Cyclopean Viking Vampire Horror

 What follows is the play log from an entire solitaire game of Thousand Year Old Vampire. Sort of a weird fragmented non-linear short story of the unlife of a vampire.

I have played three games of TYOV before this one.  This time, I began the game in pagan Scandinavia, with a young man named Torgny Hjalmerson who dreams of being a successful viking raider like his father was before him. He descends quickly into madness and villainy, and makes especially horrible relationship choices.

There's no default setting for TYOV, so I'm blending Norse Myth, a few standard vampiric themes from elsewhere in folklore and mythology, a bit of the trappings of sensationalized hollywood-style satanism, and some weird new stuff unique to this tale. (Not to mention anachronism and historical inaccuracy.) 

This was a ton of fun, and definitely a game I'd be happy to play again. It also works well as character-building exercise for Vampiric NPCs in other RPGs. (That's actually what I did with 2 of my 3 previous plays of the game.)

Trigger Warning: This is a log from a horror game. There's a good deal of violence in what follows, including mutilation, body-horror, blasphemous devilry, and violence against women. While I don't get overly lurid with the details and everything is kept kind of brief, there's some seriously awful stuff in what follows.  If you've got a queasy stomach or are easily offended, you may want to skip this post entirely. 

Full log follows below the fold:

1st Session of Feng Shui 2 - off to a solid start

Our first session of Feng Shui 2 went well! We started with basically the intro scenario from the rulebook. Using any "canned adventure" is pretty rare for me, but I wanted to make sure I had a good feel on fight dynamics before I start really tweaking things. I did rewrite the third encounter significantly, and we're already integrating little twists from the PC's various melodramatic hooks.

Everyone had a ton of fun and we were all impressed at how easily even a giant 25-character fight just zipped right along. The game engine is robust, elegant, and mostly intuitive. (I will also take a bit of the credit for it running so well, because I did a lot of custom-tuning of the Roll20 character sheet before the first session so that die rolls were automated and included reminders of relevant schticks.)

The 5 PCs we've got are a ton of fun:

• Xiong Weisheng is a Transformed Dragon, whose parents are big-deal badguys (probably Ascended) with their fingers in everything.
• Ruby Chase is a Driver with a criminal past she's trying to leave behind her.
• Myrtle Haney is a Drifter from 1850 - she's an actual Old West gunslinger type, trying to find her father or the gang of black hats who might have done him in.
• Thiegaro is a very fishy Supernatural Creature. Myrtle found him in her travels, and is the only person so far who can translate his fishy gurgles. Thiegaro is basically the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but with the personality and conversation skills of Chewbacca.
• Benjamin Dixon is a Ghost of a former policeman. 90% John McClane, 10% Kevin from Home Alone. He sacrificed himself to save a building full of civilians in the famous Christmas Massacre in 1987. Now, in 2021, he was finally set free when the city bought and developed the cursed property and turned into the new community center. (Which then got attacked by terrorists within minutes, because movie-logic.)
  

We swapped out a few Schticks and Skills that didn't match with character concepts:

Thiegaro being able to become a human seemed to go against the intended roleplaying challenge of "Chewbacca from the Black Lagoon":

• We swapped out "Transformation I" for "Flashback From The Hell of Knives". Meaning he can't turn into a human (or talk clearly), but he's very loyal and will mess you up if you hurt one of his friends.

Benjamin being a Ghost Cop meant the default Ghost template had a few things that didn't really work with his character concept:

• We swapped out the "Love Potion" power, in favor of the Sorcery Schtick "Exemplary Prostrations". Basically, he can flash his spectral badge, and any cops, paramedics, etc who see it forget he's a ghost and accept him as a fellow first responder for a few hours. Really helped when the HKPD arrived near the end of the opening fight.
• We swapped out the skill "Seduction" in favor of "Police" skill.
  
• We swapped out the skill "Info: Musicianship" a replaced it with "Info: Architecture".

When we were trying to decide why the cowgirl Drifter could understand the fishman, but no one else could, somebody said "what if it's like Cowboys vs Aliens, and you have some weird device on your arm that's translating for you". We realized that also solved the "we're in Hong Kong and your cowboy probably doesn't speak Chinese" problem as well, so we went with it. I'm probably going to say it has a built-in J-Meter as well, when we get to the Netherworld.

