Atomic Robo: Love Finds a Way

Wednesday we finished up our Atomic Robo story. We'll probably return to this game at some point; I'd like to run a story focusing more on the dinosaur characters and/or Effy. But for now!

Last time, the team refitted the Dinambulance for undersea travel. This time, they loaded up to go under the sea and see what precisely the Dauphin was up to.

They approached his palace and decided to look for Cosette's room; she was in love (supposedly) with Franklin, one of TeslaDyne's technicians, so maybe she'd help them. Effy and Jesse stayed in the sub while Reggie, Otto, and Marsha disembarked and slipped in through her balcony. They engaged in a bit of social conflict, but quickly wore her down and got her to agree to betray her brother, the Dauphin, provided that the team wouldn't kill him or destroy the Cetacean Empire, and would take her to the surface to be with Franklin.

She showed them her computer, which the Dauphin had used to send messages to Franklin. Mostly what he'd wanted Franklin to do was disable the outer defenses of the lab, presumably to allow the dolphins' massive amphibious tank to crush it. But why? They had Cosette call for her brother; Marsha hid outside the room on the outer wall...basically in plain sight, because she thought she'd blend in, Otto hid under the bed, and Reggie grabbed a bunch of light bulbs and hid on the ceiling pretending to be a chandelier.

The Dauphin came to the room and Cosette played her part well; the Dauphin revealed his plan - the idea was to capture Boris and fit him with gills, making him an unstoppable amphibious kaiju able to smash the cities of man HAHAHAHAHA!

At this point, Reggie had had enough. He dropped on the Dauphin, setting off battle. Marsha, outside, jumped on some guards, all feathers and fury, and Jesse smashed the Dinambulance/sub into the wall (OH YEAH!) creating an escape route. Otto grabbed Cosette to get her to safety, and Reggie wrapped up the Dauphin and took him along as well.

The sub slowly started for the surface, but remember it's Slow as a Sea Turtle. Effy readied a powerful pheromone bomb, and released it behind them as the dolphin army was closing in. The dolphin army...degenerated into synchronized leaping and other activities (Reggie slowly covered Cosette's eyes with his tentacle; "some things can't be unseen"), and the team escaped to the surface.

The Dauphin was transferred to a holding tank until TeslaDyne could figure out what to do with him. Cosette and Franklin are very happy together (Franklin asked for some kind of dolphin suit, so he could finally be with his beloved, which is all very weird so I suggest you don't think about it too much), and General Cavy gave everyone a promotion and told them to get back to work!

We're gonna take a break from this game, and +Travis is gonna run Nobilis. Like, Big White Book Nobilis. Pray for us.

Atomic Robo: Octogent vs. MechaSir

Saturday was Atomic Robo. I should do the write-up before I forget it all.

Last time, the characters realized that the Cetacean Empire was working against them, perhaps by wearing pants. They decided that they'd need to go under da sea in order to investigate, and go to work changing the Dinambulance to be submersible. Since Atomic Robo goes to the trouble of including a cool system for invention, we used it!

They worked on the Dinambulance and made it submersible, and added a harpoon with a cable, grabby arms to the front, and added a function to jam echolocation (damn dolphins). Of course, that took some work, and four catches. It called attention from H.P. Cavy, who read Effy the riot act about the team not informing him about the security breach and their current project; she wound up filling out a lot of paperwork. They also realized they needed a way to make the windshield stronger so it wouldn't fold under the pressure, and they'd need someone to test drive it who was not only aquatic (so if it leaked the driver wouldn't die) but an exceptional driver.

