It's always winter in Alaska

We did have a session to post here, but illness and stuff has prevented me to digitise it, so here's an ace up the sleeve instead.

Oh we were on fire here! Which was probably just as well, seeing as how we went to a snow-covered Alaska and did some stuff. Kanye West was there, because of course he was.

There was a character new to the party as well, who thought "Specials" meant "special needs", and we did nothing to disprove that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Falling for the plot device

Jack tried to flirt with the tanker truck driver he decided last session he was going to marry. She wasn't impressed.

Vince had a chat with the other Syker in town and Maggie discovered they had come to some sort of hipster vegetarian hideout where they grew their own food and served bran muffins and stuff.

We then helped to build a fence around the town and waited to be attacked. And so we were. Epic Syker blew head off bad guy - there was a mini mushroom cloud and nuclear fallout and everything! \o/

Do Doomsayers glow in the dark?

We're on the road again ... or, well, three of us are: Jack the Road Warrior, Vincent the Syker and Maggie the Law Dog.

I think we ended up somewhere in Wyoming, where we spotted some guys on the side of the road. They were looking for something, so we decided to help out. Turned out to be related to burned out corpses. Doomsayers are in the area, and them folks are bad news in general.

Eventually, modifications were made to the cannon mounted on top of Jack's truck and Maggie might glow in the dark, but it's all good ... even though the truck is now a rolling bomb waiting to go off at any second ...

Can I roll sense motive on the fruit?

We're back in Rifts, heading toward the city of Soul Harvest. We met a fairy on the way, who was trying to get us to eat and drink things, but we declined. A lot.

Soul Harvest ... is an interesting place. They have undead as servants (whether or not they're unionised is a good question), and subject people to an introductory film to welcome newcomers. It ... was a bit dull. But we don't think it's brainwashed us ... We hope.

I'm glad we're both stupidly heroic

Now that people were back from Reasons They Couldn't Make Last Session, the rest of us filled those people in on what we'd been up to in the meantime, i.e. killing bloaters on a riverboat and freeing a bunch of oar slaves.

There was a CLUE and everything, pointing toward a hospital about a mile or so away, so of course we decided that's the place to go. (It probably doesn't help that it seems like three people in the group have either Heroic or Brave or both.) Going by boat through the swamp soon attracted them bloaters, who promptly started to try boarding our ship - or at least drag us down to their level.

In the end, to cut a long story short, traumas were got and we got to the hospital.

Averaging our way through the apocalypse

It's a new year and new zombies to kill!

We went aboard a riverboat, which we meant to blow up (because zombies) but the evening was young and so we decided to check it out first. There were zombies, but there were also a number of perfectly innocent slaves that the zombies hadn't yet eaten, so we freed them.

It was the best day ever.

Zombies with a foot fetish

Baton Rouge turns out to not just have a problem with river pirates, but also with zombies. Zombies with fancy morgue tags on their toes, despite morgues having gone out of fashion (well, they kind of do when the dead get up and walk). Perhaps some nefarious dude is creating zombies in a kind of golem style way? If we can fight them off for long enough - or if the GM could avoid critting when hitting characters who botched their Quickness rolls for initiative - maybe we can actually get to the bottom of this. The murky, swampy bottom.

We're nice and very comforting people

Ehhhhh, long time no see?

We opened a café and, uh, things have been a bit hectic ever since ...

Is now the time to botch?

Let's start by introducing ourselves:

• Duke Carpenter, junker and wannabe Space Marine
• Jack Burton, road warrior and van owner
• Maggie Murphy, lawdog
• Vincent Gordon, psyker

We kicked off the adventure by driving along in the van. There was a tree blocking the road and a military vehicle. It looked like an ambush, but we weren't the ones ambushed. Getting out (Duke only after putting on his mech suit) we investigated the place, and found dead bodies with flies all over them.

Later, we found a camp full of sick people. Luckily, they had nicked a device that allows you to check your health status. Turned out to be an infection of unknown origin. As it also turned out, some of us had become infected. (So that's why you shouldn't use Vigor as a dump stat. No wonder my character was the first one infected!)

Now we just need to find some kind of cure, before our skin melts off our faces too. Yay?

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.

Is your hoover covered for supernatural ash damage?

The Derby crew had an interesting morning. Tilly woke up with a bed full of cats - and only two out of nine were her own. Instead of being weirded out by this, she thought it was lovely and promptly fell back asleep. Later on, trying to film them, they didn't show up on the recording, and as she mentioned this over the phone to Trevor, the friendly cats turned into a mass of black goo that went all horror film shock moment on her, causing her to pass out.

