Road Trip AP - part 5

Session 3:

Dmitri's original player has dropped out to run a Spycraft campaign, because he does love his espionage games.  I gave Theo the option of dropping Dmitri and creating his own character from scratch, but he's having fun playing the hard-drinking Russian.  We gave Dmitri an extra character attribute to show how drunk he is at the moment -- each scene Theo rolls a D6, and raises or lowers it depending on whether it's higher or lower than the current score.  The bare-bones nature of the system makes it easy to customise characters that way.  What drunkenness actually means for Dmitri is something we still need to determine.

Dmitri was the original navigator, with Eve stepping in when it looked like he wouldn't be available.  The team have agreed to keep her in the role, because having a navigator who can't reliably follow a line on a map with his eyes would just be an opportunity for the GM to mess with them.  (And I would have.  Count on it.)

With the race on again in the morning, Eve and Edith decided to go to bed at a reasonable time and get a good night's rest.  George did the same because he doesn't like to stay up late.  (His player describes him as 'pretty boring'.)  The others stayed up because a little thing like the threat of disqualification wasn't enough to discourage them from playing practical jokes -- and now they owed Team Rocket for the inconvenience of having to climb out a bathroom window to avoid the police!

Chad had the beginnings of a plan involving a squirrel, and some bait to obtain one.  He needed a sturdy squirrel container to go along with it, though.  A rucksack wasn't going to do the job.  Where was he going to get something like that, this late at night?  ...It turned out that Ziggy might know a guy.  (Wong made a successful luck die roll.)  There was a Genius in Monticello who worked with animals and Ziggy kinda sorta worked with him for a while... but they didn't part on the best terms.  In fact, it was probably better not to mention Ziggy's name.  (Wong voluntarily rolled a second luck die to see what their relationship was like.  He rolled a 1.)  He gave Chad the address.  The lateness of the hour wouldn't be a problem.  This guy had to get up periodically through the night to -- you know what, that didn't even matter.  Chad and Dmitri decided to go on foot.

Eve and Edith had only been in bed for half an hour when someone knocked at their door.  Edith got up to look through the loop and found a Chinese takeaway delivery boy standing outside with an insulated transport container.  She thought about ignoring him, but he kept knocking.  "Hey, you gotta pay for this!  It comes out of my wages if you don't!"  Eve tossed her some money.  "Just sort it out, Edith.  Please."  Edith paid the delivery boy for the sweet-and-sour pork neither one of them had ordered and went back to bed.  Forty-five minutes later it happened again.  "Pablo's Pizza, gotcha Jalapeño Horror right here, thas fourteen-fifty thankyuh."  And half an hour after that.  "Bigger Belly Burgers, I got a cheeseburger stack and megafries for 'E'?"

The two of them gave up on sleeping in their room at that point.  They discussed whether Team Rocket was responsible for this outrage as well, but it seemed more like a Faster Pussycats prank.  Eve called Pablo's and ordered an all-anchovy pizza to be delivered to the Pussycats' room.  She hung a note on the door reading WE GAVE YOU THE WRONG ROOM NUMBER - PLEASE GO TO 14 (which was Arthur and Junior's room).  They bundled up whatever sheets and blankets they could carry and found a thick, leafy tree just outside the motel's property to wedge themselves into for an attempt at sleep.  As they left the courtyard, they saw that there was a delivery driver knocking on Team Alabammy's door as well (no answer) and Team Human, all wearing Batman pyjamas, had a line of drivers outside their door, where they were ranking them by height.

Chad and Dmitri arrived at the address Ziggy gave them.  It was a house in the suburbs with a discreet brass plate on the door --

H. Lucas

Exotic animal supplies

That seemed like a promising beginning.  Chad knocked on the door.  Soon they heard footsteps inside and someone was peering at them through the mail slot, demanding to know their business.  Curious to know what the man would say, Chad introduced them as friends of Ziggy's.  "Ziggy?!  Is that son-of-a-bitch with you?  I lost three years of research because of him!"

Chad assured him they were alone, and wanted to buy supplies.  Dr Lucas reluctantly let them in and led them down a hallway with several steel-plated doors (locked) to a kitchen.  He sold them a steel mesh squirrel cage and some squirrel tranquilliser (but not before opening the container and taking a deep snort of the powder it contained).  Chad got a crash-course in administering squirrel sedative.  "Shove the pointy bit of the hypo in the meaty part of the squirrel's ass and push the plunger.  It's so simple I've trained rats to do it.  Don't give Ziggy the job."

They paid and left to begin the trek back to the motel, only to have a van screech to a halt next to them.  The side door opened and Team Alabammy leapt out.  Faced with the choice of grappling the commie they drank with or the dude who baked them hash brownies, they picked the commie.  The twins grabbed Dmitri and tried to drag him into the van.  He knocked one of them on his ass with his bottle, a move they were completely unprepared for.  Chad waded into the fight and with his steroid-enhanced muscles, he landed a heavy punch on Jimmy, who toppled back into the van.  Seeing how quickly the fight had gone against his team, the twin still on his feet decided not to face two-on-one odds and backed away.  The two WTFers heard Jimmy's plaintive voice ask "Did you get the brownies at least?" as the van accelerated away.  Dmitri's bottle was the fight's only casualty.