As Reggie started to tell them about someone he'd met who could act as a test driver, Otto interrupted him with a snarky comment about his long-winded stories. For a Gentleman Octopugilist, it was too much. Reggie and Otto squared off, Otto opening with insulting repartee and Reggie following up by grappling him and yanking him into the moon pool (in the...motor pool). Otto considered using his lightning gun, but as he's Like a Sir, that just didn't seem sporting. Both combatants blew through all of their Fate points fighting each other to standstill, and Reggie pulled on Otto's head enough to give him a consequence (Crick in the Circuitry). Finally, Reggie conceded (because it became obvious that Otto's player wasn't going to, even though he wasn't really getting anyway, and no one wants to be taken out because that just ladles on the suck) - he won the fight, but H. P. Cavy caught them fighting and Reggie wound filling out forms and putting Otto back together again.

Meanwhile the two dinosaurs and Effy let the boys dick around and talked about their materials problem. They did some science and developed a system of hexagonal interlocking pieces, much like compound eyes, and that solved their windshield problem.

But the team still needed a test pilot, and now that his honor had been satisfied, Reggie told them about Christopher Sponge, the best test pilot he'd ever met. The characters donned SCUBA gear to go meet with him (except Otto, who is a robot, and Reggie, 'cause y'know) and went to a sunken ship...but there were dolphins there, already meeting with Christopher.

Marsha crept up to the window, with Reggie wrapped around her like a cloak (he can camouflage, you see) and listened - the dolphins were trying to coax Christopher out of retirement to drive something up on land, whereupon the remotes would kick in. Jesse, however, slipped off the rocky outcropping she was standing on (couldn't catch herself; Short Arms, Long Reach) and fell. She didn't bruised anything but her pride...but the dolphins heard. The leader called for an attack, and a pod of dolphins zipped in, battering Jesse (but doing little damage).

Marsha, unseen burst out of her cephalopod "cloak" and tore one of the pods of dolphins apart. Effy activated her DPS stunt, making Jesse and Otto more effectively combatants, and Otto fired his lightning gun at the dolphin leader. Reggie's player compelled the leader's Dolphin Leader Aspect and pushed him to retreat; after all, they were losing.

As the dolphins left, though, they smashed the sunken ship, burying Christopher. Jesse, with her mighty tail, swept the rubble out of the way, and Reggie zipped in to talk with Christopher.

(The running joke here being that everyone talks to Christopher as though he responds, but...he's a sponge, he doesn't move.)

Reggie argued with Christopher about their shared history, and Effy figured out that, due to an incident in the Indian Ocean, Christopher was now addicted to tiki marsala. Promising to provide that for him, the team got Christopher to agree to pilot their sub on its test voyage, and headed back to base.

The test went off (wait for it) swimmingly (again, the "camera" never focuses on the interior so we don't see Christopher actually piloting). Now, the team hypothesized about what the dolphins were actually doing. SCIENCE.

Using the Deduction system, they figured that the device that they were bringing up was big, mostly remote controlled, and was there to capture Boris (remember him?) and bring him back into the ocean for terrible porpoises. They also realized that the dolphins must have an inside man...and they remembered a tech working on the tranquilizers that kept Boris down, name of Franklyn, who had perhaps too much a fondness for the Dauphin's sister.

They raced to the lab, and found the door jammed! Reggie slid under the door, no problem, and popped it open. The lab was destroyed, full of gas, and the team saw Dr. Davy's hamster-ball (I mean, he's a Guinea pig, but you get the idea) full of gas and their boss unconscious. Franklyn was sending a message to his Cosette, and managed to get the message away before Reggie pinned him to the wall.

Now the characters know what's coming...but do the dolphins know what they know? TUNE IN NEXT TIME as the team goes INTO THE CETACEAN EMPIRE!

All the Game Prep Ever

I'm running five games right now, plus occasional one-shots. If that seems nuts, well, it is. Let's take a moment to ruminate on that.

