The Generals show up in Las Azaleas and try to save Maddy from strange attackers, but learn things are quite different from how they seem.
Las Azaleas
Las Azaleas is a nonsense place. The name, a reference to the flower, is not necessarily completely out of place for a Spanish-derived city name but it is also extremely out of place. There is at least one species of azalea that is native to Baja California, but most of North American azaleas are from the United States. The reason the name is chosen is because the area around Mobile, AL is significant in lore and concept to a lot of the Alabama Weird and The GLOW storylines, and azaleas are fairly prominent in Mobile symbolism.
Growing up, we had a few bushes and I've always liked the flower. It has shown up in reference in Eustace stories and elsewhere in my games.
When I decided to take this to some place where I could have a shoot out in something like, but nothing like, a real-world casino, I wanted something that was very clearly Las Vegas but in no way bound to the rules of Vegas.
Instead, it is built up of bits of pieces of cinematic Vegas, cinematic Los Angeles, cinematic New Orleans, cinematic non-specific Southwestern City, and then wrapped up with bits of Mobile. It's dry. It has casinos. It has industry. It also has mega-churches and something like a barbecue culture. The other LA — the other-other LA for those who call Lower Alabama "LA" as a joke. A name that has bits of Arizona and Alabama right there in its structure.
Images are going to be taken directly from photos of the real world LA, Vegas, New Orleans, and similar locales. I will not bother too much with trying to find "1990s" photos, so bear with me on that.
Where is it located? No clue. Somewhere off Route 66 between Arizona and California, I imagine. But Doug, you say, that doesn't make any sense! Exactly. Round about there on the edge of sense but slightly past it.
How big is it? Big enough. It's also small enough. There is public transportation, but maybe nothing like a subway. An international airport. Some tourism. It has Campbell University — one of two nods to Ramsey Campbell in this adventure — but exactly what Campbell University is...I don't know. Unless I need to know.
Setting the Scene, 00.a.1
I'm tweaking a few things this time around. Rather than start out with a basic Mythic framework, I am going to play out this session using only a small portion of the overall toolkit. the idea is to fish for some ideas and threads and characters and then I'll construct the fuller lists later.
In that light, there won't be scene tests for a moment, instead you'll just get stuff like...
Scene: The [Three] Generals show up in Las Azaleas and find Maddy as four guys start following her.
There will not be a roll for finding Maddy because in action movies when you want to locate someone you just run around a city the size of Tokyo and shout their name for five minutes of screen time. Plus, for reasons that will become obvious soon enough...it's best to reduce some variability.
Stalking the Stalkers
Madison Dwyer was talking to a woman of about her own age, both seeming a bit older than your usual college student hanging out this edge of campus. The other woman is completely unknown three men in the car but none of them clock her as a threat. She is darker than Madison, and chubbier, but from this distance in the Campbell University's Mersey Hall (for a few branches of the sprawling Liberal Arts College) parking lot, none of the men can make out many details about either. Madison — Maddy — lights a cigarette and the two women laugh for a few minutes before Maddy turns to walk away. The other woman shouts something and Maddy waves back.
Younger college students, meaning more typically aged students, mill about. Some smoking. Playing games. One holds an umbrella to block out the August southwest heat. Nearly all ignore Maddy's passage off the edge of the campus into the street nearby where the campus gives way immediately into shops and bars.
Nearly all because four men who had been lounging by a non-functioning fountain suddenly stand up and move to follow her. Far enough back they had plausible deniability, but not too far. From here, the four look like your average computer-lab-infesting, mouth-breathing nerds. Only they move a little too deliberately.
"You ready?," Dale...Sarge...asks the other two, checking his gear...
They are going to get there in time for this, but let's do a quick roll to get an idea of how long this trip took. According to a quick check, it's a little over 24 hours by car. That's very silly, since that's two days of a travel when folks are trying to get there in a hurry, but I think it's fun enough to not worry too much about it.
However, let's do a CRITICAL Drive test vs LT. In this case, success = shaving off enough they were able to do a couple of downtime activities. Failure means they still need to do those activities.
- (Nerves) 3 + (Drive) 3 [with Free ReRoll] = Critical success. Just enough to do some downtime stuff.
They are each going to buy an additional set of ammo, giving them full mags for their guns.
...pulling his gun and strapping it into a holster under his jacket with the extra ammo zipped up tight.
LT and the Colonel both nod, then the Barracuda pulls into traffic and manages to follow the four people following Maddy. Dale, aka Sarge, knows these could people hired to help protect her but he also knows that's bullshit. Cap would have mentioned that. Right?
