Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

THE HILLS HAVE BETTE DAVIS EYES!

“I can’t slash her, she’s about to win an Academy Award!”

Sometimes you find your ride or die. Someone who will help you intimidate juvenile delinquents, stab celebrities, and help crooked cops commit suicide in the woods off Mulholland Drive. Not just a buddy. Not a partner you trust with your life. Someone who will help you commit felonies.

That's Semya Ivanova and Josiah P Diamond, PI. They were in LA, along with their own paparazzo, shutterbug/sniper Javid Kulfi, and Hollywoodland butler Aldous Bingen.
(This was our longest session ever, at a whopping 5 1/2 hours, so this will be the highlights version.)

Javid was extremely helpful as a shootist, expert in mystic lore, and notice-r. Aldous drove like a maniac and snuck like a shadow. But it was the 1° Kelvin Russian, and her detective enabler, who took Tinseltown to task.

The odd thing about the Russian: she's both inspirational and coldhearted, an expert in provocation, and has a deep, deep roster of contacts. During the case of the missing gem (the Eye of Brahma), she called in favors with maître d's, pinko screenwriters, and even Hollywood psychic and short-time player character, Madame Valeiria! Whether it was fighting assassins in club bathrooms, or making cultists puke when she was tied to the sacrificial table, she played both sides of 'loved' and 'hated', whichever made sense in the moment.
(JP, for his part, had his hands full punching out potential romantic rivals! He also jumped onto running boards and stopped two different runaway cars. Busy session.)

One of the more intriguing developments was revolution-vet Semya playing the ditz. Several times, she used subtle barbs to bring a millionaire to apoplectic anger, and in a Betty Boop singsong said

“I'm very sorry, I think there was a mistranslation! Everyone thinks I’m mean just because I'm Russian, teehee.”

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JP, who had seen her threaten criminals into their graves, spent a lot of time coughing politely. Mostly, he was surprised that as a Great War survivor and a hard-nosed shamus, he was the one playing Good Cop.

In the end, the cops raided the house in the hills, the cursed gem was sold back to its rightful protectors, and the dirty cop got put into the same shallow grave he had used for stoolies. Klieg lights can cast some big shadows. Ride or die.

Sad to see no new posts in a week. Let me fix that.

ROSE-COLORED CITY… OF DEATH!

“This is a very nice train,” said the Jade Jaguar, “but sometimes criminal stooges like to exit at speed. Wouldn’t happen to you, right?” A few rows away, a sheep bleated. Nobody looked up.

Devika Velyapur is an amazing character to play. She started completely humble, as the secretly skilled sidekick of an incompetent master thief. But because of being in the campaign the longest, she's had achievements that knocked humility right out of her.

This is most pronounced when she meets other children. Her standard of achievement is "world-class in at least one skill set, and probably several”. So when 11-year-old Anizah burst into the Cairo office and said her mother Najah was kidnapped, then immediately started pigging out on the ice cream, Devi had contempt. That all changed when the girl showed a locket of her absentee father… Rafe Lancaster!

Unfortunately, Rafe couldn't be reached due to the time difference, and the mother who could confirm paternity had been kidnapped. So Devi gathered the people she was having lunch with, and set out to solve the case and clear her mentor’s name before another girl would be running around the Lancaster estate.

We had a record this time: a fourth new player had chosen to play Sister Ynez, electrical genius nun. This was the shyest portrayal ever, but Empathy and Crafts are very useful in solving mysteries and dealing with action set pieces. Rounding out the squad were a returning Trudy Truman, aussie journalist, Tácito Uriel Velasco, and butler Aldous Bingen.

When the party really gets going, they're hard to stop. The initial investigation led to Transjordan, and the archaeological site at Petra. India's richest girl didn't like being condescended to by the country’s British administration, so the ZSS visit to the site was…unauthorized.

Trudy tried to chastise the millionaire. “Sorry, but I'm not going to take advice from an Australian mining heiress about how colonizers should and should not be treated.”

