Everyday Heroes: Rogue Pursuits (Inactive)

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"If you like what we are doing with our super intelligent evil attack chimps, wait until you see what we are doing in our super intelligent shark division..."

Edit: To be clear, that's a joke. This plot has nothing to do with super intelligent sharks. For now.

Back from NYC, I'll make a post later today

Should have posted sooner: yesterday through Friday, nose is to the grindstone for annual reporting period. I'll check in periodically but please bot if necessary.

PS: I am more and more picturing Just Angelyna as Alexis Rose from Schitt's Creek with an action bent.

I had not made that connection, but it is a good one.

I will only have intermittent Internet access for the next week through Monday Oct 30. Please bot me as needed.

Rosa is planning, as long as all things seem legit, to hand Terry to medevac should it appear. She will not reveal any information about him to enforce him that she can reasonably claim is protected by patient privacy laws. She will aim otherwise to protect the party and friendly NPCs and perform first aid as needed. She will avoid violence if at all possible, but if things get really dangerous, she will use the sedative on a dangerous attacker.

Just while we're discussing strategy, Angelyna has been thoroughly distracted by routine and will perform her job until she is reminded of the true stakes

I will only have intermittent Internet access for the next week through Monday Oct 30. Please bot me as needed.

Rosa is planning, as long as all things seem legit, to hand Terry to medevac should it appear. She will not reveal any information about him to enforce him

That should say, "To enforcers." Yes, I am a professional editor, why do you ask?

Sorry for being gone the past few days. Got a pretty scary medical diagnosis last week. I've been mentally, physically, and emotionally wiped out for the past few days.

I'll keep things moving as I'm able.

In the real world, set medics mostly just deal with first aid and minor issues, cuts, scrapes, etc. For anything serious they would just call 911. But since this is a stunt heavy shoot in the remote desert (and because it makes the story better) these people are better equipped and, as we discussed, can evacuate our boy via helicopter.

Sorry for being gone the past few days. Got a pretty scary medical diagnosis last week. I've been mentally, physically, and emotionally wiped out for the past few days.

I'll keep things moving as I'm able.

Thanks for letting us know! Take care of yourself and your family.

Still on vacation. As mentioned, Rosa planned to hand him to medics as long as everything appeared legit, so ready to move on. Please do not wait for me to return to move on.

superT, mentioned this in private but very sorry to hear of your health troubles and hope you do whatever you need to take care of yourself.

Going to try to do some GMing tonight. Again thanks for your forbearance.

Actually got some good news this week, but still feeling awful and likely that won't change for at least 6 weeks.

One consequence of the intense fatigue and brain fog I'm experiencing is that I can barely read or even watch new shows on streaming. I'm not much for tv fluff like reality shows or competition shows, and even Ahsoka and Loki have proved challenging.

So I've been watching lots of old shows. Which is to say that this campaign is currently being informed by The A-Team, The Fall Guy, and The Greatest American Hero. Only 2 seasons of Fall Guy are on Amazon. Haven't found the other three yet.

Did you see the trailer for the new Fall Guy movie coming out, starring Ryan Gosling? Should be a hoot. (And I'm sure more seasons will become available as people seek the source material.)

Also, go watch Doom Patrol, it won't make any sense anyway. ;) Final episodes, save the actual finale, are out.

I saw the trailer this week. I've actually been watching the Fall Guy series for a while and heard about the movie while reading up on it.

I think I was waiting for all of Doom Patrol to drop, but I'll go ahead and start it. Love that show. Titans seems to get more attention, but Doom Patrol is way more enjoyable to me.

Hey sorry, I do ghost tours so these past few weeks have been nasty nasty busy

It's calming down now but this week and next are busy for unrelated reasons; I'll post when able, I apologize

For a living, I'm an editor in public health, and I just want to confirm I am being ridiculous:

The institution is called the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most federally funded institutions are very careful about their branding and referring to themselves in a consistent way. It usually calls itself Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on first use and CDC thereafter, adding the U.S. if needed for clarity when talking about itself with other similar institutions (e.g., "Personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Nigeria Centers for Disease Control (NCDC) met to discuss tuberculosis case-detection strategies).

If, in real life, I saw a notification from "the Centers for Disease Control" without the "for Prevention" I would suspect a scam, as being along the lines of the typos and mis-brandings typical to spam/scam/phishing messages.

