So, I got suckered into running a BASH game. That’s actually neither fair nor true. I volunteered to save our Thursday night game. Thursday is a new blood night, meaning I’m playing with people I that I haven’t been playing with for 10+ years. This is a good thing, mainly because new players tend to surprise me and reinvigorate my interest in gaming.
Two weeks ago, while delightfully sleep deprived, I pitched the game and everybody made characters. I decided to do 20 point builds, with an additional 10 points after creation (this info I kept to myself, because I wanted characters close to Mystery Men level). Basic concept: Space Pulp! I’m basing the campaign on a book by Warren Ellis called Ignition City. Originally a 5 issue series, I fell in instant love with it.
(On a related note, YOU SHOULD GO BUY IT RIGHT NOW! If sales go up, maybe Warren will notice that people are buying it because of me, and then I can finally live out my dream of having Warren Ellis put his disease in me…)
The game is taking place about three days after the events of the book. For those not in the know, humanity is getting the hell out of space, because it’s scary and dangerous and aliens keep trying to kill/enslave all of humanity. The big bad villain was Kharg the Killer, an homage to Ming the Merciless of Flash Gordon fame. The comic reveals that Kharg was secretly captured and kept by the managers of the Earth’s last remaining spaceport, presumably to somehow make money off his knowledge. It’s a dark (though not Iron Age of Comics dark…) setting, where death is possible, and very messy. Grounded spacemen drink, swear, and try and figure out how to get the hell back into space. A PDF of the write up I gave players can be found here.
So, we ended up with two psychics, Buffy the Alien Slayer (literally), and Dumbass the guy in power armor. There’s a joke there, somewhere, I just haven’t found it yet. The psychics are built differently enough that I don’t think that there will be a problem, which is good.
The first issue went pretty well. I’ve said before that I’m a fan of starting the game in media res (in the middle of the action), but I didn’t go quite that route. We started at a meeting, discussing organizing the settlement into a real, rule of law kind of town. Marshal Mary Raven (the star of the comics), as well as the other big characters were there. Some bits of information were dropped, but the players don’t have context for them yet.
And of course, five minutes into the game, aliens attack.
Marshal Raven immediately deputizes the people who don’t run screaming. (It turns out that the only people who didn’t run screaming were the PCs. Weird.) There are a bunch of aliens in armor dropping into the streets, and OMFG a fucking alien starfighter that could kill everyone.
The fighter was there to keep Dumbass busy. His build is powerful, enough so that I felt comfortable sending an alien space fighter into single combat with him. They duke it out, and he beats it by being clever, eventually pulling the canopy off and throwing the pilot at the ground commander.
The ground troops advance, and the players on the ground engage. It’s a tough fight, but I have a lot of NPCs around to equalize things. Buffy learns to her regret that having a soak multiplier of 1 really sucks if you’re shot by an energy rifle. One of the psychics (I feel really bad that I can’t remember their character names right now) makes excellent use of his Confusion powers, while the other uses Telekinesis when no one is looking (he’s On The Run). Things look grim, then things get better.
Oh, remember that starfighter? The one with no pilot? Yeah, it starts to crash. Power stunting Telekinesis of his own, one of the psychics points it at the sky. Which means the engine exhaust washes over the pilot and the ground commander, killing them instantly. Things wrap up, and the PCs realize that the ship that launched the assault is being shot down.
We take a break, and I mention that if people want to do a minor rebuild, that would be okay. This is the first time that many of the players have built BASH characters (previously, we were using sample characters and other pre-gens), so I wanted to make sure that everyone was happy with what they had. Buffy traded out some of her stuff for Armor, a wise decision, I think.
A few hours of game time later (to give poor Buffy some time to heal), the PCs are off investigating the crash. They figure that Kharg has escaped, and is trying to get off planet. They track him to a small trading ship that has just been refueled. The fight is on! Many attempts are made to keep the ship from launching, all somewhat futile in the end.
Bearded Dork has some excellent analysis of the game, as well as his solution to his own perceived problem. Everyone seemed to have a good time, so I guess it went well.
And it turns out that gaming legend Jay Peters might want to come and play with us. Fuck yeah! One mention by him and I’m Internet famous!
Update: It occurs to me that hardcore fans of Ignition City might point out some things that aren’t in cannon that do show up in these posts. Well, you can feel free to do that. And I’ll feel free to gun fuck you. I’m taking liberties so that players can have a good time, and a lot of shit was never really described in any detail in the books.
Ads now covered, I’m gonna go get me some dinner.
