40, 30, 20, and 10 in these stats (remember this is a percentile system, so my stats are all going to suck), and then I roll a d10 and shift points between two stats, twice. Fine. Oh, let's put 40 into Luck, 10 into Influence, 30 into Energy, and 20 into Villainy, how bout. I'll shift points from Energy into Influence (2), and I'll shift points from Villainy to Luck (3).

Next we choose an archetype. This is badly named; it's not really an archetype so much as a "job", because it can change between missions, but since missions are called "jobs" I guess they didn't want to call these things "jobs." Could've said "assignment," that would have made more sense. I'm gonna pick Demolition for my guy, and I think he just kind of got assigned that by accident.

And, finally, I need a name, a personality, and a reason for joining E.V.I.L. (which in this context stands for Enterprising Villains Investment League). 

Sure. My guy's name is Geoff Goomer (he insists his surname is pronounced dʒumɚ). He has this habit of tripping face first into situations that are...not bad, necessarily, but just weird. Like joining EVIL. He thought he was getting in line at the job fair for a temp agency, and by the time he figured out what was happening, he'd already done most of the paperwork, so eh, what the hell. The on-the-job training seems more exciting here. Surely this isn't real C4? 

There, good enough. Blah, wanted to like this.