However, I don't expect people to pay attention to identity and branding and health institutional names the way I do, as I do it for a living, and I want to assume that the text message is supposed to look like a legitimate message from CDC.

Or is the slightly incorrect way of referring to the institution on purpose and ergo would my nurse character be suspicious?

Hey sorry, I do ghost tours

Are you a ghost tour guide or a regular attendee?!

For a living, I'm an editor in public health, and I just want to confirm I am being ridiculous:

The institution is called the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most federally funded institutions are very careful about their branding and referring to themselves in a consistent way. It usually calls itself Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on first use and CDC thereafter, adding the U.S. if needed for clarity when talking about itself with other similar institutions (e.g., "Personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Nigeria Centers for Disease Control (NCDC) met to discuss tuberculosis case-detection strategies).

If, in real life, I saw a notification from "the Centers for Disease Control" without the "for Prevention" I would suspect a scam, as being along the lines of the typos and mis-brandings typical to spam/scam/phishing messages.

However, I don't expect people to pay attention to identity and branding and health institutional names the way I do, as I do it for a living, and I want to assume that the text message is supposed to look like a legitimate message from CDC.

Or is the slightly incorrect way of referring to the institution on purpose and ergo would my nurse character be suspicious?

It was not a deliberate mistake. But it is to my benefit (narratively) for your characters to be paranoid in this scenario, so if that pushes Rosa in that direction I'm all for it.

Hey sorry AGAIN for the delay, my old boss had a destination wedding and now I'm visiting my college bestie in ATL, posting should get normal again on Monday

Btw, if y'all are looking for something a bit different in addition to what you are playing now, I am now recruiting for short, high level PF1 adventure. Please check it out of you are interested.

Thanks for sticking with me, everyone.

I'm looking for maybe some trouble here between Rosa's drive to keep people safe and the movie's desire to keep rolling.

At the same time, Ernie will be seeing some trouble coming up the road momentarily...

Had surgery Wednesday. Recovery is going pretty well. I hope to get to a computer and make some real posts tomorrow.

Hope your recovery is speedy!!

Likewise! Hope you need minimal followups and recover quickly

I'll ditto that likewise! Heal well, GM!

So, I was not expecting this adventure to divert into us getting dressed up as ridiculous, campy extras, but now I'm really hoping it does.

Going to be offline or slow from Friday through about 12/28 (not to mention work is in a crunch right before I take time off). Happy holidays to all; even if you do not celebrate I hope the growing light after solstice gives you hope.

Deep apologies for my unannounced absence, it has been an INSANELY busy time of year, But rest assured I am alive, present, and willing to play, give me a couple days to catch up please, :-)

This is always an extremely busy time of year, glad you checked in!

Yeah, I never even plan to take any time away. It just consistently happens!

In related news, my in-laws are going home today. My stress levels are already dropping.

Hey team, does anyone feel like there's a clear direction we should take our PCs? I feel like we're in a "wait and see what happens" spot. I have toyed with the idea of trying to convince our PCs to get out of there, but that won't really advance the situation unless the GM throws something new at us. We'd still be on the run from an adversary we don't really understand, and we'd be susceptible to a road ambush.

Staying put seems like the best way for us to get more information that doesn't result in a gunfight*, but I just want to see if the two of you are on the same page or not. I could be talked into a different perspective if it would advance the story.

* Hope I'm not jinxing things with that statement

I'm thinking lately that with all of the personal challenges I've run into, I kind of wish I had started us off as an already formed team with a backstory. I like the idea of running the origin story, but it is not as straight forward as just giving you a "problem of the week." Sort of situation.

Personally, I feel like your characters might be feeling very exposed and vulnerable, and Ernie might be the most well suited to getting them holed up somewhere. But maybe they don't really know how much trouble they are in.

It is hard to balance the PCs acting like normal people and acting like action heroes. My thinking was that you would be mostly in flight mode based on what I've observed so far.

In short: Ernie is already inclined to avoid authority.
Rosa is out of her depth.
Angelyna doesn't totally understand what is going on, but it doesn't fit into her schema.

I'm comfortable sitting with just the three of us, but perhaps it would be prudent to recruit a new PC with a "come with me if you want to live" type hook

Ernie thanks for bringing this up.