Like I said, everything went great, much fun was had, and we will be playing again in two weeks. Currently my only concern about the game has to do with Advancement. There are relatively few Creature Schticks, and two of our PCs (the fishman and the ghost) both have access to that list. The Ghost also has Sorcery powers, so if he leans into that a lot it won't be a problem, but if not, I may have to put some extra options on the Creature's list so that they don't end up too much alike after 10 or 20 sessions of play.

Playing Against Types

It feels really good to get back into LARPing. It was an integral part of my life back in the day, and the new post-divorce, post-depression Rolfe is trying to get back in touch with better days and old accomplishments.

So I'm playing in two LARPs these days, both of which share a venue and a large segment of their player base. (I also attended one session of a third LARP, but it has a scheduling conflict with one of the other two, and at this point I'm invested enough in my characters to be certain where I'm staying.)  Finding the courage to go to the first session was difficult, and the courage to walk back into that room of strangers a second time was even harder, but I stuck through it and now I don't regret it. Each week is more fun than the one before.

Changeling: The Dreaming

Changeling is the lightest, happiest version of the World of Darkness. It's the same world as Vampire, Werewolf, Wraith, Hunter, etc, but the PCs are fay beings infused with imagination and just generally much brighter and more optimistic than the protagonists of any of the other WoD game lines. Characters within the setting struggle to overcome mundane banality, not the murderous hunger or raging inner beast of Vampire and Werewolf.

Honestly, I've never liked the concept of Changeling as much as the darker more angsty takes on the WoD. I'm big into pathos, character drama, and greek tragedy. I'd played one or two sessions of Changeling back in Albuquerque a decade ago, but it never really hooked me. Given my druthers, I'd have joined a Vampire game instead.

But this October, Changeling was the only LARP I thought I was going to be able to play in. (Vampire LARPing really only feels right after the sun sets, so it starts late, and I was working ungodly early mornings at the grocery store.) Expecting this to be the only RPG on my plate (at least as a player) for a while, I made myself a therapy character. I'm playing a grumpy, masochist Troll, recently returned to the world from some horrible self-imposed exile that nearly destroyed him. I carefully picked Flaws that would allow me to vent in-character about the emotions I was feeling out-of-character; through him I get to unload sour statements about love and betrayal. He is quick to anger, but also a slave to his romantic and chivalrous nature; scarred by dozens of half-remembered previous lives of heart-break, and now actively seeking his own death. He's a ball of cynicism and banality, and frankly the other characters ought to be steering clear of him because that shit is dangerous in changeling. 

He is completely out of place at that game, and that was kind of the point. I was going to a game to force myself to be social again after years of being a recluse, so I specifically built myself a character that could stand in a corner and glower whenever the prospect of interacting with humans or making new friends was just too damn scary for me.

My hope is to give him a big ol' arc. The whole point of the character is to maneuver him along a transformation, and through it convince myself that my own return to the world is entirely a good one.

Since the entire cast of the LARP is playing crazy over-the-top fey, I often find myself relegated to the Bud Abbot / Zeppo Marx / Rowlf the Dog straight-man support role. I didn't have much to connect me to the plot, and my bristly armored portrayal often meant I was left standing moody in a corner when it would have been more fun to be center stage. The character is cooler on paper or in theory than he is in practice. Before long, I came to regret those character decisions, as my defenses became a prison. I was in danger of isolating myself from both plot and people until it stopped being worth my time to attend the game.

Luckily, after a few sessions there, one of my fellow players asked me to join the Werewolf chronicle that meets at the same location. Excuses to decline came right to the forefront of my mind, but I somehow found the courage to disregard those thoughts and accept her invitation.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse

I took a very different approach with my character here. Grumpy and quick to anger would have fit Werewolf better than Changeling, but by this point I really wanted something else entirely to get me out of my shell. I ended up playing a Lupus Cub, a young wolf who knew nothing of werewolves (or humans) until his first change (which happened at the first session I played this character). What a joy this character is!

He knows nothing. His experience is limited to what a wolf knows, and I play him with an open-eyed sense of wonder and curiosity that would be perfect for a Childling in the Changeling game. Pretending to have never had nor used _hands_ before, asking ridiculous questions and clarifications because basic human concepts confuse me, playing the timid omega of the pack who now suddenly qualifies finds himself an alpha at the same time he learns there's so much more out there in the world than he as simple wolf ever dreamt; all these things are hilariously fun. Here I'm not the dour straight man, I'm the scrappy sidekick comic relief. Everyone else is playing a darker character at Werewolf than at Changeling, but I've personally flip-flopped that dynamic. It's really fun.