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Definitely not how Devi would've acted when Lord Simon was around!

(She later pranked Trudy by loudly begging her not to horse whip Anizah for sneaking onto their jet, earning disapproving looks from everyone in the souk. Having another kid around is a gas.)

The quintet had excellent luck in the latter half of the case. A scuffle with Bedouin tribesmen proved that hit-and-run tactics are much more effective when your side has a car. And both their infiltration of the ritual site and defeat of the erstwhile god were accomplished in four actions each. To wit:
Sister Ynez analyzed.
Trudy blathered to distract the djinn-haunted host.
Tácito grabbed the man's mask.
Devi wrapped her own protective amulet around the dazed human archaeologist. And she strode out, proving not even evil spirits could keep pace with a teenage goddess.

(As for the paternity angle, it turns out the girl was the daughter of Rafe's wheelchair-bound brother Andy. As an orphan, Devi felt it was her place to lecture the mom about returning to America and reuniting their family. Humble at the start, but arrogant till the end.)

GENTLEMEN, START YOUR COFFINS!

They're going for distance. They're going for greed.

Millionaire Rafe Lancaster, stuntwoman Lala Santinella and cat burglar Thaza O'Rourke, all unleashed in Monaco. What could go wrong?

Well, continually everything. It was Grand Prix season in the French principality, so a lot of movers and shakers were in town. Including paroled chemical-genius Henry Starkweather. He had created a new, more potent gasoline, and everyone wanted it.

Everyone included Asian supervillain "The Ubiquitous Dragon” and Afro-supremacist Professor Paradox. The first of which hired Thaza, the latter of which was a fellow alumnus of Rafe’s alma mater. (The Professor, real name Montavious Okwawo, got his actual doctorate there in 1930). And although Lancaster was a star in the firmament of the white power structure, he had sold useful armaments to Paradox before. And it would violate both of their honor to betray each other, whether ‘in business’ or ‘to Interpol’.

Lala was a free agent, untroubled except for taking care of her millionaire daughter and trying to win a 100 lap urban derby. Oh, and being courted by the incorrigible master of automatons, Baron Korga.

So with these powers in play, the trio ping-ponged from scheme to scheme. Who had stolen the ultra fuel, and who had planted it at another team's garage? Would the undying queenpin be able to collect the reward on the Professor, who was still wanted in association with his desecration of the Lincoln Memorial? (A desecration that involved using it to attack the rest of Washington, DC.)

Even the casino floor wasn't safe from chaos. Devika ran into her royal rival, Prince Arthur of Borgonia. He was still peeved at her bullying him when he was hiding out in New York City, and she thought he was a prissy crown-head. The players could barely intervene before he challenged her to a duel!

Rafe and Lala, who were at loggerheads already over Devi's loyalty, managed to separate the pair. Later on though, Lala returned to the hotel suite. The door was ajar, furniture was knocked over, and there were clear signs of struggle… Leading to the back room, where Devi and the prince were making out hard. Miss Santinella wisely snuck out, not wanting to interrupt young love, or hate, or whatever it was.

The next morning, the adopted mom lightly asked for an explanation.

“His nickname for me is ‘you.’ My nickname for him I can't say 'cause it's a swear word.”

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Things got complicated when it turned out Baron Korga didn't have human drivers… Instead, he had a pair of racecar-mounted automata. And things got complicated again when Starkweather, who had finally discovered his formula had been heisted, tried to buy out every official and get the cars re-weighed until the culprit was uncovered.

That was the easiest problem to solve: Rafe was a master of gladhanding, and since he didn't currently have the formula, he was eager to create a fairness standard he knew his team could meet.

Things were going swimmingly, until he got an urgent message from the Messenger of the Melanated.

“This is a non-race-related matter. Well, not really.”

