Durzan Malakim

He hasn’t answered any rules questions since the end of May, and his profile said he last visited the forums in late July.
 
Is he all right?

I'm looking into online gaming alternatives for my D&D game. I've used Fantasy Grounds for D&D, but I don't know how well it will support Hero or Cortex Plus. It may be easier to do the game mechanics portion through talking like we do in a face-to-face game. We certainly all have dice and can roll them and declare our results. We can save video for maps and our lovely faces. This assumes of course everyone has access to the necessary hardware: computer with camera and software. We can always go on hiatus if need be.

I'm looking into online gaming alternatives for my D&D game. I've used Fantasy Grounds for D&D, but I don't know how well it will support Hero or Cortex Plus. It may be easier to do the game mechanics portion through talking like we do in a face-to-face game. We certainly all have dice and can roll them and declare our results. We can save video for maps and our lovely faces. This assumes of course everyone has access to the necessary hardware: computer with camera and software. We can always go on hiatus if need be.

So, given the givens of the current state of reality, I think it is probably best to postpone face to face sessions until things have returned to normal. If social distancing becomes the new normal for more than a couple weeks I'll look into getting an online virtual table top type of solution going. 
 
In  the meantime, I've been chipping away at adding more meat to the Cortex Plus Heroic port. I did more character writeups , more Ability Trait writeups, and filled in the details on how dice pools are formed, how plot points work, and so on. In days to come I'll be porting over setting content, vignettes, npcs / monsters, and so forth. It might be of interest to some of you, and of course feedback is welcome.  
 
Obviously, I hope all of you & your families are well. Stay healthy and safe!

FYI
Beginning Monday, March 16, all the gaming tables will be closed for the At Ease Game Store in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. All tournaments, all events will be cancelled until further notice. The store will now officially close earlier at 7 p.m. instead of 11 p.m.
 
May you all stay healthy,
Conrad

I hope your daughter gets better soon. Let us know if our next game can be at one of our houses. I live in Mira Mesa so could host a game on the march 21st if needed. Let me now what location preferences you have.

I like this campaign story line and want to see it where it goes. While I'm fully engaged and committed to its progression, I do admit that my long-term memory failed me for some of the story details. Perhaps I've grown spoiled by your story recaps, but this is a case where a summary might help reorient us. Also you can utter the words RTFM, which are always fun to say. 

I like this campaign story line and want to see it where it goes. While I'm fully engaged and committed to its progression, I do admit that my long-term memory failed me for some of the story details. Perhaps I've grown spoiled by your story recaps, but this is a case where a summary might help reorient us. Also you can utter the words RTFM, which are always fun to say. 

Ok, so here are my thoughts:
 
1) Normally if 1 player can't make it I prefer to still meet and work around it. 
2) If two or more can't make it, I make a judgement call based upon where the the characters of the missing players are at narratively and whether or not their absence can be worked around without causing more trouble than it is worth.
3) However, currently the team is in a critical place where I actually want everyone at the table. Particularly considering we just spent an entire episode / session jumping thru the necessary hoops to get the team back together in a way that avoided a deus ex machina.
4) Unfortunately due to the holidays the current "action" has gotten stretched out in real world time over the course of a couple of calendar months and I feel like it has sucked away the urgency / emotional impact of the stakes involved for the characters. In the game world, the stakes are quite high, time is of the essence, and the situation is quite dire. In the real world, it may be hard for some of us at the end of January to remember and / or care about stuff that happened in November and to still feel the anxiety and engagement I hope was present when the current leg of the adventure unspooled.
 
Now, real life presents us with challenges to all being in the same place at the same time and I get it. Work is important. Family is important. Shit happens, and when push comes to shove meeting to play a game or indulge a hobby is obviously of lower priority. However, I feel like we have a good thing going with this group and I at least am having fun with the campaign and would like for us to find a way to move past all of the recent disruption and continue. 
 
So...here's what I want to happen and then we can discuss if we all agree and if we can make it happen:
 
I want us to all be present for the next session, which will hopefully be Feb 8, and for us to all make an attempt to re-engage with the in-game narrative and try to get back into the headspace of feeling trepidation for the characters and caring about what's going to happen next. For my part, I will take a beat at the beginning of the session to reframe the scene and do my best to sink the hook for all of you. 
 
