Actual Play Double-Whammy: Night's Black Agents/East Texas University

Sunday we played Night's Black Agents, yesterday we finished up our story arc in East Texas University. Today I am home a bit early following POTS flaring up at work because the insurance company randomly decided to refuse to fill my script, so I've been without meds for nearly a week.

Anyway! First one, then t'other.

You're no fun anymore.

Well, actually, this game's still a lot of fun.

So! Last time the agents were in Belgrade, having a spot of bother. They were in the hospital; Parker in the waiting room as lookout, MacAteer and Hanover in the van across the street, and Gambone and Ess coming up the elevator. And four dudes with large rifles came out of the building across the street, while security starting rushing the elevator.

Ess and Gambone rigged the elevator to go up one floor, then tossed a flashbang down the stairs to disorient the security guards and made for another stairwell out. Parker headed for a side exit, but one of the dudes saw her and gave chase. She flung a knife at him and hit him in the chest (non-fatally, but certainly enough to slow him down) and she kept moving.

Meanwhile, outside, MacAteer started the van up to go meet the others...and then it lurched and died, with a bullet hole in the engine block. The two of them piled out and noted the sniper in the window of a building across the street, while the dudes with the guns took up positions in front of the parking lot, forming a kill box. Hanover snapped his own rifle together and took out the sniper (tell you what, every group should have one agent with Shooting as their MOS), but the other folks were still boxing them in. MacAteer snuck away and jacked a car, and Hanover piled in. They left out the back of the parking lot and started heading around to the back of the hospital, using the labyrinthine streets to best advantage.

At the back of said hospital, though, bad things were happening. Ess and Gambone came out one door to find Kingsilver and a flunky taking cover behind a car; as soon as the agents clear the door, the started shooting. Gambone dove forward and got clear, but Ess took a hit. Parker came out a side door, took aim, and shot Kingsilver in the head. Gambone, lying prone, shot her again after she collapsed. Parker approached and took a shot from the flunky, but nothing major. She stepped out to deliver a coup de grace...

...and then Kingsilver stood up and tentacle'd her in the chest. Parker collapsed, unconscious, and Ess approached, brandishing his dart gun, containing the very last of their anti-vampire coagulant serum. He shot her in the neck and her face swelled up, her left eye exploded, and she looked very much on the verge of death.

The flunky, seeing this, gunned Ess down, nearly killing him. Gambone shot the flunky and downed him, but Kingsilver wasn't dead. With both Ess and Parker down, Kingsilver pointing her gun at them and told Gambone to back off. He agreed, if she'd get in the car and go. She shot her flunky dead and lit out, leaving Gambone to tend the wounded.

MacAteer brought the car around and they loaded Parker and Ess in and took off. They made it to their safe house and stabilized Ess (Parker was mostly just stunned), who would need some major medical care. Gambone, who had no wounds and no medical training, kept an eye on the criminal underworld and the news, and found that the agents' pictures were all over the place as terrorists, and that rumor on the grapevine was that Vilmos Hajnal had put word out that he'd cover legal fees and extraction for anyone who shot the agents on sight.

Nothing to do, though; Ess was wounded and wasn't going anywhere for a week, so the agents went dark. During the downtime they did some analysis of the blood vials they'd stolen, and found the blood to be human but contaminated. Obviously Kingsilver had baited them; the op was for naught.

Figuring that they needed to get the hell out of Belgrade, they got their boat ready (yay Preparedness!) and had MacAteer cause a distraction a few miles away, using his Disguise MOS. They got on board and headed up the river, then disembarked and headed into Croatia to Zagreb. From there they caught a flight to Tuscany; they want to get back to the villa and regroup, and maybe see if there's anything in the blood that they can use.

One more session in this op, I think, and it won't be pretty.

And now...

Gosh.

East Texas University!

We pick up on Friday at the concert. Lula is running the merch table with her friend Kelly (who so desperately wants to bang the lead singer of Low Shoulder), and Doug is hanging out with them. Dante is in the crowd dancing with his date, Chrissey, and Josh is in a different part of the crowd with his frat buds.

Chrissey mentions to Dante that she promised a friend she'd give them a ride home, but perhaps she could come by later? Dante is down for that, naturally. Josh glances over into the trees and sees people moving, which strikes him as odd; why skulk? There's a concert going on. Perhaps making out?

