Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

[Golden Bee]

Happy to keep the thread alive!

We had a PC death!

Powers Of Dr. Remoux! By Stefan Jones.

Thaza jimmied open the window. "There is nothing you can possess that I cannot take away…"

***
All of our heroes started out separately.

Thaza O’Rourke sniffed her Guinness. Raised by apes, now the chief “object retrieval specialist” of the Irish mob… but somehow the family matron made that out like a bad thing?

“You know what pigeonholing is, Thaz? It’s when they think you can only do one thing. So I told the boys would give you an opportunity… Sports repair. Waindell should beat Marshall College by three, would make yer ken here in Lenox Hill a lot of money. And there’s a depression on, sweet thing.”

Naomi O’Rourke wasn’t asking. Thaza was nothing but confident, taking her “project fund” in cash and stopping by a newsstand on the way to the train, eager to look up what “football” was.

Callahan was at Marshall College, looking to learn from the ultimate troublesome academic, Dr. Henry Walton something Junior. He rang the doorbell: dun da dun dun… must not be home.

Josiah Patrick Diamond was faring the best. He and Captain Ivanova had intended to set up Ziegler Security Service’s new office, but were distracted breaking in the couch. Unfortunately, the telephone had to ring. The voodoo-empowered detective was needed elsewhere. The call was from a campus security guard, Darien "the Beast" Wilde. (He was a brother of Florence’s sometime friend, unaware that he and his brother had the exact same nickname.)

It was college game day, with hometown Marshall taking on the Waindell Silverbacks. The entire town was flooded with underclassmen.

The group convened at a crowded sports bar, where JP’s contact clued them in. Some visiting students had gone missing. Thaza, the most socially adroit of the group, Empathized with the kids. It turned out they didn’t want to mention what happened because they were pulling off a prank when they heard a roar and got separated! Their friends Daria and Jimmy hadn’t been seen since Thursday night’s prank.

The players investigated prank-victim Professor Wyte’s office that evening, finding out that while he was a public critic of football, he was also tremendously, unthinkably boring, and wasn’t involved in criminal activity.

O’Rourke and Callahan went back to their boarding house for shuteye, but JP kept digging…
Finding Jimmy’s body, and the person responsible! Unfortunately, private detection is a risky job, and Diamond skipped bedtime for the big sleep.
***
Rafe Lancaster awoke in the presidential suite of the Hilton. It was a wonderful morning… Sure, a bit drizzly, but they were about to dedicate an entire dorm to him at his old Alma mater! He had brought his best friend, millionaire mentee Devika, who turned on the radio… Where they were reporting on the death of a college student!

He soon joined the others. But what our group had gained in cash and charisma, they had lost in investigative skill.

The road to the truth had many detours. Rafe wasn’t universally beloved on campus… In fact, he got an absolute tongue-lashing from one of the members of the football team, for his actions attacking a wedding*! (Rafe is the first player character who started out as a full antagonist.) Completely flustered by someone who he couldn’t bully with money, the millionaire industrialist decamped to the local malt shop. There, his 13-year-old Indian bestie served him hard truths as he drank a wretched milkshake. (Lumpy when it was supposed to be smooth, runny where it was supposed to be thick… It was clear why this place, out of everywhere in town, was empty.) Instead of admitting culpability for his past actions, Rafe went behind the counter, took out his tools and fixed the machine. Baby steps?

Thaza accidentally caught wind of Callahan’s reason for visiting campus. Which meant recruiting her favorite sidekick (Devika!) to “repatriate” world artifacts.

“A wonderful taste in spears,” said Dr. Jones. “The Hovitos had something similar… not like in Borneo though.”

Apparently the Scourge of the Kaiser was back from vacation early. And he was curious about the connection between the cat burglar raised by apes… and the college student who had his bones shattered and his blood slurped. Could she please handle it?

After some more digging, the players found the villain’s redoubt. The old Marshall gymnasium was drawing way too much power. Our heroes snuck inside. Rafe had actually been in the building before, decades ago… But it had new occupants. The most notable: a vicious 900 pound ape!