If some of us are at a point where we need to take a step back from the campaign and focus on other things, or if we are tired of the campaign and don't want to continue that's ok too...I just ask that we all be transparent about where our heads are at.

Sorry for delayed response, I've had a grueling week.
 
I'll be running a session today (January 11, 2020) @ At Ease Games, starting at 5pm. 

I'm hoping to resume running sessions on Jan 11th if everyone can make it.

The death was not the blaze of glory I had always hoped for but then a hero's death is a rare thing. Many are the hunters who die an undistinguished death.
 
I already have two other Hunter ideas in the works.
 
Had only Murgatroyd been there Drew might have survived. 😉

No, it was rather desultory and ignominious. Drew burned through all of his extreme luck keeping Jack (who started the session with only 3 BODY remaining) alive, and without any remaining to modify the bad guys rolls he got hit and staggered. Without his Combat Luck to save him Drew was then easily ripped apart before he could recover by the trio of tentacled nascent shoggoths played by Steve, Scything, and King Red. Looks like Unconventional Solutions needs a new ops chief.
 
In death, members of Unconventional Solutions have a name...his name was Drew "Reckless seems like a sensible Complication to me" Altman.

 
Later in the evening Killroy had a classic Jason Bourne / Jack Bauer-esque solo adventure, successfully (and rather easily) reclaiming from a drug gang's crack house a mystery loot box of unmentionables stolen from the Societatis ex Monstrum Interfectorum. He even resisted to urge to look in the box, which he had been forbidden from doing by his handler. Having established his trustworthiness and reliability, Killroy has been accepted as a member of the Societatis...secretly of course. Killroy never even pulled a gun; he roughed up and intimidated his way through the gang members. It was pretty epic.

I've recently started reading an interesting superhero fiction series called "Wearing The Cape" which discusses aspects of registration in a world where superpowers suddenly appeared a decade ago in a world that was normal before then.
 
When that event happened, governments around the world reacted in different ways. Some were more accepting of the sudden presence of superhumans and some were harsher, trying to kill any they found. In some areas of the world, there are wars still being fought by different groups for control of those regions and many governments collapsed overnight.
 
Registration came about in that world's version of the United States as a means of helping normals accept people with powers, because it was terrifying to them to suddenly find themselves living in a world where the police and army were now supplanted by people who didn't have to listen to the government if they didn't want to. One of the first and most powerful superhumans, Atlas, in order to try and put a friendlier face on his kind, put on a homemade superhero outfit and went out helping people in trouble and assisting where he could. Others followed his example, kind of like how DC had Superman as the first superhero.
 
In that world, superhumans in the United States work as part of an auxiliary force assisting police and firefighters. Not everyone wants to "wear the cape" though, and many superhumans try retain their normal lives after experiencing their empowerment event, if they still look human. Some people change too much to be recognized as human when they become empowered.

I'm okay with running NPCs if there's not really anything for Beretta to do other than recover in a hospital bed, since I get experience even if I'm not playing my main character.
 
I'll do my best to hinder Jack & Drew with shooting skills worthy of a graduate of the illustrious Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.  

Ok, I'm planning to run the session at 5pm tomorrow 11/16 @ At Ease Games. I'm going to do a push on the main encounter until Murgy is present, so instead we are going to focus on A) Jack & Drew's daring duo escape, B ) Killroy's mysterious Big Solo Adventure, and C) I still have 33 hours to figure out something fun for Beretta and Joey back in Quantico and a plausible reason for Murgy to be unavailable. 
 
Given that the party managed to get split 3 ways, I'll be handing out some NPC sheets to players to play for certain scenes to keep you engaged...for instance during Jack & Drew's escape, the rest of you will have some bad guys to play to complicate their escape, etc. 
 
The goal is simple: even though this will technically be a filler episode due to real life scheduling conflicts, we are going to endeavor to make it so packed with interesting character focusing bits and hijinks that it does not feel like a filler episode. 

