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15 March, 2012

Supernatural Thursday

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We finished the latest episode of our Supernatural game, in which the characters are looking for a missing girl haunted by a huli jing (fox demon.) This was one of the most warped and funny nights of gaming in a long time. They investigate the missing girl’s whereabouts, checking her motel, then linking up with her cousin, a Chinese curio shop/mendicant guy in Chinatown. they arrive to find the older man having sex with the huli jing — it will steal his “essence” and kill him this way — but they interrupt. A short fight erupts, and the girl they are looking for enters in the middle. Father Canovas and she escape while Father MacEveney gets knocked around a bit before it escapes. they use a Chinese technique for breaking the spell the creature has over the girl, but it’ll be back.

They wind up setting a trap for it. They manage to secure the girl in the local rectory near the WTC monument and wait for it to come to them. It catches them in a super-expensive, but run-down Irish bar near the WTC visitor center (if you know the area, you can probably figure out the one I mean.) The huli jing shows up as a lycra-dress wearing temptress and Parkes, the drunken FBI guy who sees ghosts, gets tipped off by his ghost son as to which one she is. He manages to get her so drunk that they stumble into the bathroom.

The following was one of the most disgustingly funny bits in gaming in recent memory. The falling down drunk Parkes winds up having sex with the critter, which turns into its fox form, it’s so drunk (and allows them to cut it’s tail off, ending the curse.) But it was much much worse than that.

In the end, they find a file folder waiting in Parkes hotel room with clippings and forensics photos from grisly murders from around the world that are similar to the case that made his name. The “Avenging Angel” killer was executed in 1998, but weeks later Parkes own family was killed by a copycat. One of the scenes is similar to that of Father Canovas’ mother’s murder by his possessed father…they have a common enemy.

That’s the lead in to get them chasing the main villain, while helping folks worldwide.

 

9 March, 2012

Adventure Seed: Hollow Earth Expedition

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After a bit of brain lock on putting together the next “volume” of stories for my Hollow Earth Expedition game, I’ve got a basic plot. The first volume would be best called “Hannibal Drake and the Mellified Men”, this one would probably best be “Hannibal Drake and the Treasure of the Illuminati!” I was really stuck on a good hook, so Runeslinger gratiously kicked me a few ideas that I took, twisted, and voila! new campaign stuff!

The McGuffin is this hazily-defined “Illuminati treasure”: What is it? Where is it? The hook: a politician/gun runner and relative of one of the characters sends a mysterious journal with the research of the Earl of Inversnaid into the McGuffin that suggests the  treasure was entrusted by Baron Kigge to Benjamin Franklin in 1784, after the Illuminiati’s ruling “areopagus” collapsed. It appears to be “safe in the house of the President”…but what president?

The bad guys are the Thule Society, who want access to esoteric knowledge and think that’s what the Illuminati treasure is. They hired the mafia to recover the book, but now the mobsters think this “treasure” could be money…and they want it. Either way, it’s a historical/archeological problem that Hannibal Drake can’t let slip through his fingers!

The settings are the Phoenix Club in London (a follow up organization to the Hellfire Clubs of the 1700/1800s), City Hall and the subway tunnels and secret masonic temples under Manhattan, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the House of the Temple (Scottish Rite temple in DC), and more.

So there’s a good, mostly fleshed out adventure seed. Have at!

 

9 March, 2012

After Action Report: Battlestar Galactica RPG

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With one of the players out for the week (he’s got a big reveal in the upcoming Supernatural session), we shifted to a Battlestar Galactica one-shot last night. The mission was a follow-up to the attack on the ship in the last episode.

The vessel is limping to Scorpia Yards after Sagittaron Freedom Militia terrorists used a revictualing freighter as a weapon, jumping out of the portside landing bay as they were landing and tearing the pod up badly. They get intelligence from a courier raptor that the FTL signature of the ship was spotted by a couple of ELINT/SIGINT trainees at a post near Canceron. The sharp-eyed recruits spotted a ship jump in and change it’s transponder to an Intersun liner, even though it jumped outside the “bullpen” (the companies in my campaign purchase jump areas for their exclusive use to avoid jumping in on top of each other), and flagged the craft. Columbia BSG has a gunstar on route to the freighter’s destination, Aquaria.

