Encounters in Sick Country

Like backwoods, or badlands, sick country is a way to describe a place. There are patches of sick country scattered through the Land of Still Waters, some huge and well-know, helping shape the boundaries of nations, others tiny and ephemeral.

Boundaries of sick country are sometimes vague, sometimes well-defined. They shift, tidally, as the forces in the sick country wax and wane. Locals know the boundary signs of any nearby sick country well and often have extensive myths or traditions regarding them.

Though borders may shift, most sick country has a definite center or focus. Here the virulence of the place intensifies and creatures driven from the settled frontier shelter. Often this locus was a city of the ancient world whose ruins may still be seen from afar. Travelers through sick country would do well to give these relics wide berth.

The largest known sick regions bear the names of the ancient cities at their epicenters: Boston, New York, Toronto, and Montreal. The nation of Jorvik has many smaller regions within it whose borders are well-patrolled. Northern Vye contains Ottawa, and the southern shore of Acadia is blighted by Portland.

What do you encounter?

Roll three Fate dice. At the edge add another die and discard the lowest. Deep in sick country add another die and discard the highest.

Fate dice show 2 blank, 2 +, and 2 - sides.

+3: Settlement

+2: Wanderers

+1: Animals

0: Landscape

-1: Phenomenon

-2: Beasts

-3: Monstrosities

If you want to roll for encounter distance:

+1: Immediate: Ambush; stumbled upon; exits cover nearby.

0: Sighting: Raised dust or smoke; against the horizon; sounds.

-1: Hint: Trail or spoor; remains of a camp; aftermath of a battle or hunt; territorial markings.

Inhabitants

 

Even sick country may be settled, though sparsely, and as close to the edge of safer lands as possible. Land here is cheap or unclaimed, the law is scarce, and there are opportunities for those brave or desperate to seize them.

This section is applicable to both Settlements and Wanderers.

Two dice to determine how do they live.

At the borders of sick country, roll three dice and discard the lowest - in the depths, discard the highest of three. Consider rolling twice and combining the results to get a more nuanced or intense motivation.

+2: There are those who intentionally travel through sick country as benefactors: missionary or Ellisian walker; hermit; messenger; mercenary.

+1: Settlers having some degree of success: farmers; merchants; bandits & toll-takers; an outpost of a nearby borderland or nation.

0: These people are struggling: scavengers; living off limited supplies; paying fealty and tithes to some nearby settlement; failing and likely doomed.

-1: Hunters venture into sick country for many reasons: trappers; trophy hunters; furriers; exterminators. Those passing through unsettled lands should be wary they do not spring some forgotten hunter's trap.

-2: Aside from the natural hazards of these lands, anyone living in sick country is unlikely to be missed in civilization. They attract abductors: the autumn people; bounty hunters; cultists hunting for recruits and sacrifices; a witch of the wastes.

And one die for why are they here?

+1: Seeking opportunity: indebted; cheap land; exploration; salvage.

0: Long-time inhabitants: born here; making it work; delusional; infectious and unwilling to return to civilization.

-1: Exiles: Displaced; usurped; apostates or heretics; fugitives from the law.

Settlements

Structure - two dice

+2: Manor

+1: Homestead

0: Village

-1: Hamlet

-2: Campsite or hut

What state is it in - two dice

+2: Heavily fortified

+1: Under construction or temporary

0: Kept in decent repair; perhaps walled

-1: Re-purposed or adapted from other structures

-2: Crumbling; ruined; or badly damaged

Then roll on inhabitants to find out who lives there.

Wanderers

 

Wanderers may be: displaced from their homes and looking to settle; Glist; long-time nomads; just arriving in sick country; utterly lost; taking a dangerous shortcut; trying to hide.

Animals

Normally these creatures are benign, but many are host to sicknesses which may cause unusual behavior. An encounter with otherwise normal animals may serve to unnerve travelers, or restock their supplies.

Two dice:

+2: Foragers: escaped horse or ghast; wild sheep; deer; trollizard.

+1: Birds: ravens; sparrows; hawk or owl; gulls.

0: A swarm of insects: caterpillars; moths; roasps or roaches; ants.

-1: Rodents: squirrels; rats; rabbits.

-2: roll on Beasts.

Landscape

 

Much of sick country appears normal, like the land that surrounds it. The are regions though where even the earth seems to take ill. Often these places are known to and named by the surrounding natives - Toadwood, Norman's Rot, the Aching Cliff.

