Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Gaming with Baby: Christmas Edition

Well it has been a bit since I posted about my son and a lot has happened in the past three months. First let's cover the site stuff.

Blogging News

So I've managed to stay on top of my actual plays from my Apocalypse World game, the Climbers, and keep up with my weekly Monday and Wednesday posts. In part I've been helped by the 6 weeks of game material for A Plague of Spiders I presented over November. But now that it is over, I'm just treading water.

So starting in the new year I'll be switching to presenting Wednesday articles alternating weeks, at least until my actual play game concludes in May or June (the write up will take several more months to finishing posting).

In the meantime, I've started a new season of Myriad Plots, a podcast I did with my wife in the early days of the NOOP. Now with a new co-host (Mike) and as a vlog, we'll be posting it to YouTube the 2nd and 4th weeks of each month. Expect a lot of advice, ideas, and reviews.

I'll be continuing my Monday posts based on the game pitches I posted in August through October this year. I received a lot of nice feedback from those posts and I tallied the interest in each one. The most popular pitches will get several weeks of expanded material. Right now I'm a bit over a third of the way through posting material for You Can't Go Home Again, a Changeling: the Lost chronicle. In February I plan to start a cycle on The Undeath of History.

Where does the Baby Come in?

Sebastian the Christmas Edition
Sebastian the Christmas Edition
It has been an exciting few months for my son. He's had three plane trips, having visited North Carolina, Denver, and New York. He travels well as long we let him look around. He hates being constrained which might be an issue when he gets bigger.

On that subject my son continues to grow but he's still a tiny baby, weighing somewhere south of the 1st percentile. He's had a lot of trouble sleeping lately, something we hope to help him get used to soon. Now six months old, Sebastian is rolling over, enjoying tummy time more, sitting up for many minutes unsupported, passing items back and forth between his hands, and slowly gaining weight. We recently started introducing solid foods and it is mostly working out. He tolerates sweet potatoes but isn't a fan of bananas.

Next month is the big change. We move from grandparent daycare to the nearby Montessori school. It's a cash pinch but should work out. A least the walk to the school and back should help with my New Year resolution to lose some weight.

Gaming Update

Not as much change here as I might have hoped or feared.

The Online Game (The Climbers)

Still going strong with our 10th session coming this weekend. The replacement player for Mike is working out well and the game just keeps getting better with a fuller richer world. We have some scheduling issues but nothing I can't work past. Perhaps I'll write a blog about dealing with perennially late players at some point on that subject.

Games at Our House (board games)

This is slowly changing into something more roleplaying focused. Maybe. I've been busy promoting the board games with significant choking hazards so I can get them in before Sebastian begins to crawl. It will be several years before we break them out again. For the past few weeks we've played Microscope, detailing a super hero timeline. It was a lot of fun. I still haven't formally brought up the idea of me running another game yet. Maybe soon.

A second Online Game (Apocalypse World: Dark Ages)

We started playing a beta version of Apocalypse World: Dark Ages, Vincent Baker's new game. We ended up with only three players after the fourth discovered he did not have as much free time as he thought. We co-MCed a few sessions before things fell apart. I'm still not sure what happened with one of the players. I know the short sessions and holidays did not help me keep up momentum.

The Future

This upcoming year I will be producing the Myriad Plots vlog, creating more game material for Changeling and GUMSHOE, posting more actual plays, and the usual round of musings and reviews. I'm also hoping to work on some larger projects and most importantly of all, going to GenCon 2015!! It's been almost 4 years but I'm looking forward to seeing some of the rest of the gang there as well as some old friends. Here's to hoping 2015 is even better than 2014.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Rosebriar: Edgewood Asylum

This week I present another district in my setting for You Can't Go Home Again. To the southwest of Rosebriar sits a compound storied in horrors: the Edgewood Mental Health Facility.

Rosebriar: Edgewood Asylum

Tell me, why don't you feel like you are human?
Edgewood

Description

Atop a rocky hill on the outskirts of Bishopsgate sits a collection of large blocky structures. Once known as Bishopsgate Asylum, the new owners renamed this relic Edgewood in 2006.

With the catchphrase "Modern care with a humane touch", it singularly failed both as a money-making venture and as a treatment facility. Rumors of strange disappearances and unethical practices dodged the facility long before the current owners, the Pleseus Guild, took over. But since then things have gotten much much worse.

The latest audit reveals 54 patients and 8 members of the staff to be fictitious, possibly created to embezzle funds from the state and the Pleseus Guild. The director suffered a psychotic break once discovered. No one knows where the money went though some might have been spent on the new wing, still incomplete. Local construction workers claim to be unpaid however.

Job uncertainty, frozen salaries, and "the Edgewood stain" have depleted the supply of doctors willing to work there. Hollowed out, the staff struggles to manage the remaining patients. Vacant offices remain cluttered with boxes of poorly packed files as doctors and nurses leave for greener pastures or are fired as they become caught in the scandal.

The few who remain complain of echoing halls, strange noises in the night, and a feeling of being watched. But that might just be the monthly state inspections.

Local Hedge

Edgewood's Hedge twists in upon itself. Tight earthen tunnels give way to drywall lined with shards of mirror and stained padding. From there you encounter dense greenery before descending back into the earth. Throughout, Changelings encounter stretches of white halls that loop endlessly.

Efforts to navigate out of the local Hedge suffer a -2 penalty. A useful source of Glamour however can be found in the slivers of mirror that grow like icicles from the walls and overhangs of the hospital's Hedge. A six-inch dagger, ground up and ingested, restores 1 Glamour.

Damnation City Stats:

Physical: Access -3, Safety -1
Mental: Information -2, Awareness -2
Social: Prestige -4, Stability 1

Despite a rumors of escapees, Edgewood remains difficult to enter or exit. Thick doors and electronic locks however fail to stop the predation of abusive nurses or the occasional patient. With finances short, out of date magazines comprise most of the hospital's poorly sorted library. Meanwhile the patients and staff actively try to ignore anything strange, haunted by memories of "fictional" patients. With all that has happened anyone who works here does it to help others and not to improve their resume.

Vice: Denial. The staff and patients want to forget the past. Their own trauma, that of those they associate with or treat, and the hospital's own unnatural past.

Virtue: Solace. Despite appearances the staff are here to help. Even the patients are for the most part focused on trying to reclaim their lives. Edgewood could become a refuge from the darkness in the right hands.

Site: Steam Tunnels

Beneath the facility a network of tunnels thread through the stony earth. Designed to carry steam in the early days of the hospital, these passages have been virtually forgotten. Extending beyond the bounds of Edgewood, they could in theory be used to escape the hospital or gain entrance to it.

Those who enter find something darker though. Shadows crowd in on light sources and a peculiar chill fills the air. Intruders eventually encounter a large chamber with a floor stained black with an oily residue.

Something horrible happened here. Something impossible.

A True Fae died.

Changelings entering this room smell the stench of death through the Mask. Those who look hard enough (and succeed on an Intelligence + Occult roll) find another way out of the hospital: the Underworld. By spending a Glamour, the earth opens up before them and they can descend into the realm of ghosts. This is also the most likely place for them to exit the Underworld within Rosebriar. Other likely exits include Bishopsgate cemetery, a foundry in the Works abandoned since the 70s, and the basement of a rotting house in Old Town.

If you have Book of the Dead, this would be an excellent place to learn the Death clause (p. 65). Anyone entering via this gateway gains a +2 bonus to discover the clause.

Story Seeds

Locked Up: With their suspicious behavior and potentially stolen identity, Changelings can easily find themselves committed to Edgewood for psychiatric evaluation and/or treatment. Those sent here suffer a loss of freedom and control over their life and should expect to make many Breaking Point rolls (or Isolation and Helplessness tests if using Madness Meters). Can they convince the doctors they are sane or do they make a break for it? While navigating through the Hedge presents challenges but the real obstacle is what to do once you are out. People (specifically police) will be looking for you. On the other hand perhaps the doctors really can help you?

Old Secrets: The true history of Edgewood is bound up with a magical artifact, a murder, and a taint neither mortal nor fae.

In a timeline that never was five brave Changelings assembled a magic mirror with power over dreams. They used it to slay one of their Keepers. Then another fae rewrote history and that never happened. But the mirror, an artifact of Arcadia, remained and reflected a horror not of our world: the legacy of Charles Teesdale.

In the early days of the asylum, Charles Teesdale was one of its more damaged residents. A cosmic revelation blew this writer's mind open. Charles claimed he saw the world as it truly was, a realm of thorns and magic, trapped in a weave of destiny forged by usurper gods. At least he did until disease and beatings reduced him to a shuffling wreck. He spent the last half of his life wandering the halls and grounds in an endless spiral.

A couple of his incomplete manuscripts remain lost in the asylum archives. They describe a twisted mirror of this world filled with goblins and horrific beings who revere the protagonist as a monarch. Though he died in one winter day in 1898, his legacy remains. Charles was a Mage and through his madness he reached into the Abyss. The Abyss spawned a realm that reflected his nightmares, a realm accessed by tracing Charles's steps.

After his death the realm lay undiscovered for decades until an inmate named Sarah Lindell came across some of his works. After reading his rantings, she used the knowledge of the path to "escape". There she became the realms new lord until the power of the mirror intruded. The mirror expanded the realm, overlaying it with the hospital grounds. This enmeshed others in the dangerous place, one of whom deposed her and took on its mantle himself. Over the years the realm began to extend into Rosebriar itself until a second group of Changelings shattered the mirror and removed its power.

