Who is it that S.I.R.E.N is facing? What are they doing on a Chagrin farm and where is Michael Clay and his trusty Leatherman?!?!
Actual Play begins at 13:01
Knights of the Night
KOTN Acutal Play Podcast 103: Chagrin - Leatherman 101
[music] Hello, and welcome to Night to the Night Actual Play Podcast. This world of darkness story, Shigren, was written and run by her storyteller Scott. [music] And now, please enjoy episode 103, titled Leatherman101. [music] Before we get started with the next episode, we have a little bit of feedback to go. We're mostly from Facebook, we had some from episode 101. 101 was the one in which we discussed questions from the listeners. And our first bit of feedback is from Janice Stockton, who said, "First off, I must say that I'm always impressed by how this group manages to make feedback episodes as much fun to listen to as the actual play." I'm also really interested in Scott's idea of bringing elements of Dresden's system into the world of darkness. As a primary world of darkness player, I'm always looking for new inspiration from other game systems to bring into our house roles. After listening to your podcast, my group was inspired to play a white wolf/dressed in mashup, and we are currently finishing character creation. Thankfully, we seem to be having much more fun than I would have expected. Can't wait to hear how your next game goes. They had fun during their character creation. I had a migraine. I know. Also, I just wanted to mention that before listening to your podcast, I hadn't read any of the Dresden books, but since then I picked them up. I'm currently starting with the third one, so thanks for the new reading material. Should I just start it there? You should have started on the show. Yeah, I'm not really clear if they're playing it at Dresden. It sounds like it. System. No, I think they're using one example. I think they're using one example. Yeah, that's possible. Which is the setting. Well, you know, why can't I make sure they're doing it? They're doing a mashup, but what is the core system that they're using? Janice is probably interested in ours, and to be fair, we're not going to see any fate-based modifications. Anyways, I'm interested to hear how she does with her group. Very interested to know what they do, because we probably won't get into a fate-based mashup until the third story. We do have some cool social combat later on in the story that is partly mirrors and partly dance macabre. So she can look forward to that, but I can believe that. Yeah, please, you know, right back and tell us how it went and what you did and what you liked and what you didn't, because it's not going to occur until the third story for us, unfortunately. Well, thank you for the feedback, Janie. We also got a post from Ari, who said, "Good points and ponderings on the questions by the crew." It's always interesting to hear the meta side of gaming, like the, "What does a GM get out of this?" And to me, as a GM, that has always been the, "Here's what I said in motion. Let's see what the players do with it." Oh, they went that way. Well, let's see how we can adapt. I think it's more like, "Look at them squirm and..." No, they've got stuff. My story. How much pain can I think? How many grimaces can I cause in one evening? No, I do love to see, like, you lay a plan out. I mean, that first story shitlock. I don't even know why I did a flowchart, because it didn't have anything like the story that I was planning on telling, but I think that's what you got to do. You see what the players are interested in your role with it, and I think your story did a really great job of that time. We were just discussing that the other day, Thomas, John, and I, that it seemed just because the name of the story was shitlock, that there was something there that was supposed to go in a certain direction. And yet, that played very little in the actual direction. Look at Tony. Yeah, did you mean to be able to tell him? Well, I know what you're saying. There was no driving that. Right, there was no driving theme of shitlock throughout the story. I mean, that guy died in chapter three, and then Tony had it, but no one knew, and then... But I guess the point was, it was... Dr. Lucius, if there was any driving force behind that shitlock, and we never followed it back to its source. You never knew why. And obviously, it's a title of the adventure, so probably in the original design, it had more importance. Right. And we cut Ari off. He finished his reply with, "I personally hate railroading or playing out of the book, if you will, where the action of the players have little to no effect on the story. The fate system breaks those railroads quite nicely in my humble opinion." And with that, I'm waiting eagerly for the World of Darkness story to start. Turn. So, thank you for the feedback, Ari. And you've got your wish. The World of Darkness story line has started. Did I see Rocket, actually? Rocket did. Rocket was the first... That was on episode 102 that he responded. It was the first post when World of Darkness had come back. We also had Eric Cobel say to Mike that he had mentioned in the feedback that he was interested in traveler. And he recommends that you check out Diaspora, the traveler asked the gaming system. But it uses fate, the best of both worlds. I've tried a small two-shot in a campaign that lasted about a dozen sessions. And it's the first sci-fi I've ever enjoyed studying for, as well as the roles. So check it out if you think you might be interested. Believe you have said that you have checked it out. I haven't read through it all yet. I got caught in one section that didn't exactly throw me, but I'm not a spaceship combat. I'm not even sure that you are ultimately in love with sci-fi space travel. It's traveler itself. Yes. The nostalgia of the gaming system. Absolutely. Dying during character creation. And it's this that makes me afraid to even try to explore. Oh, you know that one, then you're on traveler. That is like the perfect, uh, scots. No, all the character will be dead before we even start. Oh, yeah. You see, you're just, you're splashing my little baby with mud, and I don't like it. No, no, I'm excited. I really don't like it. That's all. My character, I think, is very interesting. Interesting. It has some potential. Your character is a geriatric cripple, isn't he? No, he's a magic artifact. 58. It's not geriatrics. I actually can't, like a neat little twist would be, like, all those accidents you were having, those injuries. Mm-hmm. Or probably maybe secretly assassination attempts. So, who knows? There's a lot of neat potential. What does a magic artifact give you immense amounts of... I know he's bad luck. Who knows? We also had some feedback on Facebook. Episode 102. 