ORtrail

So, the next adventure, with a working title of "Puget Sound", is coming together. Here is the basic plot I'm thinking of going with. A deepsea drilling accident left Biochemist/Geologist Ernest Sponberg covered in a primordial ooze, which transformed him into the villian, Professor Primordial! Contained in his diving suit in a ooze form, he has decided to rule the oceans of the world. How? By creating a hybrid race he calls the "New Atlanteans", who are innocent divers injected with a DNA concoction based on his ooze. They transform into a water breathing form (Mermaid, Triton, half human half serpent, etc) and indoctrinated into believing they are the reborn citizens of ancient Atlantis! Each wears an old bronze crown, which they believe helped transform them and given them partial memories of living in an underwater city. The crowns are just some old artifacts stolen from some museums featuring ancient Egyptian and Minoan artifacts. This will be a bit of a red herring for the players, as they will believe they need to remove the crowns and/or find a lost merchant ship that went down in 1913 somewhere in the Puget Sound with several of those ancient crowns aboard. Add in an element of "save the environment" by having the New Atlanteans angry over the pollution and overfishing of the seas. They will attack a TV station near the water and go on live TV to demand immediate changes. Backing them up is Captain Fathom and his crew, aboard an old sailing ship that is actually very high tech and uses a forcefield to travel like a submarine. They are backing the New Atlanteans in exchange for gold. Others of the New Atlanteans have captured a tourist sub and are holding them hostage underwater. Also, almost as an afterthought at this point, Dreadnaut is seeking revenge versus the shipping company that fired him for theft, and he has convinced the New Atlanteans he wants to help them save the planet by stopping shipping in the Puget Sound. Dreadnaut wears a stolen high tech diving suit he stoled from the inventor he has now trapped in an underwater habitat. Still mulling over details, like what if the crowns really did contain the personalities of long lost Atlanteans? I want to start the adventure as the heroes investigate the disappearance of a group of amatuer divers training at a diving school. The scared owners of said diving school are trying to conceal the fact they saw their students taken by...creatures (bad for business you know). Oh, and the wife says she is still interested in rolling up a character.

After looking at the Mecha RPG webpage, it is certainly a good deal for a book and PDF copy (and the FREE shipping). How much will just the PDF version cost? With that black border running through the book, I might be better off doing a preorder if the PDF is still around $15 or so (and save my printer ink).

I just saw a trailer for the upcoming movie, Pacific Rim (giant monsters versus mechs and their pilots), so the timing of this release seems pretty good.

While I'm not a big mech fan, it sounds like it would have more than enough neat ideas and game mechanics to make getting at least a PDF version worthwhile. As soon as it hits DriveThruRPG, I am snagging a copy.

