In space no one can hear your stress

We are trying out the new Alien RPG! The first session turned out to be a lot about getting used to the system and how Stress dice work. We found ourselves getting super stressed very quickly. Heeh. In the end there were some house rules we decided on for next time.

We began by having our characters waking up from cryosleep five days earlier than scheduled. Another spaceship had been found. There was a dead body floating around and a Synth that wanted to murder us. It very nearly succeeded because Stress is a tricky mechanic and we may have been doing it wrong? Oops.

For the next session again, we found another ship, the Potemkin, where we also came across a teenage kid hiding in a room. Wait, why do these things sound familiar? Is there a ginger cat around here somewhere too? ;)

And the last thing, which I believe was on a third ship, we found bodies hanging from the ceiling. Like thousands of them. Space is apparently not a very nice place, but then we're probably about to find some of those alien things, aren't we? Things are bound to go downhill from there!

Introducing the future victims:

• Don[atella] "Dry" Martini, pilot
• Joshua "Josh" Brown, doctor
• Michael Knight, Colonial Marshall

 

Cool! We're Switzerland!

We continued having a look below Tilverton and found the vampire's lair. He had a fleshy-looking coffin with feet, but instead of being a quaint piece of self-ambulating storage à la Discworld, it was all pulsating and evil and wrong. It was destroyed.

We also found a guy who had been cut open and the innards had been placed on display, so to speak, but still connected to him, and he was still alive. If you can call it that. We collected him and all his bits and put them in a box to let our wizard friend read through all the research books the vampire had left and maybe he could put the guy back together. (He could. Deeply traumatised man, however, was no longer at home.)

Things like that. We also progressed the re-building of Tilverton and our own followings.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy

After levelling up (level 8, wooh!) we somehow got into a discussion about Cthulhu and tentacle porn and found out that yes, the internet will provide if you do an image search for Cthulhu dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl. Uh. Like you do?

Anyway. In actual gaming terms we went to the market, and most of the party pretended to be slaves belonging to Gorbash, who in turn pretended to be a Rakshasa. We found Alistair and his Shemarrian assistant/slave in a cell down at the slave pens, so that's good. That we found them, that is, as that's what we were there to do.

A couple of brothers, whose other brother we may have previously disposed of, recognised Booker. And then the setting off of explosions ensued ...

Don't even PRETEND this was part of the plan!

In a session where the players kept ehh doing things that the GM hadn't planned for ... like trying to communicate with the spirit/thing trapped inside the portal because rune magic. It's a Pandemonium devil, by the way, and it basically went "you what? LOL" at Gorbash and Alistair when they tried to find an alternative way to activate the gate which wouldn't include blood sacrifice.

Jayson hung out with his fellow Cyber-knights, who kept talking to him about keeping on the straight and narrow (Booker's reputation precedes him, shall we say?) so eventually he stood up and held a speech saying he's not turning to the Dark Side just yet, so chill, basically. One of them proceeded to try and recruit him on a so far unsanctioned battle in Tolkeen, which he wasn't too happy about and later raised with Joan.

Meanwhile, Booker tried to test the protection around the gate and voluntarily spent the night in the Cyber-knights' jail, where Sir Alan read the Codex at him for teh rest of the night. Apparently it was a good background noise to fall asleep to. In the morning Elyssia came along and insulted Hecate through Booker, causing a lightning bolt to blow her through a wall. They were asked to take their arguments outside of the city walls until they could calm down.

The way to activate the portal is through blood magic, i.e. someone needs to die, Booker was told by Hecate - she should know, it's her gate, after all. Booker informed Jayson of this and the two went around town looking to see exactly how bad it would be, sacrifice-wise. A cute 7-year-old girl with pigtails was the answer, which even Booker felt uneasy about, despite being a former assassin.