But the twisted world remains, diminished but accessible to those who know its secret.

Mechanically it is an Abyssal intrusion, a Twisting Maze from the Mage: the Awakening book Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss. As an emanation of the Abyss, escape is not as simple as opening a door, even for a Changeling. Someone trapped inside must retrace their steps to find the exit.

Those inside the realm discover a nightmarish version of the asylum, a mishmash of modern and Victorian era medical science. Scattered scrawls on the walls hint at the truth. Some are simple scratches, others are written in pen, excrement or blood. A few appear on fogged glass or street graffiti. Messages they might find include:
“The words of Teesdale set us free”
“Staff are not allowed out of their cells at night”
"Beware the gnomes. Don’t blink!”
“Crows stole my eyes, now I can see”

An extended Intelligence + Wits (at a -2 penalty, each roll taking an hour) at the asylum library will turn up Teesdale's lost manuscripts. Faded manila folders filled with even more yellow papers tell a disturbing tales in an elegant but manic script. Amid stories of a world ruled by the insane where normal people are caged and tortured, an investigator finds a number of clues:

1 to 3 successes: In the tale of The Wandering Fool one can puzzle out the realm’s entrance. The fool suffers a number of adventures and misfortunes, ending with him entering a realm of thorns via a particular door on the ground floor of the East Wing.
4 to 6 successes: In the tale of The Lost Child one learns how those who enter the realm find their dark reflection of themselves. In the story the child is killed by her reflection and it escapes into the world of light.
7+ successes: In the Reborn Doorway, one learns of the destruction of a door. It ends when the man who destroyed it dreams a new door.
Modifiers: +1 if suffering a derangement, +1 for Empathy 3 or more

NPCs

Former Director Deneen M. Puls ran Edgewood for the Pleseus Guild with an eye on the bottom line. Now a patient there while under indictment for embezzling, this determined woman lives in a strange dreamland. Believing the scandal never happened, she is continually surprised that she is no longer in charge. Though polite about the misunderstanding, her patience invariably breaks and this short woman breaks out into litany of threats and cursing.

Disliked before the scandal broke now no one wants to deal with her. The new director hopes to transfer her soon. But this raven haired woman recalls what really happened at the facility, including the descriptions of those who escaped Edgewood in the past and those who broke the curse.

The Abduction Trauma and Identity Distortion Help Group (a.k.a. the Deniers)

The group of patients gathers each Monday evening at 9 to discuss their problems and try to help each other overcome a common set of delusions. Each member believes they were abducted by some sort of monster, abused, and transformed into monsters themselves. Several also believe that someone in the region has stolen their identity. Dr. Evelyn Espejo leads this therapy help group in overcoming this endemic psychosis. They assert that to each other that they are human and that though they may have suffered a traumatic event, they can overcome their hallucinations.

However most of them are Changelings.

Other Changelings refer to the group as the Deniers and mock their detachment from 'reality'. But perhaps there is something to what these fae say. Members have been known to maintain a strengthened Mask for months, disbelieve (and ignore) Contracts, and even convince others of their beliefs so well that their audience temporarily loses the ability to see past the Mask.

New Merit: The Five Steps

Each level of this merit grants a new ability and each step must be taken in order. Additionally each step has a requirement. If a Changeling no longer meets that requirement (perhaps due to Clarity loss), they lose that Merit dots. Lost Merit dots can be reassigned. Prerequisites are given for Stress Meters or Clarity systems.

This is very much in Alpha stage.

I am Human (Dot 1): Prerequisite: Unnatural Stress Hardened 7 or less or Making obvious displays of magic in front of witnesses is now a Clarity 3 Breaking Point.

You can now maintain a strengthened Mask indefinitely at no cost.

I don't believe in Fairies (Dot 2): Prerequisite: Unnatural Stress Hardened 5 or less or interacting with Changeling society (such being a member of a Court or gaining an Entitlement) is now a Clarity 4 Breaking Point.

You gain a +2 bonus to resist Contracts. For Contracts that lack a resistance roll you instead inflict a -2 penalty to the user's roll.

I know who I am (Dot 3): Prerequisite: Unnatural Stress Hardened 4 or less or Killing a Fetch or Changeling is now a Clarity 2 Breaking Point.

If you possess a fetch they can no longer enter your dreams or recognize you as their double. You gain a +3 bonus to Social rolls to convince other fae that you are a mortal.

Magic isn't real (Dot 4): Prerequisite: Unnatural Stress Hardened 3 or less or using Tokens or other mystical items is now a Clarity 2 Breaking Point.

You gain a bonus equal to your Resolve to resist magic and subtract Resolve from any roll to used magic on you. This stacks with I don't believe in Fairies.

That was all a bad dream (Dot 5): Prerequisite: Unnatural Stress Hardened 1 or less or any use of magic, dreams or the Hedge is now a Clarity 1 Breaking Point.

By making a Manipulation + Expression roll resisted by the target's Resolve + Wyrd you remove the ability of a Changeling see past the Mask or invoke Contracts for a Scene. This includes the ability to see one's own fae form.

Friday, December 26, 2014

The Climbers Recap: Dustwich, Part II

creepersbanner
This week we return to my continuing Apocalypse World game, the Climbers. Gator, November, and Violet continue to their planned ambush and assassination of Dustwich. Jarhead meanwhile toils on Dustwich's device.

For this campaign my major intention is to follow the development of a single Apocalypse World setting and set of characters over the course 20+ sessions. I want to see how the world fills in with terminology, history, and peoples.

As in my earlier actual play reports, small green text indicates out of character talk, mechanics and other game aspects outside of the fiction.

Our main characters are:
  • Gator (the Gunlugger) is an assassin and part-time bodyguard who wears customized scrounged armor made from Kevlar and ceramic inserts. Camouflaged for the jungle, his face was ruined in a fight with an alligator. His eyes are always sizing things up and his brutal life has left his body a hard sheet of muscle.
  • Jarhead (the Savvyhead) is a thing African-American man with a short goatee, long dreads, and clothes covered in pockets and gear. Travelling around in a old news van, he repairs items for a living. Recently he was captured and forced to work on a strange device for a man named Dustwich. Essentially he is now a slave.
  • November Orleans (the Skinner) is descended from a family which left New Orleans before it sank. She is a beautiful woman of mixed heritage with dark eyes and skin, a sweet face and lush body. She dresses herself in a mix of scavenged clothing that somehow works together and wears a necklace made from rows of antique coins which jingle and shine as she moves. Her main profession is as a dancer, especially belly dancing, but she has a sideline business in cooking.
  • Violet Jefferson (the Touchstone) is descended by survivalists and her clothing and gear reflects her origins. Plain looking but fit, she carries a pocket copy of the Federalist papers and founding documents of the United States of America, an idea she hopes to revive. She was in Stumpland to spend the summer with her Aunt Julia and Uncle Buck. Now her uncle is dead and she is moving on.
The current stat highlighting is:
  • November has Weird and Cool.
  • Violet has Hard and Sharp.
  • Jarhead has Sharp and Weird
  • Gator has Hard and Sharp.
Finally Violet blew her Fortunes roll and so her followers are judgmental, diseased and deserting her.

Killing Dustwich

We left off with the crew at Gunge’s hut. Gunge is dead, a victim of the climbers. Jarhead meanwhile is a prisoner of Dustwich and is focused on figuring out how the strange device Dustwich gave him works.

Standing under the camo netting of Gunge’s hut, Gator, November and Violet discuss their next step. Gunge’s map details the coast and some possible structures along it. From their experience that part of the wetlands should be fairly flat, a good spot for sniping.

November and Violet set fire to Gunge’s to destroy the spores while Gator picks out a marked spot on the map. He has no idea what’s there but they will soon find out.

Then we cut back to Jarhead.

The inhabitants of Cottage huddle in the dark while Jarhead puzzles over the device.

From his earlier experiment Jarhead realizes he needs a stable power source. “Where could I get one?” he asks.

”There are none around here. You could build one though. It would need to be something like a big generator or a power plant.”

”And a power plant would be at?”

”You don’t know. Epcot maybe?”


Setting down a voltmeter, he gets up. The guard outside slumps against the wall, half asleep. “Get me Dustwich,” he tells him. He jerks awake and fearfully wanders into the darkness.

A few minutes later his well dressed “employer” enters the workshop.

“This is going to need 240 volts at 40 amps of current,” he says handing Dustwich a list. “To build a generator I’ll need these items. I could either build this or we could all relocate to Epcot Center. It has the best power source around.”

I decide the generator will take a few days and shit ton of jingle in parts for him to build.

“I’m not going back to that place,” Dustwich says defensively.

“Well they used to call it happy, the happiest place,” Jarhead says. Dustwich continues to frown. “Okay so then option B, the more fun option to me.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Cut back to the others after a bit of baby crying and soothing.

The airboat cuts across the swamp, leaving behind the flames and smoke of Gunge’s hut. Up ahead, two buildings stand out in the moonlight. A tall ruined hotel and a shorter squatter structure beside it.

As they close, they see the ocean waves battering at the far side of the crumbling edifices. A raised road winds its way down the coast, cutting them off from the buildings. But even now the tide is coming in, slowly submerging the coastal route.

November rolls Lost. She gets a hard hit and earns experience. She also earns an advancement and gets +1 sharp. Dustwich will come.

Gator meanwhile contemplates the improvement he just earned. He chooses Easy to trust.

“It could be helpful,” I tell him. “You have not been a very personable person.”