102 is the start of the world of darkness. Sugarin. Campaign. And the first post was Fight Mr. Rocket, who said, "Thank you." Downloading now. Followed by Steve Del Rosa, who said, "Heck, yeah." Okay. We're really waiting for it. Yes. And Scott Rawlings, who said, "I have yet to read the Joseph files, so I'm overjoyed to get back into the mix." You discussed if any developers were listeners. Last year, I told Chuck Windig. I was enjoying shit luck. And he was happy people were playing, but I don't know if you ever listened. I'll let him know that Test Force Cyber in his back after his power is back on. So, obviously, he's an East Coaster. Well, yeah. And Chuck's never posted, so if Chuck's a listener, we don't know. But I can say that just in case he's working in the background, that I, for one, really enjoy his writing in the world of darkness books. He writes a lot of the stories that are interspersed in there, and I really enjoy his work. So, if he's listening... As awful as that situation ends up in the Northeast, driving and listening, looking at some of the footage and the stories on the internet, I was thinking that what an interesting setting for a world of darkness that would be lack of fuel, social disorder, lots of issues. New York City right now is a match. I know. It's almost like Lovecraftian, where things are coming out of the ocean. You know, it just would be something that I'm just going to tell you. Just have more depressing the better. Sure. You know, kill a few kids and you're set. Right. Only if they're diagnosed. It's a diet. Quick comment from Martin Pliz-Bylick. And sorry about slaughtering your last name. Martin just says needs more. Well, he'll get more. Right. He'll definitely get more. Mr. Murky said, "Woo-hoo. The vigil has come to an end." After listening to the podcast, I have to admit that I've gotten an nostalgic, electrifying sensation. One after a long time, I once again heard the intro music. And just to clarify, we're using different intro music for world of darkness scenarios than we are for the Dresden. So just the beginning alone, I'll tell you what's going to be in the episode. He goes on. Further, I felt the vibe of the new world of darkness. When the hunters stared off on the desolate field, yeah, it's something that I've been longing for. And in case the topic arises, it's not that I dislike the Dresden File series. It's just that I find it less appealing to me than Hunter. And I did really enjoy delivery. But I'm a different level. So cheers. He likes the field. He likes the field. A lot of times. He's next to the spoilers. What spoilers? We've got to know the field quite well. And lastly, there's a comment from Taylor McClure. Mr. McClure was the one who said, "Well, that was something." Followed by his response of what he meant by that was made it no clearer. Of course. Intentionally. Intentionally. And his comment this time was, "There is a line in one of the Dresden books about how making cryptic remarks is like heroin." He's simply enjoying teasing us and messing with our heads. Yes, he is. One last comment really quick from Facebook and it was put right before he got here. Yes, this was from Adam. Romay Indangi. That's my basket. Adam. Oh, sorry. People should have just all... Commander should have like a call sign that we can... Please give me a call sign, Adam. Adam is from Stockholm, I believe. We've had a couple of... The Nordic countries. Ooh, Norway. And Adam says, "With all the pizzazz you guys built up from Dresden, I am anticipating your world of darkness tale a lot." My bar is set very high and I'm quite sure you will reach above even that. We can only hope so. These are Amazon link to help pay for the... It's Christmas. Christmas is coming. And Mike has recently updated the page to include a link for those of you in Canada. I had a listener who told me he'd love to use our link, but he lives in Canada. So we've had a look there as well so he can. The polls have been closed and a new poll has been put up. Let team Siren know which character you are currently enjoying in the game and listen in as the leader claims the bragging rights each week. The current leaders are Chew tied with Jay. Oh yeah, well we're going to change that right now. Yeah, you know. He's going to vote for himself. You get one vote. You already got one vote. I'm Michael Clay. Michael Clay all the way. Well, it's a play for the win. Alright, one last thing we have a message from the White Wolf forums in which Scott posted that we were restarting our Hunter campaign. In Aurelion posted Scott. I did indeed listen in and left you guys an iTunes review. Well thank you for that. That was for Dresden. I had asked him if he'd listened to Dresden because I knew he was a listener of the previous World of Darkness. Yeah. You left that review as Bard Knight, which I remember reading, so thank you again. As well as sending a Facebook message to the page, though he already addressed my question during a wrap up episode. So I guess it's not important now. But Tom definitely did a great job in delivering not so much the first address in that I understand was pre-made. And I certainly felt like a Night of the Night adventure with the addition of improved editing. I'll always primarily be a World of Darkness fan, but listening to you guys plus reading the books has broadened my interest to other urban fantasy paranormal series out there. KOTN's first Hunter game was the initial impetus to me playing the World of Darkness, though. So I'll always have a special place on my iPod. My comments probably has more to do with having a bunch of questions rolling around in my head at the end of the first story are, and the understandable, prolonged wait between the end of the last episode and the start of this new one. With all the real-life stuff that popped up for most of your group members, I'm anxiously awaiting to find out how, and then he hit in the spoiler. So I'll go on to read this if you don't want. Stop listening now if you don't want to hear any spoilers. Forward like a minute. Total annihilation alert. So some of the things he's interested in continuing to find out about is the conversation between Tammy and Shoe, whether Billy is still hanging around in the player's garage, if Michael Clay is still being trolled by the spirit of Cleveland, or if Benjamin indeed is a mage in the awakening sense, or something else entirely. Regardless, what is this connection to the ongoing events in Cleveland? As a player of that game, I think all of it. We all like the illustrations. So nice to say my expectations for the second story might be slightly high. All the best. Second, personally, said that. You get your... No pressure. I get the shitty tend to do a bridge transition totally off my style, combat-oriented adventure, but it is what it is. I hope they like it. And with that wrap up, up in the back, we'll go on to the episode. This is the world of darkness, story, chagrin. This is the second story in the Vanishing City storyline, the first with shit luck. And starting on my right is... My name's Jim. I'm playing Sister Katie O'Connor. She was once a NASCAR driver. Now a nun. Don't ask me how. My conspiracy is the shadow congression. Bob playing FBI Special Agent Chew Park, a member of the Basque Conspiracy. I'm Tom playing Jay Alton, the leader of this Motley crew, and also a member of Ascending Ones. I'm Thomas playing Edgar Montes, a Haitian vaudun practitioner from the Les Mystery Conspiracy. I'm John playing Daniel Morgan, a outdoorsman. Renegade from Task Force Valkyrie. What kind of lock we've worked with? You're looking not at one lock, but four locks. Four locks. And two of them are tumblr based. The other two, one seems to be magnetic, and another seems to be a combination. Fuck, this guy was serious. But keep it as privacy. Yeah, I really like that information. Seriously, I don't... Can you do this? I have tumblr. I think it locks down, as a set for that. Yeah, magnetic's going to be tough. Yeah, how did these guys get in that? Did they even talk the door? Well, they parked the cars and went around it, went through it around it. That's what I'm thinking, maybe... Sorry. Maybe we need to find out where they went. Track them while I deal with these locks. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so Chew and Daniel get back out of the vehicle. Walk up to where we'll say the car on the south side first was parked. Or are you going to stay on the dirt road? Is that where you're looking? What are you looking for, exactly? Can you guys explain to me what you're doing? Waiting for footprints or, you know, if they took a trail? Might be difficult. Okay, fine. Looking at the footprints, either way, survival works, plus wits, investigation plus wits. So basically, the guy who has the most dice probably wants to be the main roller. The guy who has less dice probably wants to help or assist, or what they call teamwork, in the game sense, to add. How crust or time you think we are now? There's no way you can... I don't know that he's getting through the locks. End guard, there's no way you're getting through the four locks in five minutes. You know that intuitively. You might be able to get through the two... Sorry, Matt. I was saying, Merritt, neither did these guys. They were trying to find five minutes to find out where they went. They could just go where they went. They didn't need the light. At this point, I'm going to tap into some of my psychic abilities. Okay. Kind of expedite this process here. Just close my eyes and concentrate and try to pick up any psychic energy to... ...see where it went to. I mean, you could use scene read. Success. Though the agent only appears to glance around the scene, she has a basic understanding of what's going on. The storytellers should give her the same information as if she rolled half the necessary successes to examine a crime scene. She cannot use this power twice on the same scene. So you get how many successes? Half. And how long does it take? Instantaneous, I believe. Instant action? It is. Okay. That's three seconds. And you get half as many successes as... Our total number of clues? I'm with him. Alright. So it's my tele-informatics skill plus my investigation skill. Because he's doing that. You could make a survival roll yourself to roll if you want. Because it does... your role to aid him would be of no consequence whatsoever. It doesn't help him at all. So you could make a separate survival roll, which is an instant action. It's a three-second action. So you can do that by he's doing that if you want to. You could wait your survival quicker than investigation? Yes, much, much quicker. This is good to know. You're just looking for quick things. I thought I was trying to do all kinds of things. So are there any minuses associated here? I'm not sure because this is a psychic ability. Is a psychic ability. And there's no psychic energy or anything that's impeding in your psychic energy. So go ahead and just take a standard role, please. I'm rolling eight dice. Okay. You only need one success. Five and ten again. Oh, I got ten again too. That's wrong. Five and ten again, right? That goes again and again. You got five successes? I did, yes. I got five successes. Okay. Okay. Ten again. Well, those are both exceptional successes. I'm going to go with two first. Two normally would give you half of the clues that are remaining. But since you rolled exceptional success, you're going to get all the clues that are remaining. I take one point of bashing damage. My nose starts to bleed a little bit from the strain. All right. Psychic fashion. Yes. Two kind of struggles. The one knee holds his head of bit and pain. And one of his nose starts bleeding in the strain, the brain, and the darkness. You definitely, well, you are sure that between four and six people exited the vehicles combined. Not from each vehicle. And it looks to you as if one or two dogs also exited the vehicles. You also believe they were moving in haste. This wasn't like get-out survey of the scene. There's marks in the dirt in the gravel where their shoe prints are showing movement, like fast movement, not slow movement, when they park the vehicles. You are also fairly certain that... Is he taking longer than me? No, this is the exact same time. He's doing mental things. Okay. He's doing a special hunter trait. He's using an endowment. It actually took me three seconds. Right. So, you are sure that they were, because of the depth of the footprint, you're sure that they were packing some heavy equipment. They weren't coming in light. You're seeing boots and deathly. The marks are moving down. They probably were way down with a bit of equipment. And you get this vision of insignia in your head. You're sure when you were brought to Washington, D.C. After you succeeded in the vitamin B, this story shit luck, and were brought in for debriefing after your story. You remember seeing some task force Valkyrie file folders, which were heavily redacted. And the, you know, task force factories obviously not helping you achieve your goal to find their agents, because they want to find them themselves, even though they've been told not to go back into Cleveland. You recall a insignia on one of the folders, which was called, it was a division of task force Valkyrie called Project Adamski. It's a certain offshoot of task force Valkyrie. And that's all the information you have at this moment regarding that. That's your look down at the footprint. You're not looking at the gate. You're not looking anywhere else. You're looking at the footprints in the ground, the dirt path leading up to the gate. And that's what you found in that. You know, it's going up to the gate that didn't go around somewhere. You looked down and that was your boom, your psychic vision. You don't know, they obviously were moving towards the gate, but you didn't, in three seconds, you didn't follow the path up and get more information. That was what you were able to ascertain from looking at the dirt ground. You had a choice, look at the dirt ground, look at the gate. You looked at the dirt ground. That's what you got with your psychic vision. Does that make sense? Well, the whole point was to figure out where they went. They definitely went to the gate, getting back to the exceptional success from Daniel. Daniel, your exceptional success, because you're someone who has really been deeply, heavily involved in survival, living and the survival lifestyle, you can read footprints and tracks almost at a supernatural level. You're that good. You were able to tell that there were exactly six men that exited the vehicles combined. You looked down as well with cheese, red light. And the dogs? There were two dogs. You're sure of it. The men varied in size and weight, but they were definitely carrying gear. In some cases, some of the men were carrying heavy gear. Some of them were carrying lighter gear, but still carrying some type of gear. The dogs were a large breed, probably German shepherd, or something similar. In the 80 to 120 pound range, these are sizable dogs. They moved quickly. You see that just like Chew did. They were moving quickly, but you also see a degree of skill and precision. Like they're some type of military, which when Chew reveals that they're a task force Valkyrie for sure, because he gets this vision of an emblem in his head, that kind of makes sense then. He used you guys to draw those bits of information together as a whole. Does Dan know anything about the emblem? He's in Valkyrie or was? It's a project. I'm going to go real quick because three seconds, three seconds, and I want to go back to Edgar because he's been at the lock. And then you guys can talk about what you've discovered. Edgar, you walk up. You've got four locks as we discussed. Two are tumbler. One is magnetic. One is a combination lock. What do you do? Lock picking is like my thing. Tell me how you're going to approach it. The simple lock pick kit for the tumbler locks, because those are what are most commonly found by just about anything. And then skill wise, I've got four in the larceny and a specialization in lock picking. So there's that. Perfect. So you've got five in your dexterity is? Five. Five that gives you a total of ten dice, which is a relatively exceptional. Yeah. I'm assuming you're going to go to the easiest lock first. Yes. Okay. That