[AP] 9,401: An Introduction to GURPS

[Mercator]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

It's odd, don't you think, that even when they know that time is short and that there will be no opportunity to continue an adventure, players still insist on dicking around with time-wasting side-issues rather than following straightforward leads?

Well, in the early stages of an adventure, specially when the setting is new, they don't know which are the side issues and which the main ones, so a limited initial drifting about what lines of investigation to follow is understandable.

I was much more puzzled by their insistence of ignoring the conventions of what was obviously a police procedural (a disguise for something else, I know, but still . . .) and waste more time circumventing the law instead of, you know, using it. That was a major distraction and waste of time, and what I find really odd.

M.

[Agemegos]

I've been distracted a while I know, but I'm still anxious to hear more of what happened.

[Agemegos]

Still waiting with bated breath.

[Mercator]

The Fates providing, I will be able to post the rest this weekend.

Sorry, once again.

M.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Mercator

The Fates providing, I will be able to post the rest this weekend.

Excellent! I'll have a word to the Fates.

[Mercator]

The Fates have not been kind, and have punished my hubris with my first outburst of allergy ever. Having put it down, I give you . . .

At Hesiod's Health

After yet another byzantine discussion about going with marked or overt aircars; whether an aircar with oficial DoJ markings should follow an unmarked one or the reverse; and briefly arguing about air combat tactics in case they met with enemy air assets --or AA missiles, I don't remember-- the team decided to go to Hesiod's Health Club first: because of the locker key, it was the place more obviously connected with the case. During the trip to their destination, I read them aloud some of the news bulletins from the PbM game about the general strike and the wave of refugees abandoning Cockaigne; I wanted to convey an antebellum feeling as much as possible, to emphasize the feeling of urgency.

They arrived to the tower complex were the club was located, and began to look for a parking spot. Since the gym was located in one of the upper stories, they choose to park on the roof to have as short a escape route as possible if things went south. Sure enough, the "official" parking lot was full with orchards, burning looted upholstery and debris of every sort, so they had to head to the only clear space available: the court where a bunch of youngsters with recipient red caps were playing ball (cue the players shouting: "but of course!", "typical!", "shootout already!?" in a half-irritated, half-expectant tone). They parked in the court, checked their guns, came out of the cars and headed towards the door that would lead them to the floors below. The kids had stopped playing, of course, and headed towards them, but a stern "OUT OF OUR WAY" by Thorrson, followed by a successful Intimidation roll, was enough to deter them. The party then took the lift down.

Hesiod's Health Club and its surroundings were an unsavory place. The team noticed the decay all around them in the complex the club was located at -abandoned shops with broken glasses, plaster falling off the walls, trash littering the floor, etc. The cafe at the entrance of the club -with about 15 customers drinking and watching the news on TV- didn't make it better: although not as bleak as Brett's original description, my version also sent a message of "keep the **** out if you're not one of the regulars" (incidentally, I drew inspiration from a sidebar in GURPS Cops that described cops-only bars were civilians were not welcome; it helped me to figure out how to describe a social place meant to turn away outsiders). The players got the hint quickly (Naiooka: "we're gonna have to shoot our way out of here, won't we."), but they had a warrant to serve in the name of the Empire so, after about 10 minutes outside of the club staring through the glass, counting potential hostiles and discussing evacuation tactics -all in plain sight of said hostiles, who were looking back at them in astonishment- they boldly went inside.

All conversations abruptly stopped and everybody in the cafe turned to look at the strangers with angry looks on their faces. In the deafening silence Ishikawa announced that the Imperial DoJ was to serve a warrant on the premises, and would appreciate if no one interfered. They heard an angry mutter in the background, but nobody challenged them.

Now this is a smart bunch who actually read their briefings before the game (because you guys read them . . . didn't you?) and bring printed copies for reference; so they had noticed the small Imperial servants should beware of physical violence, rape, robbery, theft, and vandalism where restraint is not enforced nuisance mentioned in the Imperial report on Cockaigne. They asked if there could be trouble if two females entered the locker room of a male club; when told that yes, there definitely would be trouble, they decided to split the group: Ashbless and Ishikawa would remain in the cafe with Naiooka, while Thorrson and Lethe would enter the locker room to serve the warrant. Being in constant radio contact, they would still be able to communicate freely and share video.

So the women stayed in the cafe, near the exit door, hands near their guns, tensely watching for any sign of trouble. The patrons honored them with some of the colorful prose from the PbM game, but the sight of Naiooka leaning on a corner and casually holding his military carbine at the ready deterred the worst of it. The situation was very tense, but still peaceful. Above their heads, the flat TV showed images of riots and looting around the planet.

Thorrson and Lethe walked through the cafe and into the club proper: a corridor led to several rooms such as a gym, a dojo from where they could hear children training kata, and the locker room. The latter was hot and steamy; the only people inside were Caspar -the "clueless young man" from the PbM- besides his locker (coincidentally the one next to the one they had to search), and a man in his 20s with an emo haircut in the showers, with a blank stare and oblivious to everything around him.

Thorrson ordered them both to get out of the locker room. Caspar immediately left, taking away with him the bunch of useful clues he could have given if interrogated; the emo guy didn't even move.
Thorrson repeated his order to the emo kid. Again nothing.
Suspecting him to be drugged with something serious, the inspector asked Lethe to stand guard between emo guy and him, while he searched the locker. Lethe did so. Thorrson took out the key and opened the locker door.

Then something happened.