They tie the boat to a patch of trees near the road. Gator walks over to the buildings alone. He only glances at the hotel for a moment, settling on the smaller building for his sniper’s nest. A rusted sign advertises that this was once a gas station.

He enters the decaying interior. Useless junk litters the floor. A big rusty generator catches his eye for a moment. It is too big for him to move himself but could be worth something. Checking the map, he realizes the symbol for this spot is a poorly written G. He notes it mentally and heads upstairs.

We cut back.

Jarhead puts the device down on a stand. He turns off the LEDs in his workshop one by one. As he makes for the rough bed of thatch, his guard Farley walks in.

“Pack up. Boss says we are moving on.”

“Wait, we are moving?” he ask. “I thought we were going to build it not move to it.”

”He says he knows where we can get a generator.”

“Oh,” he says dropping his head. “All right.”

a few minutes later Jarhead quickly packs up the van in the cool night air. As he loads the last of the machining tools, Dustwich walks up to him. He takes the device from him and places it in his jacket pocket.

“But,” the technician protests.

“You can have it after we talk to these salvagers,” he says before leaving.

“Salvagers? Okay,” Jarhead says.

A few minutes later Jarhead finishes packing. Dustwich’s driver brings the jeep around and two of the strongest warriors in Cottage get on board along with Dustwich.

Several others, including Farley, climb into Jarhead’s van. The technician gets into the driver seat and turns to them, “Don’t break anything. Don’t touch that. Or that. Or that.”

Then he starts the van and follows the jeep into the night.

Back to the ambush.

Gator settles into position. Deep cracks expose rusted steel in the concrete walls beside him. His eye to the scope, he scans the road and inland swamp. The worn structure shivers with every crashing wave.

A pair of headlights flash across the road to the north. Gator watches as a bright yellow SUV pushes through the low waves engulfing the street, racing the tide.

November Opens her brain to them. She gets a 9.

From their hideout amid a clump of mangroves, Violet and November also watch the new arrivals. The gentle lapping of wave hypnotizes November’s senses as she reaches out with her thoughts. The yellow paint and sharp lights jump out at her against the dim glow of the stars above and greenery about her. Her mind smells the fresh paint, the careful repairs, the hard work that went into it.

My question to November is “What counts as civilization to you? Is it just art? Or does technology or law count?”

”Civilization is enough order that people can take time out to appreciate beauty.”


The truck pulls up in front of the old gas station. Two men disembark along with a woman and small child. None of them are Dustwich.

Cautiously they enter the building. Gator hears them moving around below from his hideout. They don’t explore upstairs.

He settles in for a long wait.

I have Gator roll Acting under fire to hide. He gets an 8 and I say he remains hidden but the awkward position will give him -1 forward from stiffness. He sucks it up.

We cut back to Jarhead.


Hours later the sun rises over the sparsely forested swamp. The tide recedes, revealing crumbling asphalt littered with horseshoe crabs. A pair of vehicles race up the road toward a pair of ruined structures on the edge of the sea.

Jarhead yawns, following the red tail lights of the jeep ahead of him. With a sickening crunch the smaller automotive crushes one of the arthropods.

As he swerves around the mess, the tinkerer spies one of the tribesmen of Cottage poking at his electronics in the rearview mirror.

“You see that copper wire there,” he calls back. “You should touch it. Trust me. Nothing bad will happen.”

The bark clad warrior squints at him and touches the wire.

“Agh!” he cries, grasping his finger.

“Now quit poking things,” Jarhead says.

The man frowns and snatches up the device. Jarhead hits the brakes hard. Everyone slams forward. Jarhead adjusts his seatbelt while the primitives shake off the shock.

No one else was wearing a seatbelt.

“Safety first,” he says.


From his perch, Gator spies the approaching vehicles. One, a van covered in solar panels, skids to halt suddenly.

The other is a jeep, Dustwich’s jeep.

Gator looks closer at the van. The side is covered with the logo of News 12.

“Ah great,” the assassin says, frowning with recognition.

The jeep slows to a stop. A blonde man with a headdress of leaves sticks his head out.

“What’s the hold up?” he shouts.

”No problem,” Jarhead calls back. He turns to the others in the van. “Put it back.”

Jarhead says he’s intimidating him.

Are you threatening to hurt him or convincing him?

We settle he isn't promising violence, not really. Jarhead rolls Manipulate a person with the leverage of no more sudden stops. He gets a 7.


“Fine but I get that seat,” the angry thug says, pointing to the passenger side seat, the one with a seatbelt. The man in the seat widens his eyes.

“How about you get it on the way back?” Jarhead suggests. “It looks like we are already there.”

Jarhead starts the van again and follows the jeep to the shorter of the two structures. He relaxes his grip on the wheel as he spots a familiar yellow SUV parked outside.

Boo and his clan are pretty trustworthy as scavengers go, he thinks to himself. He pulls up beside it and the jeep.

A low hum emerges from the jeep, a moment before Dustwich steps out. A gentle green glow envelopes him.

Jarhead leans out of the van. “Is this it? Is this where the generator is?”

“That’s what they say,” Dustwich says, shifting the device to a more comfortable position in his pocket. The warriors from Cottage slowly assemble around him.

Gator chooses to Read a sitch. He rolls with the -1 forward and gets 6.

Gator stretches slightly to get a better view of situation. The wall beside him groans and cracks, sliding away to the ground below. Everyone’s attention is drawn to the thunderous crash.

Basically everyone within a half mile probably heard this.

Exposed Gator fires at Dustwich and ducks behind a broken chunk of wall.

Gator rolls Seize by force and gets a hard hit. He inflicts terrible harm, scares those below and suffers little harm. Dustwich thus takes 3-harm from the rifle +1 for terrible harm +1 blood crazed. His device provides 1-armor (which works against the ap ammo) due to the device. So he is dying.

The sniper round hits Dustwich in the gut, shattering his spine and cracking out of his back. The man falls back into the jeep, gasping in agony.

Or as Jarhead says, ”the device is okay!”

Several of the men around Dustwich break and run. A few fire back with their ancient guns, pock-marking the concrete around Gator.

So half of the gang flees. The rest (who I choose not to run as a gang) deal 2-harm from the 9mms -1 for little harm and -2 from his armor. He’s fine.

With bullets flying fast in the air, Jarhead ducks behind his van alongside two of the leaf clad warriors.

“It’s the best cover for miles around,” I point out.

I turn to Violet and November. What do you do?

Violet Reads a sitch.

“It can only make things worse,” I say cheerfully.

November chooses to wait and see what happens. Violet earns experience and gets a 10.

“I look forward to answering in disturbing ways.”

”Which enemy is the biggest threat?” she asks.

”Dustwich.”

”Still?” Gator says.

”He’s still the biggest threat.”

”Oh no,” he says.

”What should I be on the look out for?” Violet asks.


Violet scans the battlefield from the relative safety of the swamp. She watches as Dustwich goes down and his gang begins to disintegrate.

Then the weird glow pulses about the dying man. Dustwich reverses his writhing. His blood flows back into him. Faster and faster he rewinds until a split-second later he is standing back up, whole and unharmed. Gator’s bullet bounces away from him.

Note this comes from a custom move of the device. It has limits. This used up much of its charge.

Dustwich’s resurrection is predictably followed by exclamations of dismay from the group.

Mostly.


”That was cool!” Jarhead mutters to himself, peering from behind the headlight of his van.

”Which enemy is most vulnerable to me?” she asks.

His goons are squishy. “They are not even wearing real armor. It looks like it’s made of twigs and bark. They would be easy pickings.”


Violets gasps and hunkers down in the airboat. November slips away into the brush.

What does Gator do?

“I’m going to fucking shoot him again.”


Gator curses from his nest. He pops the spent shell casing and draws a bead on the Dustwich. He aims higher this time, for the heart. He fires.

”Is the device over the heart?” Jarhead asks.

“Yes,” Gator and I say in unison.

Another Seize by force roll and another hard hit. He takes definite hold (i.e. Dustwich stays dead), little harm, and deals terrible harm.


The bullet strikes with a flash of fire as the depleted uranium round digs into something metallic. Dustwich’s ribs cave and shatter. The would-be warlord crumples again, spitting up blood.

The aurora about him collapses into a wild arc of electricity. The bolt flies in Gator’s direction, striking him with a mixture of pain and mental incoherence. His fingers go numb for a second and his sniper rifle tumbles from his useless hands down to the rocky street below.

Waste not want not. With Dustwich dead, I unleash the last of the charge to deal 1-harm ap plus psi-harm. Gator rolls a soft hit on his psi-harm roll so I choose to have him lose something: his sniper rifle.

November is partly responsible for suggesting this next bit.


Jarhead runs from cover, shouting, “No!”

He dives for Dustwich, digging into his wound. With a triumphant grin he pulls free the now broken device. Beside him, Dustwich chokes out some unheard whispers. Then he dies.

Jarhead examines the wreckage. While the controls remain intact, Gator’s bullet punched a hole in one side of the sphere before settling into the core. Only something denser than lead would cause such damage.

“It had to be a special bullet didn't it!” Jarhead says.

Violet watches as the three remaining warriors take cover behind the jeep. They fire wildly at the sniper, ignoring the technician and their former employer on the ground behind them.

Gator, What do you want to do about them?

“I’m not here for you!” Gator shouts from his hideout. ”You walk and leave. I’m done.”

Gator rolls Go aggro and gets a 6. At least he gets experience.

Time to escalate.