would be a standard tumbler. And your dice are ten. Because of the darkness, you have anything to age you with the darkness. No, I don't know. Oh my gosh. Did you use an equipment bonus with your lock picks? I do have a lock pick kit. That doesn't really have for the darkness. So I was talking about it, but it does help as a equipment bonus. But I'm going to give you a plus two because of your lock pick set for your tumbler base. I know you at least have a tumbler base system. I don't know if you have magnetic or combination lock. There was a more combination of one that offered stuff like that. Right. I think my character would have it. At this level. That's the point. Right. So you have more stuff for one. I'm going to give you a plus two because that's your twelve dice minus because of the intricate nature. Because of the intricate nature of this minus two for the darkness, I was thinking more. But I think we can really base that sound. So it takes you back down to ten dice. Go ahead and make your role, please. How high is this gate? The gate itself is probably about eight feet high as opposed to the chain link fences, which are ten feet high. But it has almost double the razor wire on top of it. These guys didn't do the job at the same. These guys didn't juggle with dogs. They may have cut the fence somewhere. I think that's what I was going to say. I was going to say, I was going to come over the razor and say, chances are these guys probably cut the fence to the left or right. Okay. Let's not start a whole conversation. Let's let Thomas do his thing real quick. At guard. Three successes is one of them is a ten. Three successes total. Okay. In three seconds you have the first lock open. Yeah. But it was the easiest of the four locks to open. Definitely. If you're familiar with the system and again for our listeners and our players who haven't played in a while, there is a certain number of successes that he's going to need for each lock. It could be anywhere from 1 to 15 for a really sophisticated lock. Each time he rolls, it takes at least three seconds with the easy stuff. With the harder stuff, I can change that and say it takes a minute or two minutes per roll until he gets his number. Three seconds of the pass. Three seconds of the pass. We have the advantage to the fence. Click the audience with one hand going tumble, tumble, tumble. Got it. All right, next. Where did they cross the fence? I'll track them in a moment. If we're going to move on, we could pull the plugs on these cars so they can start up. I was actually thinking of cutting the stems off all the tires, leaving them with four or five tires. Okay. It's very quiet and pretty much leaves them, possible to move. Well, I got a knife. I'm on that. I'll start tracking these. You're tracking. Okay, bye. You're just a knife. I get disabled. You're better at than I am. That was just my thought. Go do it, sister. I'm still scanning the tree line. I could disable himself. We need to re-enable when we can. That works better than my idea. Jay, how many dice did you have to do your vision through your, your night goggles last night? That was composure plus width or investigation, right? Which actually ends up being the same for me. Actually, it was width plus investigation or composure. Oh, so four. You have a night vision goggle, which would give you at least plus two on. I don't know if we did last time, but we should have. I don't think we did. Which is a six. And then, you know what? I did give you a minus because of the heat. There was a lot of heat coming up off of the foliage. So, I want to roll for you because I don't want you knowing whether or not you succeeded in seeing something. Okay, throughout we do a 180. And for probably about a second and a half, your heart jumps up to your throat and you're just an instinct. You spin over with your sniper rifle, get on your side, and then you notice that it's a deer, like it's a deer and a couple fawn that are working their way through probably about a hundred feet into the foliage. But you caught like half their body coming around a tree, which looked for a second, as if it was an actual human form. Oh, it was a deep rush there. But it was not anything more than deer would be quietly faced. I have the trank darts in there, right on my regular hand. Okay. And I don't do 180, I do 360 because this is Valkyrie guys. Yes. It could be coming up from behind. Yes, my apologies. It was 360 that you left. Alright. Someone who hasn't acted yet, but should be Sister Katie, you were told to go disable the two vehicles. I'm going to disable them in such a way that it would be hard for them to re-enable them, but easy for me to do so. 'Cause like, you know, I pull something that would take them for a refine to reconnect, but I could reconnect it in a second if I needed to. Okay, in that case, you go to the first vehicle, the doors are locked. Yeah. There's no way to pop the hood of the vehicle, so you're going to have to go under if you want. Do you have light? I got a toolbox. I carry it with me. Okay. I shouldn't even know something about cars who can pop a hood if they need to. They can force it or find a way to go underneath the car. Right, that's what I'm saying. You're going to go underneath. Go ahead and make a, I'm going to say... I got a craft with specializing in auto repair. Wits plus craft, you're disabling. You especially will be applied here because if you know how to fix it, you know how to break it. Right. So you slip underneath the car with your small toolbox. You have a small flashlight that you feel comfortable turning on and you try to disable the vehicle. So what? One success. One success. All right. In about 30 seconds, you've got one of the vehicles disabled. To the point you're comfortable with, it was quick. It was pretty painless. And now back to the other three who are... Tracking. Right. Tracking. Investigating. Or tracking. And the lock picking. How far is this from the fence? These tracks. These cars. The cars are probably 10 feet away. Okay. I'm sorry. I don't know if it's scale yet. Sure. I'll just draw them up there then that wouldn't take long. Okay. And see if they run along at some distance and cut a hole or something. Right. Go ahead and... Let's go ahead and make a tracking role place. I have wits and tracking at seven. Okay. And I'm going to give you... Well, you're going to have to ask two if you could have his light because... I can track this faster. Unless you want to continue bleeding. Can I have your light? All right. So you probably have a regular flashlight as well. I want to keep the light down if possible. If you're not going to. You can my light. I have my camera. It's all good. Okay. So you take about the sun. Go ahead. So you have seven dice with the light minus one because of darkness. Six dice total. Okay. And since they are off the very dry dirt road which left great impressions. And they're now actually in an area that doesn't have quite the same advantages to track. It's a little bit more difficult. You certainly can see bat twigs and things along those lines. Of course. But it's going to be another minus two because they're off the beaten path. Four dice. Good luck. I got nine, nine, zero. Wow. Four or zero again. Holy shit. Ten again. All right. Just three. Just three. Just three. Just three on four dice. That's all. Just to the right of the gate. So off the beaten path. Maybe ten feet. Or so. You can see that there's some barbed wire that is kind of pushed down a little bit. You look into the ground and you see what looks like some kind of portable or retractable ladder which they placed up possibly over to the best of your knowledge. You don't know though and quickly