Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

[John Dallman]

GURPS 4e Day After Ragnarok, in Australia:

Japanese mini-sub caught napping, captured.

To describe it from the victim's point of view:

You're the sole crewman on board the sub. The other three left two days ago to go onto land on an uninhabited island, light a fire, cook some of the penguins there and generally relax a bit. You've been living with them in this sub for several weeks, making preparations for setting up an intelligence-gathering base here, 50 kilometres north of Sydney. They have never been more than a few hours before, so you're getting worried.

There's someone knocking on the hull in morse code, using the international signal book, saying "Surface." This can't be your crew, they have a code to tell you to let them in, so you've been found by the enemy! You blow tanks, which works fine, and start the electric motor. That doesn't go so well: the propeller's making lots of noise and no thrust.

You arrive at the surface. You grab your SMG and go out through the airlock, wanting to take a few of the Emperor's enemies with you. There's a large armed launch with crew on deck, who start ducking as you spray them with fire. Then someone in the same kind of diving gear as your crew shows up behind you, grabs you and takes you into the sea. He can breathe underwater and you can't, so you lose that struggle and are captured.


We'd put metal bars through the guards on the propellers so they could not turn and the sub could not run or ram. The propeller blades broke off. He didn't hit anyone with the sub-machine gun, although he broke a couple of windows on the MTB. He didn't try to scuttle the sub, probably due to the psychological effects of exposure to Serpent venom.

 

[soviet]

How do all you guys know these sessions are going to be your last?

 

[Golden Bee]

White and Red and Read All Over

The police started sweeping the bar. Lancaster stood up, hoping to distract them and keep their cover.
“Ohmyword,” said the badge. “I never thought I’d actually meet you. Can you sign my 1934 Who’s Who in New York Business?”

Sometimes the sidetrack becomes the main track. This adventure started off with some straightforward scenes: Rafe justifying himself and his adventures to his board; Zelda remembering her 12th birthday, where her brother was kicked out of the house and she got her first pair of contraband western jeans; Aussie reporter Trudy attending an awards luncheon with her coworker Jake S.

The most involved had Gia CM, mob-associated magician, and mercenary Calvin Davino guarding an interrogation in a remote Atlantic City warehouse. The Nucky Thompson outfit wanted to see if they still had the stomach for what needed to be done.

Turns out they didn't. When the interrogator went to lunch, the duo talked to the tormented. Gia, natural confidante, found out that the stolen necklace couldn't have been taken by the woman getting worked over, because it was already stolen by Thaza O’Rourke. Gia didn't point the finger directly, but when Louie the Nose came back, she suggested that the stolen item was in New York City at an Irish bar. Satisfied, he let Calvin and Gia drive the woman to a hospital.
***
Elsewhere, the Melbourne Age was flying off newsstands. Trudy’s stories of globetrotting adventure were big. So were exposés on the dangerous General Saeki.

Trudy won Reporter of the Year, beating out her coworker Jake Sullivan. When the group visited (to check on the progress of ZSS Australia), she very quickly learned that the ace American reporter… was Zelda's ex.

Before this awkwardness could dissipate, there was even more tension. The anti-Japanese paper was entertaining a purchase agreement… From a Japanese conglomerate.

Rafe was flabbergasted. “Itonia Corporation? Wait… It ‘ony’ a corporation?”

Trudy reluctantly brought her friends to work. Zelda recognized "Mr. Uchida” as a spy she met during the adventure White Devils of the South Pacific, but kept quiet out of loyalty to her country. Uchida played humble, emphasizing international cooperation. He received minimal questioning from the party, because he was surrounded by a throng of journalists who wanted to know if they would be fired or not.

Zelda meant to dig deeper… Until she ran into Jake. Awkward.

During a tour of the office, Calvin flirted with Uchida, and Trudy’s keen senses noticed a bomb in the mail room before it could detonate. She threw out the window to an empty lot nearby… and that's when the adventure derailed.

While a newspaper being sent a bomb is one of the most realistic things that's ever happened in this game, it didn’t blow up all the evidence. So instead of a raid on a secret Japanese military facility, we had the players tracking down the heartbroken owner of a junkyard.

There was a really funny scene though, when Zelda, Calvin and Trudy went to break into the yard… with each member thinking the other two were the skilled burglars. (None of them had the skill, so during the interlude, all they did was hide from the police and keep some local kids from breaking in.)

The bomber was an ANZAC veteran who had had to break off his engagement to his Japanese fiancée due to social pressure. He blamed the newspaper for fomenting racial intolerance, and sent a bomb. Trudy, prioritizing her journalism over the reputation of the ZSS, decided to interview him and give him to the police.

The group finally got back on the main mission, as Rafe investigated the Age’s owner's reason for selling. (Owner Thorton was willing to sell a good newspaper if it meant also selling his distressed sheep farm and railroad interests.) That meant scuttling the sale made a lot more sense than buying the paper, and indirectly becoming Trudy’s boss… and Zelda ex’s boss.

The group uncovered Uchida’s perfidious behavior. They were convincing Trudy's editor when Uchida showed up with Thornton, check in hand. The spy fled, with only Calvin pursuing. And despite the merc's agility, he had a weakness.

Uchida kissed the mercenary on the lips and fled to a waiting car, leaving the Filipino sputtering his catchphrase, “hands off the merchandise”.