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.