Has anyone used Cohort Gangs and scale much? I did a quick solitairy score testing out the mechanics.
Has anyone used Cohort Gangs and scale much? I did a quick solitairy score testing out the mechanics.
At first a Tier 0 gang (1-2 guys) being lead by a PC against a Tier 2 gang (12 guys) really helped me visualize scale. Everything was Risky/Desperate with No Effect.
Then crew abilities, PC abilities, and PC items came into play. I had trouble with what I thought was good for the fiction, and what the mechanics might say is possible.
Maybe I’m miss understanding some discriptions, mechanics, or I was just being too easy on the characters.
Here is the Google Doc of my solitairy play. I didn’t write down much of the RP because that makes the sessions last about 3 times longer.
So we’re playing Blades for the first time as a group (third play session, first campaign), and we took things for an unusual turn. I rolled on the useful charts for rumors/events as a backdrop, and the results were widespread paranoia and that some of the canals had been inexplicably drained. I had some ideas.
The crew was bullied by Baszo Baz into sending a strong message to a Crow’s Foot drug runner who has been moving product for the Red Sashes (the crew was not thrilled–they are shadows, so this isn’t really their thing). The crew decided that sabotaging the dealer’s warehouse was shadowy enough for them, so they tracked it down and navigated their way to it through the tunnels they usually use to get around.
The canals around the warehouse were drained, which revealed a hidden entrance. Engagement roll result was controlled, so the crew was able to sneak in and observe what was going on–it was complete chaos. Something, or some things–were running amok in the warehouse, eviscerating the drug dealer’s people. As it turned out, these were some kind of huge, vicious rat-men.
Where did they come from? What is the deal with them? WTF?
Anyway, the crew was able to set the warehouse on fire in the midst of the carnage and also make off with some extra product and a satchel of useful papers. But the whole thing left them very unsettled.
A NOCTURNE v0.8 — playtest session #4 “War in Heaven”
A NOCTURNE v0.8 — playtest session #4 “War in Heaven”
We ended last session in the middle of a score aboard the Ghost, with Nix and Bug caught in a nasty standoff with some of the Pale Crew, a group of ancient crew-members from the Ghost’s dark past, and the Limpets (machine intelligences who’ve been plaguing the craft for centuries) closing. The Pale Crew are at war with the Limpets, and looking to spring a makeshift ambush here, in the microgravity of an abandoned server module. We open on them starting to hide, Nix and Bug still protesting that maybe there’s a non-violent way to deal with this.
The leader of this Pale Crew gang, the bearded, bedraggled Ion Brezhnev, has dragged Nix behind one of the girders, hissing orders to the rest. Nix is trying to wear him down. He seems uncertain. Then, the Limpets arrive, round metal carapaces studded with ports, from which cable-tentacles extend as needed, little claws gripping the netting holding corroded server racks. The Pale Crew hold their breath. The Limpets crawl into the module tentatively, investigating, chirping to each other.
Ion is about to give the order to attack. One of the other Pale Crew has unslung a brutal, improvised blunderbuss and is taking aim. Meanwhile, Bug pulls out of the grasp of the bald woman who had her gun on the uplifted hyena earlier. He’s got a hair-brained scheme. He goes forward and starts to interact with the Limpets. They seem curious. One of them pushes over to him through the microgravity and starts to poke and prod at Bug. Bug has a piece of food in his pocket, a bit of hard candy, which he shows to the Limpet. The Limpet turns it over in its claws, then pushes back to its fellows, and passes it round. They coo and chirp.
Pointing out this behaviour, Nix manages to get through to Ion, impressing upon him the idea that maybe this isn’t the right place, the right time, that maybe they have the wrong idea about the Limpets. Ion’s face softens. Problem is, Brendon only rolls a 5 on his Sway. He’s managed to stay Ion’s hand, but just as the bearded man starts to hiss the order to back off, the guy with the blunderbuss roars and swings out from behind his girder, firing off a burst of shrapnel and machine parts.
Some of the shrapnel catches a Limpet and takes some of its legs off, while some strikes Bug, sending him spinning. Roxanne spends her armour to avoid the lacerations – the shrapnel skitters across the plating sewn into Bug’s clothing. Still, he’s spinning, and hits the bulkhead.
One of the Limpets retaliates, attacking the guy with the blunderbuss. He jabs at it with the butt of the gun. They tussle until Bug pulls the Limpet away, and Nix convinces Ion to defuse the situation – Ion grabs the guy’s shoulder and pushes him back against a girder. Bug ushers the Limpets out to safety while Ion lays into his subordinate for not waiting for his order.
