Wolfgang70

Re: The City News Arlington upset with community The frustration was evident in the hastily-called Arlington Community Association meeting. The 30 or so residents who crammed into the small storefront that serves as a community center turned the mirror on themselves. They didn't like what they saw. They were upset about their own efforts to combat the crime that has reared its head little more than a decade after police, the community and several agencies and organizations made it safe for little kids to play on Arlington's streets. "I'm not going to fault the city police, I'm going to fault the community," the Rev. William Gause, the president of the association and a long-time crusader against crime in the area, told the group, many of whom were among Arlington's oldest citizens. Others echoed his sentiment. Not enough people call the cops when they see crime being committed, even though a few dedicated people do. Not enough people are willing to make the tough decision to expose the criminality of a loved one or family member. "Crime Watch has to be more than a sign," said 57-year-old John "Pork Chop" Hemingway, a man who has served three stints in prison for dealing and buying drugs in Arlington and elsewhere. Being forced to face the consequences of his actions made the difference in his life, he said. He's now a small contractor trying to get a commercial and residential license and says he's been drug free since 1999. "We can't throw them away," he said of the young men committing crime in Arlington. "But they have to taste the inside of a prison." Too many people walk past young people who have lost their way instead of getting involved in their lives or taking them to church or showing them a better way. Educational programs being hosted in the community need more support. Parents drop their kids off for summer camp but rarely volunteer or only show concern when told their kid has a behavior problem. But they show up in droves for the free turkeys and Thanksgiving dinners, Gause said. The discussion was frank and heated, if somewhat disjointed. "The problem solver is us," Gause said. "We've got to learn how to stand on our own two feet." They appreciate the police presence they get and want more. But more can be done in their homes, they said. Fear has kept too many people silenced, uninvolved, said Jimmy Washington. "You deserve the right to live in a safe community," he said. "Don't let them take your streets from you." -- original article -- Excellent thread! Wolfgang

Re: Just Starting a Hudson City campaign but not using HERO system Okay, I added some stuff to the site. I did the calendar section you suggested, added to the HCPD & HCFD sections, and added images, an npc or two and lots of stuff in general. I also started a campaign log thread here and since we play on Sunday evenings, there will be another post there (and a new session summary on the site) in a few days. Wolfgang

Re: Horry County Hudson City - Campaign Log Session 2 - Myspace Or Yours (7/27/08) On Monday afternoon while Johnny is running from the police after tasing the dry cleaner, the detectives show up at Close Encounters with a search warrant. Not bad for a case that only 24 hours ago pulled a disappearing act from the active case files. They were acting on a tip and concentrated on the area around the bar, where Hardwick found the shoe that was planted by one of the hoodlums who broke into the club Sunday morning. Good thing he found the shoe and removed it before the police arrived. Still, the detectives tell Aaron not to make any out of town plans for the forseeable future. -- Johnny the Italian tracks down Tina's friend Lorraine to the Paradise Theatre on the Strip just a few blocks from Close Encounters. Seems Tina found a new job not far from her old one geographically, but miles away all the same. Finding heavy security that would make a government installation proud, but memberships still relatively easy to come by, Johnny pays for a Green Card and gets Paradise For A Day passes for Kreider and Hardwick. Once inside, they flash the cash and get Lorraine (a.k.a. Candy - or is that her real name?) and her Russian friend Nona to come to the table. Johnny gets Lorraine in the back for a private dance and stuns her with talk of her dead friend. Scared witless and in full cooperation mode, Lorraine gives Johnny some information. Seems our friend Tina was asking a lot of questions during her time dancing at the Paradise. Sounds like she was looking for information about someone or something. Meanwhile, out in the main room of the club, Hardwick is checking out the security and not liking what he finds. This place is tighter than Fort Knox, but there's nobody there who looks like blue track suit guy, though its tough since they've never seen him. -- After doing some "creative hacking for fun and profit" Johnny finds that, like she told Aaron, Tina was dancing at Close Encounters to finance her studies at Hudson City College. What she didn't tell Aaron was that her major was Criminal Justice. The earned her Associate's Degree in it shortly before leaving the club and moving on to the Paradise. -- Rob (Kreider) checks out Myspace and Facebook and the like for any pages Tina may have kept. They didn't find a computer at her apartment, but these days anybody can go online at an internet cafe, college computer lab, or public library. He finally hits the jackpot, finding that she signed up for Facebook with her real name and listed her Myspace page on her Facebook profile. He turns the info over to Johnny, so the Italian can work his computer magic. Johnny works hard hacking into her profile pages and email account (ladytee123@yahoo.com - nice), okay so he doesn't have to work THAT hard, its only Myspace and Facebook. Plus, she used the same password for both, along with her email account. He finds that other than the usual college associates (no mention of her erstwhile career as an exotic dancer - big surprise there), there is one guy who she corresponds with that seems to be a promising (and downright creepy) lead. Tracking his IP address leads to a handful of computers at the main branch of the Hudson City Public Library. -- In the meantime, Hampton, who was last seen getting tased by the Italian, has had a busy social calendar, if you can call stopping a mugging and being treated to lunch by the would be victim a busy social calendar. Deciding that the Gadsden Mall needs safer bus stops, he equips himself with zip ties and brass knuckles. It isn't long before he gets accosted by a thug, "Hey Chico, you need a ride man?" A knife is pulled, brass knuckles crack against flesh, the goon's two friends flee the scene. Not long after that, the police discover his assailant, one Emilio Marquez, secured to the bus stop's bench with zip ties. There is a note attached to his chest and he is unconscious and bleeding. His statement to police after surgery is not exactly an accurate representation of events. -- The next day, Hampton rents a storage unit. There are going to be some equipment upgrades at his laundromat and he needs a place to store the old equipment until he can sell it. -- After the police leave Close Encounters, Aaron takes public transportation out to Hudson City college with his girlfriend. He places a phone call to Indiana to express his condolences. His girlfriend poses as Tina's sister and makes some inquiries at the college as to who Tina's Criminal Justice advisor might be.