And boy has this character's arc been a breeze to get rolling. A few weeks ago I was a bewildered cub in a fox frenzy; that persona is quickly being warped by curiosity and experimentation and his confidence just bloomed at the end of last week's session. I had no Tribe in mind when I made this cub, I just built a young wolf as a blank slate. Questions and events have pushed him to Tribe Uktena, and his whole personality emerged organically out of improvisations with the other players. He's still young and innocent, perhaps even foolish, but he's also just starting to find his strength and develop some ambitions of his own. Assuming I don't get him killed (the combat system can be brutal, and I nearly died twice in the first turn of my first fight) first, I think this little pup has a bright future ahead of him.

The weird thing (for me as serious introvert) is that I'm engaging with an entirely different subset of the player group in the two different games. The tiny handful of people that have broken through the Troll Grump's shell at Changeling, are a very different (and much smaller) group of players than the young Uktena Cub pesters and riffs off of at Werewolf. I'm enjoying the later game more, but it's also enhancing the former game by way of contrast. The combination is encouraging me to be more social out-of-character as well, since I'm quickly growing to know and like the majority of the player base. Being quiet and stand-off-ish comes naturally to me, but my little cub pretty much demands to be played as a very social animal who wants to engage with everyone. So I'm just letting the character lead me, and I think that process is doing me a world of good.

The Armchair Musketeer

Last night I played in a superhero RPG loosely based on "Mystery Men", in that we were supposed to play incompetent superheroes. The system was Savage Worlds, using the Supers Compendium.

I played the Armchair Musketeer, which is exactly what it doesn't sound like: a plushly upholstered Louis XV chair that had been granted sentience, served in the Royal Musketeers, and has been fighting crime ever since. Complete with an inconsistent "french" accent... and the last time he his upholstery repaired, he had "magic fingers" installed... "for ze ladies".

I spent his ten hero points on Construct (a requirement, really) and the rest on Super Skills. This, combined with the "Blind" Hindrance (chairs don't have eyes, you see) and "Trademark Weapon" edge allowed me a Fighting skill of d12-4 (d12 +1 +1 -6). I also had Taunt at d12-2, and Shooting at d10-6. Awesomely incompetent. I rolled a lot of (adjusted) 1's, but also the occasional high-level exploding successes.

Playing a Blind PC is really hard, by the way. GMs nearly always do the majority of their narrating as "Here's what you see when you open the door..." or "In walks a villain in a lab coat, and three thugs carrying submachineguns..." or, in our case last night "You hit Santa in the face, which peels back revealing he's a robot!" For some strange reason, the other players don't really enjoy having to repeat everything the GM says.

Or, maybe, they just didn't want to constantly explain things to an armchair. I can't completely rule out "the furniture factor".

The Meat Shield (Truth & Justice PC)

Played a little Truth & Justice last week. It's a reasonably rules-light superheroes RPG.

I tend to over-think my characters too much, and take way to long making a PC. So, with my back up against the wall at the game, I slapped together a thin parody of a character, which I named The Meat Shield. Despite being so shallow, the character was kind of fun to play.

The Meat Shield

• Hot dog vendor by day, heroic sidekick by night.
• His superhero suit is printed with the cuts of meat he could be chopped into.
• He has some minor thematic equipment, such as a Knockwurstchuku and a hot-dog shaped cell phone, but nothing that actually provides a bonus (well, except the hot dog cart itself, which is mundane but amusing).
• I intended him to just be a lackey, but discovered in the process of playing him that there's some pretty enjoyable grandstanding to be done when your character resides at the intersection of invulnerable and ridiculous.
• Officially I'm the sidekick of the great Beef Wellington, a hero of immense girth reknown, who is, sadly, out of commission with some sort of food poisoning.
• The police got annoyed with me in one scene, and put a "boot" on my hot dog cart. It's hard to be a superhero when your bicycle is being impounded.

Powers:
Invulnerability +2
Regeneration +4

Qualities:
Body Guard +4
Karate +2
Unobtrusive +2
Bicycle-driven hot dog cart +2

Weakness:
Can't disobey anything a Superhero tells him to do (-2)

FATE steampunk characters

My wife and I are playing in a very enjoyable steampunky alternate history game on Sundays. Our characters have been selected to take part in the first U.S. mission to the moon, which is happening in the late 1890's.