We end the score as the Pale Crew make ready to head back to their HQ, which they refer to as The Keep, deep in the bowels of the craft. Ion tells them they have an open invitation to visit, though he grumbles about the Pale Crew’s defacto leader, a man called Lord Commander Newton. As payoff, they get a +1 status with the Limpets for helping them out of a sticky encounter with the Pale Crew. The Pale crew stay at 0 status though – they may have swayed Ion a little, but he’s just a cog in the machine. Also, the score generates some stress for the craft – only 2 stress goes onto the craft’s track though, since things were fairly contained.
Nix is curious about the Pale Crew and where they came from. He decides to go into the Ghost’s old, partially-corrupted archives to Gather Information on them. He descends into the stacks and starts trawling through, looking for any records that might survive. Brendon rolls a 3 on the Analyse, but it was Controlled, so he presses on by taking a Risky opportunity – Nix opens up the sealed section of the archives, the part where the viruses really set in. It’s cold down here, and the data-stacks are encrusted with leaking, rotting membrane. Brendon rolls a 4 on this – he’ll get some solid info, but we start a clock for the membrane rot, which latches onto Nix’s artificial brain stem and starts to infect him.
What he learns: the Pale Crew used to command the Ghost as part of a larger fleet hierarchy, working for an individual known in the records only as The Patriarch. However, they were forced out of command by the Ghost AI after something they did on Heaven, a station in the Remonstrance system. What they did is uncertain – the data here is too corrupted to read.
Adrift in Fitzwilliam’s Ashes, they get a communique from the Apophatic Order – they’d like to call in the favour the Ghost owes them for the information the Order gave the crew concerning the Limpets. The Order wants them to aid in the pruning of their heavenly garden AKA intercede in the political maneuverings of the ascendant House-Minor Vex, an AgriCorp they’d like to see scattered to the stars before they have a chance to seize power on the fractious planet of Remonstrance IV. The Order want Vex’s power wiped away, their bloodline broken, the earth salted. They leave it open to the crew of the Ghost as to how exactly they want to go about doing that, but impress upon them that this action must be final. The timeline here, though, is on the order of centuries – the AgriCorps, just like the Apophatic Order, play a very long game.
The crew manage to swindle enough Profit out of the Order to take a slow trip across interstellar space to the Remonstrance system. The trip takes a decade for the Ghost, a few decades for everyone else. The blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.
However, when they arrive in-system, Nix and Bug decide to divert their activities for a moment, to investigate the strange, silent, modular station of Heaven, to try and find out what happened there all those centuries ago.
They take their little landing craft and manually dock with the station. The interior is airless. Pressure-suited, they pass through the useless airlock and into what might once have been a pristine lobby area. Lights flicker on. Some don’t. A sign comes to life at the far end of the room: “WELCOME TO HEAVEN”. The flickering lights pick out bullet holes and the burn-scars of directed energy weapons, but no blood, no bodies. Nix goes to investigate an information kiosk that sits under the welcome sign, while Bug ventures deeper into the station.
The kiosk shows off pleasant fields, rustic living, azure seas, wide open skies, smiling children. The station appears to house a small uploaded society, and the whole thing has a slightly Mormons-in-Paradise feel. Bug’s wanderings take him past rooms of server racks, blinking quietly. The two crew-members eventually link up and Nix decides to hack into the system. He eventually manages to access the station’s internal records, and what he finds is disturbing. It seems that the Pale Crew came here and precipitated a horrible shift in the virtual Heaven – as I described the information on the kiosk to Brendon, he likened it to a kind of revisionist Christian Stardew Valley, so here I said it’s basically like that Stardew Valley suddenly went Mad Max. Thing is, all the uploaded citizens still seem perfectly happy, according to the latest records. Everyone’s dying again and again in endless virtual wars, and no-one seems bothered.
Thoroughly creeped-out, Nix and Bug are briefly tempted to pull the plug on the servers then and there, but we end the session as they go to consult Ghost about all this. Why did he care about the well-being of Heaven, so much so that he would lock the old crew out for conducting their nasty little experiment?
