Game System: Spirit of 77
Adventure Title: BEAST-Bound and Down
GM: Mike “Haladir” Ferdinando
This game ran at PaizoCon 2019, in the 9:00 AM slot on Saturday, May 25.
Spirit of 77 is a “Powered by the Apocalypse” RPG of 1970s pop-culture action-adventure.
Before the game: Intros & set-up
After introducing ourselves, I gave a brief talk about emotional safety at the game table. Specifically, I stated that every individual at the table is more important than the game, and that I want to provide the best possible experience. I went over a couple of RPG table safety tools, including the X-Card and the concept of Lines and Veils. We took a couple of minutes establishing lines and veils for the game.
After going over our safety tools, I mentioned a few qualms that I have with the game as published, with two things in particular:
First, as So77 was designed by two white dudes, I was somewhat uncomfortable with the game’s use of Black English vernacular and the judicious tropes of Blaxploitation movies throughout the book.
Second, one of the Roles (analogous to character classes) in the game is called the “Good Ol’ Boy”. This is a “driver” character that has a cool (and nigh-indestructible) car: The title is clearly taken from the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. However, the term “Good Ol’ Boy” is itself problematic, having negative (racist) connotations, at least to a Yankee like myself. I said that in our game, we have changed the name of the Role to “Gearhead”, taken from the genre of car-focused movies like Vanishing Point, Gone in 60 Seconds, or Bullitt.
After our short safety discussion, I went over the basic rules of Apocalypse Engine games in general, and of So77 in particular. We then spent about 20 minutes creating characters:
Players & Characters:
Mark - “Dugan” (Tough Guy/One Bad Mother)
Champion of the West Coast underground van-racing circuit, the ladies just love “Uncle Duggie.” (Inspired by the villain from the film The Van
Jeremy - “Aaron O’Callahan, P.I.” (Sleuth/Former Badge)
A hard-drinking ex-cop who now investigates cheating spouses and finds lost cats. Inspired by Jim Rockford from The Rockford Files
Avery - “Jimmy Plant” (Rocker/Glam)
Aspiring rock star, who’s just really into the music, man! Doesn’t really want fame, but the fans, man… can’t upset the fans! Inspired by... well, you know.!) Avery said the character is also based on "Brian" from Month Python's Life of Brian, as he didn't seek fame, but had it thrust upon him.
Ben - “‘Baby-Face’ Billy” (Bopper/Ex-Con)
Leather-clad leader of the biker gang “The Chain Lynx”. Has a loyal dog animal companion named ‘Spike’ who rides in a sidecar and wears a German WWI helmet. The gang rides along, too.
Dustin - “Pete McGraw” (Gearhead/Humble Beginnings)
Small-town boy tryin’ to do the right thing, but always gettin’ caught up in crazy schemes. An amazing driver with a cool car. (NOTE: Everyone kind of forgot about the car, and it never appeared in the game!)
The Game
The game started in media res.
GM: “It’s 1977. You’re speeding east down Highway 18 in a stolen Gettysburg Beer truck with a trailer full of cold ones. So… who’s bright idea was it to steal this truck?”
The players decided that it was Dugan’s idea: They were all hanging out at a truck stop, broke, and decided that they wanted some beer. A Gettysburg Beer truck pulled up and… the rest was history!
Time to run a flashback scene: Stealing the truck.
Flashback: Two Hours Ago
At the Highway 18 Truck Stop, the gang was waiting around for something to happen. A Gettysburg Beer truck pulled up, and the gang all exchanged knowing glances... "Hey! Free beer!"
After the truck pulled up, Jimmy Plant walked up to the cab and offered the driver a drag on his joint. C.J. Trucker, the driver, accepted the friendly offer, but not long after stepping out, Dugan, Billy, and the Chain Lynx Gang surrounded him. They made him a proposition: Give us the keys, or else.
This triggered a Get What You Want move from Dugan. He rolled 2d6 plus Smooth (+1), for a 9: Success...but. The GM decided that C.J. would comply but also withhold some important information...
C.J. handed over the keys. “Okay man! I don’t want no trouble! Here!” Jimmy said, “Thanks! Oh, here!” and placed three more joints into C.J.’s shirt pocket as a consolation prize.
Aaron decided to check out the truck’s cargo, Billy rounded up the Lynx to ride escort, Pete got behind the wheel of the rig, Jimmy loaded his amp and guitar into the cab, and Dugan brought two cases of beer from the trailer into the cab.
