Tonight we confirmed my players would rather kill bluecoats than bribe them. Coin is king. Game on!
Tonight we confirmed my players would rather kill bluecoats than bribe them. Coin is king. Game on!
#glowinthedarkrpg
#glowinthedarkrpg
The Third Rails, out of Prism City, make a grab for a cache of anti-rads discovered in the Monarchs’ turf deep in the Boneyard.
My Glow in the Dark (post-apocalyptic Blades hack) playtest got off to a proper start last night. Character/crew creation is detailed here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109333990936576277189/posts/XRwroMfB5TM
My 3 players are the Third Rails, a crew of Dealers (like hawker/smugglers) out of Prism City, a shitty underground mall like Crystal City in Arlington or Toronto’s PATH. There’s Johnny Tabernacle, a Leftover (think Charlton Heston from Planet of the Apes or any of the Fallout player characters); Lt. Dan Halen, a Reaper (Wez, Ironbar, Rambo – the “fighter” playbook); and Ol’ Zeke, the Junker (think Gyro-Captain, Chumbucket, MacGyver).
The Rails’ primary contact, a mutant named Westchester Woodhouse (http://teamventure.org/w/images/e/e5/Ned_smile.png in a top hat), comes staggering down into Prism City. He’s been worked over by the Boneyard Bulldogs, a sports-themed raider gang. He used all his ammo escaping a handful of killbots guarding a cache of anti-rads deep in the Boneyard and barely made it back to Prism City intact. The anti-rads are in Monarchs territory (a plant mutant gang of slavers), and now the Bulldogs and the Sheltered (secretive bunker-dwelling recluses) are on their way to claim the prize.
This was my version of the Lampblacks/Red Sashes rivalry, a good Cannonball Run race for a treasure. I took one positive faction (the Monarchs), one negative (the Boneyard Bulldogs), and one neutral (the Sheltered), and I’m hoping that we’ll get some good faction shifts out of the resulting shitshow. The players said this sounded like a Transport plan – just get there first, get the goods, and get out – although we had some good discussion about how different plans could work, which told me I’d chosen a fairly good opening scenario for once. They were +1 with the Monarchs and considered a Social tack (but they opted for stealth and speed over diplomacy) as well as waiting for one of the other factions to get the anti-rads and Assaulting them as they left the Boneyard (but their only vehicle was Zeke’s jalopy, an underpowered Subaru Brat – a chase wouldn’t go in their favor). The Third Rails paid Westchester Woodhouse 1 of their 2 supplies (Glow in the Dark’s coin replacement) and we counted that as spending resources on a Gather Information check. They got exceptional information, including GPS coordinates they could plug into their fine GPS (one of their crew upgrades). Armed with the most accurate route, the Third Rails loaded up Zeke’s jalopy and headed out.
Brief rules digression! I’m handling load slightly differently in Glow in the Dark. I charge a crew supplies based on the heaviest load taken – medium costs 1, heavy costs 2. This led to some fruitful discussion and in my mind made choosing a load level much more tactical than in vanilla Blades. These guys also aren’t Shadows, with their insane load bonus upgrade. They’ve been spoiled, and now they have to deal with the basic rules like everyone else, plus the supply ding on top of it. They went with medium load, even though it’d cost their last supply. I also charge upkeep during downtime, because scarcity is a theme here, so the Third Rails must return with at least one supply or things will go very badly indeed.
A six on engagement means that the crew makes excellent time and makes it safely into the Boneyard as far as their jalopy can get before the streets are choked by toppled buildings, thick, ropey brambles, and rusted car corpses. Dan’s player is new to Blades and PbtA-style games in general, but with 2 experienced Blades players beside him he adapted quickly enough. Dan Prowled his way over and through the collapsed building, but caused a lot of noise in doing so. I started a clock “Draws Attention”. Johnny T looked for a safer way through the rubble, and spotted an easy but long climb up to monorail track. Meanwhile, Zeke tried a subway access but encountered two-headed mutant dingos! He flashed back to the drive from Prism City to the Boneyard, where he Hacked together a dog whistle contraption because with their exceptional information, he’d have known about the creatures that lurk in the Boneyard. Zeke scares the dingos back into the tunnels but it’s clear that path is fraught with danger. It also nearly fills the Attention clock.