I'm such a thin-skinned perfectionist, I always find something to complain about even in a game I'm really enjoying. So let me get that out of the way:

• I have some minor gripes about the FATE system, and Fudge-based games in general, but I think I'll mostly save them for another post. The system is somewhat lacking in granularity and gradation, and you never want to be the underdog.
• The lack of a published setting means the players aren't really sure how far to take the steam-punk and pulp elements (the cliff-hanger of the last session suggests to me that the GM pictures both being more prevalent than we PCs have assumed thus far).

Those both are pretty minor complaints. The game is rolling along at a great pace, and our characters and situations thus far are pretty memorable. We've had to think on our feet, and narrowly avoided some dire fates.

Here's the stats for the character's my wife and I are playing:

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My character is Basil "Boyo" Munsby.

Basil is a former member of a New York street gang. After getting in trouble with the law, he was ordered into the Navy by Judge that wanted to scare him straight. After he served his time, he decided to go prospecting for Gold. Instead of the yellow metal, he stumbled across a vein of Phlogiston, the rare mineral that the U.S. Government in the setting is now using to power it's expedition to the Moon.

As far as NYC street gangs go, the Bowery Boys were "pretty boys", and almost respectable. So, while Basil is clearly our adventuring party's resident cold-blooded murderer, he can still dress sharp and hide his psychopathic streak if he needs too. He's uncultured "new money", but at least he doesn't look out of place.

I either bribed or intimidated my way into this expedition, on the flimsy excuse that my experience mining Phlogiston will be useful when we get to the moon (which is clearly full of the stuff). So far I've mainly proved my worth by killing foreign spies that tried to sabotage or infiltrate our mission.

Aspects:

• Half-Mad Bowery Boy: 2
• Court-Ordered Military Service: 1
• Phlogiston of the Sierra Madre: 2
• "New Money" Adventurer: 1

Skills:

• Confidence Man: +0
• Dirty Fighting: +2
• Fireman: +1
• Intimidation: +3
• Midshipman: +0
• Mining: +1
• Petty Larceny: +1
• Politics: +0
• Sense Treachery: +0
• Survival: +2

The various criminal-related skills are mostly from his time as a hoodlum, but so is the Fireman skill, as the Bowery Boys ran a volunteer fire-department.

Survival and Mining are mostly from his time prospecting, but he had some rough situations out there in the wilds that further expanded his Intimidation and Fighting skills.

Midshipman was a mistake, and needs to be renamed. He spent some time on a ship in the navy, and I chose a word I'd heard but apparently always misunderstood. I thought Midshipman was an enlisted rank. Looking on the web now, I realize Midshipman is actually the lowest Officer's rank. I should replace it with "Seaman" or "Leading Seaman". I could believe that he's got what it takes to get promoted once while at sea (he's brave and focused), but he's not Commissioned Officer material.

---

My wife's character is Theresa White.

She's an inventor and engineer. I don't know much of her character's backstory. My wife is at work, so I can't really pick her brain right now, but I've got a copy of her character sheet. Here's what I do know about her PC off the top of my head: She's a published author on various scientific topics. She was the women's fencing champion at college. Margaret E. Knight is a colleague, friend, or role-model of hers.


Aspects:

• Nine Impossible Things Before Breakfast: 2
• Obsessed With Technology: 1
• Unhealthy Curiousity: 2
• Women's Fencing Champion: 1

Skills:

• Alertness: +1
• Athletics: +0
• Electrical Guru: +2
• Here's What I Need: +0
• I'm Published: +0
• It's Never Been Done Before: +1
• Melee: +0
• Phlogiston Specialist: +2
• Technological Gadgeteer: +3
• What Is That?: +1

In our second session she built some mechanical shackles with a 10-hour time lock, so I wouldn't have to kill the enemy that had surrendered to us. We were on an out-bound train, so as long as he couldn't get free till we'd reached our destination, we didn't need more blood on our hands. Or so she told me. :)

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The rest of the play group includes a Pinkerton, a daredevil escape artist, a journalist, an employee of the Vanderbilts, and a young Smedley Darlington Butler. Smedley Butler is one of my personal heroes, so I'm kind of jealous that one of my fellow players had the idea first.

Our second session ended quite unexpectedly with the cliff-hanger of a dog-fight in space. We've been attacked by rocket ships from an as-yet-unidentified nation. Just when you thought it was safe to go into orbit...