Druglords of the Sonoran Desert is now completed! While the sixth overall Superworld adventure so far, it consisted of five parts. Epic, but thankfully not a fail. At one point I was going to get them started on a Gamma World campaign (the 1992 fourth edition) after completing this adventure, for a change-of-pace (though Gamma World is pretty gung-ho and a cousin to playing supers IMHO). I am still researching for the aquatic adventure I mentioned in an earlier post and usually end up running the adventure I am most excited/hyped about, so Gamms World may wait a bit longer. Besides, it will take most of one gaming session to get characters done and unless we get back on a regular schedule I hate to "waste" that time. Now, this final group, Los Animales was designed to give the regular heroes all kinds of fits. Hummingbird was an even match for Firefly, Code Monkey was built to be very effective versus energy attacks, Armoury allowed me to pull out any type of weapon and attack type that would be most effective versus whomever he was facing, and Red Leader had a stronger, newer model show up after they beat the first model down. They went in to the Phoenix Science Center and took a tour. Firefly stayed in "bug" form the whole time while Collider and Gunslinger (played the whole time by my wife when her brother ditched out on game day) were in civilian disguise. I played the science center like it was OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) with cool exhibits, IMAX theatre, fun science experiments aimed at kids, etc. The tour guide Stefani Jones talked about how they were hoping to get some super powered people to volunteer to be studied. Collider decided then and there to show off his mass power by making a large magnet float across the room. An impressed Stefani went to get her boss, Bryan Davis AKA Red Leader. I played Red Leader like he was expecting them to show up the whole time and with lots of references to calculated probabilities. "Given your demonstration of density control, I calculate there is an 87.4% probability you are the hero known as Collider. This was expected, as there was a 58.6% probability that association with the Los Elementos gang would lead you here. I also calculate a 77.2% chance that your companion here is Gunslinger, and a 56.1% chance that the being known as Firefly is also in or near the building." And so forth. They seemed to like the idea of a villian using a more direct approach and were willing to talk for a bit. Red Leader eventually insisted that Collider accompany him to the underground lab so they could duplicate his powers. "There is a 74.4% probability you will be defeated if you resist." Having noticed Armoury ("big guy in a black trench coat has been following you around room to room") earlier, Collider decided he was the bigger threat and hit him with a "mass blast" staggering him with a 17 SIZ weight increase. The battle was on. Firefly got ambushed by Hummingbird and got hit hard for 11 pts of damage after armor (out of her 24 total hpts). The niece was NOT happy at facing a fair fight! "I like when people have a HALF chance to hit me!" a pause then she added, "Birds eat insects... I think I'm in trouble!" The friend playing Collider had him yelling for Firefly and Gunslinger to take out Red Leader and not to worry about anyone else, so I'm not sure why he went after Armoury? The battle went on for a bit, with yet another Collider mass blast fumble ("00") and he pinned the 10 STR Gunslinger to the floor! Despite having a half chance to hit, the wife managed to hit Red Leader over her next three actions! Firefly got in a couple good shots and Hummingbird ducked into an air vent to get away. Deciding not to follow Firefly flew back in time to finish off Red Leader (version one anyway). A couple minutes later, over the building intercom, I had Code Monkey go on a rant about how they would soon see the "real mastermind behind Los Animales" and he thanked them for "eliminating the other drug gangs and leaving him as the only smuggling option along this section of the border". Finally Code Monkey emerged from an elevator, along with his two chimpanzee minions and the second, tougher version of Red Leader. Code Monkey had a magnetic tool he could use to parry and deflect energy attacks, which he used to good effect. Red Leader shoot laser beams from his android eyes and the chimps were mostly annoying with their low damage (1d10) laser goggle attacks. It was near the end of battle that Collider understood that just some physical attacks would be most effective versus Code Monkey. Collider actually finished off Code Monkey with a chair. The wife really enjoyed gaming again, talked about getting herself a new set of dice and rolling up her own character. I'd like to think she would be a regular, but her health issues make that iffy. The nephew was out of town, so no Sir Balderius, but he will probably be around through the summer so if the brother-in-law continues to be a "no show" we should still have a regular group of four players. This post has gotten rather long, so I'll post later about some ideas/twists I am considering for the aquatic adventure.

Yeah, I have invested in a couple RPG projects. Nothing to show yet for the money spent, and there have been one or two epic fails in regards to some RPG projects, but I like the basic idea. When I finally get my hands on the latest Army Ants RPG it will have been worth it. Even if I will just want to convert it over to the BRP system.