Back at the motel, they collected Ziggy and went hunting squirrels in the woods behind the buildings.  Between Chad's bait and Ziggy's lubricant making an inescapable trap, they were able to bag and drug a big squirrel.  There was leftover sedative and more room in the cage (Mila rolled a 3 for number of doses), so they stalked and captured two more.  Another big one, and an average sized squirrel.  Stage one of the plan was complete.

The next stage was to find out where Howard and Samantha Long were.  Team Rocket's co-leaders weren't staying at the hotel with their driver and navigator and they were the targets for retribution.  Ziggy had the idea of downloading a phone app to make his voice sound like a child's, and call around the better hotels in Monticello, asking to be put through to Mummy and Daddy Long's room.  The rolls went well and he got connected, finding out which hotel was theirs.  When Samantha answered, he turned the app off.  "Hello, this is One Lucky Horse's Ass Takeaways.  What's your address for delivery please?  I have an order of sweet and sour pork for you."  Samantha wasn't amused.  "You must be joking, we don't eat that American crap!"  She hung up.  WTF concluded that maybe Rocket wasn't behind the fast food deliveries to the motel, but they still had to pay for their deeds.

The final stage of the plan was to feed the squirrels some of Chad's steroids, coat them with Ziggy's lubricant and inject them with some Red Bull stolen from Edith to counteract the sedative.  Chad, Dmitri and Ziggy each took a squirrel and synchronised their watches.  Chad headed in to the centre of town, where his climbing wall skills made scaling the side of the hotel easy.  The squirrel was just starting to revive and under the effects of the steroid it was intensely angry.  He just managed to get it in through the window before it snapped at his fingers.  There was a rage-filled screech from the animal, then crashing and banging.  The light came on and there were two voices swearing in Chinese as Chad descended the wall and legged it at top speed.

Ziggy broke a Team Alabammy window and hurled his squirrel inside before tucking and rolling to slip away.  There was furious barking for a moment, then a crash and it changed to a whimper.  He ducked as he heard gunshots and someone shouted "Look out, that sqwerl's gone rabid!"  There were more shots and furniture breaking, then Alabammy came spilling out into the courtyard where they formed up into a defensive line facing the doorway.

Dmitri took the regular-sized squirrel and tossed it into the Faster Pussycats' room.  There was a moment of quiet, which was broken by angry chittering.  Then the lights came up, there were screams and the sound of the room being overturned.  Risking a glance in through a window, he saw three of the Pussycats trying to fight the squirrel with stiletto heel shoes.  Maggie was aiming a raygun, but having trouble drawing a bead on the fast-moving rodent.  Dmitri knocked on the door.  "Ladies, is some problem?  Can help?"  There was a buzzing sound and a circular piece of door the size of a coin disintegrated.  He ducked fast.

Ziggy stepped inside one of the Team WTF rooms and made sure the blinds were fully closed, then started flicking the lights on and off and shouting.  "Ahh!  It's a squirrel!  Catch it, someone!"  With any luck, Team Human would get the blame for this.

Soon after, the police arrived again.  Everyone except Team Human was in the forecourt by this point, standing in their sleepwear and listening to the enraged squirrels wrecking things in their motel rooms.  The two police officers were just deciding that this was an animal control issue and not their problem when Chad's steroids began to wear off and the two squirrels shrank back to ordinary tree rats and forgot that they'd been fighting angry.  There was a blur of brown fur and things got quiet in the motel again.  The cops shrugged and left and the racers were left to clean up.  It doesn't seem likely that anyone's going to get their security deposit back.

As a sequel to the evening's events, Eve and Edith were both woken in the early hours by a distressed 'Mooooo', quickly getting closer.  They both had their hair ruffled by the breeze as an airborne cow hurtled past, close enough to knock a cloud of leaves off their tree.  They watched in amazement as it swept in low across the forecourt and smashed straight through their room's front wall.  There were a few moments of relative quiet, only disturbed by the tinkling of glass shards dropping out of the shattered window and the cow staggered out onto the concrete.  There was a blue light from above it and it mooed in protest again as it was whisked up into a clear night sky.  A pulsing light directly over the motel whizzed away at impossible speed and disappeared in the darkness.

Road Trip AP - part 4

Session 2:

Morning arrived, and so did the last two members of the team.  George and Ziggy (no last name given).  The other characters are university students.  Ziggy is a 'freelancer'.

