RPGaDay 2023 # 29

MOST MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER

This is my 29th post for RPGaDay 2023, if you’re not sure what that is you can find Autocratik’s blog post about it by clicking here.

Basically a list of prompts is provided to generate discussion around RPG topics, with creators making a blog post, video or podcast each day during the month of August, the list of prompts is included below:

Most memorable ENCOUNTER

This is a really difficult one for me to answer since there are so many enjoyable and memorable encounters in the games I play in and that I run, and when I run or play games I tend to focus on the games I’m playing at the present so I’m going to stretch the definition and talk a little about a recent session of the Tapestry of the Void campaign of Stars without Number that Johanne’s in running for us at the moment. We decided to go with a more magic-based campaign for this season and so we’re all playing varieties of space-wizard from the the Codex of the Black Sun.

Our current crew consists of:

• Drake Ryscandor (my character): Member of the Order of the Blue Dawn, who is a Sunblade Warrior, essentially a Jedi with the serial numbers filed off.

• Lorn Ordres (played by Darren): A man of noble descent who is the face and diplomatic expert of the group, he plays a free nexus who is the ultimate support character and is capable of binding the group together with his psychic powers.

• Lucien Mondoe (played by Mathew): A God Hunter who was raised in an order who hunt Demons/Metaphysical Entities and is capable of manifesting a supernatural weapon from his very psyche.

• Lt. Falcon Dituri (played by Rob): A military man who oversees the group and is a War Mage, having more traditional spell-like powers, his Commando-evocation and floating platform have been the MVPs of a number of sessions.

The session in question, we found ourselves extremely short of cash to perform necessary maintenance on our ship which we had basically been running into the ground since the start of the campaign, luckily we were on the world of New Alexandria where we had allies. Our contact Ves managed to hook us up with a lucrative job for a local crime boss who was sympathetic to the goals of the groups we have hooked up with, those goals being to open/awaken a number of psychic power sources known as Manifolds, with the belief that doing so would restore a pre-Scream Golden Age to the area of space known as the Meridian.

The job was to inflitrate a swanky hotel to steal a data column from a rich hacker who the mob boss wanted to get leverage over; my character had just had cybernetic implants where he can project an imperfect hologram of anyone he has studied over himself as a form of camouflage. We came up with a plan where we’d pose as maintenance people in the hotel (via a contact Lorn had made with his abilities), I would then impersonate our quarry to get a replacement door key for the executive suite, we would then use a small robot in the air-con system to push knock-out gas into the suite, burst in, steal the data-column and beat feet back to our ATV that we had parked in the hotel’s underground car park.

The reason this was so memorable is because the stars seemed to align as we put our plan into motion and—aside from one relatively inconsequential roll at the start of the game—our dice were on fire and we pretty much succeeded at every point where things could have gone wrong (or were quickly able to deal with any minor issues). We eneded up breaking into the suite, all of the targets friends were knocked out and he was on the balcony, disguised as the target I was able to knock him out and stash him away before walking out—in my disguise—with the other two carrying the data column. Posing as the target—who was known to enjoy a somewhat debauched lifestyle—we loaded the goods onto the van and implied to the night watchman that I was going out to enjoy the nightlife, even dropping a mention that last time I’d celebrated too hard I’d woken up in a wardrobe with no memory of how I’d got there, referring back to the fact I’d stashed the actual target in a wardrobe in his suite.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a session where a plan went so perfectly, with the dice roll and all of our character’s abilities synching up so well with our plan, and we even collected a bonus from the mob boss for not raising any sort of alarm.

Definitely a memorable session and we were all chuffed with ourselves.