I've always dedicated a lot of time to running games (start the clock on "always" when I was about 18 or so; I ran games occasionally in high school, but my freshman year in college was when I started to meet a lot of other roleplayers and it wasn't uncommon for me to run games four nights a week). For a while it was mostly Chill, but I'd routinely buy other games and we'd try them out. So I'd run or play Shattered Dreams, Nightlife, Paranoia, Toon, Earthdawn, and lots of others I can't even think of right now. Sometimes we'd just play a game once and then gravitate back to stuff we liked more, and once 1994 rolled around and Wraith: The Oblivion came out, then it was down the rabbit-hole that was the World of Darkness.

World of Darkness, in both incarnations ("classic" and what's now called Chronicles of Darkness), was great for the GM who likes to run multiple games because they could all take place in the same universe. That was harder with OWoD, since the cosmologies weren't really designed to mesh, but it didn't get too crazy until Demon: The Fallen by which point I had pretty much stopped running connected games. It was nice, though, if I had a random group of people one night and folks wanted to play but we didn't have a group of characters for those particular players to be able to say "OK, make Mage characters and let's pick a city." And bam, new chronicle, another entry in the binder.

Now I don't run as much WoD, though. I'm not running any CofD games at all (for now, though we'll get back around to Promethean at some point), and I'm just running Changeling: The Dreaming as a playtest for the 20th anniversary edition. Since my priorities have shifted from "be an expert in WoD" to "play lots of different games to broaden my horizons as a designer," I'm running, at present, a Fate Core game (Atomic Robo), a PbtA game (Epyllion, or rather, the Epyllion ashcan, since the main game isn't out yet), a Gumshoe game (Night's Black Agents), and a lighter, beer-n-pretzels game (Feng Shui), in addition to Changeling.

Epyllion is nice because it's zero-prep. I wing it every session, and that's the way PbtA games work. But the rest of the games require varying degrees of prep. Feng Shui is simple enough in play, but it's got a lot of backstory and since it relies on combat, I have to have opponents statted. Night's Black Agents is Gumshoe, which is a heavy-prep game (though this particular game has been going long enough that I can wing it a little) because you have to know what clues are around for the PCs to find. Changeling, sadly, is more prep than I'd like. It used to be that I knew WoD so well that I could whip up stats off the top of my head, but even if we weren't doing a playtest with some revised rules, it's been so long since I ran an OWoD game (that last one was Demon, which wrapped in...jesus, late 2004, by the look of it?) and I largely (and deliberately) put the system out of my head when I started developing/writing for NWoD that it's weird to be running it. Doesn't help that the players, by and large, aren't familiar with it and, I think, would rather be playing it in NWoD/CofD. Atomic Robo is Fate, which means that I know the system, but it has several cool little subsystems I need to get familiar with.

And all of this is on top of the fact that the groups are very different. Atomic Robo is perfectly able to improvise and buy in with no trouble. Feng Shui has a bit more trouble with that. Night's Black Agents is finding their feet in the game, but it's taken three years and some switches in players and characters. And so on.

Time was that I had no trouble keeping up with game prep, but then again, time was that I a) had more energy and b) had more time, somehow. My day job used to afford me occasional opportunities to work on not-work, but it's gotten more intense this year, and it's sapping my energy. I'm getting older, too, which doesn't help, and then there's the freelance work.

What I am saying? I think what I need to do is set aside a day a month, to do some extensive game prep for what I'm running. One day may actually not be enough, but I have a day today (yesterday, really, but I was sick yesterday which totally pissed me off, and led to me taking today off work). In the interest of not making this post any longer, and in making it easier for players of the respective games to avoid the posts in question, I'm gonna make separate posts for each of the games (less Epyllion, because again, no prep).

First up, since I'm running it today: Changeling.

Atomic Robo: The Plot Thickens, and Get Salty

We played Atomic Robo yesterday, despite our best efforts. I say that because everyone at the table was just on fire with the clever jokes, and I don't even mean that sarcastically. People were really funny (sadly, a lot of it you needed to be there for), and the giggle loop was very much in effect (I was trying to find a clip from Coupling that explains it, but I can't, so just trust me, it's very funny). Anyway, we did make some progress in the story, but this episode is likely to be kind of short, interspersed as it was with masturbation jokes and Grease references.