The woman behind the wheel of the jeep shouts, “Open the box in the back!”

One of the warriors pulls a long green box out. He pops the clips holding it shut and pulls out a tubular weapon.

“Oh fuck!” Gator says spying the rocket launcher.

Then November puts a knife to the warrior’s throat. “I think y’all better just leave.”

November uses her Devil with a blade move to Go aggro with hot. With her +1 forward from Lost (which I generously let her use) she gets a 7.

“Oh oh alright. We’ll just go,” the man chokes out, letting the tube drop. He looks to Dustwich’s corpse. ”He’s dead anyway.”

November nods to the others. “You guys first.”

As the two warriors flee, the dancer takes the rocket launcher from the leader and lets him run as well. Her knife vanishes into her outfit as Violet races up to join her.

And now they have a rocket launcher. Sigh.

The jeep peels out and makes a tight turn back down the road it came, blowing past the tribesmen of Cottage.

Leaving poor Dustwich lying in the road dead.

”No,”Jarhead corrects me. “Leaving poor Jarhead with broken equipment. Fuck Dustwich.”


Gator collects himself and descends to the ground floor. He stumbles into the family of scavengers. The patriarch trains a shotgun on him.

Gator tips his hat with his MP5. “Howdy folks.”

“What do you mean to do?” the man asks.

“You don’t work for Dustwich do you?” he asks the shorter man.

“We were making a deal,” he says evenly.

“Well I think that deal is done. But I don’t want anything here so it is all yours.”

“Alright,” the man says letting Gator pass. He lowers his shotgun.

“You have a nice day,” Gator says on his way.

Once outside he picks up his dinged up sniper rifle and hurries over to the others. He looks at the broken corpse between them. “Well that’s something you don’t see everyday.”

“What a dead guy?” Jarhead says, turning over the broken sphere.

“No a guy that un-deads himself. “

“That was pretty cool,” Jarhead laughs. “Hi Gator. How are you doing?”

Gator brings him up to speed. “Damn it I’m down another two bullets,” the assassin realizes.

”You had to shoot him the heart didn't you,” Jarhead says without sympathy.

“Actually one of the bullets is lying on the ground there. Because it never actually hit him.”

Gator spies one of the rounds almost pristine on the ground nearby. He picks it up and turns to November. “Thanks for the assist.”

“Sure,” she says, standing over the rocket launcher. “This seems dangerous.”

“I’ll take that,” he says with a smile.

“What are you doing around here, Jarhead?” Gator asks.

“Oh this,” he says holding up the device.

“I was working with that guy,” he adds pointing to the corpse. “He wanted me to fix this. That’s why we were going here. But now it is even more broken! But I think I can still fix it.”

He mutters to himself, “I can make it better.”

Gator nods and turns to looting Dustwich. He pulls a nickel-plated 9mm from his belt. Gator offers it to November, “Here’s a pretty gun for a pretty lady.”

“Thanks but I think I’ll stick with my knives,” she says.

“Alright. Violet? Want it?”

“I’ll take it,” the survivalist says pocketing the gun.

November joins Gator and dividing up Dustwich’s silk suit. She grabs his relatively undamaged pants and jacket. Gator takes his underwear.

”Aren't we going a little bit far here?” Violet asks, turning away.

“He doesn't need it anymore,” the assassin says.

November looks at the corpse. “Do we need to cut his head off or something? He seems pretty spooky.”

After a short discussion they agree to burn him.

“I don’t want him coming back again,” Gator adds.

“I don’t care what you want from him, the device is mine,” Jarhead says. He starts walking back to his vehicle.

“Jarhead is it?” November says. “That’s an interesting van you've got.”

“It’s a van.”

“Why does it say it’s new?” she asks, stowing the clothes in her pack.

“I don’t know,” Jarhead says stroking his chin. “I think it was a custom of the people from before. They called a lot of things new. Like New York.”

“Yeah my family is from New Orleans.”

“Is that really new?” he asks.

“Maybe your van belongs to me,” she jokes.

“No, it doesn't work that way,” he says quickly.

“Why were you traveling with Dustwich?” she asks.

“It’s kind of hard to say no when someone holds a gun to you,” he explains. “Plus I got to play with this cool toy here.” He looks past her. “Oh is Boo here?”

Boo pokes head out the door.

“Hey Boo?” Jarhead calls out.

Boo relaxes. “Hey Jarhead.”

“Oh you were the one I was getting parts from,” the scavenger says walking over to meet him.

Boo gestures back into the building. “Yeah, we hoping to sell this old generator.”

“Generator?” the tinkerer says excitedly before running inside.

He finds the giant rusty machine in the backroom. It will need a lot of work, he thinks to himself.

Boo walks up behind him.

“What would you want for this?” Jarhead asks. The two men quickly haggle.

”It’s going to need a lot of work,” Jarhead points out before closing on a price. “Toss it in the back of the van.”

We settle for 2-barter.

As Boo and his son Garbar wrestle the mass of steel and rust into the van, Jarhead joins the others.

“How have you been traveling around?” he asks.

“First,” November quips.

“Why?” November asks. “Would you like us to transport your generator someplace? We could be hired.”

“No, I am just curious about what you were doing. I didn't expect to run into many people here.”

Gator and others fill him in on their purpose.

“So you came here to kill Dustwich?” Jarhead asks.

“He killed a friend of ours,” November explains.

Jarhead looks at the burning body. “He seemed like that kind of person.”

“He had it coming to him in more than one way than one,” Gator says.

“I’m not too upset about that.”

“I’m done,” Gator says adjusting various his weapons and gear. “So where to? After we bring the boat back?”

November looks on as Boo and his son finish loading the van. “I’d ask where you were going Jarhead but your van looks pretty full.”

“Where are you headed?” Gator asks.

“I don’t know,” the tinkerer says.

“How are you doing for food?” November says.

Jarhead’s stomach growls. “I wasn't really thinking about that. I was kind of mooching off the dead guy but that is sort of over.”

November says, ”You eat dead people?”

”Not munching, mooching and before he was dead.”


“Well we are headed to a gator farm if you are looking for food,” the dancer suggests. “It’s good meat.”

November hands him a sample of jerky. He bites into the tough flavorful meat. “That is really good,” he says.

She smiles. “I was trying a new recipe with that. I like how it turned out.”

“I guess I could visit there.”

“You need protection out there?” Gator asks.

As he tries to get hired as bodyguard.

As Jarhead shakes his head, Gator says, “Okay good luck.”

At this point I note that I haven’t addressed Violet’s followers. I decide to draft the scavengers as members.

Boo spies Violet as she gets the airboat ready. He grabs his burly son Garber, young wife Lauren, and small child Gina. They walk over and accost her.

Violet recognizes the stout man and his son as fellow believers in the United States of America.

“Oh hi there,” she says.

“Hi," Boo says as the little girl coughs with a bad case of the swine flu. “Violet, did you hear what happened down in Miami?”

”Are there any remedies I know of?” Violet asks.

”No really, just bed rest, keep warm, and chicken soup. You wish you knew what you knew what chickens were.”


“No, what happened?” the survivalist replies.

“The hardholder down there got himself killed in a raid,” the man complains. “We were all agitating for an election like you keep saying but then nobody was there to back us up on that. White’s boys came in and took over.”

“That’s terrible.”

“They killed my brother just to make an example of him,” he grumbles. “To stop this democracy talk. Burned our flags, kicked us out.”

“Well there’s going to be people like that,” she explains. “Those that like being in power and the status that comes with it.”

Violet is not a smooth talker.

“We've got to make changes!” he shouts. “We have to fight for our beliefs! You've got to back us up on this!”

“Thing is we are not going to win this by fighting,” she says. “We've got to win the hearts and minds.”

“Yes and we've got to drive the British out,” he retorts.

“Of course we've got to do that but-” she stammers.

“People will join us once we get these thugs out of there,” Boo argues. “You've got to help us take care of that if you really believe what you are spouting. I support the return of law and order and look what it has got me: my brother’s dead, flags are burned, Gina got the flu. I’m still willing to fight for it but you've got to help us.”

”Ah the joy of followers.”

”He who has cows has care of cows,” Violet says.


Violet sighs. “That’s not cool at all.”

“Exactly! We've got to free the holding so they can make their own choices, elect their own leaders.”

Violet nods.

”I think I have a quest,” she says.

End Of Session

And that’s it.

Finally we do Hx improvements.
  • Violet gains +1 Hx from BRT as part of his parting action (since he wasn't there for the last session but owed an improvement for the session and a half).
  • November gives +1 Hx to Jarhead since they finally met.
  • Violet gives +1 Hx to November which earns November an experience. We discuss the optional rule to divulge a secret whenever Hx resets but Violet isn't a secretive character.
  • Jarhead gives +1 Hx to Gator since he now sees how much he will risk for weird technology.
  • Gator gives +1 Hx to Jarhead as he got to see him in action.
Gator gets a second advancement and raises his cool.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Clarity Revisited: Design

For “You Can't Go Home Again” I would probably return to tweaking the game system again. Specifically, despite the name, I don’t think Integrity (from the God-Machine Chronicle rules) is a good fit for Changeling: the Lost. So this week I’ll give a rambling account of a possible replacement.

Clarity Revisited

Breaking up
My thoughts on a good replacement (because I also dislike Clarity) begin with the Madness Meters from Unknown Armies. I previously adapted them for use in Hunter: the Vigil where they worked to good effect. The basic concept is that you have meters of escalating psychological stresses (five to be specific with 10 ranks each). These ranks range from relatively minor stresses like being alone for a solid day to mind breaking experiences like spending months in sensory deprivation.