Three dice.

At the borders, roll four and drop the lowest. In the depths, roll four and drop the highest.

+3: This land offers respite: wax reeds well-adapted to any nearby sicknesses; a walker grove; a seemingly empty and stocked shelter, well-hidden; a length of ancient self-repairing road is clear and easy to travel.

+2: Teeming with life: obscenely plump and verdant plants, humid and heavily scented; swarms of flies or rats or birds with no obvious food source; fearless and hyperactive wildlife; roiling mist full of unseen chirps, hoots, and squeals.

+1: Passing through tended lands suggests a settlement nearby: farms; trails; orchards; pasture.

0: There are some plants which seem to thrive in the sick country and their abundance should serve as a warning to travellers: willow; sunflowers; pigweed; mustard.

-1: A wasteland of: parched dead trees; twisting thorn scrub; scorched and glass-like barrens; rusted ruins.

-2: This water is: vibrantly wrong color; stagnant and fetid; slick with oil and toxins; clear and still but utterly devoid of life.

-3: Blighted with: fungus and slime molds; miasma; rift in the earth; ethereally poisoned.

Phenomenon

Higher numbers are not necessarily good or safe, but they can be more easily avoided and might yield salvage if investigated.

Two dice.

At the borders, roll four and drop the lowest. In the depths, roll four and drop the highest.

+2: Haunts are warded regions created generations ago that try to scare the curious away from the dangers they hold. They send out periodic ethereal scouts to keep abreast of what's scary these days and manifest them with a variety of illusions and shifting facades.

This haunt: broods over a great plague; is slowly breaking down; has turned malevolent; might reward or bribe those who brave it.

+1: An ancient building: perfectly preserved; partially buried or obscured; active with magic and guardians; finally succumbing to the centuries.

0: Roll on the sickness table. This place is rife with the result.

-1: Zones of ethereal flux in which magic is: dead; wild; empowered; sentient.

-2: Radiation lingers in this area. It is a pernicious threat often undetected until one is deep within its boundaries. The animals and plants here are warped; the place glows faintly in the darkness; headaches and nausea begin quickly; everything appears normal to the naked senses.

Beasts

These creatures pose some risk to travelers and settlers. They are not necessarily hostile, though many of them are hungry or diseased.

Two dice:

+2: Feral animals have lost much of their fear of humans: wight; wild dogs; trollizard; cat.

+1: Most predators will only attack humans if they are hungry or threatened: wolves; coyotes; bears; bobcat.

0: Scavengers: dire rats (these are descended from Gambian pouched rats); wild dogs; hop crow; amphisbaena.

-1: Garoulin: regular garoulin; wolf-garoulin half-breeds; look like dogs but are smart as average garoulin; magic-using.

-2: Roll on Monstrosities.

Monstrosities

Three dice:

+3: Chimera: their artistries; their servants; or they themselves.

+2: Fey other than beguilers are somewhat less common in sick country but not unknown: sprite; goblin; gnome; nymph.

+1: Undead can rise spontaneously or are sometimes released by cultists: zombie; ghoul; wraith; revenant.

0: Lesser thaaskith roam wild here, escaped from or released by the cults. Amphisbaena; jaculus; basilisk; tatzelwurm; cerastes; or cockatrice.

-1: Fargone, or something on its way there: viscerid; luxpuck; tallow; ogre.

-2: Beguilers, the succubi and inccubi, are known to hunt the sick country for the weak and undefended. They may be: whole; decayed; traveling with thralls; recently fed.

-3: Greater thaaskith; rampaging lindorm; medusa on a vision quest; naga travelling between temples; samaelisk, possibly with converts.

Sick

Unsurprisingly, things encountered in sick country are often sick. For any encounter, you may use this chart as many times as you like.

Roll three dice to determine the nature of the sickness:

+3: Maniacal: frenzied & murderous; screeching & terrified; gasping & ecstatic; relaxed & psychopathic.

+2: Stupefied: idiot; animalistic; delirious; forlorn.

+1: Blind: cataracts; seeping eye holes; put out; eyes look fine but don't focus.

0: Disfigured: hunched; spindly; twisted; palsied.

-1: Diseased: leprous & rasping; fevered & sallow; bloated & oozing; wheezing & hacking.

-2: An old plague: clear plastic skin; partially ossified; cysts & vestigial limbs; ethereal siren (agonizingly loud for the afflicted and anyone sensitive, attracts attention in the ether).

