Snape and Dumbledore

I was trying to say something very brief about Snape in an IM, but it became massive. Amber expertly observes, “stuff involving him goes that way I think.”

You get to thinking about just how sympathetic Snape was in the end, how difficult the decisions he had to make were and how cruelly he was treated, but that eventually brings you to a deeper understanding of his still, in spite of all that, having been an awful, arrogant person with evil beliefs.

He really couldn’t help developing that dichotomous personality. Being troubled already, he let himself be defined early on by James on the one hand and Lily on the other, and maybe he could have let that go later in life when they married and had a kid, but wow did it ever not work out like that. It’s not a revolutionary observation, just a more complicated way of saying what’s obvious, but his relationships with James and Lily form a Hegelian dialectic, the synthesis of which being his schizo approach to Harry Potter. Snape carries on a schoolyard grudge through his long dead enemy’s orphaned 11 year old son, but spends immense effort, making the largest possible sacrifices, for the same boy.

Which of course was engineered by Dumbledore. Dumbledore is Snape inverted: he really was warm and insightful, but not just insightful, there was ruthless, stony calculation, willingness to ask agonizing sacrifices of anyone he could leverage into making them, and even, it would appear, intricate, willful manipulation of the people who trusted him. To me, it’s only his *need* for Harry Potter, and the vastness of what he knew he’d one day expect Harry to do, that explains and excuses the constant nepotism. When you’re gonna ask a seventeen year old boy to literally, definitely die for you, you goddamn well better try to do something nice for him first.
The crucial revelation about Snape also serves as a microcosm of him. When he becomes a redoubled agent for Dumbledore, he didn’t suddenly see the light and change his ways, he went against his own beliefs to protect Lily Potter.

Dumbledore’s response when Snape goes to him is telling too. I had to look this one up. Snape begs Dumbledore to keep the Potters safe, and Dumbledore says “and what will you give me in return, Severus?” Reasonable, he’s talking to an enemy agent, but not the words of a friendly headmaster so much as a tactician fighting a losing battle.

I love Snape and Dumbledore for being such adults, and for not developing into those roles so much as occupying them from the start, waiting to reveal that depth as Harry Potter becomes able to recognize it. The level of complexity in their portrayal is tied to how much of them Harry can figure out, but the bare facts of their actions, removed from Harry Potter’s emotions and interpretations thereof, shows such complexity.

The very short thing I meant to say was that even though the last book’s revelations about Snape are redeeming, they crucially don’t erase what’s been bad about him all through Harry’s years at Hogwarts. The revelations add to him, showing why he did some of the things he did while leaving the cruel pettiness of others intact. They don’t overwrite him. I think that’s an extremely good thing. The counterpart revelations about Dumbledore do something different, causing everything you’ve seen the character do to shift unnervingly. But crucially, it only makes the things that were familiar and endearing about him muddy and complicated, never fully invalidating them. He really did care about the people he appeared to care about, and many more people, which is precisely the motivation behind his Machiavellian calculations.

The same way thinking about Snape’s positive traits makes me circle back around to his flaws, Dumbledore’s secrets lead back to what made him a good man. A thirst for knowledge is one of the first things Harry Potter learned from (and about) Albus Dumbledore, and it comes back to the surface during their postmortem conversation in the form of a question. Referring to his effort to gain power by collecting the Deathly Hallows with Gillert Grindlewald, he asks Harry if he was ultimately any better than Voldemort. It showed the wholeness of Dumbledore’s regret and contrition, but it also showed him to be seeking understanding. 115 years old and dead, Dumbledore still wanted to know more fully the impact of his own actions.

r-102

Early signs of unrest!  Meg pegs Savage Worlds’ flaws in this one, though it takes the rest of us a few more games to come around.

Important minor characters in this session:

Felix

Evander

In this session, the preamble goes on for a while.  To get right to the game itself  just ctrl+f “***”

Megadoptorous: Hey.
Fortinbras: What it is.
Megadoptorous: Lovin’. It’s what I got.
Fortinbras: ¡Hola! Two to go. Hope Max gets his thing sorted.
spindingo: Yeah, do not want to miss the fireworks!
Megadoptorous: I would help Max with his things.
Fortinbras: Heyhey.
Megadoptorous: Hello, suckas.
Fortinbras: He says he thinks it’s the router. Not sure if that means he’s going out to buy a new router now, or he’s just gonna plug directly into modem.
spindingo: At least it is not the modem that’s out.
Fortinbras: Yeah.
spindingo: Now if I could only make MapTools an Android app.
Megadoptorous: It’s jsut a flash application.
Megadoptorous: Er, java
Amordea: Does Android not have Java support?
Amordea: Although the tiny screen size would be pretty horrible even if you did get it to run.
Amordea: Might be workable on one of those little tablets.
Amordea: It was ok on my netbook, though not great.
Fortinbras: Yeah, be weird to work with.
spindingo: Yeah, tablet might be better, .pdf referencing would be a pain too.
Amordea: Hah, yeah. My phone can read pdf’s but it’s not fun by any means.
Amordea: I’d do it if I had to, but definitely not for casual reading.
Fortinbras: It’s one of the two things my laptop screen is perfectly sized for. Exactly the right size for widescreen movies, and can fit initiative+chat+map on, each at just the right size.
Fortinbras: Everything else, “boy I wish I could turn you sideways.”
spindingo: Had to pull up a 115 page printer repair manual on mine once. That was a pain in the neck.
Amordea: Oh gods, yuck.
Fortinbras: Sumbitch. Yeah.
Fortinbras: Still running the old timiest cell you ever saw, myself.
Megadoptorous: I bet it’s adorable.
spindingo: I don’t do repair for that out source group anymore.
spindingo: Heh, do people mistake it for a burner?
Fortinbras: I think most peg me pretty cleanly as a dude who don’t care about his phone much.
Megadoptorous: By your muttered ramblings about the soon-coming end times?
Fortinbras: That’s a big part of it.
Megadoptorous: “These are good people to have with you in a crisis.”
Fortinbras: Hope Max’ll be back and routered up soon. You guys cool waitin’ on it? We left off at a moment where he was, well, a bit essential.
spindingo: Got all evenin’.
Megadoptorous: Um. I have videoes I really should return…
Amordea: No problem here.
Improvidence: Yeah, fine by me.
Fortinbras: Think it’ll be a quick job?
Amordea: I’ll be butchering people in TB in the meantime.
Megadoptorous: It shouldn’t take more then… 15 minutes from when I go.
Fortinbras: Cool, I say go for it.
Fortinbras: We did figure we’d start a little late tonight, so!
Megadoptorous: Once community ends.
Fortinbras: Hah, okay.
Fortinbras: Watching TV on TV and getting movies from a video store. This year begins with a 2, man!
Megadoptorous: I also keep my car on the ground and my robots know their place!
Fortinbras: Rereading Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Making a tabletop campaign in the style of *that* would be interesting.
Megadoptorous: BRB SUCKAS!
Fortinbras: See you soon!
Improvidence: Reading about Eve Online. Thinking I should look up some futuristic pen and paper systems.
Fortinbras: I don’t know of any specifically futuristic ones. Ages ago wanted to run something with mechs in, but never got past musing about it.
spindingo: I tried playing Eve a couple times. I like the idea but without being able to walk around bothered me a lot more than I thought it would.
Fortinbras: For a while I kept thinking, “spaceship MMO! Sounds neat!” Then I’d remember everything I’d ever heard about it and let it go.
Improvidence: It’s pretty interesting, the way the developers don’t seem to care if people are dicks to each other. But I don’t think I’d actually enjoy that as much as I enjoy reading about it.
Fortinbras: Hahaha.
Amordea: I read about the game model and was immediately turned off. Sounds like you log in, select a skill to raise and log out until it’s raised some days/weeks later. Which means someone who has an old account is always going to be ahead of you.
Amordea: It’s like somebody took Progress Quest seriously.
Amordea: And made it into an MMO.
Improvidence: Yeah, I think that’s gone away, but that was exactly how it worked for a while.
spindingo: Been a while since I read about it. Thought they had an ambitious plan to combine it with two other MMOs. One was an FPS styled one shootin’ dudes on planets.
Amordea: Oh they changed that?
Amordea: My knowledge is outdated then.
Improvidence: The most interesting thing to me is how stuff that would be bannable on any other MMO is seemingly encouraged by the developers. There was a trailer a few months ago that talked about how you can lie and get your way into an organization, and then cheat them, steal their resources, and bring about their downfall.
Fortinbras: hahahah. yeah, that’d be a fucking scandal in WoW.
spindingo: Mortal Online is like the fantasy version of Eve Online.
spindingo: It’s all one big pvp zone with full looting.
Improvidence: Hah. Sounds horrible.
spindingo: Gives crafters work to do.
Fortinbras: I wonder if it would end up with society developing, on account of everyone being pissed off at being griefed. Small percentage goes around fucking with people, as in real society, and most people just… hope not to be murdered.
spindingo: Yeah, saw some guy soliciting lumber for miners for “protection” from other pvpers.
Fortinbras: Hah! Wow.
spindingo: That’s kind of like a government.
spindingo: Miners would stick together too. Sometimes for self defense, sometimes to beat the pvper to the looting.
spindingo: Odds were better together than going solo.
Amordea: I gotta admit…UO felt more like a community when there was danger just outside of every city.
Fortinbras: Hello again!
Megadoptorous: Back I am back
Megadoptorous: No max stillz?
Fortinbras: Fraid not.
Amordea: He opted for the former option instead of the latter.
Megadoptorous: Any ETA?
Fortinbras: Nah, he’s incommunicado. Hopefully not much longer.
Megadoptorous: Ok.
Megadoptorous: I can wait.
Megadoptorous: Also, I love you, new Avatar.
Megadoptorous: avatart*. no need to cap.
Fortinbras: He lives a little far from like, things. Places. But like I say, hopefully not much longer.
Fortinbras: I like it also!
Megadoptorous: Doesn’t he live in the midwest, where it is legally mandated that there be 1 mile between each individual thing, and all land is divided into perfect squares?
Fortinbras: Exactly.
Megadoptorous: There is a reason why the Piligrams started settling in New England.
Fortinbras: He’s home now.
Megadoptorous: It is just the best place in America.
Fortinbras: Maybe they just had to choose between fighting bears and fighting lobsters, and figured “the big bugs are easier to deal with.”
Megadoptorous: :”Huh. one of these places is full of colleges, and the other is full of…. Screaming nothingness like staring into the void of space.”
Fortinbras: The colleges were there when they got there?
Megadoptorous: I assume.
Fortinbras: Love text messages from Max. Same cadence as most other texts I get, but perfect spelling and punctuation.
Megadoptorous: Haha.
Fortinbras: Excellent!
Amordea: Hooray!
Megadoptorous: Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo. It’s my second favorite type of gram!
Fortinbras: So, things of note. 1: unless you’re shitty at this, you’re getting a level tonight. Information about what that means can be found on page 59 of the PDF. Last week, among all the other things I forgot, there’s one more: for each benny left over at the end of a session, you roll a d6. For each 5 or 6 you get, you (personally, not the team) get an extra experience point.
Grammaticus: I was laboring under the misconception that my old router was Netgear. It was actually Belkin, so I am of the same camp as you now, Amordea.
Megadoptorous: Oh, neats.

* Megadoptorous rolls: d6 => 1

Megadoptorous: i don’t
Fortinbras: 2: the definitive description of agility contests on held actions. The winner goes first, then the loser, unless the winner’s action shakes the loser or otherwise prevents them from being able to act.
Amordea: Belkins are de debil.
Fortinbras: 3: remember the people you meet! Never know who’ll be able to help you later, whether directly or by namedropping them to someone else.
Fortinbras: Mine’s a dlink.
Amordea: They make quality cables though.
spindingo: ’bout all they can do anymore. Used to have the best darn NICs in the business.
Fortinbras: Routers seem to die really easily, for how simple their job seems to me to be.
Fortinbras: So, right! Care for a bitta bitta recappin’?
Amordea: I’d like this thing.

***

Fortinbras: LAST WEEK ON… THIS THING!: A gang tried to shoot Bill Brogden down in his home. Fortunately for him he had a couple of visitors, one cautious in the extreme and one not quite so. She might actually be offended at the idea of caution, we think. Bill, his assistant Evander, and his visitors Jonathan Walker and Heidi St Louis fought them off, but they burnt his motel down. Kept together by mutual fear and presumed necessity, they spent an icy night in the back of a semi trailer, then laid that trailer across a busted bridge and filled the rest of the gap with very, very conveniently available ladders.
Fortinbras: They went looking for high ground to look out over their next obstacle, a staggering wall of buildings, bodies and debris that fills the southern limit of Portland, and instead found a man who plans to build a door through that wall, Victor Gall, and his quietly menacing travelling companion Robert Arnsdale. Mysterious men. With a shared goal and tenuous trust they’ve all set out toward the Wave, and the city beyond.
Fortinbras: But, of course, there’s that little catch. Victor needs a detonator, and he was just about to explain the options as he sees them when the curtain closed last week. Spoiler: one of them is wandering around the town looking for another remote detonator.
Fortinbras: Over to you, Vic!
* Victor Gall had just left off on the word “laptop?” with a hopeful look at Brogden. “Saved from your, ah, scuffle?”
Evander: Ah yeah, I got that.
* Evander offers it over to Bill, mostly seeming apologetic for keeping it so long.
* Bill Brogden grabs the laptop with frustrated gratitude. Bill Brogden: One of the few things, couple meals and our health.
Bill Brogden: Looking for some internet, you said?
Victor Gall: “Y-yes, exactly. I could detonate the charges remotely with it.”
* Robert Arnsdale stands off to the side a bit, watching the exchange with dim interest, seeming to have accepted these strangers aren’t an immediate threat and looking elsewhere for trouble brewing with his dull blue gaze. Heidi St Louis: Is… There going to be signal around here?
Fortinbras: There would’ve been before Bill’s relay got scrapped. Now it might be problematic.
* Bill Brogden begrudgingly concedes to the idea of someone else using the laptop. “Well, if it saves some time. Give me a minute to lock things down here.”
* Victor Gall smiles unevenly, and adjusts his glasses. “That is, unfortunately, the m-million dollar question, isn’t it?” Bill Brogden: You know, don’t want -them- tracking us.
Heidi St Louis: And… Is there some other type of detonator? Like, could we pull a blasting cap outta something aroudn here? Where would one find a blasting cap?
* Jonathan Walker picks idly at the smouldering remains of the demolished grocery stands, not really expecting to find anything of use.
Fortinbras: Clippy says: the charges Victor is using can connect to the internet, or a LAN. You will, however, need an app for that. Somebody could write something real quick using a knowledge(electronics) check.
* Bill Brogden laughs a little. “Might have to boost our reciever, find some high ground. Think we can find some ol’ internet.” Fortinbras: Jon: there’s a torn open can of sardines in tomato sauce. It looks strangely inverted, like some shrapnel got wounded by blood and guts.
Amordea: Rob perks up at the odd remark Bill made and ventures to ask in his husky voice after a moment of pensive silence, “You bein’ followed?”
Bill Brogden: We’re all being followed. This is one giant people farm.
* Bill Brogden slips out casually as he continues typing.
* Victor Gall ‘s eyes dart from Robert to Bill. He knots his brow, nonplussed. Heidi St Louis: Yeah, ignore him. The only thing following us is wolves. And nothing. Mostly nothing.
Amordea: Rob doesn’t say anything to that, recognizing the aloof remark for what it is, but taking it to mean there is no immediate danger, he accepts it in silence.
* Evander shakes his head, at the same time taking a long slow breath. “Bill’s got these ideas about the government, you know? I’m not going to say the man’s wrong, hell, I work for him, but if the government is following us they just bound to keep following and not causing trouble, at this point.”
* Bill Brogden pulls back the display to share with Victor. “All right, young demo man. What do you know about these things?”
Fortinbras: Bill: care to make us a knowledge of electronics roll to slap that program together?

* spindingo rolls: 1d8 => 8

* Heidi St Louis starts to kick over a bit of the rubble, whistling as she does it. Victor Gall: “Well. In the event we couldn’t find a signal, we could set off the charges manually. That’s what I was here for, looking for anything to use. You never know what people leave behind in the stores, these days. Obviously not food, but.”

* spindingo rolls: 1d8 => 6

Fortinbras: Hoshit! We gonna call that a work of art.
Grammaticus: Hah!
Bill Brogden: Nevermind, how’s this work for ya?
Bill Brogden: Don’t even need internet, really. Local’ll do.
* Bill Brogden explains his plan.
Fortinbras: The last click falls into place and the program is made. It looks effortlessly lovely, easy to use. A little kid could set these bombs off.
Heidi St Louis: Do we have the wire for that? I mean, I assume we’re going to not want to be near this thing.
* Victor Gall ‘s brow unfurrows with slow appreciation. “You are a dangerous man, Brogden.” spindingo: (keep forgetting to add the e, by the time I finally get used to it I’ll be doing it on D&D rolls)
Amordea: haha, exploding d20′s
* Evander looks over Bill’s shoulder at the screen. “If I got this figured right, it shouldn’t be no trouble to connect ‘em wirelessly. Just got to get close enough.” Bill Brogden: They made me a monster, and now they call me one.
Bill Brogden: .. a’yep, that’s right.
* Victor Gall stoops to pick up his briefcase. “Well! What are we waiting for?”
Evander: Real cool. …how close is “close enough,” William?
Bill Brogden: Straight shot? Think we could get behind a building.. well, most of us.
* Evander nods along. Uncomfortably. “Sure, awright.”
Bill Brogden: Someone has to do the final click. Ah..
Bill Brogden: I’ll add a delay for ya.
Fortinbras: Victor is quite right. When you’re ready, we’ll head to the wave!
* Bill Brogden smiles a crooked smile, not having a dentist around is a bitch.
Fortinbras: All set?
spindingo: Gewd
Megadoptorous: Hey, what’s this a graph of?
Megadoptorous: My guess….. Pinapple prices.
spindingo: Hooray for summer.
Amordea: Hah.
Grammaticus: Huh. Why the picture change, Heidi?
Megadoptorous: I liked this one more, mostly.
Amordea: I’m curious to see if Heidi’s look will dramatically change every session.
spindingo: I kind of hope so.
Megadoptorous: The last one was also a little too… Fashion-y. Also? Re-casting after a post-pilot delay in filming.
Fortinbras: Bill’s program is better than he could’ve hoped. The crew heads out, walking the length of the towering wave of debris, and when they get close to the spot where Vic says he laid his charges, the program picks them up and you’re able to connect. It’s ready to blow at will. Around the same time though, you hear a scuffle. And, taking cover behind a standing wall – a shattered toilet has to be pushed aside for everyone to get close – you can see what’s happening through a window.
Fortinbras: (take a little look to the west)
Megadoptorous: (Can I get the map centered?
Fortinbras: It’s hard to decipher what’s going on. A writhing mass of ragged humanity, clearly presenting menace and fear but all too washed out to determine any sides right away.
Amordea: Do any of them have firearms?
Fortinbras: Quite a few of them do, out and ready too.
Fortinbras: Roll me some initiative, and anyone who wants to make a Notice roll to try to figure out more of this scene can do so.
* Megadoptorous rolls: d6 => 5

Megadoptorous: That’s my notice.

* spindingo rolls: 1d8e => 6
* spindingo rolls: 1d6e => 4

spindingo: That’s mah notice.

* Amordea rolls: d4e => 2
* Amordea rolls: d6e => 4
Amordea: And here’s my init:

* Amordea rolls: d20 => 11
* Megadoptorous rolls: d20 => 9
* spindingo rolls: d20 => 19

Grammaticus: Ach, sec. Forgot to bring my sheet up in all the router business.
spindingo: Hot rolls tonight.

* Improvidence rolls: d20 => 2
* Grammaticus rolls: d8e Notice => 2

Grammaticus: woo
Improvidence: Rerolling.

* Improvidence rolls: 1d20 => 4
* Grammaticus rolls: d20 Initiative => 16
Improvidence: Again!

* Improvidence rolls: 1d20 => 19

Grammaticus: Hahahah.
Improvidence: Theeere we are.
Fortinbras: That… is a good edge.
Grammaticus: Oh, wild die.
Amordea: Bein’ quick is sweet.

