lurkerwithout: (gaming)
Before getting started on the "Orient Express" campaign we played a couple games of the Dresden Files Card Game. Basically a co-op board game adapted from the Fate System rules where you're attempting to solve on the books using an assortment of characters from the whole series. First we tried "Fool Moon" with Harry (one player always has to be Harry), Mouse, Sanya (me), Molly and Thomas. We lost, with it all coming down to a roll of six Fate dice.

The next time we tried "White Knight" with Harry, Karrin, Sanya (still me), Ramirez and Butters. Again it came down to single roll of six dice. And again we lost after a zero result.

Then we got back to CoC, with the same group of Wooster & Jeeves and my giant Hawai'in. This first session was basically set-up, with us arriving in London, some avoiding of Wooster's family and then attending a Challenger lecture on ghosts by our main contact. Then waiting to hear back from said contact about what we were going to be tasked with investigating. But before that, a mysterious fire and three dead men with the same name. So that is where we'll start next time.
lurkerwithout: (Cat Jedi)
Finished up the introductary practice mystery.  It was a crazy scientist all along.  He just wanted to show those fools at the institute the glory of the stars.  And his neighbors.  And anyone who wandered by.  And sure it led to some children vivisecting their father.  And maybe some mass graves came about.  But all for the glory and wonder of the stars.  Which spoke to him (and some others) in the voice of God.  Anyway we solved everything using violence and fire.  As one should.  Next stop, London.
lurkerwithout: (Cat Jedi)
After a lengthy scheduling break, we're back to Creepy New England Academic Town.  And we investigate the mystery of Can We Find a Hotel Room?  No we can not.  Both the good and the cheap lodgings are sold out.  Why?  No one knows! (Obviously its Cultist Season and all the Cultists are in town).  We also learn that many local homes and farms are being foreclosed on for seemingly no reason.  So we end up essentially camping in the empty home of our missing professor aquaintince.  Though during the night my Hawai'in Dick sneaks off to check on the secretary and her creepy twins.  One of said twins was spotted washing their hands late at night in a creepy manner.  Sadly the basement window was too small for Max's overly large frame and my lockpicking skills are non-exsistant.

The next day we attempted to report our missing person to the local cops to no effect.  And checked with the grocery store where our deranged and doomed grocery clerk worked.  Minimal gains there as well.  We did notice an ongoing pattern of injury to eyes amongst the townsfolk.  After that we headed out to the farm owned by the local handyman who dragged off Kenny's body last time.  And had a bad reputation.  There we came upon some goons and what looked to be a mob digging a giant hole.  Violence ensued, with the goons drawing knives after mention was made of the rampant pink eye going about.  The mob seemed to be some kind of forced labor and fled the farm after the fight.  And interogation was attempted on the surviving goons but to no avail.  And then we searched the farm, finding a drawer full of assorted key rings, a barn full of cars and eventually a group of filled in giant holes.  Investigation of one revealing it was mass grave.  Leading to more shock and horror to poor, innocent Wooster.
lurkerwithout: (Cat Jedi)
Had a bit of character building to finish up (mostly me) before we started, but then right into the intro adventure.  Of the Go to Small Town to Meet Person, Where is the Person?  In this case an expert on Native Studies who are trio was supposed to meet before the trip to London that would start the full length adventure (which is the big Orient Express box set).  As stated before the roommate & Frazer are running CoC Wooster & Jeeves.  I decided to sideline the various possiblities I rolled up previously and convert Matsuna "Max" Toshiro, my converted from GURPS: Babylon 5 to CoC.  So giant 1/2 Japanese - 1/2 Hawai'in secretly gay  WW1 veteran marine turned P.I.

A quick drive up from New York to Connecticut and we get to the professor's house.  But no one is home.  The door is open so we head on in.  A quick search doesn't turn up the missing Prof, but we do find our boat tickets and travel papers.  But no sign of violence or a rushed exit.  Though while looking thru his study a maddened grocery clerk throws a rock through the window and attempts to attack.  Max subdues him and keeps him from attacking Wooster & Jeeves with a jagged piece of glass wielded bare-handed.  But Kenny (he had a name tag on his smock) wriggles free and bolts outside.  Where poor Wooster gets to see the local Sheriff blow Kenny's head open without warning.

