Author: Jason Eley

#CopperheadCounty AP: The continuing adventures of my playtest for my modern-southern-criminal hack.

More on the hack at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JasonEley/posts/5LhUpew5xRK

For previous adventures, check the tag.

Our last Copperhead County session was a doozy, so this is pretty long! The crew ended up overseeing a five-faction firefight, multiple rocket launchers were fired, buildings and vehicles were exploded, old enemies were slain, and new allies were made. All in a day’s work for the Hellraisin’ crew known only by their rural dive bar, Marlene’s.

Technical notes: This session had a lot of clocks flying around to track multiple sides fighting each other, and it worked super smoothly. I also tried the Uncertain Resistance rules for the first time, and really, really dig them and am adopting them for this game.

This was our second game back from a holiday hiatus, but I’ll dispense with the first one quickly: The major issue facing the Marlenes is that, after foolishly starting a war with the Heathens MC (tier 3, bad biker dudes) in season 1, the Heathens have taken over their bar and made the PCs pay them 2 Cash every downtime. Last week, Zeke, the Heathens captain put in charge of Marlene’s, bade the PCs to accompany him on a heist of the nearby historic Lester Hawkins Distillery, in order to make off with their valuable rare whiskeys. This was also part of the Heathens’ plans to weaken the Barnett Organization (tier 3, a no-drama weed-growing mob), who had their hooks in the distillery.

Dubious of the plan, Camila the Wheeler tried to set up a meeting with the Barnetts and critted, as her musician friend Baird hooked her up with a Barnett captain, Gabrielle. Camila impressed her with the need to kick the Heathens out of town, and received permission to hit the distillery, in exchange for terms TBD.

Later, the PCs and Zeke attempted the heist, and after looting a few expensive bottles from the gift shop, split up. Half of the crew ran afoul of security, who radioed another guard, who called the cops. Not caring enough about Zeke’s heist to risk the cops, the crew high-tailed it out of there, gaining barely any Cash and a good amount of Heat.

For their next job after that flub, the crew was eager to finally make their stand against the Heathens. They soon got their chance when Zeke came to them again, this time needing their help against the Pettimore Clan (tier 4, a brutal mountain crime family), who the crew had gotten mixed up with in season 1. The Heathens had scoped out the Pettimore’s drug pipeline, and discovered they were getting heroin shipments from a Mexican cartel via a mountain airstrip. The scheme was for Zeke and the crew to put eyes on the airstrip before an upcoming delivery, and when the time was right, signal the motorcycles to come in and take the product.

Meanwhile, Marvin the Brick completed a long-term project he’d had for a while: Directing Starla, one of the escorts in their employ who was often in the company of Zeke, to find out what his plans were. This was great timing, as Starla soon came to Marvin stricken: she had overheard Zeke on the phone with the Heathens MC President, intimating that after the airstrip deal, the Heathens would turn on the crew and take Marlene’s for themselves.

Obviously, it was time to take down Zeke, so the PCs made their own plan. Using their own gang of Soldiers, and their alliance with Jensen Allbright (tier 1, a rich Californian intruding into the local market) and his bodyguard, Houston, they would wait for the airstrip battle to begin, then assault the Heathens themselves.

As the job began, the crew and Zeke arrived at the airstrip in one of their heavy vans, finding a simple setup: in a small valley surrounded by hills was a rough airstrip and a small outbuilding. Their engagement roll was a 3, and so they soon found yet another faction busting up the deal: the Copperhead Patriots (tier 2, a militia with very bad opinions) came flooding over the hills across from them in trucks, firing on the Pettimores and threatening to take the loot for themselves. (In retrospect, I wish I had spawned these dudes behind or nearer to the PCs. My intention was to complicate the PCs’ planned approach and have the Patriots threaten the plane. That worked out, but as a result most of the crew were insulated from the firefight, and I would have preferred to threaten them more directly. That’s life!)

As a flashback action, Jesse the Stringer had reckoned that someone might come in from that direction, and so had already set up Willem the Cleaner in a deer blind with his trusty sniper rifle. Rather than charge down into the bulletstorm, the PCs decided to hang back for a round while Zeke signaled his Heathens calvary to charge down to the strip. At this point, I created a status clock for each of the enemy gangs, as well as a Plane Distance clock measuring the approach of the cartel plane, and a Sheriff Response clock measuring the response time of the county cops (who are allied with the Pettimores). Then I rolled quality for all of the gangs to see how much they shot each other, and periodically advanced the Distance and Response clocks after the PCs and gangs had acted.