In an attempt to reduce the attention clock and draw any Monarchs off their trail, Johnny T uses his hand terminal to Hack into any pre-war systems that might still be operational – and rolls a 3. He finds something all right. The nearby monorail starts blaring anti-terrorism warnings (“If you see something, say something!”) and draws a Monarch patrol to the site! Three plant/bug mutants peer down at the Third Rails from atop an eight-story tenement.
What happened next just goes to show the inherent speciesism people have for weird plant/bug things. The Third Rails had +1 status with the Monarchs. I figured this might be a social-type challenge, something that’s been surprisingly absent in our vanilla Blades capers. I was wrong. It’s not me – it’s my players. 🙂 Johnny Tabernacle checks “fine energy weapon” off his items list and snap-fires a maser into a bat-winged probiscus/hibiscus. The poor dude’s water content flash-boils and he explodes like he was an extra in District 9. The Venus Butterflytrap next to him shouts “You killed Baptista!” and grazes Johnny with a Mosin-Nagant rifle (level 1 harm after resistance). Lt. Dan doesn’t take kindly to plants shooting his friends and after a brief exchange (the Raid action as opposed to Johnny’s Hunt roll), plugs the Butterflytrap in the “face”. The rifle falls eight stories (a complication – no looting this guy).
At this point, Zeke’s player mentions that they were on good terms with the Monarchs and now they have to murder all of these guys so they can stay friends with the rest of them. It’s sound logic, if a bit like the opening of Heat. Problem is, Zeke doesn’t have the skillset for a gunfight. He does have a frag grenade and 2 dots in Wreck, however. The Junker arcs the grenade into the building, aiming to collapse it and bury the woodsy Groot-like Monarch in the rubble.
Rolling a 2 on that kind of roll is bad news. The building collapses, all right – sideways into the street! Johnny T ends up with 2 harm (“Bad Sprain”) as he’s swept off his monorail track, Lt. Dan avoids harm but is pinned under rubble, and Zeke takes 1 harm from flying rubble (“stunned”). Dan Finesses his way free but draws the Monarch’s attention. “YOU KILLED MY FRIENDS!” it bellows, grabbing a length of rebar with a concrete lollipop on the end. In his first Desperate knife-fight (a recurring theme across literally any game I run), Dan buries his combat knife deep in the Monarch’s mouth. The roll’s a six, and the blade comes out sticky with sap, felling the tree-man.
We had to wrap it up there, but we did do character XP, whereupon I noted that I desperately need to revamp my XP triggers to be more like BitD 7+. We’ve been playing with those triggers for a few weeks now and they are just so much better. The players love that certain triggers don’t limit your XP to your playbook track, and that there’s explicit callouts to earn multiple XP per trigger. I still had the old style, where there was a playbook trigger and an “anytime” trigger. Furthermore, we’re only playing this fortnightly as opposed to weekly and I want my guys to advance through the abilities.
The new XP triggers in Blades are just so much better. It bears reiterating – it’s a major improvement but it looks so small on paper.
Anyways, the Third Rails looted what they could (Zeke winning the day with a Scrounge action), coming up with 1 supply in chems, rations, and plant/mutant food off the dead tree-man. It’ll cover their upkeep at least.
Battered but alive, the trio of survivors makes their way towards the cache, hoping the Boneyard Bulldogs and the Sheltered don’t reach the prize first…
#glowinthedarkrpg Our first real play session!
#glowinthedarkrpg Our first real play session! Okay, this is a recap of our last 2 hangouts, but combined it’s character/crew creation and part of a first run (my substitute for score).