They consulted with Joan, who would rather the people who might or might not be alive in Nxla's realm stay there rather than sacrificing an innocent child. Gorbash came along and suggested maybe we could use Rakshasa instead, because they're evil anyway so doesn't matter. Joan still vetoed the use of blood magic, because she's not insane.

At this point in time it's starting to seem as if we're not going to Nxla's realm after all. 'Tis a silly place.

I've never been so tense to start a boardgame

After finishing Hunter, we've had a couple of sessions of boardgaming. The first one was zombie survival game Dead of Winter, and yesterday, we played the XCOM boardgame - which is a very stressful (yet fun) experience.

We also started putting together characters for the next roleplaying game we've got lined up: Deadlands: Hell on Earth. It's like Deadlands, but in the FUTURE. With MUTANTS. And RAD POISONING.

You can't make a Heroic Molotov without breaking a few eggs

We did what any normal roleplaying group would do: we brought the big stone eggs together at Trevor's, because there was one in Trevor's basement and one disguised as a book box at Tilly's. Bringing eggs together made them smash, and green goo went all over the place.

Zolistagol and Eddie quickly went to clean themselves off, but Tilly was fascinated by the gunk moving ... especially as it was actually moving OFF her. The goo went down on the floor and came together in a great Terminator impression. It became a baby hook tentacle monster that was almost sort of cute.

We did what any normal roleplaying group would do: KILL IT BEFORE IT KILLS US. Most of the party didn't seem too concerned about being baby-killers, except for Tilly who wasn't convinced we should have killed the thing in the first place.

It turned out there were a few eggs over at Eddie's as well, and that his old pal Dave was a tentacle monster. The cinnamon-smelling ganja smoke that filled up Eddie's living room had the unfortunate side effect of impregnating him ... with one of those stone eggs. The weird writing we had seen on the walls was actually a warning to stay away because 'ere be an incubator.

Dave was later shot and killed, which wasn't part of the plan, but at least we didn't do it.

Objects in the rear-view mirror may explode quicker than you think

We started where we left off last session rather than doing the entire scene again from scratch.

While Ugrub was held at gunpoint by the remaining survivor from the van, Dru got out of the car and planted explosives under the van and then telling everyone to get the hell out, as there was only a six-second fuse. Ugrub still got shot but managed to run off, with Dru running after him and Teddy hiding in an alley in the other direction. Phage managed to drive off, but surprisingly, so did the van. Phage stomped on the brakes of her car and the speeding van blew up a bit further down the street, causing a gridlock all over downtown.

She then picked up Harold, a.k.a. the guy we were supposed to convert, and drove him home. Because she suspected him of not telling her the whole truth and nothing but the truth, she shot him in the leg and then wanted Dru to talk her through patching him up over the phone.

The rest of the gang re-grouped, with Ugrub patched up, and walked for a bit until they managed to flag down a taxi to go to the gated community where Harold lived. As Phage got there first, she threatened Harold's wife Marie, because she wasn't panicked enough that a stranger had come home with her husband bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the leg.

Can I take your Sanity?

For this session, we did two things: levelled up our Rifts characters, followed by a game of Mansions of Madness, one of the expansions. The GM had had a bad day, so he was definitely in the mood to inflict pain on us - but first, getting us into a false sense of security by being nice.

We got the clues, were doing okay, and when the character with the silver tablet was making a run for the exit, hell broke loose ... quite literally. And then we all failed horribly and the GM won. It was a fun session. :D

Why does this CD rack have 'Made in R'lyeh' on it?

Still slightly mentally scarred from seeing big, red eyes in the sky, the show had to go on. Cully went back to North Platte to do some research - not that anything useful really came from it. Bones and McAffe headed up to Three Mile Lake to check if it was a portal to R'lyeh or not. They founds lots and lots of flies, so ... probably not. Or maybe. We're not sure yet.

Mulligan, meanwhile, went to have another look at the girlfriend-murderer's house, and by the computer, found a peculiar sort of CD rack looking thing. When the right sort of rolls had been made, it was found that the discs contained a very long and rambling message about the End Times. The ones who bothered reading this lost a bit of Sanity in the process. (Cully declined to read any of it for religious reasons.)