My Nook tablet has become a vital accessory to my RPG games. I forgot to bring it along for the last adventure, and really wanted it for the Lowe Museum. I had stored some pictures of Elvis paintings, a humaniod plaster sculpture vomiting up a rainbow of colors photo, and finally some photos of a typical Border Patrol pickup and "Watchtower" lookout trailer. It really is true that a picture can be worth a thousand words, and convey an idea or situation with minimal effort on the part of the GM. While I do not see ever being comfortable with all my notes and such on a tablet or eReader, it is sure handy to show off some things and saves me a lot of color ink compared to printing out stuff (the black and white is fine -in fact some of the players enjoy coloring while we game, so I always have a couple sets of colored pencils with me). A moment that made me chuckle was when Amber Lowe was giving the tour and was about to show them one of the "Special Exhibit" rooms, with all the Elvis stuff. She introduced it as, "Let me show you our tribute to the King." and the nephew says, "Michael Jackson?!" Another moment was when Giganto was throwing artifacts at them, starting with an old stone Mayan calendar ("Now outdated." I said with a grin). There were a number of references once again by several of us about the nephew being the "Aquaman" of the group. Okay, so here is what I finally decided was going on: Red Leader, of the Los Animales gang is an android and only appears to be the leader. Built by the real criminal mastermind of the group, Code Monkey (your classic genius gorilla). He started his criminal empire by selling energy weapons to the other gangs (Los Elementos and Los Mulas de Drogas) then decided to take over the smuggling business with his own gang. He has recruited a human male who can somehow pull most any weapon out of his trenchcoat (Armoury) and a tiny female villian (Hummingbird) who should be a great match versus Firefly and Red Leader has super strength and laser eye beams. Did I mention the two chimpanzee sidekicks with blue laser beam goggles? The ace card for Code Monkey? A Teleportation pad he finally got working, with one end at the Phoenix Science Center and the other in a Mexican villa. Then he just needed to get rid of the other gangs to have all the drug trade for himself. Why not get a team of super heroes to do the heavy lifting? With this adventure near the end I have started on an aquatic scenario. This will be a blending of a scenario from the Evil Genius #2 PDF, an old Champions module called Scourge from the Deep, and my own ideas. I once again went looking online and found a nice variety of underwater habitat floorplans, photos, and a cool tourist submersible that is just begging to get hijacked by aquatic villians. While this adventure started as a basic powered diving suit used by villian to blackmail money from the Seattle harbour/freighter companies, I wanted to add some other elements. Another scientist, besides the one who built the suit, one who has used some iffy genetic manipulation to give his humaniod creations the freedom to live under the sea. Some of his early experiments are just monsters, but a couple of the latest ones are very intelligent and concerned about saving the oceans from human pollution, over-fishing, etc. I am still putting together notes, maps and such, but it should be a nice change of scenery adventure. The idea of having an "Aquaman" won't seem so bad either!

Wow, it has taken a month to get back to this adventure, but the end is now in sight! The nephew is on summer break now from college, so he sat in on the adventure (Sir Baldarious). The Brother-in-law was unable to make it, and the niece spent much of the time on her resume for a car dealership job. That left Collider and Baldarious doing most of the adventure and Firefly along for the ride. Gunslinger was back to attending to "personal issues". Instead of heading out into the mts and finding the old Santiago mine (and the rest of the Los Mulas de Drogas gang) they decided to go chat with the Border Patrol agent Mario Sumudio and convinced him to voice his suspicions about the Lowe Museum and Art Gallery in Yuma and a possible connection with the Los Elementos gang. I think they reasoned that they had broken up the distribution channel of the drug mule gang and were okay with that. The next day they went to the Lowe Museum and took a look around. There were guards with the classic theatre masks (comedy and tragedy) which started as happy faces and changed when the inevitable fight broke out. They were well equiped/trained humans and put up a good battle alongside the super villians. They ended up with a private tour given by the owner/artist Amber Lowe (Animator her super villian name as she can animate paintings and sculptures). As Amber was showing off her extensive "Elvis on velvet" paintings, a woman came in with a briefcase containing $30,000 and half-heartedly bought an Elvis painting. A crappy painting of course and Firefly followed the woman (Tina Cooper) as she drove away to find out why she paid so much for it. What was going on was that Animator was helping Los Elementos smuggle drugs through a tunnel under the museum, and ego stroking by kidnapping people and having them "ransomed" by forcing the spouse to buy a painting from her museum. The painting was delivered the next day, along with the kidnap victim (who were kept in the tunnel on the Mexcian side of the border. Firefly blew out the tired on Mrs Coopers car, then hauled her up into the air for a question and answer session. She felt bad after finding out Mrs Cooper was not buying drugs, but ransoming her husband. She hurried back to the Lowe Museum and the fight was on. Animator had a "Energy Elvis" jump out to attack and animated a sculpture too. The battle was joined by Giganto (the earth element of Los Elementos) more guards, and after a minute or two a second battle when the fire and air members showed up. They ended up going down through the tunnel and battled Rio Fangoso the water element of the team and yet more guards. They freed the kidnap victims (Mr Cooper and a couple others) and that is where we left off. They got the next big clue from Mr Cooper when he told them he overheard the Los Elementos gang talking about meeting with Red Leader at the Phoenix Science Center (they never realized he could speak Spanish). I'll talk about the final battle they face against Red Leader and Los Animales later today or tomorrow. Gotta get back to work.

I just downloaded some comics that were created by professionals (online only distribution and on a donation basis). The creators seem very happy with how the "pay us what you think they are worth" approach has worked and they are using the money to continue making more issues. Panelsyndicate I think a similar approach would work for many RPG projects. Of course, having never recieved my copy of Swords of Cydoria from Chaosium might be clouding my perspective on this.