We open a few weeks after the team found and tagged Boris, the giant predatory dinosaur. Effy is in her lab, running some tissue samples on the big guy. She finds, though, that a bunch of them have been contaminated and are useless. Very strange.

Marsha is in the jungle, stalking Boris. She's convinced he's up to something nefarious, stomping through the trees and eating herds of animals, the big asshole. She notes, though, that he's got scratches on his flank. She sneaks up and peers closer (in no danger because she can camouflage herself), and smells antiseptic on the scrapes. It looks like someone took tissue samples...but who? She heads back to base to try and find out.

Jesse is in the motor pool, working on the Dinambulance. She realizes that someone has adjusted the seat settings, someone much smaller than her (but that's a lot of people, since she's a dilophosaurus). She realizes someone took the Dinambulance out of the motor pool, but who could even drive it?

Reggie, meanwhile, is in the ocean just off the coast, supervising a weigh-in for an upcoming boxing match (he's retired, but still part of the circuit). He hears some dolphins talking smack about him, and one of them - a muscular fellow named Batroc - challenges him to a bout. Reggie handily beats him, and the other cetaceans back off, and Reggie heads back to base.

The characters meet up in the lab, where Otto is there calibrating himself (see, this is how it starts). Jesse and Marsha report their findings, and they figure, hell, we have these cameras for security. Let's check 'em out.

The cameras show the motor pool, but then they go down. When they come back on, the Dinambulance is gone. It comes back, the door opens, and water pours out, but before they can see who or what steps out, the feed goes out again.

Effy takes some samples from the floor around the Dinambulance; Jesse's fastidious cleaning makes it hard, but she manages. She finds traces of sea salt. Very curious.

The characters head to the security room to talk to the head of surveillance, Petaluna Petals. She's infused with the DNA of a creeper vine, and if she sits anywhere for any length of time, the vines grow around her. Marsha and Reggie zip to the security room, Reggie using the series of water-filled tubes that allow him to zip around the facility. When they get there, they find Petaluna in her seat, watching monitors, the room covered in vines as usual. But Marsha notices that one section of vines - near a control panel - is brittle and weaker, as though dehydrated.

They ask her to call up the footage from the appropriate day, and they find that the outage starts at the control room and goes to the motor pool, and then back. So someone started in the control room - but who? Petaluna has an alibi, she was sunning herself in the sun-lamp room at the time. How did this person get in?

The characters realize that Reggie's tubes allow this kind of access, and Reggie, as a gentleman, doesn't allow cameras in them (modesty, people!). He checks the tubes' interior and finds traces of grease. Analysis shows it's biological, but genetically engineered - who has that kind of tech (besides Tesladyne, of course)? Meanwhile, Jesse checks the settings in the Dinambulance and realizes that who- or whatever drove it was smaller than her, but had arms even shorter, proportionally, than hers! What could that have been!

A dolphin, they realize. But then how did it work the pedals? Jesse theorizes that two dolphins together might have done. Reggie decides this mystery is involved enough that they need to consult an expert.

They head to the brain-room and hook up Sherlock Holmes' brain (which, you'll recall, taught Reggie the art of bartitsu). They sprinkle some cocaine on his lobes and he talks them through the problem. Sure, this could be multiple dolphins...but a dolphin with legs makes even more sense! Then the dolphin would worse the pedals. So there is the question...where are the dolphin's pants?

(Tune in next time, when I promise this will get even more ridiculous.)

Atomic Robo 1st Session - Meet Boris

Which actually happened a week ago, but this week has been nucking futz, you guys.

Well, first thing to note, we added a player. +Matthew Homentoasty is playing Otto von Faust, a robot assigned to make sure everyone stays in their budget and that Tesladyne's interests are represented (his concept aspect is Company Robot).

