Golden Anvil

Man it's been a long time since you've read anything here. You shouldn't be so lazy...

Well, last time we played our Monday RPG, we finished up the adventure. The group managed to escape out the window of the Houses of Parliament (into the Thames) and swam down the river to the area where their ship was docked. There was some difficulties with drowning, but pretty much everyone made it. Not a whole lot else happened, and the group managed to leave without much uproar, the ship loaded with a cargo bound for Hong Kong.

Then gauntman (the player of the Professor), took over as GM for the rest of the evening. He'll be running the next adventure in Hong Kong. By the end of the evening, the group (minus me, as my character wasn't introduced yet) got into Hong Kong, and left the ship to do a little shopping for the ship's cook. After an encounter with some pick-pocketing kids, and some inscrutable merchants we finished up for the week.

Well, we played on Monday. The session was pretty much taken up by a fight. The Glass Man (from waaaaay back near the beginning) apparently found out they were around and attack while they were busy digging through papers looking for the stuff the Resistance wanted. Fortunately, Brooky was standing guard, and with Eva's ability to see through walls they were able to set up a nice ambush that threw the attacking soldiers back out of the room (props to Natasha for setting up a ring of illusionary soldiers right around the doorway to sow fear and confusion).

After the first wave of Nazis left the room, Brooky went charging out after them, gunned down one, then realized that the Glass Man was standing there. He went sprinting back in the room, warning everyone. General panic broke out (after all, they only beat him the first time because Brooky managed to use the jeep-mounted machine gun on him), and everyone started making for the windows that looked out over the Thames.

Well, it's time to update you on the last two weeks of play (we didn't play the two weeks before that, as Mrs. Kheldar was visiting family and friends out of town. This will be a short summary, but at least it'll get you caught up again.

Last time they decided to put the blind friend they found on the base in contact with the London resistance group they'd met with. They had a meeting scheduled with a resistance contact, and that went pretty well. They got a hold of a couple pistols (since weaponry was kind of tough to smuggle out of the port area), and got some information about where the records were archived that they were looking for (it turns out that the Reich had turned the Houses of Parliament into a records archive for temporary storage while waiting to get it all sorted and processed for useful content).

You've seen pictures of some of the bombing damage in European cities after WWII? Tone that down just a little bit. You've seen pictures of people during the Great Depression in the US? Now combine those pictures. In particular, keep the dirt and the grey. Add some fog, since it's London.

There you have the setting of tonight's session. The players are in Reich controlled England (London specifically), posing as independent tramp freighter operators. They're trying to track down records from their past to keep the Germans from learning to much about them. It's now 1947, the war was unofficially over a year ago, and things are now in somewhat of a cold war state (although technically peace was never declared). The Reich controls all of Europe (as well as other places).

Tonight we made some lists of potential plot ideas for upcoming adventures and set-piece location and events that could happen during those plots. This is part of a kind of interesting idea that we're experimenting with. The idea is that I need help running a cinematic/low-powered-supers campaign, and my players need some help playing in such a campaign. So, we're going to together determine an overall plot for the next adventure, and then together pick a couple set-piece location or event that will happen during that plot (I will also pick another couple set-piece items that the players won't know about). This will help me run a game that fits nicely into the genre, and allows the players to have a sense of where things are going so that they can help the story flow smoothly.

I meant to post this last night, but ironically enough, I was busy preparing for next week's role playing session...

Monday we finished up the adventure with a couple quick dice rolls and some plot summarization. Most of the bombs on the base were found. Loss of life was minimal due to advanced warning. The moles on the base (at least the known ones) were killed or captured.

Most of the session was actually spent in some deep discussions about where we want to go with this campaign. We talked about a variety of ideas on making improvements to the game and adjustments to the characters. We're all pretty excited about what lies ahead.

Natasha's player was missing, but we played tonight, and it looks like we should be able to finish this adventure next session. The group staked out the place where the bad guys were planning on bombing someone/something. In the early morning a truck was driven to the place and left parked on the street. After some messing around with trying to get in the truck, Brooky was shot at with something (likely a rifle of some kind). This actually was able to get past his tough skin, and so the group decided to chuck a grenade under the truck and run for it. This of course blew up the truck and the explosives inside quite nicely, which (unless the target was the nearby buildings) foiled the bad guys' plans.

Well, I guess I'd better get this post out before I get too far behind again and get forced to post another ramble (I think I can keep this one to only two topics!!!). We did play on Monday, but we got home a little late, and I've been busy since then.

As you might recall from last time, Eva got taken down in a fight with the bad guys...

Well, they made their way back to the hotel with Achmed (and the unconscious Eva) in tow without any real problems. They then got in touch with their British contact on the base and explained some of the situation (not revealing yet that there were traitors on the base who were going to be smuggling in explosives). Their contact agreed to send four men as backup, since the party had previously arranged for the one mercenary gang to do a hit on their hotel room (so that they could grab some of them and interrogate them for more details).

Well, we played tonight, and things went pretty well. In particular, I think I firmly proved that I'm not playing favorites with my wife...

As you might recall, the last session was three weeks ago, and Mrs. Kheldar hadn't been able to make it. We stopped the session just as a fight was starting, and someone showed up in the room behind the group. Natasha had taken some gun fire, and burned off a character point to get a chance to roll a dodge.

Sorry I missed my Monday roleplaying update. We did play, and in fact things went very well. Unfortunately, I got home later than usual and didn't have time to update. Then the last two days have been very busy, and now it's Thursday, and Mrs. Kheldar and I are leaving this afternoon to go visit her family for an extended weekend. So, I figured I'd better post an update now before I leave too long of a gap.

On Monday, Mrs. Kheldar wasn't feeling well, so she wasn't able to make it to the roleplaying session. However, everyone else was there, so we played anyway.