Over at the merch table, on the other side of the crowd, Lula and Doug notice folks in the trees, too. In fact, Doug recognizes one as Peter Lopez, the campus cop that Lula was all smitten with...but he's with the dude that Dante tackled in the Sociology building Wednesday night, and a third dude that Doug thinks is familiar but can't place. How odd.

The concert winds up and Dante asks Chrissey if, perhaps before she leaves, they might find a tree under which to neck? And then his player rolled like four raises on the Persuasion check, so Chrissey does him one better - there's a pier jutting out into the lake.

Josh, meanwhile, crosses over to his friends and tells them about the people in the woods. Lula leaves the merch table with Kelly and Doug and goes into the trees herself, and finds the dude that Doug kinda-sorta recognized. She asks him about Peter, and he claims not to know him (but is clearly lying, because Doug saw them together).

The line continues to die down. The band disassembles the stage, and Kelly takes the cash box over to Nikolai and gets invited into the van. (Don't worry, she's fine. Low Shoulder isn't booked to hit Devil's Kettle, Minnesota for a few months yet.) The other characters finish up and head to the parking lot, and find more cars there than they'd have expected...including one that Dante recognizes as Chrissey's. Doug, too, notes a campus security parking pass in one of the cars - perhaps Peter's? Josh takes the opportunity to grab his gun out of his car; this is getting weird.

The group quietly heads toward the lake, and sees a campfire burning on the water's edge with people milling around it. They sneak into the woods (and all made their Stealth rolls, amazingly), and see something horrific. A group of people is standing around the fire, and two big strong guys are holding a woman (that Dante and Doug recognize as a Sociology prof) and dunking her. They're apparently doing this on the say-so of the dude that Doug recognized; he's holding up a book bound in leather. A half-dozen other folks are standing around looking on...including Chrissey.

Lula flings a rock at one of the guys holding the prof, and he drops her - she runs. The dude with the book screams at them to get her, and they give chase. Josh tries to tackle one, but misses and gets punched (though not hurt). Dante sprints out and intercepts the guys, letting the woman run, but the guy with the book raises his hand and shouts something unintelligible, and a horde of mosquitos appears and swarms around Dante, the prof, and the two cultists.

Doug runs out, grabs Josh's gun, and holds it on the book-guy, ordering him to stop. The book guy laughs and points his hand at Doug, firing some horrible bolt of energy. Doug turns away, vomiting up mosquitos.

Lula, meanwhile, keeps to her plan of throwing rocks from the forest. She downed Peter with a shot to the eye, and downed one of the other cultists with a rock to the face. Josh took a punch to the face and a broken nose, and Dante tackled a cultist but got kicked (ineffectively) in the shoulder for his trouble. But during all this kerfuffle, the prof made it to the parking lot, and the dude with the book, apparently thwarted, dove into the water and swam away. Shortly thereafter the sheriff arrived, and everybody got hauled in for questioning.

Doug and Josh needed some medical attention, and Dante, who had been bitten by a shitload of mosquitos, needed a bucket of calamine lotion, but no one was seriously injured (well, Peter lost an eye, but fuck that guy. Also I decided that gave him enough character to be a Wild Card going forward). The prof told the cops that Dante and his friends had saved her, and Dante told the cops that Chrissey hadn't been part of the cultists, so she got off with no real trouble. Everybody else got arrested and, where applicable, expelled.

The guy with the book, whose name was Michael "Mikey" Suez, was never found, but Kestrall Lake is 70 feet deep, so the police assumed he'd drowned and become catfish food. We'll never see him again.

And for now, we're taking our leave of East Texas University, but we might well revisit at some point. Go Ravens!

East Texas: Beer Pong and Punching

So, last time, the characters saw a bunch of birds, chatted, kvetched, and tackled a thief breaking into a prof's office. This time, there was even more excitement!

The characters had their usual day of classes (nothing especial to focus on there, except that Josh's theater prof had his sketchbook back). And then that evening, as they hung out in the dorm doing study-things, and Josh's roommate texted all of them.

Josh, you see, has a kind of annoying roommate named Donnie Gayle. Donnie manages to trip headfirst into stupid situations, and he usually texts everyone first. But this time, he texted photos of the folks from Low Shoulder - they were at a party in Greek Row. Lula was down (and let her friend Kelly know, since Kelly was very much looking forward to bedding Nikolai). Dante, likewise, was always up for drunken shenanigans, and Doug and Josh kind of figured "ah, hell, sure" and tagged along.

