#glowinthedark

#glowinthedark

#glowinthedark

Last crew (for now): The Dealers

Dealers are weird. They have Convoy as a default crew upgrade, which means their lair/settlement and most of their claims are mobile, whether that’s a train or semi trucks or covered wagons or huge tracked compounds. They’re half Hawkers and half Smugglers, except in the wasteland there’s no laws to interfere with smuggling. That said, barter and trade are a big part of my source material (the constant traders in Fallout, Bartertown in Mad Max, the trade between Gastown, Bullet Farm, and the Citadel in Fury Road). In the fiction, the Dealers should need other factions to keep their trade going. They have some abilities to help them out with rep, supplies, and friction, and one wartime bonus focusing on defense.

I’m not 100% on their claims, however. In fact, I’m looking over all my crews’ claims and I’m seeing more of an RTS building/tech tree rather than turf to be carved out of competing factions.

I want to embrace the scarcity that’s part and parcel of post-apocalyptic source material, so I think I need to reinforce the claims somehow, but at the same time I like the implicit worldbuilding in having unique claims for each crew. It works hand in hand with the special abilities and upgrades to paint a clearer picture of what each crew’s about while leaving plenty open to interpretation.

I mean, it’d all probably work okay as-is, because for the most part I’m just renaming stuff and remixing some abilities. Maybe it’s enough to speak on what might need to happen to open up an opportunity to seize a claim, and have it be fictionally more in line with the post-apocalyptic theme rather than claustrophobic, crowded Duskwall.

Obligatory Google Sheets link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DBV7m2DnqVsLTq-L_yCTHFQozitUYaTa7jaLdchhHuA/edit?usp=sharing

#glowinthedark Yet Another Crew: The Relics

#glowinthedark Yet Another Crew: The Relics

#glowinthedark Yet Another Crew: The Relics

The Relics can branch out in a few different ways. You can do the secretive paramilitary force with advanced tech, the cabal of scientists trying to marshal ancient knowledge against a changed world, or a voice for a better future – with heavy stompy boots for anyone who disagrees.

Also revamped the fonts a lot. I found a regular text font that more closely matched my memories of old Gamma World books, and messed with the logo some. I’m going for a “sort-of Atari?” thing.

As usual, my Google Slides link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DBV7m2DnqVsLTq-L_yCTHFQozitUYaTa7jaLdchhHuA/edit?usp=sharing

I have one more to flesh out: The Dealers.

#glowinthedark

#glowinthedark

#glowinthedark

More Crews! Raiders this time, plus I’ve refined the crew sheets a little bit more. I’m finding it easier to narrow down the Cargo Cult (now named “Shepherds”) by comparing my choices there with the (mostly a Breakers reskin) Raiders crew.

The idea behind the Raiders comes from our good friends Toecutter, Humungous, the War Boys, Ironbar, and the hordes of generic bad guys in the Fallout games. They’re all about living fast, dying fast, and using the friction they generate to their advantage. In contrast, the Shepherds have many more options for reducing attrition, defending themselves, and obtaining stuff. The Raiders should always be hungry.

Google Presentation link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DBV7m2DnqVsLTq-L_yCTHFQozitUYaTa7jaLdchhHuA/edit?usp=sharing

#glowinthedark

#glowinthedark

#glowinthedark

Figured I’d share my version of Retirement. It’s mostly unchanged in how you get there – I’m just changing how it’s presented and adding a teeny bit of game to the higher results.

The Nothing and the Sky City

There are some who say a better life waits across the Nothing. They say there’s a beanstalk to sky-castles made for giants with endless food and water. They say survivors from the Last War wait under the earth, ready to welcome the mad to Valhalla. When you mark your last Trauma and tire of your wretched existence, you set out across the Nothing, braving scouring endless winds, trackless ash plains, mutant creatures, and rad storms. Maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t. Your chances of survival depend on how many Supplies you managed to Stash away over your career:

0-10: A Warning to Others. You die hard in the ash faults. Even children know not to go out so ill-prepared.