I'm unavailable for our November 16th game as I'll be attending another social event with my wife. I'm sure the ensuing shoot-em-up-special will be dramatic and cause for much regret. I'll see you fine folk again for the game on November 30th. Try and avoid a TPK.

Session went off without a hitch last night. @Steve was unable to make it due to a family obligation, but it worked out as Beretta was rendered comatose at the end of the last session. Jack the valorous bravely lept from banisters and scaled balconies to thread his way past obstacles to get to her and force one of his healing potions down her throat to save her from deaths door, but she was still affected by some kind of infernal infection and remained unconscious. 
 
Meanwhile Drew, Joey, and Killroy worked together to pummel the Red Hand's daemonsoul into unconsciousness. Murgatroyd took control and ordered the team to flee before the rest of the Red Hand cultists could free themselves from Jack's alchemical glue bomb, amid out-of-character riffs around the table on the Gandalfian "Flee you fools!" moment. Jack loaded Beretta into the back of her Mustang and fished around in her pockets for the keys, he drove the Mustang with Killroy in the passenger seat. Drew drove the rented SUV with Murgy in the passenger seat, and Joey in the back with the daemonsoul administering Haymakers at a regular cadence to keep the daemonsoul knocked out.
 
Killroy knew of a rundown and vacant warehouse near the municipal airport that he had assessed as a possible location for a field office, and the group went there. Murgy created a mystical warding circle around the daemonsoul, sure that it was only a matter of time before the Red Hand attempted to find her via scrying. Joey stayed in the circle with the daemonsoul and continued to periodically punch her.
 
Beretta was unresponsive and Jack's healing potions had done all they could; she needed medical attention. However, given the unnatural nature of her injuries, they team could not just take her to the hospital. The decision was made to pull out to Quantico via Murgy t-port, but the team had left luggage at two different hotels. Drew and Jack took the SUV and headed out to the first hotel...the one whose management had hired the team in the first place...the El Dorado...with the intent of Drew gathering up all the stuff the team had left in their rooms there, then driving across the river and repeating the process at the other hotel...the Margaritaville...and then returning to the warehouse so that the team could teleport out.
 
Due to complications from a prior session, when Jack was possessed by a Guede Loa and made a rather public scene of himself at the El Dorado casino, Jack waited in the SUV while Drew went up the back elevator to the teams rooms on the 3rd floor. To pass the time Jack cleaned his pistol and fiddled about. After a while, it dawned on him that Drew had been gone awhile. He waited a little longer...but eventually he had to admit something was wrong. Drew should have been back by now.
 
Jack called Drew's phone but it went to voicemail. Without pausing to call back to the rest of the team, Jack left the SUV and entered the hotel from the garage entrance and headed toward a bank of elevators. No one else was in sight, but Jack did notice a couple of bubble-style security cameras in corners...he was definitely on camera. He pushed the button for an up elevator and after a few seconds one arrived with a "ding" but as the doors opened Jack felt a deep sense of unease, a cold tingling reptile brain dread, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. He opted to try the stairs instead. Feeling no such emanation in the stairwell,  he ascended to the 3rd floor and found it empty of any people.
 
Getting a bit of an Overlook Hotel feeling, Jack took a pause to remember which room was Drew's, then walked down the silent empty hall to knock on that door. Receiving no answer, he looked both ways...noticing a couple of security cameras along the wall, shrugged and kicked in Drew's hotel room door. Entering the room, Jack couldn't tell if there were signs of disarray per se because Drew is notoriously a bit messy...nothing obvious like a overturned lamp shade stood out. Jack looked back out the door down the hallway...still no one. Not even someone poking their head out to see what all the noise was from Jack having kicked in the door. Very odd.
 
Jack took out his cell phone and called Drew again...and heard the rhythmic buzzing of a phone on vibrate from under the bed. Allowing the door to close, he walked over and peered under the bed and found Drew's cell phone. Looking to the other side, he saw Drew's pistol underneath a chair in the corner which he retrieved...finding it to be in working condition but with some kind of ichorous slime residue on it. Pulling back the drawn curtains Jack discovered a rounded crack in the side of one of the window panes like the half-impression of a head. Eyeballing the physical geometry of the bed, chair, and window it kind of looked like maybe someone...perhaps Drew...had been knocked off their feet while standing on the window side of the bed...perhaps with pistol drawn and in the process of trying to call an ally...and slammed their head partially into the window's jam and partially into the glass before falling unconscious onto the floor...phone and gun tumbling away from the impact. 
 