I asked Jimmy's player to roll a d6: The Die of Fate (higher is better). He rolled a 2. Something bad was about to happen...
A sheriff patrol car started to pull into the truck stop. While the cruiser's lights/siren weren't on, the deputy was looking in the party's direction. At that, Pete started the truck and hit the road… with Aaron still in the trailer! Aaron pulled the gate shut and switched on the interior lights. Bzzt! The fluorescent lights buzzed and flashed on, with one tube flickering annoyingly. The camera cut to the rig hitting the road from the truck stop parking lot, with the biker gang following. Cut to C.J. Trucker, standing next to a gas pump. He shakes his head, takes a long toke, and as he exhales he mutters, "They have NO idea..."
Cut to now.
Continued…
Now on the road, Dugan got on the CB...
”Breaker breaker! This here’s Firebird. We got the football on the hammer and are eastbound on 18. Anyone see any Smokeys?”
”Hell, howdy, Firebird! This here’s Hamhock. Yep, the county mounties have a bear trap set for anyone goin’ over the double-nickel at mile marker 80. You watch out for ‘em!”
.
”Thank you kindly, Hamhock! That’s a big 10-4. Firebird over and out!”
Meanwhile, in the trailer, Aaron was looking around.
I said this sounded like he was Scoping the Scene, and asked him to roll plus Brains. He got a 7: He could ask one question from the list. He chose, “Is there anything hidden here?”
I told him that he noticed something strange: The beer cases were arranged in two long rows along the sides of the trailer, secured with some cargo netting. This left a 3-foot-wide aisle down the middle. This was unusual: Normally, there’d be no aisle—The cases should be stacked all across. That would mean about ten dozen more cases would fit, and there’d be no need for netting. He walked down the aisle to the back, and I told him one more odd thing: There was another gap between the beer cases and the far wall of the trailer… which seemed about eight feet shorter than it should...
I then switched to Billy, and told him that they’re now crossing into the turf of another gang: The Road Gators. I asked him how his gang got along with them. He said that the two gangs were bitter rivals and had a long-standing beef with each other. GM: Excellent!!
I then asked Pete how fast they were going: ”About 80!” GM: Perfect!. I then told Pete that he saw another group of motorcycles following them about a mile back. Pete signaled that to Jimmy, who ordered all of the Lynx to the back of the truck and to get ready for action! He asked if it was the Road Gators, and I just told him “Yes! You recognize their colors.” GM: No need for a roll here. I went on, “So, it looks like the Road Gators are following you about a mile back, and they seem to be gaining on you. What do you do?”
Pete said he’d pull into the fast land and keep the speed up. Billy said that he orders his gang to hang back to let the Gators catch up, but at the last second to pull to either side, so that the Gators would ride up the middle. Then the Lynx would take out their chains and go to town on their rivals.
Billy’s tactic seemed to be an attempt to trick the Gators into a trap, so I decided that he was trying to Get What You Want. I asked him to roll plus Smooth. Snake eyes… uh oh!
As the Gators approached, the Lynx pulled their “split and surround” maneuver, and the Gators seemed to fall for it at first… but that the Lynx had pulled this trick so many times it was starting to become a signature move, and the Gators were ready with tire irons and chains of their own! A high-speed brawl on wheels broke out, with bikers on both sides trading blows… but the Gators seemed to have the advantage!
For the gang-on-gang violence, the Lynx would Deliver a Beatdown, but based on the previous roll, the Gators were ready for it! I had Billy roll plus Might, but with Something Less: Roll 3d6, and throw out the highest number. That gave him only a 6. I had the Gators deal 3-Harm to the Lynx… leaving them with only 1! One more hit and the Lynx would become a Small Gang, and be far less effective!
Continued…
I described the mayhem of two biker gangs involved in a high-speed melee in terms of the special effects of a low-budget movie from the late 1970s: Several bikers got thrown to the pavement, knocking over other bikers, and bikes sailing through the air into the median strip or onto bystanders' cars.
Cut back to the cab of the truck. I looked at Jimmy and asked what he was doing. "I'm gonna do what I was MADE FOR!! It's time for a concert... FROM THE ROOF!!" Jimmy then grabbed his guitar and his amp, climbed out the sunroof of the cab, and walked along the roof of the trailer!
