Maybe you should consider a Path?

In Staten Island, Adelaide says she Sees spiders all over Jeanine, digging into her and eating her regret. (WHY IS DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE SPIDERS?!) Lottie "convinces" Jeanine to put some of her blood into a thermos flask. Looking at the thin blood in the flask, Adelaide freaks out, saying it's "cold, so cold". She doesn't mean temperature-wise.

After Jeanine puts the lid on the flask, it's put into some oven gloves for an extra layer of protection. Lottie and Julius strategise what to do with Jeanine, and they decide to leave her there for now, and make their way back to Brooklyn. She asks him about his first Childe, who appears to be missing, presumed dead, after angering some werewolves.

Meanwhile in Brooklyn, Frankie and Benny are thinking ahead. If you're in a Prohibition setting, your character is a bootlegger, his ghoul is a bartender in a speakeasy, you and your cousins are planning to open a blood donation clinic, and the house rules say you can mix alcohol with blood to make it fine to drink, it would be rude not to combine these factors, right? If one was to find out which types of blood goes best with which types of alcohol, there's a whole new market to tap into right there.

In the end, the two cousins finally meet up again, at "Angela's", where Frankie was considering heading anyway, after a brief phone conversation. Frankie starts telling his cousin and her Sire his side of what's happened while they were away, and the two Malkavians are not exactly thrilled about his and Theo's raids on the Giovanni affiliated speaks in Little Italy ... If only they knew it was (sort of) Frankie's idea ...

There’s no zealot like a convert

There's some kind of corrupt person that Deadorna speaks to on the crystal island, and is told people shouldn't go down there. Umm, well, duh?

We don't, in fact, get eaten by ginormous creatures, but instead a deal is made with the barbarians (?) down there that the blind death lizards won't kill anyone who's down there in the company of Deadorna or Elindra - everyone else is fair game. We're happy with that arrangement. and finally manage to emerge from the hole!

Murmei gets a note about meeting someone in an alley. That sounds as bad as it absolutely was - he, Valgai, Knightlight and Vizell get attacked by archers on the roof as well as on the ground. But it's fine, the ones still alive at the end of it get thrown into dungeons, because hello? RUDE!

Do we have dinner coming to dinner?

We wanted to go on a raid against the White Hand warehouse, but realised we were way outgunned. Genius idea - go to a hotel and borrow their phone and call the cops on the warehouse (because that's totally how the mafia do things ... we've realised much later when we found their code of conduct on Wikipedia). Then we just had to sit back and wait for the cops to bring the numbers down to a better level.

While doing this Frankie also received relationship advice from his cousins. Lottie's advice might have been slightly better than Val's, who was very matter-of-fact and didn't actually address the problem:

"How do I talk to her? You're good with dames, what do I say to her?"
"Well, if you want a girlfriend, she's technically the only and/or logical option. So good for you."
"... Uh ... thanks?"

At least Lottie suggested getting Angela a present, maybe a really fancy bottle of wine that could be used for when she ghouls her. The fanciest bottle available was swiftly requisitioned from the restaurant where we had camped out, and it was WELL fancy.

And then we had really weird dreams again. What's up with those?

I'm the best support class ever!

It's been a while since we were last on Faerûn with our new gods. Of course, last time we were thrown back out into the world after some time away in the Night Roads and other shenanigans. Our friends were basically gone, and things were looking rather bleak.

Maybe things can be less bleak going forward, because now we have clerics and paladins and rangers, oh my! Basically, because a bunch of gods have died, it seems we're a bit more powerful and if people choose to BUH-LIEVE then they get their powers back that were previously bestowed upon them by other gods. So that's pretty cool. (GM has also said he'll be using this version of Faerûn next time he runs D&D, which means our characters are going to be the gods of the game! Which sounds awesome.)

Tilverton has been taken over by Lolth and her people, so the plan is to go get our pantheon's capital back, thank you very much. We just need to get there first. By way of creating wolf pups and getting attacked by gnolls.

The Dog-boy is a go(o)d-boy

This isn't very long, but it's the last bit of Rifts for the time being. We made it out of Coalition State - somehow. Not with intact SAMAS, though, but you win some and you lose some. At least we got John back and looked cool getting the hell out of Dodge. Or, well, dodging. Stuff like that.

