Sunday 27 September 2020

The Jungle Blade Mystery Act 1

                              Nickel & Dime Productions, proudly presents Radio Days
               Starring Donny Wayne as Karl Timperman & Mary Coyne as Easther Leballe
          If you like tails of daring deeds & high trills go somewhere else, if not then stay tuned.  

Karl Timperman stirred, as the ringing sound came again he reached out switched on the bedside lamp & looked at his watch, which showed the time was 6:24 am. Who would be phoning at this hour of the morning he though as he got out of bed & headed for the living-room to answer the phone.
Karl "Karl Timperman"
Woman's voice "Karl its Esther Labelle, something awful has happened, I was wonder if you be so good as to come over to the house"
Karl could hear the anxiety in her voice.  Karl" Do you want to tell what's wrong Esther"
Esther "I'd prefer not to say over the phone, but its very urgent could you come at once"
Karl "I just have a quick shower & shave & I'll be on my way"
Esther" Thanks Karl" then a click as she hung up.

Just over half an hour later.
Esther "Karl thanks for coming over so quickly"
Karl "No problem Esther, now do you want to tell me what the problem is ?"
Esther "Oh  Karl I've been so foolish, as you know I'm a Patron of the museum & do a lot of charity work for them"
Karl" Yes I'm aware of that, go on"
Esther "Well last night I held a charity event here to raise some funds for the museum & to add some interest to the event I foolishly brought some items from the museum over here & now one of them is missing"
Karl "Isn't this a mater for the police"
Esther with tear's forming in her eye's " Karl I can't go to the police, you see(pause) you see I took the items without permission, as their not on display at the moment I thought no one would notice them gone & I would have brought them back today, oh Karl what am I going to do"
Karl feeling sorry for her & known that her heart was in the right place even if what she done had indeed been foolish "Okay Esther I'll do what I can to help, what is the piece that missing"

Esther "It's a small jewel encrusted blade that was found at a archaeology site in a jungle in Peru"
Karl " I'll need a list of all the people that were here last night & did you haven to notice did anyone seem to show a larger amount of interest in the piece then what you would have though normal"
Esther "Well now that you mention it, Sharina Benavides did seem to show a peculiar interest in it"
Karl " Sharina Benavides as in the politician"
Esther "Yes, but surely she wouldn't have taken it"
Karl " I'd guess you would you'd say that of all of your guests Esther, but the fact is that its gone & we've got to start some place, now go & get me that list"

While Esther was getting the list Karl gave the room a quick once over but found nothing of help, when she returned Esther hand the list to Karl & then set down while he want over it.
Karl"Is this everyone that was here last night & by that I mean the staff as well"
Esther" No that's just the guest list, I would need to get in touch with the agency to get the names of the extra staff"
Karl" Is any of your own staff that was here last night here now"
As it turned out two of them were, but neither of them could shine any light on the matter.
With the time now coming up to 8 am, Karl phone the home of Sharina Benavides, only to be told that she had just left for a meeting at the theatre.

As the theatre was only a few blocks away Karl decided they'd walk, as it would give him some time to think of the best way to approach Sharina Benavides on the subject of the missing blade, along the way they ran into Noah King a history teacher that Esther knew & after a brief chit chat headed on to the theatre, only to find when they got there that it was locked up, wherever Sharina Benavides had gone for her meeting it wasn't here.

Tune in next week when you will here Esther ask  "What now ?"  

Designer's note. In last months news I cover the basic set up of the characters, this time I want to add a bit about Larger then Life the Director's cut, now like I've said before this game is like no other Two Hour Gaming game that I know of & while its old it really is imho better suited to their new battle board way of playing.

So what I'll cover here is how it sets up, after making up your character & if you want any supporting cast, you go about setting up a crime/treasure hunt or what they call the opening scene, this is all done by rolling on different tables, in this case something had gone missing & the last person who had it was a Patron, from here on you decide what that object was & flesh out the person if you want.

For me that's the joy of the game as I like to make up a story which is what this game is all about, so if making up a story is not your thing then its not for you, so I had something missing & a Patron.
I decided the Patron would be a Petron of a museum & that the missing object would be a knife found in South America.
In the open scene you also find out how many clues you need to solve before you get to the finial scene & who the big bad is, now I don't want to give anything away here, but I will tell you that after rolling for the type of big bad I didn't flesh him out, as even I want a surprise :)

Now here is were the game is great & bad at the same time, after doing a few more things like the travel scene & a few other thing it was time to set up the table for a game, well talk about a none event but, well there's always a but right. 
The object of the game was to cross the table which had one PEF (Possible enemy force) get to the target building, enter have a defining moment (another possible PEF ) & question a person of interest, in this case Sharina Benavides.

So after spending time setting up the table, I came across a PEF who was no threat a defining moment that due to dice rolls didn't happen & a person of interest who turned out not to be there :( on the plus side this didn't count as me not finding a clue, a failure in finding clues equal to your Rep means games over, which means the hero didn't save the day & get the girl, something I really like.

