tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28261385096658385702024-03-05T07:47:34.749-08:00Insidious GURPS PlanningUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-25146214477605029932021-09-18T20:55:00.002-07:002021-09-18T20:55:21.883-07:00RPM Mistakes- some made, some avoided<p>My brother moved across the country a few months ago, and to help deal with his social isolation he got up the energy to convince me and some other family members to start a new GURPS campaign. It's been going swimmingly, recaps may or may not be in the works.<br /><br />That said, it's been a long time since I've GMed a campaign that uses Ritual Path Magic (and the last time the only PC caster was using alchemy), which means it's a perfect opportunity to go over mistakes we've made, as well as pitfalls we've avoided that have come up in play.<br /></p><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Delivering a Spell via Melee Attack is not a Free Lunch<br /><br /></h2><div>I choose to accept a <b>very broad</b> reading of page 17 of Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic to allow attaching a spell to an attack:<br /><br /><span class="fontstyle0"><blockquote>Once created, the missile has to be delivered by touch<br />(using DX, Brawling, etc.)</blockquote></span></div><div>Activating a charm requires a full Ready maneuver. Before we realized this the resident mage was thwacking people with his staff and loading additional spell damage beyond what would've been reasonable given the overall action economy of the game.<br /><br />Yes, you can put a conditional on the weapon so that a spell takes place when it hits, but short of extremely careful preparation of conditional triggers (good luck convincing your GM to let that slide), you're looking at being one and done as far as those go.<br /><br />Even the option presented in Pyramid #3-66 The Laws of Magic for Charm 'R' Us doesn't get around this - a ritual charm meant to deal damage after a melee attack still has to be activated with a Ready maneuver, even if the charms inhabit a physical wand or staff, or other object.<br /><br />For those wondering why delivering a RPM spell via melee attack is still an appealing option:<br /><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Cheaper than adding range and subject weight for internal damage<br /></li><li>No range penalties from attempting to utilize a missile for external damage</li><li>Having actual melee weapon skill allows for better parry than raising Innate Attack skill</li></ol><div>Important note: Compartmentalized Mind has no interaction with charms themselves due to the requirement of a Ready Maneuver.<br /><br /><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">Tapping Energy Reserve is a Free Lunch</h2></div></div><div>Tapping Energy Reserve takes a Concentrate maneuver, meaning that as long as you tapped enough energy for the full spell cost, the spell happens immediately.</div><div><br /></div><blockquote><div><span class="fontstyle0">On the caster’s turn in which the last necessary point of energy has been acquired, he rolls against the appropriate Path skill (</span><span class="fontstyle2">Choose the Skill, </span><span class="fontstyle0">pp. 19-20) to cast the spell.</span>
<br style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-size-adjust: auto;" /></div></blockquote><h2 style="text-align: left;">Blurring the Lines between Conditionals and Charms is a Bad Idea</h2><div>Initially, I waffled on how concretely to treat Charms, whether they were physical objects, or something more akin to Vancian Magic where you just prep the spell ahead of time and then get to activate them at will.<br /><br />Ultimately, forcing Charms to be physical objects that must be readied to use became important to ensuring that mages don't become magic machineguns, dishing our 7d of damage turn after turn after turn. This also introduces potential counter-play (by creating opportunities for enemies to respond before charms are utilized), allowed for people to steal charms created by others, and is overall more consistent.<br /><br />It also forces more careful thought about the use of conditional spells in general.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Rule of 16 is Important</h2><div>Per B349:<br /><br /></div><blockquote><div><span class="fontstyle0">If a supernatural attack (magic spell, psi ability, etc.) offers a resistance roll and the subject is </span><span class="fontstyle2">living </span><span class="fontstyle0">or </span><span class="fontstyle2">sapient, </span><span class="fontstyle0">the attacker’s effective skill<br />cannot exceed the </span><span class="fontstyle2">higher </span><span class="fontstyle0">of 16 and the defender’s actual resistance. If it<br />does, reduce it to that level.<br /></span><span class="fontstyle2" style="color: #325f5a;">Example: </span><span class="fontstyle0" style="color: #325f5a;">A wizard has an effective skill of 18 with his Mind-Reading<br />spell. If he tries to read the mind of someone with a Will of 16 or less,<br />he rolls against 16. If his subject has a Will of 17, he rolls against 17.<br />And if his target has a Will of 18 or higher, he rolls against 18.</span>
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" /></div></blockquote><p>In our specific circumstance, the Rule of 16 should've kicked in when a practitioner with Path of Mind 19 whammied the party with a Terrify spell. With fright checks, rolling without -3 in penalties can be the difference between being stunned for 1 second and having to roll vs Will to snap out of it, or being stunned for 1d seconds then having to roll vs Will to snap out of it.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">No, You can't Bestows a Penalty to the Resist Roll</h2><div>I largely view this as a case of using magic to get better at magic, which is explicitly forbidden. You <b>can</b> hit someone with a spell that saps their HT or Will, or a spell that gives them Magic Susceptibility, but those spells have to defeat the target's Resistance Roll mano-a-mano before taking effect, and they only benefit the <b>following </b>spells that affect the target.<br /><br />Penalties that take effect after the magic has successfully affected a target are generally fine.<br /><br />This one we avoided.<br /><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">Path Skill Defaults Can't Exceed 12</h2></div><div>Path Skills default to Thaumatology-6, but cannot exceed 12 at Default. Beware your preferred character sheet program of choice 'helpfully' increasing Path Skills above 12 if a character's Thaumatology exceeds 18.<br /><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">Drinking a Potion is yet another not Free Lunch</h2></div><div>Per page 29 of Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic:<br /> </div><blockquote><div><span class="fontstyle0">Before </span><span class="fontstyle2">using </span><span class="fontstyle0">an elixir, you must have it ready. If you<br />have it exposed (e.g., in a bandoleer), this takes only two<br />Ready maneuvers (one to draw it, one to open or ready it).</span>
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br /></div></blockquote><p>This is one that my group is still coming to grips with, along with another important note on potion use.<br /><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">No Administering Potions to Unconscious Individuals<br /></h2><div>You cannot administer a potion or powder to an unconscious individual. </div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-69853714760259554552021-04-30T08:44:00.000-07:002021-04-30T08:44:16.930-07:00GMing Advice: Your Game Should be What it says it is on the Tin<p>A friend of mine recently had a very amusing experience running Rogue Traders for his group. He presented his group with an assassination contract, meant to disrupt an upcoming vote on who would get to rule some lucrative mining planet.<br /><br />He was completely floored when his players decided that instead of settling on just doing an assassination, they could rig the upcoming vote so that <i>they</i> would gain control of the lucrative mining planet.<br /><br />Clearly my friend is blessed with ambitious players. Every single instance of players going off the rails to do something ballsy and epic is a gift that should be cherished by a wise GM.</p><p>He summed up the experience by stating:<br /><br /></p><blockquote><h2 style="text-align: left;">"In my experience, players will create the type of sessions they want to play through their actions. You just need to follow through once they tell you what they want. Get out of the way."</h2></blockquote><p>It's excellent advice, assuming that the game your players have fun playing is a game you have fun running.<br /><br />This post is largely geared towards readers who are recruiting players blind, and possibly people attempting to coax friends into forming a TTRPG playing group.</p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Incongruous Expectations</h1><div>When a GM decides to start a campaign, they tend to have an idea what it will be like. Typically, just choosing a game system is a fairly binding choice right out of the gate. If you're playing in PARANOIA, or Exalted, or the World of Darkness, you have some pretty solid foundations that you can assume will hold true in most campaigns.<br /><br />But even within the confines of game systems, there's plenty of variance on how each game can be approached. Saving the world quests, hack and slash combat, and political shenanigans are all three distinct campaign styles that you could run in each of the systems/settings above. (If Friend Computer says you saved the world, you saved the fucking world. Happiness is Mandatory.)<br /><br />With all of that wiggle room and ambiguity, it's easy to see why horror stories abound of people joining new groups, only to discover that what the group considers (fun/acceptable/normal) is completely different than what the new player/gm expected. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even assuming some of those horror stories might be attributable to troglodytes and misanthropic assholes, I'm certain that a good portion of them are related to GMs/Groups failing to properly get on the same page about what everyone wants out of the game.<br /><div><h1>What the GM Wants</h1></div><div>I certainly approach a new campaign by asking 'What do I want?'. After all, a GM who isn't interested in the type of game that they're supposed to run is in for a bad time. And so are their players.<br /><br />Lately some family asked me to start a campaign for them so my goals were loosely:</div><div><ul><li>Introduce completely green players to GURPS and TTRPGs</li><li>Not run a modern action game because I'm already running one</li><li>Considering that the players are new, whatever I come up with should have some heavy structure to it- I ended up choosing a central heroic quest that they'll hopefully latch onto and enjoy undertaking<br /></li></ul>Usually a GM's goals will align with the system, setting, genre, and premise that they present to potential players. The better you can do this, the easier a time you will have finding players who mesh well with you and the group.</div></div><h1 style="text-align: left;">Know Thyself<br /></h1><div>The Exalted Guru I know is an expert at weaving storylines together and does an excellent job of balancing the spotlight for players who frequently have extremely different gameplay goals. That said, I can't picture him running a mega-dungeon, or staying interested in a hack-and-slash campaign for very long.<br /><br /></div><div>I have another friend whose GMing talents revolve around heavy systemic world-building, coupled with good skill at stringing together missions to form a campaign. Building that world and doing the ground-level prep necessary to set players loose in those settings as a sandbox without firm rails is not really within their GMing toolbox.<br /><br />I myself mostly run skulky-action games set in the modern age. My attempt at running something closer to super-heroes and every single one of my attempts to run Blades in the Dark have been utter failures.<br /><br />Clearly, it's beneficial to be honest and aware of what you do well, what you can handle, and what you should recuse from and let someone else helm if that's what the group wants to play.<br /><br />If you set out to do X, tell players they should expect X, and then fail to do it well because you're actually better at Y and unintentionally running Y, you've set yourself up for problems.</div><div><h1 style="text-align: left;">Know Thy Players</h1>Discussion of player motivations and how to categorize them into taxonomies have been going on <a href="https://www.runagame.net/2015/06/player-types-and-motivations.html">for decades</a>. Given just how much those motivations can affect the course of a game, it's clear why it's a topic that's always good for sparking long conversations with your local grognards.<br /><br />When your game allows the players to do the things they find interesting to do in play, you're in for a good time as a GM. <i>Especially</i> if what they find interesting also happens to be fun for you to watch.<br /><br />Which is why it is so vitally important that the way you talk about the campaign accurately represents what the campaign will be like. If players accurately know what they're getting into, the better the chances that they will self-select <b>OUT</b> if the game wouldn't be a good fit for them.<br /><br /><h1 style="text-align: left;">In Summary:<br /></h1><div>Games are a blend of both what the GM and the Players want. The closer the premise and style of a campaign matches with the temperaments and goals of the players, the less friction there will be.<br /><br />The better a GM is able to understand their tendencies, and the more accurately they represent themselves and their games, the easier time they'll have gathering players of a similar mindset.</div><br />A GM's capability to execute on what they try to do, their skill at the craft, and their improvisational chops will determine how well things go when expectations clash, or unanticipated situations happen.<br /><br /><br />To his credit, my Rogue Trader pal handled the curveball from his players with aplomb. If the players pull off what they're planning, it will be a story they retell for <i>years.</i><br /><br /><h1 style="text-align: left;">Final Thought:</h1>It's important that you've reached zen acceptance that allowing other people to do things in an imaginative space where decisions actually lead to logical consequences will inevitably lead to the game not looking like the color-by-numbers you had originally envisioned in your mind.</div><div><br />If the emergent dynamics of a campaign freak you out, might I suggest becoming a novelist?<br /><br /><br /></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-40499003487379690112020-10-29T10:49:00.001-07:002020-10-29T11:03:45.335-07:00The Basics of Using GCS: Equipment<p>This is part 2 of my introductory series to utilizing the program GCS for creating GURPS Character Sheets. In it, I'll be covering the options for editing equipment to suit your needs.<br /><br />Other Parts:<br /><a href="https://insidiousgurpsplanning.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-basics-of-using-gcs.html">Part 1: Introductory Basics</a></p><p><br /></p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Equipment:</h1><div>Adding equipment to a sheet is the same as adding any other entry to your character sheet- either dragging the entry onto the sheet with the mouse, or hitting CTRL+SHIFT+C.<br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgak14Th80hYA40uLqqNV1y6Ijp_P4cLglLCzxxvz8A9u3EtkCrtfggPXR7K4V3L_FXVEG77VGxDlQGJ1gconrbf6rvc-GZx9QTYQ7JMJWSB9Qy6TndRIONOnTeAL0iNjRfbefz0OgRkNU/s557/Equipment_Window_Ranged.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="557" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgak14Th80hYA40uLqqNV1y6Ijp_P4cLglLCzxxvz8A9u3EtkCrtfggPXR7K4V3L_FXVEG77VGxDlQGJ1gconrbf6rvc-GZx9QTYQ7JMJWSB9Qy6TndRIONOnTeAL0iNjRfbefz0OgRkNU/s16000/Equipment_Window_Ranged.PNG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bog standard edit equipment Window</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The top half is the same for all equipment and encompasses the typical stats that would be applicable to equipment regardless of function- price, weight, quantity possessed, and so on. There are really four things to note about the top section:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>The notes field will show up under the item in the character sheet view- useful for noting specific rules or bonuses the gear might give.</li><li>The Extended Value and Extended Weight fields will dynamically update with modifiers added through the modifier tab</li><li>The checkboxes for Equipped and Ignore for Skills will make the item count or not count against encumbrances. The equipped box will also clear any skill bonuses for equipment that give those if it is unchecked.</li><li>CTRL+UP and CTRL+DOWN will increment and decrement the uses of an item on the character sheet, making it easy to use the field to keep track of things like say, shots remaining for a gun.</li></ol><h1 style="text-align: left;">The Melee Weapon and Ranged Weapon Tabs</h1><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now let's break down the Weapons Tabs:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglIccW0BgXMtcNvwwvKL2Llvs1vChUuum66XBvcrOub7BMEN-HtVz0NNQpOMDQnWChwFuYmhBaKnHNn-ROt_HKBHvBGsvsQBUFn6rOtKXQ5pJR1279zWKzMzCBYdTqh38UTAoVzrn6x7s/s550/WeaponTab1.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="91" data-original-width="550" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglIccW0BgXMtcNvwwvKL2Llvs1vChUuum66XBvcrOub7BMEN-HtVz0NNQpOMDQnWChwFuYmhBaKnHNn-ROt_HKBHvBGsvsQBUFn6rOtKXQ5pJR1279zWKzMzCBYdTqh38UTAoVzrn6x7s/s16000/WeaponTab1.PNG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This first section is where you add the usage of attacks. Some weapons have different styles of attacks- such as stabbing with a sword instead of swinging it- and others have numerous types of ammunition that can be used (such as the Buckshot/Rifled Slug shown above). <br /><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>The red circle in the image above shows where the + and - buttons to add and remove a weapon usage are located. They do not render (but function) properly on some Windows computers, a known bug.</b></h3></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJQDWHmXSrBTn1gAyTcoRbb9Sc41LMsnldmhhM78vcT73-HNZdy13ef7EQJFHS_q4NyqeisoBIWIIjXBs-MVWDTHdCc72mKjXGI5nIa_OI5MnUen03d1akl1dzLXpYx1UnNy1mEAgDR8/s539/WeaponTab2.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="539" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJQDWHmXSrBTn1gAyTcoRbb9Sc41LMsnldmhhM78vcT73-HNZdy13ef7EQJFHS_q4NyqeisoBIWIIjXBs-MVWDTHdCc72mKjXGI5nIa_OI5MnUen03d1akl1dzLXpYx1UnNy1mEAgDR8/s16000/WeaponTab2.PNG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The second section deals exclusively with the damage line that will show up on your eventual sheet. Most of what is here is strictly what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG). All of the fields have helpful mouse-over text to denote what they are.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYkr0jzIUdvb7M_FvAN6EKNgaE_7x3A7f338nPB0ykAjVytKXGOgqcUr8PHZKTiZLkWaLVKwPVQ7r7AgFj2xHk655f-SEwsugLtJSZ_22OM8gwrWX9J5JKkxIHCz5cIGItQSWA8NG_nrI/s543/WeaponTab3.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="543" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYkr0jzIUdvb7M_FvAN6EKNgaE_7x3A7f338nPB0ykAjVytKXGOgqcUr8PHZKTiZLkWaLVKwPVQ7r7AgFj2xHk655f-SEwsugLtJSZ_22OM8gwrWX9J5JKkxIHCz5cIGItQSWA8NG_nrI/s16000/WeaponTab3.PNG" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This last section hooks up the specific piece of gear to the skills on the character sheet, so that its specific entry in the weapons on your character sheet can be calculated correct. (Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that I never did this for the Slug usage option, which is why it displays a level of 0 above.)<br /><br />As shown above, you can specify way more than just 1 of these- allowing defaults to be handled pretty elegantly.<br /><br />The first box (going left to right) is for the skill, and the second is for a specialization, if any. Both of these fields are case sensitive and won't work well with typos or misspellings.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The third box circled in red is the one you want to edit to emulate bonuses such as weapon bond that improve skill ONLY for that particular piece of gear. (<b>EDIT</b>: Turns out with a recent update the features tab now has a selection for "to this weapon" for Weapon Damage Bonus and Skill Level Bonus, which is awesome and makes the work-around above obsolete for some use cases.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkAZs3mgFZ04JOG-0ODZNdWS_jiNXD60zc_-Rjepdny2_Ntj8GyWS9u9hdr9-jcYIQGmSeBHioFC9oSUImKQWDsl38jh2l4W6x6p5H-qXRu8bLcuD6zuI6J_exFklPBgqCG96p3uRbNDA/s558/ToThisWeapon.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="131" data-original-width="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkAZs3mgFZ04JOG-0ODZNdWS_jiNXD60zc_-Rjepdny2_Ntj8GyWS9u9hdr9-jcYIQGmSeBHioFC9oSUImKQWDsl38jh2l4W6x6p5H-qXRu8bLcuD6zuI6J_exFklPBgqCG96p3uRbNDA/s16000/ToThisWeapon.PNG" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /><br />GCS will default to displaying the highest valid option on the final stats on the character sheet.<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7yL9B6eKgXOIGU24exa8mCb8JNxRrWyN4xOycxZssZJzdMem2apVhTV0wrgflw9QbohMCh0r-jFVIzhmHRnQ0tL1OYoSJ2421ugtw4BgRxhpV5nuV6U205g2ymRZNerT597gd0Qluj4c/s558/WeaponTab4.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7yL9B6eKgXOIGU24exa8mCb8JNxRrWyN4xOycxZssZJzdMem2apVhTV0wrgflw9QbohMCh0r-jFVIzhmHRnQ0tL1OYoSJ2421ugtw4BgRxhpV5nuV6U205g2ymRZNerT597gd0Qluj4c/s16000/WeaponTab4.PNG" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The fields for a melee weapon are very similar, but omit rate of fire, range, and such in favor of Reach, Parry Modifier, and Block Modifer fields. Again, most of the fields are WYSIWYG. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><h2 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Prerequisites:</h2><div>This tab allows you to specify traits that are necessary to use the item. Without them, the item will show up in <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: red;">Red Text </span>on the character sheet.</span> This is normally more of a concern for checking for advantages or skills, but maybe your sword requires Magery or high IQ to wield or something. Fairly self-explanatory.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Features:</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTOfXV4v7cen2yNS6CiFaBcNUxvqCYSfv45ODoKLgd5-haVMQAwcookZqmI3vPxlc7w9K8eQ1M5A3zqGDxLBssrDgLsvhBK-wj8gBoYlizCVxuv-qXIrFBIP1MFTbH597ZXMQYWYYtetQ/s558/Features+Tab.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTOfXV4v7cen2yNS6CiFaBcNUxvqCYSfv45ODoKLgd5-haVMQAwcookZqmI3vPxlc7w9K8eQ1M5A3zqGDxLBssrDgLsvhBK-wj8gBoYlizCVxuv-qXIrFBIP1MFTbH597ZXMQYWYYtetQ/s16000/Features+Tab.PNG" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>This tab allows you to attach bonuses and penalties of various types to the item, which will always be in effect as long as it's equipped. This is best suited to bonuses that are passive and constant, such as the DR afforded by wearing armor, or the Strength Bonus granted by wearing enchanted gauntlets.</div><div><br /></div><div>Notably, the "Gives a weapon damage bonus of" field is where you'd want to look for setting up traits such as Weapon Master, Trained by a Master, and the damage bonuses afforded by Karate (although some skill entries also use this field, so make sure you're not double-dipping if you want to avoid GM ire.)</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Modifiers</h2><div>This is the latest addition to the equipment tabs, and it's a doozy for all of you who want a Bedazzled Light Halberd. Some of the options overlap with those in the Features tab- but modifiers allow you to affect the weight and value of the equipment at the same time, making it very flexible.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijA0U1nSdKjQi41uVNf7dGIgPRAWgbE_Yxan47q7JbNCaWITKsWI2OKenbthAHzED9GRvPoIP165-rOntZfWelPXQclwIaUP76Fmzky4P8b5yO17WWWXXeqXuNpyvq2Bt68EJMZ42zH7o/s611/ModifiersTab.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="611" data-original-width="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijA0U1nSdKjQi41uVNf7dGIgPRAWgbE_Yxan47q7JbNCaWITKsWI2OKenbthAHzED9GRvPoIP165-rOntZfWelPXQclwIaUP76Fmzky4P8b5yO17WWWXXeqXuNpyvq2Bt68EJMZ42zH7o/s16000/ModifiersTab.PNG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Take note of the Extended Value entries above- they differ quite a bit from the base Value and Weight!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-21222906743320981412020-07-11T07:33:00.001-07:002020-10-29T10:50:43.910-07:00The Basics of Using GCSSomeone on a Discord server I frequent was attempting to learn the ropes of <a href="https://gurpscharactersheet.com/">GCS</a>, and was unimpressed with the level of documentation available on how to actually utilize the program.<br />
<br />
I've been using GCS for years as I've found it to be a very convenient and powerful tool for making character sheets. I consider myself a bit of a GCS power user, so here's the start of what may become a series of posts on the basics of using the program. (In fact, <a href="https://insidiousgurpsplanning.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-basics-of-using-gcs-equipment.html">part 2</a> dealing with equipment is now up!)<br />
<br />
When you first create a new character sheet, you'll be presented with a blank sheet filled with some pregenerated character fluff (Height, weight, eye color, etc), and baseline GURPS stats.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM4xDf98UugVLwcdd3aQ_aQpxc2CBPvdhS2SoRFc9jIND3lbjPm-H1gWMtrMRGMFmbVVq0wZ0zYf4GS354VrHdh8VmWgDzpe1-SlQOTKxV_Y8U6PRJO1-mwCgV-tW5Uf320SSNT42H3rY/s1600/GCS+Blank+Character.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="1600" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM4xDf98UugVLwcdd3aQ_aQpxc2CBPvdhS2SoRFc9jIND3lbjPm-H1gWMtrMRGMFmbVVq0wZ0zYf4GS354VrHdh8VmWgDzpe1-SlQOTKxV_Y8U6PRJO1-mwCgV-tW5Uf320SSNT42H3rY/s640/GCS+Blank+Character.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to Expand</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Of note, the Master Library contains the bits and pieces you'll most likely want to add to a character sheet- advantages, disadvantages, and skills. The libraries for Basic Set Advantages and Basic Set Skills will likely be where you'll spend the majority of your time searching for what you want to add to your characters.<br />
<br />
Most tabs will have a blank line at the top that functions as a search bar, as well as a drop-down that usually filters by categories.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeSvWS366-3nt_KQ5MLt9cTgh58IzR6o8SMfT17mh-DK2O3Etu1lCu0jCI7NZc8YegalYmp-Tr5B8J70gxeMLHJH_-p9ZZpYvCyJy7QBtGpoQ1lYzkLVcdonjTtxxQVYZAoz7ym51xXFA/s1600/GCS+Search+Bar.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="721" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeSvWS366-3nt_KQ5MLt9cTgh58IzR6o8SMfT17mh-DK2O3Etu1lCu0jCI7NZc8YegalYmp-Tr5B8J70gxeMLHJH_-p9ZZpYvCyJy7QBtGpoQ1lYzkLVcdonjTtxxQVYZAoz7ym51xXFA/s640/GCS+Search+Bar.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I've typed warp into the Basic Set Advantages Library here</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
On a character sheet, blue text means that that field can be directly edited. The fields for your stats (ST, DX, IQ, etc) will decrement unspent points appropriately as they are increased. Additionally, GCS will update derived stats appropriately (increasing DX will increase related skills, and basic speed calculation, for instance).<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu0abfXuVqy6OSOeL4aoTmGlmqAVy1jixUUXVwy0LbMO0RRCHvi_CG5R3Jzl5XQ8osLuW_LSeT9MSjaURZWgUOqrhDVwz7LIRVWSPu2hLfjjKTV9Ag3HExrXx5IKoLrgnYriCP3UPoEAk/s1600/Warp+Modifiers.PNG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1073" data-original-width="597" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu0abfXuVqy6OSOeL4aoTmGlmqAVy1jixUUXVwy0LbMO0RRCHvi_CG5R3Jzl5XQ8osLuW_LSeT9MSjaURZWgUOqrhDVwz7LIRVWSPu2hLfjjKTV9Ag3HExrXx5IKoLrgnYriCP3UPoEAk/s320/Warp+Modifiers.PNG" width="177" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some traits have way more modifiers<br />
than others...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To add something from a library to the character sheet, you can either drag and drop it onto the sheet, or hit CTRL+SHIFT+C. Depending on the trait being carried over, a dialog box might open with modifiers related to the trait- CR ratings for disadvantages, enhancements for advantages, etc.<br />
<br />
To edit a trait in GCS, either double-click on it, or select it and hit enter.<br />
<br />
For advantages and disadvantages, the top portion contains fields for how to price the trait, as well as fields that help with categorizing it.<br />
<br />
The dialog window that opens will also usually include the following tabs for most traits, including equipment:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1nsxV4QyK4dFEPMaEhemqzBiiHoihTV_Us9UtuGBkQ12DSXjbAizj5t_lXFfF2flBUl90lQP-pAUtQDSQElq-8-K7Rq2tZRlrXi2YLGYELCrIdNjTfMBhp39dUkNcVP7a84PArt1Mn4/s1600/GCS_Edit_Trait.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="251" data-original-width="755" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1nsxV4QyK4dFEPMaEhemqzBiiHoihTV_Us9UtuGBkQ12DSXjbAizj5t_lXFfF2flBUl90lQP-pAUtQDSQElq-8-K7Rq2tZRlrXi2YLGYELCrIdNjTfMBhp39dUkNcVP7a84PArt1Mn4/s640/GCS_Edit_Trait.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li>Prerequisites- These will turn a trait red if your character fails to have the listed traits. (Example: Cinematic combat skills without Trained by a Master or Weapon Master.)</li>
<li>Features- These are how you can tell GCS that an advantage should give a modifier to a character- such as voice improving reaction modifiers and giving bonuses to certain skills, combat reflexes increasing defense scores, or the damage increase Striking ST gives to attacks</li>
<li>Modifiers- these are the limitations and enhancements present on numerous advantages and disadvantages</li>
<li>Melee Weapon and Ranged Weapon- these tabs allow you to specify that an attack should appear on your character's sheet, and allow you to define the statistics of those attacks</li>
<li>User description is a field that allows for entering notes.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Skills have largely the same dialog window, but have a tab for Skill Defaults, and the top portion has different fields specific to skills, which I'll drill down deeper into in a future post.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimymRq-fJNwMUu6rPmzUWbyN5n_JnnlFq6zIphxgaNvJCVzunpkfsACV570PSfkq-OR8W3qF3RTa4pA-Jlp4HXNetPb1mqXyWdp3UvLcD2IOMNPsTiqo_S-4DGSZXbm-G6uhoqj7YmlQA/s1600/GCS_SKILL_DIALOG.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="617" height="513" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimymRq-fJNwMUu6rPmzUWbyN5n_JnnlFq6zIphxgaNvJCVzunpkfsACV570PSfkq-OR8W3qF3RTa4pA-Jlp4HXNetPb1mqXyWdp3UvLcD2IOMNPsTiqo_S-4DGSZXbm-G6uhoqj7YmlQA/s640/GCS_SKILL_DIALOG.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-78789331204306303682020-03-13T04:17:00.003-07:002023-04-30T16:14:24.576-07:00Modeling Osteogenesis Imperfecta in GURPS<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteogenesis_imperfecta">Osteogenesis imperfecta</a> (OI) is a congenital disease where the body doesn't produce collagen in sufficient quantity or quality, depending on the specific type the subject has. Due to this, people with the disease break bones very easily. It's more commonly referred to as Brittle Bone Disease.<br /><br />OI Can generally be split into 3 Types:<br />
<ul>
<li>OI Type 1- the mildest form of the disease.</li>
<li>OI Type 2- normally fatal within the first year of life</li>
<li>OI Types 3+- Moderate to severe types of the disease with differing clinical presentations</li>
</ul>
