Young Centurions: The Sticky Conclusion

Finally managed to finish the "one-shot" that we started here. We were down a player, so we didn't have Mickey back, so we decided he gave a rousing speech and then was abducted by aliens or something (actually I just forgot about him). 

The characters follow their lead to a nameless dive bar, hoping to find the infamous Thick Stan. They walk right in, and CB walks up to the bar and asks to do some work in exchange for food. The bartender looks him over, and then growls at him to go grab a bin from the back and collect glassware. He gets started on that, and the characters spot three thugs at a table in the corner. One of them is an immense fellow, broad of shoulder and girthy of neck, who can only be Thick Stan. 

Penelope, subtle as a train, stands upon a table and addresses the room. She offers money to whoever will give her information about the train wreck that happened today. The room subtly shifts and people surreptitiously glance at Thick Stan, who growls and shakes his head. The money is apparently too tempting, though, because one of the patrons tugs Penelope's dress a bit and motions toward the door.

Penelope and Leigh head outside and hide in a shadowy stoop. Meanwhile, inside, CB hears Thick Stan growl to his cronies, "go outside and make sure girl doesn't talk. Also get money." They stand up, and CB trips, spills glassware on them, and knocks them down to buy the others some time. Thick Stan stands up and lopes toward the door, and his cronies follow. CB knows he needs to go help, but he spilled the glasses and, Nose to the Millstone, he feels he needs to clean up first.

Outside, the dude who offered info finds Penelope and reveals that a young woman, about the same age as Penelope, was in the bar the other day looking for folks to do a "job," and he heard her speaking to Thick Stan in Slovak. In fact, they left together! Penelope slips him some money and he heads into the street...and straight into Thick Stan. 

Stan picks him up by his throat and shakes him till he gestures towards Penelope and Leigh, and Stan tosses him aside. Penelope runs around Stan and finds herself coming up on the two mooks. Stan grabs for Leigh, but Leigh dives between his legs, grabs his suspenders and pulls, knocking him ass over teakettle. 

Penelope runs into the bar, a thug on her heels. CB grabs her and spins her around, sticking out his foot to trip the thug. Penelope then starts talking to the bar patrons, getting them fired up about the possibility of not having to answer to Thick Stan all the time!

The other thug, meanwhile, goes after Leigh, but the Spirit of Exploration is just too damn quick. Leigh dives between this guy's legs and yanks down his trousers, and then runs into the bar. Stan follows, and arrives to a not-terribly-friendly crowd. He tries to stare them down, but Leigh slips in among the people and spreads the rumor that Stan is secretly a cop. The crowd turns against him, and he leaves with a snarl.

Penelope bribes one of the thugs (who are not at all interested in dealing with these kids any further) to tell her where Dobra might be, and they reveal that she said something about the Drake Hotel, downtown. The characters head back to the hospital where they tell Herr Hoffmann that Dobra was responsible for the train crash, but he refuses to believe it. After all, they didn't see Dobra at this bar, and he can't believe that she would do such a thing. The characters decide they need to go talk to Dobra directly.

They secure a carriage and arrive at the opulent hotel, which fortunately puts Penelope very much in her element. She talks to the concierge and learns that Dobra is in the penthouse, and they ride the elevator up (which fascinates Leigh, who's never been on one). They arrive at the penthouse to find a guard reading the paper, and he throws Penelope's little card right back at her and tells them to leave. They talk him into asking if Dobra will see them, and CB shoulders the door open. 

Dobra and a bunch of tough-looking fellows are in the room, including Thick Stan. Things look like they might get ugly, but the characters deftly talk Dobra down, slowly learning about her and her motivations. Penelope, noting that Dobra doesn't seem to care about money, finally realizes that Dobra feels that Everyone Needs to Know (Her) Name. Leigh, following up on that, realizes that Dobra is the Shadow of Fame. 

They each launch a barrage of accusations and speculation about her motive, and Dobra finally gives up and tells the thugs to leave. She agrees to tell Hoffmann what really happened, and tells the other characters to leave her alone. 

The next morning, the characters are summoned to a townhouse to meet with Herr Hoffmann, and he reveals the truth - he is a representative of the Century Club, a society dedicated to the betterment of mankind. The characters are Spirits, embodiments of the new century. "I have so many questions," says Leigh. 

"Ja," says Hoffmann, his eyes lighting up. "Gut!"

Young Centurions: A One-Shot in Two Sessions

So not a one-shot at all, really. (What happened was that it was meant to be a one-shot and then it got late and people got crashy 'cause we're fuckin' old and we decided to schedule another session to finish it. So here we go.)

