Just Outside the City: The Chain of Command vs. the Food Chain

Barry made up his Quarantine and this had some really neat effects on the game.

The Quarantine, especially tossed in mid-campaign, allows the players to really show how effed up the world is.  Some neat Quarantine moments for Captain Dale Anderson and his five man crew:


 - Naturally, the first person they meet is Shit-head, the omega of Baby's gang.
 - The soldiers from the World-that-Was smelled really good and because of that and that alone, Baby slept with Anderson.
 - Yeah, the soldiers are well trained and have cool gear but man...Powers Bars...have you had those Powers Bars?  Fuuuuckin' Powers Bars...
 - "He's a captain? Where's his fucking boat?"
 - "What's yer gang called?" "The U.S. Army."
 - And I could see that having this character allowed Barry to set Bullet up for his end-game, be that a violent death or a well-earned safe retirement.


Last game really left its mark on Bullet, not only in that his face is scarred and he's got a nasty limp but in that he's haunted by how things went down when he let his rage at being ambushed take over.  Webb, the squid-eater Bullet asked to point out those among his own folk who had eaten with the cannibals, finished the barge he was fixing up, left his eldest son in charge and then killed himself off camera.

Everything is primed.  The Hudson River Valley Compact is planning to destroy the cannibal's incoming shipment from "out west" where they get lots of raw goods and materials, hoping that this will starve them out come winter.  It'll be a while, with the holidays messing up the next few weeks but once that is past us, war is coming.

I'll jot down some more notes and scenes as it occurs to me.

Marsh was back and Baby was pleased to have the Hudson River Valley Compact's own Brainer in arm's reach.  He came back with a Hocus' cult representing the Onondaga he led away from Salt City in the western part of the state.

When she told him about Turk and Mary hitch-hiking in her brain, he took her out hiking with his folk.  They made two clay people and sat between them.  Together, they cast the two psychic stowaways into the clay and destroyed the scultpures.

Padraic's description of how he was doing this was really nifty and deserved more time than it was given.  I felt really pulled in different directions this game, with Dent and Marsh back and Barry bringing in a new character.  There were several scenes with Dent, Baby, Bullet and Marsh looking over the road map, figuring out a battle plan.

Dent took charge of the Road Demons (now known as Dent's Demons...catchy) at his bloody wedding and has them primed and ready to ravage their way through cannibal country.

I have a playtesting question!

How'd the quarantine's sex move go? Did you learn anything good about Baby?

I have a playtesting question!

How'd the quarantine's sex move go? Did you learn anything good about Baby?

Let me see, he asked her if she'd consider staying with him.

She was like, "No way, this is just because you smell so damned good and plus, I have shit to do."

I wish I had asked some more questions.  I need to ask more, somehow fell away from that.

Dent isn't buying the good Captain and his crew's special forces mystique.  He isn't buying it at all.  He followed them to make sure that they weren't cannibal spies and watched them take down the crew gathering to destroy Pole.  Still, he managed to stalk them without them knowing for a good long time.

I neglected to have the psychic maelstrom effect the awakened members of the unit but I figure that can be a bit of a slow burn as the maelstrom slowly worms its way in, which I like.

Thoughts on this past week's game is coming out in spits and starts.

Bullet had put word out among the Squid-eaters that no one was to go up nor down the Hudson without stopping and checking in with his boys first.  So, Rubbin was in his car, machine guns on the roof aimed at the river.  She fired a round off the guy's bow and he ignored it.  So, she lit him up and if he survived the machine gun fire, the squid would take care of the rest.

"Rubbin, let's go for a drive.  You drive."

There is something fantastically fatherly about the way Barry get's when Bullet is being a good parent to Rubbin.  She's doing better.  Her ribs no longer hurt when she sneezes and the headaches from the concussion are going away....mostly.

"You're getting really good with that stick, honey."  Man, it breaks my heart how good a dad Bullet is.  And he broke down about how fucked up he was over the way things went up in Kip-town with the squid-eaters.  I really loved it.  I love seeing how they all deal with things.  How Baby just files it away so she can get things done, leaving it for another day that'll never come.

Dent is just...Dent.  He's a full on super-hero/multiple personality disorder.  "If you had a helmet, dealing with this shit would be easier, Bullet."

Marsh has his Hocus-spun community now and they're different than the gangs, which is neat.  I have to figure out my apocalyptic spin on Marsh's Onondaga  I think I will ask Marsh some questions about it (especially since Padraic recently took a class on Native American History in college) at the next game.

As the GM, there are things I need to do:

I need to bring my fronts together into easy to read and access paperwork.  It is all too hard to fiddle with in-game and some fronts are kaput now.

I need to re-read the basic moves and the MC moves.

I need to re-read the character sheets, look at the ways their gangs, hardholds, cults and such give me license to fuck with them beyond the Demons being fucking heyenas.  I use that one to death; its like a sore tooth I can't stop playing with.

I have also felt this pull you mention between PC's doing trippy things with weird tech, ritual, and the Maelstrom, and then holding politics and wars on the other hand.  I created a threat to try to bridge the two -- angry ghosts in the Maelstrom -- but I won't force it either way.