O’Rourke was the perfect burglar for the job. She was able to talk to the ape, Moriarty, who was utterly baffled that a human could speak its language. The gangster laid on the charm, and Moriarty revealed that he had killed one of the missing students and tried his red juice. He was eager to drink more human blood; it was delicious. He wouldn’t kill her, because he had never met a human who could talk with him, but maybe she had some friends he could consume?

Elsewhere, Callahan and Lancaster snuck down dusty gymnasium tunnels. Through a peephole, they saw something unexpected… Hung on a hook, JP Diamond’s trenchcoat! Unfortunately, they also saw the psychotic Professor Remoux, and the missing co-ed!

Thaza tried to slash the dork with her spear, but the Frenchman deflected it with a bare hand! Prof Callahan theorized that whoever was behind the attacks was removing and absorbing life energy. And if he couldn’t see JP, there was only one place Louisiana PI could be… In the machine! Rafe, meanwhile, earned the ire of the great ape, getting grabbed by the peckish beast. And he wasn’t winning a wrestling match with a 700 pound weight disadvantage.

Thaza was more of a burglar than a battler. Which meant everything was down to the only educator of Queen’s College Malta. It was the rude Briton’s time to shine. He assessed the machine instantly, even fixing a wire bypass, bringing the dead JP from his current state (no longer zombied and therefore dead) to a state of energetic super coherence! JP immediately grabbed Daria the student, put her in the machine, and brought her back from near coma to fighting fit shape.

Dozens of footfalls came down the stairs… It was the prank-loving Silverback football team! Rafe convinced them, through straining lungs, to rescue him from the evil gorilla. They did.

Remoux saw his numeric disadvantage… And decided that it was time to absorb massive amounts of Lifeforce. Callahan had stoked his ego, The room began to fill with white light, dirt and dust shaking loose from the ceiling. Small bits of moss and weeds grew and grew and grew! Moriarty rushed to help his boss, while everyone else fled. Professor Callahan stumbled over a bloom of dandelions thick as telephone cords. The group got outside… Seeing an overwhelming organic bloom rushing across campus. And in fact, threatening the soon-to-be “Lancaster“ dormitory! Rafe grabbed his pistol, aimed at a power transformer, and remembered the training of his mentor, a hero known for his clutch last second pistol skills…STEEL EAGLE! The Tibetan Spirit of Brooklyn must’ve been a hell of a tutor, because Rafe took out the power, which stopped the machine… Instead of destructive, unstoppable nature, the side of the building was covered in ivy and crocuses.

Never one to miss an opportunity, Rafe grabbed a bullhorn from a nearby cheerleader and gave his abridged speech, saying that while he could give money to the university, he was prouder still to aid his beloved alma mater so directly. Cheers and applause.
***

“Thaza O’Rourke?”
“No autographs please.”
It was Darien “the Beast” Wilde. “One of the placekickers was found with a detailed gambling sheet in his locker… Do you have any comment?”

Thaza raced out of the stadium, down the tree line, and into the vines that crisscrossed the campus.
Rigging gambling… Dammit, she should’ve just hired Penny.

*In Kiss Kiss, Ratatatat!!

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Arkham Horror is a Futon....

Context, last night, board game that thinks it's an RPG, RPG that thinks it's a board game. I just wanted a beer and pretzels game, and in the end, it played like MtG while having to deal with tokens, decks of cards, dice, etc. UGH. SMH, I'm still trying to drink away the horror of Arkham, well it is 1924 then so at least I get some bathtub gin

You're playing the wrong edition for beer-and-pretzels. See if you can find the original Chaosium version where it rapidly degenerates into a monster hunt in the streets if that's what you want from Arkham Horror. Better yet, dig up a copy of Cults Across America and enjoy the Mythos silliness.

Cults really deserves a reprint some day. Delightfully goofy.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

See the other thread, that only I seem to use!

I beg to disagree. I'm between FtF groups at the moment, but Dallman's been posting steadily for quite a while. I suppose I could start reporting PbP games but what a "session" is gets pretty blurry with those.