Not sure why a laser sight would matter if you are just shooting without aiming? I would let the player roll an attack (at 1/4 chance) versus every target within the area being shot at and assume they have an empty clip or power cell when done "spraying and praying". At best I would allow the characters with skill level at 60% or better to have a 1/2 chance to hit when doing this. In case some of this was in reference to Gunslinger and his Rapid-Fire power? He gets to fire a three shot burst at any single target (one attack roll with a 1D3 roll for number of hits) or split his attacks among two or three targets (seperate 'to hit' rolls for each target and a 1D2 for number of hits on one of them). All Rapid-Fire attacks are at -5% per attack over one (so -10% to Gunslinger's accuracy). Only the first shot can do "critical" damage. Gunslinger also pays the energy cost for each shot, so he burns through A LOT of energy very quickly. More than once he has ran out of power and had to resort to his old normal revolver or grabbed any weapon at hand. As with many things in gaming, if it becomes something that every character wants? It is probably an exploit of the gaming system.

I'm a big fan of super heroes, time travel, and post apocalyptic gaming. BRP is excellent for time travel/dimension hopping adventures. Low level supers work well (Hawkeye, Captain America, Batman on up to about Spider-Man power levels) with BRP. I've done the vast majority of PA gaming with Gamma World (1st and 2nd editions), but BRP can do it too. If someone ever completes a BRP version of Jorune, I am SO THERE! I should add that, after playing the BRP system, I find that characters advancing by levels in RPGs annoys me.

Yeah, I would take a long look through the RPG collection your aunt has. For the most part, many RPGs age well -BRP in particular. You should find a lot of inspiration. Is there a particular genre or RPG experience you are wanting to try? Take a look at the download section here (if you haven't already) and you can see a number of BRP conversions for various settings. Oh, and welcome.

Thanks to one work project ending, and going through two others before finally getting a stable schedule, it took us until this evening to play again. The niece is now back to work on a temp job too, so we finally decided Saturday was the day to play. Even then, the player of Gunslinger got to feeling ill and went home just before we got started. On a side note, I think we will be playing on Saturday evenings now, it seems the best for everyone. I am going to try and recruit another player, one that might take the place of my brother-in-law if he is unable to play all that much going forward. I did a five minute recap of the adventure so far, and then they (the players for Collider and Firefly) decided to follow up on the Sonoran Vet Clinic lead. Firefly snuck in to look around the clinic while the two vets (a husband and wife) drove off to meet a Dr Mia Tavares in the desert. They were setting up some kind of lab or something out in the desert it seemed. The players followed them and found three semi-trailers, converted into a mobile clinic, and treating several families of illegal immigrants who had been abandoned out in the desert while being snuck across the border. Found by Warhorse and Cimarron they had been taken to the mobile clinic for treatment. The heroes waited for the Los Mulas De Drogas members to leave the moblie clinic area (they were in the middle of smuggling stuff into Yuma) and confronted the vets and Dr Tavares about helping/working with drug smugglers. It turned out that drug profits had helped pay for the mobile lab, and Los Mulas De Drogas often smuggled over medical drugs to treat cancer patients without medical coverage. A bit of a moral quandry for our heroes, who finally decided they still needed to stop Los Mulas De Drogas even if they were doing some good deeds. Chasing after Warhorse and Cimarron, there was a running battle that left Collider with 7 hpts and Cimmaron knocked out. Warhorse carried her away while Firefly carried Collider and went after them. Collider meant to hit Warhorse with his "mass blast" to add weight to him and slow him down, but fumbled ("00") and instead hit Firefly and they both went down under the sudden weight increase (+16 SIZ versus her 16 levels of flight). By the time Firefly recovered, Warhorse and Cimarron had escaped into the desert night. It was a solid three hours of gaming. Lots of talking and some hand wringing, followed by a classic fight that ended with some embarassment on the part of Collider. I should mention they had taken out a couple of the Los Mulas De Drogas human guards, who they questioned and now know that the Los Mulas De Drogas have a base established at the legendary (and mostly long-lost) Santiago mine.

