A Explosão episode 4.

A Explosão episode 4.

The stalwart crew at anarcho-feminist newspaper A Explosão are on the hunt for their next big story. The dockers and the local street gang – the Três Cachos – are now actively hostile, and the monarchist and communist papers are gaining ground.

In this session, I tried out a new standardised “score” for breaking a story. It consists of two stages, each with a 6-segment clock. First is the legwork, getting the facts, quotes/attribution and pictures. Then is the write-up: headline, lede, nutshell, kicker, printing.

I also made a sheet of story leads and events, mostly cribbed from the BitD sheets, for the players to choose from as prompts.

First of all, Maria the lurk comes running into the office, an abandoned warehouse, pursued by police and covered in blood. She didn’t stab that policeman but try telling them that. Victor the leech disposes of the knife; Octavia the cutter talks Sergeant Marques round while Maria leads the constables on a wild goose chase. She gives her bloodied clothes to one of the paper’s street-urchin gang to dispose of, which will come back to haunt them.

The crew later parlay the connection with the sergeant into a lookouts claim: they’re now hooked into the cops’ local network of informants. Octavia pulls this off in her inimitably violent way by roughing up Marques, but seems to have fallen for him too and the pair hit the town in a big way that night. She comes to work the next day with a raging hangover.

Over the following days, the crew successfully breaks the story of medical neglect at a city orphanage operated by American missionaries. Maria gets herself into the building undercover as an orphan, while Victor helps to get the photos.

Next they decide to confront the Três Cachos head-on. Maria breaks into the home of the gang’s leader, Pica-Pau, and steals his prized navalha (straight razor).

“What first tips you off that Pica-Pau isn’t alone here?” “He’s blindfolded and his hands are tied to the bed frame.”

The next day, the paper runs a front-page challenge, inviting Pica-Pau to a fight on the beach, with his navalha as the prize. He accepts, naturally.

The day of the fight is a big event attracting hundreds of onloookers: Pica-Pau shows up in his white suit with a malacca cane for a weapon. Octavia wears her mother’s wedding dress (“I might not get another chance.”) and brings a cricket bat.

Thanks to some chemical bat-preparations by Victor, her fighting abilities and pushing herself, Octavia wins the day and embarrasses Pica-Pau. With a roll of 2, 2, 3, 6, it was a close-run thing, and I’d made clear that Pica-Pau would do his best to kill Octavia (4 harm).

The Três Cachos splinter, dropping a tier but going to war with the newspaper crew. The incident gets a glowing review in their own paper. The rest of the popular press goes with MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN COMMITS VIOLENT OUTRAGE.

Next session (my players, look away now): war against the remnants of the Três Cachos; the dockers arrange for an eviction order at the warehouse; whatever other trouble the crew create.