-3: Fargone: luxpuck (skeletal and luminous); ogre (rippling muscle and insatiable hunger); tallow (bones soften, flesh flows); viscerid (must survive on the harvested organs of others).

A fourth die can determine how contagious the sickness is.

 

+1: Non-contagious: congenial; dormant; too specialized to host.

0: Moderate: wounds or injection; consumption; handling or grappling; imbued in an object.

-1: Virulent: airborne; bodily fluids; ethereal; skin contact.

Even non-physical ailments can be contagious in sick country.

Reactions

If you want a quick behavior, roll one die:

+1: Ignores, possibly curious

0: Observes, possibly stalks

-1: Aggressive, probably attacks

For a more nuanced behavior this encounter will tend towards, consider rolling three dice on this table. You can add a die and drop the lowest on the edge of the sick country, or add a die and drop the highest deep in it. Player actions and attitudes can guide these reactions.

	Initially appear	and soon turn	because they are
+	Welcoming	Helpful	Principled
0	Cautious	Indifferent	Hungry
-1	Threatening	Aggressive	Afraid

Possible minion/mount system for Fate

The Fate game I'm running now isn't using the Drive/Ride skill, as I've often found it to be too situational, and one of the characters has something of a familiar, so I've been trying to think how to handle minions and mounts within conflicts. I read some good posts on treating them like aspects, but that feels like a significant investment for a horse or the like. It might work out well for followers or mentors, but we're in a weird gray area at the moment.

So what I plan to playtest tomorrow is:

• Mounts and minions are Extras.
• Mounts are free from a character-building perspective, though might take in-game resources to acquire. They have statistics akin to Nameless NPCs.
• Minions require a refresh point and have stats akin to a Supporting NPC.
• You choose an appropriate skill to control the minion or mount with. You could control an average mount with Provoke, Rapport, or Empathy. A minion might be controlled by those in addition to Deceive or Resources. In my game there are some magic skills - the minion in this case will be controlled by one of those as it's an imp formed of its owner's blood.
• You can use their trained skills in place of your own within a conflict, but you use the lowest of that skill and skill you're controlling them with. So if you had Athletics +0 and were using your Empathy +2 to control your mount, which has Athletics +3, you can make an Athletics check at +2. If your Empathy was +4 you could make an Athletics check at +3.
• Normally there is no need to roll your control skill, but I can imagine situations where opposition or the environment will attempt to break your control and you'll need to roll defensively to maintain it. I'm thinking that would be an Overcome action on their part and if you lost control it would be another Overcome action to regain it.
• You can spend a Fate point to allow the mount or minion to act independently for a round in a conflict. You decide its actions.
• You can spend a Fate point to use the higher of the control skill or the minion's or mount's skill.
• Their aspects can be invoked and compelled as if they were your own.
• They could have other effects on the narrative. If you are riding a horse it's fair to say you can travel faster and carry more, or pull a cart, without going into details.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Fate Vis Major Playtest Characters

Piecemeal over the past few days, I've been converting the characters used in the first playtest of my homebrew system for the Vis Major setting over to Fate Core. It was surprisingly easy from a system perspective - way too much of that time was spent trying to find nice little quotes to put on the character sheets.

Also spent more time than usual for a playtest on the character sheets themselves. I really want to grab the group with these, and I hope that making it look like a "real game" will help with that. They're done up as trifold legal-sized sheets, single-sided, in a Google presentation. Playtest is this Thursday!

Skills

The skill list is customized for Vis Major. I'll post the full list at some point in the future but here's a summary.

• Athletics, Deceive, Empathy, Fight, Notice, Provoke, Shoot, Stealth, and Will are handled just like core.
• Physique was renamed Brawn, Burglary was renamed Thief, and Rapport was renamed Charm, but they work basically the same. I just like one-word skills.
• There are three magic skills: Blood, Ether, and Gnosis. Each of these has some limited stand-alone benefit, so it's not a waste tossing a +1 or +2 into them. However, there are Aspects that grant them new uses, so if you're putting a +3 or +4 in one of these you will probably also be taking one of those.
• Contacts became Clout, representing not only who you know but your standing within your various affiliations and capacity to pull rank.
• Resources became Trade, which is your ability to apply your skills to making money, and is another one-word skill.
• Then there's Gambit. I'm really just going to have to see how this plays out, but it's your capacity to plan ahead for potentially outrageous circumstances, your machinations, and your perfect bits of gear you happen to have. It will likely allow for a lot of retconning by the players.