SuperTumbler, in fairness to you we started with a few more PCs/players who disappeared, including a cop, who could have helped us navigate through this in a different direction. We ended up in a place with fewer tools than we started out with so it's hard to adjust from that. Just Angelyna has a point about maybe seeing if we can recruit one more player--maybe someone on the more fightery side of things, with a dash of rebel.

One of the "problems" is you have successfully established the MIBs as well-equipped badasses who can destroy communications and are willing to kill us, without consequence, for looking at them funny--and we are also surrounded by NPCs who can suffer at the hands of these folks without us being able to do anything significant about it.

I think indeed you have created the likelihood of running away as probably the most obvious option, but based on your drawing of the movie shoot location, there is only one way out of the canyon, and that's the road the MIBs are blocking (and while we've sabotaged one SUV I recall there being several). We can't leave on foot or using small-range vehicles because we're in a desert and have no supplies, so we'll die.

I think that's why "stay put" seemed the obvious option to Ernie (and me at least in part, until I realized they'd probably be looking for Angelyna), especially since the movie set keeps us close to equipment and other people we can use and/or hide amid.

My original idea at the start of the game is that we'd end up all living out of the stolen RV clinic (with its NPCs dead or dropped off) so we could have a mobile HQ, but I don't know if that's plausible given the direction we're taking, especially as there is nowhere a giant RV can flee to particularly easily. I'm willing to dispense with it, and we have other PCs' cars we could use (Ernie's car is here but he can't currently get to it; maybe a DA even went off to fetch Just Angelyna's shiny car and that is now conveniently on the other side of the MIBs' roadblock?), but that still requires getting out of there and my sense of the situation is we are completely boxed in by impenetrable bad guys who can outgun and outmaneuver us at every turn.

My suggestion would be is
1) If the best option is to run, drop us an area description and/or NPC that can direct us to a nearby abandoned laboratory/military base/ghost town that somehow has water. (I'm going to post in game seeking something like this out.)

2) If we can or should stay put, we just contend with either lying low, or make it clearer there might be a way to contend with the MIBs (because right now my sense of them is that if we do anything with them, we're absolutely f%@*ed and it's game over. That my character is a technical pacifist doesn't help). Having a reminder of how many cars, how many MIBs, etc. are present would be helpful.

And meanwhile we can chat about possibly recruiting another PC.

True. My original plan was to have the deputy steer you back into town and have a chance to gather some resources. I should have adapted some of those ideas to populate the set, but that only just occurred to me.

Some thoughts about you options for leaving:

The RV branding/styling is probably a vinyl wrap, right? So that could be removed and you pull a bugs bunny on the MiB.

There is a ring of hills, but it isn't impenetrable. And there are small and large vehicles capable of driving off road. And there is plenty of portable food and bottled water in craft services. The desert is pretty hard packed and flat in lots of places. Pretty driveable.

There are several civilian cars and production related vehicles. I'm also not opposed to having a PA show up with Angelyna's car, but it is pretty easy to spot.

For reference it is the Black Rock Desert in Northwest Nevada. Burning Man is there.

There were four SUVs. 8 agents total.

As for making a stand here, at your current strength and with the fact your characters aren't particularly combat focused, that seems like a terrible idea to me. They seem to have all of the advantages.

Did the MedEvac chopper already take off? Maybe we could sneak on

Yes. It is gone.

Everything above said, I am ready to be extraordinarily open to ideas that move things along. I have so many ideas for this campaign. This is really just the pilot episode. A little early installment weirdness to get us going is fine with me.

Let me know if you think we should recruit a 4th as well.

Also, if we do want to recruit a 4th, I've found in the past that sometimes it is best to bring in an already known player. So if you have anyone to recommend, feel free to throw that out here.

Most of the other players in my other games are engaged players (and in one of them our GMs (now on the second) are struggling to manage the time. If it's okay with you, I could post a general invite to the players in my games, or recommend players I think are particularly participatory and team playery to you via PM if you wanted to issue an invite.

