Session 4: Firestarter part 2

At this point, I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with me.

Random Thoughts

So session 4, was a pretty major shake up in the game, it was the departure of one player, and almost got the party killed. Kendall's player left in the middle of the session, stating that due to work commitments they didn't feel like they could really give the game the commitment it deserved.

I disagree but I keep being told I'm a decent GM, Once the campaign ends I’ll see if they still say that. This session also was the sort of end to me using the Episodic approach, and started telling the main story, I had established the main villains at the end of the first session, Alex, Dr Burton, and Katrina, which were kinda meant to be foils for the 3 existing character's, now this ended up being quickly abandoned as the story went on and everyone became.. a bit more complicated and deeper.

I really want to kinda sit down and plot the arc's of the NPC's, to chart where they started, to where they end in the game. If my game ends in the new few weeks, since one player is going to have to drop as they are joining the military, and we are kinda reaching the original planed end of the game.

Because a big part of this is people asking me how I kept the game going this wrong, well, again I kinda tweaked the mechanics a bit here and there, I tended to use more of a softball style of play.  to kinda explain this, the pre-written scenario, "Crumbling days", is about 10 scenes long, which could potentially cause any given character to raise there encroachment, just from scene count, between 10 and 100 encroachment, if your starting off at around 30 encroachment, your looking at hitting 80 encroachment just from scenes alone.

I tried to go with fewer scenes, partially out of necessity, averaging about 5 a session, meaning that  players were gaining between 5 and 50 Encroach from scene count, I kinda like this because it lets the players really go to town on enemies, since I'm not in the habit of holding back punches with the harder villains as this session proved.

Session 4 taught me however, the need to pull those punches, I almost wiped the party out, not against the Firestarter, but against the Book NPC "Moon dogs" because I was throwing down powers on the party with almost every attack.  As a GM, you don't have to follow the rules of encroachment if you don't want to, so you really do have to sit down and think about what your doing so you can prevent a TPK because you have your NPC's bomb the hell out of the the party with someone super combos.

Anyways lets talk about the session.

The characters introduced during Firestarter

 I should have done this last post, but the character Jordan Demir joined the party during this scenario, kinda interesting in the respects that the player, at least from my side of the screen, has played him as a quirky, awkward teenager, that never seemed to be comfortable around other people. As allot of teenagers are ironically enough, With the background of being a bit of a latch-key child. Both parents are alive, but there almost never home, I still kinda giggle a bit when I think how he was outed as an Overed, when Kendall warded the room both he and Sarah where in, causing Sarah to drop, and Jordan to not. he brought Bram Stoker powers to the table, mostly as a skilled fencer, but a lot of strong personal healing powers to the table.

 Honestly, he shared in one of the most powerful moments of the game, where he was forced to make a choice, allow and NPC who had a hard crush on him die... or use his  embrace power to save her life, knowing there was a very strong chance she would become an Overed. but that was about a dozen sessions later.

Firestarter himself, was my botched attempt at creating a morally ambiguous situation. I can think of more than a few situations later in the game that created a gray area for the players so slog through, the entire next scenario comes to mind. The biggest mistake I made, was after building up the situation of this kid's really troubled childhood, and the potential that he may have only been running with the FH, was out of an emotional desire to belong to something, had him blow up a school with his Salmandra powers.

Once I did that, he became irredeemable, and was just another target to be put down. In the process Kendall "died" in a never found the body kind of way as the player left at that point, but The remaining party, really kinda shocked that I went there, and that character went there, opted to take the kid out.

 The Post Session Write up

(I personally feel this was the point where I started writing half decent post session write ups enjoy for the quick and dirty on the session)

The episode picks up with John and Kendall walking into the Middle School. They hit a snag when Kendall failed to secure a fake FBI badge.

After John managed to get a badge, they talked to the principal, who revealed Jason's rather poor home situation and that his parents were involved in drugs.

Outside Alvin and Jordan were confronted by Jason, who revealed he is working for the FH who he considers to be "family" and gave them the choice to walk away or fight, before fleeing he set fire to the Junior high school and sent 3 Chimera Gjaums at the party, John made it out to help, but Kendall, in a mild panic stayed to help students and staff escape the building fire.

After they defeat the wolf-men.. they see most of the students escape... but Kendall was not with them, she was still in the building when it fell.

They tried to use Alvin’s scent tracking ability to track the car, but they only get as far as a commercial district, where the scent is lost.

John then had a serious fight with the voice in head, who berated him for even being here, and for trying to avenge the woman who may of killed his wife, after the voice then gives him a pep talk, they deduce that a nearby club is a popular hotspot for kids skipping school, but before they can act on it, there attacked by 3 of the dreaded FH Moon Dogs...

After a brutal fight, two Moon dogs are dead, Alvin breach 100 encroachment, and they started debating what to do with the still living but unconscious one.

unfortunately Jordan succumbed to his impulse and tortured the guard to death for information learning there are no other guards for the boy in the area.

With information, anger, and a very high encroachment, Jordan did form an attachment to Alvin, the kick the door open to fight the kid.

The battle was hard and furious, and in the end they were pushed to there breaking point. Alvin was almost lost to the virus, but there persevered, although much was lost.

In the end the heroes won, but at great cost, Kendall was lost, and with that, they lost there only means of connecting with the UGN.

After this a closing scene involving Katrina played out, in which she was discovering where John's wife is, and that she was due to be executed in 3 days.

 The Scenario's Impact

The biggest impact of the scenario, was after the session I sought out an extra player to fill the spot left vacant by the loss of Kendal's player, and picked up two players instead, filing out the cast that would stick with the game through the entirety of it's run.

Kendall’s player leaving really forced my to rethink of the roles everyone played, Kendall was the team's UGN contact, and by letting me think about how to cast hooks out to the players, I had to think out of the Episodic style of "Kendall gets a call from a handler" approach, and left it open for how the rest of the game would play out.

The next scenario, the first single part session, would actually see the party doing the dirty work of the False hearts agent Katrina for example. But that's for next time.