Lore, Investigate, and Drive/Ride are not on the list. Lore is determined by your Aspects, Investigate I plan to do with challenges, and Ride will be handled with Empathy, Charm, or Provoke.

Aspects

Unlike Fate Core, I felt the Aspects on these sheets needed a little more explanation than a single phrase. We have a sense of what a "Fireman" or "Librarian" would be invoked for, but "Aleph" or "Acadian Walker" aren't immediately evident, even though they're common enough in the setting. So a couple fragments to provide an archetype and perhaps a quote.

The magic aspects needed some detailing too since I rather wanted the facts that "your blood is independently alive" or "you can blow up golems" to be staring the players in the face constantly.

There are some blank Aspects left for the players to fill in. Only one character got a personality trait of "Mousy" assigned, and that's only because she was played so memorably that way in the last round of playtests.

Stunts

I've only played Fate once, and it was actually FAE, so we'll have to see if these stunts feel balanced. I'm using an alternate initiative system based on Marvel Heroic Roleplaying where you basically just choose who goes after you, so some of the stunts are based off that to give the decisions more weight.

Then there are some that further enhance magic skills, and a few left blank to fill in at the players' discretion.

Extras

There are no plans to use weapon and armor ratings, so there's just some simple lists of what they're wearing and wielding. I'm hoping that having some of the aspects deal with specific types of weapons will be sufficient. Other gear is suggested by their Aspects.

I listed out some specific foods they're carrying instead of generic "rations" in an attempt to reinforce cultural identities. A common theme I've noticed in works of fantasy that resonate longer is the author tends to describe the foods the characters encounter in greater detail. Tolkien dwells on dishes, and I often think of this bit from Narnia:

"And immediately, mixed with a sizzling sound, there came to Shasta a simply delightful smell. It was one he had never smelled in his life before, but I hope you have. It was, in fact, the smell of bacon and eggs and mushrooms all frying in a pan."

I've gotten a bit obsessive about the food situation in Vis Major, but it's an important way to delineate cultures.

Then there are mounts for most characters. I couldn't find any rules for managing mounts in Fate so I'm just going to wing it. One of the characters has an imp servitor - this is a more complex Extra that I felt was worth knocking his Refresh down by 1 for. Note none of the other magic stuff costs Refresh, just skills and aspects.

Stress & Consequences

The only thing abnormal here is that the Physical stress track is build on the combination of Blood and Brawn, and the Mental on Ether and Will. This is one of the reasons it can be nice to "dump" a point or two into those skills.

Potions

Extracted and stored magic forces in various solutions and salves. Potions are a relatively cheap resource that can get you +1 on a roll, but if you can hold off on dipping into your stock, you can store up enough to try and imbue or enhance an item with them.

JiffyCon East 2013

Yesterday I attended JiffyCon East:

A local roleplaying and board game event showcasing games by independent designers. Held in western Massachusetts twice a year, and in the Boston area annually.

It consisted of two sessions starting at 9 and ending around 6, with a generous lunch break. There were about 40 gamers in the basements of the Unity Church and one dealer, Jim Crocker of Modern Myths Games, who I bought some Fate dice from.

I got there a bit after the doors opened but in time to sign up and start the first session without being late. That session was Ace Adventure by Beer Star Games, a pulpy 1920's fighter-pilots-versus-giant-monsters setting using the Fate Accelerated Edition rules. I hadn't played FAE before, but had read most of Fate Core, and mostly chose this game to get some exposure to the concepts.

The GM, also the owner of the company, Brian Liberge, had pre-generated characters for us and allowed us to take our pick after giving us a bit of a setting summary. It was clear we were going to be experiencing progressive disclosure of the rules rather than a dump at the start, so we were able to jump in quickly after character introductions.

A full play report follows but in short I very much enjoyed this game and this group. I found out during lunch that it was the very first RPG experience for Dr. Rosie King's player, but if she hadn't told me I wouldn't have guessed. The whole thing was very evocative of the pulp era it was shooting for, and Fate Accelerated is a delightful game I've found. The gradual reveal of the rules was handled ably by the GM who also took the group's suggestions and questions in stride.