Why play a game that's such an anti climax ? I here you ask, well here's the good bit, as I've said before its all about the story (I hope your still with me John) so the challenge is to make the game fit the story, simple as :)

I hope that has given you guys an insight into Larger then Life the directors cut & why I've gone about doing it in this manner, I'll cover more in other posts as for now I don't want to give anything away.      

As always my thanks for dropping in & if you'd care to comment it would be welcomed :) 

Friday 4 September 2020

Movie Tone News September 2020

Good evening & welcome to this months news, there's an old saying" that no news is good news" but in this case that's not really so as from a hobby point of view I've still not done much, but I am messing around with different things & feel that surely (I know don't call me surely lol) if only slowly I am pulling away from the hobby blackhole.

So then what is this news post going to be about you ask ? well its going to be different to the normal, but in a world that is at this moment very different then normal maybe that's ok, tbh I'm winging is this post & that might mean I'll ramble a bit so please bare with me, as for me its another step in the right direction :)

Even through the dark days of not doing anything hobby wise I still pick up some things & one of those things was a hotwire table I picked up from a guy I know that had ordered two by a mistake, & that's one of the things I've been messing around with, this brings me on to something else that I'm also trying to get the hang of & that's Greenstuff rollers.

Greenstuff rollers are designed to be used with, yep you guessed it greenstuff but also work very well on other things but be warned are not as simple to use as they might look on u-tube videos, but at least even if its only trying to get the hang of using the hotwire table & the rollers it is something hobby related, another plus from doing this is that from time to time I've picked up some models & did a bit of painting, so as you see its baby steps but its something.

Another thing I want to cover in this post is Larger then Life the Directors Cut from Two Hour Wargames, now this is really more of an RPG then a table top game, in fact most of this game is played out away from the table, this had me puzzled for a long time as to how I might do something on this blog from the game & then I remembered that Vagabond had done a series of NUTS games while he was an hols & had done write ups on them but with no pictures other then little, I'll call them plans on bits of paper.

This gave me an idea that I briefly mentioned some months back called Radio Days, so basically what Radio Days is going to be is stories with no pictures & I have to say that I think it a very fitting way to cover this game as it really is very story driven, here's a little out take from the first episode.

Karl Timperman stirred, as the ringing sound came again he reached out switched on the bedside lamp & looked at his watch, which showed the time was 6:24 am. Who would be phoning at this hour of the morning he though as he got out of bed & headed for the living-room to answer the phone.
Karl "Karl Timperman"
Woman's voice "Karl its Esther Labelle, something awful has happened, I was wonder if you be so good as to come over to the house"
Karl " Do you want to tell what's wrong Esther"
Esther "I'd prefer not to say over the phone, but its very urgent could you come at once"
Karl could hear the anxiety in her voice, as she replied.                                                                            Karl"I just have a quick shower & shave & I'll be on my way"                                                        Esther" Thanks Karl" then a click as she hung up.

Now I don't want to give anything away here but I'll cover what you've most likely guessed, In  Larger then Life the Directors Cut the first thing you got to do is make up a star, unless your using one that you had made up before.

Star,Karl Timperman, American works for Harvard Academia   Rep 5 Adventurer, Attributes, Hard as nails Once during each scene the character will treat its first Out of the Fight result as Carry On instead, Smooth counts a +1d6 to taking a talk the talk test, Cruel counts a +1d6 to taking a talk test against characters with a lower rep.
Circle Exotic
Profession Explorer
Home Middle Residential New York City.

After that you go about building up what the story is by rolling on different tables, which is where Esther comes from, now needless to say you've got to come up with your own names & flash out the story as the tables are only pointing you in a certain direction.

Esther Labelle, Rep 3  Patron Civilian
Circle Mover,
Profession  Patron Civilian
Athlete: Counts a +1 to Rep when taking a Physical Challenge.

So what could have happened that Esther needs Karl's help for ? well you'll have to wait until I release it to find out. :)
Larger then Life the Directors Cut is a game that in one story could take you to many different locations & the studio just doesn't have near enough sets to cover all of this which is why doing it as a Radio show from that point of view also helps.

In other news, I've been thinking a lot about how I want to do things going forward as a lot of what I do on this blog can carry on over months & I like most I'd guess can often come bogged down on a project & that bad in a couple of ways, 1 is when I should put it a side for awhile until I feel I want to go back to it I carry on, & 2 when a project drags on to long its very hard for people following along to keep a track of what happened many months ago.

So what I've decided is that no story will be released until it is finished, now this might lead to not much happening on this blog for months on end & then a glut of posts together, but I think over all it should work better.

Just before I go, after the last post a former gaming pal of mine got in touch offering support & I'd like to thank him foe that, I won't name him but he knows who he is, so a BIG thanks mate :) 

Well that's it for this months news, so its a Goodnight from me & a Goodnight from him :)
As always my thanks for dropping in & if you'd care to comment it would be welcomed.

 

  

  

   

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