11-20: Never Tell Me the Odds. Like so many other times before, your life comes down to a single die roll. On a 1-3, well… at least you make it far enough that nobody knows you failed. On a 4-5 you pass beyond the dust walls, never to be seen again. Read the 21-30 result. On a 6, read the 31-40 result.

21-30: The Kindness of Strangers. You’ve made it this far and won’t let little things like running out of food, water, fuel, and ammo stop you. If you find anything out here past the Nothing, you won’t be in any position to make demands, however. The table decides your fate.

31-40: Shiny and Chrome. If anyone can make it, you can. Bowed but unbroken, you survive the worst the Nothing can offer, intent on carving your name into what lies beyond. You decide your fate.

“All you have to do is keep rolling sixes.”

“All you have to do is keep rolling sixes.”

“All you have to do is keep rolling sixes.”

After a tense cliffhanger that left 2 PCs trapped inside the Crows’ watchtower HQ, the rest of the PCs joined the battle alongside Vampire Roric’s basement assault. A lot of Skirmish went down, a lot of resistance rolls (you don’t want to go out by being drowned in shin-deep sewage), a lot of looting. We had a looting race clock, as the Buzzards and the Dead Setters tried to scour the Crows’ HQ for valuables and intel before firing the structure.

We learned something about every gang member through their actions this session, enough to warrant that “anytime XP”.

The Spider led a charge against the remaining Crows but turned it onto a “you guys go first” feint, which while effective, was witnessed by Roric.

The Hound tried to murder the surrendering Crows, and was only stopped by Roric shoving her gun skyward.

Roric might have caught on to how the Setters were trying to make sure the Crows didn’t have too many people to swear loyalty to Roric, and they were trying to thin out the Buzzards just in case. It’s going to affect the faction standings, and it was a cool Devil’s Bargain.

The Leech waited until everyone else had made Desperate Prowl rolls to parkour their way out off the top of the HQ to avoid the Crows’ bribed bluecoats swarming the perimeter before revealing she had Spider Oil and just walking to safety.

The gang was clear, with 10 Coin and a decent lead on where Lyssa had escaped. 3 of them had 1 stress box left. It had been a close thing.

So Rook the Cutter decides he hasn’t killed enough cops today and heads down to street level.

There’s twenty of them, and they were waiting in a firing line for anyone to walk out the front door of the watchtower.

“You’ll have to make a resistance roll before you can even do anything-“

“I’ll spend my Armor, and I have enough slots for Heavy if I need it.”

I offer a Devil’s Bargain: the gang’s Bluecoat contact, Laroze, is down there with the cops. He might catch a bullet if you don’t roll a 6. Acceptable.

“Bluecoats are Tier IV, so you’ll have limited effect even with Brutal and your railjack hammer.”

“What does rage essence do?”

“Well, that’d cover the gap in effect level for damn sure.”

Rook walks out, face smeared with blood and rage juice, duckfoot pistol in one hand, railjack hammer in the other, screaming a Skovlander working song. The cops empty both ranks of their firing line into the man and he rips off the dented and holed pig-iron breastplate, Eastwood-style. Rook lays into the cops. No fucks are given. Nothing less than a six is rolled across multiple Skirmish and Prowess resistance rolls. The 12-segment fight clock is filled in record time.

The cops’ morale is broken. Laroze tries to spark a retreat – Rook catches all but Laroze and wants to interrogate them. He’s on rage essence, though, so I ask for a Resolve resistance roll. Rook finally – finally – rolls a 2.

“You can ask your questions for 4 stress or you can kill them.”

And that’s how you make 10 Heat on a score.

#heestcomplete

Glow in the Dark

Glow in the Dark

Glow in the Dark

My first super-alpha attempt at a crew sheet, the Cargo Cult. It’s mostly cribbed from the BitD Cult, but since the “deity” doesn’t represent an actual god, I’m taking it more towards a crew that can spread a message and has easier access to random stuff.