"Wong, your area of expertise... a freelance student?  How does that work?"
"No.  Like, a freelancer.  When people need to make things happen, they talk to Ziggy.  He arranges it."
"I don't think so.  Change it."
"Okay --" SCRIBBLE "-- there."
"All it says now is 'explosions'."
"Yep."  
"That seems like an awfully narrow range of -- you know what?  I don't even like you.  I'm accepting this."*

Ziggy makes a bad first impression.  He just seems a little bit... off.  He makes an even worse second impression, but hey -- it's not like people are lining up to be friends with a group of mad scientists.  While George sorted out a third room, Chad took Ziggy to breakfast at the motel restaurant.  Team Alabammy were there, and clearly still high.  All three had a massive plate of bacon and eggs in front of them.  They were eating with gusto and only responded to Chad's greeting with thumbs up and a high five.  Team Rocket were present and having a whispered meeting in the corner.  They didn't respond to Chad at all.  The Faster Pussycats were having a planning session over coffee, so Chad and Ziggy dropped into vacant chairs at their table.

The conversation stopped and the Pussycats covered up their papers, but they received the two politely enough.  Maggie made introductions and Leonie poured them both a cup of coffee.  There was a brief scuffle between the WTFers before Chad managed to get Ziggy's cup away from him.  (He gets decaf or nothing at all.  That's the rule.)  The Pussycats were cagey talking about the race, but opened up when Chad changed the topic of conversation.  Still playing match-maker, he tried talking up Eve's mechanical savvy and love for racing.  If Leonie was impressed, she hid it well.  Ziggy announced (seemingly at random) that he figured out a way to turn his fuel additive into a super low-friction lubricant.  Maggie seemed interested.

Elsewhere, Dmitri was taking a nap now that the Rick Astley had worn off.  A knock on the door woke him up and he answered it to see two uniformed police.  They didn't give any details of why they were there, but said they had the motel manager's permission to search.  One of them did, while the other stood outside with Dmitri.  Whatever they were looking for, it wasn't here.  Chad and Ziggy finished breakfast and came out to the courtyard in time to see them moving on to the WTF women's room.  Eve and Edith were in there working on a mad science fire extinguisher/jet engine combo.  Chad sent a quick text and they had time to each take a dose of Eve's Sneaker Juice and silently escape through the bathroom window.  He sent a second text to Jimmy Ray, who replied with 'thx'.  Moments later, the sound of his Harley starting up came from the other side of the motel.  Dmitri was close enough to the cops to hear one of them say that this was "probably them, but there's nothing to make an arrest on".  The other radioed in to base that there was "no sign of dealing, probably just for personal use".  They got back in their cruiser and drove away.

WTF conferred, and decided that Team Rocket were behind this.  Ziggy was especially offended and came up with a plan to make them pay.  The team had a makeshift lab in one of the motel rooms.  (He realised on entering that it had been searched by someone who didn't seem to have much of a talent for it, at about the same time the cops were investigating their other rooms.  That thought got put aside for later.)  He put in a couple of hours work to develop his superfuel into a superlube the way he described at breakfast.  (He rolled Science afterwards, but rolled a 1, meaning his Science stayed at 1.  Technically it shouldn't be possible to have two Wonders at that level, but the plan he described passed the rule of cool, so I allowed it on the provision that after a single use the lubricant would evaporate into uselessness.)

First he made sure that Arthur and Junior were in their room (Howard and Samantha were staying off-site and disappeared shortly before the police arrived).  They were, so he painted a wide lane of lubricant from their door to the barn behind the motel where the race's non-portable Wonders were being stored.  The one Fred had protected with a forcefield.  Once the trap was set, he pulled the fire alarm and hid to watch the show.  Arthur and Junior both stepped cautiously outside to see what the fuss was.  Setting foot on Ziggy's lube trail was enough.  Their feet slid out from under them and they both landed butt-first and continued to slide.  The NPCs both rolled to struggle for grip, but only Arthur succeeded.  He managed to awkwardly swim to the edge of the path and grab a handful of weeds to stop himself.  Junior slid right out of site, but seconds later there was a flash of light from the direction of the barn and a bug-zapper noise.  He staggered back after a few minutes, soot-stained and wild-haired, only for Ziggy to grab him by the arm and shout "Dude!  Are you okay?!  What happened?!", attracting a whole lot of unwanted attention centred on Junior as other racers stepped out of their rooms to see what all the fuss was.

Meanwhile, Chad and Edith were working on their plan to get Eve together with Leonie.  Stalking the Faster Pussycats' Facebook accounts led them to think she'd be open to a relationship with another woman**.  What could open up the lines of communication?  Maybe a gift!  Facebook has a series of photos of Leonie in Rosie the Riveter cosplay, so she likes old stuff.  They got to work on a Wonder radio that plays without power and gradually adjusts its playlist to match what the listener enjoys, in a vintage case.  Its flaw is that it's large and heavy.  (I pointed out to Chad's player Mila that she's investing a point of Science in building a gizmo which is essentially an oversized MP3 player with a recommendation feature.  Does that actually require mad science?  You can pick the same thing up at Walmart for ten bucks plus tax.  She's cool with it.)

