Players comment, review and critique of the Shit Luck story line.
A few secrets are spilled, sotry points explained and a few comments are made on the White Wolf Storytelling system in general.
Enjoy!
Knights of the Night
KOTN Actual Play Podcast 50: Shit Luck 51 "Review and Comments"
[music] Hello, and welcome to Night to the Night actual play podcast. This is the wrap up in review of the shitlock story which was run by Scott. We also have some questions from our listeners which we couldn't fit into here, but we'll have a supplemental release this week. But this was already an hour, so we wanted to cut it short. Thank you for downloading and enjoy. Okay, so this is the recap for the World of Darkness Hunter story shitlock. And I will open it up for discussion since we just finished the 16th and final chapter. And if anyone has any questions or comments on how it could have been improved upon or what they liked, what they didn't like, a thread that wasn't answered, an idea that they wanted to pursue that kind of got lost in the shuffle. If I can answer it without ruining the entire story arc for the entire campaign, I will answer questions if there's something that's kind of important and it's going to influence the further story arc of the campaign then I'll refrain from answering right now. But I'll just open it up for comments or critiques, if you will, for right now. I don't even know how it ended yet. That's right, it wasn't an important one. We won. So the only thing that I had, I mean one of the things I had an issue with, overall it was a really great adventure. I thought it was fun and it was enjoyable. Thank you. The one that I felt kind of sorry for Mike was, "Ah, you know what, we didn't do the, who I am." I'm Tom. I play the character Jay. But the one thing that I felt kind of bad about for Mike was that we're in the final battle and he gets taken over by the spirit and then you're done. You don't get to roll the dice, you don't get to do anything for, you know, two or three rounds or whatever that the battle took. Right. That's what happens when you're ridden though. You're ridden hard and put away one hand. And I thought, you know, if nothing else you should still be able to roll the dice to do something. I think that would have been an interesting way to handle it. Would be to have you roll the dice for the spirit of Cleveland as opposed to rolling the dice behind the screen for you. You know, what did you think as the player? That's Tom's impression of not being the player. What was your take being the player who was, you know, overcome by the spirit and you helped, you know, achieve the success and the final victory but you didn't really get to roll anything. Well, it didn't, this is Mike playing Mike, Michael playing. I didn't really have a problem with it other than to, you know, I just, we spent, I don't know, how many hours preparing that attack and within one round the plan was gone. Well, that's which is normal. Yeah. But it's the fourth or fifth time it happened and you're just like, well, I just, we gotta win it somehow. So the, it didn't really bother me that much because how that circumstance even came to be with the, through the Cleveland, the voice, the soundboard that we had to talk to. That was a very spooky, very engaging kind of moment of role play for me. And so I kind of got all that out there and it carried me to the final, you know, scene. I mean, the fact that I was prepared to be ridden when the game came. So I just wanted to be in the right place at the right time. And I mean, we rolled phenomenally. We had like third, Greg, I think had like 13 successes at one point or somebody had, was not Jim because he was not here. Sister Katie, we founds to go into the, that's where again, that's where another location. I just remember that, you know, Bob and I, the shotgun brothers were blasting away. That's right. Doing really well. Right. And Bob, I think had the major, major success, which after the Queen B, Meredith, after your spirit broke the relic and it turned into a million wasps and went up and started stinging her and she was slightly on fire because they were, you know, there was flame involved. And then you just torched her with a shotgun blast with like a double exceptional success. That was Bob. You was like nine damages. Was it nine? So almost a double success. It was really impressive shot. You know, this is how a story changes. And then when we talk about it in a few years, he did 22 fucking damage. Incredible. I think the only reason I bring it up is because, you know, this isn't the only system we play, which is also something we can talk about is how we enjoyed this system as compared to other ones. But the one thing I absolutely hate with 4th edition is any time, or any edition of D&D, is any time you get paralyzed or possessed or you're just out of it. You know, you wait forever to get your turn in and your turn is roll one dice. Okay, yeah. You're just completely fine. Even in D&D and stuff when you get stunned or whatever and you're like, I'm stunned until I get, or months done. Well, yeah. Every hour I get to roll a die 20. Then you turn, you roll a die and you go, I do nothing again. You know, I'll start you with nothing. I can't play your character. Yeah. I guess I didn't notice you being upset about it, but what I thought about it, it was like a big surprise and it kind of sucked. It caught me by surprise and I don't know why it did because when I looked back on it, it made kind of perfect sense. But we've been playing up the whole adventure, my kind of daffy duck-like greed for artifacts. And when the spirit took that relic that had been across the bear with the way you guys were running around that thing, and then threw it down and shattered it. I was like, "No!" That's mine. And from a storyteller perspective, you know, it was funny because I knew that would be really hard for you to do if you weren't possessed to throw it on the ground and destroy it. So it was really funny to just watch your facial expression when I said he rears back. I mean, it makes noise. To me, it was a nice, it was a nice loop into his possession, his greed of your face. And it played into it perfectly. And I went back into a rickety-exploded building just to retrieve this thing. And so there was no one to... Like I said, it made sense, you know, if it's the story and, you know, sooner or later... And if it your character