<br />My friend has OI Type 4, which is a moderate to severe type. They broke her foot attempting to walk across concrete in socks. Accidentally kicking the leg of their bedframe broke their toe. A fall in the kitchen broke their elbow. They've cracked ribs, herniated a disk in their back, and had a metal plate in their elbow to correct a break from before I met them. To say that OI doesn't seem like an appealing Player Character trait is entirely accurate, as I'll illustrate below.<br />
<br />
OI leads to numerous effects that could be relevant to a GURPS character, which I'd consider core to the trait:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Propensity for bone breaks</li>
<li>Hypermobility (A propensity for dislocated joints)</li>
<li>Chronic pain</li>
<li>Distinctive Blue Sclera</li>
</ul>
<div>
Let's start by modeling the bone breaks. Let's flip Injury Tolerance (Unbreakable Bones) on its head, and then address the duration of crippling injury.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Injury Vulnerability (Easily Broken Bones) [-10 or -20]:</b> Your body is especially vulnerable to crippling injury.<br />Mild: Your limbs become crippled when they take damage over HP/4. Your extremities become crippled when they take damage over HP/6. -10 Points.</div>
<div>
Severe: Your limbs and extremities become crippled when they take damage over HP/10. -20 points.</div>
<div>
<br /><b>Injury Vulnerability (Long-lasting Crippling) [-10]: </b>When you roll HT to see if a crippling Injury is Temporary or Lasting, you roll at HT-4.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now for modeling the frequent dislocations, I suggest using the rules for <b>Bad Back</b>- the rules fit suffering painful dislocations very well. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Likewise, <b>Chronic Pain </b>also works right out of the basic set. I could see mixing the triggers of Bad Back and the effects of Chronic Pain to simulate bouts of pain triggered by unwise physical activity, which is true to my experiences with my friend.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Distinctive Features</b> covers the Blue Sclera as a Quirk.<br /><br />Now in real life, OI can lead to additional effects, some of which will come down to a case-by-case basis:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Hunchback, </b>per basic set, in the case of deforming types of OI</li>
<li><b>Lame (Crippled Legs or Paraplegic), or One Arm, or No Manipulators </b>in the case where OI leads to compression of the spine, resulting in nerve damage that causes one to use the use of their arms/legs.</li>
<li><b>Loss of Basic Move</b></li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
And for Cinematic Icing:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Flexibility (Double-Jointed)</b>, if the Hypermobility has beneficial uses, although people with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers%E2%80%93Danlos_syndromes">Ehlers' Danlos Syndrome</a> are better fits for it.</li>
<li><b>Bonuses to Weather Sense, or Detect (Low Pressure Atmospheric Conditions)</b> since we all know bone breaks react to atmospheric pressure.</li>
</ul>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-68357554523075722722019-12-15T11:32:00.001-08:002019-12-15T11:32:58.618-08:00My first rules botch- StrategoMy mother has a battered set of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratego#Gameplay">Stratego</a>, an older version released sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. A blue bomb piece was missing, but we usually compensated by making red remove a bomb as well. I was taught by my mom, and frequently played with my cousin Sharon while she babysat me as a young kid.<br />
<br />
Stratego seeks to emulate Napoleonic Wars of attrition, featuring a constrained map where pieces move one square at a time and the main approach to your enemy is three two-square wide channels with impassable lakes or the board edge to the left and right.<br />
<br />The victory conditions in Stratego are simple- kill every piece your enemy has that can move (Flags and Bombs are immobile), or capture the enemy's flag.<br /><br />
Stratego is a meat grinder. The strength of pieces is known only to their player- and all pieces are rated on a 10-point scale for strength. In older versions, smaller numbers were stronger, much like AC in 2ed AD&D (Which I'll use here). You can only discover the strength of opposing forces by attacking- a risky venture as discovering that you just walked your 7 into your opponent's 2 means losing the 7. Ties result in both pieces dying in a Pyrrhic Victory.<br /><br />My family generally played with the following understanding:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Scouts (9) can move and attack in the same turn</li>
<li>Bombs destroy any attacking piece that is not a Miner (8). When attacked by a Miner the Bomb is removed. Bombs are not removed upon killing attacking pieces.</li>
<li>Victorious attacking pieces advance into the square of the defeated piece</li>
<li>Victorious defending pieces <b>do not </b>advance into the square of a defeated attacking piece</li>
<li>Moving a non-scout piece to the far end of the board (similar to a pawn advancing in chess) allows you to rescue a formerly captured piece, which is placed on your starting side of the field. This may be done 3x per game, but each individual piece may only rescue once.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But, Sharon and I didn't read the rules closely enough, because there's this cool piece called the Spy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At the top of the Stratego foodchain, you have the Marshall (1). The Marshall is a force of nature, capable of cutting down swathes of troops, only challenged by Bombs and the enemy Marshall in the absence of the Spy. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Spy is squishy, and dies to <b>any attack</b>, while also dying when attacking other pieces<b>.</b><b> </b>But, <b>if the Spy Attacks the Marshall first, the Marshall dies</b>. At that point the Spy can just sit around body blocking, preventing Scouts from blazing across the battlefield and taking unprotected flags, or something I guess.<br /><br />But Sharon and I didn't understand the rules that way. We'd unknowingly played with a much deadlier set of rules:<br /><br />If the Spy Attacks, <b>it wins</b> (except against bombs). If the Spy is attacked, it dies.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This made a game that was already a stark look at attrition and added a game of monstrous glass cannon chicken into the mix as well. The spy could annihilate and cut through an opposing enemy army, but any scout could quickly end its reign. Attacking the wrong bait could cause the Spy to advance into the defeated piece's space and fall victim to a piece lying in wait.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Previously, the Spy was best used hidden, unobtrusively placed to sneak out and get the drop on the Marshall, a contingency to the piece in the game meant to be a force of destruction.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
With our rule, what was an elegant and subtle duel became a frantic dance to find an opening that would allow for taking out one of the deadly duo, without losing half of your own in the process.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now that I'm significantly older, I've played Stratego with both sets of rules. As far as screwing up rules go, the unintentional change we made to the Spy wasn't game-breaking, unlike the scores people who never ran auctions for unpurchased Monopoly properties (let alone the insanity of allowing free parking to accumulate a pool of money).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'd say that this rules botch is <b>a viable rules variant. </b>It can overall speed the time a game of Stratego takes because of the rapid death experienced by armies as the deadly duo comes through town, and it simplifies the Spy's role by making its interactions with other pieces more universal. Highly suggested when playing with young kids looking for a more action-packed board game.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-36311024259233062712019-09-19T17:46:00.000-07:002019-09-19T17:46:22.861-07:00My Players, and Working with themEvery gaming group is different. I do believe there is a spectrum that most people fall on between Thespian Method Actor and Hack N'Slash Munchkin. It's safe to say that a normal distribution is probably appropriate- most players appreciate a mix of both, and the populations of fanatics tapers down on either side.<br />
<br />
That said, groups also differ on how they approach problems, how much they like to plan and prepare, and even on how much in-character banter they want to have.<br /><br />So I'm going to talk a bit about my players, and how I adapt my games to run more smoothly with them.<br /><br />
<h3>
As a Group:</h3>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Group preference is for text-based campaigns. When I floated using voice chat reaction was nearly unanimous that text was the preferred medium.</li>
<li>Pace of play is fairly slow and methodical- while not nearly as slow as PBP, it's still objectively on the slower side.</li>
<li><b>Every player is capable of not being in the spotlight.</b> It is hard to overstate just how <i>easy</i> this makes things for me. Try as I might, occasionally someone gets injured and has to recuperate, a single PC dominates the screen time of a session, or someone gets stuck on overwatch outside while the stealthy party within aces things and no outside threats emerge. None of my players have ever raised this as an issue.</li>
<li>Engagement is generally high- this is aided strongly by the text format and the maturity of my players. It's highly unusual for people to be unaware of what's going on in game- largely sidestepping issues of having to catch people up on recent events because they went to go pee, or were stacking dice, they got bored because their PC had nothing to do, or had to help their roommate snap out of a flashback.</li>
<li>The group is <i style="font-weight: bold;">Focused.</i> Everyone is highly aligned on the group goal, and having their PC contribute to the mission. This group does a really good job of not deeply exploring what I consider to be roleplaying empty calories- wenching, asking what booze is available at the bar, etc.</li>
<li>The group thrives off preparation, planning, and executing their strategies. While willing to improvise when needed, they generally take a very methodical approach.</li>
<li>Pinebox as a campaign doesn't have a huge emphasis on Roleplay, with more focus on the tasks at hand for the PCs. That's not to say that the Players don't Roleplay their characters, it's that they've rolled with the pacing and campaign structure. This goes back to how focused they are.</li>
</ul>
<h3>
Individually:</h3>
</div>
<div>
I'm going to use the PCs names as pseudonyms for my players to maintain their privacy.<br /><br /><b>Gaston</b> is the newest player to join the group, currently playing the team doctor/demolitions expert. He's attentive and does a really good job playing up the generous/selfless nature of his character. Being last to the table and chargen, he filled in missing skills for the group, and has crushed it ever since, which isn't always easy in my games. I might encourage him to consider playing a face the next time a new campaign comes around.<br /><br /><b>Otto </b>is one of my two players who have stuck around since Agency 17. Otto's instincts for combat tactics are among the best in the group- if he's thinking it's a good time for a retreat, it's probably time to get out of dodge. Otto frequently keeps me on my toes, oftentimes recalling old plot points, NPCs, or piecing things together from clues. He pays way more attention to things than he lets on.<br /><br /><b>Alex </b>is a long-time IRL friend. His flexibility and overall competence has allowed him to fill numerous roles within the group- from skulk, to hacker, to combat heavy. It's really hard to single out things that make him such a good player, although I will say having the shared context of knowing him about a decade does make dumping specific things into the game much easier. For example, I knew he'd know what the Mirai Botnet was when I referenced it in-game.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Hassan </b>has continually been the one stuck with the leadership role in the group since they participated in my Agency 17 campaign. I largely think this is due to his good executive function and capability to break problems down into actionable items. We have a rapport where he seems to just <i>innately</i> <i>get </i>how things function in my campaigns- which means that if he whips up a plan, there's a high chance his enemies are going to be in for a lot of pain.<br /><br /><b>Kujo</b> has had the most PC deaths/injuries out of any of my players, a consequence of their preference for playing combat heavies. Kujo is starting to grow into being the closet thespian of the group, steadily improving their roleplaying and characters since their beginning losing their PC session 1 of Prohibition Mob. Kujo's often responsible for bringing a little bit of zaniness to things, helping bring humor and vibrancy to what's going on, all while being just as laser focused as the rest of the gang.<br /><br /><h3>
Accommodations :</h3>
</div>
<div>
Currently, we've been playing Pinebox for 122 weeks- 2.3 years. At this point we've settled into a steady rhythm, so it's not so much of <i>active</i> accommodations as it is <i>continuing what already works.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>I generally allow the players ample time to plot, plan, and discuss their next actions. Obviously this doesn't apply when combat's going on or they're on a crashing plane, but there are very few situations where they're rushed.</li>
<li>I put a large emphasis on allowing the players to decide how they want to pursue their goals. While the campaign has rails ("Your objective is to prevent Imprint Technology from being finalized"), those rails aren't very restrictive. As the plot demands I might throw constraints at them, but the onus is on them to decide what they're doing.</li>
<li>I do my best to telegraph information to my players when appropriate. They're playing badass operatives, they might just have a hunch that someone approaching them can throw down without needing to roll. Their planning habits also thrive off having information at hand.</li>
<li>I occasionally skip skill checks when it's obvious success would be trivial for their characters.</li>
<li>I stop play when it's clear that I'm getting gassed or need time to plan out ahead.</li>
<li>I allow the players to create unfair situations for their enemies and then curbstomp them.</li>
<li>I don't fudge results in combat, and the group has occasionally gotten caught with their pants down, wound up in an unfair situation, and almost got hosed because of it. (<i>"Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer."</i>)</li>
<li>Enemies generally don't have good enough intel on the players to specifically plan for their individual capabilities.</li>
</ul>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-31945619425719244372019-09-11T19:04:00.002-07:002019-09-11T19:04:24.130-07:00Observations on GMing Mistakes and Momentum of PlaySome sessions are going to be less energetic than others. Maybe there's a person at the table having a difficult day. Maybe there's multiple players having difficult days. Outside of the external factors, campaigns will naturally ebb from high energy to low, as the story has its beats, rising actions, climaxes, and the fallout.<br />
<br />
That said, if a GM mishandles things, it can completely grind a group's momentum to a crawl.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Preparation, usually the lack thereof:</h3>
It's on the GM to prepare enough that they can give the players avenues of action that they can take. This varies depending on genre, but if your players can't seem to come up with something to do, chances are there's not enough prep going into the campaign.<br />
<br />
For a dungeon crawl game you should likely have an idea of the dungeon the group is going into, a sense of the denizens, or at least the capability to improv on the fly. For games not quite running on the Felltower wavelength, you really should be fleshing out factions, NPCs, and providing hooks.<br />
<br />
It's entirely possible to have players who are looking for a quasi-sandbox experience who will hit that wall of not knowing what to do next- even if they are fully engaged actively trying to find a direction.<br />
<br />
<b>If your players seem interested in a hook you improvise the shit out of that hook, </b>even if it's not necessarily what you had in mind, or anything you had planned. That interest, that desire to explore and check things out, that's the flicker of momentum starting. A hook meant to develop sessions later is probably better used now if players would otherwise be twiddling their thumbs.<br />
<br />
<b>Be practical about your preparation.</b> You <i>really don't</i> need a full character sheet for most mooks or minor characters. It's often times safe to not have full character sheets even for important NPCs who can be reasonably expected to not participate in combat. It's perfectly fine to only lay out combat traits for combatants, and maybe note important social skills for a character who only serves as a merchant, informant, quest-giver, etc.<br /><br />Furthermore, <b>If players aren't going to interact with it, don't make it a big focus of your preparation. </b>Having the players being adjacent to the most interesting thing going on in the campaign world is often a bad idea, unless that most interesting thing is invariably deadly (plague, mustard gas, swaths of destruction*, etc). It's pointless to make complex magic systems if your players don't want to interact with a byzantine magical system and instead wonder why their death spells get less DPS than an assault rifle. It's a bad idea to create a massive cosmology/pantheons of Gods if people are largely interested in playing secular or atheist characters.<br /><br /><b>Leave room to react, only the most linear of games allow for planning things out like a TV show.</b> Games are volatile. Some settings allow for resurrections, some don't. It's not particularly fun to have to ass-pull or fudge something when the dice say that a critical (N)PC just ate a x4 damage headshot putting them well beyond -5xHP. Planning too far ahead isn't practical, especially if it's predicated off actions the players are *supposed* to take.<br /><br />
<h3>
"I don't want to prep too much until I know what the PCs are doing"</h3>
<div>
So, this at first brush seems like a chicken or egg problem. GM doesn't want to over-invest in prepping in areas where it won't matter (good), but likely doesn't prep enough for the current situation (bad). I see it as coming from a few factors.<br /><br /><b>Lack of group direction/purpose. </b>Everyone meets in a bar and then just randomly decide to join up together and form and adventuring crew? We've all heard this cliche, and it's a rotten way of starting a campaign unless you've got a good crew of thespians who want to hammer out why everyone's working together in-character for a session. I vastly prefer having <b>strong purpose</b> for the existence of a group of PCs. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<i>"You're part of the clandestine organization Agency 17, the existence of which is hidden even from the other 16 members of the US Intelligence Community."</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Prohibition has rocked 1920s New York City, leading to ample opportunities for criminal enterprises and their members to catapult themselves to wealth and infamy."</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<i>"You're a group of Augmented Humans hand-picked by an angel to fight off the forces of Hell."</i></blockquote>
This is almost entirely on the GM, right from campaign conception. Unless you're starting session 1 with a strong sense of what the PC purpose is, or an <i style="font-weight: bold;">iron-clad** </i>way of determining it through play, you're already behind the eight ball.<br /><br />
Related to overall group purpose there's <b>Lack of Immediate direction.</b> This usually results when players don't have paths, hooks, or things to do/react to. The players might be rip-roaring to do something, stacking dice and browsing on their phones while the group spins its wheels, but without something to actually *DO* it's pointless. This is almost always a result of not enough prep.<br /><br /><b>Players need information and context to make decisions. </b>In a linear game, some of this can be taken away ("Your next mission is..."), but for many games players are going to be on the hook for choosing their next objective or goal, and they need a solid informational ground to stand on. They need to know the situation, the NPCs, the factions, maybe cultural or geographical details. It is <b>explicitly</b> the GM's job to provide these details.<br /><br />
<h3>
Other Momentum Killers:</h3>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Allowing players to spin wheels too long, and/or rehash the same conversation multiple times while discussing plans</li>
<li>Not allowing players enough time to incubate and ruminate on plans</li>
<li>Not allowing players the capability to follow up on things they find intriguing</li>
<li>Allowing too much focus on extraneous BS (seducing wenches, drinking plans, trivial travel plan details, etc)</li>
<li>Specifically tailoring challenges so that a single player has a bad time (because once they clock out, risk of others doing the same goes up)</li>
<li>Being overly adversarial with players (Are you here to beat them or provide a fun experience?)</li>
<li>Not properly adjusting your campaign style to ensure it suits your players (grimdark campaign + players who just want to goof off = bad time)</li>
<li>Making or allowing others to make a player uncomfortable.</li>
<li>Not recognizing when things aren't working well and changing course/stopping</li>
</ul>
</div>
<br />
</div>
<div>
*A friend of mine knows someone whose Ranger's favored enemy type is Swaths</div>
<div>
**Seriously, if you initial sessions happen and the group doesn't gel or establish a purpose, wrap things up cause you likely just scuttled the campaign right out of the gates.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-68867384671837550342019-04-19T18:10:00.000-07:002019-04-19T18:10:20.023-07:00My thoughts on the SJG/Bill Webb partnershipLike I imagine most of you do, I follow diverse types of people on social media. Two circles I tend to follow closely are GURPS content creators, and those interested in left-leaning politics.<br />
<br />
One of my politically minded friends (who is an Exalted aficionado and kickass GM) replied to the following tweet:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZPTC7AD7iIAzWML13EBKETxM0b3QUXhxrXbiS3-rjr6ps8A5UTOA7S9EA2OIX7lXlVIt5vvk3o69c5jO95rbZT2_0Z00agifnGqJJzIR8vYc_ZXiEpm2c5vXRY6YtC-F1-qhSyTW-1rI/s1600/Webb-SJG.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="606" data-original-width="641" height="377" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZPTC7AD7iIAzWML13EBKETxM0b3QUXhxrXbiS3-rjr6ps8A5UTOA7S9EA2OIX7lXlVIt5vvk3o69c5jO95rbZT2_0Z00agifnGqJJzIR8vYc_ZXiEpm2c5vXRY6YtC-F1-qhSyTW-1rI/s400/Webb-SJG.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/dorkland/status/1117096486876086272">https://twitter.com/dorkland/status/1117096486876086272</a><br />
<br />
This obviously caught my attention. GURPS is by far my favorite RPG system, I run it, I play it, it has been my go-to for close to a decade now. I very much like a lot of what SJG does.<br />
<br />
But stuff like this is troubling. I've been party to some discussions on the matter among my circles, and seen some of the various posts from those involved.<br />
<br />
The central talking point was a single incident of harassment that took place in 2017, at PaizoCon. The victim in that circumstance clearly wants to be done on it and move on, a sentiment I heard expressed as a reason to let the matter drop.<br />
<br />
Matt Finch, a partner at Frog God Games, wrote the official statement from Frog God Games:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/rpg-industry-sexual-harassment-mentzer-abuse-and-what-do-we-do-about-it.817741/page-35#post-21452429">https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/rpg-industry-sexual-harassment-mentzer-abuse-and-what-do-we-do-about-it.817741/page-35#post-21452429</a><br />
<br />
It's a very measured response, very carefully tailored to make it clear that Finch took the utmost care to be sensitive of the victim, while also very carefully avoiding implicating Webb or shaking the hornets' nest in any way. It's 'empathy' draped in the careful maneuvering of a lawyer seeking to reduce the exposure their client might present after screwing up. Finch is <b>NOT</b> unbiased/impartial, given that he's a frequent collaborator with and an employee of Webb. The conflict of interest there cannot be ignored.<br />
<br />
Webb certainly could have attempted to rehabilitate himself- laying low, giving a genuine apology, demonstrating that he's learned from his mistake and changed how he behaves. Instead, his business partner blandly apologized on his behalf.<br />
<br />
The line "Bill does deeply regret his actions, and understands that they were inappropriate and upsetting. " has all the sincerity of a defense attorney spinning things to his client's advantage.<br />
<br />
The stoic silence, predicated on "Mr. Webb is also under instruction not to discuss this matter in public, in case peripheral details... might allow the identification of the person..." doesn't excuse that an apology could have been made by Webb. You don't have to discuss details to express remorse, and I suspect Bill only regrets that it blew up in his face in a very public fashion.<br />
<br />
So it's one incident of harassment, the victim doesn't want it dredged up, Bill's business partner is convinced of his sincere regret, Bill is keeping his mouth shut, no problem, right?<br />
<br />
I find the undercurrent beneath all of this frightening- where are the people saying that Bill's belligerent drunken behavior is being exaggerated, skewed, or is inaccurate? It seems very clear to me that Bill's public behavior is consistently toeing the line of how one should conduct themselves at conventions. I would not be surprised in the least to learn of undocumented/unreported incidents, most of which weren't severe enough on their own to present a problem, but as a pattern are very insidious.<br />
<br />
I'm inclined to pay attention to that undercurrent.<br />
<br />
Enter SJG and The Fantasy Trip. They're an older company, with a founder who is in his grey years, and let's be honest, they're very much a company that hasn't changed much over the years.<br />
<br />
But they really should have seen this backlash coming. Times are changing, and with more mainstream attention zeroing in on Dungeons and Dragons and tabletop gaming in general, the behavior of your business partners isn't really something you get to be ignorant of.<br />
<br />
Steve's response is pretty lame, more or less stating that people being mad about harassment is no reason to cut off a business deal. The olive branch of giving refunds is a little muted given that they're still putting people on the hook for fees and whatnot- wouldn't want their customers' moral fiber cutting into the business' financial ledgers, after all.<br />
<br />
Phil Reed <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/sjg-offering-partial-refunds-and-continuing-to-work-with-bill-webb-see-redtext-in-post-163.844606/post-22535997">statements in this thread</a> are the closest anyone has gotten to actually stating that Bill Webb's actions at Paizocon were truly egregious. Given even that, the statement is still too sterile to really paint SJG's response as anything but tone deaf at best.<br />
<br />
The Tabletop community is still small, especially once you look at authors churning out RPG content. There's not many people who walk that walk professionally, and that contributes to the formation of an echo chamber. Maybe SJG didn't hear the rumors, the undercurrent, and was blindsided by the accusations, being trapped within the chamber. Maybe the other voices in the chamber are downplaying Webb's actions, and propping up Finch as a reputable source even though Finch's neutrality is disingenuous and deceptive.<br />
<br />
That said, I'm not particularly sympathetic that SJG is feeling quite a bit of heat over this. They should have known better than to collaborate with someone who makes the spaces we nerds like to inhabit unsafe for some of the more vulnerable members we share it with. I hope that the wave of refund requests prompts them to rethink their business deals with FGG, and that they will pay more attention to these types of concerns in the future. <br /><br />I'm certainly going to think hard before putting down money on the next Monster Hunters or Action PDF that tickles my fancy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-77001235201716395092019-01-30T15:58:00.001-08:002019-01-30T15:59:58.806-08:00Pine Box Consulting: Session 1 (Dec 11, 2017)<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have recently tapped a friend to begin transcribing the Pine Box Consulting sessions, going through the Discord channel me and my players have used to play since Dec of 2017.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
The Players:</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hassan: Formerly attached to Egyptian Intelligence, Hassan is an expert Intelligence Analyst, Interrogator, Pistolero, and dog person.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kujo: Former LAPD, was kicked out of the force for having anger management issues and problems with proper escalation of force. The most combat heavy of the team.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Alex: Hacker and Sniper extraordinaire. Alex has a lot of illicit contacts, and his access to places he really shouldn't be poking around in would probably have landed him in jail for life if not for his PMC occupation.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Otto: Electronics whiz, tinker, and the other combat heavy for the team. Otto appreciates extreme sports, drones, and suffers from being Easy to Read.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Gaston: Gaston is a world-class surgeon and medical mind. He's also the team's primary demolitions expert.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s 8 in the
morning on the first day of August and it’s soon to be scorching
hot in Tampa, FL. Pine Box Consulting has called the group back from
their Rest and Relaxation and they’re all ready to assign them
their next job with one of the account executives, Angela Apolonia,
being the one leading the briefing with the team. They’re all
familiar with Tampa’s office, despite being in the armpit of the
US, it’s also the largest in the state and it’s a common pit stop
for people that are going to be dealing with affairs south of the
border in Latin America.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The group
convenes as Otto jumps into a chair into the conference room and
immediately plops his recently dirtied shoes (dirt biking is always a
hazard to welcome mats) onto the table while Hassan shows up promptly
15 minutes early with heavy messenger bag in tow. Kujo marches in
about 5 minutes early to the meeting and, not finding a dark corner
to lurk in, declines a seat; instead he leans against the doorway and
pulls a cigar case from his pocket and chomps down on one of them in
a bit of a ritual.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Promptly at 8am,
Angela walks in with an armful of manila folders and a laptop bag
slung over her shoulder. A quick headcount later and it’s
immediately obvious that she’s displeased with the fact that
several of the group are running late and passes out the folders.