My second session just happened to be with the same GM, but in a different system, this one of his own devising, Pulp!. It's a single-six-sided-die system which the author acknowledges has a lot of overlap with FAE but was developed independently. I don't have a full play report for this session mostly because, through no fault of the game at all, I was extremely tired by this time (weird preceding night).

However, here's what I remember. We did character generation instead of pre-gens, mostly because someone apparently walked off with the pre-gens at the last conference. But it's a straightforward game in many ways and the rules are short and free, so this didn't take long. We ended up with an illusionist in the vein of Dr. Orpheus, a rather grim sorcerer fueled by an internal arcane furnace, a dwarven sycophant to these mages, and an elven tiger knight who had no tiger most of the time.

The encounters were card based and played on the table. Our mission was clear - extract as many artifacts as possible for the Blue-Eyed Wizards from the Isle of Giants. This was more of a colloquialism apparently as there were no giants, only lizardmen, nasty insects, semi-sentient vines, a maddened wizard of shadows, an enticing imp, and an actual dragon. I guess the dragon was technically giant.

Pulp! intentionally features death spiral mechanic - your damage is tracked against abilities directly. I felt it worked out enjoyably in play but only if you considered it a classic dungeon crawl. Limping back to town (or the ship, in this case) to rest did not make me want to yell "pulp!". Still, we managed to defeat (not kill, mind you) a dragon with only the dwarf dying, and the character creation rules hook you into the world admirably, so it was a good afternoon with a crowd of creative and amiable gamers.

All told I'm already looking back on JiffyCon 2013 fondly just a day later, and am thankful to Brian of Beer Star Game for making it so. 

---

The characters in Ace Adventure were meant to invoke a poker hand:

• I ended up with the titular Ace Adventure, youthful American crack fighter pilot, daredevil, prone to putting his foot in his mouth, Flashy +3.
• 10, the time-travelling, amnesiac, Japanese scientist whose actions kicked off the pulp era.
• Jacques du Monde, French super-spy, numerous gadgets.
• Dr. Rosie King, brilliant inventor, determined alcoholic, heading up technology on our Boston Harbor base.
• Jackie the reporter (I failed to note her last name), not technically a member of the team but uncannily able to insert herself wherever a story is happening, and we make stories happen.

There was one unchosen character who filled the "queen" slot. All the characters had two of their aspects left undefined for expansion during play, though we only saw that come up once. The game was described as "if it works in a comic book, it works here" and that flavor dominated the session.

The game started with each of us being asked to give a description of what we were doing in Boston or its environs. The other characters were generally pursuing their interests or professions on the base or in the city - Ace was tooling around western Massachusetts in his sports car. When a radio news flash announced that a giant turtle had entered the bay of Providence and was attacking the boats there, all the characters convened on the island base. Ace got to get there by deploying the wings on his car and flying - I think the fact that I was able to declare my car could fly helped set the tone for the game.

To get to Providence I initially proposed we all get in the cannon and be shot down there, but Dr. King said that went terribly last time and she'd been working on these new super-slick wetsuits. 10 took one of those and started swimming down to Providence at startling speeds. Jacques already had a hydropack sporting twin shotguns (decided by his player, not the character sheet), so headed out on that. The rest of us each too a plane, but Dr. King was able to stretch the suit polymer over each before we headed out, meaning they became submersible as well.

As we're heading to Providence, the GM hands out our Fate points and explains their uses. Upon arriving, we find the news reports were not lying and a 60-foot turtle with an oddly ridged shell and covered with bony growths is indeed wading through the harbor and tearing up boats. So, initiative is determined!

Jacques tries to distract it with dual shotgun blasts but fails. We get the rules for failure described at this point. Jackie buzzes the turtle to get a picture and, tangentially, to blind it with the flash - Dr. King notes that she's augmented this camera in several ways. She gets her picture but the turtle gets her plane.

10 uses his grappling hook and line to cleverly get up on top of the shell. The GM is hiding the target numbers for challenges so 10 spends his Fate point, which causes him to succeed with style. He's able to get a decent look inside the overlapping shell plates and sees a pulsing organ of some sort.

Rosie King tires to land on the turtle to investigate. That's an Overcome action using Careful - she gets a 4, spends Fate to use a gadget she's built into the plane, sticky and bouncy landing gear.

