In Glow in the Dark, your tribe makes runs into the wasteland in search of supplies (to sustain life) and rep (to grow in size and power). This creates friction with other factions in the setting and leads to fallout for your tribe as they seek to rule – or escape – this new world.
Version 6 is hopefully my last major rules pass. I’m switching gears into “make it look nice” mode next, pulling together the last pieces of art, and so on. After the encouragement I received from my most recent art preview, I am tentatively planning on offering it POD once the SRD comes out.
The Relics were out in the Barrens (inhospitable wilderness, overgrown with deadly flora and stalked by mutant beasts), hunting down a contingent from the Ape Empire who had managed to clone/hack/kidnap their compound’s AI, SIRI. This was Fallout from their last run, and the players chose to settle it the hard way instead of paying a hefty ransom.
The trio of Nestor the Leftover, Torch the Junker, and Rooster the Driver observed the apes from a few hundred yards out. The simians were on a promontory of cracked earth jutting from the overgrown ruins of a farm, using a fire truck’s ladder to raise some sort of comms dish high enough to intercept the Relics’ transmissions and “steal” SIRI. In addition to an offroad IROC-Z guarding the operation, there were deadly Yaxels (yak-bat creatures) circling the area, plus it would be night soon. You don’t want the be in the Barrens at night. It was a fairly straightforward situation with good intel, so the Relics opted for an Assault plan. Rooster marked “Fine Anti-Vehicular Weapon” and Nestor marked off “Bodytank”. Torch had brought her new invention, a “fire-flinger”, kind of like a potato gun firing napalm bombs.
The engagement roll was risky – the IROC saw them coming, but Rooster’s “Beat the Snake” ability let him fire before the apes could. The Driver’s Carl Gustav recoilless rifle thundered, hitting near the Camaro and blowing off a wheel. The ape’s return fire flew wide, serving only to draw the attention of nearby yaxels (mixed success, doing limited effect and marking a tick on a yaxel clock). Torch’s fire-flinger finished off the hapless vehicle and the apes inside (6, so no blowback from the invention’s volatile flaw).
The apes on the promontory flew into action. Three gorilla-type guards (Macho, Peels, and Konga) dropped prone and crawled to the edge, hoping to return fire with small arms. The apes’ driver and two techs frantically tried to stow the comms gear and get the fire truck moving. Nestor made quick work of Macho, counter-sniping him with a laser rifle before the ape could shoot him or his friends. Torch’s fire-flinger cut off the truck’s escape route as Rooster fired his Carl Gustav again. A crit! Additional effect: surgical precision. The fire truck was immobilized but could be repaired.
Things were going really poorly for the Ape Empire, and I made a middling fortune roll to see how they’d react. The driver just ran for it, and one of the yaxels swooped lower as the ape crashed through thorny brambles. The techs, Baud and Tack, started unhooking the comms gear, planning on carrying the equipment out if they couldn’t drive it out. Meanwhile, Peels and Konga rolled down the promontory and into the cover afforded by the ruined farm. They were still on the attack.
Nestor tried to make his way through the twisted flora up to the fire truck, but Peels ambushed him, leaping off a dilapidated silo and tackling the bodytank to the ground! (risky trek, fail -> desperate position) Ape and man struggled, servos straining against mutated ape strength!
Torch decided the best way to help would of course be to set the farm on fire. A devil’s bargain and partial success later, Nestor and Peels wrestled amidst roaring napalm, but Konga was flushed from her position towards Rooster. It looks as though the driver was about to be caught off guard by a charging gorilla, but Rooster used his trusty Carl Gustav like a baseball bat, smashing the weapon into Konga’s face and knocking her out (full success, prisoner captured, devil’s bargain for broken weapon).