Barely a moment later Alex walks in, playing on his smartphone
looking like a tourist before slumping into one of the chairs. The
next second in walks the last of the group, Gaston, with his nose
buried in a book until he gets to his seat where he places a bookmark
in to mark his place and takes one of the distributed folders. In a
show of disinterest, Otto ignores the folder given to him and instead
pulls out his phone as well to start playing drag racing and asking
how everyone else’s weekend went, the only people to respond being
Kujo, telling him that he just went to the gym, and Hassan saying he
went to a bar but was quickly bored by the poor conversationalists
there (even the drunk ones) and that war criminals were more
interesting.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Deciding to just
get on with the briefing, Angela addresses the group while going
through some rather sparse slides on PowerPoint. Their Rio branch had
gotten a tip from some of their local contacts that a man wanted by
the State of Israel was living in the area. The local contact, Hubert
J. Makovich, was a British national and entrepreneur that moved to
the area to try and capitalize on the Olympics. A few slides showing
information on the man, his photo, his merchandising company, and his
accounting records that show his very rapidly diminishing net worth
and plummeting stock prices. He was hired to pose as a venture
capitalist to server as HUMINT (Human Intelligence). Slides change
from Hubert alone to distant photos of him shaking hands with
investors.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hubert has
managed to survive in that position for years, despite being a known
information security risk as the next few slides show with him in
various stages of undress with a large amount of ladies that were
previously featured in past slides in much more (formal) attire.
Finally paying attention, Otto asks if someone is after Hubert. The
only thing Otto got wrong was the tense as Angela explains that he
was found dead almost a week ago, snatched by a local gang who then
tortured him before disposing of him.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kujo asks if
Angela wants them to go over the local gang while Hassan snarks about
him seeming like a pillar of the community, on the other hand, Alex
is excited by what he managed to accomplish on his phone. Angela’s
responds that they were prepared to write off Hubert until his last
report caught some attention… Apparently, it’s not every day that
a low-level asset manages to turn some heads in Mossad. She pauses
for effect, to see how the group handles that bit of news.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Otto spins in his
chair a bit while Hassan mentions that Mossad’s interests outside
of the Middle East tend to be very limited and very focused while
Kujo questions why the Mossad are outsourcing their kills, why aren’t
the targets dead already.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Angela explains
that they’d normally be all over Nazi fugitives but due to the
political climate, it’s just too difficult for the Mossad to
directly act. And while Kujo expresses delight and excitement at the
prospect of delivering long overdue justice, Angela explains who
they’ve found with the best picture they had of him, almost 20
years old back in the 1940s. Heinrich Günther, a scientist
specializing primarily in physics and biology, an impressive
intellectual prodigy that eagerly participated in the science
programs of the time and while most records past the end of WWII are
scarce or non-existent, recent indications show that he made use of a
Ratline out of Austria at war’s end. Hubert’s digging around
landed him on some financial records that indicate that Heinrich is
still alive in Rio de Janeiro.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Alex is now
finally interested in what’s been going on and puts his phone away
and begins to dig through the folder in front of him while Hassan
inquires as to how a failed venture capitalist managed to get the
attention of the good doctor. Angela has to admit that they have no
idea of Hubert’s death was related to his findings or not, just
that the company is interested in the Israeli bounty on Nazi war
criminals.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Responding to
Hassan’s question about their objective and the rules of
engagement, they’re told the objective is to locate and then either
lift or liquidate him. The mission isn’t sanctioned by the US
Government so they will disavow all knowledge and the company’s
propaganda team are already arranging stories of anti-fa hit squads
coming out of Connecticut in case the Brazilian authorities become
alerted to the team’s activities. Civilian casualties are to be
minimized, but unless it’s a complete cock up then minor accidents
may be overlooked.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kujo jokes around
it being similar to LAPD’s departmental policies while Hassen
mentions he may have trouble fitting in as a college junior before
the rest of the information unfolds. They’ve got a funeral home
cover in Rio, but local politics keep them from truly establishing
themselves in the area. The Funeral Director’s name is Robert
Smith, a resident of the area for many years and quite reliable, but
resources in the area are limited meaning that his armory and garage
are more meager than what the company has Stateside, this means that
the team will be sent out with their own bit of kit.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">While most agree
things will be fine if they can bring their own kit, Hassan makes a
point to ask for their preference on Henrich’s condition. Despite
being previously explained that they can bring him back alive or
dead, bringing him back alive will be a rather large PR boost in
finding and arresting a War Criminal. However, 90-some year-old men
are also notoriously fragile and will be taken into account.
Extraction will be tough so it’ll have to be secured on the team’s
end once Henrich has been dealt with.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With some probing
from Kujo, other than the photo from multiple decades ago and the
financial records from recently, there’s no real clue to Heinrich’s
location which is somewhat of a benefit as if it was known, then it
would be likely that the Mossad would already be on their way.
Instead it’s up to the team to be able to investigate the location
and survive the violent environment in the Rio underworld.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are no more
questions, just folks confident that they can handle the job of
locating and dealing with an old Nazi and climbing the Chriso
Redentor despite the objections of some of the party.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The fight down is
a sight-seeing tour plane that takes a 12-hour one way trip, looking
any deeper reveals that it’s thinly veiled criminal enterprise that
specializes in trafficking around customs and border patrols.
Everyone has their bags packed and ready to go as a new companion
shows up to flirt with a cute receptionist while the rest of the team
discuss how shady their flight is and that it’s quite obviously not
baking ingredients causing the white flecks all over another
passenger’s luggage. Having failed with the receptionist, Salvador
comes up to rain on the team’s parade by informing them that even
if they managed to lift the smuggled cocaine, it wouldn’t be any
good to use as blackmail materials as the South American cops are
more likely to suicide them via beheading than capitulate with any
attempts at blackmail.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Most are minorly
dissuaded from attempting it, they start boarding the plane with Kujo
asking if it’s a smoking flight. True to their reputation for
customer service, the steward informs Kujo that he has no idea in
rather colourful language and assuming the best, Kujo lights up a
Churchill as he takes his seat. Otto, however, having stayed behind
for a moment quickly grabs the rather obvious bag of cocaine while
its own was distracted and immediately moves away and onto the plane
and stows it away.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With the
exception of Alex and Salvador, the rest of the group takes the time
to relax and do their own thing. Alex decides to research what he can
about Rio’s telecom systems and maps to be able to navigate his way
around the Latin American city while Salvador attempts to find some
form of “in-flight entertainment”. Unfortunately, the most
entertainment available is Otto playing candy crush, listening to
Skrillex too loudly through his earbuds, and attempting to sneak
lines of coke in the airplane bathroom when he thinks that no one is
looking. Otherwise it’s getting drunk with Kujo or reading a book.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It takes them
quite a few hours before they manage to reach Brazil where the pilot
points out Chriso Redento to fulfill it’s purpose as a tour plane
and then after the rubbernecking out the windows is over, it swings
around for a final approach for touch down. The pilot kicks the
passengers off the plane with just long enough for them to grab all
their luggage before he taxis it into a nearby hanger and while they
group up and try to figure out their next step, the rest of the
passengers from the tour plane get into a hired car and start to
drive off before being immediately surrounded by police. They decide
quickly to get the hell out of dodge and start to move away from the
police presence as unobtrusively as they can when a van pulls up
right next to them.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The driver tells
them that the hearse broke down and that he had to take the backup
vehicle. Grateful for any way to get away from the cops, the team
piles in with Kujo calling out shotgun. It turns out the driver is
Carl, sent for the group by Bob and that business is booming with
funerals happening left and right. Rio is a mess, the government has
had to deal with numerous corrupt scandals, that gang violence hasn’t
been too affected by UPP, and that almost every cop is dirty. This
may explain why Bob stayed back at the funeral home, the rather
tasteful three story affair with a small graveyard in front.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Complementing and
joking about their current digs, the team starts to offload their
luggage into the house where they are greeted by Bob and a short
woman in bloody medical scrubs. Bob is rather amused by the fact that
it’s not everyday that he gets to play host to undertakers instead
of corpses while the woman in introduced as Marigold, the pathologist
that seems to do the reputable work as a side job when she’s
actually the head of security and the only cleared field op they’ve
got down there since Bob was deemed too important to lose in the
field, especially as the previous funeral director was mailed back
home to his family in pieces, a fate which Bob has managed to avoid
so far. Still, with the long flight and the long day they offer to
let the team get some rest before starting the briefing in the
morning.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">On the side, Alex
speaks with Bob about what he can expect in terms of electronic
support. There’s an old Pentium 3 sitting alongside a first-gen DSL
modem that mildly horrifies and disgusts Alex before he learns that
they also don’t have any radio support either and they mostly use
cell phone service. It’s looking to be rather scant for the tech
down here.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the meantime,
since they slept on the flight down, some of the group end up going
out to the bar with Otto finding himself the center of popularity
while Salvador finds an ex-girlfriend that dumped him after he was
caught in a threesome with her sister and cousin. Gaston stays back
at the funeral home and unpacks before asking Marigold if she needs
some help with anything. Hassan attempts to lure others into a game
of cards with Kujo begrudgingly joining in. Back in the bar, Salvador
has managed to mollify the girl with the promise of a buying her a
drink, trying to get him to buy her something from the top shelf. At
the funeral home, Carl and the other lackey have joined the card
game, Bob has opted out, and Marigold and Gaston share a moment over
Hubert’s corpse.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Marigold explains
that Hubert’s corpse wasn’t handled correctly by the local law
enforcement and they had to even pay them a few grand to get the body
delivered to them. Alex subverts local internet traffic for his own
purposes as two medics note down the notable findings on Hubert’s
body.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It appears that
some of his initial wounds had time to partially heal, indicating
that he’d been worked over for at least several days, he was
missing fingernails from his left hand, he was missing one testicle,
three ribs were broken, a lung was lacerated, a kneecap was busted
from an source uncertain because the body had also been left out in
the elements for at least a day and there are signs that some sort of
scavenging animal had been having a good meal.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Police also
refused to release his possessions and it’s unknown if his
apartment was searched either. The report was sorely lacking in even
the most basic details and the attack was written off as gang
violence due to the location the body was found and didn’t bother
to probe further, or at least any attempts to was overturned as it
also appears that the report was rather poorly edited too. Some posit
that it may have just be thugs, or it could have been trained
interrogators, it could go either way depending on how they obvious
took their time working him over. It could have been corrupt cops
looking to make a quick buck or folks that have paid off the local
police like Heinrich. Regardless of all the speculation, they decide
that it may be a good idea to check out Hubert’s apartment and Bob
lends the crew the van.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hubert’s
apartment looks rather squalid and obviously was most propped up to
the funds coming in from Pine Box. Kujo heads inside to try to deal
with the apartment door but trips and ends up with a used syringe
protruding from his leg, getting it removed the best he can while
Salvador “entertains” the neighbors. Gaston helps to treat Kujo
quickly before they head back in, finding the apartment already
tossed and trashed. Hassan digging into wreckage and extracting an
intact hard drive from a wrecked computer.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The crew takes
some time to do some crime scene reconstruction, Salvador joining in
midway through adjusting his outfit. It becomes obvious that the
tossing happened while Hubert was absent, there’s no blood, no
signs of a violent encounter, and very obviously no signs of someone
trying to clean up after themselves. Alex alerts the crew that
they’ve got some company coming down the street checking out
vehicles and Otto decides that means they need to get going. The
company stops by a car, knocking out a window and grabbing a radio as
the crew pack up. Alex gets the van going to the meeting spot, the
gang banging the side of the van with a bat as he drives by, scoring
a loud thump. Once around the block, the crew piles into the van with
their findings.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The hard drive
itself has three partitions, the OS, a Restore Partition, and an
Encrypted partition. Alex makes sure to take a backup image of the
hard drive before he starts attempting to decrypt the partition. It
appears to be a bad install of tails that Hubert didn’t do quite
right and back at the funeral home they explain what they found and
that it looks like it would take a few days to crack the encryption.
Alex attempts to think of ways to speed up decryption before finally
deciding to head down into the basement with Kujo and Otto. They
jury-rig an old scanner and camera to start taking and uploading
pictures of pages they have found to attempt OCR on the drive. It
takes an hour and a half to get Hubert’s book and rolodex uploaded
and scanned.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With this new
data, it takes only five minutes to crack the drive. Hubert was huge
on computer security as he used Candi followed by his birth date as a
password and while Salvador notes down Candi’s contact information,
they find communications and financial records on the drive. At least
some of which was Hubert contacting Heinrich and attempted to
blackmail the old scientist. Apparently Hubert knew less than they
would prefer, but the blackmail makes sense as Gaston’s financial
forensics discovers that Hubert owed thousands to local gangs and a
few Russians and his credit was so bad that even local banks wouldn’t
lend him money.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Using this
newfound information, the crew try to figure out how to use this to
their advantage. Either baiting Heinrich into responding to more
e-mails, finding the cop that altered the report. Maybe send him
e-mails from another account to bait him into clicking a phishing
link that would give away his location while they attempt to get
information on the police reports. Though the fact that Heinrich may
know that Hubert is dead could also explain the redacted police
reports and tossed apartment. All the searching and talk of e-mail
inspires them to check out the origin of the one that Hubert
contacted Heinrich through, apparently it was an e-mail account from
a company called Protroleum but it doesn’t appear that Heinrich is
an official part of the company. The crew decide that might actually
be worth a look as the session ends off.</span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-61394553146903916832018-12-02T14:41:00.001-08:002018-12-02T14:45:30.692-08:00Return to Ceteri 4: Home Hunting<h2>
Our Cabal:</h2>
Aggravaine Tashalan: Inhumanely attractive and a genius spellcaster, Aggravaine is trying to make a name for himself in the supernatural world of Ceteri.<br />
<br />
Leo: A werewolf private investigator. Leo has a fondness for Twinkies and is a disappointment to his family.<br />
<br />
Ranulf: Paperpusher, ley line expert, and victim of Brimstone Law. Ranulf really wants his old life back, but likely won't get it.<br />
<br />
Marv: A man of many hats, Marv hasn't run into many situations that he hasn't run into something similar before.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We get a lead from Cleo about new digs in Boston- a swanky historical building with some kind of fairy infestation, complete with lots of unreturned library books.<br />
<br />
The Library. Not just Boston Public Library.<br />
<br />
We're given a key, which opens a door that's hidden with magic in the basement.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We hear the rustling of wings once we enter.<br />
<br />
We've entered a massive pixie nest.<br />
<br />
A pixie lands on Leo, attempting to steal a twinkie from them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Eventually we're able to get one forward to negotiate- we offer food in return for use of the space and the Pixie's services as guards for the space. They're initially open, although all four of their leaders will need to approve.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
With Leo's assistance to ensure no loopholes are in the contract, we seal a deal. The pixies give us a tour- there's an almost completely library, an alchemy lab that's set to explode, and some rooms that used to be for stay overs. There's access to the subway through a door in the basement. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aggie begins cleanup of the lab, finding a half-complete homunculous inside, also disposing of numerous magical bits about ready to explode.<br />
<br />
Five months pass as we work on our lair.<br />
<br />
Besides the resident pixies, we have a Rakshasha valet, and numerous housekeeper spirits.<br />
<br />
Our lair includes:<br />
<ul>
<li>A scrying chamber</li>
<li>A damper room that negates magic and spirit abilities</li>
<li>An alchemy lab</li>
<li>Hydroponics room full of secret herbs and spices</li>
<li>Library (good for +1 to all Occult Wildcard/Intrinsic Magic covered topics)</li>
<li>Magical lab (+1)</li>
<li>Summoning Room</li>
<li>It's scry and divination shielded </li>
<li>Training room/Gym/Weight room</li>
<li>Training room for magical pursuits</li>
<li>Magical power supply (Cooked up by Magnus, leeching power from the MBTA's third rail)</li>
<li>Meeting Room</li>
<li>Ley Line tap</li>
<li>Base is self-contained and can be sealed up as a survival shelter</li>
<li>Spirit Wards</li>
<li>Intruder Wards</li>
<li>Can house up to 25 people</li>
<li>There's two entrances- via subway tunnels, or down through the basement of the historical building.</li>
</ul>
<div>
During the construction we find Marv, sent on a mission to wipe out the Pixies. We recruit him into our little group.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The head of Hadestown, Giselle, is looking for some help with a magical matter and is willing to pay for help. She's known for being a problem solver, and is half-sidhe.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Giselle runs a bar in Hadestown, which we pay a visit. Her connection to Underhill, and her troll contacts within, has been severed, and finding people willing to travel through Underhill to fetch the portal stone she needs to reestablish the trade line has been difficult. Enter us.<br />
<br />
Rumor has it that Underhill has seen recent activity of ancient creatures not usually seen on Earth these times- dragons, chiefly. Ginnar, a norse dwarf, is the craftsman who has made the item she needs.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
She hands us a doctor's bag to deliver to him as payment. It's full of reagents.<br />
<br />
We have a few options for getting there- the Autumn Road, going through the outlands, or finding a direct portal. Ranulf's gut is that the Autumn Road is likely to be the safest, if weird.<br />
<br />
The first two hops along the Autumn Road are pretty mundane, just paths. The third we enter a spider nest, but Ranulf is able to circumvent us around them. We experience 8 hours in the Autumn Road, but arrive almost instantly back in the real world.<br />
<br />
The Troll plaza is under The Giant's Causeway, a massive bridge which disappears off into the wilderness.<br />
<br />
The locals are viewing us as a mix of prey and curiosity at first- before Leo and Marv decide to put on their war faces, which causes people to actively move aside to avoid us.<br />
<br />
Ginnar almost closes up shop when we come close, before he realizes we're carrying his pay. We get the item we've been hired to fetch, and then have to make our way out of town without attracting trouble.<br />
<br />
However, the Troll Market is enticing- lots of interesting smells and curios to be had. Ranulf's swindled into buying a $65k hunk or iron ore, and Aggie has to step in to prevent Leo from eating an entire foodcart of grilled meats.<br />
<br />
We get back into the Autumn road, having to take a slightly longer trip. We manage to avoid any nasty encounters, but it's a week later. We drop off Giselle's item for her. She installs it into her portal.<br />
<br />
We mull over the options- getting a quick $30k, getting a favor from her, or getting a year of free portal access to the Troll Market. We ultimately go with the favor- having her as a resource to tap when encountering future issues might be beneficial, and having access to the troll market for a year is less beneficial when the campaign has time skips of 5-6 months at a time.<br />
<br />
That and playing the market doesn't lend well to adventuring.<br />
<br />
Also, a week has passed on the outside. When we hunt up other rumors it turns out one of the other rumors we didn't chase ended up in a House completely getting wiped out- seems House Yagani was closer to the brink than we realized.<br />
<br />
We decide to check out a shrieking woman who is rumored to appear at night in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.<br />
<br />
The cemetery is protected by a robust blessing, which is maintained at least once a year. Leo has some initial issues pushing through the ward, but his lack of malicious intent allows him to push through it.<br />
<br />
Once night falls we find the shrieking woman, sitting on a bench in front of a monument in the cemetery. She's crying. All of us recognize her as the Banshee of Boston, a ghost, not an actuall banshee. She tends to become more active as the city undergoes stress, chaos, or mass death.<br />
<br />
Marv approaches her, and she stops crying. She asks if Reginald has come back. Marv responds that he can be Reginald for her if she likes. The Banshee proceeds to say that the marriage can now proceed.<br />
<br />
Marv plays along. The Banshee starts to turn on him, binding him with Magic, when Aggrivaine interrupts, offering to try and locate the real Reginald.<br />
<br />
Aggrivaine uses sticks to make a casting circle, helped by Marv who uses carpentry to make a pentagram out of greenwood that can be transported. Ranulf locates a ley line he's able to allow Aggie to tap into at a distance.<br />
<br />
After an hour of casting in a graveyard suffused by glowing blue ley line energy, Aggrivaine calls Reginald's spirit, who appears.<br />
<br />
The Banshee is convinced it's a trick. Marv and Aggie attempt to talk her down. Reginald is standing around in colonial soldier garb. Aggie yells at him to state his name and rank, and Reginald responds by demanding why he's been brought back from death.<br />
<br />
We tell him his Betrothed has been unable to pass onto the afterlife. Reginald materializes, and the two spirits start to argue about the circumstances of their situation during the war. They eventually reconcile, and ask to be laid to their final rest.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine counters that they need to be married first. Marv offers up that he was once ordained as a priest. While we're arranging the wedding a group of spirits rise, to witness the event.<br />
<br />
Marv conducts the wedding in his own special way. We get witnesses to sign off on it.<br />
<br />
The Banshee asks Aggrivaine to find her book, then she and her groom both begin to glow, eventually disappearing in a flash of light.<br />
<br />
We head back to the base and end the session there.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-59505993311878523392018-11-04T20:12:00.000-08:002018-11-11T11:12:39.295-08:00Return to Ceteri 3: Friendly Extraction<h2>
Our Cabal:</h2>
Aggravaine Tashalan: Inhumanely attractive and a genius spellcaster, Aggravaine is trying to make a name for himself in the supernatural world of Ceteri.<br />
<br />
Leo: A werewolf private investigator. Leo has a fondness for Twinkies and is a disappointment to his family.<br />
<br />
Ranulf: Paperpusher, ley line expert, and victim of Brimstone Law. Ranulf really wants his old life back, but likely won't get it.<br />
<br />
Jackson Taft: A crack sharpshooter hiding a more malicious second half who you won't like when he's angry.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
<div>
We try and determine what to do next. The initial options seem to be investigating the Lion's outpost, or dealing with their own response to our actions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We opt to head out to their facility. It's warded up to the gills, clouding any attempts at ley sight or similar. They're using ward tokens affixed to IDs to allow people through them,</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is in addition to mundane security. Main transport in/out is via automobile, and the ley lines deflated like a balloon once we stole their focusing device. There's roughly 12 cars parked outside the wards.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We stake out the facility.<br />
<br />
Leo crits on Detective! There's 24 people inside, a very good suite of mundane security devices (infrared, motion sensors, etc). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aggie also crits on seeing the supernatural security setup. Their supernatural defenses are formidable, including a ritual ward that's ridiculously powerful and difficult to put into place. The only hole is that things can gate in, but that's a one-way trip. The Ward will zap any supernatural intruders- a primary concern for Leo.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Leo's enhanced senses pick up the scent of Magnus inside the facility, and groks his overall position in the facility.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aggie attempts to turn the ward onto the security enchantments in place- and botches horrifically, taking 5 points of injury from magical backlash, and undoing wards in a massive 100 mile radius.<br />
<br />
Leo and Ranulf rush the building. Leo rips a door off its hinges using his werewolf strength. Ranulf follows. Aggie limps to the car and preps their getaway car.<br />
<br />
Inside, Leo and Ranulf find Magnus chained to a wall. A guard with an automatic carbine sprays at Leo, who dodge and drops out of the way of the spray.<br />
<br />
Ranulf pulls a blocking spell to avoid the bullets himself.<br />
<br />
Leo recovers and launches himself at the guard, slamming into him and driving the guard onto the ground. The guard fast-draws a cold iron knife plated with silver and stabs at Leo. Ranulf causes a freak accident to happen, and the guard is fried as a live wire from the ceiling is dislodged in the melee and falls on him.<br />
<br />
Magnus is surprised to see Leo, and seems concerned about people being able to utilize his work once its done. The work is locked into a gunsafe, which Leo intends to carry out. Ranulf sees about freeing Magnus from the desk he's chained to.<br />
<br />
With a 500lb gunsafe on his back Leo's at heavy encumbrance, and moving about 5 yards per second.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Leo and Ranulf manage to get out without running into anyone else. We tie the gunsafe to the roof of Leo's hatchback and then pile in and drive off. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Magnus confirmed that Taylor Bloise and Morrow had a falling out about 20 years ago- he doesn't suspect that Taylor was involved in the kidnapping.<br />
<br />
We use Helen Taft's house as a safehouse again, assuming that it's already been searched and won't be now that it's cleared.<br />
<br />
Evidently Magnus got an idea from the events surrounding some of the wards Aldrick screwed around with during the Babel crisis.<br />
<br />
Magnus has a prototype and research notes in the gunsafe. He says it's a new form of magical matter.<br />
<br />
Leo's convinced that Magnus' work is the equivalent of magical radioactivity and would rather not get zapped by it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Magnus explains- he's learned how to concentrate quintessence using a ley line, and the process enriches Quintessence to be about 100x more powerful than normal quintessence. Being physical magic, Quintessence makes enchantments far easier, and allows for some badass spells on the fly.<br />
<br />
It takes Leo an hour to crack the safe. Aggie takes some time to perform first aid on himself, and also reaches out to Olivia to keep her appraised of things.<br />
<br />
She's very unhappy about the wards thing, but is relieved that Magnus is alive. She instructs us to drop him off with his house, and to return to her to get our payment.<br />
<br />
We talk a bit about what to do with the research when Olivia knocks on the door.<br />
<br />
She's particularly unhappy with our methods, and isn't surprised when we mention that Magnus has developed paradigm changing tech.<br />
<br />
Olivia completely understands the process to the make the stuff once explained. Olivia casts a spell on Magnus, catching him once he falls. She then placed a geaus on us to not speak about what we found.<br />
<br />
All of us are handed three grand as pay, plus whatever we grabbed from the safe. Olivia strongly encourages Aggie and the others to get a stronghold into place, and to integrate more into society,<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-4180193151199919112018-10-28T14:42:00.001-07:002018-10-28T14:42:32.245-07:00Return to Ceteri 2: Lines of Influence<br />
<h2>
Our Cabal:</h2>
<div>
Aggravaine Tashalan: Inhumanely attractive and a genius spellcaster, Aggravaine is trying to make a name for himself in the supernatural world of Ceteri.<br />
<br />
Leo: A werewolf private investigator. Leo has a fondness for Twinkies and is a disappointment to his family.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ranulf: Paperpusher, ley line expert, and victim of Brimstone Law. Ranulf really wants his old life back, but likely won't get it.<br />
<br />Jackson Taft: A crack sharpshooter hiding a more malicious second half who you won't like when he's angry.<br /><br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
</div>
Last we left off, Ranulf just caused a large explosion. Thankfully, no deaths, but it's still quite the scene. It's chalked up to a gas line leak in the press and 'official' documentation.<br />
<br />
Aggravaine is wrapping up tending to some of the wounded, and has successfully implanted a SPY Protocol spirit into the foci of a Silver Lions mage leaving the building.<br />
<br />
