Robert Affette ("Bob") was naked, Cedric Ignatius Dashwood ("Cid") wore ill-fitting clothes (because they were Bob's), and no one dared touch Unlike's rags. No one remembered who they were, where they were or how they had got there, but the burning airship and dead parrot probably had something to do with it.
Trying to find civilisation, they came across an awkward lord, Ralph, and his shy Irish farmhand, Ted Doyle, who were discussing what to do about the pesky drainage in the lower field. The gang invited themselves to the lord's manor, where they got offered tea by Ted's missus, who insisted. A lot.
After some investimagating, it was decided to go and talk to a nearby vicar, who might have some clues, and so the vicar did. He recognised them as the paranormal investigators he had hired to suss out what the ghostly nun haunting grounds of the new-built rectory wanted. Poltergeist phenomena occurred, orbs went missing from crypts, churchwardens muttered, and the residents of the local manor house might or might not have murdered one of their maids.
And not once did anyone bat as much as an eyelid at the adventure being set at the most haunted house in England. Guess not everyone is as obsessed with Borley Rectory as myself. *cough* As I ran the game, there was less time to write things down, but I'm planning on transcribing the sessions in the next few weeks.
Courtesy of July/August 2012's 2nd Edition Victoriana adventure at Chimera.
Session 1 (Character generation) - 24 July 2012:
“We live on a proper street. When it was the Jubilee, there was a street party. There was jam and everything. Okay, maybe not jam. Hamburgers. And children. And you wouldn’t bring kids to a drug bust.”
“Corsets are like Chinese finger traps for peoples and torsos.”
“How do you sell people on your 6d6 stuff?”
“He doesn’t.”
“I haven’t taken the trait, I just smell.”
“Let’s have a pathetic life-off! We’ll go home depressed and cry.”
“Roses are red, violets are blue, I like bacon. Bacon is good.”
“Congratulations on this being the third game where you’re NOT the evil guy.”
“He’s called Bob Affette.”
“You’re a horrible person.”
“I’m a nice guy.”
“Who summons demons.”
“And makes people insane.”
“Can I eat that?”
“Bring it! I’ll give you indigestion!”
“Why is your chicken yelling at me?”
“We’re surrounded by stereotypes.”
“So what else is new?”
“YOU’RE Bane? High level game, then.”
“Second question: are there bats and have you broken them?”
“Can I do the accent?”
“You’re really gonna be a mad Scotsman?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s got Wits of 4?! Jesus, he’s smarter than me!”
“It’s all gone a bit Laudanum.”
“I’m calling an end to this! ME!”
“I love you, man, but we do go off tangents whenever we play together.”
GM: “I know how to begin, I just don’t know WHY.”
Session 2 - 7 August 2012:
“Uh-oh. Bad idea.”
“Did you just rub wasabi powder in your eyes?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
“French surrender-monkey!”
“Yeah, but I never use that name.”
“Now it doesn’t look black.”
“Racist!”
“Aaaw. You know me so well.”
“If it was L5R, snapping the lead off a pencil means loss of honour and you now need to commit seppuku.”
“Yes, Mr Naked Man, sir!”
“You now have syphilis of the feet.”
“I hate to say this, but I think we may be perverts.”
“Don’t finish that thought, it’s against God.”
“You’re gonna draw a map from memory when you’ve got amnesia? Good luck.”
“Hung Low is currently looking for stuff.”
“Is that what we’re calling him?”
“The parrot will squawk at you from beyond the veil! It will want crackers from hell!”
“I feel like I’m suddenly Baldrick.”
“You sound superstitious.”
“I’m in a Victorian setting. Of course I’m superstitious.”
“No, that name’s too common, it doesn’t sound like me.”
“I know there was a reason I live in the city. Sewers!”
“What are you, kabuki theatre?”
“I never said assassinate – that’s YOUR job.”
“This would only work if we were in some sort of book. Aah, we’ve got the wrong character sheets! We’re Jurisfiction agents!”