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He needed a decoy because the Dragon wanted to kidnap him during the race. (The millionaire knew this already, because the night before, the Dragon had asked him to do it.)
A few blocks away, that same Queenpin was assigning the task to one of her most helpful agents, Thaza. And since they didn't have an easy way to communicate, the smuggler raised by apes had a brilliant idea … Grabbing two race flags, she communicated with the millionaire via semaphore!

Lala, by this time, had been paid big bucks to race for Rafe. Rafe, extremely busy with pre-race check-ins, still had time to warn Devi out of a toxic relationship.

“In my experience, there's no kind-of sort-of when it comes to royalty. And you shouldn’t hate someone until you’ve dated them for at least a month.”

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It was bizarre, but the man who had once tried to assassinate the party was becoming something of a good influence.

As the race started, the group was split. Santinella and Lancaster were battling fourteen others for pole position. Thaza was riding shotgun for a spurious kidnapping. The plan went sideways when one of Dragon’s henchmen had the brilliant idea to ransom (who they thought was) Professor Paradox back to Lancaster. Thaza, thinking quickly, broke a street light to get the Paradox squad's attention.

On the track, things were just as tough. the Dragon’s team was in the lead, without even using their stolen Starkweather fuel! Rafe tried to slow them down by memorizing team Korga’s automated racing line, and then trapping the dragon’s minions on outside corners.

A few blocks away, the cat burglar got her co-kidnappers to stop the car … Just in time for the other gang to catch up. She was caught in the middle of a brawl where she didn't want to hurt either side!

On the track, Rafe made a daring play. He "accidentally" ran into a fire hydrant, soaking one of the mechanical cars and causing it to go haywire. It smashed through a barricade and drove north, passing by Thaza’s street brawl. She used the distraction to grab the fake Paradox and deliver him, as promised, to the American embassy… Where eventually he would be revealed to be the wrong person. But not before she got paid by the Dragon, and paid by the USA.

Lala was sad the race had been called off, but was more than willing to ‘persuade’ sleazy Euro-bookies that the team’s wagers should be returned.

After some fast driving, the group used just as much fast talking, getting themselves onto the Baron’s yacht, and getting an unrefusable invite to the scenic Castle Korga…
But that’s a tale for another time.

Paraguay is for Leavers/A Cut Below!
Diamond’s latest dance partner was bigger, meaner, and was holding a butcher knife.

A two-in-one session today. The group (Tacito, Captain Ivanova, Aldous Bingen and JP Diamond) were hired by the other General Franco (Rafael) to help overthrow the government of his native Paraguay.Of course, border control was a bit of an issue.

Officer: “Mr. Diamond. Are you a diamond merchant? Hahaha.”
Ivanova: “Some of us have been waiting for a diamond for a while.”

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The country seemed to be a relatively functional democracy, so the players dug a little deeper… And found a conspiracy. General Moringo was the handpicked replacement for the president, and the opposition were fielding a weak candidate in exchange for concessions.

The interview was going OK, until someone broke out the captain’s vodka and made it a drinking contest. The General’s spymaster was both highly competitive and a lightweight, so after a few rounds of shots, the group was able to record a confession from the general and pass it around to the newspapers. Then, they told the lesser General Franco that semi-popular, mild agricultural reform was no reason to launch a civil war.

***
Josiah P Diamond was in a circle of hell. His sister-in-law, Alice, was hosting a soirée right out of Redbook. One of those magazines with a paragraph of recipe and a full page illustration of the result.

Over at the snack table, Tacito was going wild on the only edible offering, beignets. It took Aldous’s prompting to notice his court rival was also at the party, Edwina Sharpe. The Jaguar believed that everyone deserved justice, but Edwina was a Harvard-trained expert at pointing out flaws in ZSS evidentiary technique. And somehow, that kept setting free agents of New Orlean’s biggest crime boss, the Sinister Skull.

One of those crooks was Frankie “the Butcher” Bertinello who had been stalking Alice to get JP to back off the Skull. A little digging and a back-alley confrontation revealed something interesting: some experiment had made Frankie much tougher, but would soon make him much deader.

