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Of Mice and GMs
As GMs we were faced with a problem. On the one hand we had a lot of great material to work with that was nothing short of brilliant. I do not in any way exaggerate when I tell you that hearing about the events of the second session from the other GM’s perspective made me laugh so hard that tears streamed down my face, I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t stop! How do you not abuse that? What kind of GM would it make me if I let that go? I have a responsibility to make the PCs miserable at any given opportunity, and this one was given on a silver platter with a side order of steel toed boots and an invitation to kick hard and often.
The problem is that all those hilarious things went down in the second session of the campaign. Sure, now I’m not against a TPK, but at the time I had only just invested in a bunch of books to GM this bad boy and I wasn’t sure I was quite ready for a TPK in the third session.
How the times have changed!
As a result we decided to teach these people a lesson about being discreet, while leaving at least some of them alive to play another session. And so we decided that the news guy who had been at the club that night, the one who got sent home from work the next day ranting about monsters, did his ranting in front of a Hunter who also worked at the station. This particular Hunter is not of the “all monsters must die!” variety. This guy is a member of Network Zero: The Secret Frequency. (See: Hunter the Vigil) The fine folks at Network Zero are all in favor of vicious uncontrollable monsters meeting violent ends, but they understand that not all “monsters” are monsters. Mostly what Network Zero wants is to prove that they aren’t insane. They want to prove that the monsters are real.
And so, when they heard about the events at the club they saw a golden opportunity to not only meet some monsters in a social setting but maybe get some Werewolves on film!
And so they made some fake invitations. And they made a fake club (heck, these guys work in TV Production they know how to build a set), and they got the cameras and the sound equipment in place and they waited.
One of the Hunters posed as a bouncer outside of the “club”. The previous night the Werewolves transformed when they were refused entry into the club. This is why their bouncer was, under no circumstances, to allow them to enter the club.
AND THEN THAT PURPLE HAIRED NUISANCE SHOWED UP!
She stroked his arm, she flipped her hair, she cast Perfect Moment and he let her in. If he hadn’t allowed himself to be so distracted by her maybe Matteus wouldn’t have gotten the drop on him so easily. If he hadn’t been trying to show off what a big tough man he was to her maybe he wouldn’t have decided to let Matteus get the first shot in free.
If he hadn’t been trying so hard to show off maybe he wouldn’t have gotten his ass beat before using that silver sword cane he was leaning on to trigger a wolf-out like he was supposed to!
Ultimately the Hunters ran out as fast as they could leaving some of their camera equipment behind. The Mages and Werewolves, instead of ripping each other’s faces off and roasting each other on spits like we had hoped, used it to discredit them by filming an attack by “fake” Werewolves. How did they do this? One of the Werewolves went into Gauru form and Rex, the Matter Mage, made a fake zipper to stick to his back like it was just a costume that looked real good from the front, and real ludicrous from the back.
They then posted the videos online and headed to the bar for a few brews together.
I ask you, what did I do to deserve this?
Dances with Werewolves:
Werewolves have a reputation for being territorial. As such, it was important for the Mages to come up with a plan, a good plan, before wandering over to Central Park for a visit. Much to my surprise they came up with one! The plan was elegant in its simplicity.
Nokoni is a Thyrsus Mage, and as such he can speak with Spirits and has knowledge of the Spirit realm. He knows that Werewolves frequently deal with Spirit matters. Aenaiyah has a cat spirit as a familiar. Now while one may not immediately see the wisdom of bringing a cat to meet wolves, the fact that it is a cat spirit and Werewolves are not full wolves and as such not prone to the same potential animosity with feline species as your average canine species makes this a different case. So Aenaiyah and Nokoni head out to the park with Noel, Aenaiyah’s familiar. Noel’s job is to wander about the park until someone notices her, and when someone does she should communicate back to Aenaiyah about how that goes. You might think that this is somewhat dangerous for Noel, but only if you are not aware that Noel is the Death Kitty!
I will rant about that at some other time. For now let’s just leave it at :::insert facepalm here:::
So Noel makes some circuits about the park, which I dutifully IM to the GM at the Werewolf table before the Mages at my table have figured out that those are the Werewolves they’re looking for. Eventually the Werewolves return from their fight with the Spider Host, somewhat the worse for wear (they had fought several before the night was through) and encounter Death Kitty. Death Kitty purrs sweetly in the hopes of getting a treat out of this. When they in fact decide not to attempt to eviscerate Death Kitty (they chose… wisely) Aenaiyah and Nokoni are given their cue to head out to the room with the other table. The rest of the players are told (with the door open so the other table can hear me) that they can “take 5” so that I can keep track of what happens at the park.
