Adventures in Shades of Black and Red
Went to Games Night at The Minotaur, and once again we didn't get enough people to run Mountain Witch. I'm looking into another day for that.
Anyway, I whipped out Primetime Adventures and Spirit of the Century, two games I was prepared to play at a moment's notice. It was a narrow choice, but the group settled on on SotC, leaving PTA for some time when more of us were more awake, and we started to create Pulp! Action! Heros!
A bit into it we sucked in a bystander and got an extra player. SotC character creation is that much fun :)
What with none of us really understanding the rules, and having only one rulebook to pass around, we spent the evening (about 2 hours) on making the characters. The nice thing about SotC is that having got that far, it's easy to pick up and play with no real preparation. So, next Sunday may see some action!
Our Characters (still somewhat sketchy):
The Raven - a Man of Mystery, he strikes from the shadow and all fear his mocking laughter! A combination between Batman and The Shadow, but with a more global range, and global enemies. He has almost the whole set of Stealth stunts.
The Rook - The Raven's faithful Sikh manservant/sidekick; they were both taught Mystic Secrets (tm) by the same master, but the Raven saved his fellow student from some dire fate and won his loyalty. The Rook's prior allegiance to a Hindu death cult makes his true agenda uncertain....
we don't have real names for either of these yet, just monikers, and a lot of details need to be fleshed out.
Finally: The Crimson Commissar - Sergei Mikhailovitch was a youthful hero of the Revolution, and has become the Soviet's greatest agent, battling the tentacular conspiracies of shadowy cabals of capitalist megalomaniacs around the globe, and fighting threats far more menacing than the mere bourgeoisie! This was the most interesting of the characters - and made up by the kid who joined us spontaneously. The Commissar's main power is his amazing leadership abilities, and he has some cool secrets - like his recruiter and mentor in the Party, Russian femme fatale Comrade Ivanova*, has betrayed the great Cause and joined the diabolical World League of Trade! Also, even worse, the Commissar himself is secretly a multimillionaire, having acquired vast sums of money through defeating the schemes of the WLT! He uses the money to further the Cause around the globe, but if Comrade Lenin ever found out the truth, it would be a bullet for the Crimson Commissar!
Hee hee hee, yes I know, quelle fromage. But it's fun :D I'm hoping to hook in another couple-three players so we have a good pool, and I think I am going to use the framing device of the Century Club, since it makes it so much easier to explain why the characters know each other and what they're doing on a flaming zeppelin as it plunges into the mouth of Mount Aetna.
I left at nine, realised I'd missed my bus, hung around in a pub downtown for an hour, went back to the bus stop, realised there were no buses at all on Sunday night, and made the 45-minute walk home, flanked and pursued by a lightning storm and the threat of torrential rain. The sky gods were merciful, however, and I arrived dry.
*Tremble, B5 fans. You know just how I'm going to play this one.