I said that willingly climbing onto the roof of a tractor-trailer going 80 down the highway while two biker gangs duked it out below would require Jimmy to Keep Your Cool. I asked how he was attempting to hold it together. Jimmy's player explained that Jimmy was so high right now, that he was practically on another plane of existence. "Okay! Roll plus Soul!" He rolled a 9: Success with a complication.
As soon as Jimmy declared what he intended to do, I described the camera cutting to Jimmy’s first-person perspective. Psychedelic guitars started playing in the background and the the scene started shifting as different-colored gels swirled in front of the camera lens. Jimmy got onto the roof, plugged his guitar into his portable amp, struck a chord and… nothing. I told Jimmy that this happens every once in a while: The portable amp needs about 30 “D” batteries, and one must have been put in the wrong way.
Cut back to the cab. From the bunk area of the cab, a woman's voice said, "C.J.? What's going on? HEY!! You're not C.J.!! Who are you, and where’s C.J.?!" A woman then climbed down from the bunk area.. She was very attractive, about 30, had long dark hair tied back in a ponytail, and wore untinted prescription Aviator glasses. She also wore a white lab coat with the name-tag “Dr. D. Leems” pinned to the coat. I turned to Dugan and asked “What do you do?” Dugan smiled, shrugged, and replied, “Hey, it’s OK! Everything’s cooooool. There’s been a change in plans. We’re the drivers now. Wanna beer?”
I said that since Dugan was trying to get the woman to drop her guard, he was trying to Get What You Want, so I had him roll plus Smooth. 9—She’s still guarded but also still listening.
The woman took the beer. She took a sip and said, warily,. “Who are you again? And is the plan still on?”
Cut to inside the trailer. I told Aaron that since he didn’t have any windows, and also due to the loud hum of the refrigeration unit, he had no idea about the biker fight outside. “What do you do?” Aaron poked around the far wall, which was closer than it should have been. I asked what he was looking for, and he said that he expected to find a hidden door. There was one. I decided the story required that he find it, so I didn’t ask for a roll. I told him that after tapping and looking for a hidden mechanism, he found a secret panel, with the seams of the door hidden among the sheet metal plates, and that one of the rivets was actually a button to release the latch. He pressed it, and the door opened.
The far wall of the trailer was lined with a computer equipment, with banks of binking red and yellow lights and a reel-to-reel magnetic tape drive. On the side was a narrow countertop holding some kind of medical monitoring device with three paper reels scrolling past pens recording some kind of continuous output, and an oscilloscope showing what looked like a heartbeat. Below that was some kind of glass case. Hanging from a corner in the ceiling was a closed-circuit TV camera. But the most interesting thing in the room was the 7-foot tall, hairy, humanoid creature that was manacled directly to a stainless steel wall. Steel cuffs held its wrists and ankles directly to the wall. Several electrodes were taped to its skin (presumably through its thick body hair), and a metal bowl was around its head, with numerous wires coming up through the top of it. The creature’s eyes were closed, and it was breathing slowly. I looked up and asked Aaron, “What do you do?”
Aaron that he stepped closer to the creature and reached out to touch it. I said that the creature was certainly alive, but as soon as he touched it, the creature seemed to stir.
Cut to the roof of the trailer. I asked Jimmy what he was going to do to try to fix the amp, and he said he’d check out the polarity of the batteries and try to find the one in backwards.
This sounded like he was trying to Do Technical Stuff, so I asked him to roll plus Brains. He rolled a 9.
I said that after a moment, he found the errant battery, corrected it, and the amp powered right up. But now his guitar is out of tune, and he’ll need to take a moment to tune up before he could start shredding some sweet licks.
Cut to the cab. From behind the wheel, Pete said, “Oh, yeah, the plan is still on! But since we’re just meeting you now, why don’t you tell us what you think the plan is!” At that, Dugan turned up the charm some more and added, “Yeah, honey. Why don’t you do that? Oh… and what is your name again?”
Looking at the Basic Moves, it sounds like they’re double-teaming her to get her to spill what’s going on. I put this to the players: Clearly one of them is trying to Get What You Want, but I wasn’t sure if the other was trying to Help A Brother Out or Give Her The Third Degree. They decide that Dugan is trying to sweet-talk her while Pete will try to figure out if she’s lying. Dugan rolls plus Smooth and gets a 9, while Pete rolls plus Brains and gets a 7.