 

[R_J_K75]

You're playing the wrong edition for beer-and-pretzels. See if you can find the original Chaosium version where it rapidly degenerates into a monster hunt in the streets if that's what you want from Arkham Horror. Better yet, dig up a copy of Cults Across America and enjoy the Mythos silliness.

Cults really deserves a reprint some day. Delightfully goofy.

Seeing as in my friend spent somewhere around $60 for the core game and then a few expansions, even though you have to pay a little more attention than your average board game than I'd prefer I'm willing to stick with it for a while. It just wasn't quite what I was expecting but we started to pick it up towards the end of the night, so I think we'll get the hang of it sooner than later. Think my friend plans on buying the organizer for all the cards and tokens, and I think that will help things go smoother too.

 

[GameDaddy]

Ran Original Whitebox D&D Game.

Sunday Night/ Monday Morning using Judges Guild Wilderlands of High Fantasy at the Indianapolis International Airport for GenCon Attendees flying out the Monday Morning after the show... ended up with five players for our free & Fun Airport Lounge Game!

 

[Golden Bee]

Home on Deranged & Terror in Tinseltown! by Alex Drusts.
A double feature this week of Los Angeles action and horror.
First, we had a Rashomon-style whodunnit, as Captain Ivanova, Elliot McCaffrey, Dr. Hazoul and JP Diamond faced LAPD interrogation. What was supposed to be a quiet matinee ended up with butler Aldous wearing the cowboy hat of Buffalo Bill Cody, and being possessed by that frontier showman! Although in some accounts, it was simply mercury poisoning. Anyway, the antics continued with an unlicensed exorcism, and Texan Elliot grabbing the hat… and wearing it into a Tong Bar. They didn’t appreciate Bill’s gratitude for building the railroad. Then: fisticuffs.
The second half of our screening was the amazing adventure Terror in Tinseltown. (Elliot had to step out so it was just three players against a La La Land conspiracy.)
A blow-by-blow account of the mystery would be extensive, so let’s stick to the highlights:
Dr. Hazoul’s interrogation techniques, which led to him kissing the leading man on a forbidden jungle temple set. It’s fine though, the actor was ‘totally straight’.

Serpent-masked marauders held Bingen at gunpoint. “ I don’t wanna shoot you!” Said one. “That’s good“, Aldous replied, “I don’t want to be shot!”

JP explained the difference between a fork and a three-pronged snakebite. “The tines of a fork are in a row, so you don’t stab yourself in the mouth.”
And the finale. Great boxed text.

In twenty feet the tunnel opens up into a larger room. A pair of gasoline-powered generators rumble over to your left near the wall. Cables run from both generators across the dirt floor, one going to a film projector on top of a wooden table, the other to a movie camera on a tripod. A cultist in a gold snake mask and a white jumpsuit fiddles with the projector. Another cultist in similar attire looks through the eyepiece of the camera. Both have their backs to you as they focus their attention on the opposite wall, where a bizarre scene plays out. Lily Montgomery stands on a small platform about ten feet in front of a flat wall, completely nude and perfectly still. Behind her hangs Hollander’s painting in all its strange, primitive glory. Lily holds a pose identical to that of the woman in the painting, a wooden flute held to her lips and Chloe’s black snake draped across her shoulders. Lily’s fingers move in a mesmerizing dance as she plays a haunting melody on the flute, over and over.
The film projector provides the only light in the cavern. It casts a flickering black and white image of Hollander’s painting, superimposed over Lily and the actual painting. The projection is positioned in such a way that it lines up perfectly with both Lily’s still form and the painting behind her. The effect is disconcerting, and as you stare you find yourself becoming hypnotized by the layered images. It seems as though the painting is shifting and writhing behind Lily. You can’t tell whether it’s just an optical trick, or if something more sinister and unexplainable is happening. The three elements start to meld together before your eyes.

The trio called on all their willpower not to be hypnotized. Hazoul didn’t want to damage the only light source…So he simply removed the film from the camera!
Even with tagalong Ava Astor’s help, the fight was at a standstill. She got bit by a poisonous snake… and it was hard to brawl with the villains’ goons, certified stuntmen!
Hazoul had another brilliant idea, exposing the electrical wiring, as JP led the giant snake over it. There was a bang, a sizzle, and a smell of charbroiled meat… but when everyone opened their eyes, the villains had escaped. Luckily, leading lady Lily was rescued, and the players had nothing to do but cure a snake bite, get the actress to a hospital, and negotiate the movie rights. They could name it something catchy, like “Horror in Hollywood!”