As the firefight raged, Willem started to pop off individual Patriots with his sniper rifle, not wanting to give up the game with the Heathens just yet. Then Marvin recklessly (his Trauma) charged down the hill, wielding an RPG launcher he’d thoughtfully brought along, and fired a rocket down into the airstrip outbuilding. As a Devil’s Bargain, he agreed that in his reckless haste, he had left all of his other rockets in the van, and so this was his only shot. The outbuilding blew up good, hurting the Pettimores’ defenses, but Marvin’s body armor was shredded by their rifle fire.

Meanwhile, Jesse had a complex plan to take care of Zeke. As a flashback, he and Haddie the Hazard had trapped the locks of the van, so that when he directed Zeke to stay in the van while they all went outside, the van became an unescapable deathtrap. Then Jesse and Haddie doused the van in gas, and Jesse threw the fateful match before Zeke had a chance to alert anyone. With Marvin’s extra rockets still inside the van, it blew up immediately, completely incinerating ol’ Zeke. RIP to an NPC I really liked playing, who the PCs hated intensely. (I later gave them a Cash penalty to the job for destroying their own van.)

As this was going on, Marvin and Willem continued firing into the chaos, rolling well on their resistances and taking lots of stress to avoid harm and shoot good. As the cartel plane approached, Willem saw one of the Patriots go for his own RPG, but used his superior Reflexes to shoot him down before he could wreck the plane. The plane, seeing that the airstrip had become an explosive free-for-all, banked back up and flew into the night (after Marvin’s player called for a fortune roll to see if they still had fuel, and they did. The cartel comes prepared!).

With the enemies weakened, Camila directed Houston’s gang, as well as the crew’s own gang, to sweep down to the airstrip in their trucks and open fire on the Heathens. The battle continued to rage, and even young Haddie got into the destruction, using her own rocket launcher to blow up the Patriots’ trucks, leaving them at the others’ mercies. The remaining Pettimores were soon destroyed before the allied forces took down the rest of the Patriots, and then mopped up the final Heathens, suffering only minor losses to Houston’s crew (who never rolled above a 3).

Left in the bloody, fiery aftermath, the crew and their allies high-fived and worked on an escape plan. A fortune roll revealed that one of the Pettimores’ trucks had survived the outbuilding explosion, and Haddie hotwired it as Camila surveyed the wreckage, finding a big bag of money that the Pettimores had brought for the deal. By this point, the Sheriff Response clock was almost complete, and it came down to the wire as Haddie got the truck working and sped everyone away before they arrived. If not for her quick driving, the crew would have probably gotten into a firefight with the cops and would definitely have gained a Wanted Level.

With Zeke dead and the Heathens’ plan foiled, the MC’s grip over Marlene’s was gone, and the bikers frittered away back to their holes. The crew now had their own turf back, and with all the Rep gained from this job, could afford to increase their Hold, and are now halfway to Tier II. Camila met with Gabrielle Barnett again and agreed to her terms of friendship: the Marlenes would stay out of Barnett territory in the city, and stay out of the weed game. Then Camila lingered in her company… could romance bloom between these crime lords?

Find out next time on… #CopperheadCounty

#CopperheadCounty AP: The Best Brands Hijack

This is the continuing tale of my playtest game of Copperhead County, my modern-southern-criminal Blades hack. If you want to read the entire saga up to this point:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JasonEley/posts/PcYiYuWjSud

If you want to read more about the hack:

Playbooks: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxKYBKmPes3HQXV0RExOUnhwUkE

(special thanks to Adam Schwaninger for letting me use his files to make these PDFs!)

Factions/some setting: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxKYBKmPes3HX1h2dmJ3TXdrOEk

This was a somewhat uncharacteristic adventure for our Hellraisers: they didn’t piss anyone off and they didn’t blow anything up. They merely worked together and got a nice payday with little Heat. If only the life of crime could always be so simple…

After the crew’s last adventure, ransacking a gun workshop run by the Heathens MC, we discussed a few different things they could do next, and they decided to make a move into stolen goods. I’d had an idea in mind for a while and was ready to go: their mechanic contact set them up to meet Rich Sturges, a shady pawn shop owner, at a Triple B’s restaurant (the B’s stand for Buffalo, BBQ, and Beer: maybe I should trademark this idea) in a new shopping center in the city suburbs. Rich was looking for a crew of criminals to break into the shopping center’s Best Brands, a big-box electronics retailer, and make off with all the iPhones, iPads, and HDTVs they could carry. Then he’d fence the goods through his store, kick up to the Mob, and everyone would have a nice payday. If they got along, maybe he’d work with them again as their Pawn Fence.