* Grammaticus rolls: d6e Notice => 3

Grammaticus: woooo

* Improvidence rolls: 1d6e notice => 3
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6e notice => 7

Amordea: If it fit Rob at all I’d seriously contemplate it.
Grammaticus: Oh, nice.
spindingo: Potent stuff, but yeah.
spindingo: Sure it has some prereqs.
Fortinbras: Bill and John, roll me a d20 each.

* spindingo rolls: 1d20 => 12
* Improvidence rolls: 1d20 => 11

spindingo: Is that rectangle in the lazy L our boom-booms?
Fortinbras: Right! You’ve deciphered a bit more of the scene: some of these folks are… if not quite expert, then as experienced in their field as the ones who attacked Bill’s place. They’re not full on raiders but they’re used to doing this.
Fortinbras: Haha, the rectangle in the lazy L is a bathtub in two walls of an otherwise busted down house. This was the second map I made.
Fortinbras: And the radius of your bombs is thus:
Megadoptorous: That is good for us.
Fortinbras: The other people in this equation are not so experienced. Travelers. They’re not dead scared, maybe just too tired to be, but they don’t know how to fight, that’s for sure.
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
Fortinbras: They’re probably open to suggestions from any sympathetic voice. (That is to say, you control them in this battle.)
spindingo: Ah, neat.
Fortinbras: And they rolled a 20 on their initiative, so this turn, they get to act whenever they want, with a +2 to any trait tests. Lucky? folks.
Megadoptorous: Wow, that’s neat.
Amordea: What do they have that the robbers could want?
Fortinbras: Bit of food, maybe. Doesn’t take much.
Megadoptorous: Bed Bath and Beyond gift certificates?
Fortinbras: Or that, certainly.
spindingo: Bill has the mind to persuade them to back off.
spindingo: At least give ‘em the warning.
Fortinbras: (The ones you control are the ones you’ve got stats for!)
Fortinbras: He could certainly give it a go!
Fortinbras: An old man trying to intimidate a gang into running away would have a lot of trouble with that… unless, you know, he could do something to show he meant business.
* Bill Brogden sticks his head out. “Ladies and gentlemen! You’re standing in a demolition zone. Take cover if you value your lives! “
spindingo: Mostly concerned with getting the other guys to move.
Amordea: Heh, as true as that is…
Amordea: I wonder if they could possibly believe that.
* Shooter 1 sticks his head out to trace the source of the voice. He yells back to the gang.
Shooter 1: SOME OLD MAN!

* spindingo rolls: 1d6e => 5

Amordea: lawl.
* Jonathan Walker reaches over and places his finger on the button. Safety precaution, of course.
Grammaticus: Hahahah.

* spindingo rolls: 1d6e => 5

spindingo: Ah well.
spindingo: and he moves back
Fortinbras: Your intimidate rolls are being made at -5 right now. They don’t seem to take you very seriously. But now that you’ve made yourself known, you can yell commands to the people in trouble.
spindingo: Long as it is within my turn~
* Victor Gall drops his briefcase again and fidgets nervously with the blanket bandle.
spindingo: That was a Persuasion roll
spindingo: For the people that will listen.
spindingo: Intimidate is also a d6.
Fortinbras: Oh, yep. You can choose to move them when you like.
spindingo: All right, what say you, noble tacticians?
spindingo: Move the guys then make with the booming?
Fortinbras: Relevant tip: if the only thing you’re doing during a turn is moving, you can Defend for +2 Parry.
Fortinbras: Figure it’s okay to say stuff like this at this stage, errbody still learnin’ the system.
spindingo: Sorry for fudging this up.
Fortinbras: ‘sok!
spindingo: So, no need for Persuasion.
spindingo: So I could do an intimidation afterall.
spindingo: Ain’t got much, but..
spindingo: Might make life easier for those guys out there.
Fortinbras: Was gonna have you make yourselves known in order to get control of those guys anyway.
Amordea: Isn’t Taunt what you’re good at?
spindingo: Yeah, was going to Taunt them.
spindingo: Needed to have a little of both.
spindingo: So, a Taunt!

* spindingo rolls: 1d8+2 => 3 + 2 = 5

spindingo: Ah vell.
Fortinbras: Got a target in mind?
spindingo: The Batman #4.
Fortinbras: Good call.
Fortinbras: He’s well taunted. Not even smart enough to say nothin’ back, just leers your way.
Bill Brogden: You’ll be sneezing out your asshole in a few seconds if you don’t get out!
spindingo: Guys want to help me move our dudes and go for an early boom?
Grammaticus: Do you, like, just have a list of these ready to go? Because they’re pretty great.
Fortinbras: I know, right?
Improvidence: Hahah.
spindingo: No, just kinda going tourettes.
Grammaticus: Also, I presume the northern jagged line blocks line of sight?
Megadoptorous: Who’s turn is it?
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
spindingo: These guys have a movement of 5?
spindingo: Or 6? Some of them look old like bill.
Fortinbras: Hahah. They’ve got a 6.
Improvidence: So, Jon is in favor of pressing buttons first and eliminating a whole pile of trouble ASAP. We should have these guys move first.
Fortinbras: Gram: yeah, you won’t be able to shoot through to, say, Bat Man 4.
spindingo: Risk their “OA”s and gtfo.
Fortinbras: Haha.
Megadoptorous: Well, they do get to act first.
Fortinbras: Feel free to move them as you like.
Amordea: Defend and run?
Megadoptorous: Yeah
Amordea: If we can get them all out of the blast radius, we can definitely clean up a whole mess of these very quickly.
Amordea: And very likely scare off what survives.
Fortinbras: Ho! That guy gets lucky, neither OA hits him.
Fortinbras: Although, oh, can’t move through enemy units. Gonna have to lay on another from the crone…
spindingo: Poor AE1.
Megadoptorous: Yeah.
Amordea: Can’t move diagonal through them either I assume?
Fortinbras: She scrapes him as he runs past. He’s shaken, but *can* get just barely out of the radius, I believe.
Fortinbras: Yeah, gonna go with D&D’s precedent for this.
Megadoptorous: That’s 3.
Megadoptorous: AE 2 takes an OA.
Fortinbras: Ah, can you do that for me again?
Megadoptorous: She was there.
Fortinbras: She’s lucky, she’s got a clean run!
Fortinbras: On to the next one~
Amordea: Ah, Meg, if you hit spacebar while moving it sets a waypoint which the icon has to cross through.
Megadoptorous: Really?
Megadoptorous: That’s neat.
Fortinbras: Yep!
Fortinbras: Who wants to move the bleached men?
Megadoptorous: Erm, I guess I’ll continue.
Amordea: Think he might be able to avoid a lot of those.
Megadoptorous: How?
Megadoptorous: Do it up.
spindingo: Go right one more
spindingo: Then go
Amordea: Yeah, like that.
Megadoptorous: Ok.
Fortinbras: He’s lucky he defended–I think someone said they were all defending–because both of those attacks would’ve hit if he hadn’t!
Megadoptorous: Yes.
spindingo: Good thing the tanky type person read up on their stuff to share it.
Fortinbras: Two to go. Very close to being all clear.
Amordea: Fort suggested it.
Amordea: Well BM3 doesn’t have far to go at least.
Fortinbras: The luck of these guys is staggering! He gets away without even an attack on him.
Amordea: AE1 has a lot of OA’s to suffer.
Amordea: Who does?
Fortinbras: Bleached Man 3, assuming the only one is from the batman.
Amordea: Ah, yes.
Fortinbras: Now for the tough one.
Amordea: I don’t know how we’ll move her.
spindingo: I bet AE1 is going to be the cool unlockable character if we did this on difficult mode.
Fortinbras: Hahah.
Amordea: Hah!
spindingo: Going to have to take 3 hits.
Amordea: The only possible path is riddled with OA’s
spindingo: eer, 4!
Amordea: I’m counting 5.
Megadoptorous: Look, she’s gonna die from shrew bites.
Amordea: That’s the path I see.
Amordea: Anyone else?
spindingo: Let us pray.
Fortinbras: She’s looking, sad and with a touch of the cruelty felt by a person whose friends have run ahead of them, after her friends.
Fortinbras: She takes…
Fortinbras: I count 3, because in most of those cases she didn’t actually move away from anybody, just past.
Megadoptorous: SHREW BITES SHREW BITES SHREW BITES
Grammaticus: She’s gonna even out the statistics. Torn to bits!
spindingo: (at least now we are justified, right?)
Amordea: Oh I see.
Amordea: Didn’t know it worked like that.
spindingo: Hey, don’t hit her! KILL THEM
Fortinbras: Well holy hell. This scene was supposed to involve tragic and inevitable deaths, but sometimes luck is on the side of the righteous, or at least the endangered.
Fortinbras: She gets by!
Amordea: !
Megadoptorous: GASP
spindingo: KILL THEM ANYWAYS!
Grammaticus: Inconceivable!
Improvidence: buttonbuttonbutton
Fortinbras: Jon, it’s your turn. There’s a man with a laptop next to you.
spindingo: Spam the button, best way to compensate for lag.
Improvidence: Throwing the switch!
Fortinbras: Spin: you’re lucky your intimidation tactics didn’t work. If they’d believed you about there being bombs, they’d have a chance to make an agility roll at -2 in order to dive away from it.
spindingo: Heh, Double Fake-Out.
Amordea: The good news is they might believe anything you say now.
Amordea: No matter how outrageous.
Fortinbras: As it is, they just… well… it’s a fucking explosion. The bat men at the edge came close, they only took 3d10 instead of 6d10 from the overlaps, but even they are gone with the blastwave.
Improvidence: Yeah, I don’t really intimidate well, but suggesting that we have bombs elsewhere around here might make this end pretty quick-like.
Fortinbras: You dynamited that god damned wall!
Fortinbras: I need to do some complicated drawing and revealing because I wasn’t very smart at maps when I made this, so enjoy the explosion for a second.
Amordea: I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended right now.
spindingo: I’ll go for it on my turn if someone doesn’t go for it.
Improvidence: Gonna AFK briefly, myself. My turns done. I’m not going to expose myself if I don’t have to.
Fortinbras: oh son of a bastard
Megadoptorous: What the zip?
spindingo: Gonna second that afk with my own. brb
Megadoptorous: Hey, look. An exploded area.
Grammaticus: Mad smashed.
Megadoptorous: Exploded like a hurricane.
Fortinbras: The wall you’re hiding behind ends in a door hanging on its hinges. It gets knocked right off those hinges by, hang on, what? Another door. More debris is raining, some of it much heavier than doors. I swear to you these locations were planned ahead of time, it’s not just theatrics:
Amordea: Hahah, is AE1 getting crushed?
Amordea: After all that?
Amordea: Because lol.
Megadoptorous: Supes lawls.
Fortinbras: Well, let’s roll and find out. She’s got a bit of agility, she might be okay!
Amordea: haha
Fortinbras: No, she’s not going to be entirely okay.
Grammaticus: cringe
Megadoptorous: No… Sigh.
* Fortinbras rolls: 2d12 => 16
Megadoptorous: ow
Megadoptorous: that is
Megadoptorous: exploded.
Amordea: That would even wound mighty Robert.
Fortinbras: The other guys are equally not okay. Those pieces of wall and infrastructure crushed these guys like… well. Giant pieces of wall that got blown into the sky and then landed on human beings.
Megadoptorous: That’s a sad story.
Fortinbras: She got to feel a moment of relief before the end, at least.
spindingo: God, Victor. Why did you let us do that!?
spindingo: Next trn.
Amordea: Jon’s just racking up the kills.
Fortinbras: Yep. Anything left on your agenda, Jon? Youc an move, maybe do something at -2.
Amordea: He just doubled them.
Fortinbras: He’s ruthless!
Grammaticus: I didn’t know! I didn’t knoooooow!
spindingo: Sounded like he wasn’t going to risk anything and may still be afk.
Amordea: Yeah that’s what he said.
Megadoptorous: Yeah, he mentioned specifically
Fortinbras: Alrighty.
Improvidence: Nah, I’m cool behind the wall, here, until the debris is done raining down.
Fortinbras: Caught the AFK, but not the not doing anything. Okay. The one surviving robber!
Victor Gall has received initiative.
Fortinbras: Defends and flees.
Grammaticus: Gonna hold and let them flee, if that’s their intention.
Grammaticus: I suppose ready an action in the event someone fires on us, or moves to assault one of the refugees.
Fortinbras: Solid.
Robert Arnsdale has received initiative.
Amordea: Exact same as Vic.
Fortinbras: The crones aim to save what years they’ve got left.
Fortinbras: They’re getting out of the area.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
Megadoptorous: I am going to MOVE FORWARD WITH SNEAKING
Amordea: Oh, I have a question…
Fortinbras: Sure,

* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e => 7
* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e => 2

Amordea: Are these guys possibly part of a bigger gang?
Grammaticus: That’s some sneaking.
spindingo: Explosion makes good cover too.
spindingo: What with the dust and blood spray.
Megadoptorous: Generalized immigrant mist makes the best smoke bomb.
Fortinbras: They don’t seem like gang members. They seem like people whose options have run out. If you want to know if you know anything about the real gangs in the city, a general knowledge roll will suffice.
Fortinbras: Oh, god. Immigrant mist.
Grammaticus: Vaporized people particulates.
Fortinbras: Oh, by the way! Bill, I meant to give you a benny for yelling at that one guy.
Fortinbras: You yelled the hell out of him.
Megadoptorous: You yelled at him so hard? He exploded.
spindingo: Like a torn can of sardines in tomato sauce, these are the days of our lives.
Fortinbras: hah.
Fortinbras: Anything else, Heidi, or are you done?
Megadoptorous: I… do not shoot bleached man.
Fortinbras: Hah.
spindingo: But you sooo could.
Megadoptorous: I defend.
Fortinbras: From behind this wall, the gang’s spotter peeks out. Made of different stuff, it would seem. Or at least confident that the stuff he’s made of is going to stay in one place. Because he don’t look scared, he looks mad as fuck. He murmurs something evocative of Yosemite Sam’s nonsense cursing.
Fortinbras: He takes a shot at Heidi with a rifle that looks older than he is. He continues cursing when it goes wide, and ducks back behind the wall.
Amordea: Do Vic and I get to shoot ‘im?
Fortinbras: Sure do.
Megadoptorous: Can I shoot him? With the shooting?
Fortinbras: ‘Fraid not, Megwad.
Megadoptorous: argh!
Fortinbras: Opposed agility rolls!
Amordea: Ewgod, 16 squares with the shotgun?

* Grammaticus rolls: d6e => 5

Amordea: I take that back.
spindingo: Over Victor’s head? GG
Fortinbras: It’s okay. Victor… can make up for that.

* Grammaticus rolls: d6e Wild => 11

Amordea: Yeah, I’ll let Vic handle the shootin’. I’ll shoot something that gets…closer.
Fortinbras: Shit, nice! He rolled a 2.
Megadoptorous: That’s a good idea, for the formatting.
Grammaticus: Hahah.
Fortinbras: Show him how much bigger yer gun is.
spindingo: Wild indeed.
* Victor Gall finally gets the sheet untangled, and it crumbles around his feet in a lump, revealing a long rifle, obsessively pristine. He crouches and crackes open the door.
Grammaticus: Oh, question.
Fortinbras: Ask.
Grammaticus: With the held/readied action, since I haven’t moved, does it count as an Aimed shot?
Megadoptorous: I think aiming is an action on its own.
spindingo: Good one.
Fortinbras: Afraid not. You gotta actually spend the turn going, “I am aiming.”
Grammaticus: Ahhh.
Grammaticus: Righto.
Amordea: Yeah that’s what I’d say too.
Fortinbras: Meg’s got it.
Amordea: You’d have to be aiming specifically /at/ something.
Megadoptorous: That is also true.
Grammaticus: In -that- case, am I incurring some snapfire penalty?
Fortinbras: Yes, or at least carefully selecting your shot.
Fortinbras: Nope. Only if you move.
Grammaticus: Aha.
Megadoptorous: Not for drawing?
Grammaticus: Then!
Grammaticus: Oh, yes, it wasn’t as though the gun was out.
Megadoptorous: Isn’t there some sort of quick draw merit that specifically avoids that -2?
Fortinbras: yeah, there’s a quickdraw edge. You do get a -2 for not having your weapon drawn, but… you roll a d12, motherfucker. Deal with it. *sunglasses descend from ceiling.*

* Grammaticus rolls: d12e – 2 => 6 – 2 = 4

Megadoptorous: Ha.
Megadoptorous: Holy shit your roll a d12 for shooting?!
Fortinbras: Well, it’s a success!
Fortinbras: He’s interesting. Brutal damage, but kinda has to stay still for it to be worth it.
Grammaticus: This is a thing I do. Victor shoots with SCIENCE. He’s also a complete coward.
Fortinbras: And use very specific weapons.
Bill Brogden: Goddamn! What the hell are you packing? Got us a ringer here, gents!

* Grammaticus rolls: 2d10e => 14

Megadoptorous: Holy hell are you using an anti-material rifle?!
Fortinbras: Not yet.
Megadoptorous: haha
Grammaticus: That’s just the default sniper rifle deal. I would gladly accept some sort of anti-tank gun, though.
spindingo: Oh, damage dice explode too?
Fortinbras: Yep!
spindingo: Beautiful.
Fortinbras: Oh, when you succeed an attack roll with a raise, you get to roll an extra d6. For future reference.
Fortinbras: That is VERY important to future progress, as weapons and armor and rolls improve.
* Victor Gall mutters to himself the while, corrections and observations, in a rapid, nervous, rattling off, most of which is inaudible.
Fortinbras: Anyhow, remember the man who came out to shoot at you? He meant to disappear back behind that wall, but he disappears a little sooner. Dissipates, it’s more accurate to say. Goner!
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
* Bill Brogden dances around his laptop in a circle, pumping his fists into sky.
Fortinbras: Now that one of the travelers has died, they each make a spirit roll. If they fail it, they won’t be taking your advice for a little while.
Fortinbras: Hahahah.
Fortinbras: They’re all terribly despirited by the loss of their friend, it seems.
Amordea: Rob flinches through the shot which ends the robber’s life, distantly watching the daring but now dead fellow fall into a silent heap amid the blasted rocks.
Fortinbras: One simply sits down on the ground. The others huddle in behind what cover they can find.
Amordea: Well is that the end of it then?
Fortinbras: It may as well be. Moving on into the city?
Fortinbras: Or, well, moving out of cover?
Amordea: I figure we should talk to these poor fellows first? Well, what are we going to do with them?
Fortinbras: Indeed.
spindingo: Sure, only going to to persuade them to let us by without incident on my turn.
Grammaticus: Mounts. Piggy-back rides for all.
Amordea: Dang.
spindingo: Unless someone wants to do anything else.
Megadoptorous: Like golden retrievers.
Fortinbras: That’s gonna be rough for whoever has to carry Rob.
Amordea: Haha.
Fortinbras: Once the debris stops falling, you head down to talk to the people you saved.
Megadoptorous: Walking walking walky walk.
Fortinbras: The man sitting in the dust is immobile. The rest are looking from him to the approaching people and back.
Bleached Man 3: Thankyou.
* Victor Gall sits down in the dust and carefully folds his blanket back around the rifle.
Amordea: Rob heads forward with his allies, remaining vigilant to any further danger; shotgun in hand, but lowered towards the ground, just in case there’s trouble.
* Bleached Man 3 expresses his gratitude in a familiar voice. It’s a person in a supermarket’s voice, disinterested, going through motions. He means it, but he’s not invested, cannot be.
Bill Brogden: Was a mighty brave thing your friend had done there, may as well saved you all by getting in the thick of it.
Bill Brogden: We aren’t soldiers, afraid we did not have any other way about it.
* Megadoptorous plants her guns back in the holsters at her hips. “How’d you get holed up by them?”
* Jonathan Walker follows behind, shotgun similarly in hand, but in a non-threatening position. Bleached Man 3: Followin the wall. Thinkin it safer te have … not to be in the open.
Aeonian Emigrant 2: They came from the ruins and we couldn’t go anywhere, anywhere.
* Heidi St Louis watches the robbers run, a low whistle coming out. “Wonder how they got here before us? We didn’t exactly go slow.”
* Aeonian Emigrant 2 glances back toward the wall her traveling companion is underneath and looks away. No notion of saving her, it fell like a flyswatter of god.
Aeonian Emigrant 2: They say they wait in places like this for hours. Instead of foraging… somebody has to come by some time, and then…
* Jonathan Walker forces a straight face as he surveys the rubble and gore, doing his best to remain convinced that he took the best course of action.
Fortinbras: The bleached man raises himself up and, after an awkwardly silent moment, hugs Heidi.
Fortinbras: Notice roll.

* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e => 1

Amordea: May I?

* spindingo rolls: 1d8e+2 => 4 + 2 = 6
* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e WILD!!! => 2

Fortinbras: Sure.

* Amordea rolls: d6e => 2
* Amordea rolls: d6e => 2
Amordea: nope nothing to see here

* spindingo rolls: 1d6e +2 Wild => 5 + 2 = 7

* Heidi St Louis returns the hug, though it’s equally awkward and stilted.

* Improvidence rolls: 1d6e => 3
* Grammaticus rolls: d8e => 7
* Improvidence rolls: 1d63 Wild => 61
Improvidence: What
Heidi St Louis: That is… not right
Improvidence: no

* Grammaticus rolls: d6e Wild => 3

Grammaticus: Hahahahah.
Fortinbras: d63, huh?

* Improvidence rolls: 1d6e Wild => 5

Improvidence: A 3 is kind of like an e.
spindingo: Impressive, still.
Fortinbras: Anyway, Bill, you notice a flick of pocket knife and the strap on Heidi’s canteen falling from her shoulder.
Amordea: Rob is watching the fleeing robbers during the hug, seeming more interested in whether they have any more tricks in store than in the hug.
spindingo: Bill doesn’t address it.
Fortinbras: He pulls away from the hug and nods at each of you.
Bill Brogden: Our destination is pretty obvious, you want in on the convoy you can follow.
Bleached Man 3: I’m, we’re, all of us, real grateful. We got to be goin on though. Got to be stayin quiet. You folks don’t seem quiet sorts.
Heidi St Louis: Are you guys sure? We’ve got a little extra food with us, even.
* Victor Gall laughs in two short hiccups. He adjusts his glasses.
Bleached Man 3: No, lord, couldn’t ask th-
Bill Brogden: Your cost.
Aeonian Emigrant 2: That would suit us fine.
* Heidi St Louis tosses her ruck sack on the ground, and starts to look through it. She comes out with a pair of the MREs from the house fire, and hands them over to the hungry woman.
Fortinbras: Speaking of food, you’ll notice all of your tokens have food and water measures on them now.
Megadoptorous: They do?
Fortinbras: Yep. Doubleclick to see.
spindingo: That they do.
* Jonathan Walker frowns as he looks on Heidi’s generosity, and tightens his grip on his own pack.
Megadoptorous: Oooo.
Megadoptorous: Is that two I have post sharing or pre?
Megadoptorous: I thought I had at least 4.
Fortinbras: You had 5.
Megadoptorous: Ok.
Fortinbras: I updated it for ya.
Megadoptorous: Thanks.
* Robert Arnsdale gives the strangers an unfriendly, unwelcoming stare, seeming to make it clear he doesn’t appreciate their presence very much.
spindingo: Stole one, and gave two?
Megadoptorous: Yup.
Fortinbras: The two men go to lift their friend up. The woman stays, and her look of gratitude lingers as long as she can stand not to eat. Before long she peels the packaging open and has a few bites, eating with her hands.
* Heidi St Louis starts to walk toward the new hole in the Wave. “Let’s get going,” she starts to whistle, shouldering her rucksack again.
Aeonian Emigrant 2: He’s not like to move soon. He’s never had much by way of constitution, and that’s his wife’s just died. But you believe me, we’ll be alright. You go on now.
* Aeonian Emigrant 2 closes up the package. It’s an immense act of will, not eating any more. Amordea: Rob starts heading for the hole.
Amordea: He’s glad to get away from this mess.
Fortinbras: Evander’s quick to follow.
spindingo: Heh, Bill likes the idea of staying by beefy and Evander.
* Victor Gall seems amused by the entire event, but does not say anything. He hurries to keep in tow, looking with appreciation at the chasm blown by the bombs.
Fortinbras: Passing through the crumbled section of wave–there’s some climbing and seeking of footholds involved–you find the immediate city… not terrible.
Heidi St Louis: Hey, where’d you find all those explosives, anyway?
Fortinbras: You’re in downtown Portland now. Washed out banners are still waving in the breeze.
Victor Gall: (brief afk)
Megadoptorous: Are we in ‘travel montage’ mode?
Fortinbras: Hahah. Nah, feel free to chat a bit after that fight. You’re cautiously having a look around the first few streets you’ve found, deciding your next move. Which, the in-character question becomes: where is everybody headed now?
Fortinbras: And did anyone want to make that general knowledge (smarts die) roll to see what they know about the larger gangs around?
Amordea: No idea where to go, although Rob wouldn’t make that decision anyway. Seemed like Vic had a reason for heading here though?

* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e => 2
* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e => 9
* Amordea rolls: d4e => 1

Megadoptorous: I know things!

* Amordea rolls: d6e => 3

Amordea: i dunno nuffin

* spindingo rolls: 1d10e => 5
* Improvidence rolls: d6e => 2
* spindingo rolls: 1d6e Wild => 10
* Improvidence rolls: d6e Wild => 4

Fortinbras: That’s a very good one. This roll was made at -2, so Heidi and Bill are, unsurprisingly really, the ones who know what’s been going on in the city.
Fortinbras: Any gang cooperative enough or the right kind of insane enough is known to get swept in with the raiders. While everybody else makes a point of blending, seeming if they can to be one with the concrete – even gangs tend this way – the raiders enjoy extravagance. They like wearing mad masks, and violence, and making life challenging.
spindingo: Bill would probably share freely what he knows, peppering the blanks with supsicious military activity.
Amordea: Hahah, love that Bill.
Fortinbras: Bill got a raise, so he knows a little more. He’s noticed that reports of raiders on the net tend to come from people around the Willamette River. He figures there’s a lot of ‘em there.
spindingo: Let’s not go there yet.
Megadoptorous: Heidi will correct anything she sees as dangerously incorrect, which may included the fact that the military is completely destroyed.
Fortinbras: Hahahah.
Fortinbras: OH!
spindingo: Bill knows some guys. If no one else knows guys he’s going to suggest visiting an old pizza joint. Knows a trade facilitator.
Fortinbras: I forgot this week’s epigraph, which I suppose is appropriate enough at this moment. That fight went a bit long to be considered opening action, but it does fit.
Megadoptorous: Heidi is owed stuff, so she’s sticking with Bill.
Fortinbras: “I’ll be the axe that clears the forest.” From Murder By Death’s “Rum Brave.”
Fortinbras: That pizza joint is, unfortunately, across the river. On this side, there’s the Portland Golf Club. They’re pretty skittish about visitors there. Shoot on sight skittish.
Megadoptorous: So it really hasn’t changed much?
Fortinbras: But he knows ‘em well. If he can get in touch- HA!- they’ll probably receive him.
spindingo: Yeah, they are his kind of audience, but.. they are his kind of audience. Have to tread carefully.
Amordea: Rob growls a bit at Bill’s suggestion. He murmurs to Vic although loudly enough that everyone can hear, “There someplace we goin’ here, Vic?”
Victor Gall: (back)
Evander: How bout we find us some gear, William? Lost a lot to that fire. Girl with the guns, how you feel about incurring some more debt from us?
Amordea: Actually I’m not sure how Victor introduced himself to Rob…
Amordea: Would he prefer Dr. Gall?
* Victor Gall has worn an immovable frown since the news about the Willamette River. Grammaticus: Nah, Vic’s good.
Amordea: Ok.
Bill Brogden: I’m not rushing headlong into anything. If someone has an idea, let’s put it on the table.
Heidi St Louis: Sounds like fun. Also, it’s Heidi. Or Miss St. Louis.

* Megadoptorous rolls: d8e Survival => 2

Fortinbras: If Vic wants across the river, he might suggest working something out to get over there.

* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e Wild => 2

Megadoptorous: This roller is all about fits and starts.
Fortinbras: Heheh.
Amordea: Oh, Survival?
Amordea: What’s prompted this?
spindingo: Rolling for a good idea on where not to die?
Amordea: Oh I see.

* Victor Gall squints to the north, as though he can just make it out. “R-reed College. It’s over the river.”
Megadoptorous: Actually, some scavenging as we move through the city.
Fortinbras: Ah, yes! It’s midday and you’ve got a world of stuff before you. Would you like to scav for anything?
spindingo: Man’s gotta eat.
Fortinbras: Another protip: you can look for specific stuff that will grant temporary bonuses, if you think you can spare the roll.
Amordea: Well Rob’s got a bit of skill in that too. Can’t live in the apocalypse without knowing how to scavenge.
Fortinbras: Standards are lower these days. Toothpaste, soap and BO stick would give you a +1 to charisma for a week or so.
Amordea: He’ll help find some grub.
Grammaticus: You can make friends with Rob.
Fortinbras: Evander’s out to find dinner too.

* Amordea rolls: d4e => 5
* Fortinbras rolls: d6e => 1

Grammaticus: (ffs nother afk)

* Amordea rolls: d6e => 5
* Fortinbras rolls: d6e => 3

Amordea: I’ll take the 5.

* spindingo rolls: 1d4e FOOD => 1

Grammaticus: but survival!
spindingo: I hunger.

* Grammaticus rolls: d6e => 4
* Grammaticus rolls: d6e wild => 1
* spindingo rolls: 1d6e Wild => 2

spindingo: Tough breaks. Better luck for dinner!

* Improvidence rolls: 1d4e Foods => 10
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6e Wild => 3

Megadoptorous: Damn. Glad one of us can roll.
Fortinbras: Jon comes back with a bit of food for everybody. +1 to each person’s food supply if they can carry it, and if they can’t they can throw it on Robert’s back. He can carry a lot, twice his str in food.
Megadoptorous: Yay!
Grammaticus: And back.
Grammaticus: And wow. 10 on a D4.
Amordea: He can also carry two days’ worth in his stomach.
Fortinbras: Rob and Vic each find a bit to eat too, +1 to their respective food supplies. But with all the 1s that are going around, it figures that while you’re out, you find a little something more. It’s not gunfire this time, at least. It’s voices. Free, open, vaguely hostile laughter.
spindingo: Heh, don’t want to be in a scenario where Robert has to mamma bird feed me.
Amordea: So +2 for me?
Fortinbras: Correct!
Amordea: And does anyone need me to carry anything?
spindingo: So far, so good. Got 1 pound/unit/thing to spare.
Megadoptorous: Am good.
Grammaticus: I think I must have missed the complete weight tutorial.
Amordea: You can carry your strength value in days worth of food and water.
Amordea: Unless you’re me.
Fortinbras: You can carry your str die in food and water. Go above that, you get a -1 to all trait tests.
Amordea: But you’re not.
Grammaticus: I see!
Fortinbras: Rob can carry… well, a lot. Because of an edge, he carries twice his str.
Grammaticus: If you don’t mind taking an extra ration, I’m one over.
Amordea: Sure.
Fortinbras: You’re in what was once a pretty nice area. It’s a bit more beat up now though, and on the horizon looking a *lot* more beat up. Just on the border of downtown’s most “urban sprawly” district, there are nice restaurants and cafes and, wherefrom the mean laughter emanates, an art gallery with one wall down.
Fortinbras: You’re at a distance, so it’s only an occasional burst you hear. No words yet. There’s a lot of cover around, if you want to move in and have a listen.
Megadoptorous: Is there any chance a map is made?
Fortinbras: Suuure is. By a lot of cover though, I kinda mean one building, on paper.
spindingo: (quick afk, feel free to roll for me, back in 3 minutes)
* Heidi St Louis creeps forward, one pistol out. Moving around the rear of the house, slowly ducking toward the speaking individuals.

* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e Stealth => 3
* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e Wild => 1

Megadoptorous: Oh jesus, seriously?
Fortinbras: Nah, no need for that. You’re still at a distance here.
Megadoptorous: Ok.
Grammaticus: Hahah.
Fortinbras: Lucky you.
Grammaticus: You step on five cymbals and a tripwire.
Amordea: haha
Megadoptorous: 25% chance of failure and i manage to fail 5 out of 6 times.
spindingo: Ask me about Arnir.
Amordea: Is the narrow section a broken wall?
Fortinbras: It is, yeah. Provides decent cover.
spindingo: Stealthing is horribly unreliable for low level characters in every game I’ve played.
Amordea: Can I move Rob here?
Fortinbras: Sure can.
Fortinbras: You’re all safe, but Heidi’s failed stealth roll got them on edge. Any future stealth rolls will be opposed.
Amordea: He keeps behind the tall wall while Heidi stealths ahead–Rob is terrible at going unseen, but he wants to be in a position where he can jump out and shoot if needed.
Megadoptorous: This situation is exactly why I dislike systems in which you roll small numbers of dice.
Megadoptorous: But that is a conversation for a different time.
Smile 1: You’re some kind of son of a bitch, Negredo.

* Smile 1 cackles. “All up in that tower. Fuckin… knock on the… ha!”
Felix: Heheh, for sure, man. It’s uh, for sure, gonna be a walk in the uh park.
Fortinbras: They’re not friendly looking folks.
Amordea: Can I jump/climb over the broken part of the wall easily enough if needed?
Fortinbras: Gonna call it three squares of movement OR a climbing roll to get over. It’s about waist level, so takes a couple seconds to bypass, in standard turn terms.
Amordea: Too much. Can I have Rob move up here with his head ducked down below the wall? He wants to be ready to jump out in case Heidi gets caught.
Fortinbras: If you move him back one he’ll be alright.
Amordea: I’ll take that.
Fortinbras: They’re at a table in what seems to have been turned into a bit of a patio bar. Couple paintings ground into the dust beneath their feet.
Smile 1: What time, what the fuck time, kid? When?
Felix: Just got to take it easy cause they will *be here.* Okay? Okay. Okay.
Smile 1: Shut f– okay. I gotta “go,” naw mean?
Felix: Leave me outta this.
Fortinbras: He walks, slowly, out of the room.
Fortinbras: Doesn’t seem to’ve noticed anyone yet.
Amordea: Gonna start moving back a bit I think.
* Heidi St Louis springs into action! With a motion of her hand, she encourages Rob to move away! Fortinbras: Hahah.
Fortinbras: Initiative me?

* Megadoptorous rolls: d20 => 10
* Amordea rolls: d20 => 16
* spindingo rolls: d20 => 19

* Victor Gall seems distinctly uneasy and displeased to be here.
spindingo: Rob gives it all away.
Fortinbras: Bill is spry.

* Grammaticus rolls: d20 => 1
* Improvidence rolls: d20 => 18

Grammaticus: -That- uneasy.
Fortinbras: Now, there’s gonna be a moment to hold at very shortly. Do you want to do that and resume later, or keep going?
Fortinbras: This is a gimmickless combat, but not a huge one.
Amordea: I’m good to keep going here.
Grammaticus: I got time.
Heidi St Louis: I’d like to hold, because I may be getting a call to DD within the hour, and my adult-ness is telling me midnight is bedtime.
Megadoptorous: Also, that’s OOC.
Amordea: Fine by me. Are we picking back up on Sunday?
Fortinbras: Hah. Alright.
Fortinbras: Could do, if you’re not runnin’ your game then.
Amordea: No plans to.
Fortinbras: I think sundays are the primo D&D day.
spindingo: Well, it is Thursday, why the hell not.
spindingo: Sunday works.
Megadoptorous: I could prolly do Sunday.
Grammaticus: Same.
Fortinbras: Cool. Okay, let’s finish this one up!
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
* Bill Brogden nods to Robert. “Gotcha covered.”
spindingo: Going to hold.
* Evander whispers, ducked down into a corner, “the fuck kinda lunatic business is this?”
spindingo: Taunt whoever draws hate up on Robert.
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
Improvidence: I’ll hold as well. Wait and see quite how this is going to go before interjecting my shotgun into this.
Robert Arnsdale has received initiative.
Amordea: Rob’s going to move into a spot he’ll be better unseen.
Amordea: Here seems good. He keeps his ears open for trouble, ready to stand up and shoot if something goes wrong.
Amordea: That work?
Fortinbras: Sure.
Amordea: Done.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
* Heidi St Louis keeps down, using one hand to draw her other gun, and preparing the other to fire. Just in case.
Amordea: Oh boy.
Smile 1: A voyeur!
Fortinbras: Felix perks up at that.
Amordea: Can I stand up now?
Heidi St Louis: Bang.
Fortinbras: Ah, didn’t realize you meant to hold. Afraid you can’t move and then hold, but yeah, you can go prone/stand up pretty much automatically in this game.
Amordea: Ah, yeah I did.
Amordea: Oh well, bummer.
Megadoptorous: I would like to shot him before he draws his weaponage.
Amordea: Dunno that I would’ve moved if I’d known that though.
Smile 1: You waiting for me to whip it out? That’s a shitty line, they say that in action movies.
Fortinbras: Okay, you can undo the move.
Amordea: Yeah, Rob gets up and cocks the hammers back on both barrels of his shotgun pointedly for attention-grabbing.
Heidi St Louis: Yeah. They say it cause it’s awesome.
Amordea: Barrels staring right down at Smile.
Amordea: He won’t shoot unless Smile tries something though.
Fortinbras: Anyway, yeah, he’s got a knife in one hand and a grenade in the other. And he’s going to whip both, if you guys don’t win this agility contest!

* Megadoptorous rolls: d10e => 9
* Amordea rolls: d6e => 7
* Amordea rolls: d6e => 3

spindingo: Smooth moves.

* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e => 1

Fortinbras: He does not beat Meg.
spindingo: Glad Ol’ Bill has you two around.
Fortinbras: He came out even with Rob, so their actions happen simultaneously.
Amordea: Armed with a grenade, he’s entitled himself to both barrels of this shotgun.
Megadoptorous: I only have one gun drawn, so, Fort I’m gonna ask for a ruling on this: Can I shoot with one gun unpenalized (with my Ambi. and Two Fisted) and the other at the -2 for drawing?
Fortinbras: I’m on the wall with this one. How about we split it this once, and call it -1 to both? Not as a precedent, but I’ll look at the book and figure out how it should go for next time.
Megadoptorous: Sounds fine.

* Megadoptorous rolls: d8e-1 => 5 – 1 = 4

Fortinbras: Okay. Riddle’m fulla bullets.

* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e-1 => 3 – 1 = 2
* Megadoptorous rolls: d8e-1 => 1 – 1 = 0
* Megadoptorous rolls: d6e-1 => 4 – 1 = 3

Amordea: Wild die!
Amordea: aw.
Fortinbras: You get one shot on him!
Amordea: Whew.
Amordea: Hope you shaken him.

* Megadoptorous rolls: 2d6+1 => 2 + 1 = 3

Megadoptorous: …. c’mon, seriously?
Amordea: :(
Fortinbras: Harsh!
spindingo: Serious Lee.
Megadoptorous: Can I use a bennie on that?
Fortinbras: Absolutely yes.
Amordea: Good call.

* Megadoptorous rolls: 2d6+1 => 7 + 1 = 8

Megadoptorous: This die roller wants me dead, seriously.
Amordea: It does seem to hate players.
Amordea: All players.
Fortinbras: Hey, you got a 26 or something crazy last time.
spindingo: Players in combat, then.
Fortinbras: He’s shaken, but I’m going to spend one of the two general use GM bennies I get on this one.
Megadoptorous: I’ve missed more then 50% of all my shots, the thing I am best at.
Amordea: nuuu.
Fortinbras: Eradicate that shaken status out the gate.
Fortinbras: He throws his knife at Heidi and his grenade at Robert, both at -2.
Amordea: Motherf–
Fortinbras: The knife hits Heidi, but hardly puts a scratch on her.
Megadoptorous: Yay.
Fortinbras: The grenade deviates from its course, but not by much.
Amordea: I can do something about this grenade yeah?
spindingo: Throwbackery?
Fortinbras: Yep, agility roll at -2 will let you dive out of the way.
Amordea: Like kick it hopefully.
Fortinbras: I think there is something for throwing them back, but damn if I can remember it.
Grammaticus: Note for future melee guy: include tennis racket.
spindingo: Remember skimming it over, because I though gernades or bouncing betties would be cool for Bill.
spindingo: Haha
spindingo: Bat Man’s off-hand.
Fortinbras: Maybe I’ll call it throwing -2?
spindingo: Complete the Casey Jones from Ninja Turtles.
Amordea: My throwing is worse than my agility.
Amordea: Not by much.
Fortinbras: Haha.
Amordea: And throwing it back at him would probably put Heidi in danger.
Fortinbras: There’s that as well.
Megadoptorous: Definitely.
Fortinbras: Might just wanna clear outta there.
Amordea: Guess I’ll go with agility option.

