Glow in the Dark: Relics Playtest

Glow in the Dark: Relics Playtest

The Final Pam- er, Chapter

The Relics were out in the Barrens (inhospitable wilderness, overgrown with deadly flora and stalked by mutant beasts), hunting down a contingent from the Ape Empire who had managed to clone/hack/kidnap their compound’s AI, SIRI. This was Fallout from their last run, and the players chose to settle it the hard way instead of paying a hefty ransom.

The trio of Nestor the Leftover, Torch the Junker, and Rooster the Driver observed the apes from a few hundred yards out. The simians were on a promontory of cracked earth jutting from the overgrown ruins of a farm, using a fire truck’s ladder to raise some sort of comms dish high enough to intercept the Relics’ transmissions and “steal” SIRI. In addition to an offroad IROC-Z guarding the operation, there were deadly Yaxels (yak-bat creatures) circling the area, plus it would be night soon. You don’t want the be in the Barrens at night. It was a fairly straightforward situation with good intel, so the Relics opted for an Assault plan. Rooster marked “Fine Anti-Vehicular Weapon” and Nestor marked off “Bodytank”. Torch had brought her new invention, a “fire-flinger”, kind of like a potato gun firing napalm bombs.

The engagement roll was risky – the IROC saw them coming, but Rooster’s “Beat the Snake” ability let him fire before the apes could. The Driver’s Carl Gustav recoilless rifle thundered, hitting near the Camaro and blowing off a wheel. The ape’s return fire flew wide, serving only to draw the attention of nearby yaxels (mixed success, doing limited effect and marking a tick on a yaxel clock). Torch’s fire-flinger finished off the hapless vehicle and the apes inside (6, so no blowback from the invention’s volatile flaw).

The apes on the promontory flew into action. Three gorilla-type guards (Macho, Peels, and Konga) dropped prone and crawled to the edge, hoping to return fire with small arms. The apes’ driver and two techs frantically tried to stow the comms gear and get the fire truck moving. Nestor made quick work of Macho, counter-sniping him with a laser rifle before the ape could shoot him or his friends. Torch’s fire-flinger cut off the truck’s escape route as Rooster fired his Carl Gustav again. A crit! Additional effect: surgical precision. The fire truck was immobilized but could be repaired.

Things were going really poorly for the Ape Empire, and I made a middling fortune roll to see how they’d react. The driver just ran for it, and one of the yaxels swooped lower as the ape crashed through thorny brambles. The techs, Baud and Tack, started unhooking the comms gear, planning on carrying the equipment out if they couldn’t drive it out. Meanwhile, Peels and Konga rolled down the promontory and into the cover afforded by the ruined farm. They were still on the attack.

Nestor tried to make his way through the twisted flora up to the fire truck, but Peels ambushed him, leaping off a dilapidated silo and tackling the bodytank to the ground! (risky trek, fail -> desperate position) Ape and man struggled, servos straining against mutated ape strength!

Torch decided the best way to help would of course be to set the farm on fire. A devil’s bargain and partial success later, Nestor and Peels wrestled amidst roaring napalm, but Konga was flushed from her position towards Rooster. It looks as though the driver was about to be caught off guard by a charging gorilla, but Rooster used his trusty Carl Gustav like a baseball bat, smashing the weapon into Konga’s face and knocking her out (full success, prisoner captured, devil’s bargain for broken weapon).

There was still the matter of the two ape techs trying to make off with their truck’s data. Torch snorted her botdust and reached out, making a bizarre wireless connection with the comms gear, searching for the pathways to overload the equipment and shock the apes. She did it, but the feedback threatened to fry her brain (risky, partial success, level 2 harm “brain burn” resisted to level 1 “migraines”) as the nanites overheated with effort. The two apes, thinking their gear was useless now, also retreated into the Barrens.

Peels tore Nestor’s helmet off his power armor and raised her fists for the killing blow, but Nestor has the ability “Pearly Whites”. They shared a desperate moment in the firelight and, although it was perhaps due to the encroaching flames that threatened both of them rather than Nestor’s disarming countenance, Peels relented. The downside was that the heat was rapidly draining Nestor’s power reserves. He was already at 4/8 for his suit’s flaw Limited Power, and I moved to tick 3 more as complications from a desperate Sway roll. He resisted like a boss, however, popping the heat sinks now he wasn’t in immediate combat.

Torch marked armor (a firefighter’s turnout coat) and scrambled through the blaze to the fire truck. Rooster’s attacks had left the fire truck immobile but fixable, and Torch pulled her tool kit out and got to work. The fires spread, both from the farm below as well as her earlier attempt to block the truck’s escape route. The engine wouldn’t turn over! Rooster drove his car, Layla, up the hill and flooded the scene with his highbeams so Torch could see what she was doing. The flames were at the truck now, a desperate situation, and finally Torch got her six. The truck roared to life and burst through the fire.

After their brief standoff and realization that both man and ape wanted to escape the inferno more than they wanted to kill each other, Nestor clambered up the slope and onto the fire truck, leaving Peels to an uncertain fate, shaken to her core by the man who fought like an ape.

~~~

This standout session marks the end of my Relics playtest, and I cannot thank my players Matt Schwaninger, Jason Eley, Logan Shoup, and Thomas Berton enough for their energy and thoughtful feedback.

Today I Learned: The Relics need just a little more help from their playbook prompts, XP triggers, and so on. As they are now, they’re more of a theme rather than a tribe with a purpose or method of surviving the apocalypse. Our playbooks meshed really well, however: Leftover, Junker, and Driver all had a lot of synergy.

Our starting situation back at the start of the playtests was… better than in my first playtest. That’s all I can say. It’s fine. But tribe-specific starting situations might work a lot better. We also talked about “Professional” as a tribe’s reputation in the post-apocalypse. We agreed that there are situations where that might fit, but this tribe of Relics maybe wasn’t embodying “professionalism” exactly. Perhaps each tribe might have a slightly customized list of reputations to choose from, but I’ve been thinking about that and I feel that maybe we just need to tweak the list that’s there a little bit.

I also learned that all my playtest groups have gravitated towards the more gonzo factions. Big Red, the sentient drone semi truck. Noah, the AI remnant of a pre-war weather service. The Monarchs, bug/plant mutant drug dealers. The Ape Empire. Glow in the Dark definitely has room for your car gangs and guzzoline pirates, but the Blacktop Society, Knight Riders, Ash Lords, and so on don’t seem to be as popular.

What’s Next / Roadmap: After I tweak a few things based on this group, I’ll be releasing Glow in the Dark v6 probably in the next week or so.

Thanks again to my playtesters! If you’re playtesting your own hack or are just LFG, this community has resulted in some really wonderful experiences. I was really nervous putting the call out for randos, but I couldn’t be more pleased.

#glowinthedarkrpg