I’m making my own rules

Having come across reviews of the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, the GM (i.e. me, who has never really run a pre-written adventure before) was happy to conclude that feeling like a shit GM was less about actually being a shit GM and a lot more to do with a poorly edited and very confusingly laid out adventure book where the reason you can't find something is because it's spread out all over the place, and not necessarily in chronological or alphabetical order, or any other kind of order you would expect.

Anyway. The characters continued the partying at Feathergale Spire. Aial decided to check out the commander's private quarters while no one was looking, and then set it on fire to hide evidence. The order lost all of their initiates in the ensuing fire ... but of course the party wasn't present at the time the fire went off. Kyla, who earned a gold star with the order for killing the manticore last session, was taken aside and got the "hello, my name is Elder Knight and I would like to share with you this most amazing cult" talk. She later helped out with healing the wounded to show that yes, she's definitely initiate material. (As if.)

After a night when the party was randomly attacked by jackalweres (why they're not called "werejackals" we have no idea), the party headed down the road toward Womford. Stopping for a bio break, they came across some water themed soldiers that were suitably skewered by Lo-Kag and then turned into kebabs by Schnicktick.

You know, it's like there's some sort of elemental theme going on here ...

You're not rolling particularly high, are you?

Two regulars down but with the addition of an occasionally recurring player, we decided on playing Betrayal at House on the Hill for this session. We were doing okay, and then the little boy turned out to be a traitor (AGAIN - seriously, third time playing this game in the group and all three times that kid's been the baddie!) and summoned a ghost.

The ghost took down three of the explorer characters and the traitor died but there was one guy left standing - who finished off the ghost and lived to tell the tale. Somehow they were making it out to be some kind of feminist conspiracy, because the female characters died first. Methinks feminism isn't a word that means what they think it means.

Offhanded guess becomes true!

I think we can summarise this session with "wow".

So, in the crowd, we saw this weird dude - who turned out was a Sunaj called Marvin. A Sunaj is some kind of Splugorth minion. He offered to give Booker something that will help him/us in the fight to come, and Booker managed to make the Sunaj agree to help out with the Lion situation.

Lion was brought forth, shed his disguise and was - gasp say it ain't so - a Rakshasa. Surprise! (Not really.) Fighting broke out. Booker emptied his guns into Lion's chest and Gorbash then grabbed hold of Lion, who turned into mist form beacuse he could. Dragonbreath singed him slightly, we think. At any rate, the Rakshasa disappeared and we had helped save the East Side Boys gang.

Their leader, Maria, having had the Cyber-Knight as a full body shield in the fight took a shine to him, and spent the next few hours flirting with him over cups of tea in the company of Baradhi. Gorbash went to talk to Ixchal about what was going on (Rita requested her presense), and Booker went to receive his gift. The gift turned out to be an Elom, a symbiod creature whose only real downside (maybe) is that only servants of Splugorth are ever seen wearing them. At the back of their neck. Still, it might come in useful later, so Booker named it "Bally".

We finished off by finally meeting Rita, a.k.a. Hecate, who hadn't really thought to check what dimension she was asked to make a portal to/from. She agreed that maybe that gate needs stopping after all. But that's the next adventure. Cliffhanger!!

Find the storekeeper, save the world

We finished off the last of the battle. Jayson's laser rifle misfired and blew away a part of a building. Before it collapsed, Gorbash saved the woman and child who we could see were in the building. Both him and Jayson then broke into song to calm them down. The remaining Rakshasa had already run away at this point.

While Gorbash went to flirt have a chat with Ixchal, the rest of the group took the recently made homeless mother and child back to the Blackstone Juggernaut headquarters, where they were assured they would be perfectly safe - and the mum could even get a job.

As Baradhi had a look through the (unexpected) eyes of Sister Anna, there were clues. Perhaps Rita the Babe was a bit more powerful in the wizarding department than we had expected. Back at her shop, we encountered another group of mercenaries - difference was their (stupidly paid) mission wasn't to find her, it was to kill her, but a bargain was struck: we find her and cash in, then they can take over and cash in their job and everyone's happy.

We closed the session having explored the magical runes protecting the tables in the shop and even found our way into the cellar ... and there was a gate. OMINOUS!!