I think there’s some interesting places to go with Claims for this sort of post-apocalyptic game. Right now it’s mostly a reskin. Same with the crew upgrades – I’d expect those to change around some.

Google Presentations link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DBV7m2DnqVsLTq-L_yCTHFQozitUYaTa7jaLdchhHuA/edit?usp=sharing

#glowinthedark

The Dead Setters only had 2 players this week, but what were we gonna do? Not play?

The Dead Setters only had 2 players this week, but what were we gonna do? Not play?

The Dead Setters only had 2 players this week, but what were we gonna do? Not play?

The Feast For Crows Caper

I was running for Teatime the Whisper and Raven the Hound. Last week the gang allied with the Crows’ formerly alive former leader, Roric, who was currently a vampire in charge of an upstart gang called the Vultures, a bunch of loyalist Crows who bailed on Lyssa when she betrayed her master and some new recruits who didn’t mind working for the undead.

The plan was Infiltration. The gangs deemed a ground approach too risky, due to the Crows’ network of scouts and paid-off Bluecoats. Roric and his Vultures would cause a distraction in the tunnels below the Crows’ HQ while Teatime and Raven (they argued for more help from the Vultures but Roric said he needed his men with him) used the rooftops to parkour their way to the watchtower roof.

Because the gang didn’t take downtime between sessions, I considered that the Crows didn’t know they were at war yet. Still, they were a Tier higher than the Dead Setters, and this and that and this and that.

Didn’t matter. 6 on the engagement roll, and we picked up as the PCs rolled the tower guard and went for speed, blitzing down through the watchtower before the Crows could muster an organized response.

Raven was on fire. She ably tracked Lyssa down in the middle of the Crow leader’s personal gearing-up montage and opened fire. Lyssa tossed a vial of ghost oil on the wall behind her for an escape route, while the 3 thugs (Marie, Fist, and Handy) with her downed rage essence and moved in.

What followed was a lesson in what happens when a Hound survives enough Desperate knife fights. Even though I felt I was harsher with incoming Harm and consequences (“The thug grabs both your arms and pulls, dislocating both shoulders” or “Marie bumrushes you back, grabs your head and bashes it against the wall until you die”), Raven had 4d6 to resist with Prowess and then armor on top of that. Lowest she rolled was a 5, too. Most of the time it was sixes – or multiple sixes, so she took the incoming harm from the rage-thugs while Teatime handled offense on Lyssa, smashing her alchemical vials with ghostkinesis, forcing the crimeboss out the ethereal hole she’d made in her wall. Raven got a shot off as Lyssa’s “boss fight clock” filled in, blowing a hole through the woman’s mouth just as she reached a squad of loyal Bluecoats.

Me: “You got a 5 on that roll, so of course I’m going to reduce the effect to keep her alive – barely. However, do you want that shot to be debilitating or disfiguring?”

Raven: “I know it’d be better next time for it to cripple her, but Raven would disfigure her.”

I’m only realizing this now, but we learned something about Raven right then (and I immediately messaged her player to let him know to mark that XP).

We left the duo victorious against the rage-thugs, but they’re still surrounded in the Crows’ headquarters with 8 stress each. If more players can play next week it should be a hell of a flashback.

#heestcomplete

The Dead Setters did a bit of a setup heist last session, in the prep for the eventual Feast For Crows Caper.

The Dead Setters did a bit of a setup heist last session, in the prep for the eventual Feast For Crows Caper.

The Dead Setters did a bit of a setup heist last session, in the prep for the eventual Feast For Crows Caper.

The Spider’s player was sick and the Hound’s player was seeing something called a Caravan Palace, so with a Cutter, Leech, and Whisper left, we agreed that tracking down Roric’s ghost to use for intel in an assault on Lyssa’s Crows was interesting enough to be done in “heist time”.