is well... Right. Like, an opposite of your possessed, and this is something you would never do, is destroy the relic. So I thought it was a nice tie-in to your particular advice, but didn't know if anyone really noticed it or not. Yeah, well, maybe that could have been played up a little bit more, too, in that... The fight even let him decide it. It was close to 1 AM. And that was the rush to the end. That was really unfortunate. Because we would have went one more week. I think the ending could have been a little bit even more special. Well, do you feel that because we had already postponed the conclusion, I think, four times? Four times. That, you know, and it got to the point where like, we should probably knock it off for the night. And I'm like, "No, Dan, do you like..." I don't know. Dan the torpedoes were going to finish it, and I don't care if he'd stay up to two o'clock in the morning. I don't ask you guys to do this too often, but suck it up one time. So, but do you think that that might have also... Yeah. ...made a little too... Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. In retrospect, I should have taken my dose of... Okay, Scott, the ending part 18 and just dealt with it. And save it for one more week when everyone was fresh. Nothing really happened a ton more, but I could have described it better. I could have focused in on it a little better. It would have been nice to have Jim there for the ending as well. So, in retrospect, yes, I have a few regrets about the way I rushed the ending. Yeah, you couldn't have denied that we are going to finish this next week, because we're standing right in front of the Queen Bee. You know, one way or the other. One way or the other, it's a combat that wouldn't have lasted much longer. You know, an hour at the most, but... Yeah. But everyone enjoyed their characters that they played. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Interesting. Yeah, I thought that there were a couple of them that... A lot of you really picked characters that I thought were maybe against type a little bit. Graggy played someone that was just... I mean, you're not in life, you know, an overly cocky person or dismissive of people's opinions. Or a dick. Yeah. Or just a jerk in general. Not really, though. The way you would race. Yeah, overly. Just right. I thought your character was really well done. I mean, I really thought it was a good sense of playing someone who was a... I'm a doctor. I get a lot of fun doing it, but the only thing about it, and you had asked about the system in general. Yeah. One of the things that I see in this system, and it really did in that character that I was playing, is if you make a character who's good at something, if he's a doctor, it's realistic because he isn't going to be firing weapons, and he's not going to be stabbing people with knives. Right. And he's not going to be shoving pentagrams, you know... Right. And casting. And casting if you're doing any of that. I mean, that's what he's going to be doing. Right. Do you like that aspect? Or did you... I don't know. I don't know. I kind of like it because you can't be the bard. You know, as a warrior in D&D, where you're at the jack-of-all-trades. Right. You've got to focus in one thing, which is not a bad thing. Right. Like, I'm good at shooting a gun. As Jay Eden, he's good at sniping. And that allows me to not have to, or even... You should be good at something and be allowed to shine at that one thing. And by the same token, you should allow other people that option. So if I'm not good at the social skills, it's kind of nice to say, "Here's so-and-so's turn to shine." Yeah. You know, investigation. "Here's Bob's. I'm going to sit back and I'm going to watch him while Bob has his moment." Right. And that's good. The only problem I had with it is, and it's... Scott, I'm not complaining about this. No, it's a storyteller. That's okay. If the action focused on any particular one of us... And I noticed this a couple of times. And that particular person, and it was like some drop dead holy... Oh my God, moment. There was a tendency on the storyteller's part to keep the story moving along, to focus kind of the rolling or what they have to do into the mold of what that character's kind of able to do, to move the story along. Whereas like, you know, there were points like where people were following in cars and this and that. You know, ask somebody, "Do you have the driving scene?" Or, you know, roll your driving scene. And I'm driving, skip one minus one, buddy. You're turning the corner at 35 miles an hour, guess what? Right. You're going to die here. You know, your character's going to survive the werewolf, die wrapped around a telephone pole. Right. I guess... So you thought that was too realistic? No, no, no. I'm saying what I'm saying is that... I think a lot more tension and build up and reality into the whole system can be made when... You know, like when we were doing the gas explosion thing occurred. Yes, that's a good answer for an example. Yeah, there were some roles there that were kind of like, "Well, do you have this skill?" Do you feel like I was trying to help you along in the heat event? Yeah. Because you didn't have what you needed to succeed in that. Right. I remember one time you said, "Jim, your character, Tony, we're going to allow him to use this instead of this." Right. Because he had a specialty in the demolitions and you're supposed to be using some other skill to decide the bombs, but his demolitions wasn't another skill, so we allowed him to use a different skill or something. Not an expert world of darkness, but a lot of the feedback I get or that I've seen is people saying that we actually focus too much on the roles. Hell yeah. And that it's more of a storytelling system and just... Go with the story. Go and have fun. Playful things. Right. You know. It's not to say that you can ever play a role playing game wrong. Right. Well, what do you think science found really? Oh, I'm sorry, just to give you a shot. All I'm saying is like, okay, you know, you got the bomb ticking down, the whatever, whatever. Maybe the... And again, it's nothing against the storyteller at all, but maybe the way to keep that story moving along is to already have, you know, written down somewhere. This is what, you know, and then just make that role and... Be a little more strict. Yeah, no, no, you know, like... I think