Young Centurions is a Fate Accelerated game (I made a character here) that acts as a kind of precursor to Spirit of the Century. The characters are teenage "Spirits" of the new century (that is, the 20th), just coming into their roles as pulp heroes. Our game is set in 1915, and our titular Young Centurions have more in common than just a birthday. They also all survived the sinking of the Titanic! They are:

• Leigh Biddle, the Spirit of Exploration. Leigh is from Ireland and was a Lucky Stowaway on the Titanic ("lucky" inasmuch as they were sleeping in a lifeboat when shit went down, and so was able to snag a seat to escape). Leigh's biggest problem is that they often have their Head In the Clouds. 
• Michael "Mickey" Browne, the Unsinkable Spirit of Grit. Mickey is from London, and like Leigh, stowed away on the ship. When the ship started to sink and everyone panicked, he was well served by being a Bad Slow Thinker, Good Faster Thinker and getting people and himself into a lifeboat. 
• Clide Edwin "CB" Badley, the Spirit of Work. CB was employed on the Titanic, first as a coal trimmer, then in a crow's nest. No matter where he is, CB always has his Nose to the Millstone, but that didn't help him the night the ship went down - the fog was too thick to see the iceberg. What he did see was the panic and death that the sinking brought, because You Can See Further from the Top. 
• Penelope Rossen-Jones, the Freewheeling Spirit of Revolution. Penelope was traveling first class (her mother is Prussian, her father American, but both have money). Her unflappable attitude - What's the Worst That Could Happen? - was put the to the test when she tried and Was Prevented from Giving Up Her Seat in a Lifeboat. Since returning to the US, she has become a firm advocate for women's suffrage. 

The characters scattered to the winds after arriving in New York in 1912. Penelope went home to Chicago with her family. CB and Mickey took work on the railroads and headed west, although they went their separate ways when work took Mickey in a different direction. Leigh wandered west and wound up in Iowa. For the most part, these folks don't know each other: Mickey and CB worked together a bit, and Mickey had see Leigh around the ship and recognized a fellow stowaway, but otherwise they're strangers. 

And now, in 1915, approaching the three-year anniversary of the disaster, a mysterious German man named Werner Hoffmann approaches each of them and asks them to accompany him on a train to Chicago, for a "reunion" of sorts. The train pulls into Chicago and picks up Mickey and, finally, Penelope, and all five characters get to know each other.

Five? Yes, the fifth is a very pretty and charming girl named Dobra Meyer. Dobra and Penelope immediately start chatting in a very polite and upper class kind of way; Dobra is living in New York and was adopted by a daughter of the prominent de Acosta family (look up the family, it's well worth your time. Start with Aida). Hearing this actually compels Leigh to emerge from the luggage rack they'd been hanging out on and asking about Aida (Dobra's aunt), who was the first woman to pilot a motorized airship some years back. 

As the conversation dies down, Penelope asks where Herr Werner is, and Dobra says that he'll be in when he's ready. This isn't good enough for Penelope, so she goes looking for him, and finds him in another car writing on a chalkboard and muttering to himself in German. She knocks and startles him and he pulls down a cloth over the chalkboard, and tells her that he'll join them all in a few minutes. Penelope leaves, but lingers to watch him through the window, and sees what's on the chalkboard - some large concentric circles with numbers and connected lines, and the numbers 12 4 12 written in a corner. 

Penelope returns to the others and, true to his word, Werner joins them. He sits down and explains that they'll be pulling to a stop soon and then some reporters are going to ask them some questions, but that they don't have to answer anything they don't want to. If they want him to intervene, they just have to tap a foot and he'll "rescue" them. Dobra seems ecstatic about talking to the press, and Penelope is likewise excited (she has a cause to advance, after all), while Leigh is terrified and CB and Mickey are shy and indifferent. 

The train pulls up to a platform and the characters disembark, Dobra and Penelope waving and everyone else kind of shuffling. Werner speaks to the reporters and tells them that these remarkable young people survived one of the worst disasters this century has shown them (he ain't seen nothing yet, of course), and they'll answer questions, but please, be respectful. He then steps back and lets the reporters step up.

The reporters fire questions at the characters and they answer as best they can, for the most part. Leigh taps their foot almost immediately and Werner steps in and asks the reporters not to ask Leigh more questions - they don't do well with crowds. The press turns its attention to the others. Mickey admits to being a stowaway and thanks White Star Lines for not pressing the matter, and CB gets a good response from his experiences actually working on the ship and being a lookout. 

Dobra, however, just comes to life when the press starts talking to her, and she quickly steers the conversation to her life in New York. Penelope, who is beginning to suspect something is very off about Dobra's story, steals her thunder and guides the conversation to suffrage. Dobra tries to take back the spotlight, but Leigh, recognizing Dobra as an Adopted New York Socialite, wipes some cookie crumbs on her dress and when Dobra takes a second to clean them off, Penelope well and truly fires up the crowd. 