On high alert, Jack tried to call Murgy...but his phone suddenly had no bars despite having just had a good connection a moment ago. Jack heard something moving around outside the pushed closed door...he had kicked in the latch so anyone or thing could just walk in by nudging it open. Glancing at the window and down the three stories to the ground Jack briefly considered jumping and hoping for the best but was unsure if he could survive. 
 
A knock at the door was followed by "Mr. Maywood? Please come to the door sir.". Taking one last glance out the window and not liking his odds, Jack grimaced and headed over to the door.
 
>>> More to come <<<
 
Everyone present had a strong night of roleplaying, and as the group separated and headed in different directions, most of the players had a chance to chew some scenery in focus scenes; each of them received 4 XP, and the group voted Drew MVP for the session.

I liked our big reveal this last session. If Chthonic elder things can't be number one in your life, then L'Deux on you. I think we set a record on party splits this session, but fortunately no one in the party was actually split. I look forward to the written recap. Here are my favorite highlights of the night:
Drew's magic bullet against the Innati/demon Joey subduing the demon as only he can Jack being a big damn hero, rescuing Baretta, and giving her a healing potion Jack going down fighting in the El Dorado stairway The Drew and Jack buddy cop action movie. Drew: "Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs..." [I know you used another quote, but I forgot the exact one] Murgatroyd's discovery of Keyser "L'Deux" Soze. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Kilroy's "Ask me about Belfagor" phone call to Section M. "Is this about Belfagor, Mr. Kilroy?" Murgatroyd having to drag Baretta to the teleportation gate so Joey can keep "subduing" the demon. Murgatroyd: "Baretta is surprisingly muscular." The gunfight at the Quantico corral. "Was that Albert Armos?" Joey taking a bullet for Murgatroyd and then asking for a raise Idris the wizard throwing sass at the hunters. "How were you restraining the demon?" After hearing the explanation: "Of course hunters would use such crudely practical means. I've got this."

I liked our big reveal this last session. If Chthonic elder things can't be number one in your life, then L'Deux on you. I think we set a record on party splits this session, but fortunately no one in the party was actually split. I look forward to the written recap. Here are my favorite highlights of the night:
Drew's magic bullet against the Innati/demon Joey subduing the demon as only he can Jack being a big damn hero, rescuing Baretta, and giving her a healing potion Jack going down fighting in the El Dorado stairway The Drew and Jack buddy cop action movie. Drew: "Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs..." [I know you used another quote, but I forgot the exact one] Murgatroyd's discovery of Keyser "L'Deux" Soze. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Kilroy's "Ask me about Belfagor" phone call to Section M. "Is this about Belfagor, Mr. Kilroy?" Murgatroyd having to drag Baretta to the teleportation gate so Joey can keep "subduing" the demon. Murgatroyd: "Baretta is surprisingly muscular." The gunfight at the Quantico corral. "Was that Albert Armos?" Joey taking a bullet for Murgatroyd and then asking for a raise Idris the wizard throwing sass at the hunters. "How were you restraining the demon?" After hearing the explanation: "Of course hunters would use such crudely practical means. I've got this."

I had fun playing the game Saturday last night.

Here today, retconned tomorrow.

The puzzle box refused to yield its secrets to the young wizard, as he sat scowling upon it in an overstuffed tufted leather club chair before a banked fire, smoking jacketed and slippered. In the corner a wooden cabineted television, a very recent and somewhat gauche addition to the richly appointed study, reeled grainy color images of a new show...Lucy something or other. In a moment of reflection the young wizard imagined the quirked eyebrow and paternal "suggestion" he would have received were his father present to free himself from distractions and focus on the task literally at hand...opening the box...instead of watching "that infernal contraption".
 
The box was cube shaped, 9'' square, each side variously bearing geared cogs, buttons, sliders, knobs, panels, or other manipulatives. Standard puzzle box fare and perfectly mundane. However, such mechanical impediments were of little consequence compared to the complex layering of mystical wards, traps, binds, and riddles the object was festooned with.
 