There was still the matter of the two ape techs trying to make off with their truck’s data. Torch snorted her botdust and reached out, making a bizarre wireless connection with the comms gear, searching for the pathways to overload the equipment and shock the apes. She did it, but the feedback threatened to fry her brain (risky, partial success, level 2 harm “brain burn” resisted to level 1 “migraines”) as the nanites overheated with effort. The two apes, thinking their gear was useless now, also retreated into the Barrens.
Peels tore Nestor’s helmet off his power armor and raised her fists for the killing blow, but Nestor has the ability “Pearly Whites”. They shared a desperate moment in the firelight and, although it was perhaps due to the encroaching flames that threatened both of them rather than Nestor’s disarming countenance, Peels relented. The downside was that the heat was rapidly draining Nestor’s power reserves. He was already at 4/8 for his suit’s flaw Limited Power, and I moved to tick 3 more as complications from a desperate Sway roll. He resisted like a boss, however, popping the heat sinks now he wasn’t in immediate combat.
Torch marked armor (a firefighter’s turnout coat) and scrambled through the blaze to the fire truck. Rooster’s attacks had left the fire truck immobile but fixable, and Torch pulled her tool kit out and got to work. The fires spread, both from the farm below as well as her earlier attempt to block the truck’s escape route. The engine wouldn’t turn over! Rooster drove his car, Layla, up the hill and flooded the scene with his highbeams so Torch could see what she was doing. The flames were at the truck now, a desperate situation, and finally Torch got her six. The truck roared to life and burst through the fire.
After their brief standoff and realization that both man and ape wanted to escape the inferno more than they wanted to kill each other, Nestor clambered up the slope and onto the fire truck, leaving Peels to an uncertain fate, shaken to her core by the man who fought like an ape.
~~~
This standout session marks the end of my Relics playtest, and I cannot thank my players Matt Schwaninger, Jason Eley, Logan Shoup, and Thomas Berton enough for their energy and thoughtful feedback.
Today I Learned: The Relics need just a little more help from their playbook prompts, XP triggers, and so on. As they are now, they’re more of a theme rather than a tribe with a purpose or method of surviving the apocalypse. Our playbooks meshed really well, however: Leftover, Junker, and Driver all had a lot of synergy.
Our starting situation back at the start of the playtests was… better than in my first playtest. That’s all I can say. It’s fine. But tribe-specific starting situations might work a lot better. We also talked about “Professional” as a tribe’s reputation in the post-apocalypse. We agreed that there are situations where that might fit, but this tribe of Relics maybe wasn’t embodying “professionalism” exactly. Perhaps each tribe might have a slightly customized list of reputations to choose from, but I’ve been thinking about that and I feel that maybe we just need to tweak the list that’s there a little bit.
I also learned that all my playtest groups have gravitated towards the more gonzo factions. Big Red, the sentient drone semi truck. Noah, the AI remnant of a pre-war weather service. The Monarchs, bug/plant mutant drug dealers. The Ape Empire. Glow in the Dark definitely has room for your car gangs and guzzoline pirates, but the Blacktop Society, Knight Riders, Ash Lords, and so on don’t seem to be as popular.
What’s Next / Roadmap: After I tweak a few things based on this group, I’ll be releasing Glow in the Dark v6 probably in the next week or so.
Thanks again to my playtesters! If you’re playtesting your own hack or are just LFG, this community has resulted in some really wonderful experiences. I was really nervous putting the call out for randos, but I couldn’t be more pleased.
I got some design validation from an unexpected source the other day.
I got some design validation from an unexpected source the other day. The amount of ammunition Battlegrounds hands out maps really well to my ammo rules in Glow in the Dark. You typically have enough ammo for murder but not battle.
“As you expend ammunition, you’ll mark off ammo dots under Items. This represents the foresight to bring enough ammo. Follow these guidelines for marking ammo:
Mark the first dot when you engage in a gunfight that uses a raid action (as opposed to hunt).
Mark the second dot if you squander ammo; suppressing fire, full-auto, two guns at once, and so on.
You’re out of ammo if you don’t have the load to spare or if it makes sense in the fiction. It might also come up as a devil’s bargain.”
