Chargen
I had a worried moment there. Barry was looking at the Driver with a gleam in his eye. Padraic was going back and forth between a Brainer and a Hocus but was leaning towards a Brainer. J.J. took the Faceless. K.K. was not sure but there she was teetering between Battle-babe and Chopper.
No followers, no holdings. They would have been a tribe of loner bad-asses traveling the wasteland, men and women with no names. It is the same kind of fear I get when people take object demons in Sorcerer. Some selfish GM part of my brain says, "But I want to make up cool NPC's that are bound to you!"
Brandy made a Maestro'D but she won't be there until next week, so we hold off on her character from Hx on down.
In the end, K.K. took a Chopper and their group is really neat, not tied to any particular hold in the Hudson River Valley, making trips into the city as needed for salvage. Good stuff. We talked about post-apoc life in the city, salvage vs. production and what-not.
Start
I wasn't sure where to start the damned game. There's no Hardholder, dammit! They didn't make a town for me. Bastards.
I latch on to my image of a town whose walls are made of telephone poles. I describe it as a ragged wild west palisade fort but made out of telephone poles and mud. The town is called Pole.
"You've just gotten out of the city and you are dragged a big-ass haul behind you, like, dragged behind the car with chains. What did you get out of the city?"
Some ideas are thrown out there.
J.J. speaks up. "Maybe its a person."
"Its a fucking person. Yes. Chained up in a trailer. Someone dangerous. Who is it?"
"The local warlord's daughter? Maybe a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing?"
"Yeah, she went off and hitched up with a rival, Dog head and her dad, the Warlord of Pole is pissed. Her dad is Millions."
And off we went.
They brought her in, knowing full well that Millions would execute her for disloyalty. J.J.'s Faceless, Dent, did the execution, doing in her skull like a watermelon.
This is their first job. The rest of the game is them lazing about, spending Millions' reward.
Bullit, the driver, agrees to take some gas and some time in Millions' garage.
Dent, the faceless, agrees to be paid in a week's worth of food and flesh.
Baby, the chopper, just wants week's worth of food, booze and whores for her boys.
Marsh, the Brainer, just wants a week worth of food and booze.
Millions feels like he got off cheap. He is a central stop-off point when people get out of the city on salvage runs.
Cool Dice Shit
Dent, big bastard in dirty carhart overalls and a dented helicopter helmet with a sledge-hammer on his back, is nervous. They got their payday from Millions for delivering his wayward daughter to her execution but had to piss off Dog head to do it. He wants to know where Dog head might strike back. He reads a sitch, sitting around town, watching its ebb and flow.
There's a spy in Millions' hold and its his favorite son, Look. Once Look has info on where they're going, he'll send it to Dog head and there will be a nasty ambush.
Shit.
Dent visits Ugly, his favorite prostitute but the she asks if he wants to take off his mask. He cuts the massage short and just walks off, tells the rest of the group what's up with Look.
Baby watches Look playing cards with her boys. The boys are liquored up and fuct and loose. They are telling Look shit. She tries to get them away (manipulation) from the table by sending girls over and sending signals but they aren't taking the hint.
Baby follows Look when he walks off to piss. She could hit him (Acting under fire, I think) but there's no room for error. He's the golden boy in his daddy's own hold and if there's a brawl it will turn ugly. She'd have to hit him HARD, I tell her that it might put him in her clutches unconscious and it might put him in a coma. Head trauma is funny like that. She elects not to hit him. Look walks away, not knowing how close he came.
Marsh is sleeping with Hundreds, who is Millions right hand girl and main security gunslinger. He's all up in her brain and she likes that he's this exotic Native American from the great-big-outside-Pole. He knows how she wants to leave but likes feeling legit, likes being a part of something bigger. When he pushes her, asks her why she hangs around, they get into a nasty fight and she stomps off once she's done cleaning her guns in bed.
Next up: Cool NPC's & Leaving Hundreds with the Problem