Copperhead County: Let’s Be Cops
After an expensive recovery downtime last session, the Hunnicutts manage to pull off a stick-up job assisted by a roll20.net RNG that finally took pity on them.
The Hunnicutts are a Blood crew, which is based on using family ties to increase your crew’s prestige. Many abilities are feud-based or involve family ties. Our particular family got into crime to raise money for the family patriarch, Ezekiel Hunnicutt, and his struggle with COPD.
Zeke the Stringer (planning, group actions, setups), failed start-up entrepreneur played by Adam Maunz
Earl the Cleaner (stealth, hunting, murder), corrupt cop played by Tyler Ellis
Eustace the Mover (speed, daring, cars), ex-con dirtbag played by me
Jason Eley as the GM
We decided to go after some Turf and chose the Gia Dinh Nui (Vietnamese protection racket) as our targets, as they had strongarmed our NPC cousin, Wayne, during a previous Entanglement result. This session saw the first of many crits during our opening Gather Information roll. We staked out the strip where Wayne had informed us the GDN operate, and ended up in a perfect position to witness a drug handoff at a Vietnamese market between the Barnett mob (higher-tier west-side old-school) and four GDN members (including Danny Tran, who was the guy who’d roughed up Wayne).
We deliberated whether we should go for all six guys and try for the drugs and the money, but we were gun-shy after our abject failure two sessions ago and waited for the Barnetts to leave before we moved in. Our plan? Use Earl’s connections to the police and pretend to be cops.
Earl flashed back to the precinct supply room, and although he got some badges for us to use, he ended up seducing his lieutenant in a great scene. Detective Lind will be poking her head into Earl’s business more often now, which isn’t good for criming, but we got our symbols of systemic abuse and white privilege.
Engagement roll was a 6 (again, a marked improvement over our 1 previously). We didn’t start off yelling (well, not too much), but our attempts at playing the dirty cops just looking for their cut weren’t enough. Last crew upgrade, we all took bonus dice in Fight because it’s a good plan B. Zeke also has several great Stringer abilities that boost setups and group actions. Mechanically, we were able to work together much more efficiently than in the past, and critted a controlled group Fight roll to put the GDN boys on the pavement.
I played Eustace’s Vicious trauma here, pistol whipping Danny well after he’d been taken down. It took Zeke to physically get Eustace off Danny, which was an opportunity for one or some of the guys to make a break for it. Zeke kept rolling sixes though, and the danger didn’t manifest.
We scared them into staying north of the strip, allowing us to move in on some new turf of our own. We didn’t let slip we weren’t really cops. We made off with some kush for Wayne to move. We tiered up to Tier 1. We didn’t leave any bodies (really, our choices were no bodies or four bodies).
It also (for me, anyway) felt really skeevy. It was a nasty plan to basically use some of the worst things about our country and have it work that well, you know?
Seriously, our dice rolls: 6, 2, 4, 6, (66, 6, 6) (a group roll), 2, 4, 6, 6, 3, 3, 5, 2, (5, 66, 5), 6, 6, 5
#copperheadcounty
“his struggle with COPD” #CopperheadCounty is about real-life situations
I’ve been waiting throughout campaign for Earl to abuse his badge to aid the family, and it happened at an opportune time. The flashback where he ended up seducing his boss is just an all-time RPG moment for me. As soon as he flubbed that flashback action to Creep into the supply closet (where the cops keep their extra badges, I guess), I knew what the consequence was (a good benefit of introducing Lind a few downtime’s ago, just to flesh out Earl’s world), and as soon as she entered the scene, it was like everyone knew what Earl was going to do. A potentially momentous development in the campaign, all because of a 3 on a flashback action.
One of my favorite things about GMing this game is that it’s set in the city and it’s residential suburbs (unlike my previous play test campaign which was set in the rural county), and it’s a treat for me to use bland everyday locations for our jobs. This crew mostly hangs out at their dad’s house and a burger place, and they’ve crimed at an apartment complex, a college campus maintenance building, a grocery store… I really get a kick out of it.
Yeah, a bunch of white dudes rolling up on a small-time Vietnamese gang, robbing them in order to enrich our own criminal enterprise, all under the guise of being cops was a complicated and 2017-America-ass thing to do.