They also have intelligence from an investigation on the Colonial military post on Sagittaron from which the attack originated. They have positive IDs on two of the four hijackers of the vessel. One is a Sagittaron Freedom Movement (shut down after Tom Zarek’s arrest and reborn as the Sagittaron Freedom Militia) terrorist, and one is a Colonial officer that spent 5 years in prison for selling materiel to Ha’la’tha criminals on Tauron. Two others are unidentified.

The commander (GM played for this session) sends a small detachment to find and recover the bad guys. they arrive at the Scandinavia-like setting of Skellinsgard, a small city with a municipal spaceport. The freighter is there, and they find the real crew executed (and the supplies for their ship still aboard…) The police aid them in going through possible SFM sympathizers from the Restoration Party — a political party seeking to return to pre-Articles of Confederation independence. They get a hit on a suspected arms dealer with ties to the disgraced colonial officer.

The denouement put them at a snow-bound farm in the boonies, where the hijackers were holed up with the arms dealer and a few of his friends. There was a big firefight with bad guy snipers, countersniping, a grenade launcher that nearly killed one of the characters (BIG plot point expenditures here!) They also found the arms dealer and some local buddies were keeping kidnaped women for “fun”…and food.

Eventually, they only captured one guy, had to cut some bureaucratic wheeling and dealing with the commander of the gunstar (not pleased to have his mission snaked from under him!), and were able to return to the ship, avenged.

It ran swiftly and smoothly, and shows that — when you’re out a player for the week — swapping games for a one-off isn’t a bad way around an absence.

 

9 March, 2012

Campaign Rundown & Adventure Seed: Supernatural

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A fortnight ago, we had our second Supernatural “episode” (what i call a complete story, rather than a game session.) We started with an action-packed teaser in the deep Congo, where Father MacEveney — the “James Bond of the Vatican” — and Father Canovas, his protege exorcist, have been dispatched by the Occidental Diocese in the country to investigate cannibalism against the Mbuti pygmies by the security forces of an international mining concern. They find the culprits are nephilim — the children of the “sons of God” and women of Earth. They’re giants (7-8 footers), powerful…and can’t be exorcised; they’re living creatures, not demons, and they stay immortal on the flesh of men. The priests have to remove them from the mortal coil the old fashioned way…not their MO. Canovas was captured in media res and questioned by the nephilim, and Mac wound up using their land Rover to stage a clumsy “rescue”, that involved burning down the colonial style mansion the baddies were living in, and having to injure them with quickly blessed holy water from stew pots. Mac blessed a machette to obvious purpose. they wound up killing one, maybe two of the creatures, but one is still on the loose so he can recur as a villain.

Cut to Leo Parkes, the former FBI agnet haunted by his dead son and others. He is in the worse neighborhood in Baltimore locating a runaway and gets into a car chase on snowy streets — the locals want his cherry ’68 Mustang fastback, but their black spray-painted SC430 (with great rims, of course) can’t handle one of the turns. Parkes winds up finding and returning the girl, and getting the thugs arrested. On the way home, he gets a call from the annoying Jerry Neimann.

Our red-haired, fat, comic/game/computer geek has been busy with his Ghost Chasers website, and has unwittingly been providing information to a Parkes stalker (we’ll resolve this next time, I hope.) He calls because a friend of his has a cousin he has gone missing. The girl is Chinese, has been in and out of institutions since the death of her mother (who drove herself into the Passaic River), but the psychologists always found her sane. The family hasn’t made her disappearance public, but her cousin pushes the matter. Neimann calls PArkes to help find her, and having seen video of the girl talking in tongues, bounced the cell video to Father Mac, who is sent to exorcise her.