In other news, Marshal Bones is down to 20-something Sanity. He might not last to the end of the adventure.

Some of these things make more sense than others

As the next place we needed to get to was about an hour or so away by car, we had to weigh our options very carefully. How could we get to the singer's home town, Manchac, and still have money left to pay rent at the end of the month? In the end, we decided to go to Fat Dan at the Absinthe House (a.k.a. the client) and ask if he had a car we could perhaps borrow, because we really needed to get somewhere.

He did. And he also got one of his guys to drive us up there.

We found out the family lived about four miles north of the town, which meant we had to say goodbye to the driver and walk. At the end, Morgan Freeman and his family were very hospitable and served up a tasty seafood gumbo, and then we went to bed.

Doesn't sound like a lot happened, perhaps, but just as we were finishing off the session, the GM asked Sutcliffe for a Spirit roll. After having spent his final Bennie on a re-roll, he botched ... It's Manitou time!

In Cthulhu, it’s death or nothing

We got the translation of the manuscript in Japanese, the place featured on the photo the insane guy had on him when we had him sectioned was found, and Special Agents Mulligan and Cully went out there to have a look.

This was widely regarded as a bad move.

They found a barn with a hole in the ground. In the shadows, a green jelly monster. Down the hole in the ground, we dug up a piece of rock that was probably hollw inside. And then there was a big, black, tentacled monster.

Throwing all caution to the wind, Mulligan lowered a box of dynamite down the hole and set it on fire with a flare gun - and then legged it. He was one point away from death ... when he finally made a successful Jump roll, landing him face first on the bonnet of an FBI car. At least he lived to tell the tale.

Now we just hope the monster is an ex monster.

Must be talking to the tinfoil hat

Because Mulligan had an epic dice roll for whether or not people in a restaurant had a camera, it turned out a photography convention was being held at that hotel ... The photo in question was taken of a couple of Japanese fellas standing outside with a black Mercedes. We've been joined by the original offshoot of the Aum cult!

And we have reasons to believe we're going to need tinfoil hats going forward. In fact, the plan is to make stetsons with a Faraday cage inside, because we're all sophisticated, like. After all, isn't the tinfoil really meant to ward off things like radio waves? Then a Faraday cage is what you want! Simples!

Our journalist pal took us to see her father, who managed to translate enough of the old scroll we had in our possession to realise it wasn't the lyrics to a Eurythmics song. But we definitely agree that there are shenanigans afoot in Texas.

An adventure triple bypass operation

Super investigators Hatch and Malone kept investigating this session, and in doing so, ended up skipping from part one to part five of the multi-part adventure. Because that's just how we roll.

Perhaps the shady guy who owed the Mob money was trying to get hold of some missing barrels from Hellstromme Industries ...

We ended up going into the Bayou with an inbred Captain Ahab, looking for a ginormous alligator. We found the alligator. It was now a ginormous zombie alligator, hidden in an old train cart. We spent so much time trying to get the door open ... when we could've just walked to the back, where there was no door - although we would've been eaten a lot quicker that way.

Born to not investigate, not to survive

We ended up generating characters for the next game, Deadlands Noir, instead of playing a boardgame. So far, we're not sure what to make of the Savage Worlds system, as it's more limited than 1st Ed Deadlands, but we'll see how we like it as we go along. If we decide against it, we'll just convert the characters (or create new ones, as the case may be) into the Deadlands we're used to, only using the new 1930s setting.

The heroes of this adventure are two investigators. Both are very savvy when it comes to investigating, tracking, searching and things like that. Being able to shoot a gun is sort of optional. We might hit, if we're lucky. As long as no one hits us back, because we sort of ran out of points to be able to get a Dodge skill. Ho hum.