They got there and found the party was already going nuts - lots of drinking, beer pong, and people trying to get close to Nikolai and his drummer. Donnie showed up and acted drunk and stupid, but the real excitement was when Doug noticed a bunch of frat guys eyeing him in an angry sort of way. And then one of them stomped over, made a slurred accusation about Doug banging his girlfriend, and slugged him ineffectually.

Doug lit out for safety (he is not a fighter), and Dante launched himself over the pool table like Batman at the dudes. He wound knocking one down, as did Josh, but got a beer bottle to the head for his trouble and wound up Wounded. Lula crept around the throng with Kelly, but bounced a quarter off a frat dude's head and made him trip over a table, taking him out. Doug, meanwhile, had made his way over to Nikolai and told him that if he helped out, Doug would make sure he met Kelly, who was entirely willing to do depraved things with him.

Nikolai let Doug hide behind him, and then the sheriff showed up and everyone got quite a talking to! And also tickets for disorderly conduct and so on. Lula's cop buddy, Peter Lopez, showed up and pretended to write her a ticket, but actually gave her his number. Dante got a towel with ice to put on his head, and everyone started walking back toward Whitehall (the dorm they live in).

Donnie, meanwhile, had put a bunch of photos of the party up online, and Dante noticed that Peter had been there before the violence started. He excused himself and went to campus police, and talked Peter into rescinding his ticket (it's not really illegal for Peter to be there but it doesn't look good). He rejoined the others, who were in the midst of obtaining pizza, and they looked at the photos some more. They realized that the thief they'd tackled the day before had been there, too, handing what looked like a book to a dude that Doug recognized from the business center, who was then photographed getting all up in Nikolai Wolfe's face.

Some drama was going down, the characters just weren't sure what. They headed back to the dorm, ate pizza and hung out a bit. Tomorrow's the concert, after all. Gotta rest up.

Game prep! Oh, myyyy!

Back at the table and high on life. Let's prep some games!

I don't have a lot of philosophical blather this time, so I will instead link this poem I recorded over on Soundcloud. It's "The Hangman" by Maurice Ogden, it's one of my favorite poems, and I felt it was kinda topical. I linked it before, but I'm just filling space now so that my players don't click on this and see something they shouldn't.

Good? Good. On we go.

East Texas University: The Beginning Commences

Monday was our first session of East Texas University. Meet the characters!

• Josh Jacobs (played by Glen): Josh is a theater major, most interested in tech. He's also got an annoying roommate who hasn't shown up yet; note for next time.
• Dante Cervantes (played by Toasty): Dante isn't even supposed to be here today is a military science major, and is therefore in ROTC. He's spending more time than is probably wise partying just now. 
• Tallulah "Lula" Rae Sawyer (played by Sarah): Lula is a "nontraditional" student; in her late 20s, she was an accountant and then decided to go back to school for fashion design. She's in the dorms because she missed the deadline to fill out the "I'm too old for this shit" form.
• Doug Olson (played by Matt): Doug is a computer science major and skilled hacker. He's also calm in the face of danger, but that didn't come up much (nor did his Trouble Magnet Hindrance, because I forgot about it). 

So! We open on a Wednesday afternoon. The students know that this Friday, there's a concert out at Lake Kestrall starring Low Shoulder. Doug is going because what the heck, it's a social thing, and he wants to be better at that. Lula is working the merch table (a friend of hers wants to bang the lead singer and she got volun-told). Josh is going for the fun of it, and Dante is going because his crush Christy asked him. 

This Wednesday, though, the students are in class, except for Dante, who has managed to arrange his schedule to be free in the middle of the week (which is perhaps the most unrealistic thing about this game). He hears from a classmate that one of the campus Christian organizations tried to get Low Shoulder's concert campus, but that they'd already gotten a permit and all was above-board. Lula is in Color Theory, and chats with her classmate. She hears that the lead singer of Low Shoulder, Nikolai Wolfe, is on campus hanging out, probably trying to get laid (said classmate makes it clear that she is d, as they say, tf). Doug is in a programming class, but it's being taught by the TA instead of the prof. He later learns that the prof's office was broken into, and the prof sent the TA to deal with the class while he cleaned up and talked to campus security.