scaled the fence and over the barbed wire. There was two indentations where the ladder set. And it definitely was an angle so you knew that it wasn't obviously climbing a tree. They were obviously laying it in an angle the way the impressions were made. You see the ladder going up to or you envision the retractable ladder going up on top of the barbed wire kind of pushing it down because it had some weight to it. And then you think, yeah, you're sure. On top of the barbed wire there is a piece of camouflage pant or shirt. Something that was torn and it's hanging in the eraser wire. Perhaps showing the speed they were moving at as opposed to the care they were giving. Animal can plus widths. You're not military or anything almost like a paramilitary. And I'm going to say minus one just because it's not common knowledge so make it roll. I rolled the zero in the name. Two successes. You're very aware that there are retractable ladders in the military that military dogs are trained. The steps are a little shorter in between and they're flatter. And it's retractable and dogs can absolutely go over it. Along with humans. Katie. Get to do it. Okay. My car. Well, my turn though. Real quick, Katie's still underneath the first car. It was 30 seconds. He made that roll. He wandered up and it was probably 10 seconds of that. Shoot, did you want to do anything in the meantime? Yeah, I don't know much about alarm systems but I want to check and see if there's any alarms on the fence where if you cut the fence. If alarm would sound like anything. Any electrical wires, whatnot. Any buried lines or at least what looks to be an area where where lines could be buried. Go ahead and make a larceny plus width roll. See, it's going to be three dice. Since a larceny is a physical scale. I'm going to go ahead and make that roll for you if you don't mind because I don't want you to know whether or not there's no alignment on the gate. Just my width then is four so minus one for not having large nearby three. Right, right. Here's the things guys. There's an alarm. Yeah, you want to trip it. They're sneaking in here. We're not. They're not a real snake. Yeah, they are. You do not detect any alarms whatsoever on this fence. Well, okay. Could that SUV go through this fence? Yeah, I would say so. If you could fast enough, find that. The fence, you believe there's a pretty strong chance that you could get through the fence with obviously a great deal of noise being made. I think that's what we want to get in. Especially since some of the locks have been undone. Well, no, no, you wouldn't drive into the gate. No, that's what I was thinking of going to the fence to the side of the gate. Yes. And the only problem with that is there's a lot of trees and shrubbery beach really overgrown those areas. Well, that's why I'm not taking my van. It would be challenging. It could be dangerous. That sounds like you all over, Katie. Go for it. You couldn't go through the gate? The gate is built stronger than the fence. The gate is a ton stronger. I mean, iron bars. Alright, here's the thing, guys. They're sneaking in here fence with just chain. No, it's like it's a farm fence. It's a huge farm gate. They're sneaking in here. They're not up to any good. Anybody that's in here that we wanted to talk to, we want to beat them to it. The more noise we make, the more we warn whoever's in here, let's do it. They weren't present enough to go smashing in. Because they have a terrier of modus. Oursa, don't we? For them? For us? No. Keep working on the locks and see how far we can get before she gets the car started. Second of the tumbler locks. A little more difficult. A little more challenging. Check the equipment as well. Basically, lock big kids. Just plus one. Thank you. Plus one gave me plus two last time. I don't think you really needed the help with a 10 dice or whatever you had. So, once again, I think you have 10 dice. Is that correct? Let's do a trip. Okay. And I'm going to give you plus one for the equipment. But it's minus two for the darkness which gives you a total of nine dice. Okay. Wow. That is really unlikely. No successes? No successes. This tumbler is tough. That's your good at those, Katie. That's just one turn though. It has three seconds. All right, all right. No successes. Mm-hmm. Tough one. Okay. So, you're standing at the fence at this point looking up saying okay, I can see where that razor wire is kind of pushed down a bit, yep, definitely was the area. Razor wire hurts, but you could probably climb it. I'm not great athletics. I got some. Right. Just letting you know, your wood's been your mountain man. A veneer says, I can get over that. And if I do, I'll probably be bleeding, but I'm not going to be dead. It's not that tough. So, that's why you see looking into it. I rely as much though. Sure. I could jump this. It's scalable. It sucks. What are you doing? Is this a thick chain? I mean, how hard it would be to cut with the right tools. With the right tools, it's a relatively robust chain link fence, but it's not like-- I gotta say, it's super-- Mike's got a leatherman. Right? He does. You're literally right. Well, I know, Katie-- He's cursing right now in-- That's amazing. Wherever he is, yeah. I could have used my leatherman tonight. Go ahead and make a quick survival plus which role. Okay. No minuses. Okay. Well, I'm going to let everyone else know that they went over the fence over here. There were no successes today. Oh, there's a knife. Okay. I'm good. You're jacking over the razor wire. It's going to even minimize it a bit more. You're thinking to yourself, I could do this without any problem whatsoever. And probably everyone else could do it too. You could get over if they wanted to climb or, again, drive a van through the fence. That's equally doable or wait for a guard to pick the locks. They're talking about running this through the gate over the fence. Yes, of course. No. I'm just going to jump at them. That's why I gave you the idea because your character would definitely have an idea. It's just a loose can and not a loose can. A can is definitely a loose can. But it wouldn't have to have somebody quiet going over when someone's making so much noise. You're not quiet. We're not worried about being in a-- Nothing about you. Something's going through a gate at high speeds. Relatively, I would be unnoticed. You even should. Are you trying to time it for one-- Katie drives a vehicle through? Wait for it to go down or rather jump over the wire. Why not? Why not have the whole thing spent jingle and jangle? Well, you're on one side and you always drive through the other side, I mean. We're obviously taking the easier path. I'm either side of the gate and we're going through the fence. The black does look like it's the easier side as far as-- Is that right? --subbery and heavy. You're on the right side. The north side goes to the south side. Tope you halfway up and you go-- Yeah. Are you going over this fence? Are you climbing over this fence? Is that your plan? Yeah. About the same time you guys run through it. Oh, I don't know how long it's going to take me to get scar-started, so let's see. Can I have a flashlight back? Oh, my God. I have a ignition. I'm still in the talking distance to him. Go ahead and make a width plus ground crack wall plus. I thought she was light. She was just like that. OK. I want to spend a willpower to help this. You don't even know what you're doing. Uh-huh. How many times do you make a wheel? I thought this was the skid-card start. This is before. No, no, no, no, no. Would you subscribe? Yeah. I got a success. Why? Can you spend a willpower after you roll? I just want to know. Five decks. The system's less forgiving as