So! I went around the table and asked everybody for a threat, something that's been dangerous on the island of late. We got monsoons, a volcano, time rifts that sometimes disgorge dangerous beasts, and, of course, the Dauphin off the coast. Also occasional earthquakes.

With that in mind, the characters got a distress call from an outpost close to the interior of the island. They rushed out there in the Dinambulance (well, Otto flew with his jetpack), and found that a big portion of the front of the building had been smashed in. Most of the staff had made it to the panic room, but the circuits had fried and they couldn't get out. The characters worked on that, and then we tried out these Brainstorming rules.

I like these very much - you present the group with a situation, and they all make rolls to see who gets to establish a fact about the situation. With some Notice and Biology rolls, they realized it was a Really Big Dinosaur that Fell Through a Time Rift, and went about tracking it.

Oh, they found it.

The creature was a gigantic carnivore. They found it munching on some unfortunate local fauna. Reggie jumped on it and got it into a headlock, using his sick moves as the South Seas Southpaw. Otto blasted it with his lightning gun, and the Marsha jumped on Otto's shoulders to make use of the lightning gun more effectively. Effy used her patented Bio-Flage to conceal everyone, and a pheromone bomb to confuse the poor monster.

Soon enough, they had downed it. Effy, though, given her whole Bring 'em Back Alive philosophy, was of the opinion that the creature could live on the island. They'd just tag it and make sure it didn't get too close to the facilities. They decided to name it "Boris."

Epilogue: A shadowy cetacean figure looks into a viewscreen. "Perfect," he says in a Parisian accent. "They have given it a name."

Character Creation: Atomic Robo

So, y'know, I like to make characters for games before I run them, when possible. Since I'm running Atomic Robo tomorrow, I figure I should make a character real quick. So heeeere weeeee goooooo!

The Game: Atomic Robo
The Publisher: Evil Hat Productions
Degree of Familiarity: Not much with this particular game, but it runs on Fate Core, which I'm pretty well versed in.
Books Required: Just the one.

 
Atomic Robo is a comic, and it's one I haven't really read, but it's very much up my alley - Tesla creating robots, crazy sentient dinosaurs, very pulpy and action-sciencey. Michelle has been wanting to play it for a while, so when the group that was Monsterhearts morphed into its current form, we wound up choosing it as our next game.

Creating a character for this game works a lot like other Fate games. I need a concept to start out. I've overseen chargen for this before, so I know I want to play a weird character, but I don't know that I want to be as weird as Travis and his gentleman octopus. There are a number of sample weird modes in the book; nothing says I couldn't make up my own, of course, but I kinda want to play a psychokinetic. I don't know that I ever have played a character with some stripe of telekinesis, but it's far and away one of my favorite super powers, and I think it'd be kind of cool. Ooh, and I have an interesting concept, with a little inspiration from Stranger in a Strange Land. Actually, as I'm thinking about it, maybe I do want to make up my own mode.

So, Adriago Valetti is my character. His parents worked for a branch of Tesladyne investigating "parallel harmonic alternate dimensional entities," or PHADEs. The equipment worked by vibrating the participants' molecules at precise frequencies, such that they moved out of synch with the world around them. The eight original PHADEnauts vanished into a parallel dimension, and came out two years later, each having aged almost a quarter-century. With them was Adriago, born in-PHADE to two of the PHADEnauts.

Adriago, once the vibrations stopped, was stable, and ages at normal human rate here (time passes different in his phase; about one year of time per one month of normal Earth time). Adriago is trying to adjust to life here, but it's so weird - people here have so very little control over their lives. They're at the mercy of things like "gravity." My concept aspect is "Stranger to this Frequency."

Now I need to buy modes. I get 30 points, and each mode costs a number of points based on the Skills it includes. Action, Banter, and Intrigue each cost 9, and Science costs 3.

