Come close, little ones. I don't feel well.
I refreshed my memory on remorhazes, and we decided we weren't quite ready to take it on yet. We did have an idea where I could try charming it, then use my conversational skills to convince it to go away, but unfortunately they only speak jotun, and while Aunold is good at learning new languages, I just don't have the knack.
So we took a short break at the enchantress's mansion. Vared made some magic things in her lab, while I decided to immerse myself in magic and see if any new spells showed up. I can create stinking clouds now. No! Why would I do that? That would be rude.
Then we headed for the port, since we'd heard there was more trouble going on there. Lord Vexil wants to build some warships, and I thought that having him sail off somewhere in a warship would be quite a good thing since it's not like you can sail a boat into the Greenwood. They were glad to see us when we got there, as apparently they had an undead problem. We agreed to try to sort it out.
Ironic, really.
We followed tracks through the tundra, until we spotted a bothy. Normally bothies are quite welcoming, but this one wasn't. I felt quite scared just going near it, and Vared wouldn't approach it at all. But we were definitely in the right place, and I could see tracks that told me the place was in regular use. So we decided to wait and see who showed up.
I turned into a tree, and the others hid in my branches until someone showed. Two men, and two large zombies. Vared and Turgut approached them. Aunold and me hung back. Oh yes, I did stop being a tree. We both flung fireballs. One of the men opened some kind of doorway and disappeared. Vared and Turget engaged with the others.
It didn't go well. We dropped a couple more fireballs, but they were still there. The man cast a spell to blind Turgut. I sent in a gremlin to help out, and the giant zombies were dealt with, but the other man disappeared. Vared started running away from the fight, and we realised that he'd been possessed.
I tried to fascinate everyone, to calm everything down until we could figure out the best thing to do. But it didn't work on Vared, and moments later I felt my mind being invaded.
He used my gremlin to attack Turgut, who could hardly fight back while both blind and attempting to restrain me, until he lay bleeding on the ground. I fought back as he tried to take control of my arms, but he was too strong for me and I could only watch as he used me to fire lightning bolts at Aunold and Vared.
It was a relief when Vared's arrows and Aunold's spells finally connected and I slipped into unconsiousness. I didn't expect to wake up again. Killing me would have driven out the phantom. But Aunold found another way.
A while ago in the Greenwood we'd found a barrow, occupied by a barrow wight who'd been tasked with a responsibility. Turgut agreed to take on that responsibility so that he could rest at last.
So Aunold killed Turgut, who rose again as a barrow wight. And his presence was enough to convince the phantom to leave.
I feel sick. This is all my fault. If I'd been just a bit stronger I could have kept him out of my head. Now I've hurt my friends and Turgut...
Thank you, Mittens. It helps.
Friday, 10 January 2020
Thursday, 9 January 2020
Imposter Syndrome
I saw this New Gamemaster month thing.
"Ooh," I thought. "That might be useful. Because I'm pretty nervous about actually pitching a long block game at the club and it's bound to have good tips for inexperienced GMs."
At which point I had to have a serious word with myself.
Because I'm not an inexperienced GM.
I've run two campaigns of Scion. I've run two campaigns of Victoriana. I ran games good enough that people were willing to play them again, despite the fact that none of us like the systems for either of them.
I've run a campaign of The Dresden Files when nobody else was willing to take it on, and it was great.
I've run two Pathfinder campaigns. Pathfinder! Sure, I used pre-written stuff for that, but so do loads of people.
I've run a bunch of short and one-off games - Scum and Villainy, Don't Rest Your Head, The Sprawl, Liminal.
I'm not an inexperienced GM. What I am, from the club's point of view, is an unfamiliar GM.
So I need to keep on pitching games. Maybe they won't all run, but people will get to know what I can do. I'm never going to win over the 'D&D and only D&D' crowd, but that's OK.
This post brought to you by imposter syndrome and a pressing desire to run a Liminal campaign.
"Ooh," I thought. "That might be useful. Because I'm pretty nervous about actually pitching a long block game at the club and it's bound to have good tips for inexperienced GMs."