Each time you encounter such a stress you roll to maintain your cool. If you succeed you become hardened, marking a level of Hardened. Anything for that stress meter that is has a rank at or below your hardened level no longer affects you. Thus you can get your remorseless killers and the like who can murder with impunity. Get hardened enough and you become a sociopath. Meanwhile each failure pushes you closer to madness as well as causing your character to momentarily freak out: fleeing, freezing in place, or fighting madly for a scene.

What I love about this system is that experience never enters the equation. You can’t buy up (or down) hardened and failed levels. To return to the baseline you need therapy. You need to work out your issues and reclaim stability (remove failures) or humanity (remove hardened levels).

For Changeling, I would want to make changes to that system. The Unnatural stress would need to be altered or removed. Overall we would have way more Self, Isolation, and Helplessness triggers. I’d also want to emphasize the aspect of a character slowly losing their mind as opposed to suffering sudden shocks. So fight, flight, freeze would need to be replaced with a new system.

Design Decisions

A major question to ask before getting much farther is what are the failure modes? Other than staying at a nice level of sanity, what extremes should characters be able to reach? Obviously characters can break (i.e. fail multiple times and go insane) or they can lose perspective (i.e. become sociopathic True Fae). I’m not seeing anything else that really fits. Staying sane involves keeping the stress meters as close to zero as possible.

Next question multiple meters or just one? While fewer gauges means less to track, I didn’t find ti that hard from a player perspective. That might have been colored by the fact that we mostly dealt with Unnatural and Violence. We are dumping Unnatural already (probably to fold the relevant bits into the others). Keeping multiple gauges allows us to have multiple types of growing madness or mental scarring. In an earlier version of this post I folded it all into one gauge but I think will keep separate ones instead.

Next what happens when you fail? Since we are ditching fight, flight, or freeze as not in tune with our vision of Changeling, what alternatives exist? Well clearly these will be Conditions, sources of beats. Also the choice should remain with the PC as to what effect the failure has on them. Finally like fight, flight, or freeze, the Conditions should be resolvable in that scene or the one immediately following. I don’t want them to linger.

So what should they be? One option would be to have temporary delusions, emphasizing the madness aspect of the game. Perhaps the character starts seeing fantasy elements where they are not. Another idea would be a temporary Frailty. Like the temporary Glitches from demon: the Descent, these weakness would hamper the characters for a few hours or days. To mortals they would look like delusions (“I can’t step on cracks or I’ll break my back” or suffer bashing damage) but could have serious game effects. Alternatively it might be thematic (if not very enjoyable for the PC) to see them break down and try to escape their situation.

That’s three options each of which could be appropriate in the right circumstance. We’ll leave the choice to players of whether they take “Fraily”, “Avoidance” or “Delusion”.

Mechanics

So mechanically if you encounter a stress which you are not hardened against, you roll the lesser of Resolve or Composure. You can spend Willpower on this roll and can choose to make a failure a dramatic failure for a Beat. If you succeed you mark a level of hardened for that stress. On an exceptional success, you can choose whether gain a hardened level or not. On a failure you mark a failure and chose a Condition. The three basic conditions are:

Avoidance

Whatever stress you just suffered is too much for you. You have to get out. On the plus side while in this state you can no longer suffer from stresses as you are too panicked to process them. On the downside if you can’t escape the situation (whether through running away or fighting your way past) you shut down.

Beat: See below.
Resolved: You escape the current situation ending the scene for your character. Alternatively if you curl up into a ball or otherwise hide from the situation (and thus remove yourself as an actor in the current scene).

Delusion

You become mentally unbalanced, taking refuge in the fantasy life you escaped. You begin to interpret everyday experiences as fantasy elements. Children are goblins, doors all lead into the Hedge, that police man is an ogre, and your Keeper is watching from across the street.

Beat: You offend or creep out someone due to your madness. Alternatively if acting on your delusions causes you harm.
Resolved: You realize your delusion and take time to recenter yourself, perhaps through meditation or dreaming.

Frailty

You suffer a frailty such as being unable to lie, suffering Bashing damage from the sound of Church Bells, or having to flee if your name is repeated three times. Whatever it is, it should be fairly common and cause a serious inconvenience.

Beat: Your frailty is exposed to a new person or group of people.
Resolved: Roll Wyrd when you first get this Condition. On a failure it lasts until the next dawn (if day) or dusk (if night). On a success it lasts a week. On an exceptional success, it lasts a month. You do not gain a Beat when it is resolved.

Next

That’s it for now. In two weeks I’ll present the gauges, recovery rules and effects of high levels of Hardened or Failure.

Monday, December 22, 2014

Rosebriar: Bishopsgate

This week I present another district in my setting for You Can't Go Home AgainRosebriar may be the name of the town but Bishopsgate predates it by over a century.

Rosebriar: Bishopsgate

You don't belong here anymore.
Bishopsgate

Description

This neighborhood of tight winding streets and aged multistory brick buildings predates the rest of Rosebriar by a century. Numerous churches and homes date back to the Colonial era. Many of the oldest families in the region still live here and this tight-knit community creates a very different feel from the rest of the town, especially the new developments to the north and west.

Everyone knows each other in Bishopsgate and outsiders can expect a cold reception. This goes for those who have been taken and come back changed. Changelings abducted from Bishopsgate can expect to find a fetch well ensconced in their place and plenty of people willing to belief the ‘local’ over them.

Physically Bishopsgate crouches on the southern side of the river, forming the southern border of Rosebriar (if one ignores Edgewood Mental Health). Two bridges connect it to the town center. Colloquially known as the ‘Old’ and the ‘New Bridge’ they are each rusty structures from a century ago (the New Bridge was built in 1946). To the north, it abuts Appleton and the community college. Local do not appreciate the college students encroaching on their neighborhood, even if many professors live within its borders.

Local Hedge

The local Hedge mirrors Bishopsgate with tight passageways through thick thorny hedges lined with hard cobblestones. An endless gloom hangs over the Hedge, casting it in twilight during the day and firefly punctuated darkness at night.

Athletics rolls to get anywhere suffer a -2 penalty as the winding paths slow down progress. The tight confines do help a single defender. A single defender gains +1 Defense if he only has to focus in one direction. The tight confines inflict a -2 penalty for multiple attackers however as the lack of space hinders attacks both melee and ranged.

Damnation City Stats:

Physical: Access -2, Safety 2
Mental: Information 0, Awareness 2
Social: Prestige 2, Stability 2

Bishopsgate’s street grid is the result of haphazard growth and historical legacies that none recall. However its buildings are built to stand the test of time with sturdy doors and strong locks. A stable community helps to keep an eye on things, even if they are less educated and talkative than most. The homes here, when they are for sale are either sad things to be nursed back to glory or elegant homes that cost a fortune.

Vice: Insularity. In the end the dark side of Bishopsgate isn’t that dark, just unfriendly. You either belong or you don’t. If you don’t, then the inhabitants will have nothing to do with you.

Virtue: Tradition. Bishopsgate remembers its history as evidence by the many small festivals , town legends, and historic markers that adorn the neighborhood.

Site: Bishopgate Lutheran Church

Type: Religious

History: This stately old building remains in pristine condition despite being over two centuries old. A narrow stone structure, its dark spire rises above the surrounding maze of buildings. The small cemetery to one side contains many notable citizens dating back to colonial times. The most illustrious member currently interred is former Mayor Maxwell Newman (1925-2006).

Sermons are still given every Sunday by Pastor Benjamin Albright. This friendly old priest is always willing to lend an ear or offer advice on any problems a petitioner has. Now in his 80s, he has served at the church since the 60s. His daughter Lucy, herself close to retirement, helps out with the services.

In addition to being well-preserved, the church has a further mystic quality. When the church bell is rung at the hour nearest dawn or sunset, all Changelings within a quarter-mile suffer 3 Bashing damage from the sound. Hobs suffer lethal damage. True Fae is so foolish suffer this damage as Aggravated.

Story seeds:

It’s in the Blood: The Witwevens have lived in Bishopsgate for as far back as any records go (a fire in 1734 wiped out many of the papers further back). They have a reputation for mystical powers, much like the witch-blood and devil worship of the Teesdales. It’s said that the women of the clan, always blessed with the palest blood hair and fairest skin, possess a secret power to mend wounds. They also say one a generation the eldest member of the clan is taken on their 29th birthday. Sarah Witweven, a doctor at Edgewood Mental Health, doesn’t believe in her family's legendary, though she has an uncommonly high success rate with patients. Her 29th birthday is coming up soon.

Oddities & Antiquities: This quaint little shop sits in an obscure corner of a tiny square accessed via a road that would be called an alley elsewhere in America. It also sits halfway into the Hedge. Here a miniature Goblin Market can be found, run by a pair of strange Hobs. Mr. Black is thin to the point of starvation and dressed almost a century out of style. Mr. White’s face is buried in his beard and long hair which also serves to hide many of the stains of the wrinkled suit he wears. Together they offer minor tokens, cursed gewgaws and snippets of things taken from nightmares. A troubling aspect is that they sell to mortals and Changelings alike.

The Bloodroot Trees: The Hedge of Bishopsgate boasts a strange grove of thick hungry trees. Raised on blood, they thirst for more. They demand a tithe of three drops of blood from all who path through their domain. Otherwise they will take it for themselves. But Changelings and Hobs avoid that area now and the trees grow hungry. Why are more trees appearing in the park areas? Why are pets disappearing?