Any stretch goals that would delay the release of the main rulebook would be a bad idea. I join in the chorus of voices crying out for RoH, ASAP! Early supporters getting an early PDF copy to test out and make some suggestions? Maybe catch a typo or two?

Continued the adventure this past Wednesday. Since we had skipped a week, I did a recap of what had gone on, who they had talked with, and now they were back at the Cross The Border Coffee shop to chat with Rusty again. Rusty pointed them to the IceWork factory, an ice factory and distributor. Owned and operated by a guy named Jack Frost ("Probably not his real name.") it was rumored to be part of a distribution network for one of the drug gangs. "You send drivers out to deliver ice and they can drop off... other items along the route." noted Rusty. What is really going on? Jack Frost, aka Snowman, went straight years ago, turning his ice powers to business ventures. He was having his factory in Yuma built when he showed up on site and found the contruction company had started building a tunnel across the border to Mexico. Jack sealed up the tunnel with ice, fired the construction company and had the factory finished by an honest contractor. It was the Los Elementos gang that was behind it. This was about two years ago. A couple weeks ago, Red Leader sent a couple goons to Iceworks, posing as Los Elementos gang members, to demand that Jack Frost work with them or face having his factory attacked. Alarmed Jack has hired back a half dozen of his old gang members ("Snowmen"), armed them with ice pistols and hired more muscle in Security-Snake (a mutant with the lower half body of a giant snake who works as a bodyguard/private security force). Of course, what Jack considered a show of defensive force looked really suspicious to the player's heroes. Just as I had hoped/planned. After a 1/2 hour of plotting and planning, our heroes decided to ambush one of the delivery drivers and take his truck, using it to sneak back into the factory. Easy enough, as the guy was just a normal Joe, but then they had to take out a couple of the Snowmen, then Security-Snake found them trying to stuff yet another unconscious body into the back of the delivery truck. A surprisingly long battle ensued between the three heroes, Security-Snake and two more Snowmen. Poor rolling all around and both Gunslinger and Collider nearly ran out of energy. I had Jack Frost step out, throw a snowball, and yell, "I told you people, NO WAY am I letting the Los Elementos gang use my business to distribute drugs!" That prompted a conversation that ended with Jack offering up two possible leads for them to follow. One lead is Border Patrol agent who might be on the take. This will lead them to the Lowe Museum in Yuma, where the Los Elementos gang has a hidden underground base and tunnel across the border. The second lead is that a local vet clinic has treated the centaur-like members of the Los Mulas De Drogas gang (according to the girlfriend of one Jack's delivery guys who works at the vet clinic anyway). This will lead them to the Los Mulas De Drogas cave complex/base out in the desert mountains, just north of the border. You can usually count on the players to follow the trail of leads, so things proceed along a certain path, but I did want to give them some options -or at least the illusion of choice. Eventually, they will have to deal with both gangs, and then Red Leader, but it should be fun to hear them argue which lead to pursue first or would they dare to split up? I should also note that the players were annoyed that Jack Frost was not exactly "the bad guy" they were after. They took some convincing and a long look around the ice plant before they accepted he was at least semi-legit. So, after two "wild goose chase" parts to this adventure, they are eager to battle the real villains -and then they can feel like they are getting closer to resolving this whole border/drug war mess.

Ex-player type. When your "fun" consists of messing over the campaign/GM/other players just for your own amusement. I am reminded of this video:

That covers a LOT of ground. Are you looking for an explore the universe theme? Space merchants? Star empires in conflict? Sadly, BRP is lacking in those things. The closest they ever really got was Ringworld I guess. A long out of print game won't help you now though. I'd suggest going to the Chaosium website and checking out all they have. I'd like to suggest Swords of Cydoria, for example. I have yet to recieve my physical copy of SoC though (ordered back in December) so you would be better off getting the PDF version if it sounds interesting to you. Maybe check out The Chronicles of Future Earth? One of the future based Call of Cthulhu supplements? For the record, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on River of Heaven.

More of a snide comment moment really, but I still chuckle at bit thinking about it: Star Trek: Prime Directive campaign. The Prime Team characters were at an M class water planet, other than a few island chains it was 98% water. A huge drilling submersible vehicle (with a laser drill capable of cutting through the planets tectonic plates) had gone missing for a week. Taken by rebel group? Too deep and too magnetic to get any decent sensor scans, the players were going over the planetary map and caculating the search radius. Then this conversation: Player: "Hey, look, this doomed city is within the search zone! We should go there!" Me: "Uh, yeah, that's actually domed city, but if your characters are heading there... it probably is..." The underwater city actually survived the adventure.