Maddy spends the next half hour weaving through increasingly worn down streets and getting further from any kind of signs of safety. If the four guys following her are confused by this, they do not show it, staying an even distance back.
LT gets nervous as the traffic dies down. The muscle car is not too garish on a regular street but in without traffic it's hard to be inconspicuous.
A test to see if LT feels like he can keep following in such a car...
- CRITICAL vs (Nerves) 3 + (Drive) 3 [Free ReRoll] >> Extreme Success. He definitely can.
Still, he manages to slide the car along, taking short side jaunts up streets to cut back in such a way that it seems to keep the four from noticing. That or they are too focused on their prey.
Maddy gets to something like a large drainage ditch, or an urban stream, and cuts to the left towards a few warehouses. Sun is fading fast, the sky going purple. Soon she'll be walking by streetlights.
Shortly after that, she takes another left and disappears down an alley between two of the buildings. Even from here, LT can tell that there's too much stuff packed into the alley to make it possible to get the car through without being really obvious, and starts to curse and see if he can find an alternate route but the Colonel, from the back-seat, gives a shout.
Two of the four guys have posted up at the edge of the alley. Meaning at least two have gone in after Maddy.
"Fuck it," LT says, "Eat some fucking Barracuda meat!" and he speeds up and aims right for the two guys.
We'll put them as Goons Template 4. Attack: Critical, Defense: Basic, Hit Boxes: 9. No real feats or special actions just yet.
- (Nerves) 3 + (Drive) 3 [FR] vs Basic >> Extreme + Basic. That's...3*3 + 1 Basic hits.
LT gets some Adrenaline for that roll. He also manages to have just enough to not damage the car...too much. Presumably there's some blood since he just one-shot the guys.
The nerd/stalkers crunch hard under the hood before they even process this. With a slam of the brakes, their bodies tumble off and slam into some crates stacked up in front one of the warehouses.
Sarge is out the door and running down the alley.
He's keeping his gun holstered, thinking he can maybe keep some stealth in mind. Then he hears the gunshots and sees one guy leaping over a stack of wooden pallets and hears another.
FUCK!
Sarge is already thinking of what he'll have to tell Cap. "Sorry, man...Maddy got killed right off the bad. LT got to run over some dudes, though."
Overcome a bit with rage and worry, Sarge shouts, "GET OFF OF HER," and then runs around, trying to get his gun out of the holster, and practically slides to a stop.
There, in front of him, is Madison Dwyer. Holding the bloodied remains of one of the two men in her arms like she is trying to hide a body.
Glancing down he sees the other of the two men who followed her, also dead.
She is 100% trying to hide to a body.
Maddy looks up at him and smiles sheepishly. "Hey, Mr. Sargent."
Setting the Scene, 00.a.2
So, fun fact, this is the first action scene I played out for the campaign after working out "Designing Maddy Dwyer" [below]. It's to emulate movie plot twists is why I am putting it second. Silly? Sure. But fun.
Actual Scene: Cultists follow Maddy into the alley and she is going to have to fight back.
I'm playing this scene out without any particular need for the scene to go any particular way. If she wins, good. If she loses, the others are there to help mop up. This is the moment where we are meant to start understanding why Maddy might be a target. It may not be her dad that is at issue. It might be her or her connections to Amy Patel that are causing this.
While Chaos Factor is going to start until Scene 01.a.3, we'll just do a general couple of setting up type questions with a presumed Chaos Factor of 5:
- Is Maddy close to her dad? (Unlikely) → 61 >> No.
- Is Maddy aware of the "bet" to have her killed? (Likely) → 29 >> Yes.
- Have these cultists been tracking Maddy for a good minute? (50/50) → 23 >> Yes.
- Does she know these cultists? Let's put this at Double Basic using her Focus (2) + Awareness (3) → Double Basic success. Yes, but only that much details about them. Which means we'll find out the details more "in media res."
- Need a name for a friend. Let's use Gamemaster's Apprentice: Weird Horror → {GMAWH112} >> Elin. She's Whimsical but likes to belch out songs.
- Distinguishing marks for the cultist → {GMAWH41} >> Belongings: School work. They look very nerdy. In it for the love of the higher equations.
Setting their difficulty, we'll just use Goons 2 [Double Basic | Basic | 6 Hits]. Their feat will be...you know, they won't have one. Like the heroes, they are underestimating Maddy. They haven't seen their best to take her out.