At which point I had to have a serious word with myself.
Because I'm not an inexperienced GM.
I've run two campaigns of Scion. I've run two campaigns of Victoriana. I ran games good enough that people were willing to play them again, despite the fact that none of us like the systems for either of them.
I've run a campaign of The Dresden Files when nobody else was willing to take it on, and it was great.
I've run two Pathfinder campaigns. Pathfinder! Sure, I used pre-written stuff for that, but so do loads of people.
I've run a bunch of short and one-off games - Scum and Villainy, Don't Rest Your Head, The Sprawl, Liminal.
I'm not an inexperienced GM. What I am, from the club's point of view, is an unfamiliar GM.
So I need to keep on pitching games. Maybe they won't all run, but people will get to know what I can do. I'm never going to win over the 'D&D and only D&D' crowd, but that's OK.
This post brought to you by imposter syndrome and a pressing desire to run a Liminal campaign.
Wednesday, 8 January 2020
Alien RPG - First Look
We're playing a two session game of Fria Ligan's Alien RPG, using the Chariot of the Gods scenario.
Like every Fria Ligan game I've encountered, Alien uses the Year Zero engine, once again modified to suit the specific game. Four attributes, each with three associated skills, makes for a solid base and also makes every attribute equally valuable. (Compare with Coriolis, where Wits has significantly more associated skills than Strength.) The skills make sense for the setting, with Heavy Machinery being the one that most stands out to me - it's not one that shows up in most games, but you know in Alien that at some point you're going to want to get in an power loader.
Besides the skill and attribute sitting in the middle of the character sheet, there's various other bits and pieces going on around the edge. One of them is resources - air, water, power, food. Irrelevant when you're on your own ship but absolutely critical as you explore a derelict vessel in your exo suit. Rather than any kind of tedious resource management, it uses a variation on the innovative system from the Black Hack - roll a number of dice equal to your current rating, and subtract any 1s. There's also a system for tracking radiation exposure, similar to the one in Coriolis.
Stress is probably the mechanic we were most aware of in the game. Any time you make a skill roll, you add additional stress dice to your dice pool, equal to your current stress rating. This means that a bit of stress makes you more likely to succeed in whatever you're doing. It also means you're more likely to panic, because rolling a 1 on a stress die is a bad thing. The official dice illustrate this nicely by putting a picture of a facehugger on the 1 face of the stress dice.
A panic roll is a d6 plus your current stress, and a table tells the GM what the result means. As yet nobody has rolled particularly high on the panic table, with the highest results merely resulting in us spreading our stress to other nearby party members. However, by the end of the session, my character was a 5 stress. That means any time I make a roll, we don't know if she's going to be hyper-competant or completely freak out. Things could get interesting next week.
There was a little concern that things might be a bit predictable. We were all familiar with Alien and Aliens, and some of us had seen the other movies. (I haven't, as it's one of those franchises where I'm reliably informed that any movie after the second can be safely ignored.) We made a conscious effort to avoid metagaming and have our characters act like people who are only vaguely aware of rumours that there might be alien life out there, rather than our own instinct to expect facehuggers at any moment.
And of course we did encounter an alien, but not a xenomorph, facehugger, or anything else we remembered from the movies. While we're only halfway through the adventure, it feels like it's an original story, not just a rehash of one of the Alien franchise movies. While this adventure is intended as a one-off (we've already had one PC death and I'll be surprised if the rest of us all make it to the end) I can see this game working for a campaign.
Sci-fi horror is absolutely my favourite kind of horror, and I'm really excited about how well this game handles it. While there's a limit to how much I can tell from a single session, at this point it's looking really really good.
Like every Fria Ligan game I've encountered, Alien uses the Year Zero engine, once again modified to suit the specific game. Four attributes, each with three associated skills, makes for a solid base and also makes every attribute equally valuable. (Compare with Coriolis, where Wits has significantly more associated skills than Strength.) The skills make sense for the setting, with Heavy Machinery being the one that most stands out to me - it's not one that shows up in most games, but you know in Alien that at some point you're going to want to get in an power loader.