Werner hustles them all back onto the train and it starts moving again. Mickey asks when they're going to eat, and Werner says that they will disembark soon and go and get supper, at which point he has something important to discuss with them all. At this point, CB hears the train start to make a weird noise and realizes that the wheels aren't holding the tracks - the train is going to derail!

He warns the others and everyone braces as best they can. The train does indeed derail and their car rolls down an embankment and lands upside down. No one is hurt - CB's warning ensured that - except for Werner, who is unconscious. Dobra stays by his side and tries to revive him, and Penelope tries to see how badly she's hurt, but as she was Born With a Silver Spoon in Her Mouth she's unaccustomed to the sight of blood and turns away. 

Leigh, however, has been living on their own for years and is something of a Self-Taught Medic, and realizes that Werner has a pretty nasty bump on his head, but he's in no immediate danger. Leigh also notes that Werner's pocketwatch has fallen out of his pocket and helpfully puts it back, and realizes that the etching on the fob is a numerologist chart - Werner is a Meticulous German Numerologist. CB and Mickey work on getting out - Mickey finds weak points in the windows that CB can kick out, and the characters crawl out of the car, bringing Werner along with them. 

The scene outside is chaos, of course, and CB grabs Mickey and heads for the boiler - if the pressure isn't shut down it could explode. Penelope climbs back into the car to try and find Werner's papers and maybe get a sense of where they were going. She finds his satchel and brings it outside, and starts looking through it for a letter or a schedule or something. 

She doesn't find that, but what she does find is information on all five of them, including birth records (where they exist), testimonials from family and people who knew them growing up, and a list of survivors of the Titanic with dates next to the names. The date next to her name is 1/1/1900 - her birthday, and it's the same for CB, Leigh, Mickey, and Dobra. None of this is helpful in the immediate, though, so she closes up the satchel and tries to get help. 

Meanwhile, CB and Mickey head down to the boiler, and spot a man coming out of it. CB calls after him and asks about the boiler, and he gives a noncommittal noise. CB, Older Than He Should Be, senses something off about this guy (he's a Cheap Hood) and confronts him, but the guy brushes him off and absconds into the city. They check the boiler and the pressure is indeed turned down, so there's no danger. Mickey finds a pair of gloves (cheap leather, not work gloves) and a crumbled up piece of paper. The paper has a diagram of the valve one would need to turn to alter the pressure, with arrows drawn to indicate how to turn it down. Seems like someone wanted to make sure the boiler didn't explode.

The press arrives and they zero in on Dobra and Leigh. Leigh freezes up again, but Dobra plays them masterfully, answering questions and fawning over Werner. Penelope heads back and CB and Mickey arrive at about the same time that an ambulance pulls up. Penelope tries to get the attendants to listen about figuring out where they were going and getting whoever's waiting on them a message, but they're more interested in getting Werner the help he needs and just tell them all to get in. Dobra graciously stays behind to talk to the press and says she'll catch up later.

In the ambulance, the characters talk about what they've learned. Werner wakes up briefly, and tells them that the plan was to go to the stately home of a friend of his for supper, but it's too dangerous now. He tells them that he'd seen something bad coming - the train derailment - but that he hadn't known exactly what until it was too late. Now he needs the characters to find out how it happened before they go to his friend's house, lest they lead whoever was responsible there. He passes out again, but not before telling them that he has every confidence in them - they are, after all, the spirits of the new century. 

The characters disembark at the hospital and CB goes and buys them some sandwiches, so they can eat while they talk. Penelope brings up the information that she found and shows them ("huh, I was born in Cork," says Leigh), and they realize they all seem to have the same birthday. Does that mean anything? Not to them, but it would to a numerologist. None of that helps in the short term, though, because what they need is a way to learn about the train crash. 

Leigh employs their Century Stunt (Infallible Sense of Direction) and suggests they head back to the crash site. There, they look around at the length of track and Leigh discovers a section of Bent Track, which CB then examines and realizes that someone pounded it out of shape with hammers. So the derailment was intentional - but why? 

CB grabs a local and asks about train schedules, and learns that this particular section of track is used throughout the day. In fact, there was another train on it only a couple of hours before. That means that someone sabotaged the track today, specifically to hit this train, but that the train wouldn't have been going very fast when it hit, which minimized the damage. Was it to delay them getting to their destination? Penelope notes that a train derailment would certainly get a lot of attention...and who do they know that likes attention? 

CB talks to a local sausage vendor and learns that three men were indeed working on the railroad earlier to-the-live-long-day, but they weren't dressed like railroad workers usually were. Cheap suits and hats, they had on. Also, she recognized one of them as a local hood that everyone calls "Thick Stan". Stan, or Stanislaus, is a Slav and a bully, a thug, and not someone you want to cross. CB asks where to find him, and Mary (the sausage vendor) tells him about a dive bar a few blocks over, but only so he can avoid it. 

