Follow that hovercraft!

Because we've been boardgaming a couple of weeks in a row, here are a couple of filler posts of games we've played previously, namely the Jurisfiction adventure "Life, the BookWorld, and Everything", in which four Jurisfiction agents were sent on a team-building mission inside The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

This second and final instalment goes from the Heart of Gold spaceship landing on the ancient planet-building planet of Magrathea to ... well, the point at which the narrative ends, which also concludes their mission. Roll call:

• Arthur Hastings, senior agent and a former military man and now occasional assistant to Agatha Christie's Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot.
• Captain Haddock, an old seadog fond of grog from Hergé's Adventures of Tintin graphic novels.
• Kaa, a snake from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
• Macbeth, a mighty king of Shakespearean fame.

We've never felt quite the same about saying the word "Belgium" after this ...

We’ll cut the narrative off at the pass and leg it

We were half the team down last Wednesday, so those who were left played the Shadowrun card game in what we later discovered was the hardest mode possible, because we drew opponents from the wrong deck. Oops. Anyway, this is why this week's post instead is going to be a trip to Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and what happens when a group of Jurisfiction agents are told to go on a team-building exercise inside its pages.

The agents were told to strictly stay out of the narrative ... and while roleplayers would normally decide to completely ignore this, they didn't, so I never got to inflict my specially prepared Vogon poetry on them. I are still disappoints, two years later.

Here's the crew:

• Arthur Hastings, senior agent and a former military man and now occasional assistant to Agatha Christie's Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot.
• Captain Haddock, an old seadog fond of grog from Hergé's Adventures of Tintin graphic novels.
• Kaa, a snake from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
• Macbeth, a mighty king of Shakespearean fame.

The first (of two) parts are when the agents have got aboard the Vogon ship and lasts until the Heart of Gold is about to be hit by a couple of Magrathean missiles ...

Is there anyone you HAVEN'T shot?

Unfortunately, we were not one but TWO players down last session, so we had to resort to playing boardgames instead. Or in this case a card game - we played Cards Against Humanity with great merriment. Probably hit scrota in record time or something.

Since I was too busy laughing to jot down quotes, here's the final episode of Jurisfiction: Meanwhile in Narnia, in which the agents meet Aslan (who in no way has the chocolatey voice of Liam Neeson) and explain a few things to him. And then they shoot him with a tranquiliser dart, of course. This is a roleplaying game, after all.

They also solve the mystery of whodunnit, and "accidentally" tranq Peter Pevensie just as he's trying to hit on Carmilla. It was the best day ever!

Introducing Father Christmas with +5 vorpal slay bells

Last week, the Ref had to cancel at the last minute, so we ended up playing the boardgame Eldritch Horror. And, of course, we tend to be a bit too engrossed in playing the boardgame to write things down. Also, we tend to talk about things that aren't particularly funny when written down, such as who should move where and do what.

Instead, have the penultimate instalment of Jurisfiction: Meanwhile in Narnia! In this bit, the agents meet Father Christmas ... and then shoot him with a tranquiliser dart, strip him bare and put Louis in the Santa suit. Oh, if only Aslan would hurry up and get here ...

Beavers and buttheads

After talking to Brian Tumnus in the pub, the group of Jurisfiction agents skipped ahead a few chapters and went to see the beaver couple, to check if they had any Christmas decorations stashed away, or at least knew anything about it. They had, and they did.

Van Helsing and Carmilla, in some kind of Mexican standoff, waited outside the beaver hut while Alice said hello to her idol Lucy Pevensie and her older siblings Susan and Peter. (Edmund was of course off somewhere fraternising with the enemy over some Turkish delight.) Lucy turned out to have more in common with a certain modern female character than anyone could have anticipated - much to the distress of Alice and the players.

Meanwhile, Louis and Long John went around investigating ... and met a nameless dwarf, who had a few things to say about his employer (the White Witch), his lack of a name, and the reason behind the recent influx of Christmas decorations in the book. Louis was kind enough to give the dwarf a name: Louis. Just a shame it won't last.

Why would we sell our friends to Aslan?

We continue the Jurisfiction adventure. We're in Narnia, investigating contraband Christmas ornaments that might be disrupting the narrative. At least if we let it, which we won't, because we're Jurisfiction agents.

Here, the agents meet Mr Tumnus, with his ehhhh interesting wardrobe, and then head off to a hidden pub called the Golden Lion, where Mr Tumnus's brother Brian is having a tea - because you can't get alcoholic beverages in this children's novel. Not even rum.