To my astonishment they all stayed in the room with the door closed so that they wouldn’t overhear!
Keep in mind, this meeting is happening in Central Park, in NYC, in the middle of the day. It is safe to assume that there will be lots of people around, especially since we had already established nice spring weather at the park. The game is being played in a public place – a game store called Ravenblood Games. If the players had decided that their characters were snooping around at the park they could have simply wandered out to the main room (where the Werewolf table was) and started looking at T-Shirts, RPG books, Munchkin paraphernalia, dice, minis, snacks, board games, or any number of other things that are on sale at this fine establishment. The Werewolf players would not have been likely to notice what they were doing, and their characters would have been even less likely to notice them wandering around the park. Yet still they restrained themselves!
Well, all except for Argus of course. He promptly declared that he was casting personal invisibility and sound mastery and went out to look at the most recently arrived batch of Necron figures.
Now I have already mentioned that the Werewolves had been up all night playing with some Spider Host, aka Azlu, and were a bit torn up. Nokoni, being a Thyrsus Mage, has healing abilities to go along with his talents in the Spirit area, and so he starts casting a few healing spells while he and Aenaiyah explain why they are there. They are afraid that someone is trying to cause trouble for the Werewolves, and while there are already people trying to keep things under wraps, that isn’t necessarily going to stop the kind of psycho lunatic who would pose a body in a van with the headlights shining on a Werewolf Territory Marker with the door open and that godawful bing-bing-bing noise going on and on and on and on and on. I mean, seriously, what kind of sicko does that sort of thing?!
Oh… errrr… I mean… clearly whoever would execute so bold and cunning a plan must be a brilliant strategist who would not likely be deterred by a lack of media coverage! Such a one as this must be strong… and courageous… and dangerous… and… good puppy?
Who Let the Dogs Out?
The Mages have a mystery on their hands. They have a body in a van, and it has drawn a great deal of attention from the mundane world. Not only is the well read though little believed conspiracy rag “Sick Sad World” reporting on this, major news outlets are reporting on it too. This is exactly the kind of thing that draws the attention of Hunters, which makes it precisely the type of thing the Guardians of the Veil are supposed to prevent from happening.
What follows, right after a certain purple haired Brit gets asked a few questions about who she is and why she’s in the city, is lots and lots of research.
WHO LET THE DOGS OUT
A ‘Sick Sad World’ Exclusive Story!
According to this article distributed by an anonymous press (download the PDF at the link above!) some art students from The Cooper Union were witness to the events of the previous evening. Both this article and the previous one, MONSTER IN MANHATTAN, seem to indicate the presence of Werewolves at the club. The van’s headlights were shining on a symbol carved into a tree that is consistent with a Werewolf Territory Marker. The thing is, the body that was found in the van doesn’t look like it was killed by a Werewolf. Werewolves aren’t exactly known for sucking the insides out of a body while leaving the candy shell intact.
Somebody must be trying to call out the city’s Werewolves!
The Mages decide that the best thing to do is split the party. Having noticed the sidebar about the “NBC Production Employee sent home after Wild Ravings”, one group (including resident FBI Agent on Sabbatical Argus Guille, and Moros Mage Rex) will be heading to the station’s offices to track down this employee and talk about what happened. One group: Mastigos Molly, Free Councillor Neils, and the Acanthus child Marissa, is heading off to the college to talk to the students who drew the artwork. The third and final group, Thyrsus Nokoni and the newly met Acanthus Aenaiyah, are off to Central Park to see if they can be not torn apart by the city’s Werewolf community.
At the TV station Argus abuses his FBI credentials to have a chat with the production manager who sent the employee home. She informs him that the employee was working on a story about illegal casinos operating in the city. It takes a while to get inside of one, or even track one down. They move around a lot, and don’t operate every night. He had finally gotten in, without smuggling in a camera because he knew he would be searched, when something happened that drove him totally over the edge. His manager’s suspicions involve drugs. She doesn’t believe he was deliberately taking any, but perhaps the operators of the casino were drugging the gamblers to loosen their wallets. Maybe her guy just had a bad reaction to something that they used. At any rate, she can give the FBI agent her employee’s home address, but obviously she can’t guarantee that he’ll be there. She advised him to see a doctor, but doesn’t know where he actually went after leaving the office.