Truth, Justice, and Pantsomancy

Tonight's session at the weekly one-shot group was the second leg of a three chapter short-shot that started at a session I'd missed a few weeks ago. The system is Truth & Justice, a light and flexible superhero RPG (I was quite impressed by the system, to be honest).

One of the existing PCs was Geckoman, like Spiderman with a tongue instead of webs. That encouraged us to be a little odd, too.

Sarah's character, Madame Griselda, is a psychic with temporally-displaced senses. She can smell the future and hear the past, or was it the other way around?

My character is Peter Braccae, aka The Trouser Weasel. Occultist, Reformed Criminal, Tailor. My power is control of pants. I can summon pants, teleport myself to pants, transmute pants, reach into my pocket and pull out your wallet (or car keys, or whatever's in your pants), etc. My signature stunts are the Panteleportation Swap (I go to your pants, you go to mine) and Immobilize From The Waist Down. My weakness is skirts, kilts, and nudists.

I just sent the following email to the other players. The plot is far too complicated for me to explain, but I think this will stand without further context beyond "Dread Wizard Calvin is the badguy, and he has a wild cat as a familiar." Here's the email:

Those of you who wear pants find the following note in your pocket. It's been laminated in hopes that it will survive all the rain, and to make it a little more noticeable when it's inserted into your pants. It reads:

"My esteemed colleagues,

I was walking miss Griselda home from the Trolley ambush, and as we talked, a theory hit me. It's gonna sound pretty ridiculous, and I don't mind if you call me crazy. Dirty looks and funny names don't hurt a guy like me. As you may know, my ancestors were excommunicated for heretical Pantsomancy. In this enlightened age, the science of Pantsometry is finally getting some acceptance, but it's been a long hard road full of dirty looks and funny names. A few more of each won't bother me.

More to the point: Griselda tried to smell the future, and she can't smell The Dread Wizard Calvin at all. Funny thing that - a guy in a fancy suit, who's pet is a wild cat, and he ain't got no scent. You'd expect some fancy cologne, or lacking that, some cat dander and piss. But no, nothing, nada, like a totally normal generic nondescript everywhere kinda scent.

Likewise, I tried to teleport to his pants, and struck out. Wrong pants, wrong guy. These ain't no simple pants, neither. Distinctive. Green Armani. Hard to confuse 'em. They don't sell pants like that in Harbor City. If they did, I'd own a pair. One way or another.

So what kind of guy looks like a million bucks, but's got no pants and no smell? An illusory guy, that's who. He ain't no wizard, he's a scentless well-dressed red herring. My money's on the cat. I bet it's a magic cat, hiding behind a guy who never was. It's some kinda exotic breed, probably related to a Cheshire.

Calvin = Illusion, Cat = Illusionist

That's a tough nut to crack. Like the Pope, a cat's got no pants. Don't know how to fight a pantsless cat. This one's gonna take some out of the box thinking. I'll let you know when I come up with a plan.

In conclusion, I'm really honored that you invited me to team up with you. You're real heroes, the kind I've always wanted to be. Feels good to be part of something. Maybe we should consider a team uniform. I'll sketch up some designs, and send your pockets a memo.

Fashionably yours,

The Trouser Weasel."

Trail of Cthulhu Session Recap

Synopsis: The Trail of Cthulhu campaign I'm running is a one-player game. Sarah (my wife) is playing a newspaper reporter named Ginny Malone. She's the new girl working at the Arkham Gazette, circa 1935. Her primary Drive is curiousity, and her Pillars of Sanity include such things as her Journalistic Integrity, and the belief that "bad things don't happen to good people".

The emotional map of the second session went like this:

• Brief shock/creep-factor, quickly denied.
• Angry fight, with Ginny winning the debate through the use of low-down-dirty tactics.
• Minor frustration over bureaucratic hurdles and delays, solved by clever thinking.
• Encouragement and gains via reconnecting with an old friend. A chance to rest.
• Social ambush, off-kiltered to the defensive, and having to scramble to find a good cover story.
• Relief as an acceptible compromise is reached.
• Finally leading to more creepiness as she perused the ancient tome.

It was great fun going through the myriad forms of emotion for the session, and throwing dramatically different NPCs at her. Sarah responded in kind, putting a beautifully nuanced performance and some great key-turning moments. She was on fire last night, definitely some of her best gaming ever, and it provoked me to some great GMing, if I do say so myself.