And Aslan, peh, he's not good for pub business. What with turning water into wine and everything. Bloody cheapskate.

Equal rights for people with no pulse!

The first ever Jurisfiction adventure to span more than one session! In this one, the group left The Shining to meet up with Abraham van Helsing at HQ, before moving on to Narnia. Van Helsing and Carmilla instantly took a disliking to one another. While the rest of the party gathered at the lamp post, Carmilla, thanks to botching a Bookjumping roll, ended up in Wonderland. Well, she WAS rather preoccupied with Alice ...

On the other hand, the Red Queen was keen to get her hands on a Narnian statue and gave Carmilla a bag of Christmas ornaments as payment. But she had better come back with a bear, or heads will roll.

I have to lick … I mean, tend to his wounds

Part two of Meanwhile in Narnia, where the team of Jurisfiction agents have finally made it into Stephen King's The Shining, which is apparently a children's book now.

At the snow-covered Overlook Hotel, the agents look for statues of what are probably petrified Narnians, avoid being read by diving behind a bush and then interrogating little Danny Torrance, busy riding around the hallways on his tricycle. Admittedly, the GM has never read The Shining and therefore based everything that happened here on the Stanley Kubrick film, which of course has very little to do with the actual novel.

Also, there were clues, leading Alice to suspect Mr Tumnus from Narnia might be involved. Who else has hairy legs, horns and wears a red scarf? The Turkish deligh definitely must come from Narnia!

What happens off page stays off page

As we only had a couple of weeks before breaking off for the holidays, we decided to have a one-off. Seeing as how we'd be joined by a friend we don't see very often, and who'd like to play some more of Jurisfiction, that's what we decided to do.

In the seasonal Meanwhile in Narnia, there were reports about petrified Narnians being sold off as souvenir statues to unsuspecting visitors, and a group of agents assembled to go into Stephen King's The Shining, as that was so far the only lead Jurisfiction had.

A child was interrogated. One of the agents kept wanting to drink another agent's blood. A pirate's parrot turned out to have a rather foul mouth, and a 200-year-old politician didn't know who to trust.

Starring:

• Alice, 7-year-old (Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
• Carmilla, vampire (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla)
• Long John Silver, pirate (Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island)
• Louis Gridley Wu, politician (Larry Niven, Ringworld)
• Polly, parrot (sits on Silver's shoulder)

Here's part one ...

Everyone back away, it’s Miss Marple!

Last week, we continued generating our characters for Rifts, and when you're busy trying to suss out your Cyber-knight's psionic powers - and just skills in general, to be honest (so much to choose from!) - you don't really pay much attention to what's going on around you. The adventure also took its first, gentle steps into plot.

But yeah, we'll save that to next week, so instead, as this was pre-prepared, here's the fifth and final part of Midwinter Murders, the very first Jurisfiction adventure. After chasing Vampire Bella from Breaking Dawn, the team have followed her into a quaint, English village - the sort you've come to expect from Midsomer Murders.

In a picturesque cottage, Miss Marple invites the party for a cup of hot, drugged chocolate. Half the party was snoozing and the other half circling the village in a stolen car looking for Bella. Ending up back at Marple's cottage, they call shenanigans on the old woman - who is obviously the mastermind behind everything!!

And then they bundled her into a bathtub, found Vampire Bella (who passed out because she started bleeding from a gunshot wound), bundled her into the bathtub as well, and went back to HQ with the knowledge of it being a job well done.

Will the real Harry Potter please stand up?

As we unfortunately was a player down due to illness this session, we were going to play something else. I got instructed to bring a game I'd like to play, so I brought Jurisfiction. It just so happens that I've always wanted to do an adventure set in the Harry Potter books, and suddenly, both inspiration and opportunity presented themselves.

Agents Hastings (Agatha Christie) and Van Helsing (Bram Stoker) had to leave their Enid Blyton pet project behind in order to go over to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to investigate a Potions book that had been stolen and replaced with a cheap knock-off. As they dawdled, Severus Snape himself arrived at Jurisfiction HQ to convince them to get a move on.

From there, they ended up force-feeding a Puking Pastille to Fred or George Weasley, charging Snape with assault, admiring off-duty Dumbledore in what can only be described as Rocky Horror Picture Show gear, listening to a PageRunning Draco Malfoy's teenage woes, finding beautiful Fanon Snape snogging his favourite student Hermione over in Fanfiction, and learning that Harry Potter enjoys going on Character Exchange trips to Fanfiction, where he doesn't have to put up with any of that false modesty nonsense, and can be worshipped like the freakin' BookWorld rockstar that he is.