Edith used Eve's last dose of Sneaker Juice to sneak into the Faster Pussycats' room and leave the radio and an affectionate note signed with Eve's name.  In the process, she spots a badly-hidden sheet that turns out to be the Pussycats' list of biggest rivals in the race.  Rocket are in first place, but WTF have been bumped up to second.  It also shows that the Pussycats are interested in Ziggy's superlube, but failed to get a sample.  (It was probably the Pussycats who searched the lab earlier.)

The day ended with another dinner in the motel restaurant.  Everyone was present, including all of Team Rocket (Junior looking slightly scorched) and Team Human.  Fred addressed everyone to remind them that the club expects good sportsmanship from everyone.  Calling the cops on a rival team is out of bounds because everyone has Wonders to protect.  Hurling someone into an active forcefield is wrong, too.  If any of them felt they have a legitimate grievance against another team, they should come to the race officials for help.  He finished by reminding them that even if a team wins the race, the club's existing members can raise an objection against admitting them.  And will, if it seems like they'd be a bad fit.  The normal good spirits were subdued as everyone ate their meal.

*Every group needs a player who is a massive pain in the GM's ass but genuinely makes the game more fun.  Wong is ours.

**The Faster Pussycats are inspired by the 1965 exploitation movie Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill! which is about a group of female thrill-criminals who are obsessed with fast cars and speed, and hold men in utter contempt.  And they're karate experts, because of course they are.

Road Trip AP - part 3

Session 1:

We were down two players this evening, thanks to university orientation week.  Our RPG club uses university rooms and looks for new members as the new semester begins.  We have three weeks of introductory games from the start of March.  Gary was away running a one-off game, and James 1 was unavailable.  Luckily Gary was willing to lend his character to Theo, a new member of the club.

Our heroes completed their modifications to the car.  They rolled up their tools and returned to the starting line.  (Unfortunately, that was when George got an urgent call.  He has a small IT side-business and this was a customer. They needed an urgent server reset.  He had to leave and hope to catch up with the others later.  With luck, George's player will be with us next week.)  Judith dropped the handkerchief, and the racers were off.  The cars zoomed off with the drivers and their navigators on board.  I rolled a D6 as a luck die to see if there would be any unexpected events.  It came up positive for the team, so there was nothing Eve's preparations hadn't taken into account.

Edith rolled 2D6 for the driving effort (+1 base die and +1 expertise die) and came up double-sixes.  A six result is success +advantage, so that was a comfortable lead over the other teams.  I ruled that from the race's midpoint, team WTF had a good 60 minutes on the closest rival.  They would keep it if nothing unexpected happened.  From that point it was up to the remaining team members to make their own way to the finish line.  WTF had train tickets for Dmitri and Chad.

Chad felt it was his role to disrupt rival teams' concentration in the time before the train left.  He tried to get Team Alabammy's Jimmy Dean interested in a couple of lunchtime beers.  I ruled that a Personal Trainer role offered nothing in this case, so player Mila had only a single die to roll.  It came up a 2, which is a simple failure.  Jimmy showed some interest, but he was still focused on the race.  He offered to buy Chad a beer at the finish line and rode away on a Harley.  Chad turned his attention to Samantha Long, who was about to get into a taxi she'd ordered.  He rolled a 3 (failure +advantage).  That meant Samantha wasn't interested in Chad's subtle muscle-flexing, but brother Howard was.  He lingered for some mild verbal sparring, watching Chad's biceps expand and contract.  Samantha's patience ran out after a while and she dragged him away.  She complained that the taxi driver was charging her by the minute.

Nothing of any consequence happened before WTF passed the finish line.  It was the forecourt of a motel in Monticello, Utah.  WTF's car had increased its lead by another ten minutes, so the team finished the first day in a good position.  (As another house rule, I declared at this point that Eve and Edith were tired.  For any kind of skill check, they would replace their base die with the Exhaustion die.  Becoming even more tired was the risk.)  Chad watched with interest as Jimmy Dean and John Human arrived.  Jimmy was still on his Harley, which means it travels faster than a Harley ought to go.  It doesn't appear to be a Wonder, so there's a mystery here.  Chad asked him about the trip and Jimmy told him it was great.  There's nothing quite like having a motorbike between your legs and the open road ahead of you.  He's not a very good liar.  John Human claimed to have walked from Los Angeles, in the normal human fashion.  That's more than 700 miles.  Chad pressed for more details, but John seemed confused by the questioning.

Jimmy had a cooler full of cold beers on the back of his bike.  Dmitri had an open bottle of vodka.  They instantly bonded and started making boilermakers.  As the other cars trickled in, they saluted each one with a cheer and a raised can.

Chad was still thinking of ways to fulfil his self-imposed role as disruptive agent.  During the train ride he'd done some deep thinking.  What he came up with was an idea for Science-enhanced special brownies.  (Increasing his Science score to 2 in the process.)