Predator and Prey
"Karoake tonight and Sushi Dave's?," Elin calls to Maddy's back as Maddy walks off. Supposedly to a hair appointment though if Elin realizes there is only the rough chunks of town in that direction, she does not say anything. In response, neither a yes nor a no, Maddy lifts the hand holding the cigarette and waves back. Smoke dancing the afternoon heat.
- Basic to spot them. Crime (3) + Awareness (3) → Double Basic success >> She spots them and then a bit.
I'll add the Basic success to the start of her fight roll, showing that she is prepared.
She continues to smoke as she walks quickly away from her friend. Elin and her cousin, Mareta, are going to be going shopping and before Maddy was aware of the four strange men following them around, she had thought to join the two chatterboxes and relax. Now she knows that business — business she thought she left behind in Cresthill — has reared its ugly head.
She doesn't know exactly who these weirdos are. They look like geeks she might have seen on the CU campus. Guys hunched over their computers, talking about how VR would be the future. Kind of guys in the cafe drinking too much soda and playing Magic: The Gathering.
Only she can sense them. Something else is there.
A few streets down and all four are there, half a block back. That's a problem. They seem to think they haven't been spotted. Just casually following. But four? That's a lot of guys. Maddy always has her gun but shooting it out on Las Azaleas streets is a good way to get locked up.
"Sorry Dad, but those D & D nerds had to die, you know?"
Just to see how well she picks a good spot, we'll set this to Basic. It's not critical at all.
- Crime (3) + Streetwise (3) vs Basic → Gets a Critical Success.
She picked a very good location. No Heat/etc for this.
A side street later and she is going towards the "canal" which is actually just a large rain ditch where homeless folk, skateboarders, and stoners hang out. Well, Mareta had said that it's an actual river. One that used to be pretty vital to the farmers in the region before automotive plants, casinos, mega-churches, and warehouses between Texas and California had become the city's only real cash crops. Before the last breaths of nature had been squeezed out and the desert and come back home.
The canal is not her destination. A block down along that stretch and the city just deflates for a bit. Shifts gears from the college quarter to a place where more sand piles up and more folks struggle with housing. A few big warehouses and garages kick up a lot of noise, especially on days like today where doors will be open. It looks like a good place to get murdered though by Maddy's reckoning, it's a nicer spot that either the churches or the casinos. At least here you have a chance to fight for your life.
Which means this part of the city is exactly where people might be willing to overlook the sound of a gunshots. Some coyotes need killing.
Soon enough, the guys are getting closer and more impatient. Maddy knows she needs to make her move. She goes down into an alley between two mostly quiet warehouses, giving the slight impression that she might be lost and hoping that no one is around...
- Is anyone around? (Unlikely) → 58 >> No.
...which seems to be the case, she moves around a few old weathered crates going the way of dry rot in the summer sun. She says, "Shoot!," and then scoots over to make it seem like she maybe dropped something and is trying to retrieve it.
A few seconds later, two guys — where are the others? — are standing behind her. Armed with the tackiest looking kris knives. "Jeez, fellas, you get those at the mall?"
She finds herself annoyed that they stop to look at their Cultist Knives™ like they are just realizing how hokey they look...and not at the gun she has...but you don't survive her line of work by giving the worshippers of eldritch gods any leeway and so she opens fire...
She's going to get one Basic success because of earlier. I'll toss in a bonus two dice this first round because she has set up things quite well.
- Nerves (3) + Shoot (2) + (2) vs Basic → She gets 3 Basics. With her banked one, that's four of the hits taken off right away.
...and drops the taller of the two guys right off the bat. His knife falls from his lifeless hands. The other guy dives back to the right, behind the crates, and as Maddy is glancing around to see where he has gone, she finds out the answer is "right above her" as he comes crashing down, knife stabbing...
- Brawn (2) + Stunt (3) vs Double Basic → Absolute whiff. She takes the full stab.
...and while she knows what it feels like to be stabbed, she still screams "Motherfucker!," as the curved blade punches into her left arm. It's not something to which you get fully accustomed. At least she hopes not.
She kicks back against the guy to get a bit of distance and fires while he is rebalancing...
- No bonus this time. Nerves (3) + Shoot (2) vs Basic → by ReRolling from a Basic, she gets a Crit + a Basic. Drops the guy cleanly.
...and pops him right in the head. Before he has hit the ground she is moving quick to pull the body of the first guy behind the crates and try to hide the sign of a fight.