Ace buzzes the turtle's head, spends Fate, and uses his stunt (+2 to Overcome an obstacle Flashily when death is likely outcome). Succeeding with style, he is able to rescue Jackie and create a boost of "unoccupied, heavily fueled plane in mouth" on the turtle. Jackie, however, leaves her camera behind and receives a Fate point in compensation. 

Now the turtle goes. It's angry! It starts to heat up, light spilling from the cracks in its shell, and gouts of plasma fire forth at Ace's plane! Since the planes are amphibious he dives underwater - 3 Force vs. 5 Clever means the plane is unscathed. 

Jacques uses 10's cord to get up on the shell. Those dual-wielded shotguns are fired into the exposed crevasse. Using 10's boost he succeeds with style, and the GM explains stylish attacks. Jacques opts to deal 2 damage and create a boost.

Jackie is with Ace now, and this game isn't using zone rules, so she says we're going to get her camera back. It turns out she's also an Olympic gymnast so while Ace is flying upside-down over the wreckage in the turtle's mouth, she dangles out and attempts to drop back into it. However she fails the roll and opts to land back in the bay rather than take a 4-shift hit. 

Dr. King rigs up an electrical rod from the plane's engine and attacks the turtle's head with it. Rolls badly and spends a Fate based on a science aspect to reroll, which leads to her succeeding in style. The turtle takes a "brain damage" complication and drops the plane - we adjust the boost I'd created earlier to be a falling plane.

10 now takes some explosive charges into the crevasse in an attempt to create an advantage. That works, but we also find out there are giant mutant lice moving around in there!

Ace, in the meantime, has turned his plane around, and aims it at the falling plane, bailing out at the last second to send both planes crashing into the turtle. I use up two existing boosts to get this flashy attack up to a 9, dealing 5 damage and opting to take a boost of "Ace has the camera". The turtle's plasma shots burn out as a disadvantage.

10 is being swarmed by lice and takes some stress. Jacques sneaks into the turtle shell to help. "Element of surprise" is suggested as an advantage - rolls 3, spends Fate, so 5 versus 1. Creates the advantage with 2 free invocations.

Dr. King tries to electrocute again, gets only +2, but turtle gets -1 amazingly, so it's with style and the turtle takes an "electric current" complication which kills off some of its lice. (I feel like in real life this wouldn't be a complication for the turtle but it makes total sense in the "it is less likely the characters will die" context.)

10 decides to get the hell out of the turtle, trying to distract the remaining lice as he does so. He rolls Flashy, but the GM compels him to have a Flashback, which he does - remembering suddenly the great Robot Insect Wars of 2000. 

Jackie uses her stunt to appear next to 10 - something about being wherever the story is. Rolls horribly but spends Fate, invokes many aspects and boosts and gets up to 6 which is enough to succeed with style and create a new boost - "surfing the wave of fate". Basically she and 10 are riding an explosion out of the turtle shell.

Ace is down in the harbor with plane debris raining around him. One bit that lands close by is a weird weapon we'd established at the outset was mounted in Jackie's plane, but hadn't given further thought to. The turtle reeling above him, Ace swims over to its mount and presses the button. I decide it's a device that's able to draw ambient energy to a point and then release it, so the lights on the edge of the harbor dim, the boost of the explosion is consumed, and 10 spends Fate to invoke my "leader" aspect, since he feels it's appropriate I get the killing blow. 

That I do and the beam of light sears the beast's head clear off, leaving its massive carcass wobbling above the harbor. Fame and adoration await us onshore and Jackie has an incredible scoop, a camera full of the kind of images you hope only happen once in a lifetime.

So now the GM introduces a social conflict. Tonight is the premier of "It Came From Space", a motion picture with state-of-the-art effects and in the genre of what would become science fiction. We're all asked how we'll react to this, but Jacques is compelled to be there, so takes a train back. Dr. King interestingly decides that her nemesis (who she's just introducing now) was hired as the science consultant on this film instead of her, and she's going to be there to make her opinions on that decision known. Ace and Jackie hang around Providence lapping up the victory and the stories respectively, while 10 shows remarkable dedication in deciding to try and track down a scientist in Boston who knows something about turtles.

The doctor goes to the premier. It's a very gala event, as this is cinema in the 20's. She is, of course, drunk, which provides numerous compels. She storms up to Dr. Pope (the nemesis) and after a bit of berating calls over a celebrity in the crowd to support her bona fides. This turns out to be Bela Lugosi. With such success she is able to create a "razzle dazzle" boost.