New Wonder: Special brownies
- long-lasting
- multipliers: none
- flaw: obvious (eyes immediately turn bloodshot)
- rank: 1

He thought that team Alabammy might help him with the most important ingredient.  I ruled that weed counts as performance-enhancing... or at least altering.  Player Mila rolled two dice to bring it up in conversation.  The result was a 4 - success with a complication.  Team Alabammy liked the idea and agreed to donate the magic ingredient.  The complication was that race official Fred Yang overheard the conversation. Fred's from California.  He hinted that he liked special brownies too.  Of course, as a race official, he couldn't accept a gift from a competitor.  However, if someone left a batch of brownies at the race desk so everyone could help themselves... no harm, no foul.

Team WTF had hired a couple of motel rooms (with kitchenettes) and divided them up between boys and girls.  Chad returned to his and cooked up a batch of Science-enhanced weed cookies.  He sampled his product, and found it acceptable.  (Chad also gained the Tired condition here.)  Team Alabammy dug in without hesitation.  Fred filled a small container.  Team Human reluctantly accepted a single cookie at Chad's urging.  Team Rocket weren't there.  When their car came in, the four of them drove off into Monticello together.

Team Faster Pussycat's navigator (Leonie) took one, only to have leader Maggie slap it out of her hands.  There was a whispered conversation, then Maggie left.  Eve offered another cookie, but Leonie turned it down.  Edith commented that they could probably find her some child-suitable snacks.  Leonie suggested that Edith pull her claws in, because her team were the catty ones around here.  (Leonie is a bit of a firebrand, it seems.)

Eve instantly developed a massive crush on her.

Team Human were examining their cookie with concern.  "What if we expose it to an electric current?"  "What if we dissolve it in a strong acid?"  "What if we ignore its presence among us?"  All three members turned their back on the cookie, still held in John Human's hand.  After a few minutes they turned back.  The cookie was still there.  It was clear the situation disappointed them.  John Human shrugged and broke the cookie into thirds so they could all take a piece.

Fred announced that there would be a club dinner in the motel restaurant in an hour.  It wasn't mandatory, but it would be nice for the teams to share a meal.  Team WTF agreed amongst themselves to attend.  Tired or not, Eve decided to use the hour to get ready for some inter-team practical jokes later on.  She decided to go into Monticello and find a hunting shop to buy the necessary tool: some bear scent.  Player Tim rolled well, so Eve had no trouble finding what she needed.  She also picked up a box of chocolates as an apology gift for Leonie.  Chad asked her to pick up some squirrel bait along with the bear scent because any plan involving a squirrel is automatically 200% funnier.

Dinner was a subdued affair.  Team Alabammy were there, and having a great time.  They all had the bloodshot eyes that meant they'd eaten Chad's cookies.  Fred and Judith were at another table, and both more interested in staring at their hands than eating.  Team Human were openly weeping into their pasta bowls.  Arthur Huang was the only member of Team Rocket present.  He was eating alone at a table in the corner and seemed to be trying to avoid attention.  Team WTF enjoyed their meal, even with Chad's mumbling.  Later, David David confronted Chad with tears trickling down his face.  He asked "We have eaten the human pasta.  Is it enough?" before his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed.

(Player Mila asked what would have happened if she chose the Carries Passengers variable for her special brownies.  I thought about it and decided that if Chad ate a piece, people around him would get high.)

Eve finished dinner early to take advantage of an empty courtyard.  She sprayed a generous amount of bear scent on Arthur's windows, hoping the smell would keep him awake.  The smell was strong.  She also dosed herself with Sneaker Juice and crept up to the Faster Pussycats' motel room to leave the box of chocolates and a note.  She knocked on the door and legged it.  Player Tim rolled a 4 (success with a complication.)  The door opened in time for someone to see a running figure, but not identify her.

The hour grew late, and the various racers started going to bed.  Eve's prank with the bear scent worked.   One of the Alabammy Geniuses had his dog with him.  The dog went nuts barking at Arthur's windows.  In the WTF room, Dmitri had an adventure of his own.  He opened a cupboard and a snake sprang out at him!  He grabbed it, but it stretched out its neck and buried its fangs in his throat.  Then it transformed (back?) into a plastic hose.  Dmitri froze, waiting for the venom to hit him.  Physically he felt okay and he slowly realised that it wasn't venom.  He'd been injected with something else.  He didn't get to sleep that night.

The dog kept up its barking until around midnight, when someone took it indoors.  Rather than sleeping, Chad was sitting on a doorstep.  He was enjoying his buzz and looking at the stars.  One of the stars was coming closer, fast.  It resolved into a cow.  Mooing in distress, legs windmilling uselessly as an unseen forced propelled it through the air.  A split second too late, Chad realised it was coming right at him.  He threw himself sideways, but a hoof caught him a solid blow in the forehead.  He went sprawling and watched, helpless, as the cow was dragged up into the air.  There was a bright light in the sky for a moment, then it zipped sideways at impossible speed and vanished.