We had to break last session in the middle of underground shenanigans against the Monarchs, insect/plant mutants who take slaves to work their irradiated narcotic fields in the Boneyard. The tribe had come to the Boneyard to raid their lair for drugs, which they could then sell for food, which they sorely needed.
It’s tricky to handle scheduling conflicts when you have to cliffhanger, but Rooster the Driver and Tuesday the Shark were the only ones who could make it. Luckily, they were both in Rooster’s dualie Boss Mustang, Layla. Nestor and Torch had ambushed a Monarch guard and it was easy to rule that Rooster’s desperate drive up an escalator weakened the subway nexus they were in. A freak cave-in separated the present players from the missing ones, and we continued on, having turned our frowns upside down.
Changing what the conflict’s about: In my last post, I mentioned that I was worried that the Shark (a social class) might not be the best fit for the wasteland, but I’ve had a Shark in 2/3 of my playtest groups and I think it’s good now. Tuesday wanted to convince the remaining Monarch guard that the previous violence was a big misunderstanding and that the tribe was here to barter with the Monarchs, tech for drugs. It wasn’t completely impossible – the guard was outmatched and alone (at least until the “reinforcements” clock filled up), and with her “bogus trade goods” item, Tuesday boosted her effect. It was still a desperate roll, but she pulled out a partial success. Rooster protected her from the wasp-thing’s claw-hands by putting Layla into a quick J-turn, throwing the mutant free.
Trauma club: The next major challenge was meeting Queen Hymenoptera and reducing her suspicions to the point where she’d actually barter. The Monarchs’ leader was all of 4′ tall, a bug-headed Brundlefly mutant whose legs had merged into something of a thorax, with twisted toes and long nails curved in mockery of a stinger. Vine-arms wrapped around the heads and necks of four human slaves, which supported the tiny monarch like a living palanquin. When Hymenoptera spoke, it was through the mouths of these slaves.
This was mainly a handful of Barter and Sway rolls, but the devils’ bargains were juicy AF. Tuesday’s first offer was a flashback, where she and Rooster combined their playbook items (a “speed inhaler” and “party drugs”) into a chem cocktail they could offer as a goodwill measure. The Monarchs happily offered some of their own supply for Tuesday and Rooster to try, and Rooster traumaed out resisting the drug-harm (in keeping with his poor decisions, he took “Reckless”). Tuesday accepted the harm, and a tick on an “Addicted” clock. Finally, Tuesday offered tech for the Monarchs’ drugs and she was truthful (and compelling) enough about the details that she piqued the Queen’s greed. Deal or no deal, the Monarchs would try to find out where the tribe’s Hidden settlement was.
Escape: Hymenoptera took the pair of PCs topside to show them the Monarch’s territory, less a friendly tour and more a prideful show of force. Look at how much turf we have. Look how the very plants here do our bidding. Getting the actual drugs was fairly straightforward, but considering Tuesday and Rooster hadn’t brought any tech to trade, things got sticky once they got back to their car.
Rooster (who was now back among the conscious) flashed back to giving wirecutters to the slave pens. They broke free and swarmed the guards just as Tuesday pepper sprayed them and Rooster ticked off “Ballistic Weapon” and “+Big” on his playbook. He refused a devil’s bargain to shoot up some slaves as he hosed the three escorts, but accepted a counteroffer to simply use up all his ammo for his SAW. He squandered ammo here (squandering resources like entire belts of 5.56mm gives +2 friction, like killing does in normal Blades) but would be able to tick that Reckless XP. The guards were overwhelmed and then they were dead. Spent brass littered the subway platform. Rooster and Tuesday clambered into Layla and gunned it into the tunnels. We had a brief chase but Rooster, driving in the dark with NVGs on and no headlights, was more than a match for the handful of winged Monarchs who pursued them.
Next time! Payoff, Friction, Fallout, Upkeep, and Downtime.