“Man, that was subtle. About as subtle as a brick in the face.”
“About as subtle as me.”
“You’re subtle?”
“No!”
“I told you we weren’t here to assassinate the guy from The Fast Show.”
“This is typical of you! One night captain!”
“We go to the Waldegraves armed to the teeth.”
“I haven’t got any teeth to be armed to.”
“I don’t have to disguise myself as a man; I’m already one.”
Session 3 - 14 August 2012:
“You’re either not racist, or you’re the most racist person EVER.”
“The Evil Ones.”
“You shouldn’t call them that, or we won’t recognise them unless they’ve got horns.”
“Would you like some spicy staleness?”
“You’ve sold them to me.”
“I’ve seen things that would make your cat curl.”
“Who you gonna ... summon by telegraph?”
GM: “The name is Ignatius Waldegrave.”
Cid: “Wait, that’s MY name!”
GM: “THE PLOT THICKENS!”
“How can we be more gung-ho than an airship?”
Session 4 - 21 August 2012:
“Do you know how I know that? Pulp Fiction.”
“Are we now comparing Buddy Holly with Adolf Hitler?”
“One of them not-real men. What do you call that? Catholics.”
“There’s just one problem with this plan. It’s YOUR plan.”
“Are you sure we want to resort to writing?”
“We’re from London! How much more colloquial can we get?!”
“It might be protein for him later.”
“That’s why I kept the parrot!”
“Can you USE a sword?”
“That’s beside the point!”
(What you can repel with silver)
“Vampires, werewolves, door-to-door salesmen, Presbyterians …”
“Wait, are we about to become Waiting for Godot?”
“I ate a fruit once. It wasn’t very nice.”
“They’ve got a very thick skin, bananas.”
“You don’t normally eat the skin.”
“Ohh.”
“WHY has no one made ‘Psychopath’ into a super-villain?! …Oh. It’s already a thing, isn’t it.”
“To quote a great scholar: it’s a trap!”
“I kind of like the Ewok concentration camp.”
“ANYway …!”
GM: “If anyone cares to ask, there’s a tearoom out the back.”
Player: “I don’t think we’re tearoom kind of people.”
“I’m rolling my general Wit to see if I think they’re faeries. – I don’t reach that conclusion.”
“We walk from there to there. I think that was a waste of a cut scene.”
“There’s a pun in there somewhere, I can feel it.”
“Why doesn’t Stilton kill people?”
“This isn’t the middle ages! We can’t just butcher people because they don’t have God in the front room.”
“I don’t think we should assume they’re French because they have French doors.”
“Did you just tie our games together?”
“Yes.”
“You bastard!”
Session 5 - 28 August 2012:
“He’s also Adam West before Batman was important.”
“Aren’t you supposed to do important shit, instead of killing off celebrities you don’t like?”
“To me, that IS important.”
“WHAT happened to the Hollywood sign?”
“It got stolen by alien pirates.”
“I can’t roll below 60 on percentile dice.”
“That’s because the dice hate you.”
BEN IS ROCKING (Everybody says this all the time, through the session)
(…Or someone hijacked my quote book to write that while I looked elsewhere. :P)
“I’m in character! Stop!”
“Give me the bug!”
“I ate it. No, really.”
“Listen to me, I’m the occult specialist.”
“You didn’t even know about the cup.”
“I was protecting it. It’s an object of great spiritual power.”
Cid: “Do you know that we are operatives of the church?”
Ghost through Ouija board: “No.”
Bob: “What would she know? She’s a ghost.”
“We’re never gonna get there if you keep making that noise, it’s not very stealthy.”
“I knock on the coach house door because one of us cares about the plot!”
“You’ve got to kapow him all proper, like.”
The group has now split, and the blog goes where its keeper goes, which means there is some Delta Green on the horizon, with FBI's very special agents Mulligan and Cully. Any similarities with characters from a popular 1990s TV show is purely coincidental if Fox TV should ever ask.