JP arrived at the party just in time to interrupt Edwina and Tacito's flirting. He wasn't one to ask for favors, but he admitted that he needed help solving the case and saving his annoying relative.

JP knew his city, and any Louisiana detective would tell you there’s no better place to find fixers than late night in the French Quarter. He cornered “Jinx” Jensen, but Josiah's tough guy act failed when the flat foot accidentally stepped into a rainy gutter. Tacito had the last laugh though. He had recently gotten Jinx parole instead of jail time on a weapons charge, so the crook was willing to give him a lead: the Butcher had been seen, unexpectedly, on the LSU campus. Mafia leg breakers don't usually take night classes, so that was worth digging into.

On campus, the duo (formerly dead PI, sensible ex-con lawyer) were outfoxed by Miss Sharpe. She had sworn Dr. Hwang and Dr. Frakes (formerly of Misskatonic University)to secrecy. Unfortunately for her, their fear of the law was less than their scientific curiosity. They would certainly help devise an antidote if the pair could return their test subject!

JP put the word out on the street, explaining “There are worse places than LSU if you want someone to teach you a lesson.”

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Soon, they brought the Butcher into the lab… Where he attacked his malefactors, slashing Dr. Hwang badly! And although the Jade Jaguar was often an honorable fighter, it was his prison time that helped him get the syringe past Frankie's bulletproof skin to his vulnerable tongue. Luckily, there’s no downside to the first attending doctor training with Herbert West…

A week later, the Skull had yet to replace the invulnerable lug. JP was celebrating a party where the theme was "booze." All the party guests were delighted, Alice was furious.

Bullywug ambush on crashed airship.

Last night's game: the party approached a southerly watchtower on behalf of the lord lord and host, Duke Gallo. The Duke has asked them to ride and check the status of each watchtower, to ensure his troops were in place and to check the countryside for enemy infiltrators or long range scouts from the enemy V Corps, 40 miles to the south at the bottom of the pass. They discovered the watchtower had been taken over by enemy troops, alongside a local Quisling witch and a noble wyvern knight. They attacked from the roof, wiped out the ballistaeros, captured the wyvern knight to take back to the Duke, then fouled the staircases with Webs and kept the soldiers from burning them with repeated Drench spells. They're currently debating whether to flee with the capture knight or wipe out the enemy forces. Opinions are yet mixed but trending wipeout, because they've got it into their head to capture the witch as well.

THE PAPER CHASE!
Florence looked at Thaza, then back to the passage in Upstate Academy #7. “I know the word. It's a piece of slang I don't want to translate. It's rather spicy and I don't think we're that kind of friends."

One thing that's amazing about Fate is how quickly you can get into and out of the action. This was a fun session with a lot of RP, but instead of a blow-by-blow, let’s zoom in on the conflicts and contests.

We start in mid February, Skagway Alaska. Negative digit temperatures outside as the players protect Sven “Spin” Ulgaard, a stool pigeon willing to rat on the Yukon mob. Or unwilling to? Tácito and Florence give him the Humphrey Bogart Defiance lecture, while Thaza O'Rourke busts rotted motel furniture to stick in the fireplace. A normal, slightly comedic scene, until Mafiosos with Molotovs arrive at the far end of the parking lot.
The players try to escape to their car… before realizing they don't want to cross open ground against gun-toting goons. So they try and sneak into the woods… then Thaza has the bright idea to grab one of the gangsters’ cars, hotwire it, and pick everyone up. Unfortunately, she's a New Yorker (raised by apes), so cars aren't her thing. The vehicle is riddled with bullets before she can make it to the curb. So as the others provide cover, she aims at the mass of mobsters and lets the gasoline do the rest of the work… Then uses her wilderness survival skills to bring the investigators, and the witness, back in time for the trial.