Didn’t you say we were going to finish tonight?

Last session we had a shoot-out in a café, where we were supposed to meet up with a team of Hunters from Nottingham. Instead, we got attacked by some creatures and had to leave. Tilly got a bit upset because a creature was actually an innocent (she can see people's souls now) ... which didn't stop the rest of the party killing it.

This session we went to Trevor's and met the Hunters there instead. It turned out we all had pets, in one way or another (Eddie is Trevor's pet, vodka is Zolistagol's, and then there's Tilly's little Rommel, of course).

The other team were a bit weird - one of the women was about as doolally as Trevor's sister Agatha, and she talked about monsters being in the house, but we didn't see any. The Nottingham team spraypainted a corner of the living room.

And then came a policeman, Detective Black, who asked strange questions. As his car left the driveway, there was a noise from the roof - David Hayes (Trevor's bodyguard) had shot the guy. Great. Super-strength junkie woman (who kept babbling an awful lot) dragged the car up to the house and hid it in a barn, because now the mansion apparently has one. How to get rid of the evidence? Well, apparently creatures like the one Rommel is (when he's not just a puppydog) can go all CSI and eat any forensic evidence. So that's useful - and ever so slightly horrifying.

50 Shades of Enid Blyton

We're doing some other bits for a couple of weeks or so, while one of the players is away. For this session, we played a two-player Jurisfiction adventure, to see what that was about.

Arthur Hastings, from Agatha Christie's Poirot novels, joined forces with the new recruit Dr Abraham van Helsing, from Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Bellman never told them that it's technically a single-player mission, but hey, if you take a complete rookie and the somewhat dimwitted veteran Hastings, it sort of adds up to a single, competent player.

The mission itself was a simple matter of internal plot adjustment: making Shadow the Sheepdog by Enid Blyton have a happy ending. It should have been a simple mission that couldn't possibly go wrong, but ... alas ... they got out of a sticky situation by teaching a bunch of villagers all about S&M, in a bid to turn their idyllic rural village into something from Midsomer Murders.

Welcome to Louisiana Fried Rat, can I take your money?

Exciting times ahead! Hatch and Murphy are still blissfully clueless their new accomplice is long dead, because he's still doing things like moving around and talking. Ohhh the hilarity that will ensue when they finally succeed on those Notice checks!

In other news, the team decided to find out where the singing dame's fanboy/stalker lived by tracking down his place of work (a bank), pretending they wanted to interview him for a newspaper article. He hadn't come in to work, as it happened, but by promising to do a favourable article on the bank manager - and later do him a favour pro-bono (it's difficult even typing those words!) - by discreetly investigating why the guy wasn't at work, the trio finally found their way to his apartment.

Sadly, it seemed to mostly be a dead end. And there wasn't even any money in it. Hey GM, we've all got rent to pay, you know!

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.

I only ever wanted to be an engineer

This weekend was the next ChimeraCon, and the game I ended up playing in (and therefore could document) was using the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play and set in Elizabethan London - or "the Smoke" as it was referred.

The party was a group of country bumpkins travelling to the big city, and ended up getting caught in a conflict between the Masons and the Templars, and a group of Psions who said King Arthur was returning.

He was, as it turned out, along with some of his friends. We got knighted by Mordred.

The game ran over all four sessions, but we only played in sessions one and four. Good way of staying alive, if you ask us!

Bark to the Future

After the explosion, Scraps dug a hole through the rubble to get Jackie (and a bunch of gear) out. Then we blew another hole ... in the wall, leading to the outside. Equipped with some kind of flying belt, we made our way up to the top of the mountain. Where we encountered Stone. That's right, the original harrowed himself.

AND WE PWNED HIM!

Yeah, suck on that for a bit! Okay, so Slick's Manitou took over, twice, first dropping Jackie off the edge - but luckily, he came to his senses at the last minute and rescued her. In the end, when Stone had melted through the floor - muttering something about we might have won this time, but like the Terminator, he'd be back - he did a similar thing to Reynard. Reynard answered by barbecuing him with a flamethrower on the way down, thus putting a crispy end to our trecherous friend, the homicidal alchemist.