Stray thoughts: Brendon and Roxanne are sort of perfect players for A NOCTURNE – they like to go all-in on the weird-future aspects of the setting, and they’re endlessly curious about the craft. One interesting thing: they’ve also been very combat-averse up until now – both our opening scores so far have been deception and social scores, after all – so it’ll be interesting to see where that goes when we get to Remonstrance IV’s hornet’s nest of intrigue and assassination, and have to way up their options for ending House-Minor Vex’s entire bloodline.
The craft-as-character is one note I always wanted to hit with A NOCTURNE, and so far it’s panning out really well. This is mostly down to centering the craft sheet in the rules, and to the players engaging with the AI in interesting ways, and to me as the GM making sure to characterise and describe the craft and AI in detail, but I’m already thinking of ways I can further emphasise this in the text.
Also, in case you weren’t aware already: Clocks are so goooood. I can already tell that the membrane rot clock for Nix is gonna be my best friend for a few sessions.
After the session, I polled Brendon and Roxanne on their special abilities, because I noticed they hadn’t used them much, if at all, and I wanted to get their read on wording and so on. Brendon’s is simple – he simply hadn’t had cause to kill anyone yet, so The Subtle Knife was currently just kinda there. Roxanne, meanwhile, was just wary of the implications of Vessel‘s rogue AI, and we had a little discussion about fleshing the character of this AI out further in future sessions.
I also changed damage and scars back to stress and trauma anf honestly it’s been a lifesaver. No more umming and arring, no more confusion.
Next Time: an awkward audience with Ghost in which some very important things have to be hashed out re: virtual euthanasia and Ghost’s own moral compass. Also, how are they going to approach the task given to them by the Apophatic Order? I’m briefly prepping a real tangled web of intrigue and nastiness to drop them in the middle of. It’s gonna be good.
We got off to a hell of a start from the end of last session with the Stitch scaling an extended crane to patch up the severely wounded Mechanic and the Muscle getting ambushed by a team of stormtroopers on his rooftop perch. However, the Muscle is one paranoid droid, and his Ready For Anything ability meant that the booby trap of detonators he left at the door went off without a hitch, sending him careening off the side of the building, but he stuck the landing. The Stitch managed to get the Mechanic back on his feet with the Patch ability and the crew reassembled to get the hell out of there.
At this point the Pilot made his grand appearance by divebombing a TIE formation and taking out several of them before he made a hot landing and the crew scrambled aboard, but not before a lone stormtrooper was able to chuck a detonator aboard. The Mechanic, all hopped up on drugs, kicked it away, but it still went off, damaging their cargo bay door and wedging it open. The crew piled into the ship and blasted off. The Scoundrel took the controls while the Pilot handled the turret, the Speaker started pretending to be a Czerka team and the Stitch and Muscle dragged the Mechanic and their Resistance contact to the medbay for treatment. The Speaker set the team up with her bluff and the Scoundrel/Pilot made a group Helm roll. By blasting away at the pursuing TIEs and flying into the face of the hurricane they were able to ditch their pursuit, but not before they found themselves locked onto by a waiting frigate starside.
Unable to engage the cloaking device while being locked, the crew hatched a desperate plan: the Scoundrel and Muscle would launch in one of the escape pods and sneak onto the frigate while the Speaker and Pilot did their best to distract them with fake Czerka codes and bluffing. The infiltration team managed to get aboard while the Speaker used the last of her stress on pushing herself for a bluff to buy them some time. At that point she succumbed to her wounds and took another trauma. Aboard the frigate, the Scoundrel made for the computer core, hoping to steal valuable data for interested parties, while the Muscle went for the engine room, drawing the attention of a curious droid that he was unable to bluff. As it went looking for its manager, he scrambled to get the job done. The Scoundrel was able to get what she wanted, but had to kill several guards, setting off an alarm.
Back on the Invincible 2, a shuttle from the frigate docked with them for a search. After dismissing multiple harebrained schemes, the crew decided to just let them aboard, hiding their Resistance contact in a smuggling compartment. During the search, an interrogation droid attempted to arrest the Mechanic, who was forced to perform a “combat disassembly” on it. Meanwhile, the Stitch was busy trying to revive the Speaker in the cockpit right next to the Pilot, who was explaining himself to a squad of stormtroopers. The sergeant recognized his name and brought up his sister, the Pilot’s longstanding enemy because of her fervent belief in the First Order. So the Pilot pulled the oldest trick in the book (“hey, what’s that over there??”) and shot the sergeant, setting off a gunfight in the cockpit, damaging the ship’s fake transponder. The Stitch lunged at the nearest stormtrooper, jabbing him in the neck with a syringe of knockout drugs and using him as a human shield in the tense standoff.