NPCs:

Troll Bridge: An Ogre has taken up residence under the old bridge, stirring rumors of hauntings and dangerous homeless people in equal measure. Changelings find themselves confronted and shaken down for any Goblin fruits or Tokens. Who is this towering figure and what draws her to the bridge?

Ghost in the Hedge: Once upon a time, a man named Buck Gold found riches in the utmost north. He took along his childhood friend Lester Moore, but Moore came back different. Surly and arrogant, he got himself trouble his rich friend could buy him out of. Lester was buried in the cemetery between the Appleton college and Bishopsgate. Recently the real Lester has clawed his way out of the Hedge. The translucent Elemental has taken to haunting the site of ‘his’ grave. But this icy figure has come under attack by a dangerous poltergeist, a ghost of his fetch.

Mourning Willow

Concept: Evil Hedge Tree

Background: A century ago, a large tree grew near the edge of Bishopsgate. Fed a diet a supernatural blood by some undead horror, it grew fat and twisted. Its leaves fluttered in unseen breezes and its hanging branches seem to sway and writhe around those who drew too close. Thern one day the feedings stopped. The tree grew hungry.

The children of Bishopsgate heard the tree’s growns of hunger and felt drawn to its smooth trunk and massive branches. They claimed they heard faerie voices among its leaves. They played within its curtain of branches for hours at end. Then one day they were gone. And so was the tree.

Description: Dead brown leaves shroud this massive tree. A dark almost purple bark cover a trunk so massive it takes two men to encircle it. A small hollow in the tree resembles an open mouth. The interior is lined with small bones.

GM notes: Cruel, vindictive, manipulative.

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 2, Resolve 3
Physical Attributes: Strength 4, Dexterity 1, Stamina 4
Social Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 2, Composure 3

Mental Skills: Occult 1
Physical Skills: Brawl (Grapple) 1, Stealth (ambush) 2
Social Skills: Animal Ken 2, Intimidation 2, Persuasion 1, Subterfuge 2

Willpower: 6
Virtue: Fortitude Vice: Gluttony
Initiative: 4 Defense: 1 (Armor 1)
Speed: 5 Health: 22

Wyrd: 5 (14/5) Size: 18
Contracts: Darkness 5, Dream 1, Hearth 3, Stone 2

Possible Pledges: Pledge of Blood: I will leave the children be and you will water my roots with man's blood on the new moon, For this I will be made full and you cunning and quiet, But should I kill a child may you rip me from the earth, And if I lack your fill you shall lay within my power,
[Forbiddance-Medial -2, Glamour +2, Vulnerability (Violence) -2, Month +2]
[Endeavor-Medial -2, Adroitness (Survival/Stealth) +2, Pishogue-Medial -2, Month +2])

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Review: Asylum

This week I review another World of Darkness book: Asylum. Part a discourse on mental health treatment, part rules supplement on Medicine, and part location book, Asylum covers a lot of ground and covers it well. It's a tome I expect to keep mining for quite some time.

Asylum

Asylum cover
Asylum begins with the usual fiction segment. It’s a nice of an overworked psychiatrist and sets up the horror feel of the game. After that Asylum jumps into the Introduction, outlining the theme of the asylum as a gulag for those society wants to hide away and a mood of isolation within an internal vastness. One part I really liked in the Introduction was a handy section on medical jargon.

Chapter 1: Total Bedlam focuses on the history of mental illness and its treatment from the earliest asylums to modern-day. The section includes a nice discussion of different viewpoints on mental illness, its cause, and possible treatment. While lacking in game material this section is definitely worth a read just to get grounded in the subject material. It reads a lot less dry than most ‘factual’ material that I have encountered in World of Darkness books (history sections for Mage: the Awakening I’m looking at you).

Chapter 2: Putting the Pieces Together is more practical, discussing how to create medical characters: nurses, doctors, psychologists, surgeons and so forth. It gives us guidelines on what their Attributes and Skills levels should be, what Merit dots they should have and how you might play them. It also features an expansion of the rules for the Medicine Skill, treatments for mental illnesses, new Derangements and a nice selection of useful merits. This chapter is full of good stuff, equal parts crunch and fluff, both of which are exceedingly very helpful. It is a good chapter to reference when building medical PCs and NPCs,

Chapter 3: Bishopgate - Built on Secrets brings us Bishopsgate Asylum from the dark history of the hill it is built upon to modern day, including all the horrid abuses of the Victorian era, 20th century eugenics experimentation and so on. Each age adds more secrets to its storied past, new layers to build your stories upon. Throughout we are provided in-game letters and records about the site. In my game, I printed out some of them and used them as handouts when a player character decided to research the site.

We start with the hill and the mysterious tunnels that predate the asylum's construction. This section comes across as quite Lovecraftian. Also in that vein we have the Teesdales family, beginning with the witch whose house once stood on the grounds and whose descendants keep popping up in its history.

We are also given a wonderful second pass through the history of mental health in the specific example of Bishopsgate. This chapter is full of story seeds related to each age of secrets: unresolved mysteries, possible connections to other supernatural creatures, and several story frames. After the history we have a description of the buildings themselves and the major ghosts that may haunt it .

In terms of story frames, we get outlines that could be used for entire Chronicles. They range from feuding supernatural factions, the idea that the asylum is a trap for a fallen angel, that the asylum is controlled by a paralyzed psychic, that it is haunted by the twisted creations of a well-intentioned psychiatrist who extracted the darkness from his patients, and a purely vile mundane conspiracy. I used several of those ideas already in my own games and will probably use the others in the future.

Chapter 4: Case Reports provides us 10 case files for people committed to Bishopsgate. Each is given a report, a history and several different interpretations about what is really going on. Are they just crazy or are the stories they tell at least partially true? We get stats for several possible monsters and how the PCs might investigate the truth of the patients’ claims. I haven’t mined this chapter as much as I could but each case file could be an entire sotry on its own.

Chapter 5: Staff records gives us a bunch of premade NPCs from staff to patients. Nothing amazing here but really helpful in a pinch.

Finally we have Appendix Reaping Madness which details ways supernaturals can interact with the asylum, how they might bend or break minds with their powers. Mostly it’s self evident. I haven’t used this chapter much myself.

Personal Experience

In my own games I’ve used the material extensively. I stole the name Bishopsgate for a district of my Changeling: the Lost setting Rosebriar. In the end I omitted almost all of the details from the mental health facility on the edge of the neighborhood (other than the tunnels below it and the Teesdales). I did use that material extensively in my Hunter: the Vigil chronicle, Corrupted Transmission, though I renamed the asylum the Hillcrest Center (and added material from another excellent book Mysterious Places). I expect I will eventually mine the case files as well when I need them.

Conclusion

Overall Asylum is an excellent book chock full of game ideas for any setting featuring mental health, insanity, or creepy locations. It is well worth buying even if you only use the Bishopsgate Asylum itself only once.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Rosebriar: Appleton

Originally published December 16, 2014

This week I present a district in my setting for You Can't Go Home Again. Rosebriar is an old town but much of it is a product of the modern age.

Rosebriar: Appleton

They don’t live here anymore.
Appleton

Description

Appleton presents itself as a small close-knit community where people move to get started in life, raise their children, and grow old. Neighborhoods consist of large blocks of developments where minor variations in building exteriors poorly hide the identical floor plans. The same green lawns and long stretches of mostly unused sidewalk line the winding streets and cul de sacs. If not for the street signs (named for trees and flowers) it would be the perfect maze.

But beneath the surface, Appelton is less than it appears. The suburb has been in a continuous state of renewal and construction since its incorporation into Rosebriar. The bursting of the housing bubble simply slowed it down. The area suffers a continuous influx and exodus as new families move into the area and then leave, either to Persimmon Hill or out of town to look for work.

The constant turnover of residents has erodes any community that Appleton once had, reducing it to a place people live but don’t interact. The residents instead work along Main Street and Ravel or the Works, shop at the big box stores on the edge of Heywood, and divert themselves in Old Town or farther afield. Few spend any time getting to know their neighbors who change on a monthly basis anyway.

Appleton continues on as a place without history or connections, where the landscape’s order contrasts with the fluidity of its inhabitants.

It’s a perfect place to get Lost.

Local Hedge

There is little place for brambles and riotous vegetation in this plastic paradise. The Hedge here is squeezed and crushed underground. Step through a door and you find yourself in an earthen basement, perhaps still studded with the farm tools of the community Appleton once was. An eerie underrealm rife with slugs and worms crawls beneath the surface, occasionally bursting into spaces between drywall or under the stairs. Rusty nails and inches long splinters replace thorns.

Rolls to navigate the Hedge suffer a -2 penalty while the darkness and confusing layout gives a +2 bonus to Stealth rolls.

Damnation City Stats:

Physical: Access -2, Safety 2
Mental: Information 2, Awareness 0
Social: Prestige 1, Stability 1

Appleton’s grid of streets should be easy to navigate but the numerous cul de sacs and uniformity can easily lead one astray. On the other hand people move here to be safe and the local law enforcement works to make that true. Information is easy to come by and everyone is willing to help but without a community, there is little transference of knowledge and few people share what is really going on. Appleton ranks higher than the eastern or southern parts of the city and remains fairly stable.