Reynard then turned on the force field, bounced unharmed on the ground, picked up the strangely unharmed belt, which he then tried to argue with the GM about until the rest of us shouted to him to just roll with it. When the GM hands you a flight belt so you can fly back up the mountain unharmed and join your friends and live happily ever after (or die trying), you sure as hell don't argue the slight implausibility of the belt's working condition!

But yeah, we saved the day. Scraps ran toward the stone, Mary shot it away from the portal thingy it was in, Scraps picked it up by swallowing it, and ran toward her. She grabbed him and together, they flew back down to the portal room and headed to the future, closely joined by Jackie and Reynard. On the other side, the portal was sealed off, and everyone left with the conundrum of how to get the Heart of Darkness out of Scraps's belly without hurting him.

And that's all folks, thus concludes our story. The Posse is now stuck 200 years into the future. Here's how we got there:

Devil's Tower is officially worse than 'Nam

Shovember dealt a few black jokers to the party out-of-game so we were a player down. Because of that, the GM decided not to take the chips he normally does, to give us a sporting chance. We're probably only looking at one more session, and then it's The End. Quite literally, actually, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

We ventured up some stairs, opened a door, saw some baddies, threw some dynamite into the room and took cover - and blew up half that level of the cave. Including the stairs, which we're going to need to go up, seeing as how our date with Stone is set to be up top.

Instead, we worked our way down the corridor, opening random doors and encountering aliens trying to kill us (and a Chinese man being in the process of being turned into an alien in a most painful way), until we eventually found a generator room ... which also contained the portal to the future. Unfortunately, that's not where we need to go right now. Not without a certain stone ... and there's us, having blown up the staircase and everything. Way to go.

On the plus side, we found a room full of alien tech, and one of the beings we killed had a kind of translating gadget collar ... which we promptly fitted to Scraps (Reynard's dog). He turned out to be translated into a posh English accent (while he's more Deep South in Reynard's head, confusing the heck out of him) - at least until it got damaged. Now, he barks at us in Japanese instead. Kamikazeeee!!

The universe wants us dead

It's not going well. After last week's party deaths, Reynard removed Sam's steam-and-ghost-rock-powered Gatling gun from the burning remains, to ensure it wouldn't blow up, while Slick helped himself to the contents of Gunney's pockets. Slick then decided the best thing was to put a bullet through the steam canister to make sure it wouldn't blow up in our faces - so it blew up in his instead. Pretty much.

Mary dealt out some healin' to the reluctant alchemist, and we headed off down the maze. We managed to find our way out of it eventually, only to find some aliens with force fields for protection. They were really difficult to shoot at. In fact, not until Slick put out Slumber Gas and Greek Fire did we manage to even damage one of them - but sadly, Slick died in the process because those aliens do pack a helluva punch.

Our previous encounter meant that we were getting low on chips (Mary had to use her two legend chips not to lose limbs), and once you're out of chips, you're out of life. Or, if you're Reynard, it doesn't matter, because you can't spend chips to negate wounds anyway. First Slick went down, then Reynard.

Fortunately (?) both quickly felt much better, even if they looked very Death Becomes Her, so to speak. Mary is now the only original PC left standing, but hopefully, with two Harrowed in the party, maybe she, Jackie and Scraps the dog can still manage to save the future. At least four of them have died trying.

We sent them there to die, not to win!

This weekend just gone meant ChimeraCon 5 - a 24 hour roleplaying event at Chimera in Beeston. These are the quotes from the first session's Eclipse Phase game (10 September 2011), which was a continuation of the story from ChimeraCon 4 in June. As a special treat, we have also included quotes from the fourth session's game of Exalted "Light" (11 September 2011), for your pleasure.

In Eclipse Phase, we went to Mars and encountered both flying piranhas and tweetfish. Do you know what happens when a whole tank full of tweetfish simultaneously panic and tweet that they want their water changed? Read and find out. Maybe.

You’ve been mindforked

This weekend spells ChimeraCon 4 - a 24 hour roleplaying event at Chimera in Beeston. These are the quotes from the first session's Eclipse Phase game, which was a continuation of the story from ChimeraCon 3 in April. This time, the team went to win a gatecrashing contest which conveniently took them exactly to the planet they wanted to go - Echo 5, where we heard wonderful harp music and were told to "mind the weave". Whatever that's supposed to mean.