Besides the skill and attribute sitting in the middle of the character sheet, there's various other bits and pieces going on around the edge. One of them is resources - air, water, power, food. Irrelevant when you're on your own ship but absolutely critical as you explore a derelict vessel in your exo suit. Rather than any kind of tedious resource management, it uses a variation on the innovative system from the Black Hack - roll a number of dice equal to your current rating, and subtract any 1s. There's also a system for tracking radiation exposure, similar to the one in Coriolis.
Stress is probably the mechanic we were most aware of in the game. Any time you make a skill roll, you add additional stress dice to your dice pool, equal to your current stress rating. This means that a bit of stress makes you more likely to succeed in whatever you're doing. It also means you're more likely to panic, because rolling a 1 on a stress die is a bad thing. The official dice illustrate this nicely by putting a picture of a facehugger on the 1 face of the stress dice.
A panic roll is a d6 plus your current stress, and a table tells the GM what the result means. As yet nobody has rolled particularly high on the panic table, with the highest results merely resulting in us spreading our stress to other nearby party members. However, by the end of the session, my character was a 5 stress. That means any time I make a roll, we don't know if she's going to be hyper-competant or completely freak out. Things could get interesting next week.
There was a little concern that things might be a bit predictable. We were all familiar with Alien and Aliens, and some of us had seen the other movies. (I haven't, as it's one of those franchises where I'm reliably informed that any movie after the second can be safely ignored.) We made a conscious effort to avoid metagaming and have our characters act like people who are only vaguely aware of rumours that there might be alien life out there, rather than our own instinct to expect facehuggers at any moment.
And of course we did encounter an alien, but not a xenomorph, facehugger, or anything else we remembered from the movies. While we're only halfway through the adventure, it feels like it's an original story, not just a rehash of one of the Alien franchise movies. While this adventure is intended as a one-off (we've already had one PC death and I'll be surprised if the rest of us all make it to the end) I can see this game working for a campaign.
Sci-fi horror is absolutely my favourite kind of horror, and I'm really excited about how well this game handles it. While there's a limit to how much I can tell from a single session, at this point it's looking really really good.
Tuesday, 7 January 2020
Ramos Reportage, episode 3: We Had A Plan
Ricky got a call from Michael Weathers, wanting us to get on with our actual job of exposing the seedy underbelly of the city through pirate radio broadcasts. Specifically he wanted us to report on the recent terrorist attack on the Trinity HQ to force the police to investigate properly.
OK. So which gang were we going to frame for this? A single grainy photograph had been obtained by once of the survivors of the attack on Trinity, showing an unrecognisable Marlon Brandroid in his Ping the Merciless disguise. Based on this, the team decided the Bushido gang would be the best option.
The plan was to steal an outfit from one of the Bushido so that Marlon could dress up in gang colours and do a broadcast as Ping the Merciless confessing to the attack on behalf of the Bushido.
That was the plan.
Requiem felt she was probably up to taking on a single Bushido member to steal their outfit by herself, but decided she could use some help to actually find one of them on their own, so took Ricky with her. In a failure of streetwise knowledge so spectacular that Requiem took notes, Ricky somehow led them not into any kind of Bushido controlled area but into Sakura, a Japanese restaurant owned by the Yakuza. Realising he'd made a terrible mistake, Ricky decided the only thing to do was to style it out and invite Requiem to dinner.
With comms reporting that rather than working on the job, Ricky and Requiem were on a date, the rest of the team decided they would have to do the job themselves. Rolando and Marlon headed out to find the Bushido themselves.
Things began well, with them finding two high up Bushido members and Marlon engaging them in conversation while Rolando filmed. The man was very insistent on them coming back to his crib, however, and eventually guns were drawn.
Guns, and mono wolvers.
Thanks to some truly spectacular combat reflexes, both of them survived without getting ripped to shreds, and decided to sell the two corpses, calling Quinton to bring the van to transport them in. Unfortunately, before Quinton could get there, more Bushido members started to emerge from the shadows.