Ranulf schmoozes to get the names of the lawyers for the building and for the Silver Lions organization at large.<br />
<br />
We decide to not stick around. We decide to visit Helen Taft, an aggrieved former employee of the Conclave who raised a stink in the department of Celeric Regulation.<br />
<br />
Helen's fighting an aggressive magical cancer, which she's been using magic to stave off for as long as possible. She's busy smoking a cigarette when we arrive, swaps it for a joint later in the conversation, and obviously hasn't lost any of her wit. Aggravaine and Leo help her roll a joint, earning some brownie points.<br />
<br />
When we bring up the Lions Helen's willing to talk shop about how much they suck. We bring up the discrepancies with their ley line. Helen brings up Silver Lions recruiting genius magical prodigies that are up and coming, then making them leave broken or disappearing them once they are done with them.<br />
<br />
She suspects that they're developing something likely illegal. Helen also makes it clear that taking them on without help is unlikely to go well. Helen suggests that we recruit her nephew, Jackson, to our cabal- he failed the trials, has an anger management issue, and needs a job.<br />
<br />She tells us he's living in her house in Dorchester, before getting wheeled inside for her medicine.<br /><br />
The house in Dorchester is a ranch style apartment. Aggravaine walks in without being invited, summons a housekeeper to clean the place for twelve hours, and begins asking Jackson if he's really satisfied with his unemployed existence.<br /><br />Jackson takes some motivating, but eventually seems down to join our efforts.<br />
<br />
We check out the garage and find her stacks of files on the Silver Lions. The files are about five years out of date, but are chock full of interesting info. Aggravaine locates a facility that they have that's in a state forest North of Boston.<br /><br />We find a photograph of Bloise Cagliostero, Morrow, and Anton J. Dyer together in army fatigues some time during the Vietnam Era. Bloise is a serious heavyweight battle mage, and has been skulking around trying to improve his standing and that of his own house. Dyer is also a badass combat sorcerer. He lacks Aggravaine's raw magical oomph, but has studied and honed his skills for a long time. Dyer founded Silver Lions.<br />
<br />
Ranulf confirms that their North Facility is sitting on a Dragon Well. That particular ley line was approved by Morrow himself, and was grandfathered in once the leyline was 'discovered' to be stronger than initially surveyed.<br /><br />
It was originally surveyed by Morrow. It really looks like Morrow was planted as a mole within the department that regulates ley lines to get Silver Lions a cushy deal on numerous ley lines.<br />
<br />
Aggravaine loops in his boss Olivia, sharing we her details of what's been dug up. The explosion in Boston went unreported to the Custos and the National News Media. Olivia wants Aggravaine and the others to continue investigating- without stepping on Cagliostero's toes so that she doesn't have to confront Taylor Bloise about anything.<br /><br />The SPY Protocol comes back and reports in, typing out what it managed to eavesdrop. They're talking about a valuable subject that they're working with, who's from Cagliostero. They're planning on getting rid of him when they're done. The spirit reports that they have photos of us outside of the office we blew, and they proceed to accuse Aggravaine of sticking his pen in company ink.<br /><br />They're also aware that Aggravaine is in contact with Olivia. They don't believe that we know about their other facility, but they are locking it down and sweeping for bugs. The SPY Spirit fled once it heard it might be detected.<br />
<br />
We take pains to ensure that Olivia gets the new intel we received.<br /><br />We oscillate a bit on what to do, eventually settling on checking back on the place that exploded after Ranulf brings it up.<br />
<br />
The local emergency response has left except for a single cop car. The cop seems out of it, like he's not really paying attention. The mists are significantly stronger than they should be. Ranulf looks at the leyline and whatever the Lions were doing + the Twist Ranulf pulled means that the leyline is more or less permanently busted.<br />
<br />
Ranulf believes that they were attempting to create an artificial dragon well to harvest quintessence from.<br /><br />We try to ascend to the 13th floor, where we meet a guard. Ranulf and Jackson attempt to fast-talk and intimidate the guard. The guard eventually demurs, and Aggravaine spends a moment to commiserate with him about how bad "Mr. Twiddles (Jackson)" is.<br />
<br />
Ranulf finds the epicenter of the explosion. Strange stone shards have been strewn about by the explosions. They had the equivalent of a magical nuclear reactor going on, and the residual energy is quite powerful.<br />
<br />
Jackson uses Archaeology! and thinks that the pieces are from some kind of ancient statue- which he tries to piece back together.<br />
<br />
A guard starts heading upstairs, so Leo falls in behind him to stalk him as he goes upstairs. Jackson and Ranulf toss the research floor- grabbing random harddrives, research notes, and so on.<br />
<br />
Leo does his best to signal that there's more people present. He then goes on to loot some important files himself.<br /><br />Aggravaine finishes distracting the guard with some life advice, bugging out once he feels the rest of the team would be finished.<br /><br />Some Silver Lions folk are approaching the building. We do our best to avoid being seen by them.<br /><br />Aggravaine locates the security room, and asks Leo to lockpick the door so that security footage can be erased. Leo scrubs the team's presence from the security footage completely.<br /><br />We leave and return back to Helen's house.<br />
<br />
Jackson starts piecing together the Egyptian tablet he rescued from the explosion. He makes out a single word/string- HEKA- which is the deification of magic in personified form.<br />
<br />
The tablet is going to take days to piece back together. Aggravaine speaks the LOGOS Shift to return the tablet back to its original state. It's returned to normal, including the ley line focusing crystal in the middle of it. The tablets are exceedingly valuable and bounce the power of ley lines up a level.<br />
<br />
There's a quartz cylinder carved into the tablet.<br />
<br />
Jackson's able to read the tablet. He translates the instructions on it to English. The tablet acts as a focusing device, increasing the power of ley lines the longer they're in place. Ranulf can tell that they've been altering the method, because even the tablet and the instructions couldn't produce the results we saw at the office Ranulf exploded.<br />
<br />
We eventually realize that when Aggravaine used the Logos he stole the cylindrical quartz that was originally attached to the tablet from wherever it happened to be- likely the state woods facility run by The Lions.<br /><br />We make plans to hide the focusing tablet and to make sure that Helen isn't retaliated against if they piece together that it was used at her house. Aggravaine drops the ley line tablet off with his girlfriend Trish, while the others go to ensure that Helen is safe.<br /><br />It appears initially that Helen is just fine. She's interested to hear that we've stolen from the Silver Lions.<br />
<br />
Some guys in suits show up at Helen's house where Jackson elected to stay. Jackson locks up, and prepares for a fight.<br />
<br />
They breach the back door. Jackson rushes towards them, shouting that he's going to blow their brains out if they don't leave. They screw their resistance roll and retreat. Jackson chases them off the property.<br />
<br />
Ranulf casts Off the Grid on Helen, making it unlikely that anybody will be able to track her down or target her.<br />
<br />
We end there.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-51391843531756222018-10-16T20:35:00.001-07:002018-10-16T20:37:24.242-07:00Return to Ceteri 1: An Explosive Twist<br />
<h2>
Our Cabal:</h2>
<div>
Aggravaine Tashalan: Inhumanely attractive and a genius spellcaster, Aggravaine is trying to make a name for himself in the supernatural world of Ceteri.<br />
<br />
Leo: A werewolf private investigator. Leo has a fondness for Twinkies and is a disappointment to his family.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ranulf: Paperpusher, ley line expert, and victim of Brimstone Law. Ranulf really wants his old life back, but likely won't get it.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
</div>
<br />
It's a month after we toppled the new Tower of Babel and defeated a master vampire that had crippled the Boston supernatural community.<br />
<br />
Brimstone law was quickly dissolved. Mike and Suzette left together to chase down leads on his parents. Yannay is busy trying to figure out how to get Aldrick out of the Labyrinth. Raleigh is "not intervening" as much as possible. Landon is still comatose, and Cormac is working overtime for The Library.<br />
<br />
That leaves Leo and Aggrivaine as the only members of the Brimstone Law cabal who are still in touch and not otherwise engaged in projects.<br />
<br />
We're at the Conclave HQ. Aggravaine is dropping off paperwork for Olivia- nicely forged in her handwriting to reduce her workload.<br />
<br />
She hands over forms finalizing the end of Brimstone law as an entity within the Conclave.<br />
<br />
Olivia asks Aggie and Leo how they're doing, where they're living, what they plan to do, etc. She's unimpressed that Aggie is mooching off local startups by posing as an employee to sleep and eat on their dime.<br />
<br />
Unimpressed when Aggie suggests taking control of the mundane remnants of Brimstone Law, she suggests taking on some of her non-paperwork.<br />
<br />
Silver Lion is a PMC on the Mundane side, chock full of dangerous sorcerers on the Supernatural side. Olivia offers per diem, expenses, and $2,000 each for us to check them out. She says that they are using a leyline for security, and suggests that we get in touch with someone who just got put on administrative leave.<br />
<br />
Olivia clocks Silver Lion as about 100 people. They operate out of Boston, renting space in a financial district skyscraper.<br />
<br />
We decide to hunt down the expert Olivia suggested. He turns out to be Ranulf, paper pusher and ley line expert.<br />
<br />
Ranulf greets us at his cubicle. He's pretty pissed, because evidently he's getting fucked because of the Brimstone ley line shenanigans we pulled to save the world. We help Ranulf with his paperwork mountain over the course of 4-5 hours.<br />
<br />
Ranulf finally looks over the files we have on Silver Lion- they've got permission to tap directly into a powerful ley line to power their security measures. It looks like Ranulf signed off on the original paperwork. The Lion's request is unusual, since they've tapping into a magnitude 5 out of 6 ley line.<br />
<br />
Aggravaine uses speed-reading to go through records to find out more about the authorization- and the supervisor, Richard Morrow, who originally signed the order is now working for the Lions. At the time, he wasn't, meaning there wasn't any obvious conflict of interest. He retired from the Conclave about a year ago.<br />
<br />
The Lions would have been activated during the Babel crisis, but we don't know just how active they may have been during the crisis. Aggie and Leo suspect that they might not have been as helpful as they could have been.<br />
<br />
Aggravaine uses his "I Know a Guy" advantage to seek out somebody who didn't particularly like Richard Morrow. Helen Taft was fired from the Conclave about a year ago, and the reason listed in her profile is clear HR-Speak for bullshit. We don't have any info on her current status.<br />
<br />
Ranulf seems determined for us to make his life better, and is going to doggedly follow us until we do.<br />
<br />
The Silver Lions are on the 13th floor of their office building. Surprise surprise.<br />
<br />
We opt to case the office from the outside. Leo succeeds by 9, Aggie by 10. Ranulf tries to find a coffee shop to assess the leyline from.<br />
<br />
The mundane security is terrible- overweight, inattentive, and too interested in Boston sports to pay much attention.<br />
<br />
Ranulf approaches them and asks to get into the basement. Meanwhile, Leo tries to slip past them into the basement.<br />
<br />
Leo's caught by someone from security. Ranulf is promptly shown inside to "check on the boiler". Leo and Ranulf try to play it off as if Leo is with Ranulf.<br />
<br />
Aggravaine takes the opportunity to cast Intercom and Remote Teamwork on Leo, allowing him to communicate with and make Complimentary Skill rolls for Leo.<br />
<br />
Once in the basement, Ranulf uses his ley sight to look at the leyline. It's being actively tapped. The wards for it are on the 13th floor. Ranulf attempts to sabotage the leyline while making it appear like an accident.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine, sensing that this is likely to end poorly, pulls the fire alarm.<br />
<br />
Once Ranulf finishes sabotaging the ley line, an explosion rocks the 13th floor of the skyscraper. (OOC: Aggravaine used Foresight to pull the fire alarm after Ranulf's tinkering blew things up. Aggie got to keep the use of Foresight because he crit on the mastermind check to see Ranulf's actions ahead of time.)<br />
<br />
The ley line tap breaks in the basement. Twisting the line while it was being actively drawn on helped contribute to the explosion, but Aggravaine can't tell if what Lions was doing with the leyline played a part or not.<br />
<br />
The evacuation reveals a number of Silver Lions folk- most of whom are carrying "canes" or "walking sticks". Some wounded are starting to trickle down into the lobby.<br />
<br />
Aggie casts Echoes of the Dead and is surprised to learn nobody actually died in the explosion. He assists with stabilizing a bystander who was caught in the explosion who is bleeding heavily.<br />
<br />
Agravaine takes the opportunity to implant an eavesdropping spirit into the foci of a Lions executive leaving the scene.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-3099792453016028372018-06-19T10:25:00.001-07:002018-06-19T11:37:19.336-07:00You Might be Doing it Wrong- Getting Weapon Bond to Work in GCSSo, you're using GCS to design a new character in with Signature Gear, or a tricked-out gun that you dropped some Character Points on to be able to purchase. Obviously you're going to slap on a Weapon Bond because that extra +1 to skill for the low cost of a Perk is bananas strong.<br />
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You go to the Power Ups library and pull the Weapon Bond advantage onto your sheet. But the Weapon Bond advantage doesn't have any features included that will make it add +1 to your appropriate skill, even after typing in what weapon it's for.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEb12JfcveqAkh1F2_udmqG3VMQCzjJOTwZYi-jMZnpxn1Wlra7J0lelBegnkI_nV6mxGCPgqUiUqiefK-By4uEIJ0FWfpd7JQpDgrFsxk3M-4M123CBfVm2pfCnpqCebI8diSPs8j7-8/s1600/WeaponBondExample1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEb12JfcveqAkh1F2_udmqG3VMQCzjJOTwZYi-jMZnpxn1Wlra7J0lelBegnkI_nV6mxGCPgqUiUqiefK-By4uEIJ0FWfpd7JQpDgrFsxk3M-4M123CBfVm2pfCnpqCebI8diSPs8j7-8/s1600/WeaponBondExample1.PNG" /></a></div>
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On this sheet I've added Weapon Bond, as well as two BSA Welrods. One is named Nancy, because that's going to be the gun that Reita finds especially well suited to her. With no further changes, GCS doesn't account for Weapon Bond, and both are at skill ten.</div>
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In the past, I would have dug around the Weapon Bond Advantage trying to add a feature that would bump Pistol Skill only while using Nancy, but this leads to problems:</div>
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<ol>
<li>The Feature "Gives a Skill Level Bonus" affects Character Skill- not effective skill using a weapon, meaning it will bump defaults, affect non-weapon bond weapons, and force you to remember to take -1 if you're using a weapon you're not bonded to.</li>
<li>Separating out a specific skill via skill specializations gets messy quickly.</li>
</ol>
<h4>
The Right Way:</h4>
<div>
When you open up the dialog box to edit a weapon and click on the line that allows you to edit a weapon's attack, you want to edit the line that dictates which skill is used.</div>
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Change the +0 to +1, and click apply.<br />
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And looking back at the sheet, we can see that one Welrod is showing an increased skill level, while Guns Skill is still 10, and the other Welrod isn't bumped.</div>
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<h3 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Added Bonus:</h3>
<div>
This is also the correct way of modeling Reflex Sights, Bonuses from Fine/Very Fine/Balanced equipment, and can also smooth over RoF calculations when using shotguns. If it affects the weapon and not the base skill, you likely want to add the bonus to the weapon, not via a feature which increases skill.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Equipment Bond:</h4>
<div>
This method breaks down when using equipment bond, things that affect Fast-Draw, etc. I'm still noodling on the best method of handling some of them.</div>
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<!--Precis - When adding Weapon Bond to a character in GCS, the first thing I tried to make the +1 bonus work right turned out to be a really bad way of doing it. In this post I describe the best way of making sure Vera gets the skill bonus she deserves.-->
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-32649515816179303222018-04-25T17:45:00.001-07:002018-04-25T17:45:23.086-07:00Relational Maps<a href="https://twitter.com/zmadpoet/status/989185055300861953">Zmadpoet</a> posted a tweet talking about the relational maps/flows used by old school game devs when making adventure games.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Ah0XPtIKtOSD1XsrlsOuLofg38bQ1SjNFLi_3etgAZU2JdW4jqjjhClT5_RwvdgR01eWilP8HvcBnITBMoK0C3o7w9SoNmv9_b7HP6xxQ2FV6GqxF8mJxk5UJuO9dmY4S_WGMUY9B0k/s1600/MadPoetTweeet.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="658" data-original-width="641" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Ah0XPtIKtOSD1XsrlsOuLofg38bQ1SjNFLi_3etgAZU2JdW4jqjjhClT5_RwvdgR01eWilP8HvcBnITBMoK0C3o7w9SoNmv9_b7HP6xxQ2FV6GqxF8mJxk5UJuO9dmY4S_WGMUY9B0k/s400/MadPoetTweeet.PNG" width="388" /></a></div>
I have gotten into the habit of using relational maps for my most recent GURPS campaign, Pine Box Consulting, and figured I could talk about why I started using them. I don't use them to map physical locations or a series of events, but the layout of influence and connections between all the actors at play in my games.<br /><br />I use <a href="https://www.draw.io/">https://www.draw.io/</a> to produce my maps.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbZq2pwWVdvHfcSOhSO0JPrXh5AmlhoYc_4Tr9x5ibdj2vlVs08yc9108EbjkCvLFuEtxkskck9oIGu2tWAPrdFIyP4KfKrtsuQbxG-ilYpwklcbTj29zTxl592V7EFC17yejjsa6wlI/s1600/Protroleum.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="831" data-original-width="1177" height="451" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbZq2pwWVdvHfcSOhSO0JPrXh5AmlhoYc_4Tr9x5ibdj2vlVs08yc9108EbjkCvLFuEtxkskck9oIGu2tWAPrdFIyP4KfKrtsuQbxG-ilYpwklcbTj29zTxl592V7EFC17yejjsa6wlI/s640/Protroleum.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is <b>just</b> the diagram for the <b>First Mission</b> my players went on</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
I like relational maps because they visually show the connections and influences between disparate factions and individuals better than a spreadsheet or word document, although a wiki might do a decent job at matching a relational map if well done.<br />
<br />
Now, relational maps don't contain deep information on the entities contained within- I keep most of that in my head. It is possible to include more in-depth info, but the effort vs. reward isn't the best on doing so.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />It can be very hard to document how every group relates to one another without significant amounts of repetition. Especially when it comes to doing writeups of groups/factions, there's a lot of times where you'll see "Group X hates Group Y" and then in the entry for Group Y you'll see "Group Y hates Group X". You can't not list it- otherwise looking at just Group Y might lead you to miss the rancor, but it's still redundant to a degree.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't muck around with different arrows all that much, or put much effort into showing which are friendly or adversarial connections- I can remember the nature of the relationships off the top of my head, and these diagrams aren't player facing. Player facing diagrams should have more careful attention paid to whether arrows are bidirectional or not. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now note, these diagrams are less "flowchart" and more "If I need to know the police are connected to". Looking 1 or 2 hops out very quickly gives a sense of who is directly and slightly less directly influenced by one another.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't use the diagrams to tie into mechanics, although I suppose there could be a way of rigging number of hops to a skill penalty (For instance, trying to pump Flavio for for information about Hubert, who's roughly 5 hops away, not counting the mystery informant, might not go very well because he's too distant from the info being sought.)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
It's generally pretty easy to update, even mid-session. Other maps that I've done for more recent missions involve big X's placed over individuals deceased during the course of the mission.\</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now, that's not to say that they can't be used for physical Dungeons, and if I ever run the Castlevania DF game I had in mind, the castle might just look a little like the diagram below.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-25173483019232328862018-03-22T13:56:00.000-07:002018-03-22T13:56:17.872-07:00My First Impressions of the MapForge BetaA while back, some GURPS bloggers were pushing the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/battlegrounds/mapforge-battlemap-creation-software-for-tabletop/description">MapForge Kickstarter</a>, and since I've recently gotten the itch to make a Megadungeon (better use that inspiration while it's still hot), I figured I should get a beta copy and try it out.<br />
<br />
I mean, I paid for it. Shouldn't investigate other options before checking out the product I backed, right?<br />
<br />
Despite a <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/battlegrounds/mapforge-battlemap-creation-software-for-tabletop/posts/2136783">post</a> opining the lack of people requesting beta keys and putting out a call for testers, I had a rocky go of getting access.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">5 updates. FIVE UPDATES.</td></tr>
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<br />
This wasn't limited to just me, either.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA7RiVrBn2XE7B2lAIcEzzjwp4kbnQNcLEbp0LsOkYx8klWzomy6vjGnKgYTlp-mMTdef_q9ORxYNPyjaBWtJq0R6vO7yqYfCXLGwQf0WWjHya0JbAfwcqZLWCObsMbq5Zr4HTKMh3qy0/s1600/FIVEUPDATES.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="689" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA7RiVrBn2XE7B2lAIcEzzjwp4kbnQNcLEbp0LsOkYx8klWzomy6vjGnKgYTlp-mMTdef_q9ORxYNPyjaBWtJq0R6vO7yqYfCXLGwQf0WWjHya0JbAfwcqZLWCObsMbq5Zr4HTKMh3qy0/s640/FIVEUPDATES.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Baffled he says, as if all of us are moronic twats</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I can actually address why people are having so much difficulty:<br />
1: To avoid getting 20,000+ emails all at once asking for keys, the creator broke them into five waves without giving people an easy way to check for which wave they are a part of<br />
2: Most people don't feverishly check Kickstarter every day for updates- I only seriously check Kickstarter once every couple of months, and all five updates had blown well past in the time frame between paying actual attention to kickstarter<br />
3: Way too much fucking reading to do before getting to the relevant info (marked in red below)<br />
4: I never received an actual email from Kickstarter going "MapForge wants you to try out the thingy"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqeiO0pZD9qdyAZv3k-bTlFtt-aMMRt7BS-37F3n1tlsJ7VRXF4dS23JdbGIq1vH-Ew-4L-6lJpI-qDnCEQhsFu3EJzUs2k71OKwrXGSudNoTIoMgItOBAcMRuBcEbvv-unQA1OyF-ioo/s1600/Install+info.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="858" data-original-width="692" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqeiO0pZD9qdyAZv3k-bTlFtt-aMMRt7BS-37F3n1tlsJ7VRXF4dS23JdbGIq1vH-Ew-4L-6lJpI-qDnCEQhsFu3EJzUs2k71OKwrXGSudNoTIoMgItOBAcMRuBcEbvv-unQA1OyF-ioo/s320/Install+info.PNG" width="258" /></a></div>
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Plus when your Beta access process is to download the beta program from your website, email you a computer-specific code, and then wait for a response, most people would consider that convoluted. Obviously you're not running some kind of centralized licensing server that the program phones home to to check that everything is hunky dory, because this is twig and spit level setup going on.<br />
<br />
<h2>
How does it actually run?</h2>
<div>
So, I get the program, I get the key, I have to manually type the key (despite being told in the email that typing it is inaccurate and I should copy and paste) because copying and pasting didn't work 3 times and forced me to restart the program to actually enter the key (who the fuck is going to brute force a license key when some script kiddie is just going to develop a crack anyways, are you fucking kidding me?).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I fire it up ...and find it has no tiles. Because despite all Kickstarter Backers getting some free assets to play around with, they're not bundled in the fucking install. Adding them is admittedly easy, but why the fuck should I have to dig through Kickstarter posts to find free stretch goals? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I sort that out- and BAM, memory errors.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR8LYXONzODpuL2Y8BGc9c5B-GTHj7Z2FwhTZYX_DTKKFX2XwTVoOqSKAZ9WOSFI0UQW4P7LhfAeFZdwGqyHFOgSB8c01y3X9GReYGa4o1N0dp-hEpaiEwb1TbJrEgyFyvoWet14WLlfg/s1600/MemoryIssue.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="404" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR8LYXONzODpuL2Y8BGc9c5B-GTHj7Z2FwhTZYX_DTKKFX2XwTVoOqSKAZ9WOSFI0UQW4P7LhfAeFZdwGqyHFOgSB8c01y3X9GReYGa4o1N0dp-hEpaiEwb1TbJrEgyFyvoWet14WLlfg/s320/MemoryIssue.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boy, I wonder how much of this is legacy code from like 2005?</td></tr>
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Evidently there's a specific exe required to run it on Windows 10 x64 machines (only one of the most FUCKING COMMON OPERATING SETUPS CURRENTLY IN THE WILD).</div>
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And this was with ONE ASSET PACK, NOT EVEN THE FULL TEN.</div>
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So, I grab the right exe and fire it up. It works. Works in that navigating the various tiles and items is deathly slow. There are frequent hangs of 10-45 seconds, windows throws up "not responding" fairly often, sometimes alternating with hangs, and has a habit of starting up as a half-loaded zombie if you focus on another window (like, this pithy blog post you're currently reading) while it's in the process of opening.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9X_tp7203uwB2YMF-KESd8aHwgsiel3UByOF7X9RhdDwvfzH448EuPjxCqJaEEgOnTKwJpBRoHIzdhbsVGEbfLREVhZnw5HcdIskr0jLlEOEfaZb2cemHY9gNbwpcqCpuIlc0bPXzNkU/s1600/OpeningError.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1285" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9X_tp7203uwB2YMF-KESd8aHwgsiel3UByOF7X9RhdDwvfzH448EuPjxCqJaEEgOnTKwJpBRoHIzdhbsVGEbfLREVhZnw5HcdIskr0jLlEOEfaZb2cemHY9gNbwpcqCpuIlc0bPXzNkU/s320/OpeningError.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's stuck like this</td></tr>
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It not quite as bad at eating up RAM as Chrome, but it's pretty RAM hungry.</div>
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Performance seems to be directly linked to the size of resources available to actually map with. Official recommendation is to disable content you don't plan on using, which really sucks given than changing said content requires a restart. Sucks to be you if you want to browse through a gigantic library of assets to mix-and-match what's best for whatever <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Infinite_Worlds">fucked</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunnies_%26_Burrows">up</a> <a href="http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/monsterhunters/">game</a> you want to run.</div>
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So, to summarize:</div>
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<ol>
<li>The Creator seems to be baffled and slightly annoyed that their convoluted processes and lack of clear communication to backers is causing confusion, and that they're being expected to do rote customer service tasks.</li>
<li>MapForge runs like utter shit on my machine.</li>
</ol>
<div>
My Specs, for those wondering:</div>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv5ljvOn5pYxg9L9WD64nM0-bAQVlx5LLiZnQp9nbyfYKvxjwTaEDQbcm632U3Kii3zmJ1GN1xvbFTxVSPabqrXG0DJjr_Wi-Ncx5UxDwT1z9KqemcqO001C17ddbgyWOPHhnF73i-tn4/s1600/Specs.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="189" data-original-width="899" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv5ljvOn5pYxg9L9WD64nM0-bAQVlx5LLiZnQp9nbyfYKvxjwTaEDQbcm632U3Kii3zmJ1GN1xvbFTxVSPabqrXG0DJjr_Wi-Ncx5UxDwT1z9KqemcqO001C17ddbgyWOPHhnF73i-tn4/s640/Specs.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I'm running a GTX-1080 for my video card, and I really should double my RAM, I'm aware.<br />
<br />
Actual Beta-User Feedback:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Frequent Hangs/Stops</li>
<li>Serious lag navigating addon assets</li>
<li>No Hex Grid option (I run GURPS, GURPS uses hexes, I need hexes)</li>
<li>No scrollwheel functionality for scrolling asset lists</li>
<li>It currently feels like a map-stamper and not much else. </li>
<li>UI would be nice if it weren't unresponsive and sluggish</li>
<li>Ease of adding addons is good</li>
<li>Need a way to disable addon content from within the program</li>
<li>No options menu for a v1.0? Seriously?</li>
<li>No option to choose where exported maps save? Really?</li>
<li>Love the interplay between the UI and the bog-standard windows error and alert messages</li>
<li>Lots of pitfalls to avoid and/or hoops to jump through to get barely usable performance out of it</li>
<li>Thunking down 5 Tavern items and attempting to export has lead to an indefinite hang</li>
</ol>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-48858293982222587012017-11-03T18:05:00.000-07:002017-11-03T18:05:01.347-07:00Ceteri B-Team Guest Appearance: Agrivaine Threatens to Trap PC Party in the Realm of Death for Disrespecting Him<h2>
The Cast:</h2>
(The cast blurbs for the B-Team were shamelessly stolen from Douglas Cole's <a href="https://gamingballistic.com/">blog</a>, where he normally does session summaries.)<br />
<br />
<b>Kamali Blackshear (18)</b>: Kamali is a young boy in his early teens. He is healthy and is of mixed ethnicity of Caucasian South African and native South African. He is a determined youth who believes in a justice of his own, likening himself to the knight of the round whom he has read deeply into. Just as they stood against the darkness of their age so too does Kamali seek to do the same. For his sister, for his friends, and for the world.<br />
<br />
Tag: “A knight without a sword carrying a faith nobody believes.”<br />
<br />
<b>Lorenzo DeModouco (18)</b>: A handsome and charismatic musician. The loss of his parents didn’t dampen his spirits and he soldiered on after their death. He’s the cheery one always trying to make others happy and sometimes spontaneously breaks into song. Perceptive of others and their feelings, Lorenzo is the one who knows what people are thinking by the looks on their face. He’s also a boy scout and is quite comfortable in the wild.<br />
<br />
TAG: “He’s a Jukebox Hero. He’s got stars in his eyes. A Jukebox Hero – he’ll make sure you survive.”<br />
<br />
<b>Amos M. Humiston (19)</b> – This boy is far from where he started out at the orphanage. His comfortable existence already gone and instead has gotten used to his new life. Not like his brothers, his talents lay more in mental pursuits and has already started towards getting a double Masters degree at a local college aiming for his goal of becoming a research librarian. Following in his family’s footsteps almost unknowingly, he exhibits certain talents towards more occult pursuits such as druidism and alchemy, mixing up herbal supplements and elixers for the team. And while he’s still somewhat still slipping along behind the group, he has become a lot more outgoing with the rest of the Orphans and have started making friends with folks outside his adopted brothers. Always showing concern for them and trying to make sure they know everything that they need to when it comes to the dangers they face.<br />