Another option, GM, for moving us on is if we seem a bit stuck here (bearing in mind we had gone in an unexpected direction), and this was intended to be "the pilot"/just a way to bring the party together, is you could just bring the scene to a close and restart us in a new scene, perhaps a day or week or month or whatever later and just throw us into the group configuration you wanted us to end up in by the completion of this prologue. You could just say "you hide in the movie set and the MIBs move on, but decide to find a place to lay low until you figure out what is happening" or "the PA's map shows a nearby disused hot springs resort you could escape to and move on from there" and cut scene and start us elsewhere. I wouldn't even mind: "It's been a month and the MIBs have relentlessly chased you; you're all listed as criminals and wanted and so have had to live by your wits. You're currently in X and here is what is happening..."

Here's a lazy numbered list of responses in lieu of thoughtful writing!

1) I'm on board with trying to recruit a new player. Even if we don't need a new PC to help us move out of our current situation, a fourth perspective will help with future roleplay decisions, also.

2) I know of one person that I can ask. She's a great player, I've played with her in a modern-style game before, and she seems to be currently active. But if Rosa wants to ask any of the players she has in mind, I'm always up for gaming with new people.

3) Thanks GM for the ideas on how to escape if we want to do that. However, the decision to escape will have to come from Rosa or Angelyna. Without a destination in mind, Ernie is going to want to try and hide amongst the crowd, hoping the MiBs will decide to go and search somewhere else. I'm not being argumentative; I'll go along with what the group wants, but I can't think of any reason Ernie would want to run unless someone is actively shooting at him.

4) If we can't move the story forward right now, I'm also good with Rosa's idea of skipping ahead. I've done that before, and sometimes it's the right decision.

My question is: if we either yada yada this situation and move on to the future, or if you successfully hide and the MiB leave, would your characters have a reason to stay together from here?

I was imagining you needing a scene or two where you have a come together sort of moment, realizing you are in this together for the long haul.

I think Rosa is already realizing that. And honestly I'm willing to handwave it given it's an obvious conceit to make the game work. Can't speak for the others.

Like, yes, if things somehow return to normal for them all, Angelyna's biggest motivation remains her job, but she's very intrigued by Ernest (hence throwing a spare phone at him earlier) and would try and keep in touch even if everything quieted down, so could easily get pulled into a continuing web of mystery.

One idea I had, is maybe we get off scot-free and Rosa tries to follow up on her patient (even tho she was annoyed by him), and, not knowing who else to turn to when it goes hinky, she asks for Ernest's assistance and Angelyna finds a way to worm herself into being involved again.

This might be a smidge early, but I'm going to go ahead:

We will level to 2nd during this little rest/retreat/regroup.

I have no idea what it even means for leveling. I did back in October, I think. I'm going to look through your classes/archetypes on Monday and check it out.

What I'm hoping for is that this spot in the narrative drives some fun and useful character choices.

Could also be useful to discuss directions so that we can work together well.

I have leveled Rosa! She gets 6+Con hp (7), an additional point of focus, a Wise hero ability that lets her not be prone after diving for cover, and a choice of 2 minor or 1 major feat. I chose two minor feats that should be fairly obvious: Advanced Skill Training to give her expertise in Medicine, and Battlefield Medic, which gives her more power and flexibility to do medic things.

Reviewing things I have no idea why my perception is 13 but don't remember how it's calculated. Is it just a static stat that is 10 + Wis? Then that is correct.

As for direction: I think the biggest hurdle I am facing is from my perspective, we are dealing with too many unknowns. I am going to do one of my verbose word salads in an attempt to try to initiate a brainstorm to help us find a way forward.

Here's what I've got: we were thrown into a situation where MIBs started shooting at us for truly no reason (my recollection is everyone was cooperating and they started shooting anyway, and killed a police officer who was supposed to be helping them in the process). And then they were chasing us. We know the guy they were after, Garrett, was trying to protect his chimp friend from genetics experiments. But apart from helping Garret--which Rosa was commandeered into doing by the police and Ernie and Angelyna were bystanders--we know very little about this chimp (who also tried to kill Angelyna), and furthermore they took the dead chimp, so they have what they want. Presumably they can also trace Garret to the hospital where he was heli-vacced, and while they might have trouble locating him due to relevant patient privacy laws, they seem to have plot immunity to real world laws, so that will probably be no problem for them. (Rosa, however, could not follow up on Garrett, as he is now in another facility's care.)