The infiltration team reconvened on the frigate after the Muscle finished rigging the engine to blow with a detonator. They stole the captain’s sleek racing ship and blasted off just as the frigate exploded. Shooting back to the Invincible 2, they slid into the open cargo bay and prepared to breach. Unbeknownst to them, the Mechanic was using the last of his drug-fueled strength to rig the ship’s doors, and with the press of a button the interior doors all emergency sealed and the interior cargo bay door shot open. The result was that one stormtrooper got spaced, and the other two that happened to be standing in the cockpit entrance brandishing blasters at the Pilot and Stitch… got mulched.
As two more frigates jumped into the system but were beyond visual range, the crew engaged the cloaking device and jumped to hyperspace, following the coordinates given to them by their Resistance passenger. They arrived at the Big Belt, a vast and dense asteroid field, and inside they found a Mon Calamari battleship, home base of the Resistance in the Corporate Sector. With big promises of payment, they made their approach.
And that’s it! Next week we’ll get into payment and downtime and all that. This was one of our most fun sessions yet, with every member of the crew getting the spotlight multiple times and each person playing a part in their own crazy plans. I can’t wait to run it again for them soon!
The Pallbearers had themselves a hell of a session last night.
The Pallbearers had themselves a hell of a session last night.
Having found out about an accountant named Shanti Shukla in need of help, the team sought her out at the Crawford and Sons firm. There, Herrik (Slide) created a distraction for the Skov barbarian-turned-secretary Tatiana, allowing Ashen Crow (Leech) and Veretta (Whisper) to slip inside. There they found Shanti and her assistant Wyman being watched studiously by a strapping thug that Ashen Crow dispatched with clever application of glue to the face. Shanti explained that she had invested the Bowmore’s money into some cargo that was currently being held by the Hive as leverage in some other scheme. She then asked the Pallbearers to get it back for her and they agreed.
A little scouting led them to an infiltration plan, coming in from an old disused tunnel from below. In our Duskwall the city has been so heavily built up that under the streets are more old streets, converted into sewers. There are many levels below the current Duskwall and all sorts of weird things can be found down there. They aced the Engagement roll and found that the only thing standing between them and their breaching point was a weak ghost that Veretta managed to bottle. With that, Ashen Crow set the detonation charges and Herrik performed a flashback to him spreading rumors that enemies of the Lampblacks would be assembling in the warehouse above. So at the moment Ashen Crow hit the switch the Lampblacks burst in and started fighting with the Hive thugs. With the floor blown open, Veretta created a fog to cover their entrance as Finni (Cutter) led them into the fray. With most of the two gangs distracted fighting, Herrik led a group action to Survey the area, and since two members of the group weren’t skilled in Survey, one of them opted to take a Devil’s Bargain. Finni discovered the cargo they’d come to recover, and at the same time the Pallbearers found that they had drawn the attention of a titanic ghost, so old and twisted that it had taken on the shape of a worm with a human face and wriggling arms and legs.
Faced with this, the team shifted priorities. Finni used his Ghost Fighter ability to wreathe himself in electroplasmic energy and engaged the worm. Veretta used her lightning hook to Set Up his attack and Herrik Assisted by punching at the worm with his spiritbane charm. Finni punched the worm right in the face, and wound up with his arm devoured up to the shoulder by the immense spirit. Ashen Crow decided that the situation was spiraling out of control and expended his fire oil to set the old cargo in the warehouse ablaze, causing all sorts of weird and arcane materials to start cooking off all around them. With the fire blazing and the worm distracted, Ashen Crow and Herrik then grabbed the large cargo crate and ran for the tunnel, escaping from the fight. Finni, meanwhile, attempted to stab the worm, but wound up getting bitten by it. We decided that the ghost did no physical damage to him, but managed to rip off the arm of his spirit form, leaving him with a useless right arm. Veretta unspooled her lightning hook and lashed at the ghost worm but succeeded only in making it thrash around, shattering the floor and sending her, the ghost and Finni down into chest-deep poisonous old water and a nest of vicious biting bugs. Finni earned himself a trauma and Veretta pushed herself to create a wild storm that helped her and Finni escape, also earning a trauma in the same moment.