what you're getting at is a couple times during the game, maybe I won't get a little bit. Instead of slowing things down and saying, let's look up this role, you know, I just kind of... Oh, no, it's more like, okay, I don't know where I can describe a perfect situation with one. But we're like, we're all at this high pitch kind of like, we're all into character. We're all into, oh my God, what am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? How are you doing? Like the car coming through, you know, a different point. The car coming through the windshield in the wine bar right at the beginning, which we don't actually have like... When they say too many rule things going on, I think that's kind of where the diatribe takes place of... Okay, well, you're up at the bar, I mean... Well, I think you could probably, you know, do you have this skill, do you have, you know... Right. Kind of you're running down the list, waiting for the character to say, oh yeah, I do have... Which could almost be subterfuge or whatever. Right, which could almost always be an example of this being the first time we really delved into the system. Hunter, I mean, we played World Darkness one time for, you know, a little adventure a couple years back. But really for Jim and for Greg and for, well, Bob, Tom and Mike played the first World Darkness a couple years back. But that was straight World Darkness, that wasn't Hunter. And we'd forgotten most of that, you know, most of the rules. So I would say that maybe that's part of it too is, you know, I can't just... I should have had a sheet in front of me, you're writing a sense that, okay, there's a bomb that goes off. What's the exact, you know, skills that are used instead of, you know, like giving Jim three options? I don't think there is one, like, like... Well, there is a demolition skill, I mean... Well, there is, but... Well, I'm saying a lot of the rules are what you think, you know? I mean, there's this, there's a skill toss that's going on. It's got to be two steps, which one's fit. Right. And there's no hard... And there could be other things that, you know, I also got a plan and I could have said, I'm not going to disarm the bomb. I just want to contain it. I'm looking, I pick it up and move it somewhere, where it's going to do some on a damage, of course. Right. And instead of just disarming it. Right. But I guess... The feedback that we got that they think, one of the cases where they mentioned, you know, was when I was trying to open the door and Jim was in there. Yeah, there was some question on whether... Yeah, one of the guys asked, like, the guy just said, "You don't run with it." It's a game, just do it. Right. But other people... I wanted to... Yeah, my explanation was you were choking and, you know, on carbon monoxide and you were panicked. You came out and, you know, Jim was an answer. And so you fired at the door and maybe in that confusion you missed. But yeah, you kind of know what makes this... Right. It's called a storytelling system for a reason. Right. And I think you're supposed to... In fact, you didn't know about them, just sure. One second and I agree with you 100%. But I guess the way I would see... It's a storytelling system, but it's also horror and it's taking place in modern days. So you kind of got a... It's just got a... It's got to move like a... Almost like a horror story. Yeah. In a way. And... Anytime you slow down... Anytime you slow down, it took me... Yeah, to look up rules and do all that shit. Yeah. I agree with a lot of what Greg's saying that if we had the... That's my biggest complaint about this game is when you want to keep it moving around and you want to look up a role real quick and just know what's the quick role? Let's roll the dice and get on with it. It's just a quick look up in these books. Yeah. The indexing is... It's going to have an hour to figure it out and it's going to have an hour to bake because you can't... Right. When I was playing with Dr. I had to look up... That gave me a little... Like three times? Every single time. Because I can't... Yeah. From week to week, it was hard to maintain. I did find a benefit when we were editing the show though that once you cut out all that stuff... And then, you know, you took two hours and made it 40 minutes. Right. How much I enjoyed it. How compelling. How actually better. Yeah. The lady said the same thing. She went out and she checked it out of the podcast and she's like, "You do that every... It's really cool. I want to do that." I'm like, "Really? It's not like that." Right. It's the same thing when other people have listened to it. They say, "Man, you guys have gotten much more focused." Right. You can really start to have an appointment. It's like, "No, that's called editing." I had one suggestion and just in on this point is that, you know, maybe the storyteller needs a critical... Whatever the critical plot junction is, make up a role. If you roll it, maybe make it list of characters. If Joe's there, the role is this. If chimes there, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. If they do this. Kind of like just real quick notes. If then... Right. He doesn't roll it. You just roll it for him real quick. I know what you're... You know, "Hey, what's your character's sheet? I know what you're..." You know. Well, Thursday, it would take some of the enjoyment out. Like, when you roll your exceptional successes a couple times. Like, when you save Jim's first character, Tony's lies. Right. I mean, that was an amazing role. Or when you... I'm talking about, like, gift ends. Like, I mean, where it wouldn't really matter one way or the other. Whether I made an exceptional success. Oh, so more not the huge junctures, but the smaller... No, like ones where... If I don't succeed... Right. Somebody dies. Periods that. If I don't do this... You don't have to take it out of your hands in that situation. No, I'm saying it wouldn't make a difference. Do you see what I'm saying? It doesn't make a difference. If you roll them and you get a critical success, so what? We still succeed and we still move on. Right. So I get a general idea of what you're going for. And I think that what I could have done as a storyteller, in this particular story, I could have said this week, you know, in my head, is not okay. Well, if we take Greg's example, this week, there's going to be a firefight. You know, they're going to be battling