So game was a roller coaster ride, we had some good times and at moments, at least to me it was BOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNG! That happens sometimes, you have to do the paperwork in order to do the fun stuff. The other part of the title comes from a comment one of my players said during game that made me actually stop and rethink my life….sort of.
Ok, so to start they met Mr. Miyagi and he gave them a task like I said last time, find the signet ring of Qin Shi Huang, that Genghis Khan had last. The problem is that no one knows where it went from there, and no one knows where Genghis Khan was buried. Yeah, going to have to work out the logistics on that one very soon, but for now I skipped that part. Mr. Miyagi stated that the group could use the passageways of the restaurant for a year and a day if they agree to search for the signet ring. The group decided to accept the terms of the agreement. Then they went directly to Mumbai to search for the item that Heady Lang asked them to retrieve, for which one of my players has an artifact that will point him in the direction of a stolen article, and the book counts.
Now for the boring part, I had to play out how they get from Mumbai to the final destination, which I have not told the group and I am not revealing here just yet. I have to keep some surprises to myself. Where is the fun in telling it all at once? I had to do the mundane stuff, like how they are going to travel, and since the group did not bring anything except what they had on their person we needed to find out, how they are they going to travel, what clothes are they going to wear, what are they going to eat. To start with they needed a vehicle, the monks in the tavern sent them to a rental car place down the road and the person behind the counter rented them a van, but since it’s Mumbai I told the group they would have to wait for an hour before the van arrived. Kind of a crappy thing to do but it gave me time to get the group fed and clothed as well. So while they were waiting for the van, the group went down the street to the rental place owner’s cousin’s place that sold kebabs, they ate for a bit and then went to another cousin’s clothing store and tailoring shop. There they hung around for a bit and got clothes, one character took the clothes he got and made a turban out of the shirt. Not sure why he did that, when he could have asked about hats nearby or could have gotten the person who got him clothes to also get him a hat.
(Tangent!!) Sometimes players make weird assumptions and do weird things…to you, just because something makes logical sense to you and you can make a logical jump from one point to another, don’t assume that others will. Players will do things that make logical sense to them…or like one player I have, they will do that which is the most humorous to them. Roll with it, sometimes you have to let your players make different decisions than you would so that they can see the consequences, from within the group or from the DM, don’t always take them to task for it. All people think differently, we are all a collective of past decisions, and sometimes we do things because of the reactions we’ll get by doing the same thing we did in the past. Sometimes your players are have disadvantages that cause them to react differently to things. A couple of my players have disads that I have to be careful of when doing things…I really am an evil person trapped in the body of a do-gooder. I know I have said this in the past but it warrants saying again, the game can help people understand how to react to things around them, by showing them negative consequences of doing an action in game, which has less real consequences out of game. Sometimes your PCs don’t realize that you’re trying to make sure they are having a good time, and they are just too wrapped up in their own self doubt to see the positivity that your trying to have on them. You’ve got to roll with it, not everyone sees things as quickly as you do, and there are going to be things that they see you don’t (END TANGENT!).
There was a store next door to the tailor shop, where one of the group went into get foodstuffs and other perishables that were needed, while inside the owner of this store flirted with the PC. It was at this point this particular PC said, “At this point I have slept with someone every game session right?” to which I responded yes. She said, “So I would have condoms and would probably be on some sort of birth control,” (here it comes) to wit another player character said, “You probably would not be on the patch or any of the subdermal stuff, it would not work when you change and your metabolism would burn it off too quick,” (almost there) to which the same PC said, “You might have an IUD,” (here it comes) to which the first player said, “How would you keep it from coming out when you shift forms?” to which the second player said, “You would probably have it dedicated, so it is always on you like clothes have been dedicated.” This was an amusing conversation that I feel I have not done proper justice. This conversation took all of 5-10 minutes, amused me, and I was without words for a moment, speechless if you will. This and my facial expression amused my players. I imagine the idea of someone who is writing a blog and running a werewolf game being speechless is amusing you as well.