The trio head to Japan to investigate a rival agency. Unfaithful Florence Zee makes waves in a geisha bar, and it's a short contest to escape after "talking things out" fails spectacularly. Thaza creates a commotion in the kitchen by knocking over all the equipment, Tácito body-blocks the doorman, and Florence just barely skedaddles away, with the others catching up after. A lot of drama, all condensed into five minutes of playtime.

The biggest fight of the session came when the players snuck into the "abandoned" castle of the rival agency’s chief officer. The Ziegler Security Services team had noticed paper poppets all over the city. Turns out the crafted-creatures were a mystic spy network.

“I think I heard something," said Thaza.
Nothing, said the 7-foot-tall enchanted paper golem.

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This was a fight, but an odd one. Only Tácito, alias the Jade Jaguar, stood any hope of fighting this thing in melee. So Florence tried to soak it in mop water … And Thaza ripped a wire from the wall to electrocute it. Then, realizing that Japanese castles have tons of paper and wood, the group struggled to put the fire out again. The creature, not possessing tremendous intelligence, decided to leave (and concede), and the players snuck out.

The next battle had strange terrain: the dress section of a high-end department store. Instead of sharp paper, the weapons were sharp tongues. Detective Naito fired sexist barbs as Florence played dumb. Tácito flirted and distracted the shop girls who meant to interfere… And Thaza pickpocketed, but didn't find much incriminating. Without Kabir, Devika or Captain Ivanova, the group didn't have much firepower in the social department! So the group conceded the conflict, earning much needed Fate points but being politely dragged to the enemies’ office stronghold.

The group was canny, however. Fate points don't just give bonuses or re-rolls, they allow players to declare story details. The group reached out to their buddy Zelda Saeki, daughter of General Saeki, during their transport to their foe’s skyscraper. And with utmost charm, they pointed out how a witch who controlled origami was a threat to the Empire of Japan. So, instead of being destroyed physically and socially in a boardroom, the players ended up in a firefight between an army unit and an ancient sorcerer.

This was (to my surprise) a contest! First, they needed to make it to the elevator. Normally easy. But in the 1930s, paper was king of the office, with every memo, invoice and receipt swirling in a deadly maelstrom.

Our heroes barely escaped, covered in cuts. In the elevator, two papercraft ninjas tried to cut the guide cable. Thaza blocked and parried, wrapping her foes’ limbs around the cable and shredding them into confetti.

The lobby was a madhouse, with the military preventing anyone from coming in or leaving. Special ops in riot gear. A difficult fight even if JP Diamond, Steel Eagle, and The Invincible Orca were there.

“Does the phrase ‘international incident’ mean anything to you?” yelled the bleeding Mexican lawyer. “You are preventing foreign nationals from fleeing the site of a terrorist attack. If you don’t let us leave, you and the rest of your unit will be washing latrines in perpetuity. That’s the best-case scenario. Now, are you going to keep us in the building? Or are you going to be telling the other 70-year-old privates what’s meant by the phrase ‘multinational inquest’?”

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The group won the contest.

aramis erak said:

Wed TFT-OE:
Arts & Crafts, Two Encounters.

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For the unaware: TFT = The Fantasy Trip. Which is Steve Jackson, (US) of Steve Jackson Games, first published RPG, from before he founded SJG. GURPS was a redesign of similar concepts.
Arts & Crafts: I wanted a better copy of the adventure map than the one in my stash of TFT stuff. And so, scan and print, and laminate. That's not the A&C... no, cutting out the counters, then shuffle, tape down to the laminated map, as the adventure in question takes between 8 and 20 hours to play through, and DdB and I are both playing, and using the solo module in question, which provides for party use.
So, laminate, cut, shuffle, tape... took the first hour of session.
Play was a little slow, but we completed 4 amulet retrievals and 2 fights. Plus sleeping a bear before he could attack. And then coup-de-grace...

I should also mention: most playable species in TFT have 32 points total across the 3 attributes (ST/DX/IQ)... Hobbits, unlike most, only get 30. So, we're in hard mode already.