Yeah, falling behind in updating this thread. We gamed last Wednesday (and missed this week due to one player being sick and another dealing with a flooded kitchen/plumbing issues), starting the "Drug Lords of the Sonoran Desert" adventure. First, once you do some research on the drug smuggling, human trafficking, illegal immigrants, and corruption on both sides of the border by various government agencies? Adding villains is just icing on the cake. This has turned into one of the biggest single adventures I've ever written, at least in terms of the sheer number of NPCs and villain groups. Two Mexican super villain groups, one American super villain group, a couple Mexican super heroes, several "neutral" super powered NPCs, a volunteer "Border Militia" roaming the desert in dune buggies, shady corporation testing of combat robots/virtual fences, and of course the wedding of Lanky and Gale. It almost writes itself. This should end up taking about 5-6 game sessions to play through. I really think you could base a mini-campaign on just the issues with the Mexican-American border and a group of heroes trying to "clean things up". The heroes were invited down to Yuma, Arizona for the wedding, arrive a few days early, and are attending a rehearsal when a DEA agent arrives to question Gale Tempest about her alleged past involvement with a Mexican gang. Agent Takemoto threatens to take Gale into custody for a few days, wedding or not, but relents when she asks the heroes to help investigate what is going on in Southwest Arizona. Agent Takemoto is worried about a war between the existing powers-that-be and a new gang lead by someone called, "Red Leader" and wants any and all intel he can get to figure out who the players are and what they are up to. Gale won't trust the DEA with anything she knows, but gives the heroes a lead on a coffee shop owner with criminal connections. They end up at the "Cross The Border Coffee" shop, talking with a game named Rusty, who eventually clues them into a company working on building a virtual fence (needing more investors of course) along the border and Rusty implies that some in the corporation might be willing to look the other way while letting certain groups cross the border. In fact, word on the street was that something was being smuggled across the fence testing area tonight. They spent the rest of the evening investigating the local office of the corporation, following Gale Harris the Spokesperson to her home (where Firefly snuck in and grabbed her laptop) then heading out into the desert where the five mile section of virtual fence was installed (which btw was sensors buried in the ground to detect foot, vehicle and low flying plane vibrations). Once out there, they were surprised by two robots bursting out of containers buried in the sand. The Borderbots took down Collider, and damaged Firefly a bit before being taken out. Rusty, as an investor in the company (which the players/characters thought would be a good investment too actually) knew they wanted to test out both the fence and the Borderbots who were designed to combat and capture drug smugglers. What better combat test than a group of super heroes? After this, Rusty will give the players a real lead on one of the local drug gangs. If things go as planned, they will fight three different villain groups before getting to Red Leader and the truth about what is really going on. In short, the heroes will be manuvered by Red Leader to take out the other gangs and leave his group as the only smugglers left along that stretch of the border. I don't know yet how the players/characters will react to crossing into Mexico if necessary -and in the end it will be.

Yes, I would look to find a BRP group online if I was not able to game locally. The tools should be just get better and better in the next few years. I would not be surprised to see someone do an "Indie game/app" for Xbox Live that would let you roll dice with your controller, group chat, and so on. After texting with the niece about online gaming, we might try it in the near future just to see how it goes. We could try for a mix of face-to-face and online.

Like most things, we tend to need experience before getting more comfortable. She is a "natural" gamer though, and has progressed quickly given she has played all of five adventures with one gaming system. She actually Googled "playing RPGs" before asking me about teaching her to game. I don't remember telling her or talking about "solo adventures" (though it could have been mentioned in passing) so she must have read about that online (which is why she was talking about using Skype to play when we first started). We did talk about "gaming styles" the other night, as she sees the contrast in how the Collider and Gunslinger players approach things, and felt like there should be more team planning/cooperation versus reacting to events. Part of that might be the fact the Collider player knew rather quickly the "Precinct 31" adventure was a "survival mode" more than anything and reacted by blasting away early and often. Of course, he has not gamed in some time either so I think he was eager for an excuse to roll lots of dice. If you have gamed for some time, you end up with hilarious (maybe funnier than at the time it was happening) stories of character death, total party kills, etc. Years ago I gamed with one player who had an almost uncanny ability to get his character killed off every 1-2 sessions, usually by doing stupid stuff and/or taking critical damage even in combat with weak opponents. Anyone here actually do any online gaming? I would think we are getting close to having it as a viable option, but just like online videogame football, it is best when you are in the same room.