Worried, Trevor, Eddie and Alex went to her house and confronted the black goo, dragging the unconscious woman outside in her PJs for all to see, and ... when seen through "The Sight", the black goo was a rather pleasant druidic entity who could remove the curse from people. Eddie and Tilly are therefore no longer cursed, and are off the menu when it comes to both being the person who sparks Armageddon and being the person you sacrifice in order to stop it.

Meanwhile, clues pointed to Weymouth, Stonehenge, and Codnor Castle, with Leamington Spa somewhere in the middle-ish of the wonky triangle, so that's where we reconvened with the Nottingham crew. In a Travelodge. Trevor just had to finish being interrogated by the police because his doppelganger had been seen causing all kinds of shenanigans. Good thing Zolistagol spotted this on TV!

I'd apologise but this is hilarious

Ahh, our first Hunter session since May 2014. It's good to be back, even though we're technically back in Derby.

So, the world's about to end in about a week's time and apparently, there is some old Japanese legend of people who bear the mark of a curse that go through a sacrifice of fire in order to cleanse the world of the curse. It looks like an orange circle, this curse mark thingamajig, and is currently occupying the skin of both Eddie and Tilly.

Since May, we have of course lost Tommy Crane's player, but we've instead gained Alex Surname, a 30-35-year-old war veteran who spent a couple of years in a mental hospital being treated for PTSD after coming back from a tour in Afghanistan. There was a werewolf, and there are no werewolves in real life, that sort of thing. He also made friends with Keles Moriton (formerly known as Rommel) in Afghanistan, and now he told Alex to make friends with us lot.

Alex also has an Alsatian, but an adult version called Karl. He pointed out that Tilly's 10-week-old puppy wasn't a puppy at all, and despite the party's best efforts at gesturing him to STFU and not trigger the Russian, Zolistagol finally realised that Rommel (the puppy) wasn't a puppy and freaked the hell out. It almost ended badly.

Not as badly, however, as things ended for Eddie's "chemical analysis lab" in a generic warehouse. The hollow Nazi gold bar we found turned out to contain something that turned people into radioactive barf zombies (!), and they're hell-bent on spreading themselves upon Derby like a bad case of Ebola. Err, yay?

PB&Z sandwich with a side of squishy mage

As Jayson woke up all sweaty and squee-worthy from the bad dream, Gorbash headed out of the window to find the zombies that were allegedly on the way. While waiting, Jayson got dressed (bow-chicka-bow-wow) and Baradhi went downstairs to help himself to a drink.

There were indeed zombies on the way. And a mage.

We slew the zombies (hard buggers they were too), and in a stroke of genius, Gorbash flew down and grabbed hold of the mage ... squishing him to pieces. Apparently that worked better than trying to shoot him with firebolts and laser cannons. He then went on to see if the body or the head would hit the ground first, because science, and because Gorbash is a young dragon eager to learn.

When we got back to HQ, Baradhi went and got tooled up in a weapons shop. He got a number of grenades, despite Jayson's objections. Baradhi didn't get himself any kind of skills to be able to handle the grenades - much to the seller's dismay - but at least he got a friendly cyborg to help train him a little.

While Baradhi practiced his new explosive toys, Jayson practiced with his new bow and arrow and then went to bed and finally got some proper sleep. Meanwhile, Gorbashi surveyed the land in dragon form only to find a place in the distance with the charming name Soul Harvest, which is probably where we need to go. Yay.

I think my dice are scared of sidequests

Plot Progression!

Baradhi went ley line hopping over to the town of Londonium, from where it would appear the gate box originated. Around the house where it was presumably created, around 40 people had died mysteriously.

We finally went back to see the insect people, whose queen gave Baradhi his gift - a headband full of mystical runes. Once adorned, the headband would not come off.

Meanwhile, bad dreams kept pestering Jayson, including visions of a guy called Gabriel, who kept repeating "Must save the world" over and over like some sort of mad wizard dude. We suspect Gabriel is being manipulated by Nxla, considering he seems hellbound to opening portals from Nxla's world to ours, sucking out souls and that.


Either way, we're not doing what the GM expected us to do, but then what else is new?

And then the zombies came.

Running with Molotovs

For the epic final showdown, we found ourselves dungeon-crawling for the better part of the session. We went to the place where we thought Trevor's sister was being held (she was kidnapped last session), but there was no on there. In the park was just a building for a junior football club or something like that. However, in the cellar, there was a hidden door ... and underneath it: dungeons!