Chad told his team-mates all about it.  They found it easier to believe the special brownies had an unexpected kick to them.  Even with the hoofprint on Chad's forehead.  That was the last excitement for the night, at least for team WTF.  Later on, Eve woke to the sound of snuffling, growling and splintering wood.  She looked outside to see a bear-shaped shadow mooching around in front of Arthur's room.  She returned to bed satisfied that her prank had been successful.

In the morning, Chad was still high.  There's a good chance everyone who tried one of his special brownies was feeling the same way.  The race desk was deserted.  There was a laminated sign propped up there reading "race postponed due to sickness".  Eve found her box of chocolates in front of her motel room door.  The chocolate inside had a footprint it it.  There was a note accompanying the box: nice try, team crackhead.  The other characters resolved to do what they could to get Eve and Leonie together.

Characters

Player characters

Eve Adams (played by Tim)
Science: 1
Area of expertise: Mechanical stuff
Wonders/beholden:
Sneaker Juice
- penalty to notice checks against user
- multipliers: none
- flaws: limited uses
- rank:  1
Positive quality: sneaky like ninja


George Warren (played by James 1) 
Science: 2
Area of expertise: Wireless communications and autonomous vehicles
Wonders/beholden:
Municipal Monitor
- hacking suite
- multipliers: Extended range
- flaws: Difficult to control
- rank: 2
Positive quality: giant nerd


Edith (played by James 2)
Science: 2
Area of expertise: Aerodynamics
Wonders/beholden:
Go Faster Paint
- increases speed
- multipliers: none
- flaws: obvious
- rank: 1
Positive quality: subject matter expert


Chad Thyler (played by Mila)
Science: 1
Area of expertise: Personal trainer
Wonders/beholden:
Ragin' 'Roids
- increases size/strength
- multipliers: none
- flaws: limited duration
- rank: 1
Special Brownies
- increased duration
- multipliers: none
- flaw: obvious (bloodshot eyes)
- rank: 1
Positive quality: smokin' hot


Dmitri Kalashnikov (played by Gary)
Science: 2
Area of expertise: Thermodynamics PhD student
Wonders/beholden:
Fuzzy Voodoo Dice
- reflects energy weapons at 4x power
- multipliers: Powerful x 2, Extra durability
- flaws: Power Drain, Narrow application, Harms user
- rank 2
Positive quality: "Vodka?  It's like water to me."

Ziggy (played by Wong)
Science: 1
Area of expertise: Chemistry
Wonders/beholden:
Super Fuel
- increases speed of any engine 
- multipliers: none
- flaws: unpredictable (interpreted to mean you don't know how fast your vehicle will go) 
- rank 1
Positive quality: walking away from explosions

Rival teams

Team Rocket 
Northern Chinese exchange students.  Co-leaders are Howard Long and Samantha Long.  Driver is Arthur Huang (who is a member at Chad's gym) and navigator is Junior Lee.

Their team Wonder is the Wolf in sheepskin.  It hollows out an ordinary car and wears it like camouflage.  It has a high-performance engine, radar detector and police scanner.  It's stretching the rules of the race, but the officials have allowed it.


Team Alabammy
Rednecks and proud of it.  Leader is a skinny guy, Jimmy Dean.  Driver and navigator are a pair of big twins, Tommy-Ray and Billy-Lee.  They wear a lot of camo and confederate flags.

They enjoy their beer and weed.

Their Wonder is the Big Big Rig.  It adds a set of smokestacks to increase the power of any vehicle.


Team Faster Pussycats
An all-women team that dress like they're from the 1960s.  The leader/driver is Maggie.  Rumour says her grandmother was one of the '76 pilots.  They defended Earth from the Imperial Mars invasion fleet at the cost of their own lives.  Navigator is Leonie, who carries a butterfly knife.  Rounding out the team are Betty and Missy.

Leonie is a Rosie the Riveter cosplayer.  She may be bisexual.

Their Wonder is the Cannonball.  It's a transparent pink globe that encases a car like a hamster in a wheel and rolls.  It can drive on water as well as land.


Team Human
Three thin, bald guys wearing identical jumpsuits.  They look human.  They sound human.  They like to eat bread and drink electrolytes just like you do.  There's just something off-putting about them...  Leader and navigator are both named John Human, Driver is David David.

Team Human have no tolerance for weed.

Their Wonder is the Spider Insider.  It replaces a car's wheels with dozens of insect-like legs.  It handles difficult terrain with ease.

Other NPCs

Fred Yang, race officiator.  Hoffnung Navigator.  Fire warden.  Jetpack and shock ray.  Busy and impatient.

Judith Lau, race officiator.  Staunen Navigator.  Inventory manager.  Short range teleporter.  Mild-mannered, but will fight you.

Magilla, race observer.  Smartified gorilla.  Currently in low Earth orbit.  He's floating in a space station built from a refitted walk-in freezer.  A little nervous about it.