Ashen Crow and Herrik dropped off the cargo with Shanti and reassembled with the group back at their mansion hideout. The team is bruised, battered and bloody but they got the desired leverage over Shanti, helped out the Bowmores and also made an enemy of the Hive. That earned them 6 rep and a new crew special ability, and they chose Forged in The Fire. Herrik and Finni also picked up Not to Be Trifled With, which is very exciting.
Overall this was a really fun session to run and I can’t wait to see what the Pallbearers get up to next!
Recently in our Sci fi campaign we switched to Scum & Villainy.
Recently in our Sci fi campaign we switched to Scum & Villainy. 2nd session after the system change and loving it. Here’s a look at yesterdays session. Some fury road themed inspiration for you.
Last Sunday we continued our adventures in the Star Wars universe using Scum and Villainy!
Last Sunday we continued our adventures in the Star Wars universe using Scum and Villainy!
The crew worked on their various projects and missions. The Speaker discovered who owns the deed to their fallen family company and is working on a plan to reclaim it, while the Scoundrel cracked into a treasure trove of data from her former employer Czerka and found that the entire upper management has been replaced by something ominously named OVERLORD. The Mechanic worked on modifying the ship and the Muscle began the process of clearing their mind for training to use the Force. The Stitch discovered the truth about the half-clone children: they would not live past the age of 40. With this in mind, he informed their leader and offered his help, and the half-clones accepted. His research into how to fix them has begun in earnest.
They then received a distress call from Resistance pilot Rana Byard, who they had met in one of their first missions. She was being hunted by the First Order after blowing up a significant portion of their grounded Star Destroyer and offered the crew payment in exchange for being rescued and returned to the Resistance. The Scoundrel, a friend and confidante of Rana, agreed without hesitation and the rest of the crew decided to help out. They jumped to Abin-Sau, the ocean planet and made for the Reef, the traveling city built atop a wandering mega-whale.
Unfortunately their Engagement Roll was a bust, and so the situation was rough. The players left their ship at a distance and approached with the help of a mon calamari contact aboard his skiff. A storm blanketed the Reef and TIE fighters were screaming by overhead while First Order troops tore the city apart in search of Rana. The Mechanic Attuned to the Force and found her location, which was besieged by a platoon of stormtroopers.
Charging right in, each member of the Crew started ticking the “Rescue Rana” clock. The Mechanic took control of a giant crane in hopes of destroying the enemy tank, while the Muscle climbed a nearby building to rain fire on the stormtroopers. The Speaker hobbled her way through the firefight into the bar where Rana was hiding and took command of the thugs inside. The Scoundrel joined her, using custom rocket-boots to kick a lot of ass. The Mechanic was forced to crawl out along the crane and cut the connection to the supermagnet manually, getting shot up in the process while the Muscle was sighted by a passing TIE fighter and managed to blow it up with a grenade launcher before pulling out their sniper rifle and attacking the platoon below. The Stitch pulled a fancy maneuver and blocked off the reinforcements before recalling his college years on the rugby team and bumrushing through the firefight to draw their attention. The Mechanic killed the tank, and the Speaker and Scoundrel rescued Rana.
As they tried to leave, a local sullustan gang boss Dua Ath threatened to rat them out. So the Speaker put a round between his eyes and intimidated the other gang members into shutting up.
We had to end the session there, but next week the crew of the Invincible 2 are going to see if they can escape the planet and get their passenger where she needs to go!
Session 2 of our Ghost Lines prequel game – I think we’re starting to get the hang of it!
Session 2 of our Ghost Lines prequel game – I think we’re starting to get the hang of it! It’s an interesting system to run; there’s good bones here and it works well when you bolt on mechanics from other systems (I’ve been using clocks from BitD and some of the Gauntlet’s Dungeon World procedures).
This session a series of bad rolls meant that the deathstorm came back as the train ran out of lightning oil. They managed to get the train going again thanks to the Owl’s spare lightning oil canister, but they lost all the freight carriages and their mentor Gulliver.
A fun, tense session (with help from a good old clock).
We also had a few weeks of downtime in Doskvol, getting a flavour of the city. One bull is doing some muscle work for the lamplighter union, who want him to make an inventor “disappear” on his next train journey (the inventor claims to have invented a stable lightbulb) . They also sold a ghost on the black market to Fat Rat & Grimm, Investors. Finally, the third bull caught up with his new friend Ragnar Ironborn – Ragnar can help him get the ghost-thistle tea recipe he’s looking for, in exchange for a little favour; helping smuggle a friend out of exile into Skovlan, a man by the name of Aldric…