This week was rather iffy for gaming with various schedule conflicts that came up, so we were going to try for this Wednesday to play. I was surprised then, when my niece texted Monday afternoon wondering about doing a solo adventure for Firefly that evening. Why not, I was still writing up the "Drug Lords of the Sonoran" (which is very much a group adventure with all the villains) so I needed a quick solo adventure. I dug around and found an old issue of White Wolf magazine (#12) with a short CoC adventure called, "The Knocking Box". It takes place on a train, and involves a mysterious crate in the cargo car. The plot being a man has a CoC creature captured and it will be escaping from the crate. I had run this scenario twice before -once "as is" for CoC, and years later, heavily modified for a pulp hero campaign. The pulp version was very close to a standard supers adventure, but I needed to update it (again) from the 1930's setting. The basic plot I turned it into is scientist bringing back mysterious meteorite with supposed powers (radiation) which was stolen by assistant from cult/warrior monks who are tracking it down. *Eases into rocking chair* Okay, for all you young gamers out there, you have it SO VERY GOOD with all these internet resources! I never tire of pointing that out, especially compared to how it was "back in the day". I was able to jump online and soon had some excellent diagrams of Amtrak train cars of all types (passenger, dining, one with a theater, and so on). I cut them out and taped up the whole train, making a pretty cool map/prop. Using her background as an entomologist, I decided Firefly was cruising on down to San Francisco with a friend/biologist for a conference on "Killer Bee Containment". She mingled with some other passengers in the Deluxe (First Class) car, especially a Professor Manfred Sigler who was just back from collecting meteorites in the Siberian/Eastern region. He had two assistants, a Russian woman named Roza Sternova and a Tibetan man named Choden Dharghey. Prof Sigler was deathly afraid of flying, hence the train. Plus Amtrak was running a nice promotion. Firefly is visited that evening by Choden, offering to sell some "extra samples" to her, since she seemed interested in being a collector. She said she'd think about it. Meantime, a Tibetan beetle mutates (6' long) in the crate with the "Star of Kathmandu" (radioactive meteorite) and breaks out, spraying the compartment with an acidic cloud from its defensive glands. The Coach car is evacuated as the smell spreads and in Firefly costume she goes to investigate the commotion. I used the illustration of the Parn (or sword beetle) from Gamma World, fyi. I had it cutting through the locked cargo door as she arrived. They fight; it retreats into the cargo room and sprays away. She opens windows outside, then goes in to finish it off. She identifies it as a Tibetan beetle, mutated of course. Prof Sigler and assistants arrive to gather up meteorite samples spilled all around. Firefly is distracted a bit by searching around for more insects that might get mutated. Afterwards, she goes to talk with Choden (thinking she can buy the radioactive one or at least get more info), who is being roughed up by a large muscular fellow (a Tiger-man type clone if you will). Choden seems to be blaming her (not speaking Tibetan herself) and she is attacked by said, Tiger-Man. She wins, figures Choden has run back to his room or to the Deluxe cabin of Prof Siglers and races there. She is stopped by a Warrior-Monk-Priestess (Sadhana) and they battle it out. Firefly was actually losing this battle (down to 7 hpts), when I had Prof Sigler show up and speak enough Tibetan to call a truce. Realizing Choden was the real culprit, Sadhana and Firefly race to the deluxe cabin but the Star of Kathmandu is gone. Looking around, they hear some passengers talking about the man who jumped from the train, so they race back down the tracks and find Choden. Sadhana easily gets the meteorite from him and the three Tibetans head back home. It was a fun, two hour solo adventure. Reminded me again how when you are alone and the dice rolls go south -well, things can turn ugly in a hurry. Other than the beetle, it was the classic comic book "misunderstanding battle" so Firefly was never in serious danger of falling into "enemy" hands. We are looking at getting together again this week (all three players) and starting the "Wedding of Lanky and Gale" or "Drug Lords of the Sonoran Desert" as I call it. I seldom share the adventure titles with the players till afterwards BTW.