with the carbon monoxide, with the security guards. And then they may find the bomb in the basement. And jot down on a sheet of paper, a couple of those key components. If, you know, Jim tries to do demolition... This test will be the test. Here's the stats they're going to be. Instead of, you know, winging it quite as much as I did. People say some of the feedback has been Scott knows a lot of the rules. And really, I didn't know as many as I should have, to be completely honest, going into it. But I think after reading some of, they have example adventures that they sell for like 599 PDFs. It's called SASs. I don't know if anyone's seen them, but they do them by scenes. This is scene one. This is scene two. They break them down and they have what are the likely roles that are going to happen in that scene. And I think in our second story that I have coming up, I'm going to either use one of those storytelling adventures, but of course flush it out to be how I want it to be. Or just use an idea of, here's scene one, here's scene two, here's scene three. Not too far ahead because you guys are going to get through one scene or two scenes at night. But in post you guys... We never go where you're supposed to. Right. I mean, the reason that... Yeah, that would be perfect because then if you do that... It keeps the tempo faster. It keeps the tempo faster. And if it throws in things like in this scene, in your mind, the storyteller's mind. And I know there's always changes. Right. You guys are going to throw curveballs. But the basic... But in this particular instance, in the monastery, grabbing whatever out of such and such, crafting basket weaving is the critical skill that will give the person less water. And have that riff down instead of... Right. Let's go through a pull pour re of what you can do. Right. And try to find something that I just want. Right. What are you going to... I'm going to... I'm going to... I don't think if I do that right, you still get to re-roll the dice. Right. Right. It keeps the dice still in your hands because you might not mind, you know, making that critical success or exceptional success. But Tom might want the dice or Jim might want the dice in your hand. Right. But I think I need to do a better job. And I mean this sincerely. Not... Right. And he's... Well, maybe... Wait at all. I need to prepare a little better of... This is what could happen. No, I mean... You started to help. When it's open like that, then... And again, no offense to Mike, no offense to me, no offense to anybody else. But we... All of a sudden we can start our discussing rules and pluses. And it takes you after this isn't set. Are the horn. And all that. And soon you're like, what will we see the area about this? Well, what was the point? That really is. I found... I don't know if this is why I'm just not familiar with this system. But the less I had to look... There were times where I never even looked at my character shit. So I didn't have to. Because... What are bad? I like that. Because I don't... Like I said, the indexing and trying to find information in these books is so bizarre. Right. You know, even the stuff that I did have written down, you know, I think I might have recorded it differently or wrong. You know, and then we had the steps. You know, if you have two dots in this, then you have this power and this power and each one's a dot and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. I was... Yeah, you do. You lose the moment. And I think that's a big part of what you said. And I liked how... But Greg mentioned in the beginning of this discussion, though, that... These are sodas, by the way. Soda soda soda. That had a bit of a problem with you conforming to our skills rather than just saying... Tough luck. Yeah. And I think it's been said on a lot of different occasions on different podcasts and discussions about games that the failure is often the fun. The fun. Yeah. It's when the shit hits the fan and things go wrong. I wrote a post on White Wolf's forums and I said, "I don't know what to charge my player to recover from a derangement when Tom's character, Jay, was trying to get over his fear of bees. Yeah, I think he did about that. Yeah. And so there's no rule. I'm not sure I want to buy that off now. Right. Well, one of the persons that was, "Why would he want to buy it off?" You know, that was one of the responses. Most of them were like, "Hey, ten years ago, it's not a good character." Right. It's like Jay is afraid of bees. Yeah. And that's the whole idea behind the horror is you're supposed to lose stuff and you're supposed to get a little bit, you know, with that. I knew you were still afraid of bees, but it can't, you know, there was to take a character. Oh, come on. There was fun parts where you were riding me about the bees. It was. Well, it was. But then it was also, it was also very cool that you had all these successes. It's overcoming. At a crunch moment. Right. Right. Exactly. From a popular movie, Hunt for October, Jack Ryan was afraid of flying. You know, until he was forced to fly, fly, fly in order to save the world from nuclear exchange. And then, you know, the scene or the movie ends with him asleep on an airplane, which you could never do before. I had to say that he still is an apprehensive of flying, but you know, maybe it's not him. Yeah, maybe he could make it like it's not a major phobia where you're deathly afraid of them anymore, but like every time you see bees, it's going to take dice away from me. It's going to bite me. Or he has to take over you. Whatever. I mean, what are the things that I like about it, but I don't. And then this is part of just the nature of the group. And I don't know how to get away from it because we've had, it happens in almost everything. One of the toughest things I have is explaining why such diverse characters are pulling together to achieve a goal. Right. And then under any other circumstance, they wouldn't be together. In fantasy, D&D, and whatever, it seems like, okay, look, the palette is going to hang out with the thief, and that's just, you know, we need, we need to be forward. It's all made of a tab, right? Right. You know, and there were moments where we're trying to, you know, save Tony's life, we're trying to do all sorts of stuff. But there were moments where you're like, okay, and this is maybe the old World of Darkness game, but, you know, I've seen enough of