At the college our intrepid Mages have little problem tracking down the artists they are looking for. Neils, being an academic, knows his way around a college campus and how to chat up the students. Molly, being a Mastigos Mage, can read minds. It’s a pretty potent combo in this situation. The fact the the law enforcement type didn’t tag along doesn’t hurt. The students are more than happy to talk about what they saw. “It was freaky man, they were like… Werewolves or somethin’. Pretty crazy. I mean… I know I was a little high… but this picture is like totally accurate…”
What will they think of next?
A time honored dilemma of GMs everywhere is trying to figure out what those annoying PCs are going to do next session so that you can plan adequately for it. I generally try to only plan for the various pieces of information that will be available for them to find without worrying too much about how they will find that information. This method frees me up a bit in session by allowing me to adjust to their ever changing assortment of crazy schemes.
For example, recently my players ended a session on the decision to storm the antagonist’s headquarters. I won’t lie to you, this was a bad plan. It did have the charm of being a plan I was ready for them to execute however. (I do so love the word “execute”!)
Instead they decided to kidnap one particular antagonist in the middle of Central Park. It being Central Park, no bystanders reacted to this event. (It helped that they had a Fate Mage to help steer people away from the area.) This I was completely unprepared for. So was the antagonist in question, who promptly botched her sense motive roll (WITS+EMPATHY) and convinced herself that they were ready to talk. (See: The Hits Just Keep On Coming) Now I have to start my session with the players holding an NPC in the Consilium prison. This causes much more work behind the scenes than the players realize (grumble grumble grumble), and leaves me wondering what their next move is.
Interrogating the prisoner would seem to be an obvious next step… but not necessarily to these guys. After all, the last time they captured an antagonist alive they wound up finding out that he had let loose a Goetic Demon in a park in upstate NY and they never did get around to asking him where in this many acre park he might have left it. That would have made way too much sense! Instead they decided to go to this park and just wander around until they stumbled across it with no idea what its bans might be. Sadly, I had planned on them interrogating the antagonist, finding out some interesting things about him and his goals (and the origins of one of the other PCs who had no memory of her past), and then going off to take care of the Goetic Demon. Instead I had to improvise and ask them precisely how a group of 6 people without a single Resource Dot between them intended to get to upstate NY and hilarity ensued. (You’ll have to remind me to post that tale here at some point… it was more than a little hysterical.)
So interrogation… not necessarily. They may decide to actually SPEAK with the prisoner, but since all she wanted to do was talk to them in the first place (and look how that wound up) this seems highly unlikely. I do have one player (a Moros Mage) advocating to kill her and interrogate her ghost… which does sort of qualify as an interrogation and could get interesting on many levels.
Another interesting option has been proposed by her Mastigos ex-husband who is contemplating taking a stroll through her Oneiros. (For the non-Mage players that would be her personal dream space – her unconscious mind) This is an extremely interesting idea that I actually like a lot, and I’m hoping to get a bead on what areas of her Oneiros he’ll be specifically looking for so I can make them suitably awesome. (Damien – I’m looking at you.) I actually have a solid back story for this character already since she is a a PCs ex-wife which makes her a pretty important character.
You never can tell what my Obrimos Guardian of the Veil will do (for the record, I totally blame my power outages this week on Argus!), and my Thyrsus Silver Ladder is convinced that the missing kid-sister of Aenaiyah the Acanthus is being held in a little town in upstate NY named Arcadia. (Don’t think I haven’t thought about how hilarious it would be should he be right!) Neils won’t be there this time around, which means I will have to come up with some awful reason why his character isn’t there. (Mua-Haa-Haaa!) My remaining Moros Mage (an Adamantine Arrow) worries me in that I have not heard him weigh in on what they should do with her just yet. This can only lead to madness.
And then of course there’s a little something that my favorite Time Mage has which could yield some interesting results. I had only considered the implications of this as I was leaving the house for the last session, and I came up with the most wonderful possible result before I reached the game store. It really would be fun on many levels – for the whole family!
No matter what happens, it should prove to be an extremely interesting session!
Mage Mistress 