#glowinthedarkrpg

#glowinthedarkrpg

We find out what Johnny Tabernacle, the Third Rails’ Leftover, was doing as a prisoner of the Boneyard Bulldogs before his friends came to rescue him. Zeke the Junker gains no XP and Johnny Traumas out during a flashback.

Last time, Lt. Dan Halen (a Reaper) and Zeke rolled up on the Bulldogs’ fortress in a ruined high school but got a 1 on the engagement roll. Before addressing that, I spent some time bringing Johnny Tabernacle’s player up to speed and playing through his downtime as a prisoner of the Bulldogs, which limited his options but he found a way to indulge his vice (denial, satiated through his hand terminal’s offline Netflix library). He managed to Barter his life in exchange for granting the Bulldogs access to the few stored sports movies in his hand terminal’s library (like Scheherazade). By making himself a useful prisoner, Johnny secured himself access to the sports doc and was able to Recover his wounds from his first session as well.

Sadly, as a complication from his Barter roll, Johnny’s library ran out and he was next in line for the Bulldogs’ next sadistic bloodsport. Meanwhile, Dan and Zeke were making their approach. We talked about what kind of terrible situation Johnny could be thrown into and settled on “fighting mutant beasts”. I had mentioned that the Bulldogs had two stripped-down bodytank frames that they used for certain sports, like “swing prisoners in bags at each other like a bloody pillow fight until one power armor frame gets knocked off a platform”. As a Leftover, Johnny had a bodytank available as one of his personal items.

Letting a prisoner have access to powered armor just because it was on his sheet? It’d make sense for it to be a hard “no” this time, but I figured maybe this is how Johnny gets a bodytank. Plus, it was license to make the creatures he was up against pretty nasty, so Dan and Zeke saw their friend in the middle of the astroturf facing three radscorpions. Johnny’s power armor didn’t have much in the way of actual

armor (the obvious weak spot flaw) and its powerplant was draining fast (limited power), but since Johnny was a former moon colonist and not some wasteland savage, he was able to jailbreak the armor’s admin settings and unlock potential the Bulldogs weren’t aware of (the Fast and Strong edges).

There was still the problem of the 20+ Bulldogs in the bleachers and on the field spectating, plus the four watchtowers surrounding the area. Dan took one watchtower guard while Zeke used a flashback to trade favor for favor with the Monarchs, a gang of plant and insect mutants who are trade partners with the Third Rails (the Monarchs originally asked for more than just a favor, but Zeke’s Barter roll was superb). A squad of a dozen locust-people arced down out of the night sky into the Bulldogs, causing instant chaos!

I like running big, complex fights in Blades. Using clocks and Tier/fortune rolls lets you engage the mechanics (so you’re not just using fiat) but still prevents a battle from feeling onerous. Within the larger chaos, a few interesting choices and mechanics were tested:

1. Lt. Dan knifes a watchtower guard and sets up to just shoot a second guard. He has more dice in Raid, but chooses to roll Hunt instead because Hunt won’t cost him an ammo dot and Raid will. My hack: working as expected!

2. Unlike my vanilla Blades game, I wanted to set a precedent for resistance rolls reducing harm by default instead of avoiding harm (I was a softie before and it’s bit us in the ass now that the characters are all experienced). Dan’s choice of Hunt got him a “Grazed Thigh” wound, downgrading from “Shredded Thigh” instead of avoiding it entirely. It makes spending armor – and remembering to keep back some load items for it – more important, because I generally do let Armor just stop an attack cold unless I can’t reconcile it in the fiction.

3. Zeke throws molotovs and hand grenades from the relative safety of outside the fence. It helps some (the molotov separating Johnny from the scorpions flanking him, allowing him to pitch one into the Bulldogs in the bleachers) and hurts some (a 1 on the grenade peppers Johnny with shrapnel instead of the scorpions). While effective in the moment, we’d see later that when Zeke doesn’t act like a Junker, his XP triggers don’t fire. If he had whipped up a homemade bomb, he’d have gotten XP for it. I asked afterwards if it was weird or discouraging, but Zeke’s player agreed that he wasn’t taking desperate risks and he wasn’t doing Junker-type things.

As the Bulldogs beat down the remaining Monarchs, Johnny crits the two remaining radscorpions, killing each of them with the other’s stingers. He makes a run for it, using his suit’s fast edge to outpace pursuit. Dan slides down the watchtower, landing on his hurt leg, and is about to be overtaken on his way back to Zeke’s jalopy when Zeke charges the pursuing Bulldogs in the Subaru Bratmobile. He ticks Armor as one shotguns the windshield (pig-iron welding mask), Dan clambers in, and the Third Rails take off into the night.

Payoff, aka “No Reward is Worth This”

Other than stripping the bodytank for parts, which they didn’t want to do yet, the Third Rails really only recovered Johnny on this run. That would leave them with only 2 supplies after upkeep, so Johnny asked for a flashback where he was palming valuables during his captivity. He had no dots in Finesse or Prowl, so he’d rolling 2d take lowest. He was getting high on stress and didn’t want to push himself and although I don’t remember the devil’s bargain I made, I remember he didn’t want to take it.

The dice came up 6… and 1.

The Bulldogs discover his trickery and lock him in a room where they play the Monday Night Football theme on a loop (shades of Daryl from the Walking Dead). Level 2 Harm, “Catatonic”. Johnny resists with Resolve, avoiding the harm, but only gets a 2. The extra 4 stress is too much and he Traumas out.

During a flashback.

Johnny’s player figured out the answer. His rival is “Nine Cat Nine”, a radio voice. The Bulldogs called in a favor and Nine Cat Nine starts broadcasting the MNF theme over open air. Johnny’s bodytank radio picks it up and, unable to escape the music, collapses in a catatonic heap.

When the crew returns, they find the denizens of Prism City hungry and anxious. When it becomes known that they returned practically empty-handed, the settlement turns its eye on stripping down anything they can to trade for food. This was the Fallout roll, which resulted in Drastic Measures: Desperate for raw materials, your crew razes one of its own claims for resources. Choose a claim to destroy, gaining your tier in supplies, or stop the madness some other way. If you do not have additional claims, then you must take the second option.

We stopped there and will do downtime and upkeep next session. How will the Third Rails stop their own settlement from literally tearing itself apart? How will the Boneyard Bulldogs retaliate? What kind of favor will the Monarchs call in, and when?