ghosts and werewolves, and I want to go back to my particular job. And I'm going to pretend this never happened. Oh, that was, that particular adventure was harsh. Right. That was a rough adventure. With Kate O'Connor's. My idea of her coming in was she was just coming in to give you guys a place to stay that safe and escort you back and forth to try to keep you alive. Whether or not you, what you guys do running into a place or running out of a place, that's up to you. You know, I'm just saying that. Yeah. So, keep trying to keep you guys alive while you do your job. Yeah, it's always like a town. So, we all have our roles and stuff like that, a really cool moment, and I think what's cool about it is, I want to see if it pays off down the road, is, you know, after this is over, Michael Clay knows that there's a bad ass, loop guru, werewolf in the immediate vicinity, and he's got a garage. And he's not going to let that stand. Oh. You know, but, you know, if we're going to focus back on this adventure, one of the criticisms that I might have had, was not, and I have to do anything with the werewolf, but it was very beginning, was we were sent here to do a mission, and it was never clear if we were on the mission or the point, which is way like this. I understand that. Right. But, to say that our characters would suddenly start focusing on this because it's the first supernatural to come along is a little... Okay. Before I get into the... But it's that meta-gaming where, you know, you know, that's where we're supposed to go. There's a point where we have that discussion, and maybe the podcast hasn't gone up to that yet, is we did have that discussion at some point. Because I kept bringing it up. But actually, what are we doing? What are we doing here? No, we said that we had that discussion, okay, how does this get us seven agents or 12 agents? It was better than once I brought it up. Right. We had a discussion saying, why are we doing this? We're going to set the point out what happened to these guys. No, that's not what I'm saying, as we played it, because that kind of covers as we did, we did kind of slightly met again, because this was the plot, so we're going to go along with it. And I was just saying, as a constructed adventure, that might have been tweaked a little bit. By the time we got to the... Like, I agree, if there was one thing, the call to arms was to find these missing Valkyrie guys. All right. That's why we were here in the first place. Yeah. Now, what I didn't connect was, okay, I thought everything we had to do had reflect to these missing guys. And so when this adventure was carrying on, and we're not finding really anything linking us back to what these guys are, and it wasn't until later on, where I think we were met at gaming, we were like, okay, this guy's like, that's an overarching thing. This is really... Yeah. I didn't do a good job of... It might have just been taped telling us, you know what, I want you guys to focus on this, because something weird is going on here. Just right. That's what it was. Actually, the first... I don't think it's recorded. It wasn't recorded in one of the podcasts. But early on, he's like, well, it's your first encounter with the supernatural. Go with it. It's the only link we have right now on those missing agents. But it wasn't well enough to find to say that you guys aren't going to find the agents this story. You know, that's the arc of this campaign is to find the agents. And that wasn't clear. Well... If I could have been much clearer. And I just think that we spent, or we spent a lot of time trying to, you know, find connections or link it. Actually, I'm sorry to interrupt, but until you just told me that, I didn't understand that at all. Right. Well, there you go. Right. So, that's an example of it not being well defined. So yeah, absolutely good in a bad job of that. Going back, I mean, you know, they've planted enough cool stuff and enough character quirks that everyone has them. Yeah, I just think it's hilarious that Jay left a sniper rifle up in the church. Up in the church. Up in the church. Up in the Bell Tower. Yeah, I had earlier ones that, you know, you wouldn't let this out of your sight, you know, and, you know, I really kind of dug where, you know, all this, what I feel is supernatural stuff happening. And the doctor just is, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, perfect rational explanation. And he's administering and, you know, treating a patient, do no harm, and, like, poison that where we'll, and kill him now while you've got him after the patient. And he's, like, showing up, you know, until there was, there was a little bit of conflict there, and, you know, but that's part of the thing. That was great conflict without it becoming an overriding theme of the story. You guys-- You're not going to kill this thing. Right. And you're not going to get five people together in a way-- Well, you wouldn't believe it's a real thing. Oh, it's not a word. Oh, my god. He's just under a-- He probably has lichen-throb. Yeah, right. You know? This is the actual disease, probably what he has. Yeah, exactly. Speaking of conflict, there was actually a couple of people that commented in feedback or writing to me about you and I playing out the tape and Jay. Oh, when you got that-- When he kind of came down hard on you guys for-- Yeah. Get a hold of your group. Yeah. Right. You guys really played that well. It sounded like you were angry at each other. I was like, no, you were just-- Right. No. Everything had a long enough and you could kind of fake through anything. The system in general-- I mean, I think that's the idea is it's supposed to be about the story. It's not supposed to be about writing. Rolling dice as much as possible. So I think that's something I'm going to take to heart, you know, Greg's constructive criticism. It was constructive feedback regarding how to stay in the moment, though, Greg. I mean, you really-- I think it's a story. Well, that's why I wanted to do this was for moments like that where you go, oh, okay, this is how we could do better. And that's a whole point. And hopefully-- Yeah, if I didn't know-- If you guys start listening to a World of Darkness podcast, we might come away with the same thing. Right. You know, it's just so convenient. That's how I could do it. Yeah. Don't dwell down in the dice rolls in the rules court as much. Keep the story moving. The story is the fun thing. It gives you the shivers or the moments. To me, like Mike said, where, when he was alone with-- I mean, you guys all left the room. We turned the light to way down. And he'd talk to the spirit of Cleveland. And it was scary for him. You could see the looks. Yes. But, yeah, it was actually a moment that was pretty cool role-playing wise. Yeah. Although I still don't. You know, that would have been creepier if you didn't make it weird by playing the music first. Because the music, I mean, but maybe this is part of your plan. I don't know. I was convinced that it was like-- I thought it was Dr. Miles and his Chiron cronies having a laugh with some type of-- Right. Focused sonic technology that was making me think I was hearing things. They were laughing behind a bookshelf at me while they were pointing out at Sonic. Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to have a signature so whenever I play it in the future, in future stories, there's just plain 20 seconds of it or 15 seconds of it. It lets you know that that spirit is creeping into the scene. Okay, pretty nice. That's what I was going for. But I can see where-- But if being a pop-- because it was popular music, I mean-- Right. It's just like, why am I picking up radio waves? Right. Yeah, what's going on exactly here? I mean, it's fair to claim that it's not done with you yet, Mike. It is not. Well, the idol is broken and the purpose has been served. So, any threads in the story that hasn't quite-- does it get wrapped up? Now, some weren't supposed to get wrapped up because they're threads that carry on. But is there something that you were like, why was that happening? Or why did that happen? Or what was that? One of the things, along with Tony Bonadillo, is that I kind of wanted to expand on it with my third and final story on him about how he got into this to begin with. I like her wrote two pieces and I wanted to write a third piece in it. Right. He kept saying he got taken away, and he was like, no matter who took a look at him or how long he was at somewhere, he wasn't getting any better. He was closer. I was going to say that maybe my idea was that the thing that he killed in the cave and they put the parts in him, that Chiron was thinking that he was going to die and these were standard werewolf parts. They were just going to use them as a transport to get them back to the US or whatever. But what ended up being put in him was something that was not quite your standard werewolf parts and it healed them which they weren't expecting. So when he recovered from it, that's why Chiron wanted. One of the reasons why they were giving him a hard time when he got back and then why they were pushing, once he got hurt, I wanted to just kill him and bring us bodies because we wanted those parts back. Now we normally know those parts are more valuable than we thought. You really want the parts back. Right. It might be why the reason why they're not your standard were parts is it might be the reason why he hasn't fully recovered from whatever injuries he got. Yeah, I think it's going to play further into the story. So that's one of the threads that there was something mysterious going on with Tony and his ability not to be healed and not come out of his situation. When writing a story and putting that in the story, mess up what you're going with. No, if I choose to go with the story line that I'm going with right now, it will not interfere with any of the stories you have. I might steal hearts of it to flesh it out, but no. Something storyline driven happened to him during this particular story. And his resistance to healing is right now a mystery for everybody. All right. Any other threads that anyone scratched their head at or said, hmm, that didn't seem congruent or wanted to know what happened to somebody. I'm wondering about Tony's pretty much done, right? I don't know. It's up to him when I play. Although I think you have an idea that Tony has a twisted and corrupted by his injuries comes back as a, like, a Freddy Krueger like, "You guys love me to burn a day!" No, we tried to save it all the less. You know, they kind of appealed to me and they're like, "Oh, wait, that's not going to happen." And then there was Ethan. You know, I guess Ethan will just go back to living his own life. Yeah, I mean, he was pretty messed up by the accident, he wasn't a nice accident. I'm not clear on how rapidly our safe houses were compromised. Okay, and I'll see what I can do here. And in particular, the fact that within the course of a day, presumably, or a day or two, that they were able to... We never investigated the events, but I imagined that a bunch of bees made a bunch of honeycombs into the vents, thus sealing them. And I thought that was going to be a clue that leads us to vitamin B. It was the plan to block the vents, poison us, blow up the building, to simulate some type of gas explosion, but then leave enough evidence of an info bomb. You know what I mean? I wasn't sure. It just seemed like an unusual overkill just to get rid of us. I think I could answer this one. I don't think you're going to be running into too many more of the bee hosts moving forward, although there may be some interactions, but they have more powers than just this. Your first safe house is compromised when you took Henry up into your rooms. There was a hive mind working, so he saw and experienced everything. The cars you were driving, the license plates you were driving, anything that he saw that got transferred back to the hive mind for their processing. So you were compromised in that very first night. And after that, what they wanted to do was they wanted to have the CO2 leak and be able to go back later on and remove the bomb. They wanted you to die from the CO2 leak. The bomb was just a backup. They had killed side street billies, his pack mates, because he was aware of them. So his pack was killed at the site of where vitamin B's headquarters is now three years ago, four years ago, where the timeframe was. They went in there, they sealed off the, and I'd like your idea of the beehive, the wax sealing it off. Just didn't think of it. Once I heard them, I got a great idea. But I had already gone a little bit farther down the path and hadn't backed it up with anything, so I just went with what I had gone at that point. It was a great idea. So I was just thinking about it. It would be something