The PCs took him up on the offer and set about gathering info on the store. Haddie the Hazard asked around and learned the Best Brands delivery truck arrived early Tuesday mornings, while Jesse the Marker scoped out the shopping center and noted that, with a nearby movie theater bustling with the summer blockbuster season, they couldn’t count on the area being quiet at night. So rather than heisting the store directly, and dealing with security guards, cameras, and civilians, they decided to hijack the delivery truck before it reached the store. They set up a stakeout in the center’s 24-hour Zip Burger (tier 2, a regional burger chain based in the county) the next Tuesday morning and observed the truck’s approach and delivery, confident they could pinpoint the truck in the wild next time.

Flash to the next week, when the plan came together: the crew’s Gang of Soldiers, led by their lieutenant Cole, would take a crew van and set up on the highway, alerting the crew to the truck’s approach. Meanwhile, Marvin the Heavy and Willem the Cleaner would take Jesse’s car, an old sedan that could pass for an unmarked police car, and approach the truck on the highway, using a storebought siren to force it to pull over into a weigh station. Jesse, Haddie, and Camila the Wheeler would wait in the weigh station, ready to unload the truck once the driver was dealt with. With a strong ‘fake police car’ detail, I gave them a 4d Engagement roll, and they 6ed it.

They successfully pulled over the truck, and I created two clocks: Notice, to measure the danger of their weigh station hijacking being noticed by passing vehicles, and Suspicion, to measure the truck driver’s suspicion that Marvin, a towering man wearing a bulletproof vest, was not a real cop. Marvin ordered the driver out of the truck while Willem tried to sneak around to the back; unfortunately, the driver spotted him, and his suspicion grew that a weedy junkie in a hoodie was not actually the cop’s partner. The driver came out, and tried to hand Marvin a $50, explaining that he was making an important delivery to the city, and his friends wouldn’t be happy with the delay. No dice with Marvin, who tried to yell the driver down, but the driver’s Suspicion clock filled and he got right back in Marvin’s face. So, Marvin punched his lights out. Feeling bad about hurting a civilian, Marvin then decided to take some Cash out of his own pocket and slip it into the driver’s, showing there were no hard feelings (one of their reputations is for being For The People).

With the truck secured, the crew then had a long argument about whether to take the truck into the mountains and unload it, or whether to find a road off of the highway and do it: the difference being that the mountains would offer seclusion from notice, but with the danger of crashing the truck; while staying along the highway would be safer for the truck, but more dangerous for them. They ultimately took it into the mountains and worked very hard and took a lot of stress to safely park the truck on a dirt road, then worked together with their Gang to unload the merchandise into their vans. During the offload, Willem dropped a box, and out spilled a blizzard of packing peanuts and a flurry of white powder. It seemed that when the truck driver said he had an important delivery to make, he wasn’t kidding. Camila gave the matter a quick consideration and determined the hidden cocaine was meant for the Mountain Mafia (tier 4, the old-guard county mob, the most powerful criminal faction in the area). Wisely deciding not to antagonize the Mob, they decided to have Rich, who had some connections with them, return the cocaine with their apologies.

A simple, low-key truck hijacking gave the crew a nice bundle of Cash and very little Heat. But the glow didn’t last long, because their post-score Entanglement rolled Show of Force: a negative-status faction makes a play against them. Checking their faction statuses, I decided to tie this into the events of their last adventure, along with a faction I’d been hoping to position as a villain this season.

Camila got a call from Jensen Allbright, the Californian transplant they’re allied with against the Heathens MC (see last job), that his own shipment of gunsmith machinery had been attacked by the Copperhead Patriots (tier 2, an extremist militia with very bad opinions). It seemed they would either need to give up Jensen’s gun trade, which he had agreed to pay them a percentage of, to the Patriots, or step up and go to war… and they chose war. They’d better watch out next time: as cathartic as it may be to beat on those stars-and-bars-waving militiamen, the Patriots can more than match them gun-for-gun and explosion-for-explosion…

#CopperheadCounty AP:

I’m back on the AP horse for my playtest game of Copperhead County, my modern-southern-crime hack. In a nutshell, Copperhead County is a modern-day Blades game set in a fictional southeastern Tennessee county with a long history of crime and corruption. See this post for my last update on the project:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JasonEley/posts/3wedc2LPCa4

Last week, we started Season 2 of the game after a six-score Season 1 and a brief hiatus. I’ve missed posting several sessions, so I’ll recap the whole thing thus far! It’s super long, so feel free to walk on, or to settle in with some tea.

