Madison Hut Received BFRPG

 It was wet, it was steep, it was a typical hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I started out like this, 

under some sun and 80% humidity on the valley floor. And then you end up here,

After the slog I collapsed in my bunk at Madison Springs Hut and surveyed the map for on the morrow we would assault the summit of Mount Washington.

But till then there was coffee to drink and spaghetti to eat and an evening cigarette to smoke. When the Croo finished the dishes and the thru-hikers fought over the left overs before they had to camp on the sodden ground I presented the Hut Master Trevor with the hand made slip case containing BFRPG, Castle by the Sea adventure anthology, the Field Guide to Monsters, and of course Purging Woth N’Rld Oakwyn’s Muddy Hole.

Trevor was taken aback but quickly grasped the nature of the gift. When I showed him the Dice bag tucked into the slip case he thought the whole package was an amazing gift for the cabin and its revolving Croo.

 Thanks to all the donors who helped fund this dream of mine. Only seven more remote mountain huts to go!

Capitol City Crime Journal - The Red Report

The Even Heroes Bleed supers campaign continues to be a new, dynamic experience for me. Once again I turned over the Game Master reins to Mettle's player Mike to run an adventure of his own devising. When I get a chance to play instead of run I use my favorite vigilante-NPC of the game, Ultra-Rosa. A gun-toting, martial arts master and gadgeteer wizard with red body armor, an array of firearms and a specially modified red 2018 Chrysler 300. Paid off. A female version of the Punisher basically. 

Today she got to team up with our newest PC hero, the Olympian. He is a flying brick from another world, a human enhanced alien. Straight up Superman vibe except he is way cooler than the Man of Steel, just saying.

We, as a group, took this detour because the PC hero Mr. Zozo couldn't make it. In a couple of weeks I can't play, so then we are looking at the Olympian and Mr. Zozo teaming up. Making me pay attention to the campaign calendar. With all these side quests going on where everything begins to occur has meaning. Since old-school gaming encourages emergent play the game group is getting a wider world to play in and everyone at the table (including the two co-GMs here) do not know where this all leads and what dramatic outcomes await. My strategy is now no matter who can make the game session we have episodes/issues which can always be played.

To keep the story threads in order I've broken the run so far into several "comic book" series. The main comic line is Even Heroes Bleed. All other story lines have to acknowledge this story line as the main story of the campaign. Every PC hero in the game has had to walk the stage in this blockbuster line. Bug, Mettle, Red Runner, Ultra-Rosa, Olympian, Mr. Zozo.

Mike took us on the campaigns first side quest with the Capitol Point Casino Adventures. These adventures (and today's session) are going to fall under the Capitol City Crime Journal: The Red Report. We have had 10 issues now of this vehicle for Ultra-Rosa's exploits when she is being run by me as a player. The Olympian has had a single issue. This was the episode where I ran just him in an adventure against some visiting galactic bounty hunters.

Now, since I cannot make next session we are going to try and continue the adventure we started today (investigating the New Revelations Church and a string of murders) in Mr. Zozo's own comic book, Road to Redemption, featuring the Macabre Mr. Zozo. Pretty nifty. The game is getting really dynamic and all the PCs feel their efforts make a notable difference in the campaign world. The only thing the game suffers (and this is common in all ttrpgs) is how long it takes to play involved adventures. There are so many potentials and intriguing avenues for rich drama, we will never see them all played out. Ah, the frailty of an rpg world. Only so much of the game world gets told, only so many tales will be spun before life changes our real destinies. And we don't know yet what those will be!

Space Opera Character Sheet for Lower Frontier 2760

I actually made two. First one was a stab at a pretty standard one. Customized for the campaign's homebrew universe. It is not finished but has the look I'm going for. The reason it isn't finished is because I had a flash of inspiration and cooked up a real specific character sheet for the campaign universe. It came from a spec sheet for a roll of batt insulation I have laying around from my house remodel. It caught my eye because for a industrial specifications sheet it actually was well laid-out. I can appreciate someone taking pride in their work!

So I reworked it for the PC in this new game highlighting the fact she is a clone. The sheet looks like this- 

Pretty badass, right?

Need to produce the back page. This is where equipment and gun stats, adventure notes, all that other jazz, will go!

Here is an empty one for you all to print out and play with!

How to Go Meta on your Supers City-Wide Drug War

Most Superhero campaign cities are going to have their various gangs, organized crime families, and drug lords. And they all via for control of everything shady; gambling, loan-sharking, prostitution, drugs, armed robbery, murder, etc. And the heroes come up with all sorts of ways to put these mangy dogs down. But how effective are the PCs efforts, really? I'm not referring to tactics, what the PCs actually do, but what happens as a result of the PCs smashing up what was otherwise a violent, deranged, antisocial way of making a living. 

Most of the time it looks like this; so-and-so gang is fighting with so-and-so criminal family over the lucrative drug trade. The PCs arrive and smash both organizations beyond recognition. Yeah, the neighborhood is saved! And there is no major dealing, death and extortion in the bad part of town for a time. Until it is time to reconnect the PCs with the criminal underground and the GM provides  drug-dealing city criminals to replace the ones previously vanquished. 

Another common tactic of PCs with an ambivalent attitude towards drug use is to play for a reduced body count out on the streets. People are able to purchase what they want in relative safety and the love gang reaps in a Supers game is to beat hell out of the entire criminal underworld until you are down to just one player. In this scenario the PCs are trading leaving one gang in tact while all others are obliterated in exchange for being the "official" drug dealer of the city. 

But while the PCs eyes are off the local drug war ball these numerous urban blights, these self-spawning criminal gangs, are re-filling in the dark cracks and trying to get back in the business.

I wanted to come up with a mini-game to meta-game the overall drug war between the gangs of Capitol City to determine which one is coming on top, on the rise, and posing the greatest threat to the PCs.

My eyes fell on my copy of the satiric card game Grass.  It is a point-scoring game with protection cards and different types of "hazard" cards. The dealer who makes $250,000 first wins. So that is how you get multiple rounds of play as a hand has an opening and a close followed by scoring. Rinse and repeat. So the thematic coloring melded perfect for the exercise. 

I played four hands to represent 4 weeks of drug trafficking between 4 different "players". Each player was one of the primary gangs in the city. The cards have all sorts of thematic hazard cards so these made nice, punchy random events which could be noted down. Not very exciting. I have to say, I will not do it again. But I did get notes for a nice detailed timeline of events and relative cash asset values for each gang which I can use as needed. These stupid little things create elements which help make a living game world, but it is still a labor of love than something mind-blowingly cool.