that we, yeah, it would be great who wouldn't have detected or wouldn't have noticed these, you know, doing this. So it was just, they knew where you were once you chased him and tackled him and, you know, kind of gave your hand that you knew he was something bigger than he was, or not he was a normal guy. They then wanted to take care of you and just eliminate any ideas, and there you all work, conveniently. All in one place, you know, that they could just do one quick attack on and take you all out. And then no one knows about Henry. No one really knows what's going on beside that. Okay, so the reason for their hostility was secrecy. There was secrecy. At that point, they were worried that you'd seen too much. Okay. And that you knew too much. You knew where he worked. You knew it was a B company. You knew he exploded into a B. You knew it was supernatural. Your reactions weren't normal like you trusted him either. You felt there was something wrong. You were going to his house and kind of exporting him. And he could feel the pressure of it not being just, "Hey, Franklin, let's go get some clothes. You could stay with us." You know, there was just a little bit more to it than that. And that was transferred back to the Hive mentality. And they said, "These people are dangerous, and they need to be taken out." And then after that, you went and visited Benjamin, which was going to be another link in your trip. You weren't giving enough. It wasn't just like, "Oh, that guy exploded into bees. We don't care." But we're going to go back to our lives. You went back and you kept on investigating. And they had, because of Meredith being Benjamin's daughter, they always had eyes on Benjamin's place. So when you pulled up the Benjamin's and did your first hit and then your second hit, you were actually followed. Because you had changed places at that point. You were no longer at the first high out, the safe house. You were at the second safe house, which is why they followed you the second time, and they didn't follow you the first time. So it was a hit to take you all out when you were all nice and secure in one place, and they could wipe you all off with the exception of Lucius who was outside of the area at that time. But they were hoping that he would come back and finish him off. They could trail him to where they needed to. So that was the idea. And then they had men there to make sure you couldn't escape. You would suffocate and you would die because they put people out there to shoot at you if you tried to escape. So they didn't want to do any of that. They didn't want you to die in your sleep like the nice werewolves did. But you would have all died in your sleep like the nice werewolves did. It had been a very short story. But for Side Street Billy coming and smashing a window. Who saw him? Was that you? For you? Somebody saw Side Street Billy leaving the alley when he... You were the first one to a window. I was just listening to the podcast. I think somebody was the first one to the window. It wasn't me. I wasn't even bothered with me. I think it might have been Bob actually who saw him because he was the other side of the building. Two more questions. Let me just finish the thought. So that originally led to the idea that Billy was trying to suffocate you and kill you. Which went back to his people dying like that. But then someone was like no. It was really great. It was great as a storyteller because you were like no. I think he was trying to save us. I think he could have tried to attack us or could have done something. He smashed the window to save us and warn us and wake us up. That's what he was doing. Then there was a battle in the alley and he got to, like Side Street Billy ran away. The two security guards who were in the back alley followed him. Then saw you trying to escape and went back and attacked you. Well he didn't leave. He just went into the darkness, hid, and went into werewolf form. Not knowing what was going to happen. Trying to see if he was going to need to help you guys or whether it was going to be okay. Then he saw Ryan's character, John Beemer, with the claws. Just come out with the werewolf claws and just start slicing people up. At that point he was very confused because he thought you guys might be the good guys. But he also saw Ryan's character get injured during the fight. So then once everybody cleared away and all they would tramp down the crime scene and everything had happened. He went up and he licked some of the blood that Ryan had dropped on the scene. And werewolves have lots of different powers. One you could have is the ability to track sense of somebody whose blood you've tasted. So he licked up the blood, boom, be lying to the second safe house. Which then opened up the second safe house to being really quickly hit. And he was just waiting for you guys to leave and to have a chance to get John Beemer alone because he knew he was wounded. And then he killed him in the second safe house. So it wasn't anyone else that had compromised. Your safe house wasn't compromised at all except for Side Street Billy. He was the one who compromised that was the only one. But then he decided to move to the third one and that one wasn't compromised until Jay left his sniper rifle in the bell tower. At that point it wasn't compromised but you'd lost your invitation to stay. So I'm sorry Mike you had two more questions. Two of the questions, the wine in Henry Jacob's house, the fruit wine or whatever it was. Yeah just going for the bee thing. Okay, being angled you know like the only stuff in this thing needed was to drink sweet wine. That's a bit figured. And then and if you can't tell us I understand but with Benjamin. I don't quite understand. I don't quite understand how I got the idol. It's been bugging me this whole time thinking that okay is he playing some kind of weird game where you know he can't be. He can't be the direct competitor of Meredith because of his relationship or whatever. But you know the fact is I got out of that backyard of his with an artifact of power that ended up destroying Meredith. So like did the spirit of Cleveland arrange for me to get that without his knowledge or did Benjamin let that happen. And because I would do his dirty work for him. Because Benjamin is a player in the city currently is going to continue to be a player in the story line. I'm not going to give away the end result to