Along the way they discover the family knew that instead of being mad, she is haunted by a huli jing — a fox spirit or demon — that was offended by a female member of the family two generations ago. The critter drives the women mad. they also feed on the essence of learned men around them. They finally all manage to get together and are trying to find the girl, who has run away to Brooklyn to make contact with a mendicant in the family who has a Chinese curio and medicine shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

 

 

7 March, 2012

Another Crack at a Marvel Character

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This one is loosely based on a character I had in a Shadowrun game in the mid-90s. The character is a former Irish fixer for the various criminal factions in Ulster with a hard-drinking, hard-fighting past. She found a strange torc while hiding out from the police in the Irish Republic and found out it gives her some interesting powers. She has recently cleared out of Ireland as she found out just how nasty the torc lets her be.

Dark Mercy (aka Maura Mercedes Laughlin)

Solo d10, Buddy d8, Team d6

Distinctions: Criminal Past, Irish Temper, Pragmatist

Power Sets:

Torc of Morrigan: Mystic Resistance d10, Sorcery Adept d8; SFX, Afflict: d6 added to Sorcery stunts with a +1 step effect die when inflicting someone with a “bad luck” complication or providing “good luck” to a favored person; SFX, Goddess of War: d6 added to pool and +1 step to effect die to create assets (usually armor or a sword); SFX, Healing: 1PP to recover other or self stress, or -1 step of trauma; Limit, Gear: Gain 1PP when Torc of Morrigan is shutdown; must make action vs. doom pool to recover; Limit, Conscious Activation: Torc shutdown when unconscious, asleep, etc.

Life on the Run: Enhanced Reflexes d8, Enhanced Senses d8; SFX, Focus: Trade 2 dice of same face for one die with +1 step, Limit: 1PP gained when she takes +1 step to effect of emotional stress caused by something from her past.

Specialities: Combat Expert, Covert Expert, Crime Expert

Milestones:

Favor the Hero: 1XP when she first chooses a worthy, 3XP when she aids them in recovering stress, 10XP when she helps place one in charge of a team, or forces him to relinquish command.

Running From the Past: 1XP for her first use of Covert skill, 3XP when her past puts her or others in danger, 10XP when she betrays a teammate to avoid consequences of her past, or allows herself to be punished for her crimes.

 

5 March, 2012

Revised Character for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

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Here’s a revised version of Jed Callahan (posted a few days back), the first character I built for the game.

Jedediah Callahan

Solo d6, Buddy d8, Team d10

Distinctions: Gonzo Inventor, That the Best You Can Do?, Wealthy Arms Contractor

Power Sets:

Unified Organism: Enhanced Durability d8, Godlike Stamina d12; SFX, Healing: 1PP to clear physical stress, reduce trauma -1 step; SFX, Second Wind: Physical stress to doom pool for a +1 step on a die for the action; Limit, 1PP and shutdown of stamina for mental and emotional tests (applies only to physical tests.)

Brace of Weapons: Enhanced Durabilty d8, Weapon d8; SFX, Lots o’ Guns: 1PP to use any of the following SFX – area effect, ricochet. May only use one at a time and must change as per Gear; SFX, We Need a Bigger Gun: and for 1PP you’ve got one, step up to d10 on Weapon for a turn, then back to 2d6 for the rest of the action sequence; Limit, Gear: Shutdown to gain 1PP, then take action vs. the doom pool to recover. May change the effect SFX at this time (limit four.)

Specialities: Business Expert, Combat Expert, Science Expert, Vehicle Expert; Tech Master

Milestones:

Callahan Industries – 1XP when aiding the government or other client, 3XP when choosing needs of company over others, 10XP when actions put the company or personal reputation and resources at risk.

Dark Secret – 1XP when he pursues the secret of his origin, 3XP if he disregards leads to his origin for the good of others, 10XP if he makes serious headway to unraveling the mystery, or if his “condition” becomes a major issue or plot point.

 

4 March, 2012

New Traits for Battlestar Galactica RPG

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Here’s a few of the house rules traits from our BSG campaign:

Chronic Injury (Complication d2-d10): The character has a chronic injury that effects their performance. A d2-d4 might be a bad knee or shoulder — an injury that effects the character’s physical tests involving that particular area that suffers from the injury. A d6 or higher could be a serious injury or injuries that haven’t healed properly and effect the physical characteristics on tests.