The only reason I can think of why the MIBs are chasing the party is they want to kill all witnesses. There is no possible way they could have--or the MIBs could think they could have--any information or materials of value. They're just vindictive, mindless m%!%*%*$%+++s who want them dead. So the one imperative to the party right now is survive.

I don't think it's what you want as a GM, but the genetics experiments thing feels like a dead end as far as direction. As far as any of them knows--and Rosa might even know the most from talking to Garrett--Garrett was a dumbass eco-activist who got his chimp friend killed in trying to very badly save him from experimentation. Companies, genetics companies especially, are going to experiment on animals. They are also going to want to be proprietary and secretive about their research. This is nothing new or shocking. Ethical treatment of animals is an issue, but I don't think it's any of our PCs' cause to the extent we would take tremendous risks for it. Whatever is going on, is beyond their ken, interest, or ability to do anything about. If we had received concrete information from Garret like, "They are building genetically enhanced super soldiers who are going to attack Las Vegas tomorrow," (but somehow seem plausible) then we might feel behooved to warn someone. But we've no solid threads like that to tug on.

If somehow we've picked up genetically enhanced chimpanzee alien-and/or-zombie plague from the chimp (Angelyna had full contact with the chimp, and Rosa treated her injuries), then it becomes a quest for finding a cure (and Rosa would be annoyingly obsessive about following public health protocols in avoiding contaminating other people, which would just be annoying for everyone, myself included). Also I don't think this campaign was going the body horror route, and I hope it isn't, because if it is, I am hard noping out. Sorry, but am really uncomfortable with those kind of stories.

So it's back to: the world's most vindictive, yet thoughtless, security team for a science researcher and/or possibly group of Feds wants to find and kill us because we witnessed something we barely understand. Said group has countless staff, the ability to fully control national telecommunications, and very high tech vehicles and other gear. We have an actress, a nurse, a scoundrel, and a pussycat. Our useful gear--not counting Sandra Solo's cool truck--I believe comprises Ernie's shotgun, Rosa's first aid kit, and her biography of a 19th century suffragist/abolitionist, and a few other odds and ends.

So with what I know and what I have the only direction is: run, hide, stay hidden. Don't turn on our phones because if they can commandeer the national push notification system, they can probably trace us. And if they stay unfound for several days, then go our separate ways and go home.

If more than that needs to happen, then I think we need to have some kind of plot intervention. I can see this happening in two ways:
(1) Message via Sandra Solo's phone, or a plain old radio. A news report that describes us as criminals or whatever (which solidifies the you can't go home aspect) and/or a description of a related incident which sparks curiosity that might make us want to check it out.

(2) Another NPC--maybe a rebel MIB?--who knows what is going on and recruits us to the anti genetics experiment cause in a way that can be compelling for all three of us. They need to be not coy about this. None of this "just trust me and do the plot" BS; real info that makes us invested in the NPC and the situation. There is no plot trope I hate more than the character who refuses to give information because the writers can't otherwise figure out how to sustain dramatic tension. Our characters' lives are ostensibly over (until they fully Receive the Call) and all-powerful big bads want them dead; that's tension enough.

The other thing I can think of that may be relevant to the above two is any plot seed that would give us hope to clear our names. I don't see how to do that but I think it would motivate all three of us (even if the adventure doesn't allow it, it's a direction to pursue to uncover more things).

Oh, one more thing, if we do decide to recruit another player, if they have either a hook into a group fighting the Big Bad you have in mind or promise of connections to clearing our names, that could be a useful way of helping us find a way forward.

I've made some mistakes in tone that are throwing things off, and maybe we can chalk that up to Early Installment Weirdness.

I do have a plan here, at least, the bad guys have a plan. I have a situation set up to try to push the PCs into being fugitives. I'm improvising some things, but the overall "what's going on" is solid.

Some of the things you have suggested are baked in to what is coming.

As for Garrett, he was me riffing on three movie protagonists who rescue apes from research lab situations. He was just a janitor who got in over his head. I'll own him not coming off as sympathetic, another misstep.

Using The Terminator as a template, the scene on the road was the scene in the night club. The scene at the film location was the scene in the police station where you think you are safe but the threat shows up. This is the motel scene where Sarah learns some things about being a badass (that's the level up).

For the moment, you are safe, have a chance to regroup, gather information.

Also, I think someone had a broken tablet from the MiB? That could have some info on it.