it. But rest assured that the reason you got that idol at that moment and why Bob's character Chu was offered the answer at that moment is definitely part of the plot. It wasn't something I made up on the fly. It was something that really went into the deepness of what's going to happen now and further on in the story line. So it makes perfect sense when you find it out but I don't want to give it away at this point. Can you explain why Henry was not appearing to be part of the hive yet he was part of the hive. And why he so easily got poofed into being this one. Like we had to beat the crap out of the other two guards who had bees in the hive. I can give I can give some basic answers without giving a really firm answer to that. And I'll give you some gray answers to that. The bees had several levels of being a bee. This bee host situation there was a couple different levels of strength net. And he was a certain level males were relegated to a certain level much like in a beehive. There was a whole bee investigation angle that was never picked up. There's nothing wrong with that. It was in Michael's Aegis Caideru archives which he never specifically went and did research regarding the bee hosts. You didn't know there were bee hosts he didn't really know they were at first. But once he got the name later on in the adventure there was a way to find out and answer that question. So the general idea is there were different levels of being a bee. The males were relegated to one level then the females could be a couple different levels and there was the queen bee. And that's how he was different and it would have made more sense had you pursued that avenue but it just wasn't an avenue that was pursued. And so if that's it and certainly other people can ask questions if they want but if that's it. When we start up this story again there's going to be a couple things that are going to happen. Obviously Tammy has some information for you that she got from Meredith the queen bee. So she has something to tell you that she was meeting you underneath the terminal tower. But when you guys duped her into leaving the quote unquote hive. That's really going to exchange some information. There's going to be a depth exchange of information there. And that information. Yes. Possibly. Potentially. And doesn't Winston take me to move in and assume control of the property here. Right. There'll be information of what happened to the beehive. You know vitamin B. Our fourth safe house? Safe house. Yeah. You're what back to the second safe house. That's where you're at right now. You will also have to make when you start the next story line there's going to be some morality and some derangement roles. Based on your last experience in vitamin B's headquarters. Yeah. Which we didn't play out but that's okay. We can start the next story off with that to see if anything is brought back. Not necessarily. There was certainly. To deal with an alien looking queen thing. Yeah. There's that for just the freakiness side of it. Now you might be protected because most of that you were under. I don't remember. A spiritual right exactly. So if people were listening going but what about the derangement roles? What about the morality checks? What about the end? That'll all come to fruition because this is a continuing story. And the next story. So I think that that's a wrap for shitlock. So thanks for participating. One more question. I guess I don't quite understand the title shitlock as it applies to everything it went through. The first time we met the salesman. Salesman he said he had. Henry has better than shitlock. It's a must. I'm going to give a little bit more away than what Jim was asking for before. To answer that question because that's a big question. Why was it named shitlock? Henry was not only in the hive. He had a ritual cast on him by Benjamin. Which many of you intimated and thought was something that was kicked around quite a bit. Early on in the story and even later on in the story. Which gave him shitlock. When Tony tackled and thereby ended the existence of Henry into a swirl of bees. Tony developed shitlock. Now I didn't spell it out for him. But I was giving him higher minuses on many of the minuses that I was giving. And I made his disarming of the bomb exceedingly difficult. More difficult than I would have had you not been underneath the power of shitlock. So as you were laying there in a coma trying to recover. One of the reasons you weren't recovering was this horrible luck that you had. And had you died with the doctor hands inside of you. Lucius would have picked up the shitlock and carried it with him. So it was actually something that was being carried on which people didn't really know. They just were having really crappy luck. Tony had incredibly bad luck after he tackled Henry. And had you not been kind of taken out halfway through the story and her being brought in. That actual theme would have carried on through the story. But it ended up not because Tony was relegated to the sidelines for the story. But I tried to, I mean he had to roll a flipping exceptional success to save your life. Not once, but three times. Once in the basement, once in the hospital, the first time in the hospital, then the second time in the hospital when he crashed a second time. Three exceptional successes to my recollection. And people can correct me if I'm wrong there. But I believe it was three exceptional successes where you should have died. And then that bad luck should have transferred to Lucius. But luckily for Lucius, but unluckily for Tony, that stayed on. So that kind of goes back into why wasn't the healing working on him and what his future holds. He's got a very iffy future at this point. Depending on how well the people at Task Force Iron can figure out what's really wrong with him and get that spell, that hex, if you will, off of him. So that hopefully explains what the story was called, "Shit Luck". And why Tony just couldn't catch a break after he tackled Henry. [Music] Thanks for listening to the Knights of the Night 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 forum 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. [Music] All music for this podcast was created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcast or business, please visit ZenAudioSmith.com and please join us next episode for more mystery and adventure. [Music] [Applause] Just right.