Road Trip AP - part 2

Session 0:

The characters are students and staff at Los Angeles' Berkeley University.  From the science department, for the most part. They all know a Professor James Fung in one way or another.  He's a Genius and a member of the Nine Vertex Devils Club. He's taking a break from competition because he lost his legs in the last race he joined.  (He's built himself a kickass wheelchair that can scale a building, though.) They all share an interest in car modding and racing, and he's encouraged them to enter as a team.  I suggested that they build their Wonders so they can be easily installed and removed from a vehicle. That way they'd be useful outside the race as well. These were to be low-level characters.  Restricted to a few, less-powerful Wonders.

The players and characters are as follows:
Tim created Eve Adams, a mechanical engineering student.  Eve's Wonder is Sneaker Juice. It's a chemical coating that makes vehicles (or people) completely silent.  Every Wonder needs a flaw, but it isn't clear what Sneaker Juice's drawback is yet. Tim intends to win the practical joke war.

Positive quality: sneaky like ninja.

James 1 created George Warren, a wireless communication and autonomous vehicles expert.  George's Wonder is the Municipal Monitor, a remote hacking suite.  He plans to infiltrate city grid control systems and change traffic lights on the go.  Its flaw is that it's hard to control.

Positive quality: giant nerd.

Mila created Chad Thyler.  Chad was a weak and skinny sports nutrition student with ambitions to work as a personal trainer. He invented mad science steroids so people would take him seriously.  They work equally well on vehicles. By dropping a pill in the fuel tank, Chad can turn a car into a monster truck version of itself. The flaw is that it can wear off without warning and then the car shrinks.

Positive quality: smokin' hot.

James 2 created Edith, an aeronautical engineering student.  Her Wonder is Go Faster Paint. It increases the speed of any vehicle it's applied to.  She also likes to use it as war paint so it can increase her speed. Its flaw is that it's obvious - it shines like fire while it's active.

Positive quality: subject matter expert.

Gary created Dmitri Kalashnikov, a Russian student of thermodynamics.  Gary went all-out when creating his Wonder.  It's a set of fuzzy voodoo dice for the rear view mirror.  If someone attacks the car, six times the damage gets reflected onto the sender.  It has two levels of the Powerful variable and one of the Extra Durability variable.  In exchange, it only functions for energy weapons. It drains Dmitri's energy. And it causes a painful feedback to him.

Positive quality: "Vodka?  It's like water to me."

The players christened themselves Team WTF.

House rules:

Cthulhu Dark is a very simple system; any game using it begs for house rules.  Usually made up on the spot, that simplicity makes it very flexible.

The first rule we added was for car modding.  Each morning of the race, the Nine Devils club presents each team with a car.  They then have four hours to install their Wonders into it and make any other alterations they see fit.  Each modding session gets divided into four one-hour sections. The characters get to make a skill challenge once per hour.  They need to accumulate successes equal to a Wonder's rank to successfully install it. (A Wonder's rank is equal to 1 plus it's number of extra positive qualities less its flaws.)  They can donate any excess successes to a planning pool. The pool represents time spent anticipating problems. Studying maps, thinking of contingencies, etc. The driver and navigator can spend these successes during the race to add extra dice to their skill rolls.

I lifted the second rule whole from Primetime Adventures: fanmail.  Each player gets a single blue D6.  They can't roll it themselves. But they can donate it to another player who's attempting something too cool to fail.  This is the only way a dice pool can ever go above three dice. After rolling, a fanmail die leaves the table.

The final rule for session 0 is the characters' positive qualities.  Once per session, each player can mark that quality to add an extra die to a pool.  Provided they can explain how it helps.

On your marks

We completed session 0 with time left in the evening, so we started the game.  It began at a 9 Devils-owned observatory on a hill in Los Angeles. The teams gathered to listen to the race officiator (Fred Yang).  He made a short speech and reminded everyone of the rules. Only ground vehicles permitted. One driver and one navigator per car. No messing with another racer's vehicle.  No outside assistance. We know you delinquents are going to prank each other, keep it within reason.

Fred's a recognised figure in the 9 Devils.  A tall Chinese man with greying hair and a lined face.  He works as a fire warden in a national preserve. He's a traditionalist: known to use a jetpack and ray gun.  He's accompanied by Judith Lau, a short Asian woman with big glasses and long hair. She has a teleporter of her own design.  She's mild-mannered, but also rumoured to have surgically implanted the device by herself.

The characters get their first look at the other teams:

Team Rocket.  Yes, that's their name.  They have no idea why people laugh.  Rockets are cool! Fast! Futuristic!  Team Rocket are exchange students from Northern China.  The co-leaders are a brother and sister, Howard and Samantha Long.  Most of Team WTF know and dislike them already, from the university.  Howard makes a habit of accusing people of racism when he doesn't get his way.  Samantha acts disdainful towards anyone who isn't rich. The driver and navigator are Arthur Huang and Junior Lee.  Arthur is a member of Chad's gym. He's not so bad when the others aren't around to influence him.

