Maddy declares herself "Major" and the Four Generals are full in number, again. The team goes to The Ishtar of Opal and meet an ally though family drama threatens to unravel their plans. Elsewhere, someone plots.
Setting the Scene, The Four Generals 00.c/1
First off, two pieces of intel to help frame the scene.
- How big is [The Casino] with {(1d6) 1: pretty big | 6: biggest in town} >> 6 = It's the biggest one in town. A real power player.
- How close are Maddy and Myrrh {(1d6) 1: close friends | 3: best friends | 6: loves who are engaged} >> 2 = Classmates who are pretty close but not quite "ride or die."
Now, let's generate a casino. I want something like... [Jewel] of [Goddess]. For Jewels we can use pretty standard ones — Diamond, Sapphire, Emerald, Topaz, Opal, Ruby — and for Goddesses let's go with Mesopotamian names taken wildly out of context: Ishtar, Gula, Bau, Nanaya, Nashe, Nisaba. Rolling on each list in written order (1d6) we get..
- The {(Jewel, 1d6) >> 5} Opal of {(Goddess, 1d6) >> 1} Ishtar.
I'm trying to keep Myrrh — a character I just sort of came up with, not really rolling, just yet — and her [sibling, etc] from having a specific background to keep to the dumb 90s action movie vibe, and Mirza is a Persian name that has drifted about, so I like that. Myrrh Mirza. Sibling will be Clo which might be...Chloe or something else depending on details. It is 100% a Myrrh and Clove "joke." Remember, kids, jokes need to be funny.
Actual Scene: The Four Generals head to The Opal of Ishtar to meet Myrrh, a classmate and friend of Maddy.
There will be at least one action sequences in The Opal. I might even look up actual blueprints of casinos or just wing it. At this point, though, we are still just setting up some details and such.
Since Myrrh — real name or nah? no clue — Mirza is not inner circle or lover in relation, then we'll say there's a reason she's useful. First, let's use Universal NPC Emulator to figure out some details about her:
- 47 Refined 44 Worker + 95 Devoted 31 Officer
- Motivation(s): 39 Administer 09 Success + 02 Obtain 29 Academia.
Ok, she's a studious person who is careful and refined with what she does. She is trying to help her family succeed, so will not necessarily like things being too shady. Why is she useful? Let's go with Mythic's Action Meaning Tables:
- 28 Defend 55 Misfortune + 89 Suppress 45 Individual
Maddy has a contingency plan in place with Myrrh in case something goes wrong. We'll say Maddy helped deal with someone for Myrrh, so Myrrh will return the favor by protecting Maddy.
To a point...
Now, whether or not The Opal's owner, Myrrh's [{father | mother} >> Mother, Book of Random Tables: Modern, Female Arabic First Names >> 33, Zarah (goes by "Frankie" for another spice pun)] agrees to any of this, we'll see. She might be another suspect on the list if she feels Maddy is a threat.
As for Clo, let's go with {male | female | non} >> male, {younger | same | older} >> younger sibling who is {-2 to +3} >> +3 responsible for the business. Clo is somehow more important to the organization. Let's get some details about him:
- 26 Wicked 92 Sniper + 78 Pushy 64 Activist
- Motivation: 47 Burden 52 Peace + 65 Learn 34 Friends
Despite being the "shoe-in" for inheriting The Opal, Clo is trying to make sure Myrrh is cut out. He is involved in charities around town, but often tries to make them about him. Deep down he's kind of a lonely guy, though. Sort of a terrible person, but one who might be redeemable in the right circumstances.
"We Need to Find Myrrh"
After disposing of the bodies...
Maddy and the Colonel will take lead on this one. She has Crime/Stealth. He does not have Crime, but does know how crime scenes work. He'll add +2 to her roll.
Failure will add +1 Heat though the characters won't know.
- (Crime) 3 + (Stealth) 2 + (Help) 2 vs Critical >> Extreme Success = They hid the bodies really well.