far as-- I'm going to stick, so I'm going to-- Yeah. You have a couple of friends since you live. Well, now you're living in Ohio City, but when you're raising your dog, your canal, your home is out in North Ridgeville, which is quite an area that there's some ruralness to. And you have a couple of friends who have farms that you visited, and you're familiar with cattle guards. And the thought comes to you as well that, OK, we can drive the van through this without any problems. But you know what, you might be able to pry up that cattle guard and crawl underneath the fence as well. They're not permanent concrete structures, they're metal placed in a hole. So if you had a lot of strength, you could probably maybe wedge it out, but just the thought that you crossed your character's mind. And I say, hey, instead of going over the fence, getting torn up might be an idea to go under it where the cattle guard is. But I'm just thinking, if I get through that fence with a car, what would be a car faster than they are? And then I'd be quite small. We'll be able to make up time going down the road that they have a lot of thought processes as well. How hard do you think it is going to be to start this car? How hard do I throw it? I'm assuming their SUV is like a... hover style. Range Rover is a very rust and rugged car compared to our scooby-doo van we're driving here. Yes, absolutely. Madeline, kids. We've got a dog. Yes, you do. Yeah, we do. Shit. I mean, you're so not Belma. And we think you can jump this vehicle a lot better if you were on the inside. I mean, it's much easier to jump the car from the inside. Well, I was going to... It is right. I didn't have to get anywhere. I didn't have to get anywhere. It's a little on the window. It's loud. Let's go. Okay, that works too. I'll walk up to it like bust a window out. Well, still not the window. If you don't stand and start the hard wire in the thing, if the alarm goes up, I don't care. That's even better. Well, I start climbing the fence and noise has been made. Yes. I'm assuming that you wrap your hand in your... Don't grab a probar, hit it. In your frog. Okay. When your arms go bad. You do the back seat so that you take your habit off your legs once again. Okay. God damn. So, it's the end of the game because there was a lot of laughter in the game. Sorry. It was good. It was all fun. I bust the back door windows to get into the car so that way the front seat's not covered in glass where I'm going to be sitting and undo the locks and jump in and start working on the dash. So, you crowbar, obviously a glass window has durability. We can make all that rolls. It breaks. It shatters into a bunch of different pieces. No alarm goes off. You're able to then reach inside, open the door with minimal risk to yourself. You're in the back seat covered in a back seat that's covered in clothes. You're going to turn the front open lock in the door and take a look at the column to see how long it's going to take. Right. You think you'd be able with your expertise and your skill, you're going to probably be able to do this in less than two minutes. Go. And had Hail Mary. I have to point these locks. Again, I have to point this out. Mike would point out that a Leatherman has a little thing for punching out windows and cutting seat belts if you ever attract them. I totally was going to miss anything important. I didn't tell him he was going to miss, you know, the Leatherman Knight. Yeah, basically. The thousands of uses of the Leatherman. Leatherman right now is going to be dealing with this episode. It serves him right. Yes, it does. What else are we going to do? I'm working on the dash or whatever, the stirring column ripping it apart, getting it. Okay. While she's doing that, the order has been given to plow through the fence. Does that mean that Edgard, you're stopping your lock picking at this point? If you could get the lock open before we start the car. This is a test. No pressure, Ed. You haven't even started a magnetic one. I don't even know if I can. I mean, I'll try it. Okay, go. Press me. It doesn't work. Missed us. Shoot the chains off. You press me, Edgard is. Make me remember your name. Same thing, nine guys. Oh, there we go. There's two successes. One of them's a ten. Just two successes. That particular tumbler is still a big lock. He got three the first one, and this one's two. Okay. What is two doing as Edgard is picking the lock. Katie is bashing in a window and getting inside the car and starting to jump it. Daniel is still standing by the fence. Well, he said he went over when the noises were made. Well, I expect it alarm to go off, but I'm still climbing it. My bad. Which once the glass be shattered. I would have questioned Dan. What are you doing? I expected an alarm. I thought we were going loud. Why are we going over the fence? Stop. You're going to go in there and stop six guys? No. I was going to sneak up as you ran through a gate. Okay. Or you can come with us and get there much quicker down a very long road. It is though. Well, I don't remember how long. Okay. So you start climbing. You get about halfway up, and he talks you down. Fine, fine. So I'm assuming that you guys are basically congregating there except for Edgard and Katie. We're still going to die. The guy we need to talk to is in here, and there's a troop of six of those guys. Recently, and Velker, he's going in there getting off him. Yeah. Cool. Nice. Of course it says. Okay. Good enough. That lock is open as well. You then turn your attention to the magnetic lock, which is the third most difficult of the locks. Your time now goes from three seconds per attempt to 30 seconds per attempt. Because this is a much more complex lock to try to open. And you don't have the correct tools for it, which makes it even more difficult. So I am going to now take your dice from nine because of the darkness. Now we're going to go, and you also got a plus one. So it's eight because you no longer have the correct tools. And not only do you not have the correct tools, you don't have, you have the incorrect tools. This is how the rule book states it. So there's also a minus three for that. So you're down to five does in 30 seconds per one quick roll and then. Yeah. I mean, we're walking around and if I see him kind of squinting in the darkness, I'm going to let him by a flashlight for the red filter and the kind of the system. I would assume that Edgard would be swearing under his breath a couple of times about the darkness. Yeah. Plus I have empathy so I can kind of read it. Your darkness goes down to a minus one instead of minus two, which takes you to six dice. It should take you six dice. That's true. Two successes total. Okay. For those 30 seconds. Yeah. You're going to have a ways to go. And I'm going to press so far anyway. You get two more rolls before Katie makes her roll to jump the car. Go. Same dice. Full. Six dice. Wow. Nothing. All right. Struggling with the magnetic lock. There's ten. There's nine. That's two more. Two more only. Okay. And it is still locked. At this point, go ahead and tell me what your craft plus dexterity is. I knew I could kick. That's what I already wanted to have it for you tomorrow. Crafts. Tootie shift. Amazation. Dexterity. Re-shipping. Against me. Wait, wait, wait. What's your craft? Specialization. Crafts with a specialization and auto repair. No. That auto repair is not going to be applicable here. It was definitely applicable to damaging a vehicle because you know how to repair it. It's not something a vehicle. That's completely different specialty. At least I'm going to rule that for right now. So you have five dice? I have five dice. Five dice. It is not dark because you have the interior wipes guiding your way. It does not have protection against being jumped. There's no pluses or minuses for that. So you have what you have. Five dice. Are we sure this is Valkyrie? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I trust you. First of all, they're not even supposed to be a necessity. Anybody want to check to see if there's any radios or something they left behind so we can listen and know what they're doing? Or equipment that might have left in these cars? Sure. Who's good at that? The guy? I want to spend a willpower and boost my role on this. You can have to pick the link in. Oh, I can't have it. My burger's done before. I give you your role. Probably how long are they? So when you get your five dice, you have to say at that point, I'm getting my willpower. You did say last time when you thought you were rolling. Yeah. So I'm going to allow. Let's just do the extra. Okay. Subtract your willpower. Add three dice to make your role. That means I can't use it for any more in the scene. When you just spend willpower and add three dice, you get to go ahead and do that every turn if you wanted to. All right. I'm going to give Dan my flat right so he can assist at your block. I'm going to head over and try to assist your kitty. Okay. You walk over. She is fiddling, fiddling, fiddling. Fiddling three successes. The engine fires to life. You have the easy job. Four fucking locks here. All we need is one car. Grumble. We have it. I always trust him not to be able to steal a car. Oh, yeah. And that was the easy part. Getting through the fence and surviving is the hard part. Whatever. I'm not trying to. The possibilities here, I drive the car through the fence and go honking him wildly like a madman into the center of the compound. Maybe even jump out and let the car run into something. Just to set off alarms and get some things and we can come in the van afterwards. Are we all going to the SUV and going to the TV? Oh. I say we all go. I'm going home. [laughter] She's never been a madam actually. No, he hasn't. He's an idea man. Valkyrie agents don't belong in Cleveland. Dan, what is this emblem that she's talking about? Yeah. Any knowledge of what this particular squad does within Valkyrie? If there was a squad that was allowed in Cleveland and I was aware of it, I'd be on it. I dropped out of Valkyrie so I could get it. This is what the emblem looks like. What do they do? Okay. So Daniel, you hear Chu describe his vision of what he saw and to you, it's fairly obvious that it's the logo for task force. Valkyrie is one of their subdivisions. Project Adamsky. And this would have been the composition of the group that your friend, perhaps more than a friend. Casey was on that mission with Project Adamsky. She actually took your place. So you probably have a pretty good feeling that this is your former task force mates. They beat you to the compound. And by all accounts, just barely. So that's kind of what you imagine in your head, I would think, as you hear Chu's description. What do you then tell the group or are you keeping that to yourself? I'm going to tell them that Project Adamsky usually covers things up. If they're covering up Danny Rockland, we want to beat them there before they do whatever they're going to do. They're not here to burn documents or anything. If they're coming armed and they have dogs, we need to head them off before they get to the compound. And get to Danny before he's harmed. Right, that doesn't change anything we're doing that. We're trying to either alert him by setting off alarms or get there as fast as possible. So we continue doing what we're doing. I'm back in the car, we're up and lining it up. I'm in the SUV looking for any stuff that they might have left behind. I also keep a forensics kit with me that has your basic stuff in it. But I can also dust for a difference too. Right, on a quick look, as she's getting the car lined or the SUV lined up, you notice that the vehicle is remarkably clean. I mean, there's nothing in the glove box, there's... There are a couple of coffee cups in the vehicle, but that's the extent of the situation. Are there any receipts for the purchase of the coffee? No. They seem to have been perhaps a little careless to leave the cups behind, but not so careless as to leave a really good trail for you. Looked like trained agents who might have been moving a little quick. And I mean, you're just kind of surmising at this point, but it seems like they were moving quickly and they were under aching because they weren't moving with judicious pursuit. They were just balls out and they forgot something behind, which was these coffee cups. Are there any obvious fingerprints anywhere? That would probably be more of the five minutes dust thing. But I'm just saying, you know, just looking on the glass. Oh, I suggest like the rearview mirror. Right. Nothing exceedingly obvious. Possibly wearing gloves. Potentially. I was just looking for stuff. I'm going to get out of here as soon as you plan. So you're ready to drive? Hopefully Edgar can get the... She didn't strike me as someone who would be riding shotgun as the vehicle was going through the mask. I'm just looking for shit. I'm out of here when the shit hits a fan. Go. Everybody in the car. I don't know if I go through the fence and then everybody go through the hole and then the car. You should tip this thing over or what? Maybe. All right. Do so. To be fair, it's a dirt path and there's definitely ravines on either side. The right side, again, has a couple of big trees in the way. If I trash this car, I'm hoping I can start the other one and follow or take the van through the hole. Yeah, just make a hole. But the other side has a couple of trees that look like if you hit them at about, I don't know, 25, 30 miles an hour. You might be able to get through them. There are little narrow words in diameter. But there's also a lot of underbrush. It's a real rural area. So good luck. You're going to tell me what your driving plus dexterity is. You're going to tell me what else you want to try to add to the equation. There's not a high-performance sports cars. I am not in the vehicle anymore. No, but he's in the vehicle. I got seven dice and I don't know what the car adds any. Yeah, it's going to have to. This wonderful SUV has handling of zero. That doesn't help. No, it doesn't. No, like there's NASCAR. But it doesn't have a handling of minus one or two, which I think is. I'll take a bit. If you risk it, you can go up to ten and then you just have to have it. And then you just have to have a success month to lose all your work. Yeah, I'm going to risk. First of all, are your headlights on? Oh, yes. This is dark. Yes, definitely. Okay, headlights come on that alleviate your minus with darkness. The terrain is going to be minus three dice to try to guide the vehicle through the terrain to your desired impact point. You're very good with vehicles. You think you're going to need to be going at least 30 miles per hour in order to get through the trees and hit the fence strong enough to get through. Go ahead, Jim. Yes. It's done, guys. I got to do it. Successes. You didn't lose your wheel. That is wonderful. Roll two dice. The two successes got compared to the durability of... Hi. Green on one. Green on one. Green on one. Green on one. Green on one double one. That would have been worse. Sister Katie goes through several small for you to snap like big. So she rides off to the left-hand side or the south side of the dirt path. She catches a couple of larger trees and is able to maybe not knock them down, but kind of careed off of them, which causes her to go further down the goalie on the south side. She then impacts the fence. The fence