* Amordea rolls: d6e => 11
* Amordea rolls: d6e => 4

Amordea: hooray
Fortinbras: Ho shit! Nice! Place yourself anywhere outside of its radius.
Improvidence: So, tell me that Robert gets to shoot while diving through the air.
Amordea: Any chance of shooting still?
Fortinbras: Robert dives. The ground shakes. These things might or might not be related.
Amordea: Or is that gone now?
Fortinbras: Yes, you get to shoot at him.
Fortinbras: *while flying through the air.* We cool like that,
Amordea: Awesome.
Amordea: Urgh. This might not have been the best direction to move.
Amordea: Do I have any chance of hitting Heidi with my shotgun blast?
Grammaticus: Robert Arnsdale is: The last action hero.
Fortinbras: Only if you get a 1 on the shootin’ roll.
Amordea: I’d benny that. Gonna take my chances then!
Fortinbras: Woo!
Amordea: Both barrels.

* Amordea rolls: d6e => 4
* Amordea rolls: d6e => 4

Amordea: And I get a +2 on that roll.
Amordea: So 6.
Fortinbras: Nice!
Fortinbras: TN to hit anyone at range is 4, so you hit.
Amordea: Both barrels, so…

* Amordea rolls: 6d6 => 23

Fortinbras: Lord!
Amordea: Dude is fubar’d.
Megadoptorous: Ow.
Grammaticus: That’s gruesome.
Fortinbras: Wow, wow.
spindingo: How’s that Smile mist taste, Heidi?
Fortinbras: yes, there’s no way he can survive that. You killed your first raider. He was supposed to be scary.
Amordea: lawl.
Improvidence: I don’t know why all of you didn’t get shotguns.
spindingo: Starburst or Skittles?
Victor Gall has received initiative.
Amordea: Shotguns do have the pointed disadvantage of requiring you to reroll them often.
Megadoptorous: Yeah, they seem to be totally devistating. I’m using huge pistols and they do NOTHING like shotgun damage.
spindingo: Weight was the big reason.
Amordea: But I’m counting on you guys to get the other mug.
Amordea: Er, reload*
Amordea: not reroll.
Megadoptorous: In fact, they do similar damage to tiny pistols.
Fortinbras: With Robert diving out of the way of that grenade, we hit the point I’d planned to pause at.
Megadoptorous: Sounds good.
spindingo: Fair ‘nough. Other guy might be all for talking.
Fortinbras: Felix is looking ready to run, but if anyone got a glimpse of him before, they might note that he *always* looked ready to run.
Grammaticus: Victor cringes, and stays cringed, crouching low, wrestling his sniper rifle free, and backing off from the ill-defined front line.
Grammaticus: Oh! Can only go so far that way.
Fortinbras: Heh, I’ll reveal more for you.
Grammaticus: Nah, s’allright. This way’s got more stuff between it and grenades anyhow.
Fortinbras: See you Sunday then? God, I need to make these fights harder.
Amordea: snrk.
Grammaticus: Hahahah.
Megadoptorous: I’m finding a lot of things I dislike about this system, actually using it.
Fortinbras: Also: I think the “bennies can be traded for experience” thing should go. Causes people to do a kind of calculation I’m not a fan of, and encourages uneven leveling.
Amordea: I agree.
Fortinbras: Aw, you just been a bit unlucky.
Megadoptorous: Agree.
spindingo: ^^^^^
spindingo: But you are DM’ing the tables great.
Fortinbras: I think the wild dice are a pretty good balancer for the low rolls. Stick with it for a bit, you’ll probably have a turn in your luck.
Grammaticus: Alternately, like me, you will become known for ruining everyone’s plans by your awful rolls at critical times.
Fortinbras: Ha!
Amordea: Heheh.
Megadoptorous: Well, it’s that with so few dice rolled, luck plays a larger part. In addition, I’m not seeing a huge benefit to having a balanced sheet- the wild die means I’m not much more likely to succede or fail until my skills are super high.
spindingo: We could blame MapTool instead of the system, but I bet the dice would still be cruel to me as the real thing.
spindingo: Not too different that D&D 4E. Luck runs the tables early on. Kind of balances out once you get to the second and third tiers.
Fortinbras: I like a lot about SW though. If you do have any ideas for balancing stuff, lay ‘em on me. I’m happy to mangle the original book in favor of something very homebrewy.
Megadoptorous: If I come up with anything, I’ll make it known.
spindingo: The speed and resolution of it is grand.
Fortinbras: I think you’re meant to be a bit shaky at low levels. We’ll see how you do with a couple more under your belt, I bet Heidi’s gonna rip shit up.
Amordea: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too.
spindingo: Yeah, and she’s established a unique role too, no one else here is going to be able to even attempt what she is doing now in a few levels.
Fortinbras: Any objections to points being doled out on Sunday? It’s been a pretty short session, in all.
Fortinbras: Also what time you wanna assemble?
Amordea: Sounds fine to me.
Megadoptorous: I’m not complaining about m character or like, anything specific that has happened- though my consistantly awful rolling is annoying- more things I notice about the system in general, and experience from other games.
Amordea: Earlier the better I’d say. I’d love these sessions lasting a bit longer.
Grammaticus: What Amordea said. My day’s pretty wide open.
spindingo: I’m fine with that and with the whole bennie/experience trade thing being slaughtered.
Megadoptorous: I will have to get back to you on a time. I think I have most of the day if I write in the background.
Fortinbras: Alrighty. I’m gonna offer the fucking lamest spoiler/preview ever: you’re going to meet actual characters on Sunday! And wow, I’m… kinda glad to end at this point. Rob leaping away from a grenade and blasting a guy to bits? Awesome exit.
Amordea: Yeah, I thought that gaming model was dinosaur’d a while back. Was surprised to see it crop back up.
Megadoptorous: 7th Sea is, I think, the last thing I saw it until this and that died in 2001.
spindingo: Heh, thanks for sharing that material by the way.
spindingo: 7th Sea looked like good fun.
Megadoptorous: It’s a great setting wedded to a challenging system.
Fortinbras: I’m not actually against switching to something else midgame, but this system is really gentle on me. My experience DMing so far is much like my experience with drawing: trying to compensate for lack of training or natural aptitude with pure cleverness. Simple system is nice to learn with. Give it a while, see if we can fall in love with it.
spindingo: I was mostly absorbed by the settings, I can barely remember the game mechanics now.
Amordea: I like these line-drawn maps. They are simple but once explained they are easy to follow.
Megadoptorous: The games I’ve enjoyed most are the games where I’ve touched dice least.
Amordea: Leaves a lot to the imagination, which is good I’d say.
Fortinbras: There’s some non-dice-touching coming up. It’s just these intro sessions that are loaded with this stuff. Soon I’ll have a feel for the balance between roleplaying and dice.
spindingo: Yeah, even the 4E D&D games are fine when we can toggle between RP session and combat session.
Fortinbras: There’s one thing from the book that I’m rigorously set in ignoring: a numerical system for how willing people are to help you.
Megadoptorous: I should probably buy at least a die of Persuasion, where I did buy attractive
Grammaticus: Leveling up in the face.
Fortinbras: Haha. Yeah, it’ll come in handy. I’m hoping to find novel uses for charisma. But that’s enough of revealing my- hah!- projected techniques!
Fortinbras: And re: the simple maps: yeah, my hope has been that raw narrative talent would make them just perfect for my purposes.
spindingo: Attractive beats a dice or two in Persuasion.
Amordea: Oh, what time was decided on Sunday? Or is that yet to be decided?
Fortinbras: We’re not sure yet. But maybe we can hope for 4 or 5?
Amordea: Would work for me. Let me know.
spindingo: *thumbs up*
Amordea: Thanks for the fun, fellas!
Fortinbras: Lovely lovely.
Megadoptorous: Yeah, see. I’m wondering why I want to buy dice in Persuasion. I could just lean on my d6 Spirit and attractive.
Megadoptorous: I like the simple maps a lot.
Fortinbras: :D
Fortinbras: One FINAL thing.
Fortinbras: Victor, Notice roll.
spindingo: Fuuuu
Amordea: uh oh
Improvidence: Yeah, as was said, they tell you what you need to know and let you figure out the rest in your head.
Megadoptorous: And they don’t take a year to create.
Fortinbras: Yes!

* Grammaticus rolls: d8e => 6
* Grammaticus rolls: d6e => 2

Fortinbras: There are cars all along the streets in this part of town, simply abandoned, then later stripped by passers through. They get very dense in intersections. Under some of the cars here, you can see dirty sneakers shifting uneasily.
Fortinbras: Goodnight.
Grammaticus: yipe
Amordea: Haha, goodnight.
Grammaticus: Good night!
spindingo: Later fellahs.

david lynch’s high caliber crazy

New logs coming soon, but today I stumbled upon this excellent observation in an assessment of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist and it’s too long to tweet:

The word “Pretentious” gets thrown around a lot today, but the literal meaning of the word – something akin to ‘pretending to be something it is not’ – is rarely what people mean when they say it. A film can be complex or surreal without pretending anything. To explain that, the films of David Lynch aren’t “weird” just to trick audiences into watching them. They’re “weird” because Lynch is fucking insane, incapable of viewing the world from a rational and linear perspective, and so he presents a small bit of his own madness via celluloid to the audience, inviting them to take whatever from it they want to from it.

r-101

r- is set, at this stage, on the west coast of the United States, 4-8 years after an incomprehensively vast cataclysm destroyed human and animal populations, upending cities and plains alike the world over.  It happened so rapidly that nobody had time to work out the reasons why.  Now, some people might be trying, but it’s a hard world to do research in.

In Portland, people are still trying to live bohemian with savage killer gangs for neighbors and roving groups of incredibly hungry, desperate people passing through their communities.  If you dig deep enough you can find jagged and rusty gears of industry turning.  As some gangs start to grow larger than the mentality that spawned them to satisfy its delight in violence and animal comfort can accomodate, relationships between these gangs grow more complicated, and larger players start to take note.

The characters in order of appearance, along with their players’ main aliases, for non-players:

Jon Walker is cautious bordering on cowardice with good reason.  He’s anemic, unlucky and expects the worst of every path he takes, but survives because he doesn’t regard definite disaster as a reason not to try.  His attention to detail has kept him alive in spite of his teetering health.

Jon is played by the guy I know best as Alex, who is also Improvidence in chat and Kaylenn/Koren/that lot in Warcraft.

Bill Brogden has practice surviving like this.  He’s always been ready.  He’s always had a plan, and his plan has always included learning the truth about a plethora of international conspiracies, no matter how ill equipped he might be.  Combining years of knowledge gained as a military mechanic with the jury rigging perspective of a crazy guy stealing internet in the woods, he can fix nearly anything with nearly nothing.  He’s familiar to many for his broadcasts, which are filled with vivid outbursts on a broad range of subjects, and the equally vivid abuse he delivers to the unjust, the conspiratorial, and anybody who makes his life harder.

Bill is played by the person I know best as Amice in Warcraft, but increasingly as spindingo as well.

Heidi St. Louis finds things for a living.  That she does anything for a living in this region besides knife fight for cans speaks to her aptitude and tenacity.  Having sleepwalked through the old world, invested more in TV, movies, porn, electronics, twitter,  the ruins of the pacific northwest were the first place she felt at home.  She’s an Indiana Jones style archaeologist of the extremely recent past, who in the course of her work finds TV, movies, electronics and porn to continue to obsess over.  She misses twitter.

Heidi is played by the lady I know best as Megan.  She doesn’t really have any widely used aliases, but we say her name a bunch of different ways, such as Megadoptorous, Meggers, Megwad, and Meg.  Meg Meg Meg, all Meg.

Victor Gall is a scientist.  He has strong, carefully practiced habits.  He rarely mentions the areas of his expertise, but his intellect shows vividly even through great swells of nervousness and sometimes abject fear.  In spite of his mortal terror, wherever he arrives he volunteers repeatedly to surmount terrifying obstacles to move on past that place.  He carries a long and evidently heavy parcel wrapped in a sheet wherever he goes, and typically introduces himself by offering to play a game of cards.

Vic’s played by the guy I know best as Max, who’s also Ghest and Cithaeron with a K sound in Warcraft and Grammaticus around town.  Internet town.

Robert Arnsdale is strong silent type weaponized.  He uses his bulk and menacing affect to protect whoever he finds himself rooming, scavenging or sometimes traveling with.  What Rob does now is what he’s always done: he bounces around, finds odd jobs driving, or looking intimidating, or something less meaningful.  However menacing, he makes an effort to be scrupulously moral, and has an unexpectedly chivalrous attitude, acting unduly nobly with women whether they’re friends or shooting at him from a nearby balcony.

Rob’s played by the person I know best lately as Amordea, who’s also Sarapis and like a billion others in Warcraft.

That should get you up to speed.  I haven’t read this end to end, and can only hope that it’s readable without the map as a reference.

The log:

Fortinbras: Here we are again!
spindingo: So it is. Hi folks.
Fortinbras: Worked my shit out a bit. Should be more flexible about getting started this time.
Fortinbras: Megless, but anticipated as much, she’ll jump in when she feels like it, I s’pose.
Fortinbras: How’s yous today? We all staring at Fortinbras going “start it, we have had enough of the waiting room”?
Amordea: Doing good!
Grammaticus: so tired, but so ready for to play
spindingo: Huh, wait, wha’?
Fortinbras: Excellent.
Grammaticus: Getting some food ready.
Improvidence: Hah. Alas for our Meglessness, but I am excited to see what you got for us.
Amordea: Same.
spindingo: I’m sure it’ll fall into place nicely.
Fortinbras: Oh ah! There she is!
Fortinbras: If you’ll permit me an indulgence, I’ve got it in mind to open with a couple epigraphs. What can I say? I like epigraphs.
spindingo: Rock me.
Grammaticus: Just for this, I’m opening every campaign I run with epigraphs, too.
Fortinbras: O to blot out this garden / to forget, to find a new beauty / in some terrible / wind-tortured place.
Fortinbras: From imagist poet Hilda Doolittle’s “Sheltered Garden.”
Heidi has connected.
Fortinbras: Happy and I’m smiling, walk a mile to drink your water / You know I’d love to love you and above you there’s no other / We’ll go walking out while others shout of war’s disaster / Oh, we won’t give in, let’s go living in the past.
Heidi: Hey, jerks.
Fortinbras: From Jethro Tull’s “Living In The Past.”
Fortinbras: Hello!
spindingo: *jazz flute*
Heidi: This is the first version of Maptools I’ve ever actually gotten to connect to anything.
Fortinbras: Oh yeah? Good to have untested success!
Grammaticus: Megaera!
Heidi: Maxpernicus!
Fortinbras: So. Let’s see if these strange powers I hold over you all works. Enough of the creepy The Shining carpet!
Heidi: BATMAN TOKEN
spindingo: Ah, I’m blind! Wait. Okay, there’s a map.
Improvidence: Time for Jonathan to go on some Metal Gear Solid VR Missions.
Heidi: It’s way off into one corner
Fortinbras: Yeah, maptool is odd that way. I’ll focus everybody on my view in the future, incase the maps decide to go weird.
Heidi: Ok.
Fortinbras: In the parking lot there’s a big shattered neon F. Overhead, a sign warns: “Motel May lower.” Johnny Walker’s been hanging around this area for a while, it’s hard to get to from the core of the city, but supplies are running low. He’s come to visit a man who knows what’s up in these parts, they’ve talked online. Guy’s real cautious, but he agreed to having a visitor. Johnny, you remember he wanted to impress one rule upon you: knock before you come in. You’re at his door on the second floor. What’cha gonna do?
Improvidence: Okay, uh, let’s start with a knock, then.
Fortinbras: There’s a lot of shuffling behind the door before it opens. Just inside, you see a trapped shotgun on a table, pointed doorward. The man who let you in lazily swings a bungee cord that had been hooked up to the door a moment ago. “Hey William,” he calls through two broken down motel walls. “Your visitor, man.”
Fortinbras: Bill Brogden sits at a desk, ensconced with some nice-ass computers and server equipment.
Fortinbras: (Not getting shot is a good start.)
spindingo: Hah, that means he likes you.
Improvidence: Passed test #1.
spindingo: Got a permission issue on Impersonate!
Heidi: (… I am willing to accept Brian not getting shot being good on faith for now, Fort)
Fortinbras: Ah! Let’s see what we can do about that!
Fortinbras: Try now?
Bill Brogden: C’mon in. Have a seat, just don’t go touching anything.
Bill Brogden: Some of this stuff bites back.
Evander: Yeah man, getch’y'ass in here. Cold out.
Evander: And don’t think cause Bill’s a old man he ain’t got a gun on you, you try somethin’ funny.

* Jonathan Walker slides his hands into his pockets obediently. He eyes his surroundings as he comes in, but doesn’t seem any more excited by the idea of him handling the objects around him than Bill is.
* Bill Brogden pulls himself from his laptop monitor to take a look at Jonathan. “Sooo..” Fortinbras: Evander shuts the door and re-rigs the shotgun. The first room is taken up by tables and a pair of Coke machines, the second is cots. There’s debris from the walls that’ve been knocked, plaster dust that kicks up when you walk through it. The final room radiates warmth from a wall of servers.
Fortinbras: Johnny, you’ve got about a day’s worth of food on you. Fistful of fruit leather found under a display in a 7/11.
Heidi: (Can I request a map centering?)
Heidi: (thx)
Bill Brogden: What can I do you for, stranger? Looking for something?
Jonathan Walker: I’ve heard some of your show. You’re kind of big around here, aren’t you?
Bill Brogden: Far as talking idiots with enough wattage to be heard, damn near the only thing.
Bill Brogden: Figure men who can put two words together aught try and get along best we can.

* Bill Brogden takes a second look at Jonathan and closes his laptop. Bill Brogden: Just trying to.. facilitate is all.
Evander: You can get a few other casts from round the east coast, good music sometimes but not much good for helpin’ anybody get by.
Fortinbras: Evander’s standing as if on guard. He’s not outright hostile, but you’re not sure he’s ready to invite you to stay the night, looking at you the way he is.
Bill Brogden: I’m Bill all right.
Jonathan Walker: Jon is my name. I’m a bit of a traveller, and I don’t really know the area. Hoping you might be able to give me a little more information.
Evander: You come up to our door for information? Information in dinner form, is that it?
Bill Brogden: Got plenty of users on the board, none many come by to talk about it.
Jonathan Walker: Well… It’s true, I haven’t found much worth scavenging, yet. If you know a place where I might find a meal, that’d be a great start.

* Evander looks to Bill. He seems to have softened a bit on the issue.
* Bill Brogden laughs a little to himself. Evander: We got that reconstitutable Salisbury and potatoes neither us can keep down, what do you think, big man?
Bill Brogden: I miss that box of Pemmican bars when I think about those Banquet meals.
Bill Brogden: .. but it sounds like Jon here can do us some good tool.
Bill Brogden: -l
spindingo: (but he was thinking tool)
Evander: Man, I wish I didn’t even know what pemmican *was*.
Evander: Awright, sit ye down on that bed and we’ll get you a meal fit for the rattiest-assed king you ever saw.
Fortinbras: Notice rolls, if you please!
spindingo: Uh, is it Smarts Die + Notice die?
Fortinbras: Just the notice die. In this, TN is always 4 and rolls are more heavily augmented by modifiers, or such is the impression I get.

* spindingo rolls: d8 + 2 => 8 + 2 = 10
Grammaticus: I thougth the TN was modified, but the effect is the same either way.

* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 4 spindingo: Hooray Alertness.
Fortinbras: Holy hell, is that your notice?
spindingo: 3 points and Alertness
spindingo: Being paranoid isn’t all bad.
Fortinbras: Wow. Wow. Alright, Bill, you hear three sets of footsteps coming up the metal steps. Through the motel’s small whitewashed window you catch a small flash of something, maybe a lighter.
Bill Brogden: Got us some visitors, boys. Six boots.
Evander: Shiiit, you got friends, Jon?
Jonathan Walker: N-no, no, I’m here alone.
Evander: Got your ass followed then, huh? Maybe they thinkin’ it’s only you in here.
Jonathan Walker: There a backdoor here? Are we boxed in?
Evander: Yeah, we got a back door. Just gotta push that dresser out the way and we can get down to the office from here.
Amordea whispers: When making skill and attribute rolls, it looks like Wild Cards also get to roll a “wild die” in addition to their skill or attribute die. It’s a d6. They take whichever result is better of the two.
Bill Brogden: Not sure you can keep me down if these clowns are here to trash my operation.
You whisper to Amordea: Ah, right! Meant to remind everyone of that. Will do on the next roll.
* Bill Brogden pulls out his .44 Fortinbras: Bill catches someone trying to whisper and failing on account of how hoarse their voice is, “throw it!”
Bill Brogden: Get down!
* Bill Brogden moves under his desk.
Fortinbras: Initiative rolls, which I’m going to make a d20 with no modifier, folks! Closely enough approximates the deck of cards approach.
* Evander ducks into cover underneath the window.
* You roll to yourself: d20 => 18
* You roll to yourself: d20 => 6
* You roll to yourself: d20 => 19 Improvidence: Jon is gonna move down to get some minor amount oc cover behind the cot.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d20 => 5
Fortinbras: He gets to roll again!
Improvidence: I’m quick, so I’m rerolling that.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d20 => 18
Grammaticus: Yowza.
* spindingo rolls: 1d20 => 13
Fortinbras: Forgive me a short delay, first time I’ve actually set initiative in this!
Fortinbras: As you might expect, a molotov comes a-sailin’ through that window.
Fortinbras: It shatters over the desk, getting the floor and server bank, and spattering across Evander’s jacket.
Fortinbras: He’s alright, but cornered by the fire. And I forgot to rollme that one.
Fortinbras: From outside you hear someone yelling, making no effort to conceal themself this time.
Crone 1: Goddammit, goddammit, you don’t go in! You wait!–
Fortinbras: But it’s a little late, and a guy comes crashing through the door.
Fortinbras: And he gets shot down!
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
Improvidence: Can I grab a blanket off the cot here and try to help out Evander get the fire out?
Fortinbras: He didn’t fully catch fire, fortunately.
Fortinbras: Also, I’m sorry, that guy was only Shaken.
Amordea: Batman lives!
Improvidence: Aha.
Fortinbras: Shotgun so nearly got him.
Improvidence: Let’s see if mine can finish the job.
Improvidence: So, with buckshot, I roll shooting +2, yeah?
Fortinbras: An interesting thing about this game. Your move and shot are assumed to take place at the same time, so you can move into and out of cover.
Fortinbras: I think that’s right.
Fortinbras: out of and into, i should say
Improvidence: Ah yeah? I can shoot and then move back into cover?
Fortinbras: Year.
Improvidence: Awesome. I’ll take a shot and then move back to the wall.

* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+2 => 2 + 2 = 4
Improvidence: Bad shot, but gogo shotgun!
Fortinbras: Hahah. Yep, that does hit.
Improvidence: Close range is 3d6.
* Improvidence rolls: 3d6 => 17
Improvidence: Blam!
Fortinbras: Hoo, goddamn!
Amordea: jesus.
Fortinbras: That dude is some kinda dead.
Improvidence: And I’ll move back to the wall.
Improvidence: And that’s all for me.
Fortinbras: More of that muttering from outside, “shit, shit, shit!” and since the plan’s gone to hell they just filter in after their friend.
Fortinbras: It’s hard to get a bead on Jon from there, so they take aim at Evander. Who you are actually in control of, anyone who would like to be!
spindingo: I’ll open that up to the spectators.
spindingo: or until I get a feel for what I’m doing.
Fortinbras: One of them gets a solid shot on Evander. He’s Shaken.
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
spindingo: All right, if I hop down a square and stand up I could get a shot off on Robber 1?
Fortinbras: Yep. Where the line is narrow, the wall is only about waist height.
spindingo: What I was figurin’. Going to launch a Taunt at him then fire.
spindingo: What are the rolls for that?
spindingo: Smarts + Taunt die?
Fortinbras: Your Taunt and Shooting, each with a -2
spindingo: Ah, okay. Got a +2 on Taunt for strong will, so that will balance out.. and I’m already a lousy shot.
Fortinbras: Ah, and a friendly reminder: you get to roll a Wild Die on every skill or attribute roll. It’s a d6, and there’s no penalty for using it, though the same modifiers apply, of course.
* spindingo rolls: d6 + d8 (Taunt) => 2 + 4 = 6
Amordea: They’re separate rolls though. You only get to use whichever’s better.
Fortinbras: Ah, yeah, should’ve been clearer.
spindingo: Sorry, still not getting it.
Amordea: So with the -2 your best was on the d8 at a 2.
Amordea: You’d be rolling a d6-2 and a d8-2 and taking the better of the two rolls.
spindingo: Ah, gotcha.
Fortinbras: You roll your skill, and then you can roll another die separately with–yeah.
spindingo: Think it is still a 4 with Strong Willed, right?
Fortinbras: Yeah, think so.
Amordea: Ah, yeah, right.
spindingo: The d8 roll, that is.
Grammaticus: The Wild Die is always a D6, then? Gotcha.
Fortinbras: Taunt rolls are against smarts, and these guys… well, they’re not. He’s shaken by your taunt.
Improvidence: The -2 is for taking two actions on the round, yeah?
Fortinbras: Correct!
spindingo: Firing the gun is pointless, but let’s see.
Fortinbras: Er, hang on. Let me look up what a taunt does without a raise on it.
Fortinbras: Oh! A raise means he’s shaken, a regular success gives you +2 to the next action taken against him.
Fortinbras: So the -2 has leveled out on this as well.
spindingo: Hah, just a standard d4 for 1 point of shooting -2 and then +2.
* spindingo rolls: 1d4 => 2
spindingo: I like twos.
Fortinbras: Misses him.
spindingo: Can I duck down then?
spindingo: (file that under things to ask first)
Fortinbras: You’ve only moved a single space, so yeah, I’d say so.
spindingo: Done and done.
Bill Brogden: I’m going to mop your brains up with your friends coat!

* Bill Brogden barks loudly before taking cover.
Fortinbras: It’s Evander’s turn. But I haven’t recorded any of his damn stats, so I’ll handle this one.
* Fortinbras rolls: d6 => 2
spindingo: (quick afk)
Fortinbras: He’s still pretty shaky from having nearly caught fire, but he’s a heroic man. He’s gonna charge (slowly, shakenly) through that fire and get to the dresser blocking your escape

* Fortinbras rolls: d6 => 6
Fortinbras: This time he does catch fire. And this time I forget to /rollme again.
* You roll to yourself: 1d10 => 6
Fortinbras: He suffers one wound from the flames. And speaking of those, smoke is starting to fill the room. At the start of Bill’s next turn, he’ll have to roll Vigor or gain a fatigue level.
spindingo: Wild Card die, save meh.
Improvidence: I think Bill and I are both pretty bad at fatigue stuff.
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
Fortinbras: It’ll be a good idea to get outta there soon then. It’s Johnny’s turn again! He’s far enough from the smoke that he’s alright for now.
Improvidence: Well, let’s lean out and take a second shot, at robber 1.

* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+2 => 5 + 2 = 7
Fortinbras: A success, even with the partial cover from the table. What’s ya damage?