...Maddy had looked around at the three older men and then pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them each one.
A gesture that Sarge notes is just like her dad. The same way of upticking with the hand. Not just that, but...
"Ramseys, huh?," he says, pointing to the pack, "Just like Cap. Jesus, you are a spitting image of your mom. She also smoked those. It's..."
The Ramseys logo — a flat-topped pyramid blending with the "M" in a broadly "Egyptian" font — takes Sarge back. To playing baseball. To Genny and Cap and all the rest. Good memories. Though Ramseys wasn't particularly one of them. He always hated the brand and the pretention to being a "sophisticated" cigarette due to its inclusion of some minor amount of Turkish tobacco. Besides, the logo always struck him as off center.
How do you fuck up going for a "Ramses" pun without leaning all in?
As all three men wave away her offer, she pauses and thinks and then puts the pack away without smoking one herself. Sarge is noting that she seems strangely unfazed by the violence she committed. By the fact that four corpses are stashed under a heavy metal sheet which is now buried under around forty wooden pallets. In the August sun... well, time to get get gone, eh?
"We have to go, Maddy."
"Why?," she asks, looking around like she is listening for sirens.
Sarge starts to explain how her dad had sent them here because of BigBetty and the strangely overvalued bet on her life, but she cuts them off like it is old news.
"Exactly, Mr. Sargent, that's why we need to find Myrrh."
"Mer?," he says it kind of like how a southerner might pronounce the French word for the sea.
"Myrrh," she says again, without elaboration.
"Ok. Also, call me Sarge. But, first..."
"Shit, you guys still doing the generals stuff?"
"Hey," LT calls from near his car which he is polishing back up. Not that there had been much splatter to begin with. "That's my name, you know. El Tee. Sargent. Collin, which is kind of like..."
"Shut it, LT, before we..."
"Fine, you can call me Major."
"..we...wait, why Major?"
"I don't know, it's 'Major' because it starts with an 'M' or you end up calling me 'Mads' and I'm not crazy. I'm fucking not."
"Ohhhkay...look Madd...Major...," the Colonel cuts in. "What Sarge is trying so hard to ask is who or what is Myrrh and why should we go to find Myrrh instead of hightailing into some geographically isolated location like a cave out in the middle of the desert.
"Because a cave in the middle of the desert doesn't have A/C and is very unlikely to have tequila. Depends on the cave, though."
As both Sarge and the Colonel start to ask follow-up questions she tells them to get in the car and she'll explain on the way. Then does this sort of puppy-dog please face thing. Even though Sarge is sure she is play-acting her idea of a playful young adult, the dad in him is starting to trigger from it. His is not the only one...
"Finnnne," says Lt, then: "Wait, where we are going?"
"To The Opal of Ishtar."
The Opal of Ishtar
Maddy, Major, had to explain some more before Sarge would stop threatening to knock her out and drag her away until they found that hypothetical cave. Turns out Myrrh is "Myrrh Mirza." Major assumes that's Myrrh's real name, since it's what everyone calls her, including professors. She had been a business major at Campbell University. The two criss-crossed in an ethics class and hit it off. Myrrh stole Major's boyfriend "by accident" and they both teamed up to get revenge on the guy.
Myrrh graduated this past May and is back to working at her family shop.
In this case, the family shop being The Opal of Ishtar. The biggest casino this side of Las Vegas. Myrrh's mom, "Frankie," which is definitely not her name but is what she wants to be called, runs the business after inheriting it from Myrrh's grandfather. The old man had wanted to call the place "Vilvoorde" after some town in Belgium he had spent some formative years but a lawyer friend (and part owner of the eventual Opal) had convinced him to swing more exotic. As Major puts it, the local yokels couldn't figure out whether than man who, originally from Afghanistan by way of a family from what is now Iran, was from "Sicily, Egypt, or Mexico."