True to form, Marlon shot Rolando in the face again, and then the Bushido descended with their mono katanas. Marlon lost a leg, but nevertheless managed to remain standing, dodge multiple attacks and take down multiple attackers. Rolando lost a leg and an arm and fell over.
Quinton (along with Tiny) took a detour to pick up Ricky and Requiem, arriving in style with the van out of control, skidding along on two wheels. Balancing impeccably on her cyberlegs, Requiem fired her Arnos and took out two of the remaining Bushidos. Ricky...
Ricky jumped from the skidding van, leaving light trails from his el-wire, breathing fire from his dragon implant, firing his Arno with one hand and holding Tiny in the other as the dog's minigun sprayed bullets at the Bushido. Whether he actually hit anyone seems irrelevant; it was undoubtedly the coolest thing anyone there had ever seen.
Finally getting the van under control enough to stop, Quinton got out and went to deal with the increasingly disintegrating Rolando and Marlon. Rolando he managed to stabilise easily enough. Exactly what he did to Marlon is unclear, and there seemed to be some extra parts lying around, but he did eventually manage to get him to stop dying.
Somehow in all this chaos, Rolando and Marlon had managed to make their Ping the Merciless video.
Quinton and Requiem piled the bodies into the van (while Rolando hung on tight to his detached cyber leg with his one remaining arm to stop it going into the spare parts) and they returned to base to go through the collection. Suitable replacement limbs were sewn onto Rolando and Marlon, with the rest sold to a local clinic that Quinton had made contact with earlier. The non-organic part of the haul included some extremely illegal mono knives and mono katanas, plus the mono wolvers from the first fight.
Requiem requested the mono wolvers, and Quinton got to work implanting them. She emerged from the surgery with a major increase in egotism and a corresponding loss of empathy. Suddenly unhappy with her appearance (a 4 to Ricky's perfect 10) she decided this needed fixing. Ricky offered to buy her a new face; since they were dating he may as well make an investment. Requiem is now a 12, and has also learned to do makeup and wear nice clothes.
GM: "I had this whole chase scene planned..."
OK. So which gang were we going to frame for this? A single grainy photograph had been obtained by once of the survivors of the attack on Trinity, showing an unrecognisable Marlon Brandroid in his Ping the Merciless disguise. Based on this, the team decided the Bushido gang would be the best option.
The plan was to steal an outfit from one of the Bushido so that Marlon could dress up in gang colours and do a broadcast as Ping the Merciless confessing to the attack on behalf of the Bushido.
That was the plan.
Requiem felt she was probably up to taking on a single Bushido member to steal their outfit by herself, but decided she could use some help to actually find one of them on their own, so took Ricky with her. In a failure of streetwise knowledge so spectacular that Requiem took notes, Ricky somehow led them not into any kind of Bushido controlled area but into Sakura, a Japanese restaurant owned by the Yakuza. Realising he'd made a terrible mistake, Ricky decided the only thing to do was to style it out and invite Requiem to dinner.
With comms reporting that rather than working on the job, Ricky and Requiem were on a date, the rest of the team decided they would have to do the job themselves. Rolando and Marlon headed out to find the Bushido themselves.
Things began well, with them finding two high up Bushido members and Marlon engaging them in conversation while Rolando filmed. The man was very insistent on them coming back to his crib, however, and eventually guns were drawn.
Guns, and mono wolvers.
Thanks to some truly spectacular combat reflexes, both of them survived without getting ripped to shreds, and decided to sell the two corpses, calling Quinton to bring the van to transport them in. Unfortunately, before Quinton could get there, more Bushido members started to emerge from the shadows.
True to form, Marlon shot Rolando in the face again, and then the Bushido descended with their mono katanas. Marlon lost a leg, but nevertheless managed to remain standing, dodge multiple attacks and take down multiple attackers. Rolando lost a leg and an arm and fell over.
Quinton (along with Tiny) took a detour to pick up Ricky and Requiem, arriving in style with the van out of control, skidding along on two wheels. Balancing impeccably on her cyberlegs, Requiem fired her Arnos and took out two of the remaining Bushidos. Ricky...