Here the GM also introduces scene aspects - Vintage vaudeville rigging, thick crowd, and dimmed lighting. Jacques arrives with his dates and feels like he's perfectly in his element with these. However he has a trouble aspect of "sleeps with the enemy" and is immediately drawn to Dr. Pope's assistant. 

Meanwhile Ace is talking to all the press in Providence except Jackie and manages to soundly put his foot in his mouth, asking such things as "you call this place a city?" and "so how do you manage to have fun around here?". Gets a Fate point for his troubles but the populace is very grumbly about their new hero. 

10 tries to track down his biologist contact. Marine biology not being a popular science in this era, he's bounced from person to person, finally ending up at outside the tenement of one Dr. Weyland. Finding the door ajar, he knocks and calls, stepping in when there is no answer. The place has been ransacked! Investigating what's left he finds some mathematical notes - apparently Dr. Weyland's research had linked undersea communication to electrical currents somehow.

Back at the theatre, the film is rolling, and just as we get to the reveal of the space monster, the screen splits and a metal sphere on six tendril legs strides forward, the speaker in its center proclaiming "Do not panic! You are being robbed!" At this time four mooks in pinstripe suits holding tommy guns burst into the aisles. Jacques is up in a balcony with his date, and is ready to take action but she's clinging to him, his troubles being invoked. Still he takes a shot at the goon and misses, causing panic to break out in the audience.

Doctor Rosie King strides through this unaffected towards the robot on stage. She takes some tools out of her purse and starts dismantling it methodically. At this point she also takes the "megalomaniac" aspect, the only additional aspect to get defined in this session.

Ace & Jackie hear a radio announcement about a robot attack at the theatre and race to help. I roll Force vs. a target of 2 to overcome an obstacle and create a "what a rush!" boost. And here's the game's pulp comic influence coming into play again - we're able to hear a radio broadcast in Providence about a fight in Boston and be able to fly in there in time to be part of the fight.

10 hops off the subway, runs through the doors, and attacks one of the mooks. He ties and gets a boost. Jackie is not far behind, hopping off the still-moving plane and blinding a mook with her flash, taking him out of the fight. During this time the doctor has been continuing her work despite the robot's protests - she finds it is mostly made of hollow tubes without any gears or apparent means of locomotion. All its attempts to drive her off seem to only make things worse for it (0 Force vs. 4 Quick gives the doctor a boost).

The remaining mooks unload their guns at Jacques but he ducks behind a pillar. We also note now that although the conflict has clearly changed from social to physical we are running the same initiative order. Dr. King keeps at the robot and finds that even its innards are empty, just a hollow sphere and speaker buzzing with electromagnetic power of some sort.

Jacques in the meantime sneaks out from behind his pillar and gets behind the mooks. He brazenly shoots one in the head, taking him down. Ace has landed the plane by this point and uses his per-session stunt to call a couple of police officers who had been standing outside to come and help. Charging through the doors, he easily tackles the mook menacing 10, taking him out and creating a "momentum" advantage.

Freed of this threat, 10 hurries to the stage, grabbing some electrical components and hurling them at the robot, disrupting it and causing some stress. Jackie is up there with him and as she tries to get a picture of the thing notices a weak spot among its legs, creating an advantage for the team. 

The remaining mook screams and unloads his gun at Jacques, who mostly dodges thanks to his spy tech boots, but still takes a bit of stress. Ace uses his momentum and some of that vaudeville rigging to grab a curtain rope, swing back around, and plant both feet in the thug's back.

Now at this point we only had about 10 minutes left in the session so we switch to a very fast paced mode. There was a challenge where the doctor and 10 were able to trail the robot back to a warehouse of some sort, largely because it was leaking liquor the doctor had poured into it earlier to try and short out its electronics. Sneaking inside they found Dr. Weyland, the biologist, tied to a chair with some sort of helmet strapped to his head and a mafia figure of some sort standing over him shouting. Also in the warehouse were dozens of metallic, hovering saucers.

And now we move very fast. Ace takes the plane from before, flies it to the warehouse, crashes it through the skylight, and blows up half the saucers. Three planes in one day! Dr. King is unsure what's going on but shoots both Weyland and the mafia head to be thorough. 10 and Jacques take out a bunch of mooks. Dr. Pope is implicated in this all somehow.

We all get a quick closing scene. Ace's involves taking one of the remaining metal saucers (which were hollow like the robot) out for a spin.