#glowinthedarkrpg

#glowinthedarkrpg

The Third Rails playtest the Fallout (Entanglement replacement) system and do downtime.

My vanilla Blades group has Slippery, where you get to pick from two entanglements. They are spoiled. There’s a lot more old-school “this is the crap life has dealt you” feeling when you just roll one die and that’s what’s gone wrong.

For Glow in the Dark, you roll for Fallout, and like entanglements, I have 3 charts. The chart you roll on is determined by the relationship between your crew’s Supplies and its Friction with other factions. The Third Rails had 4 Supplies and had 3 Friction, so they rolled:

“*Probing*: An enemy faction grabs a friend or contact, interrogating them about your defenses. Pay ransom equal to 1 rep per tier of the enemy, let them keep your contact, or show them you are not to be trifled with.”

Johnny Tabernacle’s player wasn’t there, so Dan’s player suggested it was Johnny who was taken. I was about to say that I meant it to be an NPC but then… fuck it, you know? We were all laughing at the idea, so we went with it. It made the most sense for the Boneyard Bulldogs, the sports-themed raider group the Third Rails tussled with last time, to be the kidnappers.

Once that was established, I explained about downtime and that since the Rails had The Check is In The Mail, they could spend rep as well as supplies to buy additional downtime actions.

Both Dan and Zeke indulged their vice, and accepted Devil’s Bargains to gain more dice. This is also in stark contrast to the experienced characters in my vanilla Blades group, where they have enough dice in all their attributes that they can typically wave off my attempts to complicate their lives.

Zeke started a LTP to repair and upgrade the “Robutler” they defeated last session. With Mechromancer, Zeke completed half the clock in one go (bonus effect when working on robots and drones).

Dan called in a favor from a bounty hunter he knew, Vegas. He described Vegas as Emily Blunt from Edge of Tomorrow, and when I asked if that included the powered armor he readily agreed. Zeke’s player suggested that Vegas was maybe an exiled Iron Maiden, one of the factions he has a sordid history with, so that was cool to so quickly establish this NPC into both PCs’ backgrounds. Anyway, Dan and Vegas Gathered Info on Johnny Tabernacle’s whereabouts and, with the bonus dice from using a contact and the bonus effect from the downtime investigation, found their friend at one of the Bulldogs’ fortresses. It used to be a high school, surrounded by a killing field of crumbled gravel and asphalt, with a large rectangular field of green. Green.

It was Astroturf. The Bulldogs had captured prisoners (including Johnny) and were keeping them inside giant nets on either end of this field marked with strange white lines and circles, and were playing a sport where the goal was to fling spiked iron balls into the nets. Kill a prisoner, get a touchdown.

Dan went to get Zeke and they attempted a Stealth rescue under cover of darkness. The engagement roll was a 1! The Bulldogs changed up whatever “sport” they were playing at and dragged Johnny from the net. Something new was going on and it wasn’t good! Had the Third Rails been spotted?

We’ll find out next time. Hopefully Johnny’s player can make it again so I can thrust him immediately into something Desperate and confusing.