The long form of the above:
Ginny Malone has an on-again-off-again tempestuous romance with a traveling perfume salesman named Charles. In game mechanics, Charles is one of her "Sources of Stability" meaning that comforting interactions with him can refresh her Stability pool. However, should he ever get tangled in the Mythos and killed or driven insane, it'll have some serious impact on her characters Stability and Sanity stats. This complicated relationship, and the fact that there were non-distracting mechanical reinforcements behind it, prompted the first of several really good scenes in our second session.

Backstory: In the first session, she'd been called by the Mayor, who offered her a scoop on a story he didn't want to talk about over the phone. They arranged a meeting over dinner, but the Mayor never showed. She got brave / curious enough to go check his house, and found his body. Curled up in a fetal position in the house was a man with amnesia, and a blood trail indicated this fellow had crawled from the scene of the Mayor's murder. Like any reporter would do, she called the police, and then snooped around and took photos while waiting for them to show up. Evidence she found indicated the Mayor lead a rather shocking secret life, which just confirmed her belief that good people don't wind up murdered.

The Mayor died clutching a journal, and that book was full of occult references and pornography. More disturbingly, it included a list of women's names, of which the only one that hadn't been crossed off yet was Ginny Malone (the PCs name). Needless to say, she removed the journal from the scene before the police arrived. The session concluded with her developing still and motion film taken from the site, and skimming the journal. The clues found there-in were deeply disturbing, and she'd compulsively cleaned her apartment (having failed a minor Stability roll) trying to shake it off. It was a neat little improv on Sarah's part.

Session Two started the next morning. She'd had creepy dreams involving the occult proceedings she'd seen on the film the Mayor had shot, and was awoken by a hand on her face. Turns out it was just Charles Harrington, her (currently ex-) boyfriend. Charles had the read the morning paper with her exclusive article about the Mayor's murder, and rushed over to check on her. She was upset that he must still have a key, and we immediately started exchanging verbal blows in-character.

In the middle of the argument, she notices that her carefully cleaned apartment is no longer so neatly organized. The 8mm projector is out again and reels of film are everywhere. She accuses Charles of snooping, and he insists it was like that when he arrived. "When'd you get into the Nickelodeon business, anyway?" Claims the Landlord had heard the sound of a projector running all night, like she'd been obsessively watching films. Implication being either someone else had broken in and watched the films without waking her, or she'd set the projector back up in her sleep. Either implication is kinda creepy, so she suggested Charles take her out to breakfast.

Sarah and I almost never fight - we're one of those sickeningly sweet couples that everybody else hates - but man did we have a blast pretending to be at each other's throats. The fight continued in Ginny and Charles car ride, and then round 2 at Velma's Diner, with us improvising old points of contention and things they'd done wrong before thier most recent break-up. She had an opportunity to reconcile, but at the risk of Charles becoming aware of this unspeakably bizarre occult mystery she was just starting to unravel. She chose to shelter him from it, but doing so made the fight that much more volatile, as she wouldn't explain her headspace or what she was so spooked by. Very much a soap-opera scene, obviously, not a common scene type for most RPGs. It was a lot of fun to play out thier fighting dirty while trying to keep a public face on it at the restaurant. Eventually, Charles storms out.

Now way too unnerved to go home, Ginny decides to go track down some other leads. She heads to Miskatonic University, to search the card catalog for anything referencing this Goddess named "Mormo" that was mentioned in the Mayor's journal - as understanding whether he'd been a harmless goof or a dangerous maniac would depend on what kind of cult he'd been tied up in. I wasn't expecting her to pursue that clue above various more-pressing ones, but as it turns out, I'd known that an old, half-burned manuscript on the subject was within the rare book room. It took some Library Use skill and minor social finagling, but she was able to get a dottering old professor to arrange a few hours with the manuscript if she came back later. There'd been a recent break-in at the rare book room, and a manuscript stolen, so the University staff was being very cautious now. Arranging to come back at 3:00 when there'd be an extra librarian available to control her access to the rare book room, she headed off on a diferent lead.