Well, I know want Action, which includes Athletics, Combat, Notice, Physique, Provoke, and Vehicles. Hmm. I picture Adriago as being pretty stoic and naive, so Intrigue doesn't seem to fit. Banter, however, is just as "off." I'll go with Science as my other one (which is just Will and Notice, which is why it's cheaper). That's only 12 points, so I have 15 to build my weird mode.

So, my weird mode is going to be called "PHADE". It's about how Adriago is a denizen of another dimension, basically. Hmm. Well, obviously I'm drawing heavy inspiration from Valentine Michael Smith, here, but I don't want to just play that character. So I think Adriago is going to keep Mike's largely gentle, kind of childlike demeanor, but be more physical - this is an ACTION! game, after all. Being from a different dimension, his senses don't work quite the way ours do - not sight, smell, etc., but more his more subtle social senses. So I'll add Rapport and Provoke to this mode. Also Will, too, definitely. And then I think PHADE is going to allow Adriago to use some psychic type powers (maybe TK, maybe not), but it grants him a fluidity of movement, so I'll add Athletics. Ooh, hell, I need Empathy, too. That gives me 8 points spend, here. I'll Notice and Physique, too, for an even 10.

Now I need to rate my modes. I think PHADE should be first (Good), and then Science, and then Action. That was easy.

Now I reinforce Skills. Basically, if they show up in more than one mode, they get a boost. Right now I get:

Rapport, Provoke, Will, Athletics, Empathy, Notice, and Physique under PHADE.
Athletics, Combat, Notice, Physique, Provoke, and Vehicles under Action.
Notice and Will under Science.

So Notice shows up three times; Physique, Will, Athletics, Provoke show up twice. That means Notice starts at Trained in Good, but moves up twice to Specialized (Superb). Will starts Trained in Good and moves up to Focused (Great), as do the others, actually. Holy cats, I really stacked this well.

The book says to figure out Stress Boxes, but since I could in theory improve Skills yet, I'll let this wait. Game designers - derived traits always go last.

I should fill in some aspects, though, before I do stunts. I need an aspect for each mode, and then an Omega aspect that's just kind of quirky or troublesome. For my PHADE aspect, I'll take Harmonic Manipulation - Adriago can shift harmonies around at will. This qualifies him for some weird mega-stunts, which I'll get to. For his Science aspect, I take Everything is Different Here - his approach to science involves learning about the underlying principles of his strange new land. And for Action, I'll take Didn't Know I'd Do It Till It Was Done - Adriago is a man of action and is somewhat impulsive.

That leaves an Omega stunt. Ooh, drawing on another of my favorite novels, kind of, I'll take So It Goes. Adriago is, philosophically, inclined to see people from their own perspective, which is great, except it means that he sometimes loses the thread of the whole "good/evil" thing, because evil never thinks of itself as evil. He knows that nothing ever really stops, and so he has a hard time grieving something just because it changed form. This can make him seem insensitive or even naive.

Neat! Now stunts. Hrm. Mega-stunts are the super-power kinds of things, and I know I want a couple. I had been thinking TK, but eh. I think instead, we'll start with one based off of Adriago's temperament - he doesn't get afraid. We'll call this stunt Perspective, and it's kind of based on his ability to see things long-term, big-picture. It makes him immune to fear-causing attacks, but also gives it a cost or weakness. I think he'll be weak against social attacks that use sincerely held belief (so you're not going to get anywhere lying to him, but if you really believe what you're saying, he'll go along with it).

I also want a short-range teleport, called Harmonic Slip. This allows an absolute action; he can overcome physical barriers by slipping over or through them. I'll take a cost, there, allowing the GM to compel my concept aspect (or my PHADE aspect, for that matter) once a session.

I get three more stunts. I can take more mega-stunts, if I want, but I dunno. I can take a stunt to let me attack with Empathy, that might be fun (remember that "attack" means "causes stress"). So I think I'll take a stunt called I See You, meaning that I can use Empathy in an attack action after a successful Provoke or Rapport attack action.