In one corner, there's a gumshoe, a private eye, and a drunken one at that ... and in the other, a plucky yet impulsive reporter. How could this team of non-combatants possibly not succeed in a world full of [radioactive barf] zombies and evil spirits?

MY EVIL PLAN

Occasionally, things happen that makes us unable to play our regular scheduled game. For this session, we were one player short, which we didn't know beforehand, and as we were about to embark on a new adventure, we ended up playing a boardgame instead: Merchant of Venus, an updated version of a classic game about space exploration.

There was lots of setting up and trying to figure out how to play it, so we only managed about three or four rounds before we had to start packing it back away again and go home. We had fun, though, and there will be less prep time next time we play it.

Does this mean we finished the adventure?

Halloween rave in Central Park, and we all went - we dressed up and everything, so Mulligan finally got to don his fishnet stockings. Such a proud moment.

Grigor, the Goth tattoo artist vampire wannabe who was in cahoots with the baddie, peddled drugs that would kill you, so we had to take him down. Moving through the crowd, we eventually came across the baddie himself.

As we came well-prepared with marbles, magic dust and shotguns, taking the baddie out wasn't as hard as we had expected. He tried to fade away, but was shot with dust-filled shotgun shells, and when Silver emptied a jar of dust over his head, he exploded. Hurrah!

And as the dust settled, pardon the pun, we had a meeting with a mysterious Miss Green in the bar, who invited us to join the anti pandimensional threat squad known as Delta Green. There's no money in it, but we're in it for the glory. Or, to tell the truth, because it's a plot point and otherwise we wouldn't have a game to play next week.

Oh ye of targeted plot

This week, we found us some hobos that Agent Mulligan equipped with cheap Wal-Mart pagers so they could get in touch easily. General Silver and Agent Cully put their heads together and made a sort of mystic powder, which they then filled bullet casings with - it's a weapon against the abominable diamond man!

We also explored the suspect's old haunts from the 1920s, out in Partridgeville.

No bodies, no problem

We contined our investimagations and the cameras we put up in the basement of the wine shop finally paid off. The weird monster tried to come in through a smoke cloud, but because of the ball bearings scattered all over the floor, it couldn't materialise. Fascinating.

As it happened, we then had to get out of there to find where the thing would materialise instead. As it turned out, a couple of nutters who wanted to become "vampires" were there with it. And they all disappeared, in a puff of smoke ...

That's why they put the I in FBI

After a prolonged re-cap to get the two very special agents up to speed after the three-week gaming break, Mulligan and Cully actually found clues. And plot. And all sorts of things that meant we progressed a whole lot more than normally would be expected.

Cully's dice rolls were consistently awful, but on the other hand, she had had a big scare the night before. Still, as Mulligan's rolls were pretty good, we still made headway.

We found out that the hat had belonged to a doctor, who disappeared four months after the murder of a writer in 1928, whose corpse had similarities with the present day killings. The doctor's forwarding address shortly before going missing were close to where the first and fifth murder took place.

Might this be some sort of weird transcendental time travel, with a doctor possessed by a creature from another dimension? We don't really want to believe this one.

Chasing cubist killers with festive earrings!

We gave the diamonds back to the store from whence they came, because after a careful risk assessment, we decided they were safest there. As it happened, Mulligan also figured out reflective surfaces is what repels it. Round reflective surfaces. So, naturally, we donned round, reflective sunglasses (like John & Yoko, but with mirror effect glass) and bought a box of Christmas baubles. Well, it's almost Halloween, after all ...

Not-so-lucky for us, we also came face to face with the killer, looking a lot like something Picasso would paint if he was HP Lovecraft. And then he disappeared, the bastard. Perhaps just as well, because Cully very nearly lost her marbles in the process.

Next time, we're thinking shotguns. Lots and lots of them. It will kill it eventually, right? As long as we riddle it with bullets for long enough? Well, we can always douse it with liquid nitrogen first to slow it down, and then go flamethrower on its ass. Sounds like a plan!