Our heroes: the towering Marvin the Heavy; the deadly weirdo Willem the Cleaner; the young chemist Haddie the Hazard; the stylish and canny Camila the Wheeler; and the sly gamer Jesse the Marker. This band of Hellraisers operates out of the small town of Piney Springs, TN, from a dingy bar called Marlene’s.

The game began with my starting situation, Fire On the Mountain: the Pettimore Clan (Tier 3), the longtime masters of local back-country crime, were attacked by unknown enemies when one of their mountainside drug labs was blown up, burning away their product and their family patriarch. The family set about pressuring other crews in response, and since the PCs started with a negative status with the McMorrow Clan (Tier 1), another backwoods crime family with an ancient feud against the Pettimores, the Pettimore captain Horace recruited the Marlenes to strike against the McMorrows.

Job 1: The PCs tracked Kyle McMorrow, a former high school classmate of Haddie’s, to a mountain cabin where he hung out with his fellow youngs, playing Madden and manufacturing bootleg pain pills. The crew scared the kids down, but were interrupted by a gang of dudes who showed up in a Florida-plated SUV to pick up product. They walloped the dudes, took their phones, told everyone to hit the road, then hauled out the pill-pressing equipment and burned down the cabin.

Job 2: The crew’s drug dealer contact set them up with a deal at a nearby Steak N Shake, with the county newcomer Jensen Allbright (Tier 1), a rich Californian transplant seeking to buy out the local underworld; along with his bodyguard, Houston. The deal went fine until they were interrupted by goons from the Heathens MC (Tier 3), a gang of gunrunning motorcyclists. The PCs intimidated them away, but as they drove away in their shared van, the Heathens gave chase on their hogs. The crew slammed the van brakes, causing the Heathens to crash into them, then leaped out and shot down the others. With their van wrecked, they had to hide in the woods until someone could come pick them up.

Job 3: Hungry for revenge, the crew decided to strike back at the Heathens, targeting a highway-side motel the club ran as a vice den. Since motorcycle dudes like to stay up late, they decided to strike early in the morning, when the MC would still be asleep. They found the motel watched only by a token crew of guards, most most of whom were asleep by the pool, their stereo still blasting classic Pantera (RIP, Roll20 Soundcloud jukebox). The PCs snuck through and cleared the motel of civilians, including the Heathens’ escort employees, some of whom the PCs recruited to work for them at Marlene’s. Then they threw gas around the lobby, planted some TNT, and blew the building up. The Heathens lieutenant in charge of the motel, Zeke, managed to run out in time, but was sniped in the knee by Willem as the PCs drove away. As cool as the motel explosion was, the commotion also gave them their first Wanted Level.

Job 4: Unfortunately, the new business at Marlene’s drew attention, and the crew was soon alerted that the bar had been invaded by gunthugs. They arrived and discovered the gunmen were the same Floridian dudes they tangled with in Job 1, this time led by their boss, Victor Perez, who it turned out was married to the leader of the McMorrows, Kyle’s older sister. The crew snuck around the back of the bar and surrounded Victor, who revealed that Kyle was missing and the McMorrows thought the Marlenes were responsible. Peace won the day after the crew befriended Victor and agreed to an alliance to take down the Pettimores. During downtime, Haddie critted a gather info roll to track Kyle, and found a telltale sign he had been abducted by Horace Pettimore…

Job 5: If the crew thought Marlene’s was safe yet, they were wrong: they were soon interrupted by the roar of a horde of motorcycles surrounding the bar, led by Zeke, the Heathens captain they wounded in Job 3. Zeke offered them a choice: they could submit to the Heathens, and pay a hefty amount of Cash every downtime, or be destroyed. Realizing it was a stupid idea to start a war with a Tier 3 gang, the PCs surrendered. Zeke and his goons moved into the bar, and he gave the crew an assignment: the Heathens sold guns to the Copperhead Patriots (tier 2), a far-right militia with very bad opinions, but suspected the Patriots were reselling the guns behind their back. The PCs were dispatched to observe and interrupt a deal, following a Patriots van to a construction site, where they discovered the deal was with Houston, Jensen Allbright’s bodyguard! Haddie and Camila hijacked a nearby bulldozer and used it to bulldoze the Patriots van into a big hole while the others opened fire on the militiamen. With Houston at their mercy, they decided to let him go with the guns, while taking the Patriots’ money for themselves.