Likewise, it'd be nice to use Notice, my best Skill, to defend against physical attack. I think it makes sense; Adriago can sense vibrations all around. So I think I'll take another mega-stunt called Tuned In: I can use Notice to defend against physical attacks and I get Armor:2 after the first round of combat (giving me time to get tuned in).

One more. Hmm. Oh, something I totally missed before is that because I have Science as a mode, I get all the science Skills ever at Fair. I think I should use some of my points to increase Harmonics, though. I have 5 points left, so I'll spend three points to bump it up to Specialized (Great). And then for my last stunt, I'll take Everything Has a Frequency - I get +2 to Create an Advantage with Harmonics, provided I can touch my target first.

OK, I have two points left. I can focus a Trained Skill for for 1 point or Specialize a Focused Skill for two. Hmm. I'll spend one to bump Empathy from Trained to Focused. And then I have one lonely little point left. Can I buy another Skill? Oh, I could bump another Science Skill to Focused under my Science mode, couldn't I? I'll do that. Let's say Anthropology.

And now I do stress boxes! My Good mode has both Will and Physique, so two more boxes, and then my Fair mode has Will, which adds one more mental. I'm ready to rock!

Atomic Robo: Island Paradise, or, An Octopus, Two Dinosaurs, and Effy

Saturday the smoking wreckage of the group that was playing Monsterhearts gathered, with a couple of new faces, to play a new game. We didn't have any real idea what to play, so taking a cue from +Jason Pitre's Spark RPG, we all went around and named a piece of media we liked, and then tried to find an RPG on my shelves that hit as many of those notes as possible. Here's our media list:

• Hamilton: Sarah likes hip hop, and the notion of the "language of revolution."
• Dr. Who: Megan likes time travel plots, but also the emotional content. 
• Eclipse Phase: Travis likes the wacky transhumanism. 
• Mad Max: Fury Road: Michelle likes the world-building and the established sense of history. 
• eVolve: I like the exploratory sci-fi, but also the "you fight as a team or you die" aspect. 

So with that in mind, I looked through my shelves and looked for some possibilities. We discussed Psi-Punk (Fudge-based cyberpunk), TimeZero (Savage Worlds-based time-cops), Misspent Youth (about which I've written quite a bit), but settled on Atomic Robo. 

Now, I hadn't read the RPG or the comic, but I knew a little about it from Michelle's fangirling and it looks very readable (and it's a month until we play next). So here's what we've got so far.

The players wanted to work for TeslaDyne, but not the main office, as it were. They're on an outpost on a jungle island waaaaay in the middle of nowhere. We haven't detailed the office's resources much yet (I suspect we'll do it in play), but the boss is General H. P. Cavy, an Action Scientist who transplanted his consciousness into the body of a guinea pig and who jumps into a huge suit of power armor when shit gets real. 

Weep weep weep.

The PCs, then: 

• Jesse, the Dilophomedic. She's a dilophosaurus who can spit poison or medicine! She drives the Dinambulance, a modified jeep full of medical supplies. She washed up on an Arctic Beach and has been modified since.
• Crocodylomorph Marsha: She's a velociraptor, but like, a real one, with feathers n' shit. She's only chicken sized, but she's a badass chicken with foot razors and near-perfect jungle camouflage. 
• Iphegenia "Effy" Tsoukolos, the Combat Biologist. As the support, she can apply poison to other folks' claws, spray them with Bio-Flage to make them stealthy, or science the hell out of them. 
• Reginald "South Seas Southpaw" Armstrong, the Gentleman Octopus. Reginald is, in addition to a dapper eight-armed gentlemen, a master of bartitsu, which he learned from absorbing the brain of Sherlock Holmes. The Dauphin people of the seas are his nemeses. (Nemeseas?)

That's what we've got so far. Tune in next month!