I run vanilla Blades every tuesday, and have 2 players from that game in my Glow in the Dark playtest. Joining them is a longtime friend from Texas who hasn’t played any Blades or PbtA or really much of anything in a while. I’ve known all of them for more than half my life, so their tolerance for my gaming shenanigans is high.
They opted for a Dealers crew, citing the Raiders as “too bad guy-feeling” and the Shepherds as too weird to start off with. Relics was a strong choice, though, and there was some dithering that was finally solved when they decided the Dealers were actually the most likely to be involved with building up some sort of civilization. Cool.
Survivor-wise, we ended up with:
Johnny Tabernacle, the Leftover: Born on a moon base, Johnny T evacuated to the ruined Earth once the base’s supplies ran out and the colonists turned to cannibalism. This means I can have moon cannibals follow him down to the wasteland. Perfect. Played by Matt Damon somewhere between the Martian and Interstellar.
Lt. Dan Halen, the Reaper: Originally part of the Last Cavalry, Dan was betrayed by his unit and left for dead. He joined the Third Rails while he bides his time for vengeance. Interesting point: the crew didn’t take faction status with the Last Cavalry, so that indicates this rivalry is narrowed down to just Dan and his old unit, Kill Bill style.
Ol’ Zeke, the Junker: Zeke ran afoul of the Iron Maidens, a power-armor gang running out of a derelict women’s prison. Between Johnny T and Zeke, the Third Rails got the old metro line running that serves as their hidden convoy base.
That’s right, their crew lair is both Hidden and a Convoy. An old metro line made a lot of sense, and because they’re Dealers we said the line meets up with an underground mall called Prism City.
I’ll recap the first play session later, but so far things have been promising. I haven’t gotten a lot of specific feedback yet, but then again we’ve only just started.
Had a good time with Adam Sexton’s Household Renovations of Great and Terrible Power hack today.
Had a good time with Adam Sexton’s Household Renovations of Great and Terrible Power hack today. Turns out there was a great big honking beehive in a casement window in the carriage house our crew was renovating, so of course the correct way to deal with it was to have the Freak draw the bees to itself with its honeyed skin and then have the Contractor plug him into the house.
You don’t get desperate XP for beekeeper masks and smokers. 🙂
Just finished part 1 of the Dead Setters’ Ironhook jailbreak heist.
Just finished part 1 of the Dead Setters’ Ironhook jailbreak heist. They’re busting Lampblacks out of Ironhook and assassinating some key Red Sashes as well as Master Krocket, the Filch-like houndskeeper for the prison.
First, I wanted to say how much v7.1 of the rules helped out with this. Couldn’t have been better timing. Having Dunslough and Ironhook more fleshed out really made this session work, and the prison riot got sparked off early during the work detail at Dunvil Labor Camp. We had a ton of clocks going on:
1. An 8-segment “Riot” clock, which when filled would cause enough chaos that the 2 Dead Setters on the inside could reach the lightning barrier with their Lampblack rescuees.
2. A six-segment “Quelled” clock, which represented Ironhook bringing in their riot squads and drown powder bombs and dogs. Less segments because they’re a higher Tier and they have stuff in place for riots.
3. A 4-segment clock for each Red Sash on Bazso’s hit list.
4. A 5-segment clock for the Lampblacks – each segment represented 2 Lampblacks. Since the PCs were getting paid per guy they got out, I could assign prison rolls to either quelling or the lampblacks, or tick them as consequences/complications/devil’s bargains.
It was real close. The Hound snuck up to a vantage point in Dunslough and managed to crit nearly everything she tried, including popping Krocket through the face and handling the Red Sash problem. Even with her help and the Spider and Cutter resisting Ironhook’s attempts to quell the riot, they only skated by 1 tick ahead of the prison riot squads.
We had to call it a night then, but the Whisper is up next with a crazy flashback plan to unzip the lightning barrier and somehow get a dozen prisoners out of jail and then back into Duskwall.