* Improvidence rolls: 3d6 => 11
Improvidence: And back and into cover. That’s both shots on my double barrel. Do I have any ammo to reload it? I didn’t buy any at the start.
Fortinbras: He goes *down.* Makes a little dog noise when he does, a kind of “yipe!” that makes his friend jump.
Fortinbras: Yep, you can reload.
Fortinbras: It takes a turn, I believe.
Improvidence: Alright.
Improvidence: Well, that’s all for now.
Fortinbras: This guy’s shaking, maybe from anger or maybe just because you splattered other-robber all over him. He takes a shot at Johnny.
Fortinbras: Lucky for you, the bullet grazes your clothes but doesn’t do anything worse.
Fortinbras: He ducks in there and is done.
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
spindingo: Going lobby a taunt at the robber and then gtfo.
* spindingo rolls: d8+2 => 2 + 2 = 4
Amordea: Dun forgeet your wild die.
* spindingo rolls: d6 => 3
spindingo: Yay Strong Willed.
Fortinbras: That first one’ll do it though. +2 to the next action against him.
Fortinbras: Vigor for me if you would, Bill?
spindingo: Got to move something here?
* spindingo rolls: d4 => 3
* spindingo rolls: d6 => 4
Fortinbras: Hooray for wild dice.
spindingo: Glad to see tiny numbers work so well.
Fortinbras: Moving that will take a strength check or a full turn.
spindingo: Well, worth a lol while I’m here.
* spindingo rolls: d4 => 3
* spindingo rolls: d6 => 1
Bill Brogden: “Evander!”
Fortinbras: It’s moving a bit, but you’ve taken in a lot of years and smoke. Gonna take more.
Fortinbras: Evander’s gonna get himself the hell out of this fire. The way Shaken works, if you get rid of it, it spends your turn. He’s not going to risk that while he’s standing in a fire.
* Evander coughs into the crook of his sizzling arm. “Shit’s rough. Real rough.”
Fortinbras: And now, in the words of our beloved other-GM, something happens.
Heidi: (I prefer ‘How do you play this game’?)
Fortinbras: Heidi, I took the liberty of rolling your initiative and shoving you into this.
Heidi: (Neat. I love being shoved into things)
Fortinbras: You were in the neighborhood making a delivery when you noticed, hey, those guys are preeetty armed to be going into a shitty little motel room, and oh look it’s on fire. It’s just in your nature to check things like this out. So you’ve snuck around the back way, and coming around the corner, you can hear two more sets of footsteps on the stairs and there’s another robber hiding behind this burned out car.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
Fortinbras: Inside, those servers are getting… well, melty. Bill’s screens have violently flickered and died. Heidi, your move!
spindingo: My precious internets.
* Heidi slides down behind one of wrecks in the parking lot, intimidating revolver in either hand. “Hey,” she smiles at the robber ducked down behind the car. “S’up?” she levels the guns at him.
Fortinbras: How many spaces did you move just there?
Heidi: A bunch. I wasn’t paying attention.
Fortinbras: Six squares is the limit. Allowing this because I did say you’d just come around the corner.
Fortinbras: On the steps, you see this guy!
Heidi: That’s kinda what I figured, and I will keep that in mind in the future.
Fortinbras: Gonna shoot at’m?
Heidi: … Yes.
* Robber 4 takes a moment to evaluate this. The math he does shows clearly in his features. Hello, attractive woman. Hang on, what? Oh dear.
* Robber 4 vocalizes the process in this way:
Robber 4: Shyit!
* Heidi rolls: d8 => 5
* Heidi rolls: d8 => 2
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 1
Fortinbras: One bullet makes it. Do that damage you do!
* Heidi rolls: 2d6+1 => 4 + 1 = 5
Fortinbras: He’s grazed. Not bleeding out, but worried about it.
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
Fortinbras: Johnny, next shot you take against this fella gets +2.
Fortinbras: Which… uh, makes it a success, I guess.
Improvidence: Gonna jam some bullets into this gun and take a shot. +2, eh? Well, I’ll need to spend two actions this turn, so that’ll balance out the -2.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+2 => 3 + 2 = 5
* Improvidence rolls: 3d6 => 8
Fortinbras: Well damn! That shotgun is monstrous in these close quarters.
Improvidence: I am a fan of this thing!
Fortinbras: Got a raise on that one, and these guys don’t have much in the way of armor, so you killed another man today.
Improvidence: How’s the smokiness going?
Fortinbras: By your next turn you’ll have to make a vigor roll or be fatigued. A mask or piece of cloth would improve that roll.
spindingo: Bill is being reminded of the old days from the diziness.
Improvidence: Righto, I’m done. Next time I’ll mask up, because I don’t think I can succeed on that roll.
Fortinbras: Yep. It’s the robbers’ turn! And this time they’re all coming out.
Fortinbras: They don’t seem real happy about someone new coming around. These are jittery people.
Fortinbras: The guy who was shaken comes to his senses, and that’s his turn. One of them fires way wide of Heidi, and the other…
Heidi: I need to call the wife briefly. I’ll be back in just a moment.
Fortinbras: Gets a decent shot on her. She’s shaken.
Fortinbras: But!, now that they don’t outnumber you, they make another roll to see if they’re going to run away.
Fortinbras: Like I said. Jittery guys.
Amordea: Hah.
Fortinbras: Anyhow, it’s on to Bill again!
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
spindingo: Yay.
Fortinbras: The customary vigor roll against everyone’s favorite electrical fire.
* spindingo rolls: d4 => 4
* spindingo rolls: d6 => 6
spindingo: Bill has smoked stronger shit.
spindingo: Will spend the full turn to get through.
Amordea: Hahah.
Fortinbras: Hahahah. Nice. It’s not necessary here, but when you crit, your dice… I forget what the term is here, but they explode. And you can roll another of the same die.
spindingo: Ace?
Grammaticus: Ace, yeah.
Heidi: Unless you’re rolling unskilled, ja?
Fortinbras: Yep.
Fortinbras: And now you’ll have to forgive me for a very badly made area, I’ll describe it first.
Heidi: I will… Never forgive you.
Fortinbras: The late evening wind is coming in now, blowing some of the smoke aside. For the first time in a while, the air around here seems clean by comparison with what you were breathing inside. There’s a step down and a gravel roof with a hole in it and a ladder down into a dark room peeking out.
Fortinbras: The thin line is the hole, everything else is inside the room, and not of consequence until you climb down in:
Fortinbras: Climbing down is equivalent to two squares of movement.
spindingo: So, moving it out of the way is the action and I still have my moves about be?
Fortinbras: Yep.
Evander: Go, man, I’ll get out fine!
Bill Brogden: Yeah yeah, I’m going. You too, Jon.
spindingo: I’m about here-ish.
spindingo: and done
Fortinbras: Evander’s no longer shaken, but he’s feeling pretty tired from all the smoke he’s taken in.
Fortinbras: Roll Notice, Johnny.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 4
Fortinbras: The man with the baseball bat is on his way in!
Improvidence: Brave man! Look at all the corpses!
Fortinbras: But he takes a peek in there and, yeah, decides steel himself for a minute.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
Grammaticus: By which he means he picks the metal bat for this one.
Heidi: So all the goons are running off?
Amordea: Hehe.
Fortinbras: Heidi, you’re Shaken. Gonna have to make a roll against this. But yeah, this turn you’re safe from these three at least.
Heidi: Spirit roll?
Grammaticus: Suddenly wish I made a fast, heavy, melee guy, whose weapon of choice was a host of baseball bats.
Fortinbras: Correcto. If it succeeds it spends your turn, if it succeeds with a raise, you get to act as normal.
Fortinbras: Hahahah!
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 5
Grammaticus: Golf clubs. Cricket Bats. A modern day urban-trash ronin.
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 4
spindingo: Heh, like Casey Jones.
Grammaticus: Hah!
Fortinbras: No longer shaken!
Heidi: Yay
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
Improvidence: So, I’d like to get out one of my surgical masks, so I’m not inhaling this smoke.
Fortinbras: Gonna have to make your fatigue roll first, but you can get your mask on right after that.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d4-2 => 1 – 2 = -1
Fortinbras: Success!
Improvidence: Is my wild die modified by my hinderance?
Fortinbras: That’s a lie.
Fortinbras: It is, but it’s worth a shot!
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6-2 => 5 – 2 = 3
Improvidence: Fatigue! What’s that do to me?
Fortinbras: Damn, close. You gain a fatigue level, which shouldn’t be too bad for you if you get out of here quickly. All your trait checks are made at -1 until you get clean air. If you move to the other room this turn, you won’t have to make the roll next turn.
Improvidence: Right, gettin’ out of here!
Fortinbras: “Something happens,” as they say.
Fortinbras: You hear her first. She’s tucked in almost underneath the table the shotgun is on, and she makes the angriest, weakest sound imaginable when you come by. But the sound comes along with a very deft knife strike.
Fortinbras: And I really should’ve made that token visible before I hit enter on that, but there she is.
Fortinbras: You’re Shaken by the blow.
Heidi: It’s the bat guy’s turn I’d be more concerned about.
spindingo: (quick afk)
Fortinbras: Afraid I did that D&D readied action style.
Improvidence: Ow. Well, I’ve still got the shotgun unfired. Is there any way to ready it, and shoot if either of them comes at me?
Grammaticus: Is it safe to assume we can make use of the same tactic?
Fortinbras: That might become a theme in this game. If I forget to do something according to this game’s rules, call me on it. But yeah, for this fight you get readied actions like in ol’ D&D.
Improvidence: Right! Johnny’s gonna give a shout to stay back, and ready the shotgun to fire at either of them if they come at him.
Fortinbras: However, right now you’re shaken, so can’t ready any actions. But hang on, it’s easy enough to do this more proper-like. Roll agility against ‘er.
Improvidence: At a -1 for fatigue, yeah?
Fortinbras: Yep.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d8-1 => 5 – 1 = 4
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6-1 => 3 – 1 = 2
Fortinbras: You win that one, and she doesn’t manage to hit you.
Improvidence: Ah, good.
Fortinbras: Aside from an agility roll being involved, readied/pre-emptive actions work the same way, as far as I can tell.
Fortinbras: Agility and/or something else, maybe. I’ll check that soon. Anyway, that’s your turn?
Improvidence: So if I want to do a D&D style ready action, I have to win an agility roll to get my attack off?
Fortinbras: Unless you wanna shoot at somebody.
Fortinbras: Yeah, but you’ve just reminded me, it works a little differently. If you “hold,” you can step in at any point, make that agility roll, and if you win you get to do what you want. Sort of a mix between delaying and readying an action.
Fortinbras: So you can interrupt people if you win it.
Improvidence: Can I still hold if I’ve moved already?
Fortinbras: ‘Fraid not.
Improvidence: One shot loaded and two foes. Hm.
Improvidence: Hahah, I feel bad shooting at people with knives. Maybe I shouldn’t!
Improvidence: All right, old lady. I’m gonna teach you to try to knife me.
Grammaticus: What, she can’t be a young crone?
Fortinbras: Hahahah. Do what you gotta to get by in this workd.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+2 => 1 + 2 = 3
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 2
Improvidence: Oh no!
Heidi: THE WALL! YOU BASTARD!
Grammaticus: Hahahah.
Improvidence: Well, I’m gonna get my knife out. Will probably need it. And that’ll be it.
Fortinbras: She’s looking pretty menacing. As if she’d done not a thing in the world to make you want to shoot at her.
Fortinbras: These guys back off a bit. Scared of Heidi and whatever scared their friend enough to make him stop in that doorway.
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
spindingo: Will keep moving to get out of this place.
Fortinbras: OH that’s right
Fortinbras: i need to reveal that ha ha
spindingo: Oh god roborats!
Fortinbras: Cola machines, a desk, a heap of shredded newspapers.
spindingo: Well, that’s five squares.
Heidi: Oo, cola.
Grammaticus: Bill locks the doors, takes a seat, kicks up his feet with a can of Cola. This whole session has been a Coke advertisement.
spindingo: Done. Might open the door and yell at people next time.
Heidi: AW SNAP!
spindingo: *opens top* “Ahhhhh.”
spindingo: Insert jingle.
Fortinbras: Evander takes a look through the fire at Jonathan. Nobody’s got the time to pay attention to his face, so the earnest regret in it might not be the first thing Jon thinks of when he wheezes, “sorry mate,” and scarpers, grabbing a laptop from the desk as he goes.
Fortinbras: Also: haha!
Fortinbras: Also also: that crone is up.
Improvidence: I’ve got first strike! I’m gonna swing at that crone.
Heidi: bitch is about to get stabbed
Fortinbras: Ohshit!
* Improvidence rolls: 1d8-1 => 1 – 1 = 0
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 6
Fortinbras: Ohhh *shit*.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 5
Fortinbras: That hits. Hooray.
Heidi: But, still… Bat man.
Improvidence: Damage is strength +1. Fatigue still hurts that, yeah?
Fortinbras: Only the check. Damage is fine!
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 6 + 1 = 7
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 1
Heidi: AWesome.
Improvidence: Knifin’ king.
Fortinbras: The 1 reminds me to remind you. Snake eyes on skill/attribute roll AND the exploding die roll means a critical failure of some kind. It’s “up to the GM.”
Fortinbras: But that shakes her!
Improvidence: On the wild die you mean, yeah?
Fortinbras: Wild, yes. I am not a bright man.
Grammaticus: I’m not going to be the first one to crack a Johnny Walker joke. I’m just not.
Improvidence: Glad to hear, it, though.
Heidi: I’ve been struggling with that all night.
Heidi: All night, Max.
Fortinbras: If he bleeds, or gets bruised, we’re going to have fits.
Fortinbras: blue red black get it
Fortinbras: Anyway, someone wants to beat your brains out.
Fortinbras: You gonna do your thingy?
Improvidence: I only get a free swing once per round, so that’s all I got.
spindingo: If this was more anime themed we could all be named after a liquor.
Fortinbras: aha.
Fortinbras: HA!
Heidi: Where is my turn? I thought I went before him last time?
Fortinbras: You get your turn right after this guy.
Heidi: OK.
Fortinbras: He barely beats your parry.
Fortinbras: But the blow doesn’t quite connect right. You’re not even shaken. The poor, inept bat man.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
Heidi: yay
Fortinbras: You can see the guy in the doorway upstairs from where you are, but he’s got some cover. -2 on the shootin’ roll.
* Heidi plants a foot onto the bumper of the car, and climbs on the roof, trying to get an angle on the jerk with the bat. Bang bang.
Fortinbras: Oh, thinking! Car’s tough to get over, you move at half speed on it, but it’ll nix that -2.
Heidi: Half is all I need.
* Heidi rolls: d8 => 1
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 2
* Heidi rolls: d8 => 6 Heidi: This die roller hates me.
* Heidi rolls: 2d6+1 => 7 + 1 = 8
Fortinbras: At worst, it’s conflicted about you. Good thing you got two guns.
Fortinbras: That shakes the bat artist.
Fortinbras: Done, or any more moving to do? Got two more spaces.
Fortinbras: K!
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
Fortinbras: Was worried this would be blasted right through. You’re sure not letting me do any damage to you, guys.
* Jonathan Walker ducks down as bullets zip past. Coming here was the worst idea. Fortinbras: What’cha doin’, Johnny?
Improvidence: Oh, I’m up!
Fortinbras: Sho’ are!
Improvidence: Sorry, uh, let’s try and knife this bat man and see if I can get out of here.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d8-1 => 4 – 1 = 3
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6-1 => 5 – 1 = 4
Fortinbras: Can’t quite get it into him. He’s out of it, but he’s big and he can swing his arms alright to deflect.
Improvidence: All right. I’m going to get out of the line of gunfire, anyway.
Improvidence: And be done.
Fortinbras: This turn, only one of them is still spooked.
Fortinbras: The other two figure they’ve still got Heidi outnumbered. They get to shootin’.
Heidi: See, ok. This is kinda a problem for me.
Fortinbras: One of them grazes you just enough to shake you, and the other delivers our first player character wound.
Heidi: Ow.
Heidi: See.
Heidi: Not cool.
Fortinbras: They’re assholes. But don’t worry, Bill will be here to yell at them soon.
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
spindingo: “Get off my lawn!”
spindingo: Will open the door and take a quick look around.
Fortinbras: You don’t see anybody new.
Heidi: I’m new.
Fortinbras: Er, on the map. Bill specifically sees some crazy lady fighting some thugs.
spindingo: Heard them shots too.
spindingo: What kind of shots do I have here?
spindingo: Mouse-over isn’t working on the goons, middle guy an option?
Fortinbras: Ah, it’s cause of fog of war.
spindingo: Well, just going to yell so as I long as I know he’s there, right?
Fortinbras: You can shoot at robber 3 fine, but it’ll be hard to get 5 with that car in the way.
Fortinbras: Yep, you can yell at both of them.
spindingo: Sounds like a plan. 5&3.
Fortinbras: Not gonna allow this guy to go “you don’t scare me, there’s a car between us!”
spindingo: -2 countered by my +2
Fortinbras: Have at!
Bill Brogden: They’re dead, fuckin’ dead. You are too!
* spindingo rolls: 1d8 => 7
* spindingo rolls: 1d8 => 2
* spindingo rolls: 1d6 => 2
Fortinbras: Holy shit I love Bill. Believe it or not, both are successful. +2 to the next action on either of ‘em.
spindingo: I’m done.
Fortinbras: Evander’s on your tail. He’s happy to be out of that smokey room, and he didn’t hear that yelling just now, so he doesn’t know enough to be afraid of coming outside.
Fortinbras: The crone’s still shaken, but the bat man’s head clears. She moves away a bit.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 3
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 2
Heidi: I am still shaken
Fortinbras: Unlucky!
Fortinbras: You can move three squares, at least.
Fortinbras: Is that between the cars, so you’ve got cover?
Heidi: Yes.
Fortinbras: Right!
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
Improvidence: All right, bat man. Gonna knife you again.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d8-1 => 5 – 1 = 4
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6-1 => 2 – 1 = 1
Improvidence: Smoke sucks.
Fortinbras: Gonna give a reminder about bennies now: you can spend one to remove a Shaken state, and if you use it right after an attack that gives you a wound, you can make a vigor roll. A raise on that vigor roll will undo the wound as well, and each further raise removes another wound.
Heidi: Oh, see.
Fortinbras: And I’ll cap that by granting Bill a benny for that yell. Way to get those kids off your lawn, man.
Fortinbras: They can also be spent to reroll any trait roll.
Heidi: I should reread the rules for this game some time.
Grammaticus: What exactly is a raise, by the way? Every 2 over?
Fortinbras: +4
Grammaticus: Aha.
Fortinbras: Yeah. At this level they’re gonna be rare. Well, maybe not for you, mister 12 smarts.
Fortinbras: You done, Improv?
Grammaticus: I promise to take the most improbably shots to counter any advantage that might have given me.
Improvidence: Ah, yeah.
Grammaticus: *improbable
Fortinbras: One of these robbers has been spooked one too many times, and he properly scarpers. You hear a fire extinguisher clanking along the ground, dragged by him. There goes that.
Heidi: Goodbye, computers.
Fortinbras: The others take aim at Heidi and Bill.
Amordea: I am sad for your server farm, Bill.
spindingo: The data is backed up, but the equipment invaluable!
Fortinbras: Heidi’s lucky, the bullet just whips by her ear. Bill gets shaken though.
Grammaticus: Eh. There’s a Best Buy across the street. They’re bound to reopen one of these days.
Fortinbras: Hahahah.
Amordea: Hehe.
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
spindingo: Ah, spirit roll?
Fortinbras: Spirit to do away with that, or as said you can spend a benny.
* spindingo rolls: d8 => 6
Fortinbras: Nice one. I’ll note though, spending a benny doesn’t cause you to lose your turn to getting over the shaken status.
Heidi: If a bennie is spent, do we get our full turn?
Fortinbras: Beatcha to it!
spindingo: So, can I still move?
Fortinbras: Not if you’re overcoming this with a spirit roll.
spindingo: Ah, nuts.
Fortinbras: Yeah. A bit harsh, but will work as strongly to your advantage when you can make people shaken just by yellin’ at ‘em.
Fortinbras: Do you want to use a benny on that after all?
spindingo: True enough! It’s potent.
spindingo: Yeah.
Fortinbras: Okay. Act as normal then!
spindingo: Sooner we can help out Heidi and Jon the better.
spindingo: Get a +2 on 5, right?
Fortinbras: Surely do!
spindingo: Bill fires at him on the way before ducking behind the vehicle.
* spindingo rolls: 1d4+2 => 2 + 2 = 4
* spindingo rolls: 1d6+2 => 5 + 2 = 7
spindingo: Err, just the one shot.
Fortinbras: Yep. Show me the damage!
* spindingo rolls: 2d6+1 => 9 + 1 = 10
* Bill Brogden takes cover behind the car and shouts out to Evander. “Punks to your left, watch out!”
Fortinbras: A big semicircle that overlaps most of his heart gets blown out of him, turned to thick mist in Bill’s passing. Any observing might take Bill Brogden to be every bit the prophet he seems to believe he is.
Fortinbras: Evander takes a shot, even though he can’t quite get a good angle on it.
Fortinbras: It goes wide.
Fortinbras: The crone’s no longer shaken. The bat man finally get to use his bat.
Fortinbras: Can’t quite overcome Jon’s parry though. Boy does that woman with the guns worry him, he moves inside.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
Heidi: I… am going to… do… a… thing. Nah, I’m just gonna attempt my spirit roll and hold the bennie.
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 2
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 4
Fortinbras: Huzzah!
Heidi: And I’m staying where I am.
Fortinbras: Righto. On to Jon!
Jonathan Walker has received initiative. Improvidence: Looks like the doorway’s clear. I’m going to head outside and start loading up the shotgun.
Fortinbras: When you move away from him, he gets to take a swing at you.
Fortinbras: It doesn’t prevent you moving though.
Improvidence: Ah yeah, they have OAs in this one too?
Fortinbras: Yep. There’s no shift mechanic either, I’m sorry to say.
Improvidence: Well, I don’t know if it’s worth it. Let’s try a swing with the knife. I’m supposed to be good at this.
Fortinbras: Might incorporate it later, but let’s see how it plays with it. Gonna take the hit, or stay in and try to drop him first?
* Improvidence rolls: 1d8-1 => 2 – 1 = 1
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6-1 => 6 – 1 = 5
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 5
Fortinbras: It’s not quite enough to get through his parry. You might wanna risk leaving the room anyway. That old woman is lookin’ mad as hellfire.
Improvidence: Even with the ace? Alas.
Fortinbras: Oh! Aced!
Fortinbras: I’m so sorry, I misparsed it because of the -1.
Improvidence: Yeah, is confusing.
Fortinbras: You hit him good. Do yo’ damage!
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 5 + 1 = 6
Fortinbras: He’s got an 8 in toughness, so we’re back where we started.
Improvidence: Hah, okay. Let’s flee.
Fortinbras: He swings the bat real hard, but you’re already out the door by the time it comes down.
Bat Man 2: Lucky sumbitches! God damn! God DAMN!
Improvidence: Great! That’ll be it for me.
Fortinbras: The robber heads for the office!
Fortinbras: He takes a shot at Evander,
Fortinbras: misses, and slams the door shut.
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
Bill Brogden: That little bitch.
spindingo: Don’t suppose I got a shot on batman?
Evander: Boy can have this place f’all I’m concerned, I’m gettin’ gone.
Fortinbras: Not from there. Maybe if you were able to get on the car?
spindingo: Not this turn, maybe next.
spindingo: I’ll watch the door behind Evander and call it a turn.
Fortinbras: Right then.
spindingo: Can’t breathe forever.
Fortinbras: Actually, Evander will hold his turn.
Fortinbras: He’s got an eye on that door. He is a good man.
Fortinbras: The crone comes from the doorway and whips her knife after Jonathan.
Fortinbras: It’s a rough one. Shaken and wounded.
Improvidence: Ouch. So I can spend a benny here to make a vigor roll?
Fortinbras: Yep.
Improvidence: Gonna rely on the wild die for this one.
Fortinbras: Unshaken either way.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d4 => 4
Fortinbras: Nice! Roll it again!
* Improvidence rolls: 1d4 => 1
Improvidence: Comes out to 4, since I’m still fatigued.
Improvidence: Let’s try the other one.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6-1 => 1 – 1 = 0
Heidi: That’s what you need, sucka.
Fortinbras: Ahh, yeah. Another turn in the fresh air will get you feeling okay again.
Improvidence: Alrighty.
Improvidence: Gonna swing at him.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d8-1 => 2 – 1 = 1
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6-1 => 6 – 1 = 5
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6-1 => 4 – 1 = 3
Fortinbras: You are good with those Aces! For a man with terrible luck, you have great luck.
Improvidence: Hahah.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 2 + 1 = 3
spindingo: You figure it would happen.
spindingo: I bet Lucky and Gambling is hell on your dice.
Fortinbras: Not good enough to stop him though. He gets knifed a bit, but don’t even seem to notice.
Fortinbras: Whether he notices or not though, it’s enough to throw off his swing. He misses!
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
Heidi: Back on top of a car!
Fortinbras: Oh, and at the top of this turn the fire spread!
Heidi: nooooooooooo
Heidi: And… well… I’ve already shot at the guy with a bat, so I’m apparently not on his side.
Heidi: So.
* Heidi rolls: d8 => 8
* Heidi rolls: d8 => 2
Fortinbras: Nice.
Heidi: (that’s 10)
* Heidi rolls: d8 => 7
Heidi: So, two hits.
Fortinbras: Very nice.
* Heidi rolls: 2d6+1, 2d6+1 => 7 + 1 = 8
Heidi: Oops
* Heidi rolls: 2d6+1 => 8 + 1 = 9
Heidi: So, total of 17.
Fortinbras: Well… he’s dead.
Fortinbras: You sure can use them guns, sister. That your turn?
Heidi: I do believe it is.
Jonathan Walker has received initiative.
Improvidence: Enough of this knife stuff. I’m loading up the shotgun again and taking a shot.
Fortinbras: Hahahah.
Improvidence: No longer fatigued, yeah?
Fortinbras: Correct!
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 1
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 5
* Improvidence rolls: 3d6 => 10
Fortinbras: Ah, right, using two actions and firing in the same turn balances out for you.
Improvidence: Yep!
Fortinbras: Perfect. You killed a desperately hungry old woman.
Fortinbras: The robber swings the door open, takes a wild shot at Evander, and shuts it again.
Fortinbras: Just a little graze, he’s not wounded any worse.
Bill Brogden has received initiative.
Fortinbras: Oh, but Evander gets to take a shot at him, because he readied an action!
Amordea: Wasn’t Evander hold–yeah.
Improvidence: Brief afk
Fortinbras: He’s successful on the interrupt, but his shot goes very wide.
Amordea: Is that some agility contest thing to determine who gets to shoot first?
Fortinbras: Yeah. And if you successfully hit them, you interrupt their action, if I understand it right.
Amordea: Neat.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
Heidi St Louis has received initiative.
Heidi: Oo, twice.
Fortinbras: Hahahah.
spindingo: Yeah, Bill wants to McGuyver wire the vehicle and pull it up to the door
* Heidi hops onto the other car, guns still out. “Hey! In the… Place? That building is pretty on fire! Just saying!” Fortinbras: Hahah! There might just be enough gas vapor left in it to do that, too. Gimme a straight repair roll then, Bill. I’ll figure out how to work vehicle impact based damage.
Bill Brogden: Goddamn it! Goddamn. My anxiety pills!
* spindingo rolls: d8 => 6
spindingo: Was just going to pull it up next to the door and let the guy choke to death.
Fortinbras: Successful! Next turn, you can drive this green block into that other green block.
spindingo: If not, suggest putting it in neutral and pushing it with Evander.
spindingo: Yay.
Fortinbras: It’ll be a while before the flames get to him, but they will get to him.
spindingo: “Think about what you’ve done!”
Fortinbras: And you don’t need to make a driving roll, because it’s… five feet away.
Heidi: Aren’t there windows in there?
Fortinbras: Windows, and if he wants he can climb right out of there using the ladder to the roof.
Fortinbras: But it’ll keep’m from popping out and shooting at you~
Heidi: Which is good.
spindingo: Not much else going on.
spindingo: Yet.
Heidi: Are we planning on doing more tonight?
Heidi: Because I am about to starve to death.
Fortinbras: We are, but we can take a break. After these important messages, we get to meet Victor Gall and Robert Arnsdale!
Amordea: Hup!
spindingo: Team Blue, go.
Heidi: WOO Thanks. I’m going to need to run down the street to get this food. But I will attempt to go quickly.
Fortinbras: Okay!
Fortinbras: Think we can call this guy doomed. Unless the team feels like spending more bullets, let’s say we’ve stopped him here.
spindingo: Would be best they all get some distance, for health.
spindingo: Don’t want to roast marshmallows on those fumes.
Fortinbras: The motel is much up in flames now. The server room caves in sending a fiery beacon upward. Between that and the robber who got away, it’s probably a good idea to scarper.
Evander: Gon’ take a long time to find a place good as that again, Bill. And all that gear. Man.
Bill Brogden: We had it good, Evander. Best sand castle I ever made.
* Evander chuckles while he cradles his burnt arm. “Got that right.”
* Bill Brogden looks over to Jon and Heidi with a discerning eye then back to Evander’s injury.
spindingo: Anything I can do to help him out with my crude First Aid d4 Healing?
* Evander indicates his relative okayness by joining Bill gazing at the newcomers.
Improvidence: Ah, I may be able to help with that, too.
Fortinbras: It’d be a lovely way to repair trade relations with the Republic of Bill, after this incident.
Grammaticus: Not to interrupt, but, Mouse inbetween the floors. All the cats moving in a pack, eyes trained on the ceiling.
Fortinbras: Johnny’s got a decent set of field first aid tools. He gets a handy +1 to his healing rolls.
Fortinbras: Hahaha!
spindingo: Cool cool.
Amordea: Jon’s going to be my best friend.
Bill Brogden: I ain’t going to shoot you, Jon. Going to get a little work out of you though.
* Jonathan Walker comes down the steps, loading a shell into his shotgun. He begins to sarcastically ask if this sort of thing happens often, but is interrupted by a fit of coughing.
Heidi: back
Fortinbras: Wilkommen.
Grammaticus: That -was- fast, for down the street.
* Jonathan Walker clears his throat, and plants his pack down on the trunk of one of the cars. “Anyone get hit? I’ve got bandages and things, here.” Fortinbras: There is one room that’s not yet ablaze. With a guts roll, someone could brave the supply room.
spindingo: Ah, guts.
Amordea: Is that the one with the car in front of the door?

* Evander raises his arms up, hissing softly. “Yea, I’m a little well done.” Fortinbras: That’s the first door at the top of the stairs.
Amordea: Oh the unrevealed one.
Improvidence: I don’t know if I’m going to make it back out, if I go into a smoky room.
* Heidi slides from the top of the car. She turns her eyes up to the roaring fire of the motel. “Wow. What were you guys kepin’ up there? Some kinda motel excellerant? Oh, and.. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I got shot.”
spindingo: What’s guts again? Spirit?
Fortinbras: Guts is spirit based, but its own skill.
spindingo: Ah, untrained. Scary venture. Might be worth it though.
Fortinbras: No reason not to have a go.
Fortinbras: Anyone who wants to try running in there for some things, roll guts for me!
Improvidence: How smoky does it look in there?
Heidi: I don’t know what’s going on, so I don’t.
Improvidence: smokey*
Fortinbras: It’s not bad yet. If you leave it long the fire will get to it, but right now it’s still going through the other rooms.
Improvidence: All right, let’s see how brave I am.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d4 => 1
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 5
Fortinbras: Heidi: rolling guts will give you the bravery to go into the supply room and get some stuff.
Improvidence: I would be so lost without that wild die.
Heidi: No, I mean IC. I don’t know that there are supplies in there.
spindingo: Yeah, I can’t beat that with my -2.
Fortinbras: Ahhh, right, of course!
Evander: Shame to see all ‘em MREs go up in smoke.
* Evander does not seem particularly sad, despite the impending hunger.
Bill Brogden: The first door on the ramp! We have food and supplies in there.
Heidi: “There are MRE’s in there?
* Heidi rolls: d4 => 3
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 6
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 3
Evander: Sho’, got scads of ‘em.
Heidi: So, 9.
Improvidence: Extremely brave!
Fortinbras: Yes. You are very brave, and are able to carry many things out.
spindingo: Or hungry
spindingo: Someone say Scooby Snacks?
Fortinbras: Between you, Jon’s able to get one day’s worth of food and water for everybody. Heidi is able to get three for each person. Which leads us nicely to me explaining how weight works here.
* Heidi comes out the door a few minutes later, arms loaded with stuff. She drops it on the ground. “So. I’m Heidi. Why were those guys shooting at you?”
Fortinbras: Everybody can carry their strength in days’ worth of food and water. Except for Robert, who’s got a thing that lets him carry even more.
Evander: Bill here is a famous man. Hey, Heidi? Any chance you was headed here to deliver somethin’? Not that it’ll be much damn use now, place all cajun style an’ all, but Bill done hired somebody goes by that name to replace some old gear.
Heidi St Louis: OH! Right. Yeah. I got something like that, I think.
Bill Brogden: Heidi? That’s right, no other reason to be around these parts. Not sure what I can pay you for but you got them rations.
* Heidi St Louis reaches into the ruck sack she set down before going into the fire, and pulls out… a fairly in-tact length of ethernet cable, and a pair of wire snips. “Ta da.” Evander: Heh, see that? Already got a head start on the next operation.
Heidi St Louis: Noooooo. The rations are for jumping into the fire, and shooting those guys in the parking lot. The cable can be paid for with… I dunno. You’re good for it, probably.
* Bill Brogden sighs to think how that cable was going to be used.
Bill Brogden: Those sons of bitches. Hirin’ rats to spoil our work.
Heidi St Louis: Which sons of bitches would this be??
Evander: Hey mister medical mask, you said somethin’ ’bout fixin’ my arms up? And this chick got shot up some. Thanks for savin’ that awful food, but I’m smartin’ here.
Bill Brogden: I don’t know what they’re calling themselves now.
Improvidence: Ah yes, lemme make some healing rolls.
Improvidence: Starting with Evander’s crispy arm.
Fortinbras: If they fail, wounds take a couple days to heal.
Bill Brogden: They’re old government men, trying to control the satellites they lost.

* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 3 + 1 = 4
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 1 + 1 = 2
Heidi St Louis: Wow. NPR got severe.
Improvidence: Okay, that’s one wound removed, yeah?
Fortinbras: Yep.
Improvidence: Patching up Heidi.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 1 + 1 = 2
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 5 + 1 = 6
Improvidence: And myself.
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 5 + 1 = 6
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6+1 => 5 + 1 = 6
Evander: Yeah, we about as close as you’ll get to NPR. No panel shows though.
* Evander shrugs. “Hated those anyhow.”
Bill Brogden: They must’ve traced my signal. Might need a new voice.
* Bill Brogden reflects.
Bill Brogden: Or maybe we could move out.
Heidi St Louis: I think you need way more then that, my friend.
Bill Brogden: Get a leg up on them somehow.
Evander: Yeah, let’s get gone. Them wasn’t government men, Bill, they just knew we had somethin’ to heat.
* Bill Brogden isn’t convienced, but doesn’t see the benefit in it.
Bill Brogden: That’s right, we have to survive. I’ve rebuilt twice before. Will just have to do it again.
Heidi St Louis: Whoever they were, we should probably not hang around here too much longer. They might come back and try to scavenge the remains, and I’m only good for a few gun fights a day.
Fortinbras: It’s probably safest to stick together, with this place going up like a beacon. You can head south into wilderness, but you won’t find much there. Just people struggling even harder than yourselves to get what they need to eat. The city is to the north. There’s a bit of an obstacle, maybe some of you will know about it. General knowledge should reveal something.
Fortinbras: (that is, roll smarts)
* spindingo rolls: d10 => 5
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 6
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6 => 1
Improvidence: 7!
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 1
Fortinbras: Nice smarts! There was some heavy but tightly focused tectonic action up there when things went pear years ago, and the result is a wave of concrete that’s crested and frozen in time. Buildings sticking out of it. Pretty hard to get over. It’s part of what makes this such a good position for Bill, he’s close to the city but it’s hard to get here from there.
Fortinbras: Still, unless you want to walk all the way around Portland, worth a shot heading that way.
spindingo: Sounds like a plan.
Heidi: Let’s rock n roll.
Improvidence: Right!
Fortinbras: Right! Thanks to Heidi and Jon’s bravery, everybody’s carrying their strength in rations. It’s late, but you set out Northward.
spindingo: Singin’ a song.
Heidi: WOO! NORTH!
Fortinbras: The way is broken and strange, but familiar to anyone who’s passed down it before. Not a thing’s changed in years, in fact. Dead cars in the road, everything hollow.
Fortinbras: The first new thing you encounter is catastrophically new. A bridge has crumbled, pouring cars into the ravine below. It’s almost passable just on account of these piled up cars. More stand disused on the bride and the road. It’d take a while to walk around this.
spindingo: Mood tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcHOq8i5Pyk
Fortinbras: Lovely!
Fortinbras: Bet Bill loves Gil Scott Heron.
spindingo: Big time.
Fortinbras: So. You could spend an extra day going around this obstacle, or try to find something in the surrounding area to get you across.
Heidi: How deep is the water?
Fortinbras: Not very. There’s a pretty good drop before you get to it, too. Maybe wasn’t always so far down.
Heidi: How deep is ‘not very’ to the best of our ability to estimate?
spindingo: In fall damage, not feet.
Fortinbras: Hahahah. A lot of fall damage. But we’ll say it’s five feet at the deepest. A trickle, as rivers go.
Fortinbras: Mostly rusty rocks all the way down.
spindingo: Well, no point in risky harm unless it cannot be helped.
spindingo: Unless we are likely to meet highway men on the long road.
Heidi: Well. I have rope.
Fortinbras: You could encounter some trouble on the road, yeah. Climbing down is another option, but I don’t think this is a team with a lot of climbing “expertise.”
spindingo: Not much for climbing or balancing.
spindingo: Maybe we can use that rope for an engineering solution.
Fortinbras: It wouldn’t be too hard to get down onto the mounded up cars below, getting up is a bigger issue.
Grammaticus is disconnected.
Heidi: That’s a fine point.
Grammaticus has connected.
Grammaticus: Disconnect -me-, will you?
Heidi: You should throw a chair, max.
Heidi: Throw. A. Chair.
Fortinbras: The area’s familiar enough that you can find hardware stores. The cars *would* be a bitch to fix, except Bill has that MacGuyver edge.
spindingo: Sure it would be easy enough to get something to help us float across, finding something that can climb us out however is the rub.
Fortinbras: It’s not that broad an expanse. Just a deep one.
spindingo: Backup a semi trailer into it?
Fortinbras: Mighta been one back down the road a bit.
spindingo: If it has some pallets or crates inside that could help us climb out too.
spindingo: Or just use the lumber if it’s been preserved well.
Heidi: Hm. Or, stay with me… Catapult.
spindingo: Yeah, could find an old cherry pricker and..
spindingo: *picker
spindingo: Hah, me.
Fortinbras: There’s a semi a quarter mile up the road. It’s been stripped clean, but it’s nothing you can’t get moving, you figure. It’d take a repair roll (with no -, on account of that edge) and then a driving roll to get it back to the bridge.
spindingo: Anyone much of a driver?
Fortinbras: (sorry for the delay on that, i had to remind myself of what the driving rules were like. all for in-combat stuff, it turns out!)
Improvidence: Nope.
Heidi: I do indeed have a d4 in that.
spindingo: Sweet.
Fortinbras: Give it a shot then!
Grammaticus: That means automatic only.
Fortinbras: Hah.
* spindingo rolls: 1d8 => 5
* Heidi rolls: d4 => 2
* Heidi rolls: d6 => 5
* spindingo rolls: d6 => 5
spindingo: Five it is.
Improvidence: By the way, here’s a thing. When rolling, add the letter e to the end, e.g. /roll 1d8e. That will let the die explode.
Fortinbras: Oh, that’s pretty cool!
Heidi: That is cool.
spindingo: I want to spam the chat now to test this.
Fortinbras: Between the two of you, you get the truck back to the bridge. What exactly are you going to do with it?
spindingo: Uh, profit.
Improvidence: In my tests in another window, I got a roll of 9 on a 1d4e, so it’ll keep going if you get real lucky.
Heidi: How far across is the hole in the bridge?
Fortinbras: It’s just about the length of the semi. Looks like getting it balanced on the junk below is the only trick to this. Well, doing that without being in the truck when it goes over.
spindingo: Maybe we should’ve gone with motorcycles and ramps.
Fortinbras: Hahah.
Heidi: How can a bennie make this more awesome, Fortindaves?
Fortinbras: There’s plenty of debris around to weigh down the gas, if you want to play it that way.
spindingo: Risky jumping.
Improvidence: Jon is going to stand a little out of the way, maybe a little bit behind a concrete divider in the road. Doesn’t want to jinx this, or risk getting hurt by a random occurence.
spindingo: How about we just disconnect the trailer near the edge and use a jack to get it to slide down?
spindingo: Shout out to Archimedes.
Fortinbras: That’s a good one. You got it. Won’t quite fill the gap, but you should be able to rig something up to get that last few feet covered.
Fortinbras: It’s damn dark now. Not deadly cold, but far from comfortable tonight.
Heidi: Maybe we sleep here, and cross in the day time?
Fortinbras: Could do. It’s a little exposed, but nobody would see you in the back of that truck.
spindingo: Not a ripe target I’d think.
Fortinbras: And no one but the dyingly desperate checks cars anymore, that got done with in the first couple years of the new paradigm.
spindingo: Doors that lock too. Pretty cramp but that could help with the warmth.
Fortinbras: Evander’s all for getting some sleep.
Fortinbras: All right, let’s call that close enough to unanimous. The night is uneventful in a familiar, not particularly comforting way. Dreary light shows through the sliding rear door of the truck in the morning and everybody climbs out into the mute sun.
Fortinbras: Food supplies go down by 1 each, and you can make morning scavenging (Survival) rolls. Anyone who wants to look for materials for something, a simple ramp or whatever else you might think of, can do so with this.
spindingo: Well, no point in just sittin’ around.
* spindingo rolls: d4 => 4
spindingo: Ah, forgot the e.
* Improvidence rolls: d4e => 7
* spindingo rolls: d4 => 2
Heidi: Hm. I’m gonna grab a broken off door/hood/trunk top from a car and use it to bridge the last bits of things.
* Heidi rolls: d6e => 23
Fortinbras: Oh ah! Nice rolls!
Grammaticus: !
Heidi: I AM A GOLDEN GOD
Improvidence: Woah.
spindingo: Wha-wha-whaaaa
Fortinbras: Holy fucking hell. You found some ladders, Heidi. A ladder store.
Grammaticus: She returns, walking on ladders as with stilts. With ladders over her shoulder.
Heidi St Louis: How did we miss this?
spindingo: and a bottle of booze under the counter.
Heidi: And also fresh tacos.
Evander: Where you *been* all my life? Savin’ the bad food, gettin’ us across the mouth a hell, what’s next in your day planner?
Heidi St Louis: After I get done with you guys, it’s all rescuing kittens and mansels.
Heidi St Louis: That’s male damsels, for the uninformed.
* Evander mock-fawns. “I’m in distress, ma’am.” Bill Brogden: Helpin’ old men cross the street as it were.
Bill Brogden: Not bad, kid!
Fortinbras: Awarding Heidi a benny for the term “mansels.”
Heidi: Ha.
Fortinbras: You’re able to cross the bridge in comfort and style, thanks to the young lady with the guns.
Fortinbras: Once you get across it’s looking more like Portland already. A body greets you on the way toward an area more dense with buildings, long blackened and dried, leaning on a lamppost wearing a faded t shirt. It says “Ironic Hipster Shirt,” and it is mostly torn away, flitting in the breeze.
Fortinbras: The wave is rising up before you.
Fortinbras: Is there anything you want to look for for your noon hour scav roll? Can always use a bit of food, or maybe just an ideal point from which to observe this next obstacle?
Heidi: I’ll be looking for points of observations and making sure that we can continue toward POrtland.
* Heidi rolls: d6e => 1
* Heidi rolls: d6e => 5
Improvidence: Foodstuffs.
spindingo: Fewd
* Improvidence rolls: 1d4e => 2
* spindingo rolls: 1d4e => 3
* Improvidence rolls: 1d6e => 1
* spindingo rolls: 1d6e => 1
Fortinbras: No luck getting that meal together, but Heidi finds something. At the top of a very gradual slope, there’s a supermarket from whose roof one gets the impression they might be able to see everything up to the wave very well. You gather there, and notice a couple of men inside the automatic glass doors. They’re not doing much.
Fortinbras: Victor Gall, Robert Arnsdale! There’s a bunny. You’ve been trying to figure it out for a little while when company arrives. The sliding doors announce them. Still working. Solar powered. Weird, what still functions.
Fortinbras: Most of the shelves in this market are empty but intact, save one that’s been tipped right on its side.
* Heidi walks in, a hand on the revolver at her hip. Well, one of the two of them. “Hey, boys,” she calls across the supermarket. “S’up?”
Amordea: I leave the figuring out of things to Vic.
Grammaticus: Mic check.
* Jonathan Walker remains outside, shotgun in his hands, though lowered so as to appear non-threatening. Grammaticus: Right then!
Fortinbras: Yer good, Gram.
Amordea: Rob is just smart enough to realize he’s not that smart.
* Evander ducks down when the doors activate, then stands, feeling a bit of a fool. He remains cautious.
Amordea: So there’s people outside? At what point do we notice them?
* Victor Gall adjusts his glasses and squints at the doll. He looks at Robert wordlessly, and gives a start when the doors slide open and Heidi announces herself.
Bill Brogden: Well, let’s see what they got.
Fortinbras: You’ve noticed them by now. A couple’ve come in. Though you probably could’ve noticed them earlier.
Bill Brogden: Taking in a rest, gentlemen?
Bill Brogden: Got a moment to trade some words? Valuable stuff.
* Victor Gall turns sharply, briefcase in one hand, long, bundled blanket in the other. He stammers out a hello in reply, and has to readjust his glasses, shaken down his nose as they were in his surprise. Victor Gall: “O-oh, I didn’t hear anyone coming. We don’t have anything. That is, this isn’t even -our- store, you know.”
* Evander comes up beside Bill, a little bit galled to be out-couraged by the old man and the pretty lady.
Evander: Heyyy, folks.
Heidi St Louis: Whatcha watchin’?
Amordea: The rather large man beside Victor takes a casual step forward to act as a barricade in the event of trouble. He
Evander: Not that we aim to prevent you from watching whatever you might be watching. Especially you, big man. You watch any damn thing you want, I ain’t got a word to say on the subject.
* Evander nods, solidly and politely.
Amordea: He’s gripping his double barreled shotgun in his meaty palms, eyeing the newcomers warily.
* Jonathan Walker doesn’t mind being out-couraged, and he spends a few moments playing rear guard.
Bill Brogden: Just offering the good word in exchange for some more.
Bill Brogden: Got attacked by some arsonist on the other side of the bridge.
Evander: Yeah, Bill’s got it right. We recently transient.
* Victor Gall half turns away from the group and indicates with a jab of his long bundle at the stuffed rabbit. “My friend, here, just noticed the bunny. We stopped in to, well, you know. Groceries. Curious thing, eh?”
Bill Brogden: Just making our way back to the city. You folks seen anything uneasy?
Heidi St Louis: Wait. A bunny?
* Victor Gall nods curtly. “Bunny.”
* Robert Arnsdale doesn’t do any talking, preferring to let Vic handle the words. But he sure does a lot of scowling, seeming ready for a scrap if it comes to it.
* Evander wrinkles his face, and reiterates. “Bunny?”
Evander: Shiiit, okay, that is weird. Little bastard looks downright pristine, don’t he?
Heidi: Wait, so. Is this like a bunyn doll or what?
Fortinbras: Yeah. It’s a big, white bunny doll holding a trumpet.
* Jonathan Walker hasn’t heard any gunfire, and decides it might be okay to peek in and see what everyone’s looking at.
Fortinbras: Beyond it are washrooms and a stairway.
Victor Gall: “At any rate, no. Nothing uneasy. Aside from the toy. We’re on our way through town. Just here to cap off a little project. Building a door.”
Heidi St Louis: O…kay. Now, forgive me if this sounds ignorant but… Why is this rabbit so cool?
Evander: Think about it, man. The fuck’s a bunny doin’ here? All standin’ there like it’s on guard.
Bill Brogden: Maybe it is.
Fortinbras: Notice might help you to make more of it.
Bill Brogden: Makes a sound when someone gets by, you know.
* Victor Gall has only just settled his nerves on the matter of the newcomers when their speculation rattles them again.
* Heidi has to admit, it’s… Kinda interesting. But she’s less patient. Instead, she walks toward the bunny. And, if not stopped, picks it up.
* spindingo rolls: 1d8e + 2 => 10 + 2 = 12
* Heidi rolls: d6e => 1
Fortinbras: Whew! Goodass roll!
* Heidi rolls: d6e => 3
Grammaticus: Don’t think I’m beating alertness, but hey! Dice fight!
* Grammaticus rolls: d8e => 6
Fortinbras: Bill, you might want to call out for Heidi to stop. The eyes are pretty obviously (and may not have ever seemed otherwise, to a man as paranoid as Bill) motion detectors. You can make out a little mechanism in its mouth, and the trumpet arm appears to rotate up so that the trumpet presses the switch.
Bill Brogden: All right, we should leave. You too, friends.
Fortinbras: It’s facing slightly southeast. A person might be able to sneak in and snatch the wee thing up.
Bill Brogden: That’s no toy.
Bill Brogden: It’s mechanical top to bottom, those eyes are cameras.
Bill Brogden: Motion sensors, rather.
* Heidi stops, looking back over her shoulder, “Meh?”
Bill Brogden: Heidi! Get back.
Evander: What if it’s some kinda alarmed-assed bunny? Stay back!
Bill Brogden: That could be a bomb or worse.
Heidi St Louis: if it’s a bomb, or an alarm, it’s guarding something, right? And if something’s worth guarding with a super bunny, it must be pretty sweet, right? And we want sweet stuff, right?
Evander: Havin’ all my arms and legs and head is pretty sweet too.
Amordea: Rob shares a look with Victor, to try and see what he thinks of all this.
Bill Brogden: Well, then work your way at it from behind if you want.
Bill Brogden: keep away from those eyes.
Heidi: I’m going to use my stealths, and come at from an angle that the bunny can’t see?
Fortinbras: Evander gets down behind a checkout line.
Fortinbras: Sure thing.
* Victor Gall stammers something indiscernible before swallowing to compose himself. Then he softly elbows Robert, nodding up at him. “I think our present company has the right idea. Maybe we shouldn’t be so… out in the open?”
* Heidi rolls: d8e => 3
* Heidi rolls: d6e => 1 Heidi: So. No.
Amordea: Rob nods once at Victor. He didn’t like that bunny anyway.
Heidi: Wait! Bennie.
Fortinbras: Good plan.
* Heidi rolls: d8e => 5
spindingo: Excellent.
* Heidi rolls: d6e => 3
Fortinbras: You get up to it. All is still.
Heidi: So, five.
Amordea: Rob moves wherever Vic goes.
* Victor Gall stalks slowly, painfully aware of the words “motion detectors”, to the farthest wall he can.
Amordea: Although he’s keeping an eye on the newcomers still as well as the bunny.
Fortinbras: Going to pick it up?
* Heidi is. Carefully.
Fortinbras: As soon as you do, it starts to raise that trumpet to its lips.
* Heidi sets a finger between the end of the trumpet and the bunny’s mouth.
Fortinbras: It smacks the mouth of the trumpet against your finger ineffectually. All is still.
* Victor Gall takes the moment, which he’s sure will end poorly, to size up Bill. He squints fiercely behind his glasses, as if trying to place the face.
Heidi St Louis: HOLY HELL!!!
Evander: SHIT, WE DEAD.
* Heidi lobs the bunny up, over the shelves, toward where all the men are.
* Victor Gall cringes irritably at the shouting.
Bill Brogden: Caught the tiger, how what?
Fortinbras: Unstoppered, the trumpet begins to move again. There’s a short airhorn blast.
Fortinbras: Then,
Fortinbras: All this shelving gets blown away, along with poor little trumpeter.
* Heidi stops. Boom. “Ok… That was… A lot less funny then I thought it was going to be.”
Heidi St Louis: Everyone ok?!
Evander: A adorable bunny almost killed me! I can’t get this far and get done in by a adorable bunny!
Heidi St Louis: On the plus side… Swet stuff?
Amordea: Ok, Rob’s not too thrilled about having an explosive lobbed in his direction by someone he just met.
* Victor Gall stands, flush against the wall, his shoulders hunched as high as his ears. His briefcase he’s dropped, but the blanket roll he hugs tightly to his chest.
Bill Brogden: Could’ve figured out what you wanted to do with it before you went after it.. Oh god.
Heidi: But everyone’s ok, right??
* Jonathan Walker crouches behind a bit of shelf, arms up to protect his head. “Everyone all right?”
* Evander looks around and, after a while, shrugs. “All good. Yeah? All good?”
Heidi: What is there for sweet stuff???
* Bill Brogden takes a moment to regain his breath.
Bill Brogden: Don’t go running off!