Josh is in a theater tech class, and gets asked where a couple of lights are - they weren't signed out properly. He doesn't know, and asks his classmate Andy, who reacts suspiciously but denies knowledge.

Later on, the characters find themselves in the lounge on the fifth floor of the dorm (their common area). Doug is clicking away on his computer, working on his homework. Josh, likewise, is fixing a fog machine, and Lula is working on her homework. Dante is asleep on the couch (and taking up the whole damn thing, thanks). A student walks by playing "Through the Trees" on his phone, which annoys the characters and wakes Dante. They wind up chatting about life, sniping at each other, and basically being college kids. 

Josh finishes his fog machine and turns it on to test it. It works...but then the power goes out in the building. The characters are stunned, and then hear a wear noise from outside. Looking out the window, they see that the sky is full of birds, all flocking east, blocking out the setting sun. 

Creeped out a bit, they decide that sitting in the dark is no fun. Dante goes to take a shower (he's been doing gardening work on campus), but the others decide to walk with Josh as he goes to return the fog machine to the theater department. They find the Low Shoulder van in the parking lot, and the drummer talking to Andy. They stop talking as the characters approach, and Andy is again skittish. Going inside, Josh drops off the fog machine, and sees a teacher rummaging around in his office. He asks what's up, and the teacher asks if he's seen his sketchbook. Josh hasn't, but reflects on the teacher's offices being broken into. The three of them (Lula, Josh, and Doug) go to grab tacos.

Meanwhile, Dante showers in the dark. As he finishes, his candle goes out, and he hears someone enter and go into the next stall. He hears half a whispered conversation, and the person speaking says that he'll "hit the sociology building tonight." Figuring that he might have just heard the person who's been ransacking teacher offices planning, he gets dressed and meets up with the others. They decide to stake out the building - what the heck, right?

They arrive and Dante goes in, while the others wait outside. He catches someone jimmying the door to a prof's office with a crowbar and smacks him. The dude runs, but Josh tackles him outside and the others call campus security. The security guard shows up (and flirts with Lula a bit), and then zip-ties the offender and drives off with him, turning up the radio, which is playing "Through the Trees." 

Next time, we shall meet Josh's roommate and perhaps magnetize some trouble for Doug!

Game Prep: East Texas University

Today was day one of Con on the Cob, but we didn't stay past booth-closing time. We'll be there this weekend, but we were tired and Michelle had dissertation momentum, and I really wanted to clean off my table.

You know, spoon conservation sucks. I can look forward to POTS hitting me once a day, give or take. Sometimes it's bad enough that it knocks me flat for the rest of the night (like, if I do something stupid like eat fast food). Sometimes I just need a Gatorade and a little rest. Sometimes I'm smart enough to get up and walk around and curtail it, but then sometimes something stresses me out (hint: this week has been somewhat stressful) and there's not much to be done, there. All this to say that last week, when I was scheduled to run Feng Shui the Monday after getting home from Metatopia, a large part of why I decided I didn't have the spoons was because the table wasn't cleared off. I could have run the game, cleared the table, prepped the game, made dinner...but not all four.

As such, I have to do things when I have the spoons to do them. Tonight, I could have stayed at the con, but I have to stay later on Saturday, I'm likely to be tired on Sunday, and I'd like to stay later tomorrow. And so here we are: using my spoons tonight to clear the table off and do game prep for Monday, because I'm buggered if I'm canceling again.

Probably that's enough filler so that my players won't casually see big secrets as they're browsing G+, if any of them do that.

Character Creation: East Texas University

My group that was playing Iron Edda decided to switch over to something quick and light in tone before we jump into Promethean again (we also talked about getting back into my Hunter: The Vigil/Mage: The Awakening game, but the consensus was that if we played Mage we wanted time to really get into it and this game isn't going to go that long. In a related matter, I love that I can say to this group "we'll totally play Mage in a few months" and they're like "Oh, OK, fine").

Anyway, we talked about a bunch of different games, but we were aiming for a pretty narrow target. To wit:

• A game that was light in tone, even if it had horror elements
• A game that I didn't have sink a lot of time into reading (which meant a shorter book)
• A game that didn't require the players to read it, because they won't

We talked about a bunch of games, but many of them fell short of those last two requirements. We talked about Guild of Shadows, which I'm interested in running at some point, but folks were skeptical about the "everyone's a thief" bit. In the end, we landed on East Texas University; it's modern day, it's Savage Worlds (which most of them know), and it's Buffy-level horror. Plus it's got a random adventure generator, which I'm totally using. 