 

[Golden Bee]

"My lawyer'll beat you up."

Gold shirts, gold fur.
“You’re not the first man to menace me with a knife.” said the 13-year-old. “The ugliest, sure, but not the first.”

March, 1935, Mexico City. (NPC) Florence Zee was in town for an international music festival. She invited her best friend, 13-year-old millionaire Devika Velyapur, who brought her lawyer, Tácito Uriel Velasco, and continual self-inviter, professor Winston Callahan. Zee’s host, conductor Carlos Chavez, had been lavishing the singer with jewelry and attention. Devi politely told the host that he was barking up the wrong tree.

The adventuring trio was extremely attentive, asking about event security, Carlos’s personal enemies, and the international dynamics at play. He swore everything was fine; keep an eye out for the nationalist ‘gold shirts’, and things would be dandy.
***
The next day, Callahan and Devi checked the venue for safety. Security seemed to be doing their job. Carlos was late, because he was dead.

The crime scene was a gory one. Someone bit off the back of Chavez’s head. Someone else unlocked the composer’s back door with lockpicks. And presumably someone else cut the brake lines of the Chrysler. The police cut off further investigation, but not before “El Abogado Número Uno” went through the composer’s correspondence. Carlos was getting hatred from both sides of the aisle: for being too nationalistic, and not nationalistic enough. But who killed him? And who wanted to but didn’t get a chance?

The suburb backed up onto a national park; it was time for some hiking! The group followed the natural and mystical trail into the hinterlands, where they ran into Dr Carmen Zheng, Chinese-Mexican. She radiated suspicious energy… but wasn’t the killer! She knew who it was, and promised to tell the players… after lunch at her house.

She was accompanied by a hybrid jaguar man, one of her brothers. She had used magic and science to turn her siblings into creatures who could fight back against the fascist oppression of biracial Mexicans.
***
Lunch looked delicious. Devi picked up a fork… but noticed Zheng wasn’t eating.

“I can’t eat while I’m nervous,” lied the host. “You eat.”
“It would be a shame to enjoy your food without you having any! I think you should have some first.” Devika’s eyes glowed purple behind her dark bangs.
Zheng, struggling against herself, picked up her fork and began to chew the poisoned enchilada. It was never wise to lie to a goddess.

Fortunately, the doctor had only used a sedative.

The group slipped out to go after her brother, Juanito, the most likely perpetrator. His next target was local ultranationalist, Nicolas Rodriguez Carrasco.

Unbeknownst to the others, Callahan returned to the Zheng residence, studying how to cure the transformation. His academic expulsion from England made him sensitive to those who commited crimes of anger.

Tácito Velasco, alias the Jade Jaguar, went to his newly repaired office. Some case files helped him track down a dive bar where the gold shirts liked to waste afternoons. Devi picked up Florence, recapping the adventure and emphasizing all her great jokes. (“Now he’s a decomposer! You get it right?”)

In a run-down dive, the group didn’t seem imposing. To the untrained eye, it was a fancy lawyer, two gringos and an Indian girl in combat boots. Nunca.
Velasco was unwilling to throw the first punch. Awkward. Devika read out a folded note in phonetic Spanish.

“Your mother owes my burro 30 pesos for services rendered.”

The Mexico-Firsters might’ve let that slide, until Tácito brought up Carrasco’s old friend Pancho Villa. That got the fists flying.

The Jade Jaguar was combat elegance defined. He was surrounded, and yelled at the crowd: “It seems you are unlawfully detaining me. I will exercise self-defense against kidnapping!”

Someone threw a punch and he responded with a kick to the elbow, a whirling back fist, and a rising knee. Elsewhere, Callahan used his scientific know-how to pour ball bearings on the floor and cover the bar top with grease. Devi almost got a beer bottle to the skull, but used her psychic whammy to flummox her foes. One tonto whirled his pool cue around, smashing his pal in the face. Another tripped and sent his friend face-first into a barstool. India’s Richest Girl wasn’t done yet. She used the mirror behind the bar to incapacitate six crooks at once!