<br />
Tag: “True alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”<br />
<br />
<b>Gabriel MacAlister (18)</b> – Built like the natural athlete he is, he has grown taller, stronger, and more solidly good-looking. A quiet and hard-working lad, always ready to lend a hand with any work, which he will do without complaint or obligating the other person to respond. He is an expert martial arts teacher, and has been following in the footsteps of a carpenter for some time now. Emphatically not a pushover or weak personality, but also not one to purposefully show off. Has been in many horrible places and seen many horrible things; he’s a bit of a compulsive planner as a result, as well as always feeling that most folks don’t really know how lucky they are. He lost a leg fighting zombies; he got an artificial replacement and kept on fighting the good fight.<br />
<br />
Tag: “To serve others is the highest calling; to protect the meek the noblest endeavor, and our works are judged by the effort that went into them”<br />
<br />
<b>Timothy I Mitchell (19)</b>: Timothy possess an honest if forgettable face. He tends towards comfortable, though inexpensive clothing and durable running shoes, rounding off his typical attire is a deep pocketed jacket and a backpack slung over one shoulder. Timothy appears to be a poster-boy for bad kids, often finding himself in trouble with any and all forms of authority. A victim of neglect, driven to never become a victim again he often acts seemingly on impulse, taking any dare or challenge in his stride. Timothy doesn’t have friends, not in any real sense. Too few of the people who enter his orbit can deal with him in anything more than bite sized pieces, a fact which only further frustrates the young teenager.<br />
<br />
Tag: “Darkness is within all of us, it’s how you use that darkness that matters”<br />
<br />
<b>Agrivaine Tashalan (19): </b>An extremely attractive sorcerer, Agrivaine is an extremely gifted magical prodigy, as well as a planning mastermind. Driven to try and do the right thing, Agrivaine seems to have the weight of the entire situation in Boston weighing on his shoulders.<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
<div>
Amos and Agrivaine leave Brimstone Law, driving over to a ramshackle firehouse. The group has been dealing with some Vampires or something, and they're immediately curious who Amos has brought along.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agrivaine introduces himself, and alerts the crew about what he's been instructed to do by Aldrick. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They dicker for a while about the vampire they were interrogating, and the vampire's boss, before Aldrick drives up on his motorcycle, carrying a bundle. It has Maryam's body inside- or whatever is left of it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aldrick has to head off a fight as Agrivaine loses his patience with the teens giving him lip and almost zaps Kamali with Agony. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aldrick explains the nature of the spell. Someone (Aldrick and Gabe) anchors the spell, someone casts (Agrivaine), and the rest have to go into the land of death to convince death himself to let Maryam return back to the living. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Norse demigod admonishes the others for squabbling rather than conducting themselves like capable adults. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agrivaine and Walter, his usually invisible butler, begin work preparing the ritual site. Agrivaine calls in Trish to help with the dancing portion of the ritual, knowing that he's in for a risky dance.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Everyone except Trish, Aldrick, and Gabriel are thrust into an astral realm of some sort, floating above all of us. Aldrick is beating a drum in time with their hearts, which is sustaining their bodies throughout the ritual.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He gives them advice about following doors.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agrivaine is being held up by Trish in the real world.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Within the firehouse, the door to the kitchen instead leads to a park. Kamali stops to comment on the insanity of going to convince death to give back Maryam. Lorenzo talks about offering death another individual who's been cheating death for a long time. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It appears like they're in, Christian Herter Park, the way it appeared three days ago. There's a barbecue going on. Karl and Karl's father are both there, and so's Maryam. It's evidently quite peaceful and ennjoyable. Amos barely resists being pulled in by the illusion of how things didn't turn out, and Kamali has some trouble shaking it off.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They go through the next door.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They find themselves in a lavish room, filled with almost every worldly possession somebody could want. There's a tall man, maybe six feet tall, blonde hair, with a cruel cast to his face.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's Ector- Agrivaine's brother. Kamali takes a look at his soul and looks upon one of the most vile, evil creatures he's ever seen, a half demon who has fully given himself over to sin and debauchery. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ector can't directly interfere, but he's hoping to throw Agrivaine off his game so that Aggie fails. Kamali and the others aren't afraid of him despite the fact that Ector is a fan of explosions- Oklahoma City sized explosions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We decide to press on, figuring that Ector can't do anything to interfere, so might as well press on through the next door.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A garden stretches out ahead of us. An old man is tending to the garden, weeding and planting things.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He introduces himself as Anubis, and goes on about gardening. Agrivaine tries to equate it to keeping a drug dealing organization going. Anubis gets the gist, but isn't wowed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He warns us that things are going to be getting harder moving forward, before telling Kamali that they have a long history going back.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anubis tells us bringing back Maryam will likely require sacrifice, and gives Amos a plant, an <a href="http://gulfnews.com/culture/environment/prized-omani-frankincense-trees-under-threat-1.1545143">Omani Frankincense tree.</a> Hobbs, Amos' cat, decides to take the opportunity to make an appearance.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Kamali uses a skill to listen in on the cat and Anubis talking, evidently the cat is going on about how cats aren't properly worshiped anymore. Realizing that Kamali is listening in they break off talking. Anubis takes a moment to whisper to Timothy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We leave the garden and are greeted by the biting cold of winter temperatures, and the crunch of snow under our feet. The others recognize it as a cabin that they've been at before. Next to the cabin is a gigantic creature of some kind.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's eating a body that the B-Team seems to recognize. It spots us, and hauls a gigantic halbred out of the snow, swinging it at Timothy and Lorenzo. It slams Timothy in the chest, throwing him back and hitting for a lot of damage. Lorenzo starts turning into a werewolf or something. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agrivaine zaps it with a spell that kinda just slides off of it. He recognizes it as an Abattoir demon, a mass of corpses stitched together and then implanted with a spirit. This particular specimen is particularly beefy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Timothy gets up and limps away.<br />
<br />
The Demon swings at Timothy, Agrivaine, and Kamali. Kamali's tactical awareness is the only thing that saves Agrivaine from getting gutted.<br />
<br />
Lorenzo- suddenly in werewolf form and wreathed in holy flame- comes up behind the demon and grabs it by the arm, wrenching it and forcing it to drop the halbred.<br />
<br />
The demon screams in pain as the holy fire begins to burn it.<br />
<br />
Kamali leaps up, draws a sword, and slashes at the demon's foot. Wrecked by the attack, the appendage is crippled.<br />
<br />
Amos preps a holy water pellet.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine recognizes the sigil of the creator of the demon.<br />
<br />
Timothy draws a dagger, it sucks out some of his soul, and then he suddenly has a couple of astral blades. He plunges both into its chest and carves it up like a Christmas turkey, scoring a critical hit that dispatches the beast.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine binds the demon spirit into his service- and the demon critfails its resistance roll. Agrivaine has made it his bitch, sending it after Ector to make his life difficult.<br />
<br />
The giant halberd has shrunk. Kamali picks it up. Meanwhile, Timothy is getting attacked by the dagger he used.<br />
<br />
They ask Agrivaine to help, and he taps into a latent power he has, attempting to pull out the dagger with holy light wreathing his hands.<br />
<br />
Suddenly, Aggie, a fallen angel, and Timothy are all present in Timothy's mind. The Fallen Angel mentions a contract that Timothy signed.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine has gained amazing insight into Timothy's life and character. Agrivaine knows every bad deed that Timmy has ever done- as well as every good deed. He knows that he can absolve Timothy- if Timothy is willing to repent.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine casts Death Vision, forcing Timothy to see the lives that he ended early- all the lives that he took that worked against the cosmic good. The last vision is of his own baby brother, who he killed in an attempt to spare him the pain of life. He sees visions of the life his brother would have lived, as well as the further chances Timmy has to turn his life around.<br />
<br />
Timothy is having trouble accepting that anybody else has made the choices he's had to made, prompting Agrivaine to reveal the brand on his soul.<br />
<br />
Samael, known to the B-Team as Mr. Black, shows up to also try and convince Timothy to turn away from the darkness. Timothy makes his decision, and the Fallen Angel screams in agony as Timmy rejects it.<br />
<br />
The fallen angel and Agrivaine are ejected from Timothy's mind. Samael collects the dagger and ensures that its denizen will never escape again.<br />
<br />
We decide to move on through the lodge door. Lorenzo heals Timothy.<br />
<br />
We find Maryam eating a hotdog in a bowling alley. The others ignore what they think is an apparition of Maryam, and get yelled at by the proprietor that we need bowling shoes to bowl.<br />
<br />
Death offers us food and asks us to sit. Kamali lays out his concerns involving bringing Maryam back, going into how he's not convinced about it.<br />
<br />
Maryam is asked to give her input on coming back. She puts out a cigarette and then recognizes she's surrounded by her pupils. At first, she doesn't remember clearly, but then Death grants her her memory back.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine and Maryam both express appreciation for how many conventional explosives they used to take her out.<br />
<br />
Death and Maryam talk a bit- the fact that the B-Team want her input on whether she wants to actually come back or not has Death more interested than he'd normally be. Duty, Honor, Sacrifice, and love of her children are the reasons Maryam has fought repeatedly to come back to the land of the living.<br />
<br />
Kamali's convinced that she's passed that legacy onto the boys, and Lorenzo's arguments the boys aren't fully trained seem to convince Maryam that she wants to return. Kamali's not happy about it, convinced that she deserves her rest.<br />
<br />
Death and Maryam both state that Maryam's kid, Darius, isn't actually dead, unlike what Kamali believes. Evidently he was nabbed by a witch, but he's not dead.<br />
<br />
Maryam asks about Annie and the <strike>Demonreach</strike> Murphy Island explosion.<br />
<br />
Kamali talks about how people need to let go, move on, and move past the things in their pasts that are holding them bound to repeat their mistakes over and over again.<br />
<br />
The vampire behind everything the B-team has been going through- the deaths of their parents, 66 victims, 13 survivors, and 7 children- it was a ritualistic killing.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine recognizes the date as an important date- the stars were properly aligned for a specific type of sacrifice.<br />
<br />
Agrivaine inquires about the soul of his nephew, making some particularly nasty threats about stranding everyone in the realm of death if he doesn't get answers. Death informs him that his Nephews' soul is in fact residing in Heaven.<br />
<br />
Death goes on to claim that Timothy is a descendant of Cain, as was Grendel and Grendel's Mother. Aldrick really doesn't like descendants of Cain.<br />
<br />
Maryam has a Sidhe who supplies her with death-defying charms that keep her from permanently dying. Something counteracted the magic, which Agrivaine suspects was the same work of the person attacking all of Boston.<br />
<br />
Death is amused and conjures drinks for the B-Team to drink to seal the bargain to bring Maryam back to life.<br />
<br />
Kamali drinks. Timothy drinks. Amos drinks. And Lorenzo drinks.<br />
<br />
Everyone wakes up in the firehouse. Maryam is returned to life, the teens are restrained from hurting Agrivaine for making threats, and Agrivaine limps out into the darkness with Trish to return to the Bedford Building.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-56423347079442528902017-10-17T00:00:00.000-07:002017-10-17T10:10:01.940-07:00Ceteri S1E2: Crisis, Mayhem, and Murky Waters<h2>
Events:</h2>
<div>
<b>The following was recorded by Emily, as I wasn't around for this part of play.</b></div>
<div>
<br />
24-Sep-2017 14:47<br />
<br />
Agrivain Tashaslan (Travis): Absent; Missing.<br />
Landon Winchester (Alex): Absent; Left a note: Gone to check on something, Yanay is in charge until he returns. He wants us to track down leads.<br />
Leo Brienza (Emily): Present; Went back to his appartment and picked up his stuff, slept, and then went back to the company headquarters.<br />
Mike Bastian (Andre): Present; Prayed and slept.<br />
Yanay Servantes (Annia): Present; Skipped sleep, brewed potions.<br />
<br />
There's a sense of unease in Boston. We can't contact anyone in the conclave, the phones are down. Agrivain probably went to check on Olivia. Contacting the vampire brood was unproductive, we keep getting the brush off ("They're not here, call back later.").<br />
Leo's been contacted by half a dozen of his contacts. Things are *crazy* right now. Lots of high value targets from the supernatural community in the city have been hit, people are dead, groups are scattered. There were also 6 bank robberies, an art heist, and a jewelery store robbery, in the greater Boston area yesterday, they were staggered start, some overlap. Seems to be set up to keep the police occupied running from one crisis to the next. ~$90 million stolen, managed to avoid geotrackers and dye packs.<br />
Police theory is that some sort of crime family moving in. Local crime is controlled on a family basis, with mostly Irish and Italian families in charge.<br />
<br />
Yanay visits the police and works them over for information, playing them with her excellent psychological skills. The criminal and supernatural underworld is terrified. A lot of homeless people disappearing. The crime families are bunkering, and do not yet blame each other. They're expected to go on the war path once they know what the hell is going on. Gang bangers hit up Christian Herter Park yesterday too, about 25 hit it up guns blazing with no obvious motivation. By the time the cops showed up, the gang members were dead, 23 dead humans, and 8 "probably humans" with canines and funky bone structures", lots of corpses on fire. There's only one intact vampire body, the rest burned. The gang members were shot, stabbed, broken necks, none of the gang members were burned. This happened between two to three hours before the party (between 7-8 PM).<br />
The word Leo gets is that this gang was going to be making a big drug deal downtown, 2-3kg, but never made it. They were buying, probably from a mid to top distributor probably with one of the crime families.<br />
<br />
Mike calls his girlfriend Suzette, she can't talk much right now as the proverbial shit has hit the wall and is everywhere. Mike offers to help, but Suzette thinks this might be a bad idea. They haven't been able to reach the Conclave either. Mike asks to see her but Suzette says to call her back later tonight. Her family are in the middle of shutting down their HQ and retreating to their chapter house. As far as she knows, the other warlock families are doing the same.<br />
<br />
Alan Lanbetter (the Duke's mortal persona) calls us at Landon's office. Yanay takes the phone. He reports 197 dead, and 50 casualties that may not live. It looks like at least 400 attackers - perhaps 60, 70 casualties on their side. They targeted soft targets and then bailed out through the portals.<br />
He reports that their contact at the Kveldsongr clan of werewolves have gone silent. They were celebrating Walpurgisnacht.<br />
<br />
<br />
List of known targets of this offensive:<br />
The fey (badly hit at the midsommer festival)<br />
The Conclave (very literally missing)<br />
Some vampires (8) and some drug dealing gang members (23) - murderated and fireballed or something.<br />
Kveldsongr werewolves - incommunicando.<br />
<br />
This all happened with the new moon, midsommer, and walpurgisnacht appening today.<br />
<br />
~12 PM<br />
Right across the street is a Mexican Grill, down the street is the Chicken And Rice guys (middle eastern street cart).<br />
We go out for Chipotle for lunch, swap background information, and try to figure out what the hell. We throw ideas around, note that the string of mundane crimes rolls through the timeline into the park assault, which basically rolls into the attack on the party (but that last one had a small one or two hour gap).<br />
The werewolves own an entire island (Langlee Island) - there is no bridge access, only by boat, no charter.<br />
<br />
We stopped the game to discuss how you catch lycanthropy, is it sexually transmitted, and what happens if you're carying a werewolf baby at the full moon.<br />
<br />
We head out to Langlee Island. We rent a paddle boat, notice nobody has boating, or swimming, and struggle our way across the lake on default rolls. We arive at the dock on the west side, the island is quiet, too quiet. There's a norse-style longhouse, 100 feet in length or so.<br />
<br />
While walking down the path to the longhouse, Leo suddenly freezes. Yanay and Mike ask him what's wrong, and Leo doesn't answer. Leo doesn't even move. Yanay and Mike look up and see a bird frozen in the air as well. Yanay tentatively pokes her hand into the air past Leo, and nothing happens. Mike and Yanay grab Leo and struggle to pull him back to saftey, he suffers a wrenching whiplash and recovers with a small injury. Now that we know its there, the line of effect is faintly visible. Yanay examines it, and deduces its a huge very-slow-time effect, cast from outside the area of effect. It is too big to challenge, there are no ley lines near by to power either.<br />
Mike tries to pray for assistance and recieves no answer... uncomfortably.<br />
We worry the Conclave suffered a similar fate. Leo asks Yanay to determine when the giant time stop ward was cast. It was cast about a day ago, on the 30th of April, some time after sundown - they were targeted first, probably (don't know about the Conclave). The spell is so big it would have taken a group of at least 20 powerful sorcerers performing ritual magic to cast.<br />
Mike decides we should look around the edge of the time stop effect for more evidence of the attackers - tracks, etc. We find a very large man (7') frozen near the edge of the effect, walking away from the Lodge and towards us. He looks surprised. We decide to rescue him. Yanay casts a protective spell on Mike to reduce the effects of the spell on him, then Mike prays for divine power to assist him as he reaches in and yanks the big guy out of the field.<br />
Our new "friend" comes out slightly injured, not nearly as bad as Leo though. He immediately lashes out at Mike and grabs him out of the throat - but Mike is still filled with the righeousness of Jesus and the power of the Christ Chex he ate for breakfast, and he resists the worst of being throttled by the throat by this huge dude, then wriggles out of the grapple. The new guy is angry but we talk him down quickly, explaining the situation is a giant disaster and we are investigating it, not causing it. He calls for a temporary truce using the formal term of the Conclave, then casts a diagnostic spell on the time stop ward. Yanay says to him that it's a giant time stop spell that owuld take at least 20 sorcerers, he says more like 30.<br />
We introduce ourselves to him, he is Aldrick Thorsson, the brother of the clan leader and the clans executioner. He is not a werewolf, instead he is a Vanir, a bear skinturner, rumoured to be the son of Thor, and 1200 years old. He says everyone was at the celebration, as far as he knew.<br />
Yanay discretely hides her silver jewelery.<br />
Looking around we can see a few other people 20 yards in, but we can't possibly reach them. Aldrick tells us we're going to help him fix that, we agree thuroughly. He wants an etheric battery, because obviously we just don't have the power to do this. He can make one, which is going to be necessary as his clans resources seem to have been one of the targets of the bank roberies.<br />
Aldrick is too dignified to take our paddle boat and uses one of theirs to cross (we tie our boat to his). When we get to the parking lock, Aldrick's car has its tires slashed. The other vehicles are also trashed. Aldrick takes this with more aplomb than we expected; but he promptly breaks into the other cars and collects enough compatible tyres for his car, hands them to us with a tyre iron, and then goes and stands at the edge of the parking lot while we sort his car out. It takes about an hour to do the tyre dance; Yanay leaves the men to do it.<br />
<br />
3PM<br />
<br />
We drive to Aldrick's place, and it's been firebombed. Aldrick smashes through the ruined floorboards of one of the rooms, and pulls out an ancient steamer trunk. He tosses that into the jeep and throws the keys to us, and tells us to drive to our headquarters, wherever that is.<br />
It takes about half an hour.<br />
Our secretary has a few messages for us - she oggles Aldrick's ass while we read them.<br />
A cop contact called for Yanay, he got a weird call from the coroner and thinks Yanay might want to check the body out since she's "into this kind of stuff".<br />
Landon says he's still tied up and won't be back tonight.<br />
Yanay tries to get Aldrick to tell us what the heck he's up to and he's unhelpful. He gives us a list of stuff he needs, and gives us a bag of "money" from his chest. He says that it probably won't cover it so we'll need to loan him the rest. He says they should take our card.<br />
<br />
First we check out the weird corpse at the morgue, with Yanay's cop buddy Charles "Charlie" McCurdy. They're so overflowed with bodies right now that they haven't had a chance to put everyone in the deep freezers.<br />
<br />
Talking to Charlie, we confirm the 23 gangers (Back Bay Butchers) were killed with violence, with a lot of precise bullet holes, and two had the back of their heads smashed in. The vampires were killed with two precise thrusts of blades into the kidneys and eviscerated. Witnesses are very confused, and can't remember what anything looked like.<br />
<br />
One is charred heavily, probably at 1200C (vampire fangs), and the stench is pretty bad. Yanay and Leo exchange looks. Charlie rolls out another corpse, the top of its head has been sheared off. Everyone is grossed out, but Leo is positively squicky.<br />
<br />
Mike eyeballs the burnt corpses. There's a slight smell of myrhh, and he figures that someone called down the holy fire of heaven on the Vampires. Mike pulls us aside and shares this, and wonders if they attacked the Crusader and it was self defense, or if a Crusader(s)/Angel is on team Explosion.<br />
We notice also that many of the Butchers have tan lines for rings and watches and such, but they are all missing all personal effects, documents, wallets, jewelery, etc.<br />
<br />
We decide to head out to pick up Aldricks stuff - we take Leos Ford Focus and visit Rhys Conatser who is Yanay's regular supplier. Rhys masquerades as a Head shop. He comments that we're the first customers he's seen all day, and he's quite aware of the situation - he seems a bit surprised we actually are out and about. We hand him Aldricks list and Rhys points out that it's some pricy stuff ($33 000 after subtracting the 12 gold coins Aldrick gave us); the last time Yanay put her shopping trip on the company card Landon called him up and yelled at him for three hours.<br />
<br />
Yanay offers to help him with his "herb garden" with her magical gift with plants, and Rhys is very much appreciative of this offer and trades for a discount. He has a fair crop of "Medicinal Herbs" along with purple lotus and various other medicinal and magical plants. We get sent away with a very expensive bill and a 30 lb chunk of quartz, along with other items (purified copper, other odds and ends). Rhys says to stay out of the coming storm; he's shutting down this afternoon and not going to open again until all blows over.<br />
<br />
We drive back to the headquarters, and get back by about 5PM.<br />
<br />
The shapeshifters now owe us quite a bit; an alliance seems likely. Now all the questions about werewolf STDs makes sense.<br />
<br />
Aldrick's taken over one of the board rooms as his ritual work space; he's got at least three days of work ahead of him. We suggest he stay here for safety in the mean time, and give him Landons room ("It's the best room, apropriate for your status. Not to get Landon at all. Of course.") Leo is going to stay here tonight also.<br />
<br />
About 6:00 we head out to have a look at what happened to the Conclave, and swing by a McDonalds for takeout. Leo orders four double quarterpounders with cheese and bacon, and a large fries, also with bacon, and a bottle of water. Yanay has a salad and a side of fries, and an orange juice. Mike orders the kids meal and donates to Ronald McDonald House.<br />
<br />
We go to the Conclave house and everything seems like business as usual, but the guard (Hong Li, who's familiar to us) seems squirmy. Yanay tries to charm some information out of him. He says they haven't heard from the Custos headquarters at all. It's like it's totally missing. We've got an illusion up to hide it, but the only people that can be found were the off-shift guards and whoever were just accidentally outside.<br />
<br />
There's a security measure on the HQ that can shunt it into a side dimenison, but that requires access to keys. I ask if there's a crusader organization in town, I want to double-check if they've also been hit. Li curses, and askes if Gladius Dei are in town. They used to be part of the Conclave but left in an argument over "suffering a witch to live". But they operate in small terrorist cells of 14-16 people, not nearly enough to do any of the big things we've seen - the huge time stop spell, those gates at the fey realm festival.<br />
<br />
We're suspicious now that someone is playing a huge game of Lets You And Him Fight. Who likes to operate by offering great power to people, and having it all turn destructive? Demons. Yanay had a vision yesterday about an army of angels fighting an army of demons. That's our operating theory right now.<br />
<br />
We head back to the Bedford building to camp for the night.<br />
<br />
03-Oct-2017<br />
<br />
Agrivain Tashaslan (Travis): Absent; Missing.<br />
Landon Winchester (Alex): Present; returned from checking up on the conclave with A Mission.<br />
Leo Brienza (Emily): Present.<br />
Mike Bastian (Andre): Present.<br />
Yanay Servantes (Annia): Present.<br />
<br />
Notable NPC: Jarl Aldrick Thorsson, Vanir, bear skinturner, executionioner for the werwolf clan.<br />
<br />
Due to Aldrick's importance and high status, we gave him the best room in the Bedford building to rest and recuperate in. That happened to be Landons.<br />
<br />
Landon went to get some paperwork and some licensing information from one of the Conclave's departments, and walked into a shitstorm. The lines of communication that were established through Underhill, the various lines of technologically assisted magic<br />
communication - they're just not working.<br />
People can call out but nobody can call in and it's led to a lot of chaos. He found out while he was at the Conclave that there were something like 14 to 18 major incidents on May 1st. They ranged from specific people getting killed, like Leary and Bérenger (who used to be a part of the Conclave until she retired) and the disappearance of the Murphy family - to just a bunch of random cabals and kogans being<br />
knocked out. Most of the hits were through mundane methods but we've also heard about unseelie fairy assassins coming in and just wiping the floor with people.<br />
<br />
Agravaine went with Landon and when he found out that the Conclave headquarters had been hit as well, he went there to check up on Olivia. We haven't heard from him since, but with communications down it's to be expected.<br />
<br />
The Conclave has recruited Landon to get out there and spread the fact that communications are not working, and to find out exactly what's going on with the unselie. The Conclave has had some problems with the unseelie too and that is exceptionally weird, as the Duke has a KOS policy towards unseelie. They basically want Landon to continue doing what hes doing for the Duke, because they feel that the unseelie hit on the May-Eve celebration is connected, but they'd also like him to send off at least some of his people to establish lines of communication with the rest of the world. Physical messages (letters, couriers) are not being interfered with, but magical and technologically assisted communications are being scrambled.<br />
<br />
We're reminded that the way that when Conclave buildings are under a severe attack, they literally pour themselves into a side dimension until everything is safe. They should be able to observe the situation in our dimension from their position. It appears that the Conclave HQ's defenses may have been triggered - but they haven't come back, which suggests they're stuck.<br />
<br />
The guy that's currently in charge of the Conclave (Williamson) is like the mystical equivalent of the USDA; the rest of the government is missing. A very large chunk of their military / policing / secret police force of the Custos is gone; they had around 120-150 heavily trained and equipped sorcerers, but now they've been reduced to 20. Everyone else was in the HQ when it slid sideways. This is why they are pulling in all the "human resources" they can get their hands on; they just don't have the warm bodies to investigate.<br />
<br />
It's about 8:00 p.m. on May 2nd. Agravaine went with Landon and when he found out that the Conclave headquarters had been hit as well, he went there to check up on Olivia. We haven't heard from him since, no phone calls are getting through; with communications down it's to be expected. We're pretty sure he can take care of himself and aren't worrying about him yet.<br />
<br />
When Landon gets back to the Bedford building, he goes directly to fall into his bed before we can warn him about the houseguest. A very tired Landon, upon finding a large hairy (naked) man sleeping under his 3000-thread-count Egyptian cotton bed sheets, pitches a temper tantrum - and very nearly gets a thrown axe in his face for waking up Aldrick Thorsson. Leo physically removes Landon from the room before Aldrick can toss another axe, while hurriedly trying to shush him. Landon rants loudly about how he's going to have to burn those sheets now because we've left some hobo sleep in them. In between Landons furious outbursts we manage to explain that Mr. Thorsson is _not_ a deity, but instead a 1200-odd year old half deity and deserved the finest quarters in the building. Landons indignation is briefly dampened as he processes this information.<br />
<br />
We can hear Aldrick stirring and quickly the whole team escorts Landon from the hallway to the boardroom (as the best room to have screaming arguments in, although it's half magical laboratory now).<br />
<br />
Landon decides that he will consider this all an honest error and try not to think about it.<br />
<br />