The scientist says, “I’m Dr. Desdemona Leems, cryptozoologist. You know: The plan is to get the cargo to McCarthy Park in The City to meet with the camera crew from Landsberg Productions. If we time it right, we might get to meet Leonard Nimoy himself!”
Cut back to the roof. Jimmy and the amp are facing back toward the battle, his hair flying past him. With a righteous reach for the sky, Jimmy lay down a power chord, then went into his rendition of “Immigrant Song”.
I cued the music to that song, and added it to the playlist! Jimmy’s player said that he was using his move Blackbelt in Crazy: Everyone else now rolls with Something Extra (rolls 3d6 and drops the lowest die.)
Cut to the biker battle. I told Billy that the Lynx are looking a little shaky and that they may be sensing that they might be outclassed. Billy said that he would try to rally the gang and then strike the Gators hard.
I said that this sounded like he was acting as his gang’s Warchief and that he should roll plus Might. A 10! The Chain Lynx rally and are ready to attack! I then told him that it was time to crack some skulls and to Deliver a Beatdown. Another 10! I asked Billy to narrate what turning the tables looks like.
Billy described the remaining members of the Chain Lynx forming a line, and then braking hard while simultaneously swinging their chains to the right. Spike the dog also bit one of the Gators’ legs as one tried to get close to Billy, and that Gator went down, too. The counterattack dealt 3 Harm to the Gators: not quite enough to break them up, but a bunch of them went down hard. That’s when Billy heard the *ka-CLICK* of a shotgun being pumped one-handed. He looked over his shoulder and saw Sharkface Sam, the leader of the Road Gators, pointing a shotgun at him!
Continued…
Meanwhile, in the trailer, Aaron notices that the creature is waking up: The mechanical pens on the medical read-outs increase their scribble rate on the rolling paper, and the lines on the oscilloscope move more quickly. He lights a joint to collect himself. At the smell of the smoke, the creature wakes up, and locks eyes with Aaron. ”GRRROOOWWWAA?” In an attempt to calm down the creature and to make it his friend, Aaron holds out his joint so that the creature can have a toke.
This could go very badly! I say this sounds like a Get What You Want move, and I asked Aaron to roll plus Smooth-- his lowest stat. Even rolling with Something Extra, he still got a 6! This is gonna be fun!
The beast grins, nods slightly, and then reaches forward with his mouth toward the lit joint… and he EATS it! *Crunch* *pause* The beast then starts straining at his restraints, pulling the cuff holding down his left arm from the wall! The medical read-outs go crazy. The cuff clanks to the floor. The camera then pans up to the closed-circuit TV camera, and then the scene cuts to the truck’s dashboard. A large red light starts flashing.
Cut to the cab: Pete notices in the side-view mirror that one of the Road Gators has just pulled a shotgun on Billy! “What do you do?” I ask. Dugan responds, “I have the move Always Armed, Always Dangerous. I’m going to take a full beer can, lean out the window, and chuck it at Sawface Sam!”
I re-read the move, and tell Dugan to roll plus Brains. He gets an 11, so I tell him that he can pick three tags for this beer can weapon. He chooses that it will be Heavy, Thrown, and not Clumsy. I then ask him to Smoke His Ass and to roll plus Hustle. Dugan rolls 6-6-5 on the three dice! BOXCARS, for a 13!
I describe the camera work in this low-budget movie: Dugan leans out the passenger-side window and hurls the beer can at Sharkface Same. Now, imagine a beer can, with a clear plastic rod through the middle of it, stuck into a clear plastic fork. The can is rotating end-over-end in a fixed point on the screen. This image is superimposed on an aerial footage of the truck, followed by the bikers, as if about to ride under a bridge. The camera then zooms in on Sharkface Sam’s face, all with this rotating beer can fixed in the middle of the frame. There is a sound-effect “SMACK” and the camera then cuts to a fixed shot on the side of the road, where a can of beer explodes in Sam’s face. The shotgun fires wildly at one of the other Gators, and he goes down. Sam’s bike pops a wheelie as Sam flies off the back, bounces off the pavement… and lands on the hood of a police car parked on the side of the road. The startled cops look dumbfounded at the biker as a Gettysburg Beer truck surrounded by two biker gangs tears past them. They turn on their sirens and give chase!
I then tell Pete: Oh, by the way, you just blew past Mile Marker 80… y’know, where ‘Hamhock’ said there was a speed trap?
Continued…