So obviously the characters start heading over there, Mickey giving them a little pep talk to rally them. To Mickey, after all, there's Only One Direction: Forward. 

Next time, we'll see where that forward motion takes them!

Character Creation: Young Centurions

Well, this game is going on the "run this" list.

The Game: Young Centurions
The Publisher: Evil Hat Productions
Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played this particular game, but I'm very familiar with FAE and with Spirit of the Century
Books Required: Just the one 

Young Centurions is basically the teen version of Spirit of the Century. You're playing Spirits, folks born at midnight at the beginning of a new century (the 20th, in this case). In SotC, though, you're playing them as adults, while here you're playing them as teens. That means that game takes place before 1920, so there's this whole World War thing happening, and yet the tone of the game still manages to be pretty light. Part of that is because of the author (Carrie Harris, with whom I went to college and did a lot of gaming back in the day); she's really amazing at keeping the tone consistent and accessible. 

Anyway! The game is meant to be playable by younger and less experienced players, and I can honestly say it's one of the better expressions of that idea that I've seen. So, let's make a Spirit!

This being Fate Accelerated, I need to start by deciding a high concept. I also need to figure out what I'm the Spirit of. I feel like I make a lot of characters who are resilient and enduring, and I know I lean on tragedy a lot (this may be because I'm sad most of the time, but y'know, life's like that). So let's say that my guy is the Spirit of Hope. The latter half of the 1910s are pretty dark, and enduring it is one thing, but hoping for something better and daring to dream is another. So my guy is going to be someone who has spent his young life in an orphanage (yes, I'm drawing on Annie, sue me). He doesn't know who his parents were, but he's bought into the story that a lot of orphans have - my real parents are important, and someday they'll find me. 

Anyway, I think Hopeful Orphan is a decent enough High Concept. So now I need a Trouble Aspect. I think that the flipside of hope is that he trusts too easily; he's basically really easily led. Far Too Trusting is a good Aspect.

Now I get three more Aspects, and not a lot of guidance. I definitely want to lean into the whole "orphaned under mysterious circumstances," but I also don't want to have an Aspect that represents something the character doesn't know, so I'll call it No One Will Tell Me What Happened To My Family. 

I suppose it'd be in-genre to take a dog as an Aspect, but I don't want to go full Annie. Actually, I want to swim again the grain here and say that the orphanage is an awesome place to live. The couple who runs it, the Swanns, are caring and honest people, and they just won't place a child with a family that they think won't care for them. Swann's Home for Wayward Children is the Aspect, and it'll represent that I can call on the Swanns for assistance and that the place is important to me, so it's potentially leverage.

One more Aspect, and I think I want something that's a little more intrinsic and beneficial. Nimble Like a Nervous Cat. He startles easily, but he also gets out of the way instinctively. Doesn't mean he's afraid of everything, he's just an easy mark on Halloween.

Strictly speaking I should choose a name and description now, but I'm not quite ready to do that. I'll do approaches first. I get one Good, two Fair, two Average, and one Mediocre. I know I want Clever to be my Mediocre (this guy gets by on guts, not smarts). Conversely, my Good is gonna be Flashy. Fairs can be Forceful and Quick, and that leaves Careful and Sneaky as Average.

Stunts, then! The book says to take at least one, but the usual rules apply (meaning I get three). One needs to be a "Century Stunt", which means the bonus is +3 or do a cool thing twice per session. It needs to be thematically related to my High Concept. I'll make a stunt called Light in the Darkness: Because I'm the Spirit of Hope, twice per session I can spend a Fate point to give a rousing speech that gives anyone who hears it a Fate point.

Cool. I can take two more stunts before I have to start spending refresh. I'll take one called "Want Ta Make Somethin' Of It?" Because I can talk tough, I get a +2 to Forcefully create an advantage by intimidating others.

And then I'll take "Ssh! You'll Wake Mrs. Swann!" Because I'm used to sneaking out of the orphanage with my pals, I get +2 to Sneakily overcome if I'm leading a group.

That means I've got 3 refresh, which is fine. The rest is description!

Obadiah "Obie" Tailor is 14 (meaning that this is set in 1914). He's short for his age, lanky, and has dirty blond hair that falls in his eyes if he's not wearing his newsboy cap (he's basically always wearing it). He's missing one of his front canine teeth and he blows air out of the hole when he's thinking. Obie is always down to sneak out of the house and go raid someone's garden or whatever, but if someone on the block asks for help, he always manages to convince his fellow orphans to pitch in. "How did Obie talk us into this?" is a common question, but it always seems to work out OK. 

And that'll do it!