We then fill Landon in on the full events of the afternoon, including rescuing Aldrick from the time stop ward. He also gets told how much of his money we spent buying that huge quartz chunk - unfortunately Landons rage is stoked again ("I would forgive you guys if that money was spent on new bed sheets!") Landon gives a briefing to the rest of us on where he's been and what he's learned. In turn, we fill Landon in, and then we brainstorm theories as to who could be behind this mess. Landon corrects us on the idea of Hell being directly involved, being too dangerous for Hell to contemplate. The comparison is that the Mortal World is a tiny nation stuck as a neutral zone between two nuclear powers - if one of them directly trespasses WWIII breaks out and the Mortal World loses no matter what. However, it's *entirely* possible that Hell arranged things more indirectly - selling information on good ley lines to tap to one person, selling artifacts to someone else, sending warlocks to e.g. help the Unseelie court open those gates...<br />
Our problem right now is that we have too many Mabeys and not enough concrete information.<br />
<br />
During this, Aldrick follows us into the boardroom (still naked, but carrying pants that he thankfully starts putting on or Yanay's brain might have melted down), and we hurriedly make introductions. Leo unfortunately and quite accidentally completely flubs mentioning Landons titles. Landon firmly corrects Leo and pointedly asks Aldrick if *he* has any titles - only to discover he's been hurling abuse at an Earl (Jarl). Landon advises Aldrick that Crimson Law is happy to help in any way; it's good to be in business with someone as important as Aldrick. Aldrick may or may not owe Crimson Law money, or favours.<br />
<br />
We go back to the current problem, and Aldrick suggests the communications problem is due to a Babylon Stone, an actual stone from the Biblical Tower of Babel. We all recognize that - due to Gods intervention to shatter the language of mankind, the stones of Babel carry a lingering power that cause problems with communicating with others. The more stones you have, the harder it is for people in that area to communicate. About 400 years ago an alchemist named Nicholas Flamel figured out how to direct the power of those stones so it only affects a specific group or people or person - he weaponized them. A single Stone doesn't have a lot of power, but about 100 in one place would be enough to blanket all of Boston. If we can find three or four points on the edges of the effect, we can figure out where the center of the effect is, and therefore where the Stones must be. A shortcut might be to look for major Ley Lines that intersect near the center of Boston (ley lines probably being used to power the magic that controls the Babylon Stones).<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the Conclave controls the knowledge of major ley line locations strictly. Fortunately, Yanay is packed with secret information about ley lines, and has a fantastic memory. It takes a grueling seven hours, but by 3AM she produces a detailed map of the Boston ley lines that the Department of Telluric Regulation would be proud of. While Yanay slaves away, Landon finds a five star hotel to sleep in, Leo runs out for a "quick snack" before crashing, and Mike just goes to bed. Yanay passes out on her map. At 8AM Yanay awakens to find Aldrick (clothed) working on his project, although he stops long enough to shove a cup of coffee under her sleepy nose. Yanay pulls the papers off her face and drinks her coffee. Leo runs to the McDonalds to grab four sausage and egg McMuffins, a small coffee, and two hashbrowns (he just can't resist when they offer the second one). Landon collects a $500 dollar breakfast from his 5-star hotel and brings it back to Brimstone Law in a lovely carved wood "doggy bag" - what's the point of having a $500 breakfast if other people can't see you eat it? Leo, meanwhile, has two grease-stained brown paper bags. Mike has bread and water.<br />
<br />
Turning back to Aldricks project, he's building a battery to collect enough power to fuel the huge ritual that would be needed to free the island. Batteries unfortunately need to be charged - it can either be trickle charged (a very slow process) or it can be tapped into a significant magical source, such as a major Ley Line. Conveniently, Yanay has finished a *fantastic* map, although she has ley lines on it that Aldrick is pretty sure are Top Secret. Aldrick picks out a great intersection... which happens to be near the center of the city. Good for looking for Babylon Stones, good for charging batteries. How convenient!<br />
<br />
We split up into two cars, Landon in his chaufeured limousine, Leo driving his Ford Focus. Yanay navigates Boston traffic beautifully, and (with a break for Leo to grab some quick drive-thru food) we arrive at a park outside Boston, near the Blue Hills reservation. The ley energy is so strong we can all feel it. Normally the park is busy during the day, but with all the excitement, Bostonians seem to have decided to stay indoors.<br />
<br />
Aldrick sniffs around, and declares that there's some sort of blockage on the line. It's not as powerful as it should be. It could be deliberately damned up, or it could be a natural blockage. Yanay uses magic to try to divine the source of the magic; as she mumbles in a foreign language, the entire area lights up with blue witch light. Cracks form along the ground and something starts coming out...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Everything after this point was recorded by me. (Agrivaine)</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They leave the ley line in the forest. Evidently the Ley Line has been cracked by a sorcerer, who used it for a quick super-charge, damaging it in the process.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
An entire department in the Conclave is dedicated to fixing such things, and thwacking people who damage Ley Lines.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aldrick is working on some kind of magical battery on the conference room table in Landon's penthouse suite. He intends to fix it so that it can be used to overload the spell that's keeping his entire family in stasis. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Meanwhile, Olivia and Agrivaine are in a Dunkin. Olivia's being kept alive with casts of Halt Death, and kept ambulatory with Painkiller. Something is tracking the pair, something... extradimmensional. Aggie's cellphone is toast. He's keeping onlookers from leering by putting a glamour on Olivia so her wounds are immediately apparent. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They limp back to base, scaring the day receptionist. Everyone swarms around Olivia and Agrivaine, seeing to her wounds. She's holding on by a thread.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay gets into Landon's files on his staff, contacting a doctor/EMT type fellow on the payroll. The dude forces Agrivaine to donate some blood to Olivia against Aggie's protests. At some point Aggie and Olivia both get healing spells from Yanay. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay recognizes it as a dimensional shambler, a nameless one that was stuck inbetween realities. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Leo and Mike both pass out while giving blood. Aggie manages to stay conscious. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aggie calls Trish to come over to see to Olivia's longer-term care.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mike feels an angelic presence, and he, Yanay and Aggie see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samael">Samael</a> over her bed.<br />
<br />
Samael says that Olivia's still dying, while appreciating Aggie's efforts to keep her alive, stating that Aggie tries to do the right thing.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Samael wants a favor from Aggie in the future in return for healing Olivia. Aggie agrees, with the stipulation that anything Samael requests can't be something Olivia would want to kill Agrivaine for doing.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Samael and Aggie strike the deal, and Samael uses Mike as a conduit to heal Olivia. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Trish shows up, carrying coffee. Aggie's is obviously not Dunkin like everyone else's. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Leo sees about making an appropriate stretcher for Olivia. Aggie convinces Trish to watch Olivia's recovery. He sees about securing some Fred Astaire DVDs for her as a way of saying thanks.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aggie takes the opportunity to catch some sleep. Leo helps Aldrick, Yanay sees if he silver tears may be of use for powering up the battery, and Mike tries to contact his girlfriend for help powering up the battery.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The team gets together to plan, feeding info ti Aggie. Yanay's map of the ley lines is especially good, up to the quality of conclave's agency for such things.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aggie gets a good overview- there's at six supernatural attacks, four mundanes, and numerous locations that have just been blown up. Lots of unseelie activity, temportal stasis fields, disrupted communications, and homeless people disappearing. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Dutchy of Broken Promises</li>
<li>Werewolves attacked, put under a quasi-stasis field</li>
<li><strike>Demonreach </strike>Murphy Island appears to be just gone</li>
<li>Conclave HQ and the Custos HQ have been shunted elsewhere, as part of their normal security systems. Conclave can't bring them back properly.</li>
</ul>
<div>
We decide to start seeing about gathering allies and 'rallying the banners', to organize resistance to whatever forces are at play. We head for Suzette's family's enclave.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mike spends some time trying to get past the gate, managing to trip their alarm systems into activity. He eventually gets a guy named Candid to break the security lockdown under the guise of getting a pizza delivered. We ask him about Suzette.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're told to wait in the lobby. Suzette eventually comes out, catches up with Mike, and then leads us to her Uncle, Magnus.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Magnus is swayed to help, and then Magnus' head of house, Taylor, steps in. Taylor questions Leo about whether Leo's father is involved in whatever is going on.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We ask Taylor to share info, and he paints a bad picture of shit almost heading to Civil War. He makes it clear that he's unhappy that Magnus' involvement could be construed as his house getting involved in the political arena. He hands Agrivaine two marbles- one for communication, one that Agrivaine doesn't recognize.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We piled into Magnus' tricked out van. It's surprisingly spacious inside, has a house-sized AC unit shoved into a window, is tricked out with shag carpet, and is crammed with tech goodies. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Leo is granted an unscheduled consultation with the Dimensional Shambler, which appears on the hood of the car, shanking him in the vitals for 33 damage. Leo loses control of the car, and the Shambler disappears after the car flips.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We stop to turn around and help Leo.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Shambbler reappears on top of Leo's Ford Focus. Mike charges it, and then suddenly the Shambler is squashed through some kind of hole.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay and Mike see to Leo's wounds. Magnus suggests that we leave- quickly, sprinkling powder on Leo's car. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Magnus identifies the Shambler as Luxari the <strike>Impala</strike> Impaler, a killer for hire among shamblers. He explains that reality doesn't like them, because of their unnatural nature, and does its best to squash them out. Magnus likens them to the spaces between letters in words. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay gets a hold of Landon's EMT buddy and tries to persuade him to help another stab victim. He does his best on Leo, easily convinced that some kind of serial killer is on the loose.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Leo was attacked in an attempt to get the van we were all in to crash- Magnus' driving skills saved the day.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aldric and Magnus begrudgingly get to work on the battery. Aldric orders a ludicrous amount of food from a local Chinese restaurant. Mike and Suzette slip off for some private time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aldric invites everyone to eat, encouraging us to keep strength up.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agrivaine and Trish have a conversation about how Olivia is doing, and how a ward against Nameless ones might be appropriate.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We decide to go on a field trip to the Library to hunt down info on the nameless ones.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agrivaine forces the recovering Leo to fill out a library card app. Leo DOES however stumble on some lifetime membership coupons which he and Yanay get.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agrivaine gets to work researching the nameless ones. He finds a tome by Abdul Alhazred, among others. Yanay helps, learning that Luxari accepts payment in souls. There is an appropriate warding spell- but it's written in Sanskrit.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mike confirms that Samael is an archangel, one with a ambiguous reputation. Evidently he's good buddies with another angel named Zophiel.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agrivaine spends his last hour hunting for spells- coming across a particularly interesting tome with a few spells that could be extremely problematic. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Aldric checks out a ton of books about alchemy, crafting, and elemental stuff. He hands Mike a book on info about Angels. Agrivaine talks with the librarian for a little while.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon is still in some kind of magical coma after overdosing on ley line energy.<br />
<br />
An hour passes- Aggie tries to catch some sleep, while Yanay tracks down someone who can speak Sanskrit. One of her herbalist friends is a possible lead, after she strikes out at local universities.<br />
<br />
Mike is getting a contact high from Magnus. Magnus is evidently an aficionado of magically enhanced pot.<br />
<br />
The group wakes Aggie up and sets out to go fetch the guy who knows Sanskrit. We stop outside of the shop, honk the horn, and Yanay goes to meet her contact.<br />
<br />
Rhys- Yanay's contact- gestures over to a guy whose head is in a large book. The guy's name is Amos, and he evidently knows about ALL of the languages.<br />
<br />
We explain to him where we got the tome with the Sanskrit spell, and offer to get him an application for the library.<br />
<br />
<br />
Four dimmensional shamblers decide to pay us a visit in the shop. Mike gets slashed in the foot, Leo takes a shot to the leg, Rhys loses a leg, and Yanay barely avoids getting hurt.<br />
<br />
Amos retreats a little and pulls out a slingshot. Agrivaine burns a use of foresight to produce a charm of Death Aura, sucking the energy out of nearby shamblers.<br />
<br />
Mike avoids getting hit by another Shambler. Leo proceeds to shoot one in the face. Mike stabs one. Rhys is attacked again, this time in the vitals, and he dies.<br />
<br />
One of the Shamblers teleports behind Leo, but trips up somehow and gets stunned.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_SVO8bTgn77pHulhMqsrxTLCHJDu8NESrQhbUM9CeUyrKYSDQ8wDRo1XS8jFG7OyvO1Vx3bRIpKiFlqwj_NmDr2zJee4ExqH0Pew2F99aZWq4Vh1W1aCQ-ZZXNkdEejfxpd-zYiCFvrg/s1600/ShopFight1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="932" data-original-width="966" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_SVO8bTgn77pHulhMqsrxTLCHJDu8NESrQhbUM9CeUyrKYSDQ8wDRo1XS8jFG7OyvO1Vx3bRIpKiFlqwj_NmDr2zJee4ExqH0Pew2F99aZWq4Vh1W1aCQ-ZZXNkdEejfxpd-zYiCFvrg/s400/ShopFight1.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Amos shoots one in the chest with a ball bearing. Yannay then casts Moonfire, burning one to a crisp.</div>
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Agrivaine attempts to cast Agony on Luxari the <strike>Imapala</strike> Impaler, but the spell is resisted. Leo fires three shots at a Shambler, hitting with all three shots, killing it. </div>
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Mike burns some FP limping over to Luxari, stabbing it in the torso but failing to penetrate its DR.</div>
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Luxari does a -4 deceptive dual-weapon attack on Mike, but the holy warrior manages to parry both hits with his shield.</div>
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Amos quick-draws another stone from his ammo pouch and shoots it at the remaining flunky shambler.</div>
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Luxari falls unconscious. </div>
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We dither about whether to attempt to trap the creature, or burn it with fire. We opt for the trap, since we believe that burning is less likely to stick.</div>
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Luxari starts speaking in a language that hurts all of us. We learn that contracts can be annulled if the target dies- such as their heart stopping beating.</div>
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Yanay tries to appease Rhys' spirit, having Aggie call back his spirit. He's initially pissed, but is mollified by Yanay asking to take a final will/testament. </div>
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Amos uses his knowledge of poisons to help us kill Leo- followed by everyone throwing in to help resuscitate Leo. We manage to bring him back to life at -35hp.</div>
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We talk with Amos for a bit, learning that vampires have been chasing after him and his team, and were part of attack the others looked into at the park.</div>
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Amos refuses to answer who trained him and his friends. He mentions a conclave safehouse, being run by Williams Sims, a name we recognize. Sims is the head of supernatural flora and fauna for the Conclave, basically our magical equivalent of the USDA.</div>
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It's not a department that makes Aggie very confident that competent leadership is in place. Amos explains that they located the location via psychic means. </div>
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We decide to deal with Luxari by making him agree to a contract- he won't ever target an employee or client of Brimstone law, and we'll let him free. Before we loose him, we decide to try and use divination to figure out who sent him.</div>
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Yanay casts Scry. She sees a woman with blonde hair who is casting a spell repeatedly. The woman's eyes are missing something- it's like she has a seething madness inside of her. She's got a gold ring with a black opal for a stone. There's a carved D in the opal. She's dressed really well. The skyline has Boston to the Southeast. </div>
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Once Yanay has returned to the group, she relays what she's seen. </div>
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We free Luxari after confirming the details of our arrangement, and then we head for Brimstone law. Yanay and Amos raid Rhys' shop for herbs. Agrivaine spots something he wants and nabs it before leaving. </div>
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We spend some time cleaning the scene and harvesting the bodies of the shamblers for materials.</div>
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We head back to Brimstone law, Amos in tow. We're dead set on making sure he gets a library card.</div>
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Leo is seen to by Landon's doctor, who gives him a heavy dose of morphine and a saline IV drip. </div>
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We determine that Amos is an untrained sorcerer. If he properly trains himself, he could endure the trials and join the Conclave.</div>
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Amos' cat Hobbs is at Brimstone law- something that freaks Agrivaine out a little bit. </div>
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We get into the Library (finally), and see about getting Amos a card. He uses Professional Skill (Librarian) as an influence skill on Clio.</div>
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Aldric is also there, and evidently Amos and him had a run together in the past where Aldric helped the B-Team out of a jam. Aldric is informed that Maryam is 'gone', and it gets a really large reaction from the norse Demigod.</div>
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Aldric comments 'Bloody Mary is dead.' Which Agrivaine takes note of to follow up on.</div>
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Evidently, the Duke we were with when the fairy death squads was related to Maryam.</div>
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Aldric grabs Agrivaine by the collar, demanding that he do a ritual for him- likely the very powerful spell one that he had found previously. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Yanay finds the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edda">Edda</a>, which she uses to read up a little bit on about Aldric.</div>
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Aggie asks Mike to invoke Samael. Mike tries to do it, and something goes horribly wrong, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beelzebub">Beelzebub</a> appears. Beelzebub immediately slithers up to Yanay and wraps a hand around her waist, asking why Mike called him.</div>
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Beelzebub tries to tempt Mike into giving Beelzebub his soul. Beelzebub is quite tempted by gaining the soul of a Virtue, and is ready to give Mike anything he desires.</div>
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Agrivaine tells Beelzebub why he got summoned, and indicates that he's looking for info.</div>
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Mike actually gets Samael to show up, and Agrivaine lays out his predicament-</div>
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Aldric, a Norse Demigod, wants Agrivaine to bring Maryam back from the dead, and Agraivaine wants Samael and Beelzebub to give assistance.</div>
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Samael causes a book to fall off a shelf for Agrivaine to collect, while Agrivaine makes it clear that he's not going to intentionally cause any problems with Samael's charges.</div>
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Amos is offered a job as the new research librarian for the Library. Then he and Agrivaine leave to meet the rest of Amos' brothers and bring back Bloody Mary from the dead...</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-33777555404344054862017-09-27T15:14:00.003-07:002017-09-27T15:14:51.674-07:00Ceteri S1E1: Aggie doesn't cause a mass causality event, I swear (apologies on the sparse summary, my internet was crapped out for the first 30 minutes of the session.)<br />
<br />
We're enjoying a nice party with a fairy duke when it's crashed by a bunch of combatants. There's a massive brawl:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Yanay gets a bunch of goblins to start attacking one another</li>
<li>Agravaine zaps an orge with a necrobolt, hits a redcap with agony, and terrifies another</li>
<li>Mike kicks ass with his sword</li>
<li>Leo shoots a bunch</li>
<li>Landon sips wine and allows his servants to deal with the peasants attacking the castle</li>
</ul>
<div>
The team starts to see to the wounded and interrogating what captives we have once the dust settles. Leo, some random useful person who was at the Duke's party, leads the interrogation, finding out that Baron Saoirse Uí Luain was behind the attack.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This attack far surpasses anything else done before as far as fairy hostility goes. We're talking 300 raiders, hundreds of casualties, and a huge diplomatic incident. Their goal was to cause as much chaos as possible, preferably killing as many nobles in the Duke's court as possible. The fact that they were wielding iron weapons is an even bigger deal- fairies killed by iron don't get to enjoy the afterlife.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One fairy captive who spills the beans eventually gets killed by a spell when Christopher decides we've learned enough.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We piece together that linking two places in physical space together that have no existing connections is serious magical mojo, meaning that this attack was logistically costly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay has some kind of vision from her deity. She sees a bestial army fighting another army. Pretty short and sweet for a vision. She suddenly has silver tears.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon convinces the Duke to employ us to investigate the matter further.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The duke is informed by one of his men that <strike>Demonreach</strike> Murphy Island has been blown up. The Duke has a brother who married into that family, and boots us out so he can figure out what happened there.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Our objective is to discern why the Duke was attacked, and what else is going on.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-89179016899851151152017-09-15T15:23:00.000-07:002017-09-15T15:23:12.489-07:00Ceteri Post-Tral Prequel 1: Voodoo Murder Mystery<h2>
The Cast:</h2>
<br />
Cormac McAllister (Mavrick): The team's scout and master of crossroads. Cormac is also handy with a gun and might not be fully human.<br />
<br />
Yanay Servantes (Annia): An Incan witch and powerful spellcaster. Yanay is really good at psychology.<br />
<br />
Landon Winchestor (Alex): Rich. Posh. Utterly aggrandizing and pretentious. Still, an effective face.<br />
<br />
Mike Bastian (Andre): A holy warrior who fights for the glory of heaven. Easy to guilt trip.<br />
<br />
Agravaine Tashalan (Me): The grease that makes the entire team work smoothly. Agravaine is inhumanly and inconveniently attractive, extremely smart, and a real mastermind when it comes to planning.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mike gets let in to see Suzzette as a 'priest' who can give 'confessional'. She spews out a bunch of irrelevant stuff, except for the fact that her affair with the dead dude likely killed his marriage.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All indications are that she's not the killer. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay tells Suzzette to remain strong and cautions her to not tell anything to the police.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We try to search for Holt. Making a series of really bad skill checks, we wind up outside a Boston bar. Ms. Baril is leaving right as we enter.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She strangely offers to buy us all drinks. The bar is a large wrap-around type dealie. There's a few vampires, a troll, some fairies, and a couple other Conclave members present. No normal people seem to be present. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We all order food. Landon purchases a bottle of wine that's something like $20,000- for the glass. He confirms that it's heavenly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Baril asks us what we're up to. We tell her, and she suggests getting in touch with a Custos Knight. She offers some information in return for a glass of what Landon just drank. Landon gets her a glass, drops a grand as a tip for the waiter, and Baril hands over a disc and info on her contact.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Baril's instructions lead us to an arcade, where we're instructed to enter the konami code on a machine and then enter a special coin which opens a portal to her contact. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay uses the coin and code on Street Fighter, and we find ourselves in an airfield where Guile is fighting some green-skinned creature. A guy off to the side is giving medical advice to someone, then accepting pay.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We approach the guy. He introduces himself as Garten Whitby. Yanay introduces us and explains our issue with the Loa. Garten warns us that whoever is doing the murders used a full-on invocation to do his mojo. He goes on to explain that the practitioner is capturing souls and killing the body. It hijacks the normal processes that happen when somebody dies.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon starts negotiating to buy a book off Garten that explains more, followed by negotiating for a translation text cause the book is in High Sidhe, then followed by a beneficial ring. Garten gives us some tokens so that we can visit his shop again in the future.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're booted out. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We review the film from the hotel and realize that an entity used Misting (abusing the shroud that covers everything and hides the supernatural from norms) to perpetrate the murders without being seen.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We decide to hit some local technomancers to get them to ENHANCE! the footage. We're asked to display our brands. We're told to wait for Magnus, and as we're sitting down in the waiting area there's an explosion from the back.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The receptionist hits on Mike, and rolls crazy high on her reaction roll to Mike. He gets her number.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Magnus storms out, feeling chuffed that we're interrupting his work. He asks us what we want. Upon hearing that we're stopping a member of the supernatural committee from soul trapping morals, he agrees to help.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He takes the footage, does something with it, and plops it into a VCR. We watch.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're then asked to get Gravedirt from across town. Upon entering the graveyard we're accosted by a guardian spirit dog. We manage to make nice with the dog after Mike displays some of his Divine Power. We grab some gravedirt and beat it back to Magnus.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Magnus uses the dirt to finish some kind of treatment for the tape. He says the treatment should have the cleaned up any illusions on the tape. He goes on the elaborate that he sometimes needs odd jobs done. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Evidently ALL copies of the tape have been disillusioned.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mike has a date with the receptionist, for dinner. He's dragged back to her place after a short time, quickly learning the real meaning of some biblical euphemisms.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The next day we put the screws to the Lead Detective, forcing him to review the tapes. It shows what we see- someone who is obviously not Suzette walking out with bloodied hands from the hotel room.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon casts a dispell on the particularly obstinate Lead Detective, prompting him to become way less obstinate and accepting of the evidence. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine prepares an extensive dossier on the case, which he sends to Olivia. She's not exactly happy that it's been dumped on her plate, but considering someone's gallivanting around stealing souls, she understands it had to be reported.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon receives an anonymous mail, filled with photos of Mike's dead family, photos of Landon's family burnt to death, and a note saying "They're connected." The handwriting is elegant.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay calls her family to verify that they're okay. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-33286899007585766942017-08-03T17:37:00.005-07:002017-08-03T17:37:50.489-07:00C-Team Ceteri Prequel 4: The Last Trial<h2>
The Cast:</h2>
<br />
Cormac McAllister (Mavrick): The team's scout and master of crossroads. Cormac is also handy with a gun and might not be fully human.<br />
<br />
Yanay Servantes (Annia): An Incan witch and powerful spellcaster. Yanay is really good at psychology.<br />
<br />
Landon Winchestor (Alex): Rich. Posh. Utterly aggrandizing and pretentious. Still, an effective face.<br />
<br />
Mike Bastian (Andre): A holy warrior who fights for the glory of heaven. Easy to guilt trip.<br />
<br />
Agravaine Tashalan (Me): The grease that makes the entire team work smoothly. Agravaine is inhumanly and inconveniently attractive, extremely smart, and a real mastermind when it comes to planning.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
<div>