Carrasco pulled a knife, but the group ducked around him, allowing Tácito to finish him off with an elegant flying tackle. Things were looking up, until Juanito the Jaguarman dropped from the ceiling. He wanted to kill the gold shirt leader, grabbed Tácito off the floor…and got a Shōryūken for his trouble. The rising uppercut knocked the spots off Juanito and split his jaw into pieces. Another one hit KO for the Jade Jaguar.

Professor Callahan grabbed Juanito’s necklace, reverting him to human form. The academic argued that now Juanito could flee to the mountains, an argument that didn’t persuade either of his companions. Callahan switched to his backup plan, a smoke bomb. As the other two coughed, he grabbed the young man over his shoulder and sprinted to safety.

Devi and Florence revised the concert to emphasize peace and unity, making it a tribute to the dead composer. Tácito kept his eye out for the professor, vowing to catch him… And make him serve community service for aiding and abetting. A smoke bomb, really?!

 

[John Dallman]

AD&D1e, Avalon Campaign:

Downtime: Preaching, Pruning, Teaching, Training.

We had eleven weeks of downtime, each of ten days.

Our lead cleric went to a neighbouring country where his religion is dominant, but in an altered form, which stresses greed and obedience to authority, and little else. He was teaching parish priests the less restrictive original doctrine, to significant success. The country is being gradually freed from the rather nasty nobility who rule it, but you have to free people's minds as well as their bodies.

Our half-dryad ranger spent the time getting trained in Move Silently and Hide in Undergrowth, plus helping a tree of hers grow.

Our paladin spent the time instructing junior warriors in the Landcentre militia, who'd been picked as having the potential to have an adventurer character class. This was a mixture of practical combat training and the lessons of adventuring, about how to survive far from civilization, not get ambushed, and so on.

Our wizard spent the time getting better at operating the nexus point in the basement of her tower. We will travel through it in the future, but we have a few other jobs to do first.

One player was away: we'll find out what his character did next week.

 

[Moonmover]

We had eleven weeks of downtime, each of ten days.

[Snip]

Marvelous. People should use downtime more in campaigns.

Anyway, I ran a game of The Hateful Place last night. This is an obscure game, so I feel the need to explain it before telling my story:

It's a generic system in the sense that it could be set in any time or place. But, no matter what setting you choose, it's a dark alternate universe of that. And, a curse has fallen over the world: Darkness lasts for twenty-three hours out of every day, leaving only one hour of daylight. Under the cover of Darkness, demons roam the earth.

I set my scenario in Russia in the Second World War. The players, um. Yeah so. Here are the characters they made:

•Rip Van Winkle. He just woke up here and does not know why. (Magician)
•David Copperfield. He has traveled to the past to save the future. (Profiteer)
•Fred Flintstone. He was frozen in ice for ten-thousand years, then resuscitated and trained by the US army. He and Barney are parachuting behind enemy lines on the Eastern Front to aid our Soviet allies. (Fighter) (Barney's parachute failed and he died immediately.)

I randomly rolled a starting situation, and the party was running from an avalanche. They got away thanks to Fred's dumb foot-car, and and went down into the steppes.

They saw an airplane get shot down by a ground-to-air rocket, and followed the rocket's contrail to a secret Soviet military base.

Fred's military credentials got the party through the front gate. But, when David pickpocketed a Red Army captain's ID as part of a magic trick, he was shot dead.

The Soviets declared Fred and Rip to be their prisoners. Fred and Rip started arguing and throwing blame around, which escalated until Rip turned on Fred and killed him.

Rip was then beaten to death by some other prisoners in the base.