~~~
We probably could’ve finished sooner. I probably called for a few too many action rolls during the negotiations. My best guess is that I was mentally prepared for your more typical assault/sneak kind of session, and I (mistakenly) felt that switching to a social approach needed the same volume of rolls? I don’t think it did. After Tuesday managed to shift that paradigm, there was plenty of complications to go round. Hell, Rooster got the group’s first trauma! I glossed over it in the writeup but I called for probably 2-3 extraneous Barter or Sway rolls, and it eats up time when you only have 2 hours to play. I also didn’t want to feel like we were rushing the scene or not giving it pride of place, either. I was caught off guard but I know now, in hindsight, that it was way more interesting doing this socially.
What happened also wasn’t really in line with what I had in mind for Relics. This turned out to be a Dealers score (we all agreed, too). That said, I had half-assed some Relics tribe XP triggers that I thought were maybe too broad, but I feel more vindicated about my choices now since we couldn’t contort the action into something “Relics-ish”. I don’t know if the starting situation’s to blame. Anyway, here’s what I’ve got for the Relics’ tribe XP triggers so far. Yes, it’s just a 4X game. 🙂
Execute a successful exploration, exploitation, expansion or extermination.
Explore: Gather data on the locations and factions of the wasteland.
Exploit: Reclaim pre-war technology or culture.
Expand: Rebuild the wasteland in your image.
Exterminate: Subjugate or destroy those who stand in your way.
TL;DR: Made 2 additional survivors, presented starting situation, started first score which was mostly a sneaky Assault or blitz Infiltration.
~~~
I’m late with this writeup, since we actually finished the first score this past Wednesday.
Logan Shoup
(“Torch” Constance, a Junker) and Matt Schwaninger (“Rooster” Cole, a Driver) joined Jason Eley (Nestor Carlisle, a Leftover) and Thomas Berton (Tuesday Grace a Shark). It took about half the session, and now all my playbooks have actually been played at this point. We also nailed down Nestor’s bodytank (powered armor) and Rooster’s custom ride. The gear/vehicle system I use for Glow is a mishmash of the Smugglers crew from vanilla Blades and Mark Cleveland Massengale’s Runners in the Shadows hack (and probably some parallels with Apocalypse World), and so far it works out okay.
Nestor’s armor has heavy plating, but has limited power and a leaky core. It made the most sense for him to have salvaged the suit from his spaceship wreckage, which is why it had two flaws but no obligations like it would have had he stole it or had it loaned out to him by another faction.
Rooster’s custom ride is a sort-of dualie Boss Mustang called Layla. He salvaged her as well, but took Eleanor as his starting ability, which lets you mitigate a flaw if you name your custom ride. Then he doubled down on perks, ending up with fast and sturdy but finicky and thirsty.
Torch was a former pawn of the rogue AI Noah who took off after she learned she was being used. Her vice is drink, an oldie but goodie. Rooster was a promising deathracer with the Blacktop Society, but was exiled after he threw a race to save a friend’s life. He still follows the Society’s deities, however – the Big Three, the Holy Trinity of Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors.
~~~
Starting Situation: Glow in the Dark adds the pressure of scarcity to the Blades economy. My starting situation highlights that, opening with the tribe running out of food. This is a strength of making Supplies (my Coin replacement) more of a general resource – I can say “you’re out of food” even if they didn’t spend their starting Supplies on faction relationships. Maybe those starting supplies represent gas or ammo instead. As it happened, however, the tribe did spend all their supplies on faction status boosts, so they decided to raid the Monarchs (plant/insect mutants who take slaves to work their irradiated narcotic fields in the Boneyard) for their drug stash and then trade those drugs to Hightower (Bartertown meets Tenpenny Tower, one of their allies) for food.
The tribe gathered information – one of their settlement’s scavs, Kalat, was a former slave of the Monarchs and, like Sean Connery in the Rock, provided exceptional intel and a potential way in through the lightly-guarded abandoned subway tunnels.