His father had made this in a mere afternoon and an evening before departing on a junket, a casual effort for him that would take even most master wizards the better part of a year and great planning to accomplish, and left it for the young wizard to solve in his absence. All his father would say was that he'd be in the budding state of Israel, founded a mere few years ago, for a month or so to "keep a steady hand on the tiller", and that the puzzle box would "keep you busy" until his return. Four days later our young wizard had made some progress, mostly in the first day, but had become stumped on a clever combination of a magical cryptogram intertwined with a multi-step mechanical release for a hatch on one of the sides. It seemed to require him to partially unravel the mystical construct, move a piece, re-weave the construct, move a different piece, and then repeat that basic sequence several times. One wrong move, and the puzzle box would magically reset. Starting over and going through the entire sequence from the beginning took at least two hours just to get back to the same step in the process, an arduous and aggravating exercise even for someone inured to practice and repetition.
 
After half a dozen wrong moves today alone, a low throbbing headache competed with general frustration and the long suffering low-level resentment the wizard sometimes felt about his life situation. A late-thirties academic of some prowess, by societal norms he should be an independent man with his own career and household, perhaps with a family or at least a wife, and entirely out from under the shadow of his father. He might perhaps be a professor or a writer of serious literature. But other than the outward charade of normalcy maintained to hide in plain sight, there was nothing normative about his actual situation as a journeyman wizard subordinated to a vastly more capable master who also happened to be a doting and overprotective parent. Even per the traditional journeyman-master relationship the young wizard should be striking out on his own initiative at least from time to time, but he was still treated more like a senior apprentice. It was stifling. Nearly suffocating at times. 
 
Finally, with a grimace he gave up for the nonce, put the puzzle down upon a side table next to his chair, deactivated the amulet that allowed him to see supernatural auras, and sprang to his feet filled with pent up frustration and a desire to leave the house. In an act of mini-rebellion he decided on the spot to do something his father would strongly disapprove of...visit a den of iniquity, risking injury to his finely trained hands with ill-advised physical activity, possibly even polluting his finely trained mind with cheap alcohol and cigarettes, and squandering his finely trained social graces by rubbing elbows with the hoi palloi of less monied folk.
 
He was going bowling!
 
It was a secret pleasure which he only rarely got the opportunity to indulge in on the few occasions when father was away. He was unable to join a league and had no friends, but just getting a solo lane and allowing himself to be in the company of other people doing something...well...normal...was sufficiently thrilling. He even had a pair of shoes and a bowling ball hidden away in his room, and several bowling shirts and slacks which were charmingly cheap and common compared to his usual attire of bespoke suits and respectable evening wear.
 
The headache was already giving way to excitement as he left the study and ascended the stairs to don his illicit bowling garb. He did not notice several of the elements of the puzzle box, magical and mundane, changing after his back was turned... 
 

It had taken three years before the "bull" finally appeared in the boy's slumbers...so long that the boy's father had begun to struggle to not show his concern. It turned out to not be merely a male cow, but rather some horrible thing from someplace beyond...a beast of metal skin and lethal breath, four legged and horned but bearing as little resemblance to an auroch as a locomotive bears to a flock of migrating sheep. A thing of El, also called An and many other things...ruler of the god-folk of that other time of the dream...an engine of destruction unleashed as a weapon against those who would stand against the star-borne. In the logic of dreams, Enki was still alive when the "bull" attacked, and it was only by fighting together as one that the boy's dream self and Enki were able to slay the beast...it was in retribution for helping to kill the thing that Enki was struck down soon thereafter, by treachery. The battle was dire, and the boy nearly failed...he sensed that if he were to fall to the bull in his dream there would be consequences in real life. But he had been prepared well and mustered the mental disciple even in sleep to overcome his morphean opponent.
 