Re: Horry County Hudson City - Campaign Log Session 1 - Too Close To Call (7/20/08) June 7, 2008 - Hudson City It begins in a phone booth on the strip. A young girl is brutally beaten and killed. HCPD Detectives figure another hooker went too far and ticked off her pimp, or maybe she was killed by a tourist when she wouldn't go along with some bizarre fetish. Still, the business card is there, just stuck in the coin return slot. It has some of the girl's blood on it. It's also the only lead to the identity of this Jane Doe. The detectives pay a visit to the club named on the card. A strip club. The man's name on the card is Aaron Cage. Cage claims that the girl quit working at the club, Close Encounters, about 3 months ago and that he hasn't seen her since. He said he gave her the card to call him in case she ever needed anything. Apparently, she needed something. Still, his size, and the size of his friend and part-time bouncer Robert Kreider cause some suspicion. She was killed by a big guy. These are two big guys who know the victim. Still, she's only some two-bit whore. One more death in a city that's known so much death. The cold case files are full of them. -- It's late when Johny gets to the phone booth. He almost leaves until he sees the legs. The homeless vagrant parked next to the dumpster is drinking expensive scotch. He's also got a bag of blow. Also, he seems to know something. He just wants a ride to Boxtown, where he can blend in and the huge guy with the short blond hair and the blue track suit won't find him. He tells Johnny everything his drug and booze addled brain can remember. Johnny finds the shoe.... one of the red heels the girl kicked off for speed as she dashed around the corner and into the phone booth. One of the shoes she ditched when she realized she was being followed and her life might depend on running. Johnny can almost smell her desperation to get in that booth and make that call. The one that was already too late to save her life. -- When the alarm goes off downstairs in the club, Aaron isn't even in bed yet. It's been a long night, with the cops interviewing people who might've known Tina. He sees them on the closed-circuit monitors. Four young kids in hoodies. Two aiming for the office and two for the bar. He sprints down there and grabs one. The other three escape just as Johhny approaches the door. He almost grabs another one, but those kids are fast. The kids tells Aaron about the man. The big guy in the track suit who slipped them a hundred bill and a tool to break in and do an easy job for him. The cops return to the club and haul the kid to lock-up. Its only later that Hardwick finds the shoe. That bulge in the front pocket of the kid's hoodie. The kid whose body would show up on the curb a few blocks south. Tina's shoe. Planted in the club. -- At Elmview Terrace, or "The Terrors" as the locals call it, there is nobody who has seen Mr. Track Suit. But Tina's apartment and answering machine, along with her caller ID, yield some clues. -- The dry cleaner sees the familiar black car, the one he saw on Saturday night outside that strip club where that dead girl used to work, drop a passenger out on the curb without even stopping. He rushes up to see if the kid's okay, and finds his throat slashed. A call to the police and the body is removed. -- Then, "they" came into the place. Fiennes Cleaners. They were VERY suspicious. The Italian's words sounded like threats. Mr. Feinnes had the boy dial 911. Then it happened. The Italian said it. Or did he? These three, the Italian, the bodybuilder, and the soldier... were they really on the side of justice? Not on the side of the law of course, but on the side of justice? And the cops were on the way. Hardwick and Kreider dashed out the way they had come in, before the cruiser made it to the cleaners. "Hit me and run out the back door." Instead, Fiennes got tased by the Italian, but he apparently escaped the police, because there was the note on the grill the next morning. -- Many questions remain to be answered. Who killed the girl, and why? Why are they after Aaron? These are but a few.

