#glowinthedarkrpg

#glowinthedarkrpg

The Third Rails, out of Prism City, make a grab for a cache of anti-rads discovered in the Monarchs’ turf deep in the Boneyard.

My Glow in the Dark (post-apocalyptic Blades hack) playtest got off to a proper start last night. Character/crew creation is detailed here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109333990936576277189/posts/XRwroMfB5TM

My 3 players are the Third Rails, a crew of Dealers (like hawker/smugglers) out of Prism City, a shitty underground mall like Crystal City in Arlington or Toronto’s PATH. There’s Johnny Tabernacle, a Leftover (think Charlton Heston from Planet of the Apes or any of the Fallout player characters); Lt. Dan Halen, a Reaper (Wez, Ironbar, Rambo – the “fighter” playbook); and Ol’ Zeke, the Junker (think Gyro-Captain, Chumbucket, MacGyver).

The Rails’ primary contact, a mutant named Westchester Woodhouse (http://teamventure.org/w/images/e/e5/Ned_smile.png in a top hat), comes staggering down into Prism City. He’s been worked over by the Boneyard Bulldogs, a sports-themed raider gang. He used all his ammo escaping a handful of killbots guarding a cache of anti-rads deep in the Boneyard and barely made it back to Prism City intact. The anti-rads are in Monarchs territory (a plant mutant gang of slavers), and now the Bulldogs and the Sheltered (secretive bunker-dwelling recluses) are on their way to claim the prize.

This was my version of the Lampblacks/Red Sashes rivalry, a good Cannonball Run race for a treasure. I took one positive faction (the Monarchs), one negative (the Boneyard Bulldogs), and one neutral (the Sheltered), and I’m hoping that we’ll get some good faction shifts out of the resulting shitshow. The players said this sounded like a Transport plan – just get there first, get the goods, and get out – although we had some good discussion about how different plans could work, which told me I’d chosen a fairly good opening scenario for once. They were +1 with the Monarchs and considered a Social tack (but they opted for stealth and speed over diplomacy) as well as waiting for one of the other factions to get the anti-rads and Assaulting them as they left the Boneyard (but their only vehicle was Zeke’s jalopy, an underpowered Subaru Brat – a chase wouldn’t go in their favor). The Third Rails paid Westchester Woodhouse 1 of their 2 supplies (Glow in the Dark’s coin replacement) and we counted that as spending resources on a Gather Information check. They got exceptional information, including GPS coordinates they could plug into their fine GPS (one of their crew upgrades). Armed with the most accurate route, the Third Rails loaded up Zeke’s jalopy and headed out.

Brief rules digression! I’m handling load slightly differently in Glow in the Dark. I charge a crew supplies based on the heaviest load taken – medium costs 1, heavy costs 2. This led to some fruitful discussion and in my mind made choosing a load level much more tactical than in vanilla Blades. These guys also aren’t Shadows, with their insane load bonus upgrade. They’ve been spoiled, and now they have to deal with the basic rules like everyone else, plus the supply ding on top of it. They went with medium load, even though it’d cost their last supply. I also charge upkeep during downtime, because scarcity is a theme here, so the Third Rails must return with at least one supply or things will go very badly indeed.

A six on engagement means that the crew makes excellent time and makes it safely into the Boneyard as far as their jalopy can get before the streets are choked by toppled buildings, thick, ropey brambles, and rusted car corpses. Dan’s player is new to Blades and PbtA-style games in general, but with 2 experienced Blades players beside him he adapted quickly enough. Dan Prowled his way over and through the collapsed building, but caused a lot of noise in doing so. I started a clock “Draws Attention”. Johnny T looked for a safer way through the rubble, and spotted an easy but long climb up to monorail track. Meanwhile, Zeke tried a subway access but encountered two-headed mutant dingos! He flashed back to the drive from Prism City to the Boneyard, where he Hacked together a dog whistle contraption because with their exceptional information, he’d have known about the creatures that lurk in the Boneyard. Zeke scares the dingos back into the tunnels but it’s clear that path is fraught with danger. It also nearly fills the Attention clock.

In an attempt to reduce the attention clock and draw any Monarchs off their trail, Johnny T uses his hand terminal to Hack into any pre-war systems that might still be operational – and rolls a 3. He finds something all right. The nearby monorail starts blaring anti-terrorism warnings (“If you see something, say something!”) and draws a Monarch patrol to the site! Three plant/bug mutants peer down at the Third Rails from atop an eight-story tenement.

What happened next just goes to show the inherent speciesism people have for weird plant/bug things. The Third Rails had +1 status with the Monarchs. I figured this might be a social-type challenge, something that’s been surprisingly absent in our vanilla Blades capers. I was wrong. It’s not me – it’s my players. 🙂 Johnny Tabernacle checks “fine energy weapon” off his items list and snap-fires a maser into a bat-winged probiscus/hibiscus. The poor dude’s water content flash-boils and he explodes like he was an extra in District 9. The Venus Butterflytrap next to him shouts “You killed Baptista!” and grazes Johnny with a Mosin-Nagant rifle (level 1 harm after resistance). Lt. Dan doesn’t take kindly to plants shooting his friends and after a brief exchange (the Raid action as opposed to Johnny’s Hunt roll), plugs the Butterflytrap in the “face”. The rifle falls eight stories (a complication – no looting this guy).

At this point, Zeke’s player mentions that they were on good terms with the Monarchs and now they have to murder all of these guys so they can stay friends with the rest of them. It’s sound logic, if a bit like the opening of Heat. Problem is, Zeke doesn’t have the skillset for a gunfight. He does have a frag grenade and 2 dots in Wreck, however. The Junker arcs the grenade into the building, aiming to collapse it and bury the woodsy Groot-like Monarch in the rubble.

Rolling a 2 on that kind of roll is bad news. The building collapses, all right – sideways into the street! Johnny T ends up with 2 harm (“Bad Sprain”) as he’s swept off his monorail track, Lt. Dan avoids harm but is pinned under rubble, and Zeke takes 1 harm from flying rubble (“stunned”). Dan Finesses his way free but draws the Monarch’s attention. “YOU KILLED MY FRIENDS!” it bellows, grabbing a length of rebar with a concrete lollipop on the end. In his first Desperate knife-fight (a recurring theme across literally any game I run), Dan buries his combat knife deep in the Monarch’s mouth. The roll’s a six, and the blade comes out sticky with sap, felling the tree-man.

We had to wrap it up there, but we did do character XP, whereupon I noted that I desperately need to revamp my XP triggers to be more like BitD 7+. We’ve been playing with those triggers for a few weeks now and they are just so much better. The players love that certain triggers don’t limit your XP to your playbook track, and that there’s explicit callouts to earn multiple XP per trigger. I still had the old style, where there was a playbook trigger and an “anytime” trigger. Furthermore, we’re only playing this fortnightly as opposed to weekly and I want my guys to advance through the abilities.

The new XP triggers in Blades are just so much better. It bears reiterating – it’s a major improvement but it looks so small on paper.

Anyways, the Third Rails looted what they could (Zeke winning the day with a Scrounge action), coming up with 1 supply in chems, rations, and plant/mutant food off the dead tree-man. It’ll cover their upkeep at least.

Battered but alive, the trio of survivors makes their way towards the cache, hoping the Boneyard Bulldogs and the Sheltered don’t reach the prize first…