One of our out-of-state friends and players, Pat, was in town visiting and bearing gifts of beer in the hopes of getting in on a game. Given where we were with the Freeport game, I didn’t want to try and work in another character. Especially since there would be a good chance that the character would then need to be played by someone else in later sessions until the character would leave, die, whatever in a not overly contrived fashion. So, instead, we did a pulp adventure (Daring Tales of Adventure #2: Web of the Spider Cult)…which is carrying over into this week and that’s a good thing since another out of town friend/player is visiting this week.
Jamie wrote up a synopsis of the session but, before I get to that, I want to say a few things about the game. I’ve been looking over a number of Triple Ace Games’ Daring Tales of Adventure series and they look to be quite well-suited to use as a quick pick-up game or for when gaming is going to be rather intermittent. Their episodic/modular/serial nature makes them easy to pick up, run, and then move on to the next one whenever. Although there is an element of continuity to the adventures (e.g., some recurring villains), they are mainly standalone adventures.
They are all about action. Not just any old action but over the type, cinematic action. Mundane stuff, like shopping or tracking expended ammo or the like, is tossed to the side to bring the action to the fore. Some of the other pulp rules presented by TAG also emphasize the action. Need to travel from, say, Boston to Egypt. Just handwave it…even better, draw that redline on the map like in certain movies…unless, of course, there’s some event or encounter that you want to run as part of the travel. This seems to be a good thing if a group has limited or intermittent gaming sessions…would you rather spend limited gaming time focusing on tracking how many bullets your have left or chasing down a murderous Aztec through the halls of the Boston Museum? I’m guessing most players (at least my players) would prefer more of the latter.
Even though action is at the heart, there are plenty of roleplaying opportunities as well. In fact, as with most of our sessions, we didn’t get nearly as far as I thought we would because of some of the roleplaying going on (not a bad thing). The pregen characters all have “complementarily” contradicting personalities and, if fully embraced, can make for some very fun intra-party stuff.
They adventures, however, pretty linear in nature…much more so than my typical campaigns. The clues that lead from one scene to another are pretty obvious and “easy” to follow…kind of like in the movies. There isn’t much need for the players to decide which path to take (or anguish over the decision of which direction to go). That, however, is not a bad thing especially if one is using them, as I intend to, for quick pick-up games when too many regular players can’t make it or we have visitors in town wanting to have a fun game. In fact, I’m guessing it is quite intentional…it keeps the game moving at a quick pace and focusing on the action.
That said, I still find, as a GM, enough flexibility in them to do what I want with them. If the players do take their characters off on some side-trek or misinterpret some clues, so what? The nature of the adventures make it quite easy to work things back around to the more linear side of things…or just keep winging it (Savage Worlds is so easy to do this with after all).
All of these things makes them good for a quick pick-up game and/or a game where you expect a lot of socializing to go on along with the gaming (e.g., when an out-of-town friend is visiting and playing). Plus, they look to just be some damn, good fun. I plan on using them as something of a backup game.
Now on to the synopsis as promised above…
[From the journal of Danny Dare as presented by Jamie.]
March 20, 1936. It was a sunny spring afternoon in Boston as Sis and I caught a ride from the airport to her brownstone from good old Doc Gold. It was great to be back from Patagonia, where we never did find the mountaintop mummies Professor Walton’s old research sheets suggested should be there. As we arrived at the house, I was amused to see that flyboy and would-be paramour of Virginia, Brent Stevens, lugging Doc’s Twin Turbine Air Propelled Personal Conveyance Unit down the street. I was significantly more surprised, not to mention close to laughing aloud, when I saw the great Buck Savage (by the way, he also carries a torch for my sister) wobbling down the street on a Schwinn that looked to have been designed for a ten-year-old girl, complete with flowery basket and little bell. Perched on the handlebars was yet another male love-sick for Virginia, that rather strange Kator, the Ape Boy from Darkest Africa. The pair appeared to be delivering Chinese food to the McDonagal house two doors down—Buck Savage, Bok Choy Delivery Boy! This was shaping up to be a great day!