Re: Horry County Hudson City - Campaign Log One thing I forgot before I start the logs... the characters. We have 5 player characters at this point. They are: Aaron Cage - a strip club general manager with a heart of gold (looks a lot like Dwayne Johnson). Johnny Amperello - a former juvenile delinquent who got a job as a janitor at Strake Industries but had to leave due to an accident in which he received a near fatal jolt of electricity. He is a genious (very much like Will Hunting from Good Will Hunting, but Italian) Robert "Conan" Kreider - a former professional bodybuilder who came to Hudson City and opened a gym. Hampton Fiennes - owner of an Elmview laundromat and dry cleaner. He feels responsible for the death of his twin as a child. Lt. James Hardwick - on leave from the military, mourning the death of his father, a retired colonel who was murdered during a break-in. -- I have taken Hudson City back to the previous mayor and police chief, taken out all history of vigilantism and ramped up crime appropriately due to those changes. Think of a really dark and twisted, corrupt Gotham City. Wolfgang

Re: Keeping it Real I'm looking for an update. Did this ever get off the ground? This seems to be like what I'm doing. The characters in my game are a U.S. Army lieutenant, a former professional bodybuilder who now owns a gym, a former high school athlete and club bouncer who is now the general manager of a strip club, a brilliant but trouble former street punk who was involved in an accident while working as a janitor at Strake Industries (think Matt Damon's Will Hunting character from Good Will Hunting, but Italian), and the owner of a self-service laundromat and dry cleaning business. Basically, they're normal people. They are a bit above the average physically or mentally, but nothing superhuman. Wolfgang

Inspired by the Weekend Warriors, I am posting my campaign log. As I said in my other thread, I am new to the DC genre and the HC setting, and not using Hero system (I use a modified D20 Modern with Grim & Gritty system). Still, after reading the other campaign logs here, I believe the story can stand independent of the system. Our goal with this campaing is to tell a good story and NOT be handcuffed by any set of rules. Many of my sessions are virtually diceless (2 sessions so far and about a dozen total dice rolls to this point, including mine, which is extremely low for a D20 game - not sure about a Champions game). Anyway, some of the logs refer to things that can be found on the campaign's website. Feel free to browse around. I am writing the log in a quick, clipped style, similar to Richard Christian Matheson's writing style. I am trying to make it read like a graphic novel without the graphics. If I was an artist it would be AMAZING to turn them into an actual graphic novel, but I just don't have the talent. I will start the logs in the next post in this thread. I hope you enjoy. Feedback is always appreciated. Wolfgang

Re: Just Starting a Hudson City campaign but not using HERO system Thank you VERY MUCH, Eosin! I was probably working on the "Resources" page while you were there. It is much more populated now. EXCELLENT idea about the calendar. Consider it done. I will definitely be adding more, more, more, more. We are just getting started. I never actually considered that it might become a resource for others to use for Hudson City gaming. That would be an honor. I'm still looking for resources to use myself. I am reading the material here steadily as I can. Thanks again! Wolfgang

Okay, I'm new here, so please be kind. I'm just starting a campaign based in Hudson City. It is a Dark Champions style vigilante crime fighting campaign using a modified d20 modern system. My players and I are most familiar with that system, so it was the one we decided to use, though we have incorporated the "Grim n' Gritty" combat rules for Hit Points and Bleeding to make it less level based. There are not really any superpowers per se, though one character has some affinity with electricity. I would love to have people check out my campaign website and always look to share ideas with others playing the same type of game. Please reply here and let me know what you think. "Wolfgang"