Team Alabammy.  Two big dudes and one skinny one.  They've all got trucker caps and camo pants, and at least one confederate flag on them.  The leader is Jimmy Dean. The driver and navigator are a pair of twins, Tommy-Ray and Billy-Lee.  Loud guys. Jimmy and Billy-Lee are both working on plugs of chewing tobacco.

Team Faster Pussycats.  Four women, all dressed like they just stepped out of the 1960s.  The leader and driver is Maggie. Rumour says Maggie is the granddaughter of one of the '76 fleet pilots.  They drove off the Imperial Mars invasion fleet that came for Earth after the Viking lander set down. She has a beehive hairstyle. Her navigator is Leonie, who wears horn-rimmed shades, pops gum and plays with a butterfly knife.

Team Human.  Three thin, bald guys in identical jumpsuits.  The team's leader is John Human. The navigator is also named John Human.  (They explain it's because their mothers were neighbours and their fathers were dentists.)  The driver is David David. They're polite, they smile, but they don't blink often enough. John Human is listening carefully to Fred Yang.  He's making notes on yellow notepaper and stapling them to David David. The driver seems to think this is perfectly normal.

Fred finishes up his talk and directs the racers down the hill, where the teams can collect their cars.  There's a workshop ready for each of them in a secret location. They can modify their cars, then be back in four hours for the flag to go up.  Luck of the draw gives WTF a Toyota Corolla. They drive to their workshop, careful not to give any other team an opportunity to follow them, and get to work.
 

They get their Wonders installed without much fuss and switch to planning for the day's race.  The first leg is from Los Angeles to Monticello in Utah. Eve gets out a tablet and loads up Google Maps to figure out the best course.  Tim rolls well and manages to plan out a good route. It avoids several sections of road works and a parade that will cause delays. Edith convinces the team that they should spend some of their remaining time fitting a roll cage.  They put one together from steel pipe and weld it in place.

Chad gets bored during this and decides it's not too late in the day to hit the gym.  He calls Arthur and offers to spot for him, but Arthur tells him he's crazy to waste his time like that when there's a race on.

Work completed, the team returns to the starting line and waits for the flag to go up.

Road Trip AP - part 1

For the last several years I've been GMing a Genius: the Transgression game.  Genius is a fan-written game for the World of Darkness setting. Like the other WoD games are about monsters, Genius supports playing mad scientists.  We call our campaign We Don't Use The M-Word.  It's been a gonzo adventure of punching nazis across the globe, throughout time and space.  All at the request of a (possibly Jewish?) dinosaur landlord.

Earlier this year I began feeling creatively tapped out and stepped down from the GM role.  One of the players put his hand up to run a Suicide Squad game that lasted several action-packed weeks.  A combination of family business and a holiday recently took him away overseas for a month.  During the interval, I thought it would be fun to go back to Genius and run a short game.  Even less serious than the nazi-punching.

I tend to lean towards medium-crunchy games.  G:tT is at the high end of what I'd be willing to run.  With this game's short duration, I didn't think we'd need the full mechanics.  Instead, I opted to run the game in a Genius/Cthulhu Dark mashup I wrote: They Called Me Mad!   It's light enough that a full character write-up fits on an index card with space left over.

I put the ruleset together out of a fascination with the world of Genius and the mechanics of CD.  G:tT is a game with personal horror elements - as your power increases, you have to work to keep your human morality.  CD is explicit horror.  If your investigative career lasts long enough, you're almost guaranteed to go mad.  In the mashup, they're two sides of the same coin.  As your knowledge of universal secrets grows, your concern for humanity diminishes.  But this is a fun game, so we set aside the consequences of that evolution.  Instead, the characters get quirkier as they advance.

The premise of the game is a Wacky Races-style road race across the continental USA.  The organisers are a faction from the Genius sourcebook.  A club of Chinese-American mechanics fascinated by speed.  They race single-person vehicles across land, sea, air and space.  To join the club, prospective members must have a win in one of these races.  Their problem (in my game) is that the same people tend to win year after year and the club has had no new blood for a while.  There have also been disqualifications from some of the recent races for cheating.  It's a well-resourced club which is generous to its members.  Some of the entrants are more interested in its lab space than friendly competition.  The solution is the club's first team race.  All members of the winning team will gain membership.  

The race is in a series of five stages.  Each morning, the club will give every team a car.  Nothing out of the ordinary, just a second-hand car in reasonable condition.  The team will have four hours to mod it as they see fit, with both mundane and mad engineering.  Then all teams present their car at the starting line and the day's race begins.

The club's stepping up its usual scrutiny against cheating.  Messing with another team's car is against the rules.  Messing with another team's members, on the other hand...  There's an old and respected tradition of playing practical jokes on rival drivers.  Slashing an opponent's tyres is uncool.  But having pizza delivered to his room every hour on the hour to keep him awake all night? Legitimate psych-out tactic.  That's where we expect the game's fun to be.