There'd been a dozen women on the list in the Mayor's journal, but only one (other than herself) that Ginny really knew: Rosina Tsura. Rosina had attended college at the same time as Ginny, they had taken a couple classes together and frequently gone to the same parties. Two months ago, Rosina invited Ginny to the grand opening of her new art gallery. Rosina had hoped Ginny would be writing a review for the paper, and Ginny had felt a little used. They exchanged only a few uncomfortable sentences at the Opening, and hadn't spoken since. This backstory was delivered as a semi-out-of-character synopsis, where Sarah was allowed to contribute details to their friendship and the events of the opening, as long as it ended with two months of not talking to each other.

Moving into the scene, Rosina was now very happy to see her, and very apologetic for her ill manners that fateful day two months back. She'd been unlucky in love, and the Opening wasn't going the way she'd wanted, etc. Many factors had contributed to her lack of patience at the time, but the Gallery was scraping by now, and she was willing to admit her part in the unfortunate conflict they'd had. This was, of course, designed to strongly contrast against the previous scenes where clues had been dangled just out of reach. Rosina was friendly, ammicable, and revealed a great deal of useful information of a non-sinister nature. After coffee and catching up, Ginny took photos of the gallery, and promised to write up a favorable review. She spent a couple valuable resource points making the article really good, so the Gallery would prosper - and I rewarded her with a two-point Dedicated Pool that could be used in future stories to call in favors and support from her dear friend Rosina. I think this lighter humanizing scene was really important to "selling" the session, and getting the character invested in the setting. Cthulhu can devour humanity any day he pleases, but that's only horrifying if there's at least a couple humans you kinda like.

It turns out, by the way, that Rosina had been involved in a wildfire secret romance with the Mayor for about a month. In that time, he'd plyed her with money and favors, even kicking in the money (and donating a Gericault sketch) needed to make her dream of opening a Gallery complete - but then he broke up with her earlier in the day of her Grand Opening. Rosina was ignorant of the greater implications of this tale, but it wasn't lost on Ginny. Or lost to Sarah, who seemed to be parsing my subtext quite well.

Coupled with some things she'd learned by reading the Mayor's Journal, I believe Ginny has concluded that the list of women the Mayor was crossing off indicated those he'd seduced in a search for a woman with a particular birthmark - a birthmark her character has. He'd gone to great expense to earn Rosina's trust, and then apparently dumped her once he'd gotten what he wanted. He'd reached the end of his list, and the night he was about to put the moves on the last woman (Ginny herself), someone killed him. Obviously, I can't comment on the accuracy of those conclusions - as figuring these things out is part of what makes mystery/investigative game fun.

It was getting close to her 3 o'clock appointment back at the Library, so Ginny bid Rosina adieu. She arrived at the University, expecting to have some more quality time with this old hand-written occult Tome. Instead, what she got was ambushed by the head of the Department, who had not been present on her initial arrival in the morning. Dr. Armitage took her aside to a private room, and applied the screws. Suddenly, she was being interviewed, and not the other way around. A loud in-character interrogation, full of bluster and bravado. Feign ignorance, and he'll write you off as just some pathetic child - go read Poe if you're just looking for a good scare! Show too much knowledge, and he'll decide you're a some crazed cultist. At either extreme, he won't let you near that Tome again, and if you really answer wrong, you just might end up tied to a chair.

I lit the fire under her feet, and watched her dance. She squeaked it out, but it was pretty choppy at a couple points, and she ended up having to give out more information than she wanted to. She has provisional access to the first 11 folios of the tome, provided that Armitage or someone he trusts is present, and she must give him a copy of any articles referencing Mormo before she sends them to her editor. The 12th Folio, and, indeed, the mere knowledge that it even exists, goes nowhere, young lady!

This compromise will, of course, lead to further conflicts both in- and ex-ternal, since her Journalistic Integrity is one of her Pillars of Sanity. That's okay, though, as Sarah indicated before the campaign began that she was looking forward to playing the descent into madness of the traditional Lovecraftian lead character. More fun ahead, no doubt.

From The Land Of Sky-Blue Waters

Last night at the Wayward, we played in Laura's Toon City Vice game. The group was far smaller than normal (and foot traffic at the Cafe was really low) no doubt thanks to the VP debate (which I kinda wanted to watch, but I'm not sure it's healthy for me to be so invested in politics - I really don't need an ulcer).

Anyhow, about Toon City Vice. The setting was derived from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but it was several decades later. The system was Savage Worlds. There were just 3 PCs. Sarah was playing Casper the Friendly Ghost, John was playing Wile E Coyote, and I played my beloved Hamm's Bear. Here's a few clips for those unfamiliar with the Joe Camel of watered-down beer.