Ricky jumped from the skidding van, leaving light trails from his el-wire, breathing fire from his dragon implant, firing his Arno with one hand and holding Tiny in the other as the dog's minigun sprayed bullets at the Bushido. Whether he actually hit anyone seems irrelevant; it was undoubtedly the coolest thing anyone there had ever seen.
Finally getting the van under control enough to stop, Quinton got out and went to deal with the increasingly disintegrating Rolando and Marlon. Rolando he managed to stabilise easily enough. Exactly what he did to Marlon is unclear, and there seemed to be some extra parts lying around, but he did eventually manage to get him to stop dying.
Somehow in all this chaos, Rolando and Marlon had managed to make their Ping the Merciless video.
Quinton and Requiem piled the bodies into the van (while Rolando hung on tight to his detached cyber leg with his one remaining arm to stop it going into the spare parts) and they returned to base to go through the collection. Suitable replacement limbs were sewn onto Rolando and Marlon, with the rest sold to a local clinic that Quinton had made contact with earlier. The non-organic part of the haul included some extremely illegal mono knives and mono katanas, plus the mono wolvers from the first fight.
Requiem requested the mono wolvers, and Quinton got to work implanting them. She emerged from the surgery with a major increase in egotism and a corresponding loss of empathy. Suddenly unhappy with her appearance (a 4 to Ricky's perfect 10) she decided this needed fixing. Ricky offered to buy her a new face; since they were dating he may as well make an investment. Requiem is now a 12, and has also learned to do makeup and wear nice clothes.
GM: "I had this whole chase scene planned..."
Sunday, 5 January 2020
Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 9: White Wedding
We didn't fight the remorhaz in the end. We left Tonk and Taint to keep an eye on things, and the enchantress teleported the rest of us back into the city for the wedding.
I got given all these flowers to wear. They're lovely, aren't they? Although they won't last long. And I got a little gift bag with some strange sweets inside. Some people got better gift bags though, with silver rings inside. Aunold and me checked one out, and it was definitely magic. Abduration, so probably some kind of protection. We assumed we would find out what soon enough.
The bride and groom appeared, but didn't touch each other. They didn't even kiss, which seemed odd for a wedding. We started up a chant in the crowd, but couldn't persuade them. We weren't surprised when we found out that it wasn't them at all, but a projection of them. The actual bride and groom were still inside the brothel.
So definitely a witch.
Then these two dragons showed up, both about the size of a horse, and froze everything. Lots of people died, although not the people wearing the silver rings so they must have been for protection from cold. We could use a few of those on winter nights, although they don't seem to be very well made and probably won't last to the next day.
Aunold and me tried to save people by herding them into the brothel, and while the guards were reluctant, we did manage to save some of them while Turgut and Vared killed the dragons (which may have actually been frost drakes, now I come to think of it - not enough legs.)
Amazingly enough, the drakes managed to kill just enough members of the city council for Lord Vexil to be able to be in control. This seems like a terrible way to run anything, let alone a city. But I don't understand how it works. Lord Vexil is also claiming that Ralsoth the warlord is massing an army to march on Gallia, which we're pretty certain is not the case. What would we want with this stupid city when we have the Greenwood? But then, maybe Lord Vexil wants the Greenwood?
All this politics stuff is making my head hurt, especially since it's all being talked about in Common, which I've only just learned to speak. At least Mittens understands me.
I got given all these flowers to wear. They're lovely, aren't they? Although they won't last long. And I got a little gift bag with some strange sweets inside. Some people got better gift bags though, with silver rings inside. Aunold and me checked one out, and it was definitely magic. Abduration, so probably some kind of protection. We assumed we would find out what soon enough.
The bride and groom appeared, but didn't touch each other. They didn't even kiss, which seemed odd for a wedding. We started up a chant in the crowd, but couldn't persuade them. We weren't surprised when we found out that it wasn't them at all, but a projection of them. The actual bride and groom were still inside the brothel.
So definitely a witch.
Then these two dragons showed up, both about the size of a horse, and froze everything. Lots of people died, although not the people wearing the silver rings so they must have been for protection from cold. We could use a few of those on winter nights, although they don't seem to be very well made and probably won't last to the next day.