The dungeons were mainly empty, save for a chav that was scared off by someone pointing a gun at him, and a creature that could make itself invisible. We found a stone table (no Aslan), and eventually emerged in a wide ditch, where Agatha and the (useless) bodyguard were tied to a big rock. There was some kind of Lovecraftian-looking creature there, previously known as Smith, and zombies.

We might have eaten through Willpower points and Conviction like they were candy, but by golly we saved the world Derby! :D

Football is the answer to everything, including cake

At Trevor's mansion (it has a long drive, it's a mansion), we settled down for the night. Cans of Stella, football on telly, zombies trying to break through the back door ... the usual. We also found Trevor's sister Agatha in the basement - but she seems to have lost the plot.

Eddie sacrificed his precious pimped-out baseball bat hitting at the zombie, and we all got away relatively unscathed. Well, apart from the bodyguard, but hey, he's just an NPC.

And then we had pizza, looked at old school internet message boards and made contact with a potential ally in Nottingham.

It was an eclectic sort of session.

Are we doing one dead body a day now?

After we busied ourselves with doing things like trying limited edition crisps with weird flavours, we got down to actual roleplaying. We had food in the same fancy restaurant as before (Eddie wasn't happy about his fish and chips, because herb-crusted seabass and frites or something like that wasn't greasy enough), and when meeting up at the university, in Tilly's office ... shit got real. As in, there we were, having a nice meeting, and what happened? Murderous zombies attacked us. It was very uncalled for.

On a happier note, Trevor went and got himself a bodyguard. The bodyguard turned out to be less than ecstatic over his 10k/day salary when he realised we'd be chased by near-indestructible zombies and not just general thugs. In the end, we made our way to Trevor's it's-a-house-not-a-mansion, for some televised football and lager (Eddie), breadmaking (Trevor), bathing (Tilly), and researching (Zolistagol). And then we were attacked again, and it all got a little unpleasant.

Every evil wizard has to start somewhere

Welcome to Rifts! It's 11 March 104 PA and a roleplaying party has been hired to babysit Marcus the Mage while he gets his shizzle together for some kind of spell around the Solstice time. There are bug-like creatures trying to kill him, and down with that sort of thing.

The problem is, once we got there and started digging into things, we came to realise maybe he wasn't such a good guy after all, and maybe, just maybe, the world would be better off without him - except then we wouldn't get paid, so there is that. We got him to sign a contract saying that if he locked himself inside his den (where we weren't allowed) and got killed, we'd still get paid, so we might be able to find a way around that ...

Well, if the bugs don't get us first.

Starring:

• Booker Dayes, Gunslinger
• Gorbash, Dragon
• Michael Baradhi, Ley Walker
• Sir Jayson Oakwood, Cyber-Knight

This would make a great PowerPoint presentation

Once we got back to the hotel after a good day's work, we went to sleep ... and woke up in the middle of the night, because of a storm. Outside, a big, red sphere hanging in the air ... with eyes ... It caused a crapload of SAN to be lost (enough to kill off two characters) - and then we woke up. It had never happened. Still scared the willies out of us, though.

Well, aside from Mulligan, that is. He's come to terms with his own mortality that puny things like that don't cause him to lose Sanity.

We also met the car mechanic again. First, he whistled a tune across the street - and then he came at us with a tyre iron. Some grappling and handcuffing later, we finally had to tazer him to stop him from killing himself. Yes, it's against protocol and our training, but then again, neither are how to deal with the Old Gods.

Killing zombies with cake - possibly

As we had to fill another couple of sessions due to being a player short, we decided to have another go at zombie boardgame Zpocalypse. The first time we played it, it didn't go so well (we didn't survive the end of the first night), because we didn't have a strategy worked out.

By playing the game, we realised what we should have done ... so we thought we'd give it another go, doing all the things we realised we should have been doing in the first place. And sure enough, we survived the end of the first night! And the second! As we still had another couple of hours left, we decided to play on and see how far we could get. Third night went off without a hitch, but on the fourth night, one player's squad got killed just before we managed to take out the last zombies. But in the words of Meat Loaf, two out of three ain't bad.

This game was split over two sessions, as we ran out of time after the first night. However, as there were only a few quotes from each session, the two sessions are collected in this one post instead.

And yeah, at least half of these quotes were snagged from the adjacent Mutants & Masterminds table again, because they're actually roleplaying, and their quotability is higher than our boardgaming ...