Why were the PCs so pissed at the Crows? They had a +1 status with them on paper, but several sessions ago Lyssa discovered the Dead Setters’ hidden lair’s location. She sent Belden (her second) and a small group in the lair to lean on the Setters. 8 Coin in 3 days. I grossly underestimated how affronted my players would be at this, and how little respect they would have for larger gangs. To their credit, they have bloodied far larger organizations, so it’s not unwarranted. The end result was Belden was captured, interrogated, and vivisected for information. The vivisection bit was a great Devil’s Bargain because it skewed a little too close to what the Leech did to indulge her vices, and it limited Belden’s usefulness. It’s just so hard to arrange a live subject, though. Wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity.

Their grisly work done, Teatime the Whisper worked up a sort of Dresden-esque magical compass using Belden’s flayed skull and the gang set out into the seedier parts of Duskwall, running afoul of a few random encounters as they completed the “find Roric” clock.

What the players didn’t know was that I’d been keeping a clock for Roric since close to the start of the campaign. The formerly incorporeal Crow boss was now a vampire, and was gathering a small splinter cell of loyal Crows and new recruits. These guys caught the Setters off guard but with a friggin’ crit on a Sway check, Teatime made fast friends and the Dead Setters and Blackbirds (maybe? Not in love with the name yet) are well on their way to deposing Lyssa.

Fun tidbits:

1. My original idea for Roric’s current body was a female Red Sash guard the party tossed to hungry ghosts in the first heist. However, I kept going more and more piratical with my accent and I can’t shake the image of Roric as Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe he’ll get a slight retcon.

2. Maybe Lord Scurlock doesn’t like the idea of an “unauthorized” vampire running around his city? He’s a contact on Teatime’s sheet and I haven’t used him much. Might be fun to pit a contact against an ally.

3. Roric’s splinter cell has a Whisper with a pack of controlled attack dogs (inspired by a post on this community). Thank you, Nick Belleque!

4. We only had 3 players, which meant we got more spotlight time for everyone and hit all their XP triggers. Normally it’s harder to get those “belief/drive” XPs in heist time, but taking a page from Michael Yater’s games, I ended up asking a few more leading questions for each character to get some more flavor into the narrative.

#heestcomplete

Can you raise your crew’s Tier if you have weak Hold, or must you have at least a firm Hold before you can raise…

Can you raise your crew’s Tier if you have weak Hold, or must you have at least a firm Hold before you can raise…

Can you raise your crew’s Tier if you have weak Hold, or must you have at least a firm Hold before you can raise Tier because the process of raising Tier drops your Hold one level?

If this is explicit somewhere, my apologies.

The Strangford Files Caper

The Strangford Files Caper

The Strangford Files Caper

The Dead Setters’ heist is still in progress, but I had to share some highlights:

“What’s Iruvian?”

“Bitch, you almost made me laugh.”

(apologies to Chasing Amy)

I had the Spider’s player (his PC was in jail this session) provide details of the banquet menu at Lord Strangford’s masquerade ball:

– Cream of corpse soup. Made from the remains of royal pets.

– Also, “ghost liver on ethereal crackers”. We couldn’t decide if it was better if someone had actually figured out how to carve up spirits into edible chunks, or if the whole delicacy was just the cracker, but nobody wanted to say they couldn’t taste the ghost liver so the height of Brightstone cuisine is just crackers served with a heaping helping of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Teatime (the Whisper, and the only character actually from noble stock) ended up bringing the infamous deadly dandy Roethe Kinclaithe along with him when he went to steal Strangford’s maps from his library.

On a gameplay note, this was our first session where I really pushed the Tier disparity. Strangford had access to Tier III and IV goons and locks, and I think when the Leech didn’t immediately pop open the office door with a six it hammered home that there’s still quite a ways to go to the top of Duskwall.

Strangford’s men knew not to kill anyone – who needs Spirit Wardens poking around – so they carried truncheons hooked up to battery packs. One good jab and the batteries discharge, zapping the piss out of the target. Unless they flash back to insulating their corset and burning Armor. The same discretion did not apply to the Hound, resulting in an increasingly desperate series of rolls to try to save the hapless guard’s life as he bled out and realization dawned that ZOMG CROWS NOW.

#heestcomplete