Aunold and me tried to save people by herding them into the brothel, and while the guards were reluctant, we did manage to save some of them while Turgut and Vared killed the dragons (which may have actually been frost drakes, now I come to think of it - not enough legs.)
Amazingly enough, the drakes managed to kill just enough members of the city council for Lord Vexil to be able to be in control. This seems like a terrible way to run anything, let alone a city. But I don't understand how it works. Lord Vexil is also claiming that Ralsoth the warlord is massing an army to march on Gallia, which we're pretty certain is not the case. What would we want with this stupid city when we have the Greenwood? But then, maybe Lord Vexil wants the Greenwood?
All this politics stuff is making my head hurt, especially since it's all being talked about in Common, which I've only just learned to speak. At least Mittens understands me.
Saturday, 4 January 2020
Ramos Reportage, episode 2: Taking On Trinity
The team decided they needed to do something about Trinity, the organisation who were trying to kidnap/brainwash/murder their netrunner. They came up with a plan to discredit the organisation's leader. Marlon Brandroid used his impressive disguise skills to dress up as the leader, and Rolando filmed a fake candid recording of him saying all kinds of insulting things. Then, of course, they had to actually get the recording out to Trinity's followers. Their own pirate station was not going to cut it. They concluded the only solution was to break into Trinity's local HQ and broadcast it from there.
Leaving Virtue behind to handle the remote disabling of the security systems, Requiem drove everyone to the HQ. They entered through the fire escape by leaping from the neighbouring building (a fairly easy feat when 3/5 team members were wearing MA16 Corvette cyber legs) and found themselves in the staff kitchen.
Requiem ventured out first, finding a single security guard who was easily intimidated with an Arno to the back of his head. She waved in the rest of the team, who began breaking into the broadcasting studio. Then the guard started trying to attract help by making noise, and Requiem decided if he was going to make noise then she might as well also make noise and shot him in the head.
Rolando and Marlon (who for reasons best known to himself had decided to be Ping the Merciless for this particular raid) took out the staff in the studio and got started on their broadcast. Quinton and Requiem headed for the stairs and took out the remaining guards as they attempted to climb the stairs (with Requiem taking full autofire but surviving thanks to metal gear).
Virtue warned the team that trauma team cards had been activated and they should get out fast. With the broadcast complete, Rolando grabbed some useful looking equipment and they all left via the fire escape.
Requiem drove them away in a civilised and non-dramatic fashion. Nevertheless, they were still stopped at a police checkpoint. Fortunately Ricky was in the passenger seat (Requiem liked him sitting there because he made the cab smell nice) and he had no problem charming the police officer into letting them go about their business after giving her his ICQ number.
Leaving Virtue behind to handle the remote disabling of the security systems, Requiem drove everyone to the HQ. They entered through the fire escape by leaping from the neighbouring building (a fairly easy feat when 3/5 team members were wearing MA16 Corvette cyber legs) and found themselves in the staff kitchen.
Requiem ventured out first, finding a single security guard who was easily intimidated with an Arno to the back of his head. She waved in the rest of the team, who began breaking into the broadcasting studio. Then the guard started trying to attract help by making noise, and Requiem decided if he was going to make noise then she might as well also make noise and shot him in the head.
Rolando and Marlon (who for reasons best known to himself had decided to be Ping the Merciless for this particular raid) took out the staff in the studio and got started on their broadcast. Quinton and Requiem headed for the stairs and took out the remaining guards as they attempted to climb the stairs (with Requiem taking full autofire but surviving thanks to metal gear).
Virtue warned the team that trauma team cards had been activated and they should get out fast. With the broadcast complete, Rolando grabbed some useful looking equipment and they all left via the fire escape.
Requiem drove them away in a civilised and non-dramatic fashion. Nevertheless, they were still stopped at a police checkpoint. Fortunately Ricky was in the passenger seat (Requiem liked him sitting there because he made the cab smell nice) and he had no problem charming the police officer into letting them go about their business after giving her his ICQ number.
