What's happening in the games10th September 2006My character didn't do anything much in 'Shadows' this session. The combatant characters went out to get some samples of the land-mutant-demon-bug thingies. My character was meant to go with them, but I fluffed the first stealth roll and they waved her back into the habitat instead. She went along with that, as she didn't have any confidence in the plan to obtain the sample bugs anyway, and doesn't perceive herself as a combatant type. (Even though she is actually quite tough and able, the rolls nearly always seem to go badly when we are in combat, so she has an impression of herself as not being a very good fighter as a consequence, plus she doesn't have any effective ranged weapons at present). Plus, the character is pretty upset and depressed still at being infected with a control device that effectively has crushed her free will and sapped her ability to take independent and spontaneous actions.
I might have done something different if I had realised that the whole of the rest of today's session would be taken up with that one bug-collecting task / encounter. The bugs seemed to be overly hard... It occurs to me that yes the point needed making that they were a fierce, difficult and hard enemy to deal with, and that stealth was very key to getting away with what we needed to do, but four hours of game play for one combat encounter seems a bit excessive. It also proves that the rules we're using are designed for a game that is not primarily about combat !
Metagaming tells me we are not actually meant to fight this particular enemy - they are too numerous and too tough, so we must be expected to deal with them through intelligent action rather than brute force, somehow. Shame I am not always as smart as my character is supposed to be...
It was very boring sitting for four hours plus with nothing to do. I actually got quite depressed in that time, for various personal reasons. I imagine my character found herself a relatively safe place to be and then just slept and meditated and chatted with her daughter.
Eventually the party got back with the bug sample and I was able to help discern that they are a fairly simple demonic lifeform. Their organs are non-functional, and they just use demonic energies to move their physical mass around etc., which sounds like it is going to make fighting them / defending the habitat / getting rid of them pretty difficult.
We also discovered that the guy running the habitat is in the (slow?) process of turning into a demon himself, and that if / when that occurs our own version of him will also reverse, which sounds like it could be really bad :-( This seems to be happening with most people native to the time period(s) we are currently stuck in. My character did have a theory that this could be a natural part of the evolutionary process, though it now appears it could also be a deliberate demonic plot by an NPC demon called Teth-ma-tet, who has an axe to grind with one of his fellow demons and is creating himself an army to go and kick some rival demonic butt.
I'm going to give my fellow players the address for this blog today, so maybe they will want to add their comments at some point.
20th August 2006The Camarilla game went well at the weekend. It was a small game, but everyone got involved and things were achieved.
In-character (IC) we worked out some plans for getting cameras into bug-infested areas of the sewer system. We also met and came to terms with the small collection of vampires (NPCs) living in Stockport.
My thanks out-of-character to Mat, who NPCed all 9 of the Stockport people, including three women ! Well done ! Thanks too for the help my boyfriend has given in pointing me in fresh directions regarding the possible origins of the bugs.
The Pirates game concluded last week, with us finally managing to deliver our cargo at Antigua. We had to repel borders when we got into port first though. A whole crew of borders, in fact, dispatched by us with the aid of our captain and his friend and a few others, the rest of the crew having already taken to shore before the borders turned up. We think they were Dutch navy again, but we didn't get to uncover the mastermind who sent them because we ran out of time OOC. No new game with that group for a couple of weeks now, I think.
14 August 2006We played 'Shadows' over the weekend. It went quite well. We spent the session travelling our characters from one place to another, on foot across the desert, whilst being harried by land mutants that had been demonically transformed by some dodgy food they'd picked up. We made it without incident, though we've yet to enter the underground city safely.
In 'Pirates' we set sail for Antigua. As I suspected, we were pursued, by what may have been a thinly disguised Dutch naval frigate. We couldn't outrun them, and we discovered our cannons had all been spiked, so we boarded them instead and tried to demoralise them into running away by causing as many casualities as we could. Fortunately that tactic was successful once we'd killed their captain and most of their officers. We think we may still have a spy onboard, though...
It occurs to me that telling you what's happening would be bad, if you happened to be playing the same games. Fortunately, though, that's unlikely; 'Shadows' is completely our own invention, and the plot for 'Pirates' is being made up by our GM as we go along, since it's a 'filler' game to keep us occupied until the sci-fi supplement for SpyCraft is published. Therefore, no spoilers.