Done It 100 Times… (d2/d4): The character has been through particular types of training, intensively. This might be a constant round of combat flight exercises or heavy practice doing atmospheric reentry and fast landings with marine combat shuttles (applies to Pilot tests), damage control (applies to Mech or Tech Engineering.)

Intelligence Officer (d2/d4): The character is trained in intelligence analysis. They can use the trait on Perception/Investigation and Interrogation tests.

Soft Touch (Complication d2/d4): The character might play tough, but is actually sympathetic to their shipmates or companions. The complication adds to any social tests to convince the character to see things their way.

 

 

2 March, 2012

Another Pass At Character Creation in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

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I’ve been playing with the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game for the past few days, cobbling together characters to see how I can stretch the system. It does very, very well on higher powered supers, not so well on the street-level types (but they’re still doable.)

Here’s an ooooold character from my first supers game I played in (before I was into comics.) It’s the Beauty & the Beast sort of brooding outsider trying to do good. Lion-like in appearance: big, scary, but very smart. Think the Beast from X-Men.

ASLAN (aka Henri LeCeour)

Solo d10, Buddy d6, Team d8

Distinctions: Beast Behind the Man, Rugged Individualist, Smartest Man in the Room

Power Sets: Beast in the Dark — Superhuman Reflexes d10, Superhuman Durability d10, Enhanced Strength d8, Enhanced Stamina d8; SFX – Claws & Fangs: +d6 to attack pool, -1 step on high die, but +1 step for effect die; SFX – Spiteful: Like Second Wind, physical stress swapped to doom pool for a +1 step on an action; SFX – Berserk: Borrow doom pool die for a +1 step on action, and return the doom pool die next round; Limit – Porphyry: Shut down Stamina for 1PP. Must recover in transition; Limit – Fearsome Appearance: No PP used in social tests. 1PP when he operates through his front man.

Specialties: Acrobatic Expert, Combat Expert, Covert Master, Medical Master, Menace Expert, Science Expert

Milestones: For Science!, Modern Day Cyrano (1XP When he allows someone to take responsibility for an action, 3XP to place himself in a situation where he must work openly with others; 10XP anytime he is openly exposed for his works.

 

26 February, 2012

First Pass at Character Creation in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

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I took a few minutes last night to try and bang out a characters using the new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game from Margaret Weis Productions. (Review here.) Normally, the weakest portion of a supers game, I find, is character creation — to keep game balance players usually have a certain number of points based off of the grandness of the campaign envisioned to work with. You never have quite enough points, or you have to sacrifice concept for more weaknesses or limitations than you might like, and this is understandable in the traditional campaign context where you start out as new heroes…but superheroes tend to pop into existence ready made and ready to hammer bad guys. they’re not on some Campbellian path of the hero.

Now MHR is a bit free form on character creation. There’s plenty of powers, special effects for the same, and a few limitations (that are, of course, marvel-centric like “mutant”), and you have several dozen templates to work from if you want to craft your hero. So I decided to go for a character that was one of an old gaming buddies who was so well liked he’s made an appearance in some variant or other as an NPC in nearly every super or modern game I’ve run. This is as close to the original character (once he had matured to his concept) as I’ve ever gotten.

Jedediah Callahan

Affiliations: Solo d6, Buddy d8, Team d10

Distinctions: Mysterious Origin, Gonzo Inventor, Wealthy Arms Dealer

Power Sets: Unified Organism (Godlike Stamina d12 SFX, Healing: 1PP to clear physical stress, reduce physical trauma -1; SFX, Regeneration: 1PP to regenerate destroyed limbs.) Experimental Weapons (Weapon d8 SFX: Area Attack, SFX: Ricochet, Limitation: Gear, Limitation: May use 1PP to trade in an SFX for another more appropriate one to the weapon. Must roll vs. doom pool as if recovering Gear.)