Calling on a Mesopotamian goddess was embracing the flair.
Grandpa went on to marry his lawyer's daughter in the early 70s and they had Frankie who had married some asshole from Brooklyn and then kicked him to the curb; choosing to raise two kids and run a casino on her own.
Frankie is a force of nature and one of the larger employers for LasAz and Myrrh had hit up CU to stay nearby while also getting some training in running a business. Only Frankie has her eyes on Myrrh's younger brother Clo — "Clo?! You are fucking with me!," Sarge had said before Major shushed him — to take over The Opal. A triple insult: betraying the girl-boss momentum, Myrrh's a business genius, and Clo's a lazy jackass.
"I wouldn't necessarily want her to be my maid of honor, but I would love if that girl would plan my bachelorette party, let's put it that way."
Sarge resisted interrupting again to find out what the hell that might mean.
When they get there, Major said that LT and the Colonel should go shoot some craps while her and Sarge go and meet Myrrh.
"Absolutely not, we need all the protection we can get on you."
"Look, you idiot, this casino has better security that most politicians. Don't want to freak out Myrrh too hard before we get her on our side. Besides, she has a thing for broken daddy types...," saying this last bit while looking at Sarge.
"Jesus, Madison, I changed your damned diapers."
"Major. And if you say that last bit in front of Myrrh, I bet you $5 that you'll be seeing the color of panties before midnight."
"Wait, you said she stole your boyfriend, if she's into 'broken daddies', then..."
"COME ON!" She started walking away from him.
Sarge sighed and walked through a back entrance that Major somehow knew to access. They went through a hallway that is mostly empty except for a few old models of slot machines and then into a lounge that was seemingly devoid of people because it was still a bit early for the evening crowd. He assumed.
Major sat down at a booth and motioned Sarge to sit on the same side of the booth as her. Then waited.
Now, without having said anything to anyone to let them know that they are here, he is surprised to find that the wait is only a quarter hour. A young woman, roughly the same age as but slightly younger than Major, enters and sits across from them. She wears glasses and a black top that screams, "Thank you for attending the launch of my new personal computer line, as my investors...."
Across the darker skin of her face, she has a number of freckles that stand out and which only help to bring attention to her attentive, dark eyes. She embodies a mixture of stern and friendly. She's perfect CEO material, or at least will be when she gets old enough to chisel her stare into the appropriate daggers.
Major pulls out a cigarette and puts it between her lips and leans over the table, slightly. Myrrh produces a lighter and leans over to light it. Major inhales while keeping eye contact and Sarge is confused because it is such an intimate show of affection between these two young women but it seems to be something like an in-joke. Seconds later they are both laughing. Myrrh doesn't seem to smoke, herself, but is perhaps used to the hospitality flair.
"Who's the hottie?," Myrrh says, pointing to Sarge.
"You get the email and my suggestion?," Major answers by way of another question, though she does prod Sarge with her elbow and winks at him.
"Yeah."
"How much?"
"I had 20k I could move without Clo pitching a fit and telling mom."
"Well, to answer your question, he's here to make sure you and I make money off me staying alive. You got the panic room ready?"
"No."
"NO!? Dammit, girl, we need..."
"Clo's girl is pregnant. He's having a...well, a panic attack."
Setting the Scene, The Four Generals: 00.c/3.
Actual Scene: Somewhere else, someone is getting involved.
This one will be quick and just adding some spice to the proceedings. I need a card from Gamemaster's Apprentice: Weird Horror for this, to generate an object.
{GMAWH56} Ok...the belongings are "camp gear" but I like a different prompt more. The visual prompt is "A door-handle turning slowly..."
I can work with that. I mean, I could have worked with camp gear, but door knobs have a...flair.
Somewhere Else, An Hour Later
The man in the dark room stubs out the remains of cigar in an overfull ashtray and resists pulling a cigarette from his pack. His heart is beating hard and a bit fast because he can fill the situation slipping away from him like a kid's toy lost to a rain-flooded stream.