Wednesday, 1 January 2020
Ramos Reportage, episode 1: A New Story
What better way to start 2020 than with the write-ups of our last game of Cyberpunk 2020?
A couple of points to note about this campaign:
Some of the group have owned this game for a very long time. They know how to min-max. Accordingly, all of these characters are heavily min-maxed.
We have a house rule where if you roll a critical, or see someone else roll a critical, whether it's a hit or a miss, you gain improvement points equal to the level of the crit. Bear in mind that roughly one in five rolls result in some kind of critical - especially where fight scenes are concerned.
The cast:
Together they run a pirate radio station in Night City, with Rolando providing the credibility and Ricky and Marlon doing the more presentation type stuff, while Quinton and Requiem do their best to keep everyone alive. The team mascot is Tiny, Quinton's pet chihuahua, who's been heavily cyber enhanced to allow him to carry a shoulder mounted minigun.
The team were hired by a man called Michael Weathers to take their pirate radio station into an area on the edge of the combat zone and start reporting on the city's seedy underbelly to try to bring more police presence into the area. They were supplied with a base (an old garage), a netrunner called Virtue, and the necessary broadcasting equipment to get their stories out there.
The team had settled into their new home with only a few hiccups (Ricky had a pheromone implant that made him even sexier than usual, leading to some incidents) and were starting to look into the local gangs in search of a story when there was a knock on the door. A group of religious types who hated cyberware and the net, who were there for Virtue who had previously been part of their organisation.
They were armed. Requiem only had one response for people showing up at her house armed and trying to hurt her people and it involved two Arnos.
The resulting fight was...embarrassing. Sure, the gang of religious weirdos were dispatched fairly quickly and did very little damage to anyone. However, by the end of the fight, Marlon had shot Rolando in the face, and Requiem had shot both Ricky and herself.
Everyone learned a lot about how not to use handguns that day.
A couple of points to note about this campaign:
Some of the group have owned this game for a very long time. They know how to min-max. Accordingly, all of these characters are heavily min-maxed.
We have a house rule where if you roll a critical, or see someone else roll a critical, whether it's a hit or a miss, you gain improvement points equal to the level of the crit. Bear in mind that roughly one in five rolls result in some kind of critical - especially where fight scenes are concerned.
The cast:
- Ricky Six (Rocker) - celebrity podcaster, naturally handsome and charismatic, has devoted most of his cyberware to looking cool.
- Quinton Smith (Medtech) - a borg doctor whose ambition is to eventually replace the entire team's body parts with cyberware.
- Requiem (Solo) - equipped with pretty much every piece of defensive cyberware possible, dual wielding Arno handguns.
- Marlon Brandroid (Nomad) - an actor committed to taking on a new role every few days. Very much a method actor.
- Rolando Ramos (Media) - a news anchor more interested in getting a good story out there and fully willing to make up that good story if necessary.
Together they run a pirate radio station in Night City, with Rolando providing the credibility and Ricky and Marlon doing the more presentation type stuff, while Quinton and Requiem do their best to keep everyone alive. The team mascot is Tiny, Quinton's pet chihuahua, who's been heavily cyber enhanced to allow him to carry a shoulder mounted minigun.
The team were hired by a man called Michael Weathers to take their pirate radio station into an area on the edge of the combat zone and start reporting on the city's seedy underbelly to try to bring more police presence into the area. They were supplied with a base (an old garage), a netrunner called Virtue, and the necessary broadcasting equipment to get their stories out there.
The team had settled into their new home with only a few hiccups (Ricky had a pheromone implant that made him even sexier than usual, leading to some incidents) and were starting to look into the local gangs in search of a story when there was a knock on the door. A group of religious types who hated cyberware and the net, who were there for Virtue who had previously been part of their organisation.
They were armed. Requiem only had one response for people showing up at her house armed and trying to hurt her people and it involved two Arnos.
The resulting fight was...embarrassing. Sure, the gang of religious weirdos were dispatched fairly quickly and did very little damage to anyone. However, by the end of the fight, Marlon had shot Rolando in the face, and Requiem had shot both Ricky and herself.
Everyone learned a lot about how not to use handguns that day.
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