Can you believe it’s February already! Such a fun time has been had already with four games played and two sessions hosted! The theme of the month was definitely one of rescue where there was a venture into the Savage Lands, a side quest in Kenya and two rescue missions.
Savage Apocthulhu – Savage Worlds, near future
I can’t say that I’d ever wanted to try Savage Lands as a game system but when new keeper ‘Fat Earther’ announced a game on the RPG Nook, I thought I’d see what it was all about. Now, it gets complicated as the game was “based on the Apocthulhu Quick Start game, Amber Waves, published by Cthulhu Reborn, written by Dean Engelhardt, Chad Bowser and Jo Kreil.” Not too sure what all that is but, as I explore the game systems where you can become a Mythos investigator, I’m sure it will become clear! Suffice to say it was an end of the world mythos setting as plants had taken over the world! Fat Earther did a great trailer video for it:
The pregen character I selected in this post-apocalypse world had the overly heroic name ‘The Mako’. He wasn’t very shark like or blood thirsty but being an ex-cop, he could get the job done and he wasn’t even the deadliest of the group! Our hook was that someone who had information on how to stop plants from bursting out of people had been kidnapped by a group of cultists who wanted to make plants burst out of people. We needed to track down and recover the papers and maybe save the scientist but we were realists and knew this was a slim chance!
The post-apocalyptic town we had to explore was nicely captured as was the last stand of a police station we found. We heard tales of people being kidnapped a crucified and saw in the distance a murder of crows so thick it looked like smoke! We got the location of the kidnappers and pretty much went through them like a special forces hit squad depleting their numbers by half before we got into open combat!
A side note on Savage Worlds is the quite deadly and swift combat. ‘The Mako’ was able to put some cultists down with a single shot and other players did enough damage to kill with arrows and knives quite easily. We used our Bennis (Bonus rolls) sparingly as we weren’t used to using them but by the end of the game we used them up especially when we ran into people with magic powers which left a party member upstairs bleeding out!
Not sure I’d rush back to Savage Lands over the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition but the system doesn’t matter as long you are having fun and enjoying the game. In the end we rolled very well, just about got the papers we needed and, I’m sure there was something else we had to do…! Oh well, never mind!
Side quest! Pulp Cthulhu, 1930s
We started back on our Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign in January with a side-quest to Kenya. This was a chance to try out my new back up character for the campaign should anything happen to my main Character Nadia (A Lara Croft type – well we are doing the Pulp version of Masks!) This backup is a doctor by trade who has seen plenty of action in wars so can fight but has also spent time being educated in healing both the mind and body.
The hook was to prep the way for our main party to arrive in Kenya and of course no sooner had we arrived than we saw a women get grabbed by a lion in front of us who, of course, we saved – kind useful being a doctor you know! We then had to uncover the mystery surrounding the deaths of people in the area whilst at the same time coping with the Kenyan wildlife. It wasn’t so much the large animals but the smaller one that got me – fire ants which after some bad rolls saw my character set upon by these little monsters! The larger wild wife did appear as my Doctor was stripping off his clothes running to the nearest water hole covered in ants. There he met many crocodiles who objected to his company!
From the little experience I’ve had so far, here are a couple of tips to pass on which I used in this game:
- If you think something is there but could be invisible then throw some dust in the air to give your Spot Hidden a chance to work!
- If there are lots of dead bodies around, don’t do what they did – it probably didn’t work!!
In the end we managed to figure out the mystery and sent someone mad which is always a bit of a bonus!!
Fall Out – 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu, Modern Day
Last year I had some fun playing a couple of adventures from Blasphemous Tomes and so it was great to play another one run by Keeper Stef1885. You can read their blog post about the game over on their blog parryingis4wimps
We were part of a small criminal gang who owed the “boss” a favour – not quite as much as the “boss” in the scenario Missed Dues (see Keeper’s Screen for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition) by but enough to know you don’t take no for an answer! The pregen I selected was a low level computer criminal, not really a hacker but knew enough about computers and security to be helpful. Our hook was to go and get back the ‘favourite girl’ of the boss from someone who seemed to have kidnapped them or at least, not given them back.
The great thing I find about Blasphemous Tomes adventures is that they get straight to the point but pack in plenty of story and mystery! I was able to have an inkling of what was going on from the newspaper research but still the adventure unfolded in very fun way at a fast pace – so fast that if you walked through my character’s actions in real time it might take you about five minutes! They walked into the house, took care of the security system, followed a wire to a smashed CCTV box, saw some papers then ran up the stairs and back down again whilst all hell broke loose! During the game got what has become one of my most favourite hands out of all time. Apologies for the small screen grab but I was busy!
The tip I tweeted after the game was about not using a tool when you have no skill points to use it. To elaborate on this, player FoxKitty’s character had chainsaw and had become handcuffed. I had the perfect opportunity to plunge their own chainsaw through them (C’mon, I was possessed!) but alas I had no skill with the chainsaw and my crappy dice rolls saved their life!
My character didn’t make it in the end but did save the life of another character due to their bout of madness! Instead they got munched by a mythos creature after another crappy dice roll as I’d had a critical DEX roll earlier to escape a fire. Even though the game was over in a couple of hours (we guessed this was written as a convention game) Fall Out is my game of the month!
Frozen Feet 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu, Modern Day
Last adventure of January was Frozen Feet part of the Occum’s Razor series by Stygian Fox. I wasn’t too keen on the description of Frozen Feet when I read it as believe it or not I’m not too keen on horror films. The thought of a character dying to something like the Hills have Eyes wasn’t too appealing but everyone else seemed to want to play it so I didn’t want to miss out!
I was quite pleased with the modern character I created for this. They had a good set of investigative skills so can really recommend the “Deprogrammer” occupation which, if you read between the lines, is “Professional Kidnapper”! These folks have Stealth to creep up on their target, Drive Auto to get away and Psychology to deprogram them. They even have intimidate which gave me my character’s top moment in the game by scaring the crap out of an NPC into helping us and fight on our side.
I did have one little niggle about the game and it’s something I’m finding and more often in adventures and that’s the above average SAN loss to mundane things. 1d6 loss is something I associate with something over the top or supernatural and page 155 of the Keepers guide describes this level of loss comes from a meeting a Ghoul or meeting someone you know who is dead. Not giving too much away I found a body part and took 1d6 SAN loss for which I rolled a 6! The temporary insanity was fairly minimal but still, 1D6 for a bit of a body?
Emu, the master Keeper behind the RPG Nook took the basic premise of the game and expanded it so we had lots of “fun” enjoying the impromptu gun fight between our Computer Hacker and an old Lady over a fumbled stealth roll! And you do not want to know what we found in a chest freezer!!
Ultimately there was show down – and an extreme pistol shot from my character to polished off a fiend in one round but then there was the horror movie running and screaming and life or death DEX checks which finished up the game. Not the most satisfying of endings for me but I’m not one for horror movies but if that’s what you like then you should have great time.
That’s all the games for this month, what will be played next month…?
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