Finished up Assault on Precinct 31 this past Monday evening. I had revamped it to account for the extra hero (Collider) but then the player for Gunslinger got sick and didn't make it. We rolled with just the players for Firefly and Collider. Now, this adventure was a change of pace, really a classic "railroad" type where things are set in motion well before the players get to do anything (no following a trail of clues/leads here -it was all about fighting for survival) and only one real course of action. The police at Precinct 31 had arrested a driver that night (Wesley Thomas) for DUI and probable Identity Theft, and the guy phoned someone who he claimed was his older brother -and the quasi-villain (depending on how you view things) Harvester. Confident his older brother would soon arrive Wesley was talking trash and giving warnings to all who would listen. Police Chief Douglas Savage called in a prison transport van to get Wesley taken to a supers containment facility in the Seattle area, and our heroes were asked to escort the van back. While they are in the station trying to get information out of Wesley about what his brother is capable of (along with adding ankle restraints) a moving van pulls into the parking lot, they hear a faint humming noise, and then the lights go out. The emergency generator kicks in, the moving van screeches away back down the road, into the fog that suddenly appeared. It passes the arriving prison transport van and the heroes spend a couple minutes checking it out and noticing that the internet is down, land lines down, cell phones with no signal, etc. Thinking this all must be something Harvester can do, they pile into the transport van with Wesley and start down the road. They quickly encounter a man running out of the fog, yelling for help. Calls himself Dr. Sam Tilson who was just kidnapped by Harvester who wanted to use his experimental Dark Matter Amplifier to boost his sonic powers. An 8m long slime-worm comes out of the fog and attacks the van. They drive it way with a few energy blasts and then stop at the gas station/mini-mart nearby. A swarm of huge insects is trying to get at a man trapped in his pickup and they rescue him. Going into the darkened mart, they get some snacks from the deli and free ice cream (no power, so why not? reasons Nigel White the assistant manager). They were convinced that a part of some other world had been brought back here to earth, it took a bit for them to realize (like finding the road ending at a swampy lake with the moving van half submerged) that THEY had been the ones to get moved to an alternate earth. Dr. Tilson headed back to the station, while Collider went to rescue the doctor's equipment out of the van and Firefly was asked by Chief Savage (police radios still worked) to check on a nearby home that had also come through with them. Collider enjoyed taking out the creatures, while Firefly just wanted to get the equipment back and have the doctor get them back home. Collider found a cooperative Harvester who also wanted to get home, so they called a truce and brought back the van after he "downsized it" and pulled it out of the swamp. I need to add that when they first got to the mini-mart they asked "Did any of you see a moving van go by?" With a straight face Nigel replied, "Do you mean a moving van? Or a van in motion? Or a moving van in motion?" You probably had to be there. The niece went to check on the Chang house, actually hoping that, "Maybe they are already dead and I can get back to helping save Dr. Tilson's equipment." Instead, of course, she had to rescue the retired couple (and their yappy little dogs) from a couple of giant tentacled-frog creatures. Yes they tried to catch Firefly with sticky tongues. She beat them easily, and noted they were distracted by the scented candles around the Chang home. Getting back to the station, she found some bipedal creature breaking into a car, searching for, and finding some batteries. The creature pulled out a Sony Walkman and tried to play a cassette -but it was too badly corroded to work. Firefly realized this was a human male in disguise -in fact it was George Walling a man who had disappeared over 20 years ago while hiking in a thunderstorm. His mind was nearly gone, and all he wanted was to hear "The greatest band in the world, Skid Row, one more time." The niece rolled her eyes and said, "What a loser!" Chief Savage was amazed that the guy he helped look for as a rookie was finally found. "His family came up every year for the first decade or so, and we used to joke around the station 'Where's Walling?' when looking at maps." he said. Yes, I snuck in a "Where's Waldo" reference. They beat a final wave of floating tentacled sphere creatures and one final "boss", and get zapped back to their earth. Chief Savage and the heroes look the other way as Harvester and Wesley take off. The station was badly damaged at that point, everyone was just glad to be back after fighting "Crabzilla".

Okay, this strikes me as stealth advertising. That said, a couple of those supplements look interesting. Alas, there are NO conversion notes for BRP, though they cover 9 other systems.