We fast forward to the good bits because ain't nobody got time for more pointless downtime. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It appears the final trial is just pomp and circumstance- an initiation, a brand that sears both soul and body, and swearing an oath to the Conclave to keep the supernatural world hidden.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Evidently all of us are approached with general offers for work given our performance. Landon is disappointed that his final ceremony was an intimate affair, lacking adoring fans, and is even more disappointed when Ms. Baryl is the one to give him his tattoo and brand.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine's instructed by Olivia that he's free to do what he wants- so long as he routinely checks in. Lucien doesn't particularly care about us, and goes off to finish High School.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon sees about getting back in touch with his household- only to learn that his parents and brother are dead, in a mysterious fire no less. It seems a cousin has assumed his title and holdings. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's November 1st and we're dumped out onto the streets of Boston. Landon promptly rents a 5-Star hotel room for himself, Cormac crashes at his pad, while Yanay, Mike, and Agravaine slum it up a bit. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay sees about continuing her college semester so she doesn't lose progress. Landon sees about re-establishing his identity again, as well as setting up a business. Mike meanwhile sees about trying to find out more about his family.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's a murder at the hotel, totally fishy, a maid (Suzette Jameson) supposedly slitting the throat of a pharmaceuticals businessman (Mark Conaway) she was having an affair with. She professes innocence.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon offers her his assistance as an expert Lawyer. She offers some money, and then Landon puts the screws to her for more. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon gets the crew together. Agravaine, being more or less without anything pressing that he really wants to do, agrees to help out. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Suzette's prints are on the murder weapon. She claims that they had sex, they slept, then she went to work and returned to find him dead. She believes it was his crazy ex wife. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine sits in on the first interview with Suzette and casts a spell- I Know What you Know- on her. The spell determines that she does not know the identity of the killer. Yanay isn't able to really get a Psychology! result on Suzette- she's suffering from PTSD and is a wreck.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mark was freelancing until he recently got hired by Geo Pharmaceuticals.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We try to look into the ex-wife. Landon tries to pull any public records on them, and Yanay tries to scry for more information. Yanay gets a picture of Boston Harbor, and then a picture of a corpse getting pushed around by waves on a beach.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac, Mike, and Yanay head to the harbor to find the body.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Detective Bradley Bradshaw seems very unimpressed with our presence. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Suzette mentions something about a face in the mirror, which causes Agravaine to suspect that some kind of ghost or other restless undead is involved. He improvises a spell (Path of Mind -6) to give her a constrained form of Eidetic Memory.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She starts dishing out more info. SHe works a split shift- 4 on, 4 off, 4 on again. When she came in again, there was red on the floor, which she mistook for paint. She grabbed the murder weapon before spotting his body. She rushed to his body and cradled him, finding his throat slit.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then she spotted a face in the mirror, a young woman with pointed ears and glowing eyes. She remembers hearing a strange sound- not quite a moan. Then she was spotted by another maid holding the knife.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay leads the team right to the body, it's floating in a small inlet near Revere Beach. The left thigh is speared on driftwood. Cormac reckons it happened after she died. Her wallet indicates that she is the ex-wife. Her throat has been similarly slit as well. Cormac doesn't see any signs that her body was moved or transported. She's dressed like she was on a date.<br />
<br />
Mike tries to perform last rites and gets the strange feeling that there's no soul left to help move on- a bad sign. The back of the ex-wife's neck is covered in chalk dust. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay does some astral projection to get a sense of the area, and finds that the area is very spiritually active- Boston has a long an active history after all. However, she's able to determine that all of the ex-wife's vital energy was sucked out.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She also has a symbol on her body, similar to the brand we have. Everyone starts making hidden lore checks.<br />
<br />
Yanay calls the police to let them know about the body.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Back at the hotel, Agravaine's able to identify the symbol as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veve">Veve</a>, which allows Cormac to use his knowledge of The Between to identify the connected Loa. Cormac sees it as some kind of strange summoning of Baron Samedi. This particular Veve encapsulates a soul then removes it from the body.<br />
<br />
Agravaine advocates for trying to lure the Veve out by using Mike's soul as bait. Cormac is able to confirm that the Bane Sidhe (Banshee) that we're dealing with is either a super nasty undead creature or a herald of death that's tied to a specific location.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
An entire day has passed, and it has the police totally convinced that Suzette is the murderer- apparently the murder weapon matches too closely. Apparently they also have finger print info.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac has a local contact that we can ask for some info from. All of us take the Autumn Road to Hadestown where she's located.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
"No sexy posing in Hadestown." -Cormac</blockquote>
Hadestown is filled with all sorts of strange and fantastic beings. Cormac leads us to a bar, where he proceeds to buy Gisela a beer and tell her about our strange problem.<br />
<br />
She and Cormac trade pleasantries, and then they get down to the fact that we're chasing a Banshee and the fact that there's a Veve involved. Gisela mentions that she only knows of two voodoo practitioners- one who wouldn't be involved with a Veve, and one who TOTALLY WOULD.<br />
<br />
The ONE WHO TOTALLY WOULD is named Holt Boukman, and Gisela says that the Loa actually listen to him, making him dangerous. He's the ultimate descendant of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutty_Boukman">Dutty Boukman</a>, which apparently is a big deal.<br />
<br />
Gisela states that the "Bane Sidhe of Boston" is actually a Ghost, not actually one of the Fae. She shows up around death, seemingly at random, last really active around 1872 when there was a big fire or something.<br />
<br />
We end there after deciding to investigate Boukman.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Commentary (Christopher):</span></h2>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">C-Team has been a further testbed for my wilder ideas on initial party</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">cohesion and to say they haven't worked well is an understatement. Luckily,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">I have a few fallback plans to make things work - I hope.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">As for the game itself I threw Landon's player (Alex) for a *loop* when I</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">announced that his parents were dead along with his brother and that a</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">distant cousin had inherited his family title (Earl if Wiltshire). Both the</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">player and the character were a bit dazed by the information (which means it</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">had the intended effect). I underutilized Mike (Andre's character) and wish</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">that I'd had more time to devout to Agravaine (Travis's character). We'll</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">see. So far the plot thread they are following is a bit of a "twofer" (or</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">maybe a threefer). One thing we discovered is that the PCs lack of Occultism</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">(partly due to my fault, really) and investigative skills are not going to</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">lend well to being a group of "paranormal troubleshooters." They'll need to</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">fix that.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">There was a brief moment of who's getting paid by who that I squashed</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">quickly - I hope that doesn't come up again.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Next session, we'll see if what I've introduced does as well as I hope it</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">will.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Soundtrack:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">"Hotel California" by the Eagles </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DxJbSR9xRRbE&source=gmail&ust=1501885055433000&usg=AFQjCNH9Ge303ANyLONjKTmeXXEQEF20Hg" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJbSR9xRRbE" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=xJbSR9xRRbE</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">"Behind Blue Eyes" by the Who </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://youtu.be/BfuWXRZe9yA&source=gmail&ust=1501885055433000&usg=AFQjCNElWWF9Q939AALTDULxWeIWbCBp1Q" href="https://youtu.be/BfuWXRZe9yA" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/BfuWXRZe9yA</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">"Runaround Sue" by Dion and the Belmonts</span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3Dy4NUZJMCJ20&source=gmail&ust=1501885055433000&usg=AFQjCNHV2zgT9ef0NPWgzPMBVE6g2ovEwA" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4NUZJMCJ20" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=y4NUZJMCJ20</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">"Criminally Insane" by Slayer </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D99RHl5eQLH8&source=gmail&ust=1501885055433000&usg=AFQjCNGM7mo3HbsrgSj-f0PJ_Ni4InpfsQ" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99RHl5eQLH8" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=99RHl5eQLH8</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">"Lawyers, Guns, and Money" by Warren Zevon</span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DlP5Xv7QqXiM&source=gmail&ust=1501885055433000&usg=AFQjCNFFVefvrAGyP8Q3xcDEF7GwQXZ-GQ" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP5Xv7QqXiM" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=lP5Xv7QqXiM</a><br />
<br />
<h2>
</h2>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-62907400001526733052017-08-03T17:37:00.002-07:002017-08-03T17:37:11.099-07:00Ceteri Prequel 3: Are we there yet?<h2>
The Cast:</h2>
<br />
Cormac McAllister (Mavrick): The team's scout and master of crossroads. Cormac is also handy with a gun and might not be fully human.<br />
<br />
Yanay Servantes (Annia): An Incan witch and powerful spellcaster. Yanay is really good at psychology.<br />
<br />
Landon Winchestor (Alex): Rich. Posh. Utterly aggrandizing and pretentious. Still, an effective face.<br />
<br />
Mike Bastian (Andre): A holy warrior who fights for the glory of heaven. Easy to guilt trip.<br />
<br />
Agravaine Tashalan (Me): The grease that makes the entire team work smoothly. Agravaine is inhumanly and inconveniently attractive, extremely smart, and a real mastermind when it comes to planning.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon's hauled off by a Custos Knight for a debriefing of some kind, something to do with the guy who ran off in the Labyrinth who Landon replaced within our group.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We have two more days of downtime to relax and recoup. Cormac gets promptly bored, challenging Mike to a game of wooden sword vs. painball gun. Cormac 'wins', and Mike is prepared to be humble and accept defeat until Yanay instigates further conflict.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine is subjected to intense training by Olivia after seeing his poor display in the shifting room from before.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're told that Trina will live- although she'll be recovering for months.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The number of remaining pupils has decreased dramatically- lots of groups are down from 13 members down to 4-5. One group is literally just one guy whose entire group flaked out at the pond test- and he's managed all the trials up to this point by himself. Yanay attempts to introduce herself, and he brushes her off within seconds. Agravine does some asking around and is told by Olivia that Tarrant Einari makes him look like a pansy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We head back into the Labyrinth again.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We find ourselves in a field filled with white roses, with a fountain in the middle. A statue of a lady holding lilies stands amid the fountain. There's not a lot of water at the bottom of the fountain. The roses are sharp with brambles and thorns.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's a bronze plate with an inscription in latin on the side of the fountain. Mike, who can read Latin, takes five minutes to puzzle it out. It reads:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“A white rose can be red if you bleed upon its petal,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"As a lily can be white if you’re willing to test your mettle.”</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div>
Cormac decides to drink from the fountain, and finds that his hands don't get wet and he can't feel the water. Scraping his nail across the bottom of it produces reddish brown flakes. Cormac then cuts his hand, losing 5 HP as the wound bleeds profusely. It appears that a quarter of the lilies and roses have swapped colors. Cormac's hand clots normally, making Agravaine a little less concerned about things.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay, Mike, and Agravaine all follow suit, taking 5 damage. Everyone except Agravaine succeeds at avoiding a major wound. Agravaine is pale, woozy, and blacks out for about half and hour. Yanay does some first aid, healing all but 1 of the damage caused.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The fountain is suddenly flowing with blood, the roses are red, the lilies are white, and a door has opened for us to go through. We go through it, Agravaine using Mike's shoulder for support.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We find ourselves in a hallway, which opens up into a room filled with clocks of all shapes and sizes. Digital, cuckoo, sundials, all kinds of clocks. All are set to different times- including the sundials.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac's watch doesn't move in the 90 seconds he counts off watching it. Yanay determines that we're in some kind of convergence of time, where everytime intersects. Mike attempts to adjust a clock, and ages almost 15 years in a second. He adjusts the clock back in the opposite direction, suddenly growing almost 10 years younger than he was when he began. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He reverts back after a few seconds. Cormac makes a Survival (Between) check to see what knowledge he might have. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Every clock suddenly accelerates, spinning through time until all match up at the same time, 1:13pm.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All of us seem to have difficulty focusing, and the passage of time seems strange. Mike finds himself back in time with his parents as a little kid. Lucien, Agravaine, and Cormac all have no problem, while Yanay suddenly finds herself talking with her psychology professor in an interesting debate.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine attempts to use Autohypnosis to steel himself against the effects, while Cormac cuts himself to cut through the mental fog. Lucien is in a trance, seeming like he's discussing his special capabilities with his father- wanting to be normal and not dragged out of school to go to exorcisms and shit.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Only Cormac and Agravaine aren't in a daze. Mike is very focused on wanting to go back into the memory, screaming that he should've been there for them. Suddenly, the clocks all stop, and return back to normal.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine has some trouble tending to the gash in Cormac's leg, just in time to be spit out of the Labyrinth. Those of us who are injured are lead to the infirmary. Ms. Baril congratulates us for only having one trial left, and doesn't even bite Agravaine's head off when he implies she's no longer off her Prozac.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon's in the quarters, asleep. We're given a week to recoup.<br />
<br />
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Commentary (Christopher):</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">I feel like this one went better than the couple before. Mostly because of the players interactions with one another vs. anything I'm doing. I still really am trying to find my feet with this campaign and the gaps of play are not helping that at all. I'm going to have to find a way to address that at some point.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">C-Team has also been a bit of a testing bed for some of my DF trap ideas (yes, I know. Different genres, but in this instance it works).<u></u><u></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Soundtrack:<u></u><u></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">"Here It Goes Again" by OK Go <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DdTAAsCNK7RA&source=gmail&ust=1501885055451000&usg=AFQjCNFpx-XZy5PyPvGhw36Zf4XJvEzWUg" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=dTAAsCNK7RA</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">"Time Is On My Side" by The Rolling Stones <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DrIE2GAqnFGw&source=gmail&ust=1501885055451000&usg=AFQjCNEFidZiU_Liu2oZ1mDMwHrKnGpakA" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIE2GAqnFGw" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=rIE2GAqnFGw</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">"(Don't Fear) the Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DClQcUyhoxTg&source=gmail&ust=1501885055451000&usg=AFQjCNFMfj5jqnX1h3Uw1rJM2KUD8sFPgQ" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClQcUyhoxTg" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=ClQcUyhoxTg</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">"Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D7wRHBLwpASw&source=gmail&ust=1501885055451000&usg=AFQjCNG-yUaJmAWZ982zfhFb9nRmgIU9fA" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wRHBLwpASw" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=7wRHBLwpASw</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">"Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DzUwEIt9ez7M&source=gmail&ust=1501885055451000&usg=AFQjCNG4zMy7oP18rZ5sFoZKQ8IutePWow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUwEIt9ez7M" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=zUwEIt9ez7M</a></span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-87037946354812178952017-08-03T17:36:00.000-07:002017-08-03T17:36:03.760-07:00Ceteri Prequel 2: Enter the Labyrinth they said, it'll be FUN they said<h2>
The Cast:</h2>
<br />
Cormac McAllister (Mavrick): The team's scout and master of crossroads. Cormac is also handy with a gun and might not be fully human.<br />
<br />
Yanay Servantes (Annia): An Incan witch and powerful spellcaster. Yanay is really good at psychology.<br />
<br />
Landon Winchestor (Alex): Rich. Posh. Utterly aggrandizing and pretentious. Still, an effective face.<br />
<br />
Mike Bastian (Andre): A holy warrior who fights for the glory of heaven. Easy to guilt trip.<br />
<br />
Agravaine Tashalan (Me): The grease that makes the entire team work smoothly. Agravaine is inhumanly and inconveniently attractive, extremely smart, and a real mastermind when it comes to planning.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
<br />
We handwave the rest of the fight against the plant. One of the injured is an observer, which is unusual. We were under the impression that they had a handle on this small slice of the labyrinth. Yanay crits on esoteric medicine, with Mike providing First Aid, and Agravaine helping via Teamwork!<br />
<br />
We stabilize the group, temporarily. Agravaine tries to trigger his bracelet to get more observers to show up, but it doesn't work. Mike casts a spell that confers regeneration to the observer, but they're in a nasty coma.<br />
<br />
The way we'd entered from is now closed off. Two new directions are open though. We take stock, and head off 'left' (cause, labyrinth). The tunnel starts to narrow the further along we get. Either we're growing, or it's shrinking.<br />
<br />
There's a tiny door ahead. Yanay tries to go through.<br />
<br />
Yanay's bracelet suddenly glows blue. Then she gets stuck. Mike shoves her through, and then the door turns normal size.<br />
<br />
The next room is strangely shaped. There's a stone sliding door, similar to a portcullis. We all hear the sound of buzzing. It's a bunch of bees.<br />
<br />
Yanay casts a spell, which fizzles the second it hits the bees.<br />
<br />
There's a big carving of a Queen Bee in the center of the room. When stepped on, it seems to trigger the door. A few bees get agitated by this, buzzing around Mike. He tries to order them, and is attacked. Mike is getting stung and chased by the bees.<br />
<br />
Yanay steps onto the center dais and bees start landing on her. They aren't stinging her, but they are making it hard to breathe. It's at this point Annia points out Yanay has Animal Empathy, and is evidently a badass at it. The bees clear her nose.<br />
<br />
The door slowly starts to lift up. After about three minutes it opens into a field. Yanay is fatigued by heat exhaustion just sitting in a blanket of bees.<br />
<br />
Our bracelets turn green upon entering the field.<br />
<br />
Yanay refuses holy water Mike seems to conjure on the spot. The field is featureless and extends forever, perfect for retreating forever. Of course the door behind us is gone.<br />
<br />
We wander a bit. Mike is able to Navigation (Land) to keep us on a straight course. Landon's gut instinct spell seems to indicate danger down below. Cormac uses Survival (Between), and Yanay uses Hidden Lore (Dimensional). Cormac definitely senses something dangerous.<br />
<br />
There's some signs of ecology- insects, rabbits, other strange shit- but it looks like a twisted version of the great plains.<br />
<br />
A door opens ahead of us, appearing magically.<br />
<br />
There's three observers, including Olivia, carefully avoiding the grass. We're allowed in through the door, into the labyrinth. The Labyrinth is getting even more angry and hostile.<br />
<br />
We're escorted to the infirmary and the injured Observer is placed on life support.<br />
<br />
Cormac tries to ask Olivia what happened. She smirks and claims technical difficulties, and then indicates that no, trials (and beatings) will proceed until morale improves.<br />
<br />
(It's currently the 15th of October, next trial is on the 17th of October.)<br />
<br />
Yanay finds a bee in her hair made of solid gold while bathing after the trial. It looks really realistic, like it was transmuted. She decides to use it as jewelry.<br />
<br />
We have two days of rest. Landon continues to impress and win over everyone during downtimes with his charm and sophistication.<br />
<br />
Olivia visits Agravaine on the 16th, accompanied by someone who might (maybe?) be mid 40's, with long hair and a Flamberge on his back.<br />
<br />
He introduces himself as Erasmus McAlister. Erasmus and Cormac look suspiciously similar. Yanay asks Cormac if there's a relation, while Agravaine cracks a joke about Cormac aging more gracefully.<br />
<br />
Erasmus indicates that he gave up familial relations when he took his oath as a Custos Knight, but notes that Cormac looks a lot like his mother.<br />
<br />
Olivia indicates that Erasmus is in charge of the Custos Knights, that the Observer we saved was his partner, and that she's speaking for Erasmus cause he's a man of view words.<br />
<br />
They leave, and we all receive a card with the Custos Sigil on it. The Director might consider us for Custos Training if we survive the trials.<br />
<br />
(Date: October 17th)<br />
<br />
We are ready to go through our third Trial. Cormac isn't going this time- something about library duties and compulsory safety training.<br />
<br />
Ms. Baril continues to guide us to the Labyrinth.<br />
<br />
We go down a hall, and find ourselves in a small room. The walls are covered in symbols and writing from what appears to be every culture and every language.<br />
<br />
We're all allowed checks against Symbol Drawing to make sense of it all. Yanay crits. Yanay can detect that there's a pattern, but not all of it. Certain symbols need to be pressed in a set order, which means finding out the order, as well as finding the right symbols themselves.<br />
<br />
Most of us are relying on Thaumatology to piece things apart, while Mike seems to be leveraging his theological knowledge to help.<br />
<br />
We start to make some headway on the patterns and symbols, but progress is slow.<br />
<br />
Landon decodes: So in the Heavens<br />
Agravaine decodes: As on Earth<br />
Mike: Raziel (Basically Uriel from Dresden, angelic spy, yadda yadda) is involved<br />
Yanay: There's some Incan related stuff, but nothing that's really contextually related to what we're dealing with<br />
<br />
Yanay crits vs. IQ. The pattern revolves around three concepts- Secret, Heaven, Earth.<br />
<br />
Landon sees the name Pursan in Hellion. Pursan is closely related to secrets as well.<br />
<br />
(Aside: Alex draws an off-hand reference to Fable from Christopher, which is produced by Lionshead studio, and Raziel is depicted as having a Lion head......)<br />
<br />
We're getting drained as we spend time in the room, we begin to notice. All of us are down 6FP.<br />
<br />
We keep plinking away at the symbols. Touching all of the Zodiac causes the symbols to go nuts and the door to open. It leads to a hallway, then another room which is full of stone hands that are jutting out of the wall, making multitudes of gestures.<br />
<br />
Landon and Agravaine quickly determine that the hands are making magical gestures.<br />
<br />
Yanay crit-fails, and is grasped by a stone hand. Mike shoots it with his pistol, to no effect.<br />
<br />
Numerous other hands merge together to form faces in the walls. "That wasn't very nice."<br />
<br />
The various faces start talking. They let go of Yanay once it's established that grabbing her wasn't cool and that Mike didn't do any harm with his pistol.<br />
<br />
The hands instruct us to do symbols as they do.<br />
<br />
All of us decide to go along. The symbols and hand movements start getting more complex. Lucian and Agravaine are both doing excellent (Agravaine crits.)<br />
<br />
Landon and Yanay find that their hands are frozen in position.<br />
<br />
During the next wave, Mike and Trina (Tina?) wash out.<br />
<br />
Agravaine dislocates his index finger during a surprisingly hard series of gestures (crit-fail). But the room resets and everyone's hands return to normal. It seems it was Lucian's test, and he passed. Agravaine pops his finger back in with a successful Teamwork! check.<br />
<br />
Another hallway. Another room. More self-closing doors.<br />
<br />
This room looks sterile, clean, and its floor is segmented into 3-foot blocks. Once inside, the door closes and the floor starts sliding around, like the rocket hideout from the first generation of pokemon games.<br />
<br />
The entire floor flows one way, before switching it up. The walls start to produce spikes when we get close. Landon seems to have no trouble hobbling along (Crit).<br />
<br />
Tina and Agravaine are the first two to touch the walls. Landon and Agravaine both then fall as the room speeds up. Both manage to catch themselves before hitting walls.<br />
<br />
Agravaine's produced a spear, attempting to use it to brace himself from smacking into the wall. Tina falls and smacks into a wall. Landon is the only one that keeps his feet. Agravaine smacks into a wall, taking damage.<br />
<br />
Yanay casts a spell to mitigate getting slammed on spikes, which causes the spikes to grow in length. Trina is the only one who isn't able to get back up during a pause, getting stuck and taking an additional 3 points of damage.<br />
<br />
Agravaine tries to determine the pattern to the movement of the floor- and crit fails. Agravaine just barely avoids disaster during the next loop of the pattern. Tina meanwhile is getting savaged by the spikes.<br />
<br />
Eventually, Agravaine notices that some bars and ropes are overhead. Everyone jumps up and grabs them, eventually losing FP (meaning all of us are down 7) desperately hanging on. The floor slows and then stops.<br />
<br />
Tina is in horrible shape. Yanay and Mike stabilize her with Magic, but she's too injured to continue the trials- and will likely be in recovery for months.<br />
<br />
We're treated with magic and then given two days to rest. Trina's stuff is gone when we return. Landom schmoozes, Agravaine's dragged off by Olivia for more training, Mike likewise, and Yanay engages in some dancing. Agravaine's noticeably tired and cranky after the second day of training with Olivia.<br />
<br />
Onto the fourth Trial. Baril is humming Another One Bites the Dust. She's more than happy to inform everyone that entire groups of initiates do fail sometimes.<br />
<br />
Eventually, we wander into a gigantic ballroom, complete with Dancers. Someone identifies it as 17th century France. All of us are approached by dance partners. Seeing that Mike has been paired up with a dude and has to dance the female part, Agravaine applies some Sex Appeal and his otherworldly appearance to ensure he gets a good looking female partner.<br />
<br />
Agravaine's partner is wearing Greek robes and laurels.<br />
<br />
The dance begins. Agravaine seems to be a natural, getting a crit vs. DX to dance, then getting a second crit on dancing during the slow number. Agravaine's partner introduces herself as Namid. She's impressed that he can dance well for someone so young- and he's surprised himself. He eventually scores her number.<br />
<br />
Yanay and Mike both fall out of step with the dance. Landon does his best to continue, but his partner flubs, dropping him out. Agravaine and Namid continue to gracefully move across the ballroom floor.<br />
<br />
The labyrinth isn't done with us however, sending us to another Trial. The next room is a massive apothecary storeroom. Nine bowls rest in the center, marked with a single letter of the Jewish Alphabet. Alchemical ingredients are everywhere. Yanay figures it out more or less immediately- the bowls correspond to something to do with the 9 branches of the Jewish Tree of Life Sefirot, which match up with the 9 path skills.<br />
<br />
We confer to see who should try and cover what path for the sorting that's likely about to begin.<br />
<br />
Lucian - Path of Undead<br />
Landon - Path of Chance, Path of Spirit<br />
Yanay - Path of Magic, Path of Matter<br />
Mike - Path of Energy, Path of Body<br />
Agravaine- Path of Crossroads, Path of Mind<br />
<br />
We're given an opportunity to guess appropriate ingredients for the paths in question, or the option of making a check.<br />
<br />
Mike rolls to deal with the bowl covering Body. He eventually finds a dagger, placing it in the bowl. The bowl glows and the dagger floats to his belt and inserts itself there.<br />
<br />
Alex, Landon's player, guesses that a deck or cards or a four leaf clover might be appropriate for Chance. He finds a dried out four leaf clover and places it in the bowl, which lights up.<br />
<br />
The crossroads bowl is next. I guess that keys would be appropriate, and the bowl lights up.<br />
<br />
Mike opts to roll to find an ingredient appropriate for Path of Energy. He scalds his hand when he places a bad item into the bowl. The second time around he scrounges for Coal, and his bowl lights up.<br />
<br />
Yanay is next with Path of Magic. She places some gorse in the bowl, and it lights up. Next up is Path of Matter, and she dumps some lead into the bowl.<br />
<br />