After advancement, Haddie took the Blue Sky special ability and completed her development of a new drug, an LSD derivative delivering a chill, party-friendly vibe, which she called Soma. Can this new psychedelic corner the Copperhead drug game..?

Job 6, Season 1 Finale: Victor Perez called on the Marlenes for help. His guys had tracked Horace Pettimore to a mountain stronghold where they thought Kyle McMorrow might be kept. Together, the two small crews would infiltrate the compound and find out, with the Marlenes taking the front and Victor going around the back. As the PCs approached Horace’s house, a pickup truck drove by and they decided to blow cover and stop it at gunpoint. They were correct that the truck was driven by Pettimore associates, but the passengers were able to fire a text message to Horace before they were secured. Leaving the truck duo tied up by the road, the Marlenes decided to forget about infiltration and sped their van downhill to the house, exchanging gunfire with Pettimore guards before crashing straight through the front door. Their van wrecked, the PCs were surrounded by goons led by Horace and his son. Another gunfight ensued and Marvin got hit and Trauma’d out while taking the Pettimores down. With his final gasps, Horace revealed that Kyle McMorrow was already dead, and the PCs hightailed it out of there in a stolen truck. A couple of county Sheriff cars showed up and gave chase along the treacherous mountain roads. The PCs wisely decided to only shoot out the cops’ tires, but Willem got hit in the commotion and took the crew’s second level of Trauma before they escaped.

With all the Rep and Cash they gained tussling with stronger factions, the PCs were now Tier I. Unfortunately, they’re still on the hook with the Heathens, paying them every downtime and tolerating their presence in their own lair. What they may not appreciate is that the Heathens’ presence is also the only thing keeping the Pettimores from destroying them… what will these lovable Hellraisers get up to in Season 2?

Job 7, Season 2 Premiere: With Jesse out on vacation, Marvin, Camila, Willem, and Haddie went to meet with Jensen Allbright in his office in downtown Patterson, the county’s central city, to discuss an alliance against the Heathens. They found Jensen high AF, his office reeking of marijuana from what he claimed was an earlier meeting. Not pressing the issue, the crew listened to his terms: Jensen would provide the PCs with intel to use to disrupt the Heathens’ gunrunning business, and after the MC was defeated, Jensen would run the gun racket in Copperhead County. They agreed, although Camila also got Jensen to agree to pay them points off his profits, and got his man Houston to agree to lend them backup when the time came to fight the Heathens head-on. Jensen passed them papers he’d obtained from a recent ATF surveillance of the Heathens, showing a tool shop on the outskirts of the city where the Heathens modified and stored weapons.

The crew, having enjoyed success attacking the Heathens in the early morning (see Job 3), decided to do that again. They found the shop on an industrial street near the Copperhead River, all quiet at the crack of dawn. They snuck around the back and Haddie went to work cutting a hole through the fence, but soon heard a motorcycle approaching the shop. They sprinted through the fence-hole and hid behind some junk, watching as a middle-aged Heathen (Rooster, by the name on his leather rocker) came up to inspect the mysterious van parked behind his shop. Willem fired a desperate potshot with his silenced pistol, wounding Rooster, and with his amazing Reflexes ran up and finished him off. RIP, Rooster. (A discussion ensued about whether the crew was being too murderous. It was resolved that, unless instructed otherwise, Willem was always performing Lethal Takedowns.) As Marvin dumped Rooster into the river, the others took his keys and opened the shop’s back door, where they found a van and several crates of firearms in a garage. They peeked into the shop floor and saw three Heathens on a couch watching early-morning TV; only one of them, a young Prospect, was awake. Rooster’s cell phone buzzed as the Prospect texted him, wondering when he was going to show up. Willem had taken the phone and tried to assume Rooster’s voice, texting the Prospect that he’d had a late night at the strip club and wanted to show him a cool video in the garage. Unfortunately, this raised the Heathens’ suspicions, as Rooster had told them he was going to spend time with his son the previous night. The Prospect woke the other Heathens and went to check out the garage, but Willem again Reflexed forth and zapped the Prospect with a stun gun, while Marvin ran up and bashed in one of the goons’ heads with his bat. The remaining goon drew his revolver and shot at Camila, but only hit her vest as she dropped him with her shotgun. As the shocked Prospect woke up, the crew intimidated him into silence and tied him up, loading him, and the guns, into the Heathens’ van to deliver to Houston for safekeeping. Before they left, they repeated their patented anti-Heathens move and planted explosives on Rooster’s gunsmith machinery, blowing the shop apart as they drove away into the morning sun.