Also, I forgot how fast time flies for characters... we've had to hunt. Last encounter? A bear. We were, genuinely, happy about a bear - edible meat!

We covered 8 days character time in the 2 hours of actual play...

We agreed to a house rule: 4d ≤ IQ to forage for 1d6 days worth of rations. -1d for naturalist or other relevant. Kills, of relatively mundane beings, generating about 1/4 their mass in rations on a 4d ≤ IQ -1d for Butcher talent... But neither of us butchered it successfully, so... we counted it as just the day's rations.

My wizard is down to 1 day's rations remaining, DdB's axe-wielder has 2 days stored, and Naturalist. But, given the amulet of flight, only dragons and gargoyles are unskippable... but a dragon encounter is likely to kill us outright. We are, however, 45 of 125 Experience to next attribute point.

THE 500 FINGERS OF DR. P!
The Russian stood in front of Karl Marx’s grave. To think, the revolution, the war, her entire life had been shaped by this one man, whose bust resembled Santa Claus in the snow…

JP, Captain Ivanova, and Aldous Bingen stared at the structure. Three stories tall, wrapped in piano keyboards. In front of them were, whirling mechanical dancers, with razor sharp limbs. Truly one of the weirdest death traps they'd ever encountered. That was before the clockwork assassin dropped into view…

It had started almost normally. Gia CM, New Jersey's funniest magician, was playing a command performance in foggy London towne. Unfortunately, the disappearance at the end of her act was real. But it turned out she had been pinched by mistake; the real target was an audience volunteer who was a concert pianist.

Who was taking these people? The trio checked East End pubs, snowy graveyards, interviewed burn victims, had their brake lines cut… crawled under stages, and pissed off hotel pianists. They had a rude dinner with Aldous’s sister Bea. (Bea monopolized the conversation talking about how hard it was to run a fashion house; the captain kept interrupting about how she had grown up a peasant, and various depredations of the Russian Civil War, until Bea excused herself. Then the rest of the group talked business.)

They visited the grave of Karl Marx; the captain exfiltrated a long-suffering burn victim to Science City Eight. All tracking a bald, horrifying-looking man and a supposed vampire. The captain and JP even had a heart to heart.

“I think sometimes you have a bad reputation, because of the… unscrupulous things you do.”
“That you help me with.”
The detective nodded. “Well, when you put it that way.”

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There was a break in the case as the villain grew more audacious. He faked an elaborate, SAW-like trap, to waste the group's time and distract them from a hidden bomb. By the time they caught up to him, he had turned a technology display at the Crystal Palace into a musical hellscape!

It was a hard fight battle, but the trio played to their strengths. After Dr. P’s monologue about his goal (musically open a gate to hell so he could drag his daughter out of perdition), the captain paused a moment… And then started laughing.

“Idiotic maniac. Read Nietzche. Your daughter is dead because that is what happens when you die. And you’ll never get to see her again, because as previously stated, the afterlife is not real.”

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Butler Aldous danced his way past the whirling dervishes, his Hollywood expertise helping him navigate the facsimile of a gala. JP, meanwhile absorbed the brunt of the man's traps, and fended off his self-winding mechanical assassin. Tall, slender, with hypnotic pulsing eyes, it was clear why bystanders had described her as a vampire.

The captain continued her verbal assault, getting close to the mad conductor and whistling the Internationale into his ears. Aldous managed to free magician Gia CM… who snatched the key from the self-winding bot’s hip. JP grabbed the maniac doctor in a chokehold, proving the power of brawn over brains.

After a thorough beating, the group tried to disrupt the symphony of destruction… and accidentally triggered the gate to hell. Massive fires erupted. The captain was pinned under a burning metal column. Aldous used all of his butlering skill to keep the panicked musicians safe, but almost died in the smoke until Gia saved him in return. Gallant Josiah Diamond used all of his strength to lift the column and free his beloved, allowing them to bust down a wall and save the day.

RIP to the Crystal Palace. On the plus side, it was the one place in London that was warm.