Specialities: Business Expert, Combat Expert, Science Expert, Tech Master

Milestones: Callahan Industries, Bleeding Edge Tech

History: Jed Callahan hails from Houston Texas. He’s a shortish, scruffy, and colorful fellow with a love of tings that go bang. His father was an aerospace engineer who made a small fortune off of patents and worked at NASA. All his life, Jed has been a tough bugger — he bounces back from injuries incredibly quickly, but with his first major injury — from a car accident that left his 1980 Camaro a twisty, almost unrecognizable ump of metal, his ability to heal has gone into high gear. (He told the police he had been lucky and gotten away with a scratch…he didn’t mention the severed limb that has sintered itself back on.)

He left college early and founded Callahan Firearms, quickly building the company into a respectable arms company, before expanding into military hardware. He earned his BS in his spare time, but has been considered an amateur by the rest of the arms engineering establishment.

He quietly sought out medical specialists that could figure out why he heal so quickly and learned that he is a “unified organism” — all the cells in his body act in concert with each other, reconfiguring themselves as needed. His DNA is definitely not human…but what is he? His father held the key to this knowledge, but has gone missing.

Personality: Jed is a free-wheeling, happy fellow who drinks and smokes far too much…or would if his body couldn’t handle the toxins. He likes fast vehicles, things that go bang (the bigger the better), and other than an unreasonable fear of heights, loves to push the boundaries of what he can do. At heart, however, he’s a south Texas boy, no matter what his DNA might say.

Resources: Jed is the CEO and majority holder in Callahan Industries, which makes all manner of dangerous small arms for militaries around he world. His company also does modifications for vehicles, uparmoring and arming and the like. He has access to a fair fortune (low millions) and anything that CI has in the works. He’s got friends all over, and loads of government and military connections.

So in essence — Jed is a combo of Wolverine and Tony Stark, with a bit of John Caprenter’s The Thing thrown in. His original concept was that, no matter what was done to him, he always survived. He’s not super-strong or even super-smart — his strength is that he keeps plugging away, even when badly outclassed, and

 

24 February, 2012

Non-Violent Challenges in Games

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Blasting up bad guys is fun, and for espionage or military-based games, it’s bound to turn up, but here’s a good way to really challenge the players: make them avoid conflict.

The latest espionage campaign I’m running has the team as part of an experimental team that is shared by DHS and CIA — the goal being to allow them to operate anywhere in the world, including CONUS. (This was prior to the disastrous NDAA this year that allows military to operate in law enforcement actions on US soil — I’m going to make it a part of the campaign that their success helped “excuse” the NDAA.) Most of the team are an Army spec ops team, but they’re operating with Secret Service in a joint counterterrorism task force; while in the US, they’re on loan to the DHS to get around the legal blocks.

The down side: they have to act like cops in the US. The USSS characters have to run the ops domestically and have had to push the other characters to obey the laws governing evidence, searches, violent encounters (one character is in trouble because while searching a suspect’s trailer, he was aggressed and used the bad guy’s .44 magnum…then didn’t check it into evidence.)

Most of the time, their goal is not to waste the bad guys, but to capture and interrogate (and not in the “enhanced” way.) That means a lot less gunplay, a lot more planning, a lot more thinking things through, and more use of charisma and intimidation skills. They have to be carful in car chases not to get too crazy in urban settings (although we had a Bentley on Ferrari chase in South Beach that was pretty damned cool.)

The most recent involved stealing information from a mark’s laptop without him knowing. They couldn’t hurt the target, they were protected by diplomatic immunity. They didn’t want the information they were out to get be compromised, so they had to get to the machine while the man was away, either subvert the password, or find a way to image the drive without getting through the password. (There’s a couple of good exploits for the latter for the MacBook the bad guy was using that one of the players found online.)

Most of the characters were busy playing distraction for the French DCRI, which was providing security for the target and his cohort that were in Paris for a “cultural conference.” The goal was to keep the security types following them by being suspicious enough to warrant surveillance, while doing nothing illegal or detention-worthy, while a two man team slipped into the target’s hotel room while the bad guy was out partying.

The natural inclination from years of fantasy hack & slash, and other violence-tending adventures in RPGS, is to bust heads or open up with high order violence where possible. Pushing them to be subtle usually runs against the grain. It can be more challenging to do things quietly, and more fulfilling when they get away with a mission without the opposition even knowing they were there.

 

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