buckles heavily. It was supported pretty strongly. So it kind of buckles and the top of the fence and the razor wire crunch over and slam through the windshield. Go ahead. Ask if your airbags go off because you're an accident and the cars were equipped with airbags. So the airbags are going to absorb some of the razor and the friction coming towards you through the windshield. As will the windshield. What? So we'll see what happens. It's just an adventure view of the pilot. Yeah. Kind of good. Oh. Kind of good. Is this damage? Yeah. Stop rolling that. The fence and the razor wire crash through the windshield. They force their way through the heavy glass of the windshield and rip and tear into the airbags. Totally deflating them. You're flying forward. You hit the airbags. They deflate. You continue forward and you take one bashing damage to your face as your face impacts the steering wheel. Luckily most of the razor wire is tied into the plastic and the cloth of the airbags. So what ends up happening is the vehicle, the SUV, the Land Rover comes to a stop about 20 foot down this goalie. Straight down, 20 feet down the line, about 8 foot down from where the road is itself. The fence is folded over on top with the razor wire leaving a path where if you jump on the top of the SUV and the left over the razor wire, you'd land on in the woodland on the opposite side. I guess we're walking. We can't even drop. Wait. That was the success. That was the success. He hit the fence. He had to go through several trees and then the fence itself. So you roll your maneuverability to try to put yourself in place. And the total success that you get on your roll, then your roll is damage. So he succeeded in guiding the truck mostly through, but he did zero damage when he rolled his two dice for the maneuverability after it all happened. So basically what happens is he lost a lot of momentum in going through the trees, impact the fence. And that fence was, I mean, it's putting with concrete at 10 foot intervals and it's 10 feet high. It's not like some backyard fence, if you will. It's a real fence to keep cattle and horses and any other things. As you use SUVs or prying eyes because he was obviously trying to keep himself somewhat retired. That was fun. Nice try. Sorry. Should we do it again with the other side? No, the gate will fall over because you can see the other vehicle that she, she's sabotaging. Wait, you said if we jump on the hood of the Range Rover, we could kind of jump up. Yeah, oh absolutely. If most of the Range Rover wire, that fence crumpled in like about an eight foot section. It crumpled over through the windshield. So there's just some razor wire sticking up over the windshield a little bit. If you walk along the top and jump. I would think he'd go under it too. I would think the fence would be kind of on top of it now so you can just walk right, crawl right under like a space underneath it now. Because the fence went. I'm just saying if we had done this my way, they wouldn't know we're coming. And I think your leader wanted them to know that you were coming. I wanted him to know we were coming. It wasn't them. Him to know they were coming. I think I wanted this to be enough. He made a rather large coffee of noise. How do you mark out the bench? It's a slash in the middle of this dead night. So you guys go ahead. I'll make sure Sister Kate's all right. We're just going to walk. I'll get out for the dog and say let's go. So are we in the van or? We can't get the van across the fence. In that little way. Not unless he unlocks stuff. I could keep the sheet locked. He might beat down 20 feet off the path through underbrush, vines, trees and slammed into the fence. He was saying our fish. I'm saying there's nothing. There's no way to get to drive down in there. I mean there's a little bit of a path that she made. I didn't get there but then there's no way to get past it because I just want to know where we're at. If we're on foot or we're waiting. Right now you're on foot and you're on the dirt road. Cringing as she went offline. Okay, keep picking up. Let's hop this way. We're on to start sprinting. Yeah, we're behind. We gotta go. Okay. Sprinting is going to leave us tired. Well, back and forth. I mean you can't spot people. Yeah, we stay here and keep on going with the unlocking thing. Can you try it again? Huh? We have a second car. We've got two more vehicles. Yeah, this is our van. You don't want to risk your van. We're just stuck out here. It's not my van. You're good. You're ready to pass. You're ready to pass. It's our rental. Did the winds continue past the fence? Absolutely. No, I'm jumping out of the car whistling for the dog and saying, "Come on guys, we gotta go." And going underneath or whatever over or whatever it is. Underneath is not going to work quite as well as you think, because of the heavy undergrowth that was there. Going over is probably the best way. Yeah. All it's going to take is an athletics plus dexterity roll. Okay, good. To get up and over. I can do that. Let's go around the table. Tell me what your number is. Don't roll please. Yeah. Six. Edgard? I appreciate it. Five. Five. Five. Six. Seven. Three. Seven. First. You can leap over safely into the undergrowth on the other side. It's pretty thick forest. And the dog clammers over the vein as well, jumps over the razor wire and sits dutifully at your side. We were on the other side. This was one second. Four successes. Me? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Four successes. Okay, so. I thought I was there. Jay, well, you were all kind of standing around watching it before it was happening. So, Jay, your next over sniper rifle in hand, jump to fence. And then the large man, Daniel Morgan, the mountain man, leaps over as well. No problems. You scramble over the top. Next? I have one six cents. Chew. Daintly. She walks very carefully over the top. Everyone else is, like, totally not great at dexterity and I trip over this fucking thing. How many guys do you roll? I roll five dice and I fail on every single one. We roll all five ones. Because I win really fine. These are four in there. Okay. The rest are all mine. I can't tell. It's all dark. No, all that happened was that when you were going over the razor wire, you got caught. You know, you tip one lethal damage because it's a razor like, obviously. What's your dexterity? Five. It was dexterity and athletics. One. Five. Minus one. Minus one. Yeah. That's dark. It's dark. You just, you climb it over the top. You slipped. You clocked some razor wire on your hand. Make sure you were going over. You like to wash your balance. You kind of reach down to catch yourself and your hand got sliced open. It's totally gross. Yeah, it's the X. All right. And five. And everyone is safely on the other side. On the other side. Thanks for listening to Nights at the Night at Actual Play Podcast. Visit kotnpodcast.com for more information on this and other adventures. Where you will find character stats, photos, storytelling, props, and even a form for comments and suggestions. Or you could email us directly at feedback@kotnpodcast.com. Or contact us via Twitter or leave a message on Facebook. All music for this podcast was created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcasts or business, please visit ZenAudioSmith.com and please join us next episode for more mystery and adventure. [music] I gotta say, it's super... Mike's got a weatherman. Right? [laughter] Well, I know, Katie, he's cursing right now. I could have used my weatherman tonight. Compared to our Scooby-Doo Vane, we're driving here. Yes, absolutely. Madeline, kids. Oh, we got a dog. Yes, you do. Here we do. I mean, I am using that Belmont.