On a roll of 1 in 6, Rip came back as a poltergeist (because that's something that happens in The Hateful Place). At the player's request, I agreed that he could keep playing as a poltergeist. The rest of the players took on the role of other prisoners:

•Billiard Billovski, a Polish refugee caught grave-robbing in the nearest town. (Profiteer)
•Private John Doe, an American GI who was captured by the Soviets due to a case of mistaken identity. (Fighter)
•Gregori Rasputin, the Mad Monk. His death was faked and he had been a prisoner here for years. (Believer)

Some guards came into the prisoner-holding area and announced that they would all be used for "weapons testing." They were brought out to a firing range, and an experimental war-bot attempted to shoot them to death. John managed to rush the bot and tear one of its arms off, but it then beat him to death with its other arm. The ghost of Rip tried pickpocketing a key from a guard but failed. Rasputin cast The Hateful Place's absurdly overpowered Fire spell, killing the guards, destroying the robot, double-killing Rip, and blasting through a wall so that he and Billiard could escape into the steppeland just as Darkness fell. The end.

 

[Golden Bee]

Gold shirts, gold fur.

Riptide in the Dust Bowl.
Diamond stabbed the Wolfman with the Troubled Blade. The gray blood glowed in the pale green light.
This week’s adventure was amazing. Devika, JP Diamond, ranch hand Elliot McCaffrey and Aldous Bingen headed to Dust Bowl Kansas in search of a uranium-loaded meteorite dagger. They found hundreds of wild dogs roving the countryside, a divided populace, and many, many plot threads.
Instead of a very long summary (because the game ran 330 minutes), I'll spotlight some of the vivacious and interesting NPCs. (Tacìto’s player GM’d for the first time this week, based loosely on a Deadlands adventure he had run.)

One of the main attractions of the town was a theater with an absurd musical called “There’s a dead man in my bed!”. It featured boatloads of bawdy humor that neither detective Diamond nor stoic butler Bingen would explain. Luckily, they snuck into the next-door speakeasy, and kid millionaire Devi got to sit next to a college student who explained all the dirty stuff. Later, it turned out that girl had a very short fling with the evil mastermind… which led to Devika, the only girl in the group, having to slip into the sorority house and comfort someone eight years older than her (who had a lot of clues). The mystic orphan mostly paid attention, but did stop the story to verify if they did “tongue kissing or lip kissing”.

(The codeword for the speakeasy was “banana pudding”. This ended up upsetting our man Elliot, who didn’t want a themed drink with banana liqueur… He wanted some pudding.)
Turns out the club’s stage show was a live human sacrifice. Not knowing it was theater, our heroic quartet interrupted and ruined it, freeing the oblation, who slapped Aldous in the face.

The master of ceremonies tried to save it with a card trick, before bringing out an electrical bone saw. Devi got off one good line… when asked “Is this your card?” she grabbed the plug and asked "Is this your cord?”
Later, while giving the magician her contact information, she handed over her contact details with a loud “Is this my card?” This backfired when she tried to pay for the damages to venue with one of Rafe Lancaster’s checks.

Seeing the Dust Bowl up close had a big impact on Devi. She hired one of the “Okays” to start an orphanage, handing her a life-changing amount of money and then leaving her at the hotel because the adventure had to continue. Sorry, but ex-goddesses are busy!

Later, while sneaking into a suspicious doctor’s residence, Miss Velyapur met the man’s housekeeper. After confirming the guy was stealing werewolf blood to inject into himself, Devi stayed for a snack and offered the lady three times her salary to help maintain the orphanage. After that though, Devi wanted to join the rest of the party, who were sneaking out of the house… but the woman was really bad at saying goodbye. Is clinginess good for someone who works at your commorancy?

Towards the end of the adventure, the group had to report a dead body. Suspicious, they made sure to find a non-corrupt cop… and met a big city detective who was trying to have a quiet life in the sticks. Elliot asked how the Dodgers were going to do this season, and he said he didn’t like baseball… Which made the Texan accuse him of being a communist. Which is a weird argument to have right before you report a headless corpse. But come on, what American in 1935 didn’t follow baseball?

The final side character we met was a cultist working for the doctor. After removing the supplicant’s mask, JP asked if he recognized the fellow.
“No,” said the GM. “You’ve been here 17 hours and it’s a big county.”

Diamond would’ve asked, except the man’s bones (and not the rest of him) was sucked into a nearby space-time rift.