The phone rings and he jumps hard, then curses.
"Yeah," he answers the question asked when he put the receiver to his ear, "I know. The three idiots are already there and have intervened. Only they didn't pull the expected route of extracting her back to Maidenstead. No, she's still in Las Azaleas. I had folks strip her room and the Orb of Enki wasn't there. She either has it on her or its somewhere..."
The voice speaks in a calm but deeply threatening manner.
"Sir, we have no reason to believe she has any idea on how to find the door, much less open it..."
Another calm reply and the man feels sweat start to flow from his face.
"Understood, I'll send..."
Oh shoot, I need a cool name for a pair of operatives...um, let's try a roll on The Maidenstead Mysteries oracle:
- 4,1 Magnifying Glass + 2,3 Fingerprint
Umm...this is dumb, but...
"...Baskerville and The Hound."
The man hangs up and, without thinking, goes ahead and lights the cigarette. The pyramid shape of the logo with the shining eye is visible even in the low light.
Then he makes a phone call.
NOTES START NOW...
Doug's Thoughts
Ok, I'm not 100% sure that having "three session zeros" was necessary for this campaign but I have actually had a lot of fun. The initial idea was simple: three friends go and save a damsel in distress that is the daughter of a fourth friend. Very 90s-coded. Only I don't really like "damsels in distress" so by giving myself that grace to keep building up lore and tools, we got the fact that Maddy was actually a seasoned fighter in her own way. More an investigator of eldritch oddities, but still good at handling herself. In principle, she's the smartest of the four though The Colonel is perhaps sharper.
Then I had time to build up The Opal, play with the art, figure out the music, and make some decisions about which tools sparked joy for this campaign.
In other words, I didn't really need "three session zeros" but I had fun doing it. Besides, had I been sitting at a table all this stuff would have either:
- Been written by me prior to the campaign over a similar time line, or
- Taken an hour or two at least to play out
I think the "Week = Session, Post = Session Segment" will work for mentally keeping up stuff but I might play around with coding it in a way that's not too confusing to me or others.
And yes, I definitely made it seem like Cap is the "Man in the Dark Room" but I don't know. Maybe. I'll find out on the way down.
[Campaign Design] Art Continues to Evolve
I worked for a couple of hours at different scripts to hit what I wanted but generally a fix that would work with one photo would completely break another photo. This is not necessarily a terrible thing. It just meant to achieve the "90s comic book printed on cheap newsprint" vibe was going to require a fair chunk of time per photo. In a scale of which that I might easily spend 2x-3x the effort of making art than playing the game, and that felt off.
I ended up going with G'MIC's G'MIC-QT Plugin for GIMP to take off some of the load. There's still a bit of tweak of color spaces and digital inking but it hits the comic book vibe a lot faster than I could having to manually hone in with each one. While I'm still using some "post-processing" to thicken the lines, I am mostly going to drop the "newsprint" effect for the moment because while it works fine with certain images, others it makes the eyes hurt to look at it. For instance, The Opal of Ishtar's main floor in the old style versus new...
Some of it is simply needing to be more conscious of the photos in question, higher contrasts between forefront and background, and all that. As I dig more into the toolkit, I will no doubt find a few more options to help bring it closer to my initial goal.
That being said, I'll still use the original "newsprint comic" style for some images since some work well with that vibe [like the photo of the dark room at the end of the play portion of this post].
Also, once my brain rests some for staring at sliders and numbers for hours, I'll play with nailing down a kind of steady "one click" style. For instance, the "slot machine" photo, above, shows how sometimes the processing by G'MIC feels a bit...melted/AI. At this point, though, trying to figure out if Line Intensity = 18.415 vs 17.1 means much is beyond me.
The brain is weak and the flesh is exhausted.
