When It’s Time to Party We Will Party Hard, a Glow in the Dark story
A reverse assault! Our first instance of social harm! Teenage love! Indoor bonfires! Burning to death! Read on!
The Big Game Approaches
Last downtime, Johnny Tabernacle the Leftover was trying to patch things up with the Boneyard Bulldogs, a sports-themed raider tribe. Coach Boss’ playbooks prophesied of the apocalyptic Big Game, the second Ragnarok promised by the Bulldogs’ god Mad’n. Johnny’s first trauma came about at the hands of the Bulldogs, and the moonbase survivor was obsessed with football. He’d been using his downtimes building this opportunity to basically do wasteland Blood Bowl. The Bulldogs were willing to call this truce, but they had a condition.
The Bulldogs needed time to train, and their sometimes-allies, the Free Radicals, needed another place to crash. The Third Rails said they were okay with visitors, and went to prepare their settlement, Prism City, for the new arrivals.
This was part of the Diplomacy fallout/entanglement we’d rolled previously. The tribe accepted the favor, and during the deal we agreed that if they did this for the Bulldogs, their faction status would raise back up to neutral.
House Guests
The Free Radicals are a Tier I nomadic raider tribe, and my default “it’s okay to whoop these people” group. They believe the wasteland is the afterlife, and when they die they go back to fight alongside the Atomic Prophet in the Last War. This makes them fearless, hedonistic, and wasteful. They’re locusts – a mix between the Wee Free Men, the dirtbike gang from Fury Road, and extreme sports/energy drink bros (think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO2Abp0FbA0). Inspired the most by King Radical from Dr. McNinja.
It was the Bulldogs’ hope that dealing with the Radicals would lead to both the Third Rails and the Radicals being weakened or even wiped out. What happened instead was Johnny suggested they throw a party. Zeke the Junker suggested they spike the booze, and Dan Halen the Reaper threw in his supply of drugs to help. This was essentially their plan for the “score” – a Deception plan via spiking the drinks. The engagement roll was Risky, which made sense given the Radicals’ volatile nature.
Young Love
Billy the Feral (a tween vault survivor gone feral) decided he was in love with Princess Yolo Jones, one of the Radicals. We started a clock and Billy managed to make some meager progress by bringing the young Yolo some fresh kills, as if he were a cat or something. It was a mixed success, however, so while Princess Yolo was moved by Billy’s ability as a provider, the meager attention she returned just fueled Billy’s aspirations. He took level 2 harm “Smitten” and didn’t even consider resisting it.
What’s Yours is Mine
The party started around dark, down in the Prism City underground. A decrepit corpse of a mall dinner theater was ground zero for an indoor bonfire and bacchanalia. While the party raged, Zeke went topside to loot the Free Radicals’ bikes. He went with the tribe’s robot butler/driver/muscle, Mr. Clanky. This proved to be wise as two of the Radicals, too wounded or exhausted to join the party, spotted Zeke picking through the vehicles (2 supplies looted, but mixed success). I rolled fortune to see if the Radicals had anything loud or especially dangerous on them. I rolled a 1. The hand crossbow pinged off Zeke’s armor and then Mr. Clanky brutalized both nomads in the style of an Elysium drone. Now it was a party.
Burning Man
Billy saw Boost, one of the Radicals, sidle up to Princess Yolo and start dancing with her. Obviously, the young boy’s mind went directly to murder. Dan Halen noticed Billy angling through the dancing crowd towards Boost and started a wasteland mosh pit to cover what he figured was about to happen. Because of Dan’s setup action, Billy got increased effect when he Prowled up and shoved Boost away from Yolo – right into the bonfire. Some of the Radicals spun on Billy. Some gestured in some kind of religious observance as Boost died (and presumably respawned to fight alongside the Prophet). It was clear the scene was turning ugly, so Johnny triggered the ancient sprinklers, which had been hacked via flashback to spray sedatives sourced from the Third Rails’ drug-dealing mutant allies the Monarchs. Johnny critted and the Free Radicals were pacified – for now.
XP for the XP God!
We wrapped there. I’m not sure if this was a cliffhanger or just the end of the score. It was a fun and different kind of session, though. “Surviving house guests” doesn’t seem very post-apocalyptic, but with the characters being who they were, I think it wasn’t too off-brand, so to speak.
I felt that having such a simple premise allowed everyone to shine RP-wise – this was borne out by the fairly high XP rewards. It was nice to push the boundaries of things you can do in the wasteland too. Not everything’s fighting (and tbh not everything has been fighting so far), and it’s good that Glow in the Dark can support variety like that.
This was also interesting to run because it was essentially a social attack on the PCs’ settlement. The engagement roll was about how prepared they would be when something could go wrong. The worst outcomes I had in mind were pretty bad – I mean, this is the tribe’s home – but the dice stayed out of that 1-3 range this time.
Mechanics-wise, I feel Blades is at its best at Tier I and II. Players are more confident, characters have more special abilities to play with, and the tribes/crews aren’t always outclassed. We’re here now with the Third Rails and coming back to this level of play after our crazy Tier IV vanilla Blades game and our beginning Tier 0 crime family in Jason Eley’s Copperhead County game really hit a sweet spot for me.
Design Update
I’ve been working on v7 of the Glow in the Dark rules. I’ve moved to InDesign (hoo boy what a change), incorporated all the art, and have been doing a ton of reading and re-reading and tweaking. I want to have some random tables in the game. They’re fun and I think very appropriate for this setting. I also have made enough progress on roll20 character sheets that we could use them for last night’s game. The faction and tribe sheets aren’t started yet, but the character sheet works pretty well. When I release this version, I’d like to make it as easy as possible for people to get into it and that means roll20 support.
#glowinthedarkrpg