[Mercator]

You see, I wanted a fight at Hesiod's, but the PCs hadn't made the mistake of bringing the women into the lockers, and Naiooka had intimidated the hell out of everybody in the cafe, so it wouldn't make sense to follow the PbP game and have Magiotto or Schmidt to start with revolutionary speeches as an excuse for mass rape. Whatever happened had to happen in the showers. There I only had a NPC, who was obviously under the influence, so I didn't have much choice: at the sound of the locker being forced open, emo guy woke from whatever trance he had been in and slipped in another, more active trance. He looked at Thorrson for a few seconds, and with a scream charged toward him for who-knows-what reasons, completely naked and ignoring the much closer Lethe.

Then something else happened, and I am not still sure I completely understand it. Allow me to digress.

Lethe's player is what Robin Laws would call a "specialist/method actor/storyteller". He specializes in "face" characters. He doesn't care about RPG rules or mechanics beyond the basics, because what he wants is roleplay a specific kind of character and build stories around him, which he does brilliantly. Maybe because of this, and the fact that he avoids combat and violent encounters whenever he can, he isn't used to running police/military characters. Therefore, he had a very strange take on Lethe: he had read Lethe's profile, and had somehow misinterpreted "loathes lethal violence" as "loathes any violence at all". So, the way he saw it, he had to deal with a suspect threatening his boss without using violence at all. His solution: he proposed to run backwards to keep his distance from the emo guy (he hadn't noticed emo was after Thorrson, not him) and drive him out of the locker room that way! That left all of us speechless for a couple of seconds before breaking into hysterical laughter, after which I explained Lethe's violence issues to him. Meanwhile, Thorrson had Fast-Drawn his non-stunner gun (the players liked this Skill) and taken an Aim maneuver to emo-guy's knee. This confused Lethe's player again: did he also have to prevent others -like his boss- from using lethal violence? Well, since time was running and we'd only have one session, I decided to speed things up and force him to act NOW. What would he do? Five seconds! Four! Three! . . .

Lethe: "Wait, I know Judo"
Other players, getting nervous: "Well, then USE IT! Reduce him NOW!!"
Thorrson: "I'll shoot him in the knee. I really will."
Lethe: "Reduce him? You mean, my boss, for pointing a gun?"
Others: "NOOOOO! REDUCE THE *SUSPECT* THAT IS ABOUT TO *ASSAULT YOUR BOSS!!*"
Thorrson: "Or I'll really shoot him in the knee!"
Lethe: "Oh, I get it now! Sure, I do that."
Me: (...)

So, once his mind was set, he Grappled emo guy, took him down and pinned him easily, then cuffed him. An astonished Thorrson was at last free to look at the locker, where he found a smashed mobile phone, some clothes with mud and polen stains on them, and a bunch of heavy electronic components joined together by fiber optic cables. Lethe identified them as memory modules from a very powerful macroframe; the kind of stuff that can only be bought from a very few, very select outworld manufacturers. Thorrson then began to bag-and-tag the evidence. However . . .

Back in the cafe, the tense silence was broken by emo guy's scream, then the sound of a body being thrown down and a struggle where emo was obviously losing. This changed everything; somebody said: "Hey! they're beating the **** out of that kid!", followed by murmurs of outrage. One of the patrons in the cafe (Jean-Luc Schmidt, but the PCs didn't know that) stood up and, at last, shouted this. Ishikawa (who, like the rest of the party, had her gun ready the second she heard emo scream) warned him to sit down and shut up and, when he didn't comply, aimed at his head and shot him with the stunner. I described the effect of the shot in detail: the impact caught Schmidt in mid-sentence; his head jerked forwards and he fell down, hitting his head on the bar (players: "yeah, sure! and what else? does he cut off his head accidentally too?" Naiooka: "guys, the GM wants a fight here"; I guess Naiooka knows my tactics too well from too many James Bond 007 games. . .) Now, remember early in the game, when Ishikawa gave her press release, all smiles, sweetness and reassurances? Well, what do you know, this is the moment that the local TV choose to broadcast just that footage, just when the very same Ishikawa was brutalizing a defenseless Cockaigney citizen for speaking his mind! (at least, that was what it would look like in the evening news . . .). To top it off, at the same moment, Thorrson and Lethe came back from the showers with the evidence and holding the naked, handcuffed emo guy.

It was too much. The crowd went crazy and charged at the party, who barely had the time to get together and run for the exit. A few overhead warning shots from Naiooka stopped them long enough for the PCs to get out of the cafe and run towards the elevator to their aircar. The last to exit, Naiooka fired a couple of foam grenades at the threshold to block the exit from the crowd. One of the attackers at the front of the mob got caught in the foam and started to choke (I like to offer them moral dilemmas); the Marine took a few seconds to spray that part of the barrier with foam solvent to free up the victim's head, then calmly covered the retreat of the group. They took the elevator to the roof of the building, where the aircar was parked (according to Brett's script, the boys on the roof should have thrown it down; but we didn't have much time to deal with that, and I wanted to reward them for managing the situation at Hesiod's without bloodshed). So they got into the aircar without further incidents (other that still laughing at the scene in the showers, with Lethe trying to explain his reasoning, which made us laugh even more) and planned their next destination.

Now the party had a handful of clues that looked like they needed careful analysis (especially the memory module) and two addresses yet to check: the victim's and the suspects' work addresses. They lifted up and left Hesiod's behind; they had been successful, but what happened had probably been caught by a security camera -they didn't have time to check- and would surely be filtered to the evening news as proof of the callousness of the Empire, and therefore of the Commune, toward the masses. That wouldn't be good. They were running out of time.

[Mercator]

Originally Posted by jimminy

Ljubljana, ey... Not too far from Hungary...

Nope. Not too far at all, now that you mention it. . .

M.

[Agemegos]

More! More!

[Mercator]

Will do.

Any comments about the last part I posted?

M.