I made him a burned-out has-been, no longer beloved by children and instead just hitting the bottom of the barrel (and keg or can), as he rightly should be. To properly represent his decline, I gave him the hindrances of Major Habit (Hamm's Beer), Obese, and Outsider. We were each allowed one "Toon Edge" a special power that was based on our character's cartoon powers, and a "Toon Hindrance" aka a special weakness. Since he has no powers in the cartoons, I had to stretch a bit. I decided his special power was the ability to find a beer anywhere, and his weakness was his drunken swagger and the trail of empty beer cans that could be used to track him.

Then I bought fairly crappy skills to match the commercials. Boating, knowledge: injuns, things that weren't likely to come up much in Toon City. In any other game, this character would be unplayable. But in the cartoon genre, being effective is far less important than being funny, and that he was.

Reprising self-imagined greatness

Last thursday, I played Hollows & Hobgoblins at the Emerald City Gamefeast. H&H is a Wushu-derivative. I'd played it before for Manu's first playtest. I got to reprise my character from that Gellur, the overly flamboyant warrior/metalmage, who liked to remind people that he was a hero. It's the most annoyingly pompous I've ever played, and remember - I've GM'd Amber.

The character's a bit like Zap Branigan, except with some magical talents so he's not completely useless. I'd share more, but one of my cats just decided he and his claws need my attention. The game was fun. Manu improved greatly on the first session, which itself was a very enjoyable game to begin with.

The Zap Branigan comparison isn't entirely accurate. Gellur was/is more flamboyant, and less lecherous. He's also a lot more heroic. I spent much of the session assuring the other PCs that I'd protect them (not that they wanted protection, or my assurances thereof, but I didn't let a little thing like that stop my character's ego), especially the "little ones" (half the party was hobbits). As a result, I took a lot of damage (but surprisingly little of it was inflicted by the rest of the party).

I named Gellur after the famous spoon-bender / charlatan. Hollows & Hobgoblins has a cheaply available magic, much of it with an elemental theme. So, I made him a Metal Mage. His Signature Move is making inanimate objects that people are holding grow mouths and bite them.

My wife starts teleworking in half an hour, and needs the computer, so she's clawing and biting me just like the cat was. Gotta go again.

P is for Narwhal

I've been meaning, for months, to blog a bunch about my favorite PC of all time. It was an Amber DRPG character, made by a good friend of mine, J. Starr Welty. Since it's an Amber character, and a picture is worth a thousand words, I put a few in-game Trumps of him just to the left of this paragraph.


The character came about because of a conversation Starr and I had at the used bookstore we were both working at. Someone was selling the store a copy of the Blue Planet RPG. Checking the binding, I flipped it open to a random page, and there was a picture of a dolphin. The text was about play Cetacean characters. The rules were pretty minimal, suggesting something to the effect of "the GM will decide what is and isn't feasible for a cetacean to have. For example, a dolphin with the hang-gliding skill would be inappropriate."

I turned to Starr and said "that's the difference between a game like this, and the Amber Diceless RPG. In Amber, as long as you had a good story to explain it, the GM would have no problem with a hang-gliding dolphin." Apparently that struck a chord with Starr, and that weekend saw the launch of the coolest (in other words, weirdest and most poetic) RPG campaign I've ever been a part of.

I introduce you to Lucid, the Parachuting Narwhal. A quick look to the right will show that he has a Narwhal body, plus little T-Rex arms, big Kangaroo legs, and a red parachute. What you wouldn't know by looking is that the Parachute is a magic artifact capable of sailing air currents between worlds or alternate realities, and that the Narwhal is an incredibly powerful psychic (1st Rank in Psyche plus a 10-point Telepathy power). You also wouldn't guess he had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from being tortured by Clowns. It sounds so goofy on the surface, but he was actually a very serious character and Starr put a lot of thought into him. Lucid was a complex, and truly unique. There's just nothing else like him.

He evolved significantly, having an awesome development arc over a couple years. Bits of his story have shown up on this blog from time to time, occasionally getting the "Narwhal" label. Sometimes it's hard to tell I'm talking about a Narwhal, since he eventually purchased the Shapeshifting power. I'd tell you more, but he's really Starr's intellectual property, and I'd hate to steal her thunder.

Lucid the Parachuting Narwhal was freakin' cool, and despites years of really good gaming before and since, he remains my favorite character of all time.