Vice: Forgetfulness. It’s not that they don’t care or don’t notice, but the residents of Appleton tend to forget and ignore the injustices and strange events around them. For many it is simply due to the fact that due to debt or opportunity, they soon move to a new area, leaving behind Appleton.
Virtue: Tolerance. It is true that Appleton is friendly to strangers. When no one knows anyone, it is hard for cliques to develop. As a relatively young community, there are few long-term residents to form a distinct subgroup.

Site: Appleton Community College

Type: Academic
History: Formerly an agricultural school, Applton Community College primarily teaches trades and prepares students poorly for more rigorous institutions. Decades of mismanagement have shrunk the student body and left the campus a shadow of its former self..

On area that has remained remarkably well-funded is the Humanities Department. Nestled in a small brick building overlooking the river, this department houses over a dozen faculty crammed into small offices, each walled with books. One in particular on the second floor is fuller than most: Dr. Petrov’s. Her course on Russian Literature is always well attended.

Story Seeds:

The Missing Street: a long-standing mystery is why the cross streets, laid out in alphabetical order with the names of trees, skips the letter G. The fae know that the truth is that the street was taken by the True Fae or perhaps the Hedge itself. Golden Larch Street still appears on the nights of the new moon. Wise Changelings know to avoid the area but some say certain secrets (which ones depend on the telling) can be learned by exploring the misshapen houses that line it. Who or what lived in these darkened structures is a mystery that has yet to be revealed.

The Other Tenant: the third house down on Birch Street is on the market every year. A family buys it cheap, moves in, and then the strangeness begins. Furniture rearranges themselves in the night. Books appear stacked in alphabetical order. Oddly labeled bottles appear in the spice rack. Things escalate and soon the family moves on. Some have tried exorcisms but to no avail. This house isn’t haunted. Instead it is the home of a lost brownie. Once it lived happily under the roof of simple farming family. When the development was built in its place, it took up residence here. Now it tries to help but is confused by the modern appliances and unfamiliar people/

The Phantom Realtor: people rarely see who puts up the signs for ‘Dream Realty’, those who do often have a hard time describing the well dressed woman in blue. They also have a hard time recalling who lived there. Calling the number gets an answering machine with a friendly female voice. Somehow they do get back promptly but the buyers are never sure how. Not that they stick around for very long. And then the Phantom Realtor put up another for sale sign.

NPCs:

The Lost Boy: this Beast was born in Appleton. Unfortunately he’s was only 6 when the True Fae took him. While he found his way back to the playground, his mother took him from, he can’t remember the way home. Worse it’s been 5 years since he was taken and his family may have moved on. Can they find them? Will they even recognize him?

The Bogeyman: this Darkling has learned the keys to a large number of hedge portals in Appleton, specifically closets. Combined with a large hollow with many doors of its own, he can quickly traverse Appleton. To what ends does he put this resource to? Is he harvesting the nightmares of children or protecting them from worse threats? It is said that this master of doors can get into any place in Rosebriar. Can you learn his secret before the Bridgeburners get him?

Dr. Lada Petrov

Description: Lada still clings to her youth, dying her hair black and using heavy eyeliner to hide a lifetime of late nights, looking for...something. Now in her 70s, she carries an amulet and a well-worn notebook, hoping to find that element of the fantastic that somehow she feels was stolen from her.

Biography: Lada Petrov was born in 1938 to Russian intelligentsia fleeing Stalin’s purges. Her father obtained a professorship at Appleton College and worked in their Agriculture department from 1948 to 1965.

Lada has always known something wasn’t right with her life. It began the summer after her junior year at high school. Somehow she felt like she wasn’t meant to be here. That there was someplace more wondrous where she should be.

Lada received her Bachelor’s degree at Columbia and then took a trip to Europe. She searched for the fantastic and supernatural and though she made many friends along the way who were well versed in it, somehow she never encountered anything herself. She resigned herself to getting a doctorate in Russian Literature from Glasgow before returning home. She has taught at Appleton since 1976 and continues to do so as professor emeritus in the Humanities department.

She has ties to several occultist groups around the world, especially the Null Mysteriis. She consults for them, referencing her vast knowledge of folklore and myth, especially Russian myth. But she seemed fated never to encounter the supernatural herself.

Except one. In 2011, she noticed that one of her students, Alice Ruby, resembles one she had before. The young woman refused to discuss the matter which just caused Lada to dig deeper. She has discovered picture and references to someone matching her description going back for over a century. She will learn her secret.

GM Only: Lada’s quest to research the supernatural has been thwarted by a friend she never had. A mad Changeling named Hedge made a deal with the ‘woman’ called Alice Ruby, a fallen True Fae. History was rewritten. As part of the deal Hedge made sure his ‘friends’ were never taken. Lada should have been a Changeling, an Elemental known as Lada Nada.

She knows she is protected but not how to counter it. Now in her twilight years, she desperately seeks to capture the magic and extend her life. She has noticed Alice Ruby’s repetitions in the town and has an extensive dossier on her. She wants her youth.

Now the magic that keeps her from the supernatural is fading. As Fate steps aside, her own efforts are bearing fruit.

Virtue: Fortitude, Lada believes in herself and believes she will persevere, That surety has kept her seeking for the occult even after decades of failure and frustration.
Vice: Wrath. Deep down the fact that so many have found the supernatural, even to their detriment, irks her. Though she keeps it tamped down, she is willing to take extreme measures to get what she wants. If others get hurt that is the price she will pay.

Aspirations: learn a way to stave off death, finish a novel of her own to assure her literary immortality

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 3, Resolve 4
Physical Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2
Social Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 3, Composure 3
Mental Skills: Academics (folklore) 4, Crafts 1, Investigation 3, Occult (fae) 4, Politics 2
Physical Skills: Athletics 1, Firearms (pistol) 1, Stealth 2, Survival 1, Weaponry 1
Social Skills: Empathy 2, Expression 3, Intimidation 3, Persuasion 3, Socialize 2, Subterfuge 2
Merits: Danger Sense 2, Resources 4, Language (Russian, French, Arabic, Hebrew), Professional Training 4 (Academics, Expression, Occult)
Willpower: 7

Monday, December 15, 2014

Review: Damnation City

DamnationCity
In tandem with my overview of the fictional town of Rosebriar, New York, I'll be doing several reviews of the books that I drew material and ideas from. The first is Damnation City. Technically a book in the Vampire: the Requiem line, the majority of the text (an impressive 400 pages long) is usable with any World of Darkness setting or indeed any urban setting that vaguely resembles our own.

Unlike some other books I've read for World of Darkness, Damnation City never feels dry, focusing on the feel of city and a tool-box of ways to build one rather than history or the way things are. For this review I'm going to focus on the parts that I've used (particularly with Rosebriar) but the rest of the material is quite good.

Overview

Damnation City is broken up into 6 chapters. Chapter 1: Storytelling the City focuses on the feel and personality of the city over on mechanics. It also delves into some specific aspects of vampiric society. It's probably the least focused of the chapters but there is plenty of good stuff in there for sparking ideas for your own cities.

Chapter 2: City Works provides several different mechanical systems to use in a city based Chronicle or campaign. It also contains guidelines for designing cities. This and Chapter 5 are the most applicable sections for use in other games.

Chapters 3 and 4 both deal with the politics of vampires. Chapter 3: Barony focuses on characters who are just above the subsistence level, seeking to gain more territory, more status and claw their way to the top. Chapter 4: Primacy deals with those at the top, the elders who vie for control of the city.

Chapter 5: Districts, Sites & Subjects is the complement to the guidelines in Chapter 2. It provides a large number of sample districts, locations and NPC prompts for building your city. Scattered throughout are also an equally large number of story seeds and hooks.

Finally Chapter 6: Newcastle is a worked out example of the city building system for the fictional city of Newcastle.

Vampire Specific

So let's start with the vampire specific material. The chapters above are nicely broken down into sections and the dividing line between what is generally applicable and what it specific to vampires tends to obey those section boundaries.

The Neofeudal System gives a nice in-depth discussion about the roles and structure of vampire society. It talks about how territory is doled out and guarded, the general isolation of vampiric society, and how architecture can be used to color your city. It is choke full of great ideas about what a particular official (like the Sheriff or Prince) might be doing on a given night as well as variant positions that might exist in a city. This section could really have used some better organization but there are plenty of great story ideas here.

Selecting Your City is a bit of a mixed bag with lots of vampire specific material combined with snapshot overview of major cities around the world. It's a nice read but perhaps of limited usefulness unless you have a globetrotting Chronicle.

Ten Princes gives you the personalities, backgrounds and general feel of living under the thumb of ten very different vampire overlords. Five of the characters are defined by their covenant and basically exemplify that aspect of the game. The fun ones are the other five, the oddities, from the never present Phantom to the primal Chieftain. I would really love to play in a city featuring any one of these figures.

Barony Gameplay I ultimately didn't like. While I find the idea of playing a character climbing up the rungs of society interesting, I think it breaks down the process too mechanically. It seems everything you would want to do with a territory costs Merit Dots and everything has a cost. This overuse of merits was something I disliked in the new World of Darkness and something I hope to see less of in the second edition of the game. There are some good ideas in here though and if you were to build your own system, it would be worth looking through it. I especially like the Trespass mechanic where the owner of a domain picks how one can potentially cross without drawing their attention.

Primacy deals heavily with the political struggles of elders. There is a mechanic for influence and the like. Again it is a bit too mechanical for me. I'd probably just use the rules for Kingdom instead.

General Use

Now for the general usage sections of the book.