Rooster drove Layla down into the labyrinthine passages. I believe engagement was… risky? There were three mutant guards standing watch in a subway nexus, along with some slave pens. Nestor and Torch got out of the car and ambushed one Monarch, burning it to death with Torch’s namesake. Rooster crushed another under Layla’s wheels as he aced a desperate two-wheeled stunt up an escalator to reach the high ground.
The third Monarch, a wasp-thing, landed on the roof, poised to strike.
~~~
As we wrapped up this session, I was once again concerned that the Shark, the social playbook, might inadvertently be “hard mode” in a wasteland setting. I was also worried that going into tunnels would make it difficult for Rooster to participate with his car. I shouldn’t have been worried.
Next time: We wrap up this first score and see what cross-country trips and cave-ins do to party cohesion! Also, someone Traumas out!
Despite catch-up character creation eating into our session time (doesn’t it always take longer than you think it will?), we had a successful Relics playtest with Matt Schwaninger, Thomas Berton, Jason Eley, and Logan Shoup playing a Driver, Shark, Leftover, and Junker respectively. Their settlement was the Leftover Nestor Carlisle‘s spaceship crash site in an overgrown, mutated park in the middle of the Boneyard.
From my first playtest (Shepherds), I learned how much better it is to have a starting situation that comes from internal pressure, ie. “You are out of damn near everything” rather than being approached by some questgiver* whom the players might not engage with. The tribe decided to raid the Monarchs’ (bug and plant mutants in the Boneyard) drug stockpile so they’d have goods to trade with Hightower (a +1 faction that ostensibly controlled the surrounding territory) for food.
One of their settlement’s farmer-scavs was once a slave for the Monarchs, and provided exceptional info. The tribe took Rooster’s custom ride, “Layla” (a Mustang-esque dualie) into the old metro tunnels, approaching the Monarchs’ lair near where they kept their slave pens. A risky engagement roll resulted in an “All The Guards!” clock being ticked and a mediocre force of guards in the underground itself. Time was an issue, but the tribe had avoided the bulk of the plant- and bug-people topside.
A flurry of rolls after that saw one thorn-man burned to death by Torch the Junker and another locust-mutant crushed under Layla’s wheels. We had to call it there, but we’ll be back to finish up this run.
I had a great time finding out about this new tribe of survivors. I’m curious as to whether a Shark (mainly a social playbook) and a Driver (well, driving-focused, naturally) can both be effective on the same run, or if we’ll see one waxing as one wanes depending on the type of score the tribe chooses.
It should also be fun to see Tuesday Grace the Shark contend with Torch, because Tuesday’s built her whole background on a web of lies about being an engineer and having all this technical knowledge so she can pass herself off as important. Will Torch expose her comrade? Will she even care?
Also wanted to touch on the survivors’ Taboos for a moment. In Glow in the Dark, you have a background and a taboo, something that you won’t do or a moral code that sets you apart from the largely amoral rank and file of the wasteland. You also mark XP if following (or breaking!) your taboo causes you trouble. I’m toying with the idea of having a set list as the playbooks develop, but at this point in development it’s been more freeform.
Rooster the Driver won’t break an oath. Simple, solid, and easy to bring it into play yourself.
Torch the Junker won’t put out a fire. This is maybe a little more suited for a Trauma (and would be a fine embellishment on a future Unstable or the like), but for now it seems pretty ripe for drama, especially since she just burned a plant-man to death in an enclosed space.
Tuesday the Shark will not abide senseless suffering. She’d give a parched man a drink or shoot him, but she wouldn’t leave him. I think it’ll be cool to see how the nuances of this play out when you get into situations like the Monarchs keeping slaves.
Nestor the Leftover won’t tolerate barbarism. Again, the boundaries of this are proving pretty interesting. Burning a plant-man didn’t seem barbaric, and led into us learning that Nestor’s got a dose of that sci-fi racism against mutant abominations.