Anyway, I had the van pull up to where they were so they would not have to go all the way back to the first location. I had the group drive through Mumbai, I offered them a driver but they felt that would just complicate things. This is the part that drug on FOREVER!!! I had them stop and check to see if the van would actually make it to their destination, I said if you fix it up a bit it will…anyway my promiscuous person decided to flirt with one of the workers at the auto parts store where they stopped. She flirted pretty heavily with the sales woman and eventually convinced her to give them parts at a discount. Now the mechanic, which is part of Team Ragabash, said that the fixing of the van would take 5 hours…he applied the Scotty principle. The sale lady knew that he had padded the time, and asked my promiscuous person if they would like to “join them for lunch.” *fade to black*
The rest of the group went on to wander around the city and found a ziggurat. I made that shit up I was bored ok, sue me, I needed to make the reason they stopped more meaningful than just the van needs to be fixed. Well anyway the Ahroun said is there anything special about the location and I said yes you sense the Wyrm here. I had the two other player characters who were wandering show up at the same place, and told them that the place was giving out free food and taking blood donations for research. My group was thinking vampire, I know they were and I let them think that, to be honest I have not yet decided if there is one or not. To add to the effect of the area, I had the persons standing outside welcoming people in, dressed in all black with a headpiece that has a white band along the front. (I know I’m going to hell) The Ahroun and the other two player characters offer to “volunteer” and are told to go to the back of the main floor to talk to Cecil about where they can best be used. When they get to Cecil’s office the Ahroun uses Sense Wyrm on him, and I say yes. The Ahroun then closes the door and punches Cecil, now Cecil is a regular guy, not a ghoul or anything just some dude working for the bad guys. The three of them proceed to kill Cecil. At which point I say, “Wow you killed him,” and my Ahroun says, “They are of the Wyrm, I am going to kill them all, it’s my job,” so I say ok, thinking that this is going differently than I expected, even though I did want there to be something going on beside just driving 1200 miles northwest of Mumbai to the destination.
Once they killed Cecil another of my group that like to stay Lupus sniffed out where the source of the Wyrm taint was coming from. At this point I need to note, one Ragabash is with the van fixing it, one of my Galliards is keeping watch over the van, the other Ragabash is “having lunch.” The Ahroun, the Philodox, and a Galliard are all going into the basement of the ziggurat. My group was split up so I had the ziggurat group go down stairs and see a hallway, they went to the end of the hallway and opened a code locked door, leading them to speak with a secretary. I told them that there were two halls in the room, which went to the left and right of the secretary for a few yards and then turned and went back away behind her desk. The Ahroun said, “Hey, I would like to see what is going on here.” The secretary said, “Do you have an appointment?” to which he says, “No, but I would like to see what goes on here.” The secretary calls someone to come and speak to them. The Ahroun starts down the hallway to the left, looking at the desk. A very well build African man comes out to talk to the Ahroun. He tells him that he will need to make an appointment to see the rest of the structure. The Ahroun starts to walk past him. The man puts out a hand to stop the Ahroun. The Ahroun puts the man in an arm lock.
We go into actions. The Galliard messes with the cameras and the secretary starts to call someone. I could have played it up as the lazy guards that were not paying attention when they called the secretary back, and my Galliard said, “No, everything is ok here” using one of her gifts, but it was not until after her dialogue that she messed with the cameras. I was being a bit of a nitpicker, but I did not want them to get away with just wandering about without someone to come and stop them. I let the Galliard lock the doors so that no one on the other floors could get away. My party is still split up and I am losing some of the group, so I asked my expert on Totems about some of the aspects of Coyote. Instead of having people be left out I did something dramatic. I had Coyote move all my PCs to the location because I wanted everyone to be involved. For dramatic effect I had Coyote dress them all in clown outfits, face paint, red wigs and everything. I was amused, it made me happy so I did it, my players rolled with it, and it allowed me to get everyone involved which is my goal. You can’t have fun with a group activity if your PCs are sitting around playing games on their phones. I had time to do one full combat round for everyone and in that time they managed to shoot and kill the secretary, and hit the man at least once. Some people rolled well and some did not. The reason I stopped the game at this point is because we have been going for roughly four hours, and I had one player who couldn’t make game, and one who needed to leave for a real life thing.
I asked the group are they sure they wanted to kill everyone, and one of my players said, “Well there is no way anyone would think it was us, there is no way we could have gotten from Raleigh to Mumbai in the six hours that it’s been since we left.” Another player said, “Nope, no way,” and then said, “Well we could have if there was a Space-X rocket ready and waiting for launch in Raleigh, and we took it and landed directly in Mumbai.” “Sorry Elon, we need to borrow this.” These are amusing quotes from my group.
Now we wait for the group’s next amazing adventure.