—
Before all that, we had some masterful back and forth trying to convince Baszo not to doublecross the Whisper and Hound, ably critted (again!) with some help from the Spider’s fine whiskey, provided via flashback.
Still, a 2 on the engagement roll is not what you want when your plan is to be arrested on purpose. The Cutter was going to be sent to the lightning wall immediately with the other death row inmates, but they crawled their way out of that.
I hope I made the situations dire enough for the guys. Going up against the prison shouldn’t be a cakewalk IMO, and this didn’t feel easy to me as the GM. They got a lot of crits along with a few abysmal rolls, but the good rolls were where it counted and the bad ones were able to be mitigated.
#heestcomplete
#glowinthedark
#glowinthedark
Glow in the Dark alpha thingy release go!
This is the white-line nightmare of the Cold War brought to half-life, a mythical doomsday that never was. Twisted metal rusts away under shifting dunes. Maniacs kill for food, for fuel, or for fun. You are part of a crew – a gang of post-apocalyptic scavengers and warriors desperate to survive. We will play the game to find out if your crew can flourish despite other hungry gangs, forgotten pre-war threats, the unforgiving elements, and their own dark impulses.
The rules link is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B436j88kgCAtYkpMY0pEMjJiRjA/view?usp=sharing
The playbooks are here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B436j88kgCAtbGZOMXFmRzdTVGc/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B436j88kgCAtYkpMY0pEMjJiRjA/view?usp=sharing
TURF RETAINED!
TURF RETAINED!
The Dead Setters tricked the Reconciled into assaulting a fake spirit well and then hanged the Whisper’s contact in the Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good Caper.
Although you could also call this session the My God, It’s Full of Sixes Caper.
Our previous session ended with the gang getting frantic word that their Coalridge spirit well was under attack by organized ghosts, assisted/led by at least one living person. That made getting into this session pretty quick, since the situation was there and the players were reacting. I framed the score as a sort of “reverse score”, where the score was to protect turf, and the engagement roll wouldn’t be how well the enemy had planned to attack the spirit well initially, but how prepared they’d be against the Dead Setters’ inevitable response.
The plan? Deception. The method? Build a decoy spirit well.
So that worked pretty well (six). The attacking spirits and their handler, Flint (Teatime the Whisper’s rival) were completely flummoxed (a six on engagement), and while the ghosts had been getting the upper hand on the Dead Setters’ thugs, the arrival of the gang leaders quickly turned the tide (all sixes to command, ghost-punch, or banish the attackers).
Flint and his two hired whispers, Coil and Ruby, fled. They tried to cover their trail by dropping chokedust behind them but Deemo the Leech had downed quicksilver at the start of the battle. Now she gathered her will and commanded the remaining ghosts to capture those cowards. She critted, naturally, and we cut to basically this, if you swapped out the forest for a shitty basement:
Although a Devil’s Bargain would end with Flint and his two cronies dead badly enough to ding the gang the +2 Heat for killing, they learned the following before “threatening to hang” turned into “hangings for real reals”:
1. They were attacked by the Reconciled.
2. The Reconciled are enemies with the Dimmer Sisters.
3. They have some loyal pawns/possessees within the Path of Echoes (important to the Hound, since she’s trying to become an adept).
4. They are led by (maybe) a quorum which is (maybe) led in turn by Tamar, the Last and First Empress of Skovland, sort-of survivor of the Cataclysm and first to discover the means to retain one’s mind as a ghost. Maybe. That was one of the few middle-of-the-road results they got.
5. They are at -1 faction status with the Reconciled now. 🙂
6. Level 2 harm is much worse than level 1 harm, but that Attune crit was pretty awesome so maybe drinking quicksilver was worth it?
7. Teatime has a Krull glaive he can control with the ghost field or something.
I think we’re where we want to be with the game now too. I feel comfortable enough with butchering John’s setting that we’re finally getting into the high supernatural stuff I think we wanted from the get-go*. There are two demons loose on the city, the current stable of foes and allies are the weirder ones, like the Reconciled, Dimmer Sisters, and Path of Echoes, and most every PC is equipped for ghostbusting.