After that we visit with the Prof's secretary who lives nearby.  She seems worried and harried and is holding something back.  But not even Wooster's charm and offers of a new better paying job get any more details from her.  And Jeeves and I observe her slightly off twin girls.  Who, when they think they're not being watched, go from sweet if gifted little girls to cruel people who verbally tear into their mother.  Very odd.

We finish up with a meal at the main local eatery, Mother's Bakery, a restaurant noted for its wonderful pancakes.  Wooster and I indulge in a meal and aren't poisoned, drugged or turned into Deep Ones.
lurkerwithout: (Mal's pretty hat  Angie creator)
Not really a full session, more of a wrap up.  I was a little surprised the group didn't try to ever discover What was the girl?  And Why (beyond the apparant summoned a sea monster once) the various people wanted her.  But they do have Father Joseph captured.  And they did accomplish their original goal of delivering the girl to their not-Germany contact for the Daughters.  So story goals were accomplished by Byron (delivery mission for the Daughters) and Frazer (Yule gets money & renown to court home town noblewoman).  Not by the roommates soldier though (find Gribbleflotz and recover family treasure) so I let him expand it to a 5-point Story if we play again.  And gave him a 1-point Fame trait.

After that was mostly prep for the next game, and for Bryon's turn he's going with 7th edition Call of Cthulhu 1920s, using the Orient Express sourcebook.  The roommate & Frazer are going with CoC versions of Wooster & Jeeves.  Alyce will be giving tabletop another try, brining in an a archeologist.  I'm still not sure.  I rolled up a few different possiblities.  Maybe a Quebecois goon or punk kid crook.

And we finished up the night with a game of En Garde.  Which came down to me and Frazer.  And he managed to eventually overwhelm me, though I came close, whittling him down from a 4 point Poise lead to just 1.
lurkerwithout: (Thunder Rolled)
The roommate gifted me with a membership to this year's con again so I took the weekend off to attend.  Saturday got to try out En Garde, a fencing simulation card game.  Fun, though I can see how in a big multi-player game it can turn into a Pile on Player X situation.  Then after that I took part in Brendan's Twillight Imperium game.  Six player game and we managed something like 4 or 5 rounds from noon to 8PM (with a lunch break when I went home to feed the cat).  I ended up "winning" by being ahead by 2 victory points when we called it.

Sunday I was in a Call of Cthulhu rpg, "Proof of Life".  Small town politics in the 1920s over whether to allow in a lumber company.  Which leads to murder, brains in jars and a final confrontation with flying alien funguses.  Though my pre-gen character ducked out of the climax with the mi-go to run off and file her story of small town madness (with pictures!) and win herself a Pullitzer.  Which apparantly was established in 1917 and so is totally what happened.

ETA: On Sunday I (The Roommate) was supposed to play OGRE, but that got cancelled, so I had a game of Heroes Incorporated, a really fun strategy Heroes ggame which I lost by a hair, and Blood Rage, a Vikings in Ragnarok boardgame with a draft system, which I got absolutely trashed in. Heroes Inc. is out of print, so good luck finding it, and Blood Rage is a Kickstarter game that sells for around $75-$100.
lurkerwithout: (Cat Jedi)
Went down to Gamer's Inn last night along with the roommate to see about a possible start-up for a Wednesday game. Dan, the potential GM, is someone I've gamed with a few times in the past. Unfortunately the expected third player had miscommunicated when he'd be available so we were short. Luckily, Dan was able to rope a couple of other people in the store to sit in for a session. The game, Trail of Cthulhu, is licensed by Chaosium to noted game designer Robin Laws for his Gumshoe system. Which is a mystery solving centric rpg. Our pre-gen characters were drawn from various parts of 30s England to investigate strange and alien birds spotted in various places. My nurse character and the roommate's closeted Anglican priest were both trying to help an older, mentally ill priest who claimed horrible alien birds were stalking him. The other two players were running a boredom driven female biology student who had found one of the bird corpses and a physics professor who wanted to know why gatherings of the birds interfered with his radiation experiments and his colleagues astronomy work...