As we were greeting each other on the sidewalk in front of the house, someone noticed that the front door was slightly ajar, and that there was a dent as though someone had opened it with a boot. Upon entering the manor, everyone was struck by the overpowering stench of sulphur permeating the air—from the sheepish look on Doc’s face, this was doubtless caused by his tinkering. As I started to help out my sister by sorting through her mail, I was interrupted by shouts from her office. When I arrived, I saw eminent scholar and recent recipient of a Dare research grant, Professor Breakspear, slumped at Virginia’s desk. Closer examination revealed a small dart fletched with exotic feathers in his neck and a broken pane of glass in the window, the relative height of which confirmed the theory that someone had shot the dart through the window at the professor as he was seated at the desk. His pockets revealed an airline transfer ticket from New York City to Boston, dated this morning, as well as a waterlogged and well-nigh unreadable notebook—I will have to see if I can massage any data from it using my photo-lab. Buck pounced on something shiny as it fell from Breakspear’s hand—a golden coin! Examination revealed weird runes carved into it as well as eight semi-circular notches. Virginia immediately thought of asking Dr. Hibbert of the Boston Museum to explain the significance of the coin. Although the dart’s tip smelled a lot like curare, Doc Gold was able to do some scientific trick that revealed it to be some sort of spider venom. Oddly, monkey-boy noted bare footprints outside the window—how many naked savages are taking advantage of the unseasonable weather to gallivant around Boston in their skivvies today? After Brent woke up the neighborhood zooming around in his rocket-pack in a fruitless search for the malefactor, we headed for the Museum in a two-car convoy—my quick reflexes earned me “shotgun” yet again.
At the Museum, Sis’s generosity meant a quick acquiescence to our request for a meeting with Dr, Hibbert, as well as some second-rate refreshments. As Dr. Hibbert was coming to terms with the death of his colleague, Breakspear, and beginning to fill us in on some aspects of what turned out to be Aztec writing on the coin, his office door burst open and a squad of nearly naked warriors armed with blowguns and obsidian axes charged in, intent on mayhem! I distracted them with my flashbulb and then got to the back of the room as the firing started. After some blasting away by nearly everyone in our ad hoc group (apart from the dipsomaniac curator of the Aztec collection) we eventually felled all of the spider-tattooed attackers but one, and then that one somehow faked us out and managed to begin to flee through the Museum. Buck stayed behind to keep Hibbert alive, which was odd behavior for him but turned out to be a good call, as a swarm of spiders began to crawl towards Hibbert, and Buck was the only thing that stopped them from biting the poor sod. The rest of us charged through the crowded Museum after the Central American, dodging school groups, angry blind nuns with canes, and suddenly-opening doors in a mad dash to stop his escape. I caught up to him once and got an axe to the shoulder for my trouble—good thing Doc was nearby with his Amazing Wonder Tonic to patch me right back up. Sis did an amazing ladder-vault and got ahead of the blighter, and as he slowed I was finally able to plug him with Dad’s old .32, ending the chase. We realized that the only exit from the room the Mexican had led us to was marked “Aztec Storage Room.” Virginia went back upstairs to check on Buck and Hibbert, after enjoining us to refrain from going into the storage room. While she was learning about the minor Aztec goddess, Tzitzimime, associated with “monsters descending,” Brent and I decided to have a quick peek at the storage room, figuring the worst was over. When we saw six huge 6-foot-cubed crates we decided that the only reasonable course of action would be to see what they contained so that we could inform the group upon their return. As I inspected the lists of contents, rather uninspiring in the uniformity of references to broken pottery fragments, Brent decided to shake a crate to see what kind of noise it made. I was expecting, worst case, that heart-rending tinkling sound priceless artifacts make when they are shattering, but certainly not the breathy “oof!” that the crate emitted just before all the other crates burst open to reveal another squad of the naturist Aztecs! After another scuffle, during which Kator showed us how to shishkebab organ meats and the Aztecs showed me the pain of their spider toxin, we eventually brought down the buggers, proving that Western firearms technology is more effective than stone-age museum exhibits. Virginia probably never noticed that anything untoward had happened in her absence, although the splotches from where we squished the spiders that climbed off the corpses were somewhat visible on the Museum’s parquet… DD
March 21, 1936. We decided to follow up on two main clues—the “Riverside Warehouse Company” in New Orleans, whose name was on the passenger crates, and Breakspear’s last known base, Madeira, Yucatan, Mexico. Booking travel with only six refueling stops, we headed to the Crescent City. On our stopover in New York we found someone who had seen a worried-looking man matching Breakspear’s description the day before, but we were unable to definitively determine where his connecting flight had originated, although Miami seemed a reasonable supposition. Once in New Orleans, we found that the Warehouse’s address was not common knowledge even to cabbies, but luckily one of Riverside’s competitors pointed us in their direction. We made our way to the run-down warehouse, finding it to be, effectively, river-side—such refreshing honesty in marketing! We could tell that lights were on inside, but the door was locked and no one was obviously about. I found that the front door’s lock was an old three-tumbler Schlade and so popped it in fifteen seconds flat. After some tedious discussion about tactics, upon which the group seemed unable to agree, my urge to see what was on the other side of the door became too strong to ignore, so I threw open the door. I am not sure who was more surprised—our group, to see what appeared to be a shrine to a spider goddess surrounded by a large group of nearly-naked cultists, or those cultists themselves, to see a group of meddlers standing at the door with pistols (and primitive spear, and Electromagnetic Dischargement Apparatus) at the ready…I believe we are in for a bit of a dust-up! DD