* Victor Gall shouts, trembling, in a voice that also shakes with stress, “Are you people crazy?!”
Bill Brogden: .. are you sane?
* Heidi calls back, “I totally thought it was just a rabbit when I hucked it. I promise to be more careful with rabbits in the future.”
* Bill Brogden stands up from behind the regsiter.
* Robert Arnsdale grits his teeth through the explosion, though comes out unharmed. He grips the barrels of his shotgun tightly while cocking the hammers of his shotgun back. At the moment he isn’t too certain of the intentions of these newcomers. He looks back to Victor to make sure he’s all right and for some sort of sign as to how to handle this bizarre situation.
Fortinbras: There’s a stack of Hustlers, anachronistic in the extreme, who gets this in print form anymore?, and buried under them a kevlar vest that’s in decent shape. Someone wanted to feel safe when they were with these.
Heidi St Louis: SWEET!
* Heidi returns, the vest tossed over her head lazily, the entire stack of old magazines in her arms. It’s obvious she’s more than a little impressed with her find.
* Victor Gall slowly relaxes, eyes jumping from man to man. He looks to Robert last, slowly shaking his head. “I… think perhaps we’d better take care of our business… if anything is even left intact.”
* Victor Gall surveys the debris with a deflating tone.
Evander: You think you gonna find groceries in here now?
Victor Gall: “No. Thankyouverymuch. Probably -not-.”
Heidi St Louis: I’ve offically won. Look at these! You guys can all stop scavenging shit like, forever.
Bill Brogden: How strapped are you men? If you’re headin’ our way we can share some.
Bill Brogden: Company couldn’t hurt, you know.
Jonathan Walker: I’
Jonathan Walker: I’m beginning to think it might.
* Victor Gall stares at the rubble as an argument.
* Evander squints through the still settling dust at Heidi’s haul. “Porno mags.” He can’t summon much more than that.
* Victor Gall sighs. Then, “Which way -are- you heading? Maybe some information isn’t a bad trade.”
* Evander scratches his head. He leaves the sharing of sensitive information to Bill at times like these. He’s a bit more concerned with not getting on the nerves of one of the burliest men he’s seen in his life right now. Bill Brogden: Back to the city, Evander and I were evicted from our home by arsonist.
Bill Brogden: My servers, my radio equipment, all gone.
* Heidi pulls the kevlar over her head with one hand, not dropping her magazines. She tosses it toward Victor. “Here. Shelf replacement fund, Brave Little Toaster.” And then she starts to flip through the issue on top, stopping to admire the ads.
Bill Brogden: Jon and Heidi here were witness to it, dispensed some good justice too.
Bill Brogden: Going to need some more equipment. Going to have to rebuild. Got a booster in the city, we can start there.
Fortinbras: Whoever wants to wear that, it’s got a good feature. Negates up to 4 points of armor penetration, which will cover most guns’ AP.
Amordea: Rob catches the thrown vest with one hand, receiving it without a show of gratitude. He inspects it briefly before passing it to Victor.
spindingo: Something Evander can suit up with?
* Victor Gall processes this quickly with a visible twitch of his features. He gives a soft grunt when the vest piles in his arms. He continues to Bill without reference or acknowledgement to most of his story, “We’re going into town too. I can save you some trouble. That door I’m building is right through the shelf. You know, the earthquake wall.” Fortinbras: Oh, yes. Bill will know some folks in Portland proper, there’re probably some people who are pretty grateful to him. And Heidi’s able to find leads on jobs wherever she goes.
Evander: So when you say building, you talkin’ the kind of building gets done with bunnies, that right?
Victor Gall: “Right. What I’m here, ah, “shopping” for is something to use as a detonator. Unfortunately, I think you just detonated it all.”
Bill Brogden: Might be able to help you out. Got a hand for stuff like that.
* Victor Gall does not seem to be the sort of man who lets the little things go, like explosions. Heidi St Louis: Ok, see. Now you probably should’ve mentioned that -before- I was handling the bo-bunny.
Victor Gall: “Then, I think we’re in business.”
Grammaticus: (Need a very brief afk. Back in a sec!)
Bill Brogden: My friends here have pretty good eyes for rummaging.
Heidi St Louis: Oh, I’m here looking for highly dangerous explosive devices. Better not mention that to people whom are handling suspicious objects I’m observing. Man.
* Heidi St Louis rolls her eyes, but her tone is less angry then playful. Clearly, she sees explosions as something to be fairly nonchalant about.
Jonathan Walker: From now on, you should assume whatever you’re picking up could be dangerous. That way, when it is, we’re all better off for it.
Bill Brogden: Eh, she’s got what you guys don’t. Ain’t all bad now.
Evander: I knew when I saw that bunny it ought to been left alone.
Heidi St Louis: If we left it alone, we wouldn’t have these magazines. Or that vest. Or this awesome story.
Heidi St Louis: C’mon. We’re not going to get to Portland gabbing all day.
* Evander chuckles in spite of himself. “Wonder if Voodoo Donuts still exists. Know that crazy place, makes the bacon donut? Imagine ‘em still makin’ donuts. Gatling guns on the roof, donuts inside.” He’s lost for a moment in a revery of fried dough.
Victor Gall: “That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say, Ma’am. There’s an alternative to a detonator, and that’s, um, internet. You lost all your equipment though, you said?”
Bill Brogden: Evander pulled my laptop.
Amordea: (need a short afk myself)
Fortinbras: Gonna assume he’s long since passed that back to Bill. Don’t think Bill would trust it in any other person’s hands for too long, being as he is about… everything.
Heidi St Louis: I think we’re coming up on a good place to end for the night? My narrative pause sense is tingling.
spindingo: Hahah
Heidi: That’s OOC.
spindingo: I’m about done myself.
Fortinbras: Yep! Figured we’d pause right when they returned to the wall, or a bit sooner.
Grammaticus: That’d be the next step, yeah.
Grammaticus: Let’s all go see the fireworks.
Heidi: I think leaving the supermarket is a good place, and we can deal with the wall first thing next time?
Fortinbras: I agree.
Fortinbras: It’ll be a delight! First thing next session: figuring out that detonator!
spindingo: .. almost as fun as my Monday morning search for a bacon donuts.
Fortinbras: I do want to do one last thing.
Fortinbras: Heheheh.
Heidi: Give us all the XP?
Amordea: (back!)
Fortinbras: Wanna credit some of the artists responsible for these icons. Cause holy god, they’re really good.
Grammaticus: I regret only that I didn’t get to shoot anyone.
Fortinbras: You did really well this round, I’d say, so I’m gonna lay 3 points on you. Probably means a level next week. Most games will be 2 points, and it takes 5 for a level.
spindingo: Yippie.
Heidi: And the artists?
Fortinbras: Let’s see if I can paste this directly.
Fortinbras: Max’s avatar by Cuson www.michallisowski.com/ Alex’s avatar by 2013 http://2013.deviantart.com/ Megan’s avatar by Arnold Tsang http://arnistotle.deviantart.com/ Amice’s avatar by Michael Kutsche http://michaelkutsche.deviantart.com/ Crone by Tim Xu http://blog.sina.com.cn/flowerzzxu Robber by Ishmael Medrano http://www.cannibalcandy.com/gallery/index.php’>http://cuson.deviantart.com/ Sarapis’ avatar by Michel Lisowski http://www.michallisowski.com/ Alex’s avatar by 2013 http://2013.deviantart.com/ Megan’s avatar by Arnold Tsang http://arnistotle.deviantart.com/ Amice’s avatar by Michael Kutsche http://michaelkutsche.deviantart.com/ Crone by Tim Xu http://blog.sina.com.cn/flowerzzxu Robber by Ishmael Medrano http://www.cannibalcandy.com/gallery/index.php
Fortinbras: Came out a little weird. Decently enough though. I say check them out.
Heidi: And now, g’night, y’all.
Amordea: Yeah, forfiter is amazing.
Amordea: Good night.
Fortinbras: Ta-ra! We’ll get a next day sorted soon~
Fortinbras: Thanks very much for coming. Hope you didn’t mind the rocky bits.
spindingo: Great! Good fun, appreciate it!
Amordea: Got us all together now. Sounds like some promising times ahead!
Fortinbras: Hope so~
Improvidence: Yeah, gonna be fun. See ya next time.
Grammaticus: Quite!
Grammaticus: Au revoir!
Amordea: Bye all.

Epigraphs

Ended up getting lazy about this after all! Finally about to post a log of our first session though. I’ve agonized over how much to cut, and ended up deciding “nearly nothing at all,” so the only thing missing will be the /rollmes I fill every session up with, which people tend not to see anyway unless I’ve forgotten to privatize it. I might actually remove some rolls I forgot to make to myself, but leave in lines referring to the mistake – if that happens, woops! Super sorry! But before we get to the logs, here, collected, are all the epigraphs used so far in r- along with the song, poem or whatever it’s from linked if appropriate.

I tend to wonder about the impact of these.  I love them, but it’s hard to tell if the bit they reference most strongly is going to be in the game that week, so sometimes they end up tagged onto the wrong game.  Which is problematic!  Can’t go back and do rewrites in D&D, son.  I also rarely get feedback on them, so hardly know if they’ve had any impact on the game.

Apart from any of that, I quite like doing them, so here they are.

WordPress is some garrrbage, and for no reason I can identify I can’t make hyperlinks right now.  I’ll be providing the links next to the titles.

Hilda Doolittle’s “Sheltered Garden” – http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/hd/11959

Happy and I’m smiling, walk a mile to drink your water
You know I’d love to love you and above you there’s no other
We’ll go walking out while others shout of war’s disaster
Oh, we won’t give in, let’s go living in the past.

Jethro Tull’s “Living In The Past” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCyC1dZiN8

I’ll be the axe that clears the forest.

Murder By Death’s “Rum Brave” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPEmRhYOOuY

They were lost in rock formations
or became park bench mutations.
In the sidewalks and in the stations
they were waiting, waiting.

Neil Young’s “Thrasher” - http://audioboo.fm/boos/439634-neil-young-thrasher

It takes much more than wild courage
or you’ll hit the tattered clouds.
You must have just the right bullets
and the first one’s always free.

Tom Waits’ “Just The Right Bullets” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov7-Ujz1ecs

In the night you hide from the madman you’re longing to be
But it all comes out on the inside, eventually

Steely Dan’s “Here At The Western World” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umoHZbKnUW4

Look west look west, look west and look away
from old familiar faces.
Yu don’t want to see these guys
without their masks on.

The Mountain Goats’ “The Autopsy Garland” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHiqn4z-1Wk

I could scrape the colour
from the petals
like spilt dye from a rock.

Hilda Doolittle’s “Garden” http://www.poetiv.com/doolittle-hilda/garden.html

There’s a big dark town
It’s a place I’ve found
There’s a world going on
Underground

Tom Waits’ “Underground” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciBAMhLiwyQ

The ancient songs
Pass deathward mournfully

Richard Adlington’s “Choricos” http://www.bartleby.com/265/11.html

On Saturday morning it’s adventure time! Don’t miss Frontier, the story of thirty people who brave bitter weather, loneliness, disease, starvation and hostile Indians to reach Utah, only to find they don’t like it there!

George Carlin’s “A Place For My Stuff” - http://audioboo.fm/boos/439646-second-announcements

teleology (from Greek telos, “end”; logos, “reason”), explanation by reference to some purpose or end; also described as final causality, in contrast with explanation by efficient causes only. Human conduct, insofar as it is rational, is generally explained with reference to ends pursued or alleged to be pursued.

Encyclopaedia Britannica on teleology - http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/585947/teleology

They cry in the night their battle name;
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

James Joyce’s “I Hear An Army” - http://www.lit.kobe-u.ac.jp/~hishika/joyce.htm

Great balls of fire
Guess who just crawled out the muck, the mire.

MF Doom’s “Saliva” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxcqTiLVYa0

I met a seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean eidolons.

Walt Whitman’s “Eidolons” – http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/wwhitman/bl-ww-eido.htm

I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from earth;
And send imagination forth
Under the day’s declining beam, and call
Images and memories
From ruin or from ancient trees,
For I would ask a question of them all.

W.B. Yeats’ “The Tower” – http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/782/

r-

This is going to double as an open thread about r- for current and future players.  Anything you want to say about the game so far in a threaded format, please do comment.

In the time I’ve been not-blogging, I’ve been running a postapocalyptic tabletop game called r-, after the theory of r/K selection.  An r-selective environment is a deeply unstable one – a sea that’s irregularly ripped up by powerful storms, a desert where food is extremely rare, but abundant when found.  It’s not an environment humans are meant to survive in.

It’s set in the same world as my book Big Town, but has no recurring characters.  Some of the people those characters are based on are players in this game, and it would just be deeply, powerfully weird to have them meet fictional versions of themselves, roleplayed by fucking me.

Blog deserves a load of stuff relating to this.  What it’s all about, thoughts on the process so far, logs of the game so far, but for now, as we reach the end of the first “season” of the game (marked by a change of city and of system, from the loose and untested Savage Worlds to the brilliantly easy to resolve, but rigorously playtested and carefully concieved World of Darkness core book) I want to describe, mostly for the benefit of players, some of what’s going to be different next season.

Most notably, in the first season, the party lacked a base of operations.  They moved from place to place.  Proper wasteland wanderers.  In the second season there will be a base of operations right from the start, which allows for a lot more flexibility, ultimately.  When the team has a place they can always go back to, they can take their time, decide what’s important to them, and generally have more power over the course the game takes.  I found that giving my party no place to call home made the game awkwardly linear, especially since my goal from the start was to let the characters’ motives be the primary source of plot.

They won’t be limited to this base, they won’t be required to return to it, and they’ll have the option of taking new bases as the game goes on.  The result is more consistent characters.  In the first season the game had a The Road-like tendency toward transiency: my guys pass through the lives of others, rarely encountering those people again after they’d moved on.  It’s a pretty interesting approach to a story, but makes a tabletop game frustrating on some level, I suspect.

In WoD there will be community, there’ll be identifiable parties and it’ll be up to my party to figure out who they want to make antagonists of and who they want as allies.  There’ll be enough depth to the city, hopefully, that they’ll always have a broad choice of things to do, and I won’t always be able to anticipate what, exactly, the hell they want to have a shot at next.  I really, truly want the shape of this game to be in the hands of the players.

Another difference comes from the change of system.  WoD is just better defined in every possible way.  You don’t have to take your skills based on vague impressions provided by the Savage Worlds book only to have it turn out that my interpretation of the rule was different, and I wanted a different roll for whatever you’re trying to do.  Chargen is more involved, but makes loads more sense.  Some of the numbers look vaguely arbitrary, but it’s rather the opposite.  Instead of lazily slapping multiples of five or ten around on character sheets, they’ve playtested all this stuff carefully, and derived the chargen process from that playtesting.

And speaking of WoD, one of the players has played a *lot* of WoD.  Which means I’ll always have someone there to keep me in check.  I don’t think anyone knows the miserable Savage Worlds book better than I, so when I make a mistake, sometimes it goes unnoticed.  Maybe I catch it weeks later, reading the book or going through the logs, but sometimes, presumably, it’s never caught at all.  Meg’s expertise will mean what’s in the rules is what’s in the gottdamn game.

There’re characters I had no idea it’d take so long to introduce.  I’d never run a game before, so had no clue about how it would be paced.  Pacing will, I hope, be a lot nicer.

There’s other stuff, but I think this is enough to chew on for the mo’.  Further posts in the next few days, assuming I don’t wander off again.

Players: what are your thoughts?  Other people who’ve run games, whether you’re in this one or not: advice?

re: the last conversation:

Integrity No2: Ha! I actually have had several guys mention that to me.
Integrity No2: These are always the same guys who respond to finding out I’m gay with an ‘ohhhhhhhh that explains everything’
Boneyard Jones: I keep trying to think of the thought process that leads to that statement. “I bet she’d value my unsolicited opinion on SOMETHING, but WHAT? Hm. Hm. Oh I know, her body!”
Integrity No2: ‘Women are rarely offended about remarks about their bodies, and I am known for my delicate and tactful manner.’
Boneyard Jones: This is the way forward! Follow it up with my trademarked line – hey bitch, wanna hit the beer bong? – and I will have a friend for life.

a bee: Someone actually said to me, “muscles on girls are gross.”
Boneyard Jones: It’s a popular opinion.
a bee: Oh, I know, but it isn’t usually expressed by someone who’s looked at my arms, then decided to deliver it to my face.
Boneyard Jones: Kinda creeps me out.  The opinion I mean, not the muscles.  “I am REPULSED by the idea of women having physical strength!  It is simply intolerable madam!”
a bee: I love you, you get it.
a bee: When he said that, my brain grabbed my face from behind and bent it into this expression: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8ZdO2FocaNA/RjUdE6xD_7I/AAAAAAAAAJ8/zUieHwA9xlo/s400/dumb+face.jpg

Too much coffee and unfiltered tobacco. Let’s see what comes out, no edits.

Nothing in the world more full of bullshit than an artist who doesn’t care about success. I don’t mean people doing it cause they love doing it, I mean starving artists. People who care about meaning and expression but like it’s a religious thing, like just making it is all you gotta do. I’m a secular humanist about art too, the fuck are you doing it for if it hurts to make, you’re broke and nobody knows about it? (You’ve only published a few bits of food journalism Fortinbras.) I’m in training motherfucker. I figure I got ideas worth pushing, just gotta refine, develop experience to match the method. I got the medium down. Know who I like? Mary Shelley. You got an idea you think the public should know about, don’t make it about a boring damn family, make it a monster story. People will read it then. Do otherwise it’s all ego.  Plus I love fucking money.  I’m a socialist but if you think a socialist can’t love fucking money you’ve been in America too long, got your definitions all bent.  It’s like feminism, there’s a range of ideas and you don’t gotta subscribe to all of em, son.  You can’t, some are in direct conflict.  Here it is a simpler way: you can be a feminist and like cocks.  Not in conflict, not a rarity, not even a minority opinion.

Ahem.

(You’re broke as shit and nobody’s read your work, Fortinbras.)  I’m pulling back on the bow still.  Bret Easton Ellis keeps going on about post-Empire, pointless, don’t care.  More importantly we’re post-Idol.  The message everybody’s acclimated to, it’s not true but it’s close to not mattering that it’s not, which’ll fucking make it true, is that your first shot is it, no screw ups or do overs or second shots.  That’s media, not life, but they’re a bitch to tell apart.   And it so happens that true or not I got this image of my first step on stage being this shattering fucking Mjolnir stomp.  In the mean time I still love doing it pro bono and in silentium, the practice rounds have all hurt like hell but in a way I nothing but love.

Still, I’ve written some pretty good shit.  Feels weird to be stomping alone.

A Theory

Copied and pasted from IMs.

Boneyard Jones: You know what I just did? Sent that to Alex, then copied and pasted it to you, and then Amber, then tried to think who else to send it to. Then I stopped thinking for about ten seconds, because one part of my brain was kicking the shit out of another part of my brain and yelling “YOU JUST WROTE A BLOG POST.”

Most north american authors grow up relatively the same way, and the result is that their work follows a sort of trend. Early stuff, people don’t have families. Or else their family gets killed early on, or in some cases there’s a really rocky relationship between a protagonist and his or her parents. As they grow to understand how relationships work, family plays a larger role.

Consider Gibson: in Neuromancer nobody has or mentions any family member, but come the most recent stories, his protagonists’ mothers and fathers, though never met, weigh on many of their thoughts and decisions. There are irresolvable tensions and regrets, especially in Pattern Recognition.

That’s not the theory though, that’s just a basic observation.

Okay, George Lucas was married during the first three Star Wars films, only got divorced the year Return came out. He remarried in 2007, two years after the last prequel was released. In the original movies we had Luke’s only known family dying, but it wasn’t the usual pretext for unfettered adventure. Looked like it would be, but then the whole trilogy turned out to revolve around Luke’s familial relationships – it was Vader’s connection to Luke that ultimately made him whip the emperor over that railing.

Here’s the theory: George Lucas went in reverse. He grew up to be a child, producing his most mature work right away and then progressing into ridiculous crap with a cartoon sea-rabbit in it.

Get ready to welcome this weird shit back into your lives, everybody.  Ice cream nonsense is coming back soon too, SOON AS IT STOPS HAILING IN MU’FUCKIN SPRINGTIME, and I’ve got a hell of a backlog, but there’s one project I’ve been wanting to get to since I heard about Thomas Keller’s tobacco and coffee custard he made for Tony Bourdain.  Yes my sons, it’s pipe tobacco ice cream.