For Path of Mind, Agravaine's foresight allows him to produce some cocaine, which causes the bowl to light up.<br />
<br />
For Path of Spirit, Landon opts to steal some of Mike's blood, flicking it into the bowl. The bowl lights up. Landon quips something about Virgin Blood, and Mike slugs him.<br />
<br />
Lucian throws gravedirt into the bowl for Path of Undead.<br />
<br />
We're onto the next challenge, and the next room.<br />
<br />
The entire room is entirely circular, disorienting due to the lack of a ceiling overhead, and 9 symbols of magic around the room. The day/night cycle is fast, comprising about 40 minutes to do a full day/night cycle.<br />
<br />
We touch the symbols in the same order as the bowls. Eventually Yanay gets zapped. We all take injury as we get zapped.<br />
<br />
We start casting spells as we touch each symbol, which causes them to glow and us to not get zapped. It's in the same order as before. We breeze through to the next room, and the Labyrinth spits us out.<br />
<br />
Agravaine uses super-dark chocolate to keep Olivia from strangling him for having Cocaine.<br />
<h2>
Commentary:</h2>
<div>
So, the symbols, floor, and hands puzzles were basically just a series of skill checks. OVER and OVER and OVER. The drinking challenge was the same too. My patience definitely started to run out during the floor challenge- rolling against DX 10 over and over again isn't particularly fun, especially after you've exhausted options for improving the situation.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Commentary (Christopher):</span></h2>
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<span style="color: black;">I'm kind of disappointed that over both sessions I haven't been able to make these various tests more interesting than I have. The players are doing some fantastic work...but I feel like I'm failing here somehow. I'll need to ponder exactly what I'm doing and how I can do it differently to make things work.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black;">Soundtrack:<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DTAqZb52sgpU&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNE1-355ddOjgvj7pfyoMbZzA0ezLw" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAqZb52sgpU" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=TAqZb52sgpU</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D3mbBbFH9fAg&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNFGx85YHj3HCWqgzNPKQq1DmQvBxw" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=3mbBbFH9fAg</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D1lyu1KKwC74&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNF9J3-V9R-Fae9wLjoW0NjTXcBs8Q" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyu1KKwC74" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=1lyu1KKwC74</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"Bent" by Matchbox 20 <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D969RAKkYESU&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNF5W5o9LewtekTR3j4DKnhOUEtHkw" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=969RAKkYESU" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=969RAKkYESU</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"Lightning Crash" by Live <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DxsJ4O-nSveg&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNEJJvxDClh71HBqp4fpEcZJPeYDyQ" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsJ4O-nSveg" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=xsJ4O-nSveg</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"All Star" by Smash Mouth <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DL_jWHffIx5E&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNFG4lUM1ZgI0kwWR-NvUaDEHeDIPw" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_jWHffIx5E" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=L_jWHffIx5E</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DbtPJPFnesV4&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNFaN5sn04EmxBnIMGd76ede_exnNg" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btPJPFnesV4" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=btPJPFnesV4</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"The Drowning Man" by The Cure <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DIJmE0C4Tq1U&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNHkoE6yK5JwRSU5Q9lz4rOQeFX4sg" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJmE0C4Tq1U" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=IJmE0C4Tq1U</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"Power" by Kanye West <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DL53gjP-TtGE&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNEs4pyCOdnSqMfyB1U88nhLhWqzeQ" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L53gjP-TtGE" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=L53gjP-TtGE</a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">"Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://youtu.be/ghb6eDopW8I&source=gmail&ust=1501885055483000&usg=AFQjCNF0QjUl-gh3K4JfUH1h-WQkP5JxpQ" href="https://youtu.be/ghb6eDopW8I" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ghb6eDopW8I</a></span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2826138509665838570.post-11145346371819280582017-06-23T16:29:00.001-07:002017-06-23T16:29:03.057-07:00Ceteri Prequel 1: Trials, START!<h2>
The Cast:</h2>
<br />
Cormac McAllister (Mavrick): The team's scout and master of crossroads. Cormac is also handy with a gun and might not be fully human.<br />
<br />
Yanay Servantes (Annia): An Incan witch and powerful spellcaster. Yanay is really good at psychology.<br />
<br />
Landon Winchestor (Alex): Rich. Posh. Utterly aggrandizing and pretentious. Still, an effective face.<br />
<br />
Mike Bastian (Andre): A holy warrior who fights for the glory of heaven. Easy to guilt trip.<br />
<br />
Agravaine Tashalan (Me): The grease that makes the entire team work smoothly. Agravaine is inhumanly and inconveniently attractive, extremely smart, and a real mastermind when it comes to planning.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Events:</h2>
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/155561/cultists.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/155561/cultists.jpg" data-original-height="328" data-original-width="410" height="160" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: white;">FNORD</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
All of us are hauled to Boston for the trials. Everyone in the supernatural community won't elaborate about what they are beyond canned one liners and empty platitudes.<br />
<br />
There's almost 200 people in the room we're in, all milling around waiting. Ages range from 13 to 40. Everyone is wearing the same drab brown (with white trim- not pictured) robes. Numerous nationalities and ethnicities.<br />
<br />
The entire chamber has a translation spell of some kind on it- everyone can understand everyone else regardless of language used.<br />
<br />
There's a few observers and instructors present- with a small sprinkling of Custos Knights.<br />
<br />
After an hour, a guy in a green robe stands up and makes a speech to the assembled crowd. Everyone will be split into groups, given an instructor, and if you've see an observer shit's gone sideways and you're probably fucked.<br />
<br />
The number of tests per individual might vary- some will be one and done, some might have to do several.<br />
<br />
We'll be tossed into the labyrinth as a group- average number of times through is 7. One or two people per trip will be subjected to an especially harrowing experience, and that person HAS to pass. It's highly suggested to be helpful towards other people in your group- they really don't like selfish asshats.<br />
<br />
The Labryinth is a prison maze where attempting to leave the center gets progressively and progressively harder. Only 5 people have ever breached the outermost edges in its history- a history spanning back centuries. There's an intelligence to it. People report seeing dead relatives and friends inside.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/Ut23RfP.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://i.imgur.com/Ut23RfP.png" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I ain't afraid of no ghosts</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We're <b style="font-style: italic;">"RANDOMLY" </b>sorted into a group of 13 people- us 4 (Landon isn't present yet) and 9 NPCs.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Marian S. Davis</li>
<li>Kirsten J. Gleeson</li>
<li>Tina J. Ellis (Age 17)</li>
<li>Trina N. Parker</li>
<li>James S. Graff</li>
<li>Donald N. Cage</li>
<li>George A. Angulo</li>
<li>Lucien K. Goldman (Goth Kid) (Age 15)</li>
<li>Vince K. Kennison</li>
</ul>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjomJe48A8K5pnIDWJBOlZLZ7Ww0cpIrvfJti_nb3-e3md7uK9G39cuL-XYnEbUEhLuVVGTX3dlvhPBrltq1PyDO4_eJ-1Yjean6bT1sR5SghQHpKV8CQ1qR52JWkh4_yM4LvFgf-OA1s3Z/s1600/teacherkrab.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjomJe48A8K5pnIDWJBOlZLZ7Ww0cpIrvfJti_nb3-e3md7uK9G39cuL-XYnEbUEhLuVVGTX3dlvhPBrltq1PyDO4_eJ-1Yjean6bT1sR5SghQHpKV8CQ1qR52JWkh4_yM4LvFgf-OA1s3Z/s1600/teacherkrab.gif" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="320" height="200" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ms. Baril</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Our instructor is Ms. Baril. She tells us to get ready for our first trip into the labyrinth. It's not an actual trial- just a jaunt to get used to it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac seems pretty confident he can apply his knowledge of other planes to the labyrinth.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ms. Baril opens up a portal/arch to the Labyrinth and we enter. The walls are smooth and grey. They don't look worked as if they had tools.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It takes a while for us to realize that Donald N. Cage is inexplicably gone. He had been particularly headstrong before stepping inside. Agravaine isn't particularly upset about him disappearing. Ms. Baril is upset about it happening again, and we attempt to follow his footprints to wherever he went off.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're suddenly in a garden, with the hallway we came through behind us. It appears Ms. Baril's necklace is having an effect on the labyrinth.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://catmacros.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/twaddle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="150" src="https://catmacros.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/twaddle.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Landon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There's an extremely posh looking asshole beneath a tree, covered in dirt. The second he stands up the dirt sloughs off his clothes. He picks at his fingers for a moment, trying to get the grime out. He's got some fancy jewelry and a nice walking stick.<br />
<br />
Ms. Baril seems happy to forget about Donald- enter with 13 and leave with 13 and all that- accepting the posh fellow into the group. The Posh guy introduces himself as Landon.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The garden seems to stretch on forever, although the sky still appears normal. There's a single doorway inbetween two trees that leads back to labyrinth.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She leads us through that doorway. Landon asks the date- we tell him October of 1999.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ms. Baril gets a bit annoyed with the continued introductions and spurs us forward to a pool that we have to look into. There's a tree with red bark nearby- Yanay knows that it's not natural in origin. It's either magical/supernatural in some regard or hasn't been present on Earth for an extremely long time. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ms. Baril sits down in a well-worn spot and lights a cigarette. She advises us to reflect on if we want to continue the trials- some choose to gaze into the pool, although that can have effects.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mike touches the tree. It feels like flesh, and is warm.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://djterbo.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/fantasy-lake-in-july-1920x1200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://djterbo.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/fantasy-lake-in-july-1920x1200.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Garden. How very tranquil and lovely.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine doesn't look- he doesn't need further reinforcement about undergoing the trials. Yanay, Landon, and Cormac all decide to look into the pool. Mike and Agravaine opt not to. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Out of the NPCs who look into the pool:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Three immediately tap out and request to leave (Kirsten, Trina, Vince)</li>
<li>George starts screaming and starts to tear at his eyes- he plucks out one before Mike restrains him. Agravaine manages to stop George from completely ruining his eyes via a successful Teamwork! check.</li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/52/4c/10/524c1069bf822e40e510cac2c92627f0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="496" height="239" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/52/4c/10/524c1069bf822e40e510cac2c92627f0.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A few observers appear- two to take away George, one to escort the other three away.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay seems unfazed by what she saw. Cormac and Landon, however, lose 10 and 11 Stability points. (Stability is equal to IQ, and hitting 1/3 of your total = bad things.) Cormac and Landon are both reeling, sitting down and staring off into space.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Baril pulls out a watch. She seems unimpressed. Everyone except Agravaine feels a lassitude fall on them- a comforting feeling, like being wrapped up in a warm blanket by a trusted friend or family member.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Baril gives Agravaine and earful about knowing that yes, he has no choice about continuing the Trials. She asks him to sit down and be a good boy. She warns Agravaine not to fall asleep when he decides that's the best course of action.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Time's up and Baril tells us we have up to two days to tell an observer if we're going to continue the Trials in two days. Exiting the labyrinth is much more difficult heading out- it gets darker, the routes are more confusing and twisting, and it's like the architecture is just working against progress.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The waiting area with cots seems half filled- out of maybe 200 people who went in, 100 have stayed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon asks for a drink and is told that alcohol is a bad idea when entering the labyrinth.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine has a quick meeting with Olivia, his mentor/sponsor. She asks him if he killed anybody, and seems surprised that he helped save George's eye. Cormac takes the opportunity to try and scare people off from continuing the trials, hoping to weed out people with weak resolve. Mavrick rolls a success by 6- James and Marian are gone next morning. Trina and Lucian are the only two left.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're all sequestered into a shared space. Rooms are private, the common room is shared, and 9 out of the 13 rooms are currently occupied by our group.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon doesn't like the accommodations- they're not posh enough for him. Yanay seems to have caught the attention of Trina who is totally obvious about it, while Lucian states that he's asexual.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine conjures up a chess board and teaches Yanay how to play. She manages to do decent against him when actually playing. Agravaine destroys Landon when they play. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon does his best to get to know everyone. Agravaine polls everyone to ask what they're good at. Yanay says that she has peculiar skills, and that she's very spiritual. Mike claims that he defends the faith of god against evil- as a warrior priest and monk. Cormac knows how to get into places, is familiar with places like the Labyrinth, and can shoot things. Landon is a lawyer, very posh, and evidently he was an Olympic-level fencer.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Trina is good with metal- enchanting, molding, etc. Lucian is all about shadows and Astral Projection. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A few of us notice that Landon's cane is either exceptional (Yanay and Agravaine) or magical (Cormac). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Olivia visits Agravaine at least once a day, usually taking 15-20 minutes to talk with him.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/sawfilms/images/4/4e/Reverse_bear_Trap_2.0.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110628013231" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="370" src="https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/sawfilms/images/4/4e/Reverse_bear_Trap_2.0.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110628013231" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Agravaine gets all the trust</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We're all given bracelets in preparation for our first actual Trial. They help observers locate us and serve as "get us the fuck out of here" beacons as well. Agravaine's is cursed with extra bad mojo should he remove his in an attempt to not be tracked. The Bracelets will glow when we arrive where we need to be for the Trial. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're going to randomly get one of 13 trials. They're kept jealously secret so people are unprepared.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine asks for a bag of marbles to supplement his other gear. Olivia gets him a bag of ball bearings.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We enter the Labyrinth and come across a dead end where there was previously a way forward. The choice is to go left or right. Landon casts a spell (basically spell intuition), and his gut indicates that we need to go left.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay, Mike, and Tina suddenly fall through the floor. There's an open shaft that they've fallen through. Midway through they slow down due to some sort of field. Lucian jumps in saying "Eh, it won't matter if I die anyways."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac and Agravaine decide to jump down as well.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The shaft ends in a large room. We land on an outcropping. Down below appears to be a large swimming pool. The place is dark (-2 penalty). The pool has some floodlights and a high dive. The shaft bricks itself up above us.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac spots an exit sign and heads off for it. As soon as he touches the door, lights come on, and suddenly it appears like the entire place is full. People are swimming, doing dives, and enjoying themselves.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac tries the door again. There's a scream from the pool, followed by shouts that someone hit their head.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i769.photobucket.com/albums/xx333/MrPoolsClosed/1235716181523.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://i769.photobucket.com/albums/xx333/MrPoolsClosed/1235716181523.png" data-original-height="769" data-original-width="800" height="307" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seriously, don't go in.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mike rushes to the pool. He's grabbed suddenly and hauled into the pool. He appears like he's just having trouble swimming. He quickly draws on his divine power to increase his strength, a process that will take 5 seconds.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mike fights to swim up to the surface, his high HT allowing him a decent time underwater, even without prepping first. He breaks free for a moment and breaks the surface, struggling, before getting dragged back down again.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i769.photobucket.com/albums/xx333/MrPoolsClosed/1235716181523.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://i769.photobucket.com/albums/xx333/MrPoolsClosed/1235716181523.png" data-original-height="769" data-original-width="800" height="191" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CAN MIKE READ?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://15858-presscdn-0-65.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/images/http-inlinethumb03.webshots.com-34498-2994109050105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://15858-presscdn-0-65.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/images/http-inlinethumb03.webshots.com-34498-2994109050105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yanay, attempting to save Mike</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yanay attempts to walk on the water over to Mike. Mike crit-fails his next check to try and escape and is hopelessly entangled by water is holding him in the water. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine realizes that the entire situation is based on a memory from someone present- it's at that point that Landon notices that Tina is super still and not moving. He slaps her. She can only mumble that it was her fault. He succeeds by 10 on Fast-Talk to convince her that it wasn't her fault.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Tina jumps into the pool to grab Mike. He immediately finds it easier to to swim, breaking to the surface and flopping onto ground. Tina treads water and the second she leaves the pool the entire place goes dark again.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We leave through the door. Tina is the last through. We suddenly find ourselves in a Library.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://68.media.tumblr.com/0758c8b0d7817fb162fd2ee117fcf1ed/tumblr_n3ywvbS1dk1tt691go1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://68.media.tumblr.com/0758c8b0d7817fb162fd2ee117fcf1ed/tumblr_n3ywvbS1dk1tt691go1_1280.jpg" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
We're shushed by a very severe looking lady with her hair in a bun. She asks us if we have a library card. Cormac sees if he can steal a library card while she's occupied.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon and the Librarian go back and forth about the intricacies of library law.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay starts look at random books, finding one in Sanskrit. It's obviously filled with magical theory.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The librarian notices Cormac's attempt at going behind the desk. His arm goes numb. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Some of us start filling out the forms to get cards.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine realizes that the group is in the Akashic Library- a place that stores the full contents of human knowledge. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon and Agravaine work out the details of membership. The lifetime tier is expensive- $80k worth of very expensive. The middle tier is only $1000 up front, $5000 total. The free tier is 2 books a month, 24 total a year. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon and Agravaine both spring for the Lifetime membership.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://40.media.tumblr.com/eed76539dec0d5383abaf38270edf847/tumblr_o218re5NfW1sq911zo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="511" height="400" src="https://40.media.tumblr.com/eed76539dec0d5383abaf38270edf847/tumblr_o218re5NfW1sq911zo1_1280.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>
Everyone else fills out the paperwork too. Agravaine burns Foresight to have the cash on hand.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac tries to work out a deal- retrieving books for a card. This involves more forms. He manages to become a library repo man. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We learn that we're at a satellite branch- one that doesn't have personnel records. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay reads up on books about the Labyrinth. Lucian looks up astral projection and extrasensory capabilities. Landon brushes up on biblical studies. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine asks Cormac to check to see if some specific people have used the library. Cormac agrees but wants to wait until everyone is out of the Labyrinth to discuss it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We all leave. We find ourselves somewhere else. We find ourselves in an empty bar.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/14/57/9d/14579dc57413848f854fa560837aa021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="402" height="320" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/14/57/9d/14579dc57413848f854fa560837aa021.jpg" width="206" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I don't care what Christopher named the bartender,<br />his name is Macnnally.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There's peanut shells on the floor and the entire place smells of booze, blood, and nuts. Our bracelets start glowing green right as Landon goes to leave.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The bartender points at Agravaine and tells him to sit down. He puts down 13 bottles of liquor on the counter and tells Agravaine to drink all 13 of them. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine starts with the one labeled #1. Cormac joins him. It's decent alcohol- and just appears to be regular alcohol. Landon has convinced both Lucian and Tina to drink. Lucian claims that he's going to be dead by 21 and it doesn't matter if he trashes his liver so he joins inn. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The four of us clear a bottle with Cormac getting drunk and Agravaine getting tipsy. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now tipsy, Agravaine attempts to guilt trip and cajole everyone into shouldering part of the load. Mike gives in to the rhetoric and starts drinking too.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Trying to get through the second bottle, Agravaine becomes drunk and begins trying to convince the Bartender to help clear out the bottle as well. The Bartender calls Agravaine a pretty boy and begins helping.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
By the fourth bottle, Cormac has blacked out. Agravaine seems to be doing okay. Tina and Lucian are drinking like fishes. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon eventually gives in and starts helping through the fourth bottle. Agravaine somehow sobers up, while Landon gets tipsy. Mike's tolerance seems to be quite high. Yanay tends to Cormac.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Bottle five, Mike is feeling tipsy. Lucian eventually hurls. Agravaine is back to being drunk. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The group slogs through the rest of the bottles. Agravaine and Mike are totally shitfaced. Tina just seems immune to alcohol. Lucian is on the floor in pain, and Landon seems to have a very high tolerance.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cormac wakes back up and tries to help out again. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Once done, the bartender points behind Agravaine. Standing there seems to be Agravaine's brother.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine instantly casts a spell at his brother. It slams into the simulacra, killing it immediately. Yanay and Landon seem to pick up on it being a really nasty spell.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tQZVLOeC-FU/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tQZVLOeC-FU/maxresdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seriously nasty.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The observers come in and escort us back through the labyrinth. Our first trial is complete. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They sober us up with magic. Yanay is very unimpressed with being surrounded by drunkards. Our nurse correctly guesses that we landed in the bar. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We have some time to relax. Mike spends it training. He finds a sparring partner who kicks his ass, but she does nicely by actually teaching him what he's doing wrong. Andre Crits, picking up some Blade! skill for the trouble. This draws attention- Mike is getting eyed for becoming a Custos Knight (think the Grey Wardens from Dresden) after the trials. People who aren't affiliated with houses tend to get headhunted by getting handed cards.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We expect Mike to get plenty.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Agravaine is hauled off by Olivia for training and doesn't get to relax quite like he wanted. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Landon of course is schmoozing as much as possible. He leaves a very good impression on everyone.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yanay meditates and sees to her spiritual needs.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Lucian has been largely keeping to himself, meanwhile Tina is struggling with the pool incident. Seeing that she's having a rough time, both Yanay and Agravaine take some time to talk with her to try and keep her in the game.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're lead back into the Labyrinth again for our Second trial. There's three possible directions to go. Landon casts his version of Intuition again, and it seems each branch is more or less equivalent.</div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://paizo.com/image/content/SecondDarkness/PZO9014-AlienPlant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://paizo.com/image/content/SecondDarkness/PZO9014-AlienPlant.jpg" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="576" height="320" width="230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Too much fertilizer</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's the same gray stone walls, followed by the sounds of someone calling for help. There's a group of fellow trial initiates up ahead, getting attacked by a giant plant.<br />
It's clear the group is getting wrecked when Agravaine uses Mastermind! to assess the situation. </div>
<div>
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Mike starts to put on armor, Yanay casts a spell that sears it with moonlight, Landon casts a spell that gets resisted, and Agravaine takes a moment to assess things. The plant is affected by Path of Spirit and Path of Body, but the Labyrinth has strange rules regarding banishing creatures inside- deadly important when summoning demons.</div>
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We decide to stop there.</div>
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<h2>
Commentary:</h2>
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<b>Very</b> strong first session. C-Team is back, and things ran smooth, pretty much like we hadn't left off. Honestly, scheduling difficulties were the biggest hurdle of the day.</div>
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We culled through our Trial group way faster than Christopher was expecting, due to a strange number of crits regarding resistances to the pool, as well as crits during Cormac's little game to scare off the weak willed. It really upped the stakes for the Bar Trial.</div>
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The pool scene was a little chaotic, although that can easily be chalked up to fast-paced voice communication with shaky connection quality. The bar trial thankfully stopped dragging on once Christopher started batch rolling for the later bottles to clear them faster.</div>
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I think unfamiliarity with the casting system has made some of the others leery to use it to its full extent, although some of that is certainly discovering that spells aren't useful in the current situations we're facing- a lightning bolt can't harm a memory shade, for example. (Much like Banish is completely worthless in the Labyrinth.)</div>
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This campaign's had more cast interplay than AEGIS did. I chalk it up to a few factors:</div>
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<li>Andre, Annia, and Alex have known one another for a long time and have good rapport</li>
<li>Andre and Annia are slightly less results-oriented than PK and Kevin were. Combine Me, Mavrick, PK, and Kevin, and you have a group that will relentlessly chase down things to do without quibbling over roleplaying out smaller interactions, often slipping into third person.</li>
<li>Agravaine offers me more opportunities for interplay than Veracity, who is all work and no play.</li>
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And no, we're not sure if it was actually Tina or Trina who made it to the end of the Labyrinth. Maybe they were the same person. Maybe not.</div>
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