The system is interesting and somewhat different. You basically use a point of value from a relevant skill to try and investigate something. For example, if my nurse wanted to check on the symptoms of the old priest and if they matched dementia she's spend a point of her Medicine skill. Or if its a skill test with some random risk, you roll a d6 after declaring how many skill points you'll spend. Like when Brendan had to make a drive roll to avoid some sheep in the road, he spent 2 points and then rolled against an unknown target of 2-8. Not surprisingly, given his lousy dice luck he plowed into that sheep in his car...

I'd be interested in continuing to game with Dan for the system, but really only if he can find at least a 3rd player for the group. Since the game style seems to need a minimum of three. Otherwise I don't really want to make the 30 to 40 minute drive to Gamer's Inn on the hope we can drag in a couple other players from the wandering masses...
lurkerwithout: (Plushtulu)
lurkerwithout: (Reading cat)
A light week this time. Starting with the finale to daytripper. A sweet and strangely upbeat ending for one of the year's best books...

FEAR Agent continues with Heath struggling to survive in a universe overrun by the Tetaldan's conquest of..well..everyone...

And finally The Thanos Imperative continues with the two teams of heroes attempting to stop the threat of the alternate Marvel Cancer-verse. Oh and someone apparently gets dumped...
lurkerwithout: (Librarian jesskat creator)
Reading this post at the "Lawyers, Guns & Money" blog after finishing Stross' latest CoC/Espionage book. And this bit jumps out at me:

#3. The most interesting period, in my view, takes place from the end of 1958 through September 1961. Nothing happens throughout 1959; France sets off a handful of bombs from early 1960 through the spring of 1961; then the Soviets go absolutely apeshit in September of that year, and things don’t really calm down again until the early 1990s. In this video, the erratic incidence of US and Soviet tests in the 1950s looks and sounds like a conversation. Afterwards, it’s an incoherent frenzy.




I wish I was a better writer, since what that says to my brain is: So exactly What was everything shooting at during those years?
lurkerwithout: (Cat Jedi)
Since we adapted a CoC character last week for GURPS, this week we'll see about turning my GURPS: B5 character to CoC. Of course there are some..difficulties..in changing a future gay Japanese/Hawai'ian ex-Marine into a 1920s setting. But we'll see how it works out...

First stat generation. STR, CON, POW, DEX, APP: 3d6. SIZ, INT: 2d6+6. EDU: 3d6+3

I'm cheating a bit, by rolling first and then assigning numbers where I want, instead of just letting them go in order.

STR: 18, CON: 15, POW: 9, DEX: 13, APP:12
Got lucky on the next two.
SIZ: 18, INT: 17
EDU: 16

Starting SAN (Sanity) is POW x5. So 45. That could be bad in the long run...

Idea (INT x5), Luck (POW x5) and Know (EDU x5) are basically defaults for when you don't have a relevant skill. They're at 85, 45 and 80. Then you add STR + SIZ to figure out Damage bonus. Which, with Max being a big dude, gets him a +1d6...

Hit Points are (CON + SIZ)/2. A 16. His Mythos score is still at 99 to start. And his Magic Points equal POW, so 9...

A roll of 9 on d10 gives him $12,500 in starting funds. Looking over the basic occupations (I should have brought my 1920s sourcebook for a bigger list) I'll go with Foot Soldier. I'm not sure WHO he served with, but I still want a combat veteran. Starting Skills for Foot Soldier are Climb, Conceal, First Aid, Hide, Listen, Sneak, Rifle and Machine Gun. He gets EDU x20 skill points for those, so 320...

Climb: 40 75
Conceal: 15 50
First Aid: 30 60
Listen: 25 65
Sneak: 10 90
Rifle: 25 90
Machine Gun: 15 55

He also gets personal interest skill points for any skills at INT x10. We'll give him Japanese equal to his native language (Hawai'in) at 80. And then split the remaining between English and Martial Arts at 40 each. Like the GURPS version he's studied Akido. In this case, from a friendly member of the Japanese side of his family...