* Baszo’s offer in the BitD quickstart averts this, as choosing to not engage in such a charged situation is still making a dramatic choice.
The Third Rails out of Prism City hosted peace talks between Blacksand, a fortress-refinery taking cues from Gastown and Elvis, and the sentient drone semi truck-deity Big Red. Tensions started high as each contingent arrived with enough armed guards to fight a small war should things go south (mixed result on the social plan’s engagement roll).
The Rails’ main goal was to quell the animosity between the two factions, with a secondary goal of making some sort of trade deal with Blacksand (they had arranged one previously with Big Red). They did not want Blacksand to find out that they had allied with Big Red to take down a Blacksand convoy previously.
Gameplay-wise, I started each faction off with grievances to overcome and then something they wanted if they were going to move forward. Blacksand wanted Big Red to lay off their convoys, but their real problem was with the Tier IV trading hub Hightower, which was cutting in on their business. They needed allies more than they wanted retribution for their losses.
Big Red was easy. It wanted a bride.
“A bribe?”
“No, a bride.”
“I ain’t marryin’ no goddamn truck!” shouts one of the Blacksand guards, resplendent in body armor festooned with Vegas showgirl plumage.
“Our lord is not simply a truck!” bellows Big Red’s chief Mechanizer in return.
Johnny Tabernacle, the Third Rails’ Leftover, stepped in trying to bring everyone around to the idea that maybe Big Red wanted a truck bride, not a human one. With a six, he defused the situation, the guns went back down, and the exchange mutated into whose issues would get addressed first.
This was more interesting for me, because I’ve done lots of Glow in the Dark sessions that head towards violence. This was new territory. Was there enough structure here in my hack to make these negotiations compelling?
Gotta pause here to talk about the PCs. I’ve got a Leftover (social, some tech, middling combat), a Reaper (killing and bossing), and a Junker (hacking and scrounging). Zeke the Junker was throwing in some assist dice here and there, but this was clearly Johnny’s show. Lt. Dan the Reaper, however, looked like he didn’t have a lot to do aside from being there in case the guns came out. So I changed the game from figuring out this NPC on NPC shit and focused on making the NPCs want the PC tribe’s stuff.
1. Big Red wanted a truck. Zeke had a truck, a big tandem tractor trailer they hijacked from NOAH the mad AI (1 upgrade in Cars plus the Quality upgrade for Vehicles). Zeke and the other PCs had to convince Big Red and its Mechanizers to look for their Bride of Truckenstein somewhere else, which was hard because really, the Rails’ truck was perfect. While we still didn’t know what Big Red’s intentions were or even if this mandate was from the truck itself or something its acolytes just said their god desired, this was the best and fastest way to suddenly make Zeke care very deeply about what was going on.
2. Lt. Dan Halen recently tracked down an enemy on his revenge list. Bubba the mutant was in charge of a small Last Cavalry (Tier IV paramilitary nomadic raiders) recon force currently camped out in the Barrens near Dead Horse. This intel had an expiration date, however. The Last Cavalry was nomadic, and helping Blacksand against Hightower first or searching for some other suitable bride for Big Red would mean Bubba would vanish and Dan would have to restart his long-term project.
Zeke had an idea. “The Last Cavalry’s mobile. They’ll have lots of trucks.” A controlled Sway later and Big Red was onboard. So many sixes.
Blacksand still wanted their Hightower problems addressed first, however, and a controlled group sway roll on 5d6 produced naught but 3s. Would Dan try to coerce or intimidate them? Would they try their argument again, pressing their luck and eroding Blacksand’s patience? Johnny tried the Barter route, offering them a larger cut for their help against the Last Cavalry and arguing how they’d all be able to use any stolen warfighting gear against Hightower together. The sixes were back and the three factions parted ways.
The trade deal the Third Rails wanted would be contingent on their help against Hightower, but for the moment they had brought a tenuous peace to their corner of the wasteland.