*But I wanted to ease into things and get our feet wet with “regular” gangs. We’re past that now.
#heestcomplete
HEEST COMPLETE!
HEEST COMPLETE!
The Dead Setters framed their Spider’s nemesis for demon summoning and illegal spirit chicanery in the Let’s Go To Prison Caper.
Richter, the Spider, already did a stint in Ironhook thanks to Jennah, his former partner/rookie when he was an Inspector. He had been working towards repaying the favor but needed something bad enough to get an actual for-real Inspector thrown into jail. The remnants of the Crows provided the ammunition when they inadvertently released Ahazu, a demon, from Lord Strangford’s family crypts. The Setters had arranged for the Inspectors to get there, not the Bluecoats.
The next piece of the puzzle was to get Jennah’s support structure out of the way. Several great gather info rolls and some legwork revealed that she had contacts within the Gray Cloaks (for underworld tipoffs) and a contact in the Skovlan Consulate (for political tipoffs). The gang didn’t want to hit her Gray Cloak contact, since the two gangs were friendly, so they shadowed Jennah and trailed her to a clandestine meeting with Skinner, her Skovlander contact. They were meeting at a power substation in Dunslough, a noisy, cramped, near-abandoned industrial nightmare of steam pipes and deadly, confusing machinery and catwalks. A 6 on engagement made this a perfect spot for an ambush.
Seriously guys, 6s on engagement rolls are pretty great. As a GM, I don’t really like seeing them but it’s not all about me, is it? 🙂
With the initiative and the high ground, the Dead Setters make quick work of both Skinner and his bodyguards and Jennah’s Inspectors, although I will say this fight resulted in the most harm I’ve ever dealt to the PCs, mainly because instead of gunshots and stabbings I was having them fall off catwalks and into exploding steam pipes and electrical conduits, trying to dish out different ideas for damage as well as separating them out fictionally.
In the end, they left Jennah alive but wounded, then hit her with this ghost-bait stuff the guys thought up previously. Spirits started in on the Inspector, and although her spiritbane charm would protect her, Jennah would be arrested for consorting with and trading spirits. The Bluecoats had a LTP for investigating her, and she had a LTP for blocking their investigation. However, without her contacts in place, and the extra evidence, AND a little push from Richter during downtime, Jennah was convicted, stripped of rank, and sent to Ironhook.
—
Downtime saw Raven, the Hound, choose to keep on her LTP for learning the Path of Echoes’ secrets rather than Recover. That’s a bold way to earn that XP for having your trauma (obsessed) cause trouble!
Teatime the Whisper, during his LTP to worm his way back into high society’s good graces, had the misfortune to accidentally participate in a combination noble wedding/summoning ritual. Certain shady nobles thought it’d be a good idea to summon a demon under their control to take down Ahazu. They fucked up and got something called The Burned King, who promptly left the venue, clearly not under anyone’s control. This is my homage to Perdido Street Station, with the crazy attempts to stop the slakemoths.
—
We ended the session with the gang getting word that their spirit well had been hit by an organized force of ghosts and one human intent on breaking through their lightning barriers. Retaliation is nigh.
—
I think we’re finally getting to that point in a campaign where the players are driving most of it, and we’ve seen enough of their characters come forward that I can start pushing on their goals and personalities and setting up opposition there rather than just having a “gang of the week” moment. For example, Raven’s trying to get in good with the Path of Echoes. She’s chosen to frame her LTP “rise within the cult” as a series of assassinations against enemies of the Path. Our group’s Leech, Deemo, happens to have Malista, a priestess (not of the Path), as a contact. Deemo’s also got Father Yorren (Weeping Lady) as a vice purveyor. I’m toying with the idea that one of these could be Raven’s “final exam”.