 

The Game: East Texas University
The Publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Degree of Familiarity: Very familiar with Savage Worlds
Books Required: ETU and some version of Savage Worlds 

 

As you know, I like to make characters for the games I'm running, so since I have a little time before I have to go pick Kai up from riding lessons (which sounds so posh when I say it like that), I'll do up a college freshman real quick. I said on Facebook that my next character would use this as a theme song ("Colors", by Halsey): 

Don't worry about the video per se, it's just the song I'm after. Well, reading the lyrics, the drugs are evident. I can't decide if I want to play the person singing the song (I mean, not Halsey) or the subject. I think I'd like to play the person singing. So here's the deal.

My character is Drake Stephens. He's a freshman at ETU, but ETU wasn't his first choice. He was going to go to his local university, which I'll say is Michigan because I know the area kinda-sorta. So he's from the Detroit area. Drake fell in love with a guy (Ryan) his senior year in high school. Ryan didn't have as easy a time with coming out as Drake did (Drake's parents' reaction was basically "yeah, and?"), and Ryan developed a drug habit. This culminated with Ryan OD'ing in late July and then disappearing out of the psych ward. As far as Drake knows, Ryan's parents had him moved to a different hospital.

Now, if I'm running the game, this being a horror game and all, Ryan might show up on the run from the demonic conversion therapy place (conveniently running distance from ETU or something) that he'd been stashed, which would leave Drake and Ryan to contemplate their relationship and whether it's a good idea to resume. But for the moment, let's assume that Drake went to ETU to get away from his home town and his memories of his boyfriend, so he's like a lot of college freshmen - a little confused, a little damaged, ready to start something new.

Step One of chargen is race, even though they're all human so why bother. Step Two is Major. I think we'll make Drake a Folklore Major. ETU actually has a well-renowned Folklore program, and I think Drake picked that because his original major at U of M was Psychology, and then he got a close look at a psych ward and decided "no, mythology is better." That makes my Major Skill Knowledge (Folklore).

Step Three is Traits. Starting with Attributes, I get a d4 in each and then five more to split up, just like in the home game. I actually think I'll just split it up evenly; d6 is each Attribute.

Now I get 15 points in Skills. I swear to god, if I ever do M0arpigz, I'm gonna put the Skills on the damn character sheet. This flipping between books is for the birds. Anyway, I'll put a d6 in my Major Skill, so that's two points. I'll take Driving and Fighting at d4, why not. I'll take Investigation at d6 (so I'm up to 6 points spent; 9 more). Ooh, Notice. I'll splurge and by it d8, which costs extra because my Smarts is only d6. I've got 5 more. Riding and Stealth at d4, Streetwise at d6 (Ryan's influence) and Taunt at d4.

Sigh. No, we don't do Derived Traits now because Edges & Hindrances can change them.

Step Four: Edges and Hindrances! I get a free Edge because I'm human. I want Be a Zebra, which raises my Parry by two if I'm standing next to a target. I want Hindrances, though. I'll take Second Fiddle, which frankly a lot of my characters should have (I feel like a secondary character and have to make a Spirit roll or lose a Benny). I'll take Clueless for my Major Hindrance; it sounds dire but it just means I take a -2 to Common Knowledge checks (and that Drake is out of touch with the mainstream, which is a pretty good representation of a Michigan boy in East Texas anyway). And them I'll take Doubting Thomas, because it's so rarely applicable (Drake, quite reasonably, doesn't believe in supernatural shit).

Right, that's four points. I'll spend two and boost my Spirit to d8. And then I think I'll boost Fighting to d6 and pick up Persuasion at d4.

I can pick an Extracurricular Activity for my first semester. I'll be boring and take Fitness (I get a +2 to avoid Fatigue from any source this semester; Drake is committed to eating right, exercising, and avoiding drugs and booze, for now).

OK, now derived traits. Charisma and Academics are 0, Pace is 6, Parry is 5 (or 7 if I'm with "the herd"), Toughness is 5, and that'll do it. Drake is ready for academic craziness! Go Ravens!