Starting minimum age is EDU +6, for 22. I'll bump that a little to 25, which has no effect on anything. He's a big man. I'll say 6'3" and 275 lbs. I'll still leave him being gay, but thats just a role-playing choice...
lurkerwithout: (Cat Jedi)
Spent last night talking with my friend Josh about the 1st Age Lord of the Rings rpg he wants to run. He seems to be wanting to do something big and epic in nature, so we'll see how that plays out. I'm probably going to run a human warrior from the mountain dwelling House, though I forget the name of them. Of course he's using the recent Decipher rpg, which I don't own. So I'll have to see if I can track a copy of that down before next Wednesday...

Plus I've got a couple play-by-post games that will hopefully start up. A restart of the Kingdoms of Kalamar game I used to play in (meaning I get to bring back Davan Scratcheye my kobold bard) and a Call of Cthulu game. I'm thinking of running a con artist/medium. Except I'd like to give him actual "psychic" abilities. Anyone know of a Chaosium supplement with rules for that?

Also, since I was discussing the LotR game, I missed the Lost so if anyone wanted to post some spoilery recaps so I don't have to try and dl it I'd appreciate that...
lurkerwithout: (Plushtulu)
CoC Play-by-post starting up over on [profile] spoonyone's Forums. In case anyone might be interested...
lurkerwithout: (Mal's pretty hat  Angie creator)
So this week we returned to Noah's Call of Cthulu game. Our merry band of Investigators headed to Florida to find the son of the professor killed in the previous session. He's got an inheritance coming to him, but no one has been able to contact him. We found wastrel son, one Colin Baxter, fairly easily and learned that he wanted to use the inheritance to fund a diving expedition. Well the funds and some money from our group. He had located a wrecked Spanish ship and hoped to salvage the fabulous treasure contained there...

While Brendan's Professor Hutchinson investigated the history of the wreck, my Reggie Abernathy (wealthy layabout and ex-soldier) and Miles' Richard Mason learned how to dive, 1920's style. Then we headed out, with poor venerable Hutchinson picking up the basics of diving as well. Finding the wreck we salvaged a chest full of silver bars and a gold necklace with a strange inscription. Hoping to find more loot or artifacts, Colin and the Prof went for another dive. Where the dice turned on Brendan and he almost died. We managed to stabalize him but had to head back to town to get him to a hospital...

And there the local sheriff arrested Reggie and Colin, saying that they had murdered a local priest and friend of Colins. The police also took the Prof away, supposedly to a hospital. Mason, after being warned to leave town, instead investigated the murder. At the same time the police were revealed to be crazy ass Creole cultists with some half-monster witch woman leader. They healed Hutchinson but held us all prisoner. Mason managed to locate the cult's lair and burst in shotguns ablaze in a rescue attempt. Unfortunately he wasn't soon enough to save Reggie who was gutted by the cult leader. He did free Prof Hutchinson and the two engaged in a total bloodbath of revenge on the cult, killing them all and burning down there base...

So my character died, mostly for constantly mouthing off to his captors and fighting them at every chance. They gutted him while he was tied AND shackled to a chair. Cowardly little bitches...
lurkerwithout: (Mal's pretty hat  Angie creator)
Ok, since my normal Saturday is breaking up soon (GM and wife are moving to Kansas), Saturday Game that was Sunday Game becomes just Saturday Game. Hell, since half the group (including the GM) was a no-show for my online Thursday game this may be my only game for awhile...

Not a huge problem, since this is my favorite group to game with. This week Noah started our Call of Chtulu 1920s campaign. I'm running a rich dilentatte (Reginald Abernathy), Miles a down on his luck private eye (Richard Mason) and Brendan a 60+ year old professor with doctorates in medicine and archeology (I forget the name, but it was something snooty). It was fun watching the cultured New England professor interact with the street-wise detective...

Anyhow, this week we investigated the death of an associate of the Prof's from Brown university. We spent several days interviewing people, doing research and ransacking people's homes and offices. And following up on several dead ends and possible future hooks. But what it came down to was another proffessor who had become an insane cannibal. During a final confrontation at crazy dude's cabin, Brendan almost got chopped up, but Miles and I took the guy out. Well, ok Miles kept shooting and missing, while I drilled the guy for max damage from my .45 pistol...

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