#heestcomplete
The Mutant
The Mutant
#glowinthedark
This is the last playbook I’ve planned for Glow in the Dark at this time, and I freely admit it is the weirdest and shakiest one. Part of me went for that Hull/Vampire/Ghost “prestige class” feel, while part of me wanted to make sure it was something with which you could jump in from the start.
It’s a LOT of Gamma World injected into a series of playbooks that have mostly stayed Mad Max or Fallout. If you stayed purely Mutant, you’re gonna be pretty freaky. However, I think mixing up Veteran advances one way or the other could be pretty cool.
I’m shaky on the items, because the underlying theme of the playbook is that you rely on your own gifts. That said, I kind of have a gear list relating to delving into pre-war sites, which seems to be broad and useful enough without pigeonholing too much.
One thing that’s broken at this point that I don’t have an answer for yet is the Channel action. In vanilla Blades, Attune can be used by anyone, and there’s a reason for that. Channel was only ever going to be a Mutant action, and I’d actually go for other actions given any one of those abilities. Scanner would use Read or Wreck or Finesse or Boss. Natural Weapons would be Prowl or Raid, etc. So disregard those Channel dots for the time being. 🙂
Ghoul: You are wizened, leathery, and tough. When you bathe in radiation during downtime, you gain +2 ticks on recovery long-term projects. You also get +1d to Prowess resistance rolls.
Superhuman: You are freakishly-muscled and massive. Spend 1 stress to perform a feat of superhuman strength or speed. This factors into effect.
Scanner: Your bloated brain swells with strange power. You may telepathically communicate with anyone you can see, and can pay 1 stress to: locate all minds around you – move an object remotely – briefly control a person or animal – read a person’s thoughts
Wings: You can fly as fast as a vehicle when you carry a light load, and as fast as a running person under a medium load.
Natural Weapons: Your body bristles with bone spurs, quills, thorns, or claws and fangs. Your natural attacks gain potency against unarmored targets. When you get inside an opponent’s guard, you get +1d to fight them.
Conduit: You are bioluminescent and crackle with energy. You can release this energy around you or project it as a beam or jet. Take 1 stress for each level of magnitude.
Venomous: You are patterned and colorful. Choose a drug or poison to which you are immune. Pay 1 stress to secrete it through your skin or exhale it as a vapor.
Invertebrate: You are rubbery, slick, or squamous, able to contort through tiny spaces. You can perform feats of inhuman flexibility. When you use contortion to do things a human could otherwise do*, you get +1 effect level.
*I also don’t like how this one’s worded. I want to say that Invertebrates can do things people can’t, but when they do contortionist stuff that people COULD do, they’d get a bonus. But not when they do their inhumanly-weird contorting.
The Feral
The Feral
#glowinthedark
Second to last playbook. This one’s for Sulik, the Feral Kid, Savannah Nix, Benecio del Toro in the Hunted, Turok, Tarzan, Solid Snake, Crocodile Dundee, and Marc Singer.
Beastmaster: Animals and wasteland creatures will not willingly harm you unless attacked. You can interact with these creatures in exchange for small favors, such as extending their tolerance to a small group or leading the way to a location.
Ghost and the Darkness: When you vanish in plain sight, pay 1 stress and say how you do it.
Shadow: You get special armor vs. consequences from detection or security. When you roll a critical on a feat of athletics or stealth, clear 1 stress.
Predator: When you attack from hiding or spring a trap, you get +1d.
Snake Eater: You get +1d to resistance rolls vs. poisons, drugs, and tainted food. Your crew’s upkeep cost is reduced by 1.
Hunter’s Quarry: When you hunt a target you’ve previously tracked or wounded, you gain +1 effect level.
Sharp: Others often underestimate you because of your preference for primitive tools and methods. When you roll resistance with Insight, you get +1d.
Good Dog: Your animal companion is a mutant, cyborg, or similarly unique example of its type. You do not take stress if you lead it in a team action. Additionally, choose a trait for your animal: fast as a car – ranged attack – psychic link – massive size. Take this ability again to choose a second trait.