No payoff, sadly, and Fallout for the score/run/job was Wastrels (pay Upkeep again) – easily explained by the Third Rails being generous hosts. While everyone’s load stayed Light, the tribe’s Supplies dropped from 5 to 3 even as their Rep maxed out. They’ll be ready to move to Tier I as soon as they can get 8 supplies (and if they’re smart, more than that to account for increased Upkeep, which means I’ll want their allies to claim enough loot to make the PCs’ situation untenable without conflict). Muahaha. The Third Rails also dinged over in tribe XP and picked up the first dot in Gyros (the explanation for which I am eagerly awaiting) and a Farm, which should help mitigate their upkeep in the future.
Had a good survivor/tribe creation session with Thomas Berton and Jason Eley last night for my Relics tribe playtest! The as-yet-unnamed settlement has sprouted up around Jason’s Leftover’s spaceship crash site. Thomas’ Shark, Tuesday Grace, spun a web of lies to her small group of refugees about being an engineer and knowing all about the World That Was, so we’ve got a charlatan and an actual Charlton Heston-style astronaut-out-of-time. Logan Shoup will join us in 2 weeks as well for our starting situation (and finalizing names for stuff).
The guys really went for all the robot choices when it came to contacts and factions, and their settlement has a farm, bootstrapped by seeds stolen from the Ape Empire’s fertile valley.
From a playtest perspective, I’ve got a lot of conceptual blanks for Relics that, while I’ve got lots of touchstones in my head, I’m not sure which ones deserve to be put to paper yet. We’ll find out.
TL;DR: A PC rams silverware into a guy’s eye socket and shouts “Fork you!”
Operation Truck Yeah saw the Third Rails out of Prism City successfully team up with Big Red to take down a Blacksand guzzoline shipment. Although Old Zeke the Junker trauma’d out with Reckless in their desperate escape, the Rails returned and both they and Big Red the sentient drone truck parted on good terms (+2 faction status).
Part of their arrangement with Big Red was setting up a trade route, which I treated as a claim. Each tribe type in Glow in the Dark has two unique claims (the claims system is stripped down and made a bit more generalized to handle anything from taking turf to stealing cars), and the Dealers have one called Caravans, which does the whole “downtime tier minus friction equals supplies” thing. That matched pretty well!
Downtime is a flurry of vice indulgence for Johnny Tabernacle the Leftover. Lt. Dan Halen the Reaper tracks down the next name on his revenge list. Zeke, fresh and clean from his trauma, spends all his downtime actions, his bonus action from the Blackfinger ability, and spends a point of rep for another action in order to finish repairing Johnny’s bodytank power armor flaw “Limited Power”. We paused after this and talked about whether the costs involved in removing the flaw permanently like this seemed balanced. We all thought it was a pretty long process but fair – this was the second or third downtime Zeke was using on this, and he’s pretty optimized for crafting as it is.
After downtime, a Blacksand truck rolls by to make trade. When the Third Rails hit their previous convoy, they didn’t leave anything that pointed to them helping Big Red, so they retained their +1 status with the refinery-fortress. Valley, the Blacksand rep, wants to make a deal. He wants the Rails to plant a tracker on Big Red. Johnny T counters with an offer to settle up peacefully with the drone truck.
He does this, however, and in Lt. Dan’s rush to help, he ends up antagonizing Valley’s bodyguard, and then he escalates to violence. Johnny uses the scuffle as an analogy in his argument for peace and crits! Meanwhile, while the grownups are talking, Dan plunges a fork into the bodyguard’s eye and crits!
“Fork you!”
Because the results were just so good, Valley doesn’t take the kill the wrong way, but actually resolves to treat this tier 0 tribe as serious business. He takes their offer back to the King of Blacksand.
Social plan chosen, next time we’ll open with engagement! I never thought I’d be running a session about post-apocalyptic peace talks.