The Marks: Kindred Graffiti despite the name could easily be applied to any society trying to convey information through graffiti. I've had graffiti feature prominently in my Promethean and Mage games for example. Just change some of the symbols and use the guidelines as presented. The mechanics here are fairly good, though I think they could be trimmed back a bit. I plan to cover this later in my description of Rosebriar but mainly I would try to make it simpler and less intimidating: the way the rules are presented it make it seem like you need to roll to spot, roll to recognize and roll to decipher a mark though in practice you'd only ever do one of those.

High and Low and Always Dark provides a nice assortment of city based imagery ranging for the tops of skyscrapers down into the hidden depths. A nice read and great for getting into the mindset of what your city is like.

City of Millions provides a bonanza of character ideas and seeds to use: 100 random mortals (consisting of a concept and what they are up to), 50 motivations, and an assortment of specific versions of a character might express their Vices and Virtues.

The section Ambience and Attitude I found less useful. It tries to put mechanics to how a given the populous of an area feels. While I can see a riot giving certain bonuses and penalties, I think It's too much detail for something that rarely comes up.

Hot Pursuit is one of the better attempts I've seen at building a good chase system. Basically each pursuit roll moves the characters to a new area with its own bonuses, penalties, and opportunities. I've used it several times to good effect.

City Building is probably the best section. It covers the basics of defining your city via Districts (which has its one lengthy section of 35 different neighborhoods with story ideas and game mechanics), Sites (75 locations for story seeds, possible characters, and histories), and maps. This section plus the ones I mentioned make up the heart of this book and were crucial to mapping out Rosebriar. The concept is to break up the city into useful and distinctive chunks of territory, your Little Chinas, Greenwich Villages, Boardwalks and the like.

Subjects does for people what Site and Districts did for buildings and neighborhoods, giving you 18 NPCs to use and abuse as agents, allies or enemies.

Finally there is Newcastle, a worked example using the material from City Building and Districts. If you look closely you'll find some variations on the previously established Districts to show how you can personalize your city.

Conclusion

Overall Damnation city is an excellent resource for any World of Darkness and I would highly recommend it to anyone considering building their own city, whether it be wholly fictional like Rosebriar or merely mapped onto an existing location like I did in my Chicago game.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Rosebriar: Overview

Originally published December 8, 2014

In September and October I posted several campaign pitches. The ones that received the greatest response were “You Can’t Go Home Again”, a potential third (capstone) Changeling: the Lost Chronicle for me, and the “Undeath of History”, a weird time travel idea I came up with last year. I’ll be presenting a bit more material for both in the coming months. We begin with the setting for You Can’t Go Home Again: Rosebriar, New York.

Rosebriar is the fictional town I used for my first Changeling Chronicle (appropriately enough, returning ‘home’): Rosebriar. Located in upstate New York, nestled amid the foothills of the Catskills mountains on the eastern edge of the Rust Belt, this town is inspired in equal parts by the family trips of my youth and my experiences later in life in a few small towns/cities in the Midwest.

Game History of Rosebriar:

I 'first' used Rosebriar as a setting for my first Changeling: the Lost Chronicle: Into the Hedge. This ran from 2009 to 2010 (in-game time 2003-2004). It was a fairly typical game in terms of rules and setting with the one major addition being the inclusion of a shattered artifact: a magic mirror. Each piece the PCs recovered gave them dedicated experience toward raising Wyrd. Over the course of the game a pair of True Fae died (one truly), industry in the town briefly shut down, a statue began granting dangerous wishes, and there was a plague of madness.

I later retconned a one shot Mortals game I ran in 2008 (in-game time also 2008) as being set in Rosebriar as well. While it focused mainly on the Edgewood asylum near the town, it also featured an Alice Wonderland theme and a thorn studded alternate reality intruding on our own.

Finally in my second Changeling: the Lost Chronicle: the Price, (running from 2013 to 2014 in real life and 1995 to 2011 in-game time) the characters lives became entangled with a pair of characters (one former PC, one NPC) from the first game. This culminated with a visit to Rosebriar where they discovered that the mirror, now complete but abandoned, was warping the Hedge around the town, making it seductive and deadly to fae. They destroyed it and freed the town.

One major complication to the history of Rosebriar was a rewrite of the timeline by the ex-PC which caused him and his companions never to be taken by the True Fae and eliminated most evidence of the first storyline (exceptions included the magic mirror and the grave of the dead True Fae). So in a very real sense he can never go home again. Expect him to make an appearance.

Means and Methods:

I built this town using the guidelines from Damnation City and it is composed out of 10 districts. I also mined several World of Darkness books: Asylum and Mysterious Places. There hints of material from the Mage: the Awakening book Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss as well some old World of Darkness material such as Pentex. Finally I put many of references to other games I’ve run.
An artist’s sketch of Rosebriar.
An artist’s sketch of Rosebriar.

Rosebriar in Brief

Rosebriar lies on the eastern edge of the Rustbelt, nestled amid the chiseled hills of upstate New York. A mixture of a picturesque small town and urban decline, this small town very nearly went under early this century with the decline of the chemical company Thornton Industries.

The old rail line roughly defines the northern edge of town, a rusty boundary paralleling the canal. The eastern half of the town is dominated by the smoke stacks of the old chemical plant and steel mills. North of them sits the historic homes of the poor factory workers that worked them, Heywood. These tract homes have fallen on the same hard times as local industry. Just over the river are an ugly conglomeration of box stores, stretching up to the highway that otherwise shoots past the town.

The west end of town once opened up into farms and the small community of Appleton but now hosts rows of identical houses with manicured lawns. To the far west amid the hills that rise above the town, the well-to-do of Persimmon Hill look down on the entirety of Rosebriar.

Moving southwest one encounters the annexed community of Bishopsgate with its tangled streets and suspicious inhabitants. Appleton Community College nestles between Appleton and Bishopsgate. Formerly an agricultural school, classwork now focuses on vocational training. Decades of mismanagement have shrunk the student body and left the college a shadow of its former self.

Just outside the community sits an insane asylum, recently renamed Edgewood Mental Health. Many horrible rumors whisper about the people who died there and the horrible experiments conducted in its past. A series of scandals have rocked the institute in the past decade and the facility may soon close.

Within the center of Rosebriar rots an underused city center. Brightened slightly by a small park and the newly renovated town hall, the central business district sports far too many empty office buildings from 50 years past.

Districts

  • Appleton (Suburb): Annexed hamlet, formerly a farming community, now a residential neighborhood of identical houses.
  • Bishopsgate (Suburb): Annexed town older than Rosebriar but less prosperous and more insular.
  • Edgewood Mental Health (Asylum): An old and tarnished hospital for the insane, rocked by scandal and with tattered finances.
  • Heywood (Projects): Originally a housing district for steel workers, it has since become the poorest neighborhood in Rosebriar.
  • Main Street and Ravel (Mercantile district): Home of local businesses and small regional chains, now under pressure from the big box stores and the markets of nearby Albany.
  • Old Town (Slums): The original town Rosebriar, then its upper class neighborhood, now a decaying city center.
  • Persimmon Hill (Nobility Hill): The current upscale neighborhood filled with large houses and gated communities.
  • Town Square (Town Square): An island of brightness in a sea of decline. Recently decorated with a statue of a local legend, the Weeping Alice.
  • Thornton Industries (Chemical Plant): An old chemical plant that has been running since the 60s.
  • The Works (Industrial Works): The rusted engine that powers Rosebriar, now decaying and blighted.

History

Here is a local timeline:
  • 2012: Edgewood again in the headlines when it is revealed that most of the staff and patient were purely fictional, either having never been hired or released many years prior. The Board of Directors is indicted for fraud.
  • 2011: A statue of local legend, the Weeping Alice, erected in the town park.
  • 2008: Edgewood rocked by scandal by the disappearance several inmates and staff. The Board of Directors however quickly squash any investigation.
  • 2006: Bishopgate Psychiatric Center renamed Edgewood Mental Health and placed under new management.
  • 1999: Maxwell Newman City Center built in an attempt to revitalize the ailing town center.
  • Late 1970s and 80s: as manufacturing moves offshore, the metalworking industry that supported Rosebriar’s growth declines and with it the town’s fortunes.
  • 1971: Rosebriar annexes Bishopsgate.
  • 1964: Thornton Industries establishes a chemical plant in Rosebriar.
  • 1957: Rosebriar annexes Appleton.
  • 1955; Maxwell Newman, home-grown hero and bomber pilot, elected mayor. He runs Rosebriar during its period of expansion and retires from office in 1987.
  • 1940s: Steel industry ramps up production in Rosebriar for the war effort.
  • 1924: Appleton College founded.
  • 1918: Buck Gold donates his property to the town upon his death. This becomes the Town Park.
  • 1908: Bishopsgate Asylum becomes Bishopsgate State Hospital when overcrowding and abuses of patients forces the state to take control.
  • 1895: Bishopsgate Asylum founded to relieve overcrowding and establish new advanced in the field of mental health.
  • 1893: Buck Gold, local ne’er-do-well, strikes it rich in Alaskan gold rush. He sells his find for a small fortune and retires to his home town.
  • 1887: The Blackwell Steel Mill is established.
  • 1852: The village of Appleton is established.
  • 1820: Last of the Native Americans in the region leave.
  • 1809: The drought at Rosebriar abates shortly after a young girl named Alice goes missing. Local legend says she was sacrificed to end the drought.
  • 1802: The area around Rosebriar is ravaged by a terrible drought.
  • 1796: The town of Rosebriar is established.
  • 1680: The town of Bishopsgate founded by Daniel Shepherd.