"GET OFF OF HER!," she hears a man shout and she is spinning, cursing that she will have trouble getting her gun back up while having a cultist's legs in her arms, and is surprised to find out she knows this guy.
Pretty well, actually.
Dad is going to be pissed. Ah, well, fuck him. Fuck 'em all.
NOTES START NOW...
[Character Design] Designing Maddy Dwyer
After typing up the session 00a, I decided that I didn't want a damsel in distress, but also didn't want her to just be another action grunt. Since this is the Alabama Weird and we know that Maddy has some connection with Amy Patel, I decided to make her The Nightmare Detective from "The Old Ones" flick in Action Flicks 2.
The drug abuse is true as are the issues with authority, but while her dad got the story out to his friends that she was just high-and-crazy, the truth is that she has worked with Amy and Eustace in fighting back some of the evil building up around Cresthill. Only it hit Maddy a bit harder. To reflect this, I picked the Feat "Memory of a Dream" where she has glances to the higher reality overshadowing humanity. She also has Parkour and Detective to help frame her as more of an investigator who is good at getting into places a bit out of reach.
The reason she is out of the region, besides to help her dad's political career, is to try and get free of some of the troubles that are plaguing her. She was there when they took down the Mazuki Warehouse and floated "corruption" as something of a on-paper excuse. She was there for another case or two. Then had to get out before the cracks in her mind widened and darker things came through. For now.
Now that I typed this up, I am going to go and play a scene with her in an alley and then play a scene where the Three Generals think they are saving her.
Does this mean her dad is on it more? Not sure. Not yet, anyhow.
That being said, the idea is that this won't really be a horror campaign. Both Maddy and the Colonel have engaged in horror-themed stories. Here is just dumb action sequences and joy.
[Campaign Design] Defining the Art Style
For a lot of my Doug Alone projects, the art style is created by taking a photo and/or older illustration and then manipulating in some way that both adds a bit of "unreality" to the vibe while also, subtly sometimes, casting it a bit into the mindset of the world.
For this one, I wanted something that kind of felt like a real photograph but also kind of felt like an old cheaply printed comic book. The 90s style where a bit more comic-realism was being used but it wasn't fully in place. At least that's how my brain recalls it: where you can feel the "four color panel" but it's also trying to be more true-to-life [just with much bigger boobs and lots of laser guns and grimaces].
With every photo I have worked on, I have tweaked it back and forth but am slowly getting to a consistent vibe that I like.
In the campaign launch, I made Sarge look like this, going a bit overboard on the manipulation:
However, as I've been softening some aspects — reducing the blur and "waterpixel" effects — while increasing others — saturation and a thicker comic-book style outline — these original photos are no longer quite like what I want. I am not going to necessarily go back and tweak anything, but just FYI, the current (as of this session) style would make Sarge look more like...
Much more vibrant, harder lines. Some of the same pixelated effect but each pixel in higher contrast and saturation to the others. Still a step removed from reality, but a more consistent artistic vision.
To show another example of the changes, the warehouse from 00a:
While the updated version would look more like this:
I think the original style, perhaps tweaked to be even more black and white, would be great for a Cyberpunk game but for this one, where folks are going to be leaning out a 1974 Barracuda and shooting bad guys with a very improbable assassination plot...well, this new variation sparks joy.
It also allows me to build up a few presets and brushes and such which speeds up some things.
Trying a Different Style of Session Counting
Because so much of my solo play is mixed up in the "prep" portions — making art, world building, vibing with characterizations, working on tools — it often works out that a couple of hours of real world time ends up being only about an hours worth of play. Not really enough to equate a precise session in and of itself.
For quite a few games, it doesn't really matter. Johnny Blue having fifteen minutes to destroy his life or two hours? He's going off a cliff.
For quite a few games, it does. There's either explicit or implicit timing. Outgunned feels a bit like that, where the rhythm and flow of sessions is part of game playthrough and there are certain aspects that count off per "shots."
In most games, it ends up with a sense that longer- and shorter-than-normal posts are missing something even if in the long run, they average out to the same end result.
Thus, with this one, I'm going to experiment with numbering posts (Week)(Post) where Week = "Session" and the posts (a,b,c) are more like mini-sessions within the larger session. There will still be some variability, but for this first week the idea is that Session 0 + 0a + 0b will be roughly the equivalent of a kick-off. Next week will be Week 1.
Next time I'll finish off parameter setting and re-acquainting myself with Outgunned, and I'll work out the Mythic lists and get the parameters in place.