Setting Up Mythic
For this one, I'm going to use a lower-impact Chaos Factor. How low, I'm not 100% on right now. I tend to like it when the Chaos Factor introduces twists and only slightly changes the Yes/No odds.
Otherwise, I'm going to introduce two keywords to the list: Minor and Remote. Minor Characters/Threads are those that aren't expected to heavily impact the story all that much. Remote Characters/Threads are outside of the main scope of action. Both of these tags can change. If they show up in various ways, they might be part of a remote scene or a more laid back type scene. There will also be at least one Major [no pun intended] tag. This will be something that means it is immutable and as a Thread/Character can't be left behind unless the story significantly changes. Impacts on it will be more about finding out The Truth, etc.
For Characters, we have just a few already. The ones I can think of right now are:
- Thomas "Cap" Dwyer [Remote]
- The Blonde Woman [Minor, Remote]
- Zarah "Frankie" Mirza [Minor?]
- Clo Mirza
- The Man in the Room [Remote?]
- Baskerville and The Hound
- Elin [Minor]
- Eustace Delmont [Remote]
- Amy Patel [Remote?]
Those last two are just there as standards for the Alabama Weird. They may or may not get involved but at this time we know that Eustace and Amy have been traveling around, hunting down cults and such. They might be Remote, but they are never Minor. Eustace is quite loud.
I won't add a few possible characters like Sarge's family or LT's ex-business-partner. Yet. If the Threads get called up in an interesting way, it might just happen.
As for Threads we have...
- BigBetty bet against Maddy "Major" Dwyer's life [MAJOR!]
- Cults stalking Major
- Cap is about to run for president
- Cap is investigating BigBetty
- Major has the Orb of Enki [which opens "The Door"]
- Sarge's Family [Minor, Remote]
- LT's Bar's Bankruptcy [Minor, Remote]
- The Colonel's Bust of The Magnolia Killer [Minor, Remote]
I think that works for all the possible drama I could ever want.
Other Tools
Besides Mythic and Outgunned, the other tools I will use include a few regulars on the channel, so to speak:
- Cezar Capacle's Random Realities {RR}
- Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator {UNE}
- Larcenous Game Design's Gamemaster's Apprentice: Weird Horror {GMAWH} and Base Set, 2e {GMAB}
- DiceGeek's Book of Random Tables: 1980s-1990s {BRTN} and Book of Random Tables: Modern {BRTM}
- Madeline Hale's Table Fables: Modern {TFM}
- The "Maidenstead Mysteries" Image Oracle {MM}
As I have been doing lately, I'll use the above {curly bracket short codes} along with a number to mean the page, card, etc. Therefore a 1,6 result on Random Realities will be {RR1,6}. Etc.
The Music
I'm one of those solo players that listens to music while playing. In fact, each of my worlds has its own [slowly evolving] soundtrack that helps to drive the moods and ideas.
For this one, I thought about loading up some action music soundtracks but official soundtracks tend to be a bit overfilled with short tracks that were deeply tied to specific scenes. Instead, my plan is to focus largely on "Epic" music like the kind used for trailers and fantasy soundscapes, some Epidemic Sounds type stuff for more action sequences, and a blend of some old favorites. Current playlist for "The Four Generals" has...
- Karl Casey: a few different albums, especially the last ten or so White Bat albums. His music has been pretty much part of the solo play stuff across all campaigns and don't see why it should stop now.
- Angelika Conrad
- Two Steps from Hell
- Thomas Bergensen's "solo" stuff after TSH
- Ivan Torrent
- Experia
- Helmut Schenker
That's probably good. I played around at adding in some J-Rock/-Pop stuff just to add some contrast but it clashed in odd ways. I might try at like one Yorushika album and one Brandy Senki album. Just to spice it up. I also had to trim back the Karl Casey bits so that it was kind of like a bit of pepper in the soup rather than the soup itself. I have a lot of Karl Casey music.