Over the next couple of years, the nightmare saga elaborated and progressed, not always in logical order, sometimes repeating certain scenes. Meanwhile, the boy's training continued...learning esoteric lore bit by bit at his father's side. The lad was not particularly precocious, had no special talent for the work, and if not for the seemingly infinite patience of his father was unlikely to have progressed very far by himself. He lacked even the ability to sense the auras of magical things innately and failed to develop the knack regardless of multiple techniques his father attempted. Finally, his father guided the boy through the making of a minor artifact, an amulet invested with a spell to compensate for the boy's lack of esoteric awareness. Armed with this and tireless discipline the boy grew to become a young man whose life consisted of day in day out practice, repetition, practice, repetition, practice, repetition. By dint of constant grinding at the whetstone of his father's curriculum the young man became a fairly reliable, technically proficient journeyman wizard, skilled at rote casting in controlled circumstances and with a head full of the lore of classical hermeticism as well as tidbits of secret knowledge salted here and there to keep things interesting. 
 
Eventually, in the evolving nightmare narrative, the young man's adventures descended into a nether place, and he was forced to slay daemonic guardians with impenetrable skin and other such dark entities to gain power with which to force the gods themselves to give up the secret of endless existence. Eventually his dream self overcame all the challenges put in his path...yet in success he also failed and his dream self died a natural death having accepted that eternity is not for mortals such as he, no matter how great they may be. But in so dying he rose again from Death's embrace, reborn with a spark of the everlasting as either a gift of the gods or a side effect of the power he had stolen to travel to the other side by harvesting the essence of a psychopomp.
 
This dream death would prove to be the young wizard's final dream in the sequence. He never again returned to it, having reached the culmination of an extended, complicated, Hermetic rite of internal transmutation, a subtle spell cast upon the self in many parts. In the waking world, the young man was forever changed, no longer as bound to the turning of the wheel of life and death, unshackled from senescence, the count of his days extended. It was the first time he expanded his own life span, but not the last. He had taken the first steps onto the long and tightrope like road of eternal life. One misstep and he might still meet his end, but with diligence and a little luck such an outcome need not be considered inevitable.
 
Perhaps more importantly, when playing out the by now nearly-routine breakfast nook scene one last time the morning after the final dream and describing to his father his dream self's death and rebirth, the young wizard basked in the rare glow of his father's unmasked pride. The memory of which would sustain him in later leaner years in moments of self doubt, an often reached for moment of validation. 

"Papa, I had the nightmare again last night.", the boy said over breakfast the next morning while eating his cereal...his favorite, store bought Washburn’s Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes!
 
The boys father, a dapper man dressed finely in tailored pants, a starched cuff-linked shirt, bow tie, and suspenders, folded down one corner of the New York Times he was reading to peer over at his only son. One eyebrow quirked, sharply intelligent and uncommonly shrewd eyes pinning the boy to his chair. "Did you face the bull this time?", the man asked in an urbane and sophisticated voice that suggested eloquence and a hint of Old Europe filtered into English through some place stuffy, perhaps Cambridge.
 
"No, papa.", the boy seemed despondent. He did not know why the "bull" was important, for his father rarely told him anything before it was needful. But given that his father always asked every time, the boy could tell it was important. He was left with a vague feeling of inadequacy he always awoke before any kind of thing that could be called a bull entered his slumber. The boy had been having this same nightmare at least once a week for nearly a year. His father had gotten excited when the boy had first mentioned them, and had said it was normal, a strong sign that the process was working and that the boy's studies were progressing. But that had been months ago, and whatever was supposed to happen next had not yet happened. A couple of times the boy had gotten further...one time he even dreamed of a fight with a pair of horrific lion-like monsters which had delighted his father. But for the last couple of months, nothing more. And definitely no bulls thus far.
 
A small, nearly microscopic, downturn of the father's mouth was the only hint of disappointment. He then repeated nearly verbatim what he said every time the subject was brought up, "...Well, no worry then. Remember, when it happens, you mustn't lose your head. Remember what I've taught you and stay with it until the bull is defeated."
 
"Yes papa, I will remember". 
 
"Good, good. You'll do well, lad, when the time comes. What you lack in talent you make up for in tenacity. You will best the bull, I have no doubt about it. Now, eat up. I'm planning to start you into the third passage of the Acatropix today. There are a few forms in particular in there you'll not want to attempt on an empty stomach."
 
"Yes, papa."
 
The boy returned pensively to his cereal, the father to his paper.