Oh yeah, and Marvin the Paranoid Android occasionally works in the admin department at Jurisfiction HQ. (He doesn't enjoy it, brain the size of a planet, and so on.)

Whatever they did, that copy of the Half-Blood Prince's old Potions textbook, which is just a teeny tiny bit pivotal to the plot, was still nowhere to be seen ...

Reneesme is obviously a runaway, sparkly vampire pig

IN WHICH WE RIP THE S#!T OUT OF TWILIGHT. Err ... Again!

Okay, so last week, there was no session, so here's another one of them filler posts from an old session. Next week, the quotes will be back to Delta Green, as that's what we played in this week's session. (If you hadn't noticed, the quotes are posted the week after the session where they originated.)

Meanwhile, he's what happened when the Jurisfiction agents decided to venture further into the Twilight series ... where they first encountered Pregnant Bella, followed by Vampire Bella - who may or may not be the mother of a pig.

To recap: A group of fictional characters, agents of Jurisfiction, are policing the BookWorld, namely:

• Alice from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Arthur Hastings from random Agatha Christie Poirot novel
• Frankenstein's Monster from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, nicknamed "George"
• Gabriel Betteredge from Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone
• Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (although he was mostly asleep)
• "Outlander", i.e. one of the players playing himself, from the Outland

The strangest thing is, today's post is only from about 20 or so minutes worth of playing ... make of that what you will. I thought there was only maybe one more post out of what was left of the recording, but apparently we're looking at two posts at the very least.

The long, generic twilight of the BookWorld

We spent last session playing Zpocalypse again, to a much greater success than the first time, and we'll be playing that next session too. Since there was only like half a page worth of quotes from that session, I figure it would be better to post the two sessions in one go instead, so that's happening in next week's post.

Meanwhile, we're going back to the BookWorld to continue the investigations of the Jurisfiction agents. They've now left Wuthering Heights and decide to go and check out Twilight, because if you're looking for a modern novel that's badly written, you might as well just start there.

Amongst all the Generics in Forks High School's cafeteria is Bella Swan, who seems more preoccupied with dreaming about her bewuved Edward than the fact she's being accused of multiple homicides. (Each to their own, and that ...) And then the agents have a brainwave as to how to solve the problem of Bella missing from the narrative if she's brought into questioning: have Frankenstein's Monster take her place.

Roleplayers, eh? Can't take 'em anywhere!

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.

Murder on t' winding, windy moors

As we ended up playing Relic last week, which didn't end up being very quotable, here's something we played earlier. At a ChimeraCon in fact. This session was the Blogkeeper's first ever go as a tabletop GM.

To recap: A group of fictional characters, agents of Jurisfiction, are policing the BookWorld, namely:

• Alice from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Arthur Hastings from random Agatha Christie Poirot novel
• Frankenstein's Monster from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, nicknamed "George"
• Gabriel Betteredge from Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone
• Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (although he was mostly asleep)
• "Outlander", i.e. one of the players playing himself, from the Outland

At this stage of the session, the characters have been briefed about some gruesome murders taking place within the world of fiction - murders that shouldn't have happened in the characters' usual narrative - and after much ado, they set off into Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

They got to Trushcross Grange (try saying that quickly three times in a row!) only to discover the Lintons' fancy manor house was on fire, which is very out of character for it. But with their parents away, can the Canasta-playing Edgar and Isabella actually be saved or will the murderer have claimed two more lives?

Midwinter Murders is not IKEA

As we didn't have a session last week, here's something we played earlier. In fact, this session was the Blogkeeper's first ever go as a tabletop GM. Using a bastardised version of the Mortal character sheet from Exalted, the group of tired ChimeraCon players decided to delve into the world of fiction.

The setting is from Jasper Fforde's BookWorld or Thursday Next series, so it takes place within the world of fiction. The characters are taken from classical fiction and are playing Jurisfiction agents, basically the police of the BookWorld, and they have been sent to investigate a string of gory murders ...

Starring:

• Alice from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Arthur Hastings from random Agatha Christie Poirot novel
• Frankenstein's Monster from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, nicknamed "George"
• Gabriel Betteredge from Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone
• Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series

...And one of the roleplayers even decided to play himself as an Outlander. What could possibly go wrong?