I realize I have not written an MRD play report in quite a while. The last one being the first session with my second group, here. In the 2-3 sessions since (I've lost count 0.o), quite a bit has happened. I'll try to roughly recap here. Also, I reread my Marvel / DC / My Hero Academia FASERIP One-Shot post for the first time in a long time, and looking back on it, I really like it. It wasn't a great play report, but it was a solid not-review, and also worked well as a self-contained module. As I continue to think about how I want to write up the Module for the MRD Kickstarter Book, that one-shot was a good reference, so in addition to the Play Report, at the bottom, I will try to collate some of my GM Notes into a semi-usable module in another post, not unlike what I did for The Court of Those Who Succumb Prematurely to Crippling Expectations which I also included in the Ashcan Edition of MRD.
I'm going to gloss over a lot of the particulars in the Play Report, they'll be included in the "modules" in subsequent posts. PR 5 was recent enough that the details are still fresh so I dig a little deeper, but the GM notes / "module" posts to come will also elaborate significantly.
PCs
Alco (SlimyKeyboard): A student in a trade school for plumbing. While working the pipes for the Poltergeist Investigators (the original team), she inadvertently activated her Poltergeist Form, Ghost in the Mirror, and has since joined the team.
Jack (Eight): A "wetworker", a Recurser with the Poltergeist Form, On a Full Moon an Ichor Heart. Works for the Nature Spirit drug dealer Chester, and has joined this team of Poltergeist Investigators on Chester's behalf.
Adore "Dori" Greyfeldt (Fiona Maeve Geist): An enforcer, also working with the team on Chester's behalf. Her Poltergeist Form is Crashing Rocket Nixie.
Pauling Linus (WildFDiscord): A scientist who moonlights as a Poltergeist Investigator, with the Poltergeist Form Afterbirth of the Broken Machine Dragon. After the last Play Report, his original team ultimately failed to save Goblin Jack, and the team was forced to use their Reincarnation Rituals to escape. On return from his reincarnation Court of Hell, he found a former companion of his, another scientist and Poltergeist Investigator by the name Watson. Much to Pauling's chagrin, he developed a Reincarnation Attachment with Watson, who escaped / auto-reincarnated alongside him. Watson blames Pauling for his death and abandonment in the Court of Hell. The rest of the original team have scattered.
PR 1
The first session of the 2nd group. We're technically now on the 3rd group but it developed directly from the second so I consider it part of the same campaign. There were a handful of sessions for the 1st group, I never wrote play reports for them, but the events of that campaign are canon to this campaign.
PR 2
At Doctor Lovesmenot's Halloween party, the team failed to stop Goblin Jack from becoming an Ashura. The police, led by Dick "Fuck Ya" Smashburn, stormed the party with a SWAT team after the murders got out of hand, alongside Wire Mother, and Redlight / Greenlight. They "killed" Goblin Jack (forced reincarnation), and SWAT had the party surrounded until they committed their reincarnation rituals to escape. Jack and Dori, hired by Chester who was also at the party, helped Chester, Doctor Lovesmenot, and the other NPCs like Rick Barrett and Baek Yesu escape. Unbeknownst to Detective Smashburn, Wire Mother was brought in to coverup Goblin Jack's association with The Doppler Potential*
*The PCs and possibly the players themselves don't technically know this, but I've already written it on the blog, so...
PR 3
Chester has become the new Poltergeist Investigation team's Handler. They take on a new client, Barret O'Brien*. He is a gambling addict who owes a secret underground casino a lot of money. In his haste to run from the casino, he gets into a car accident with his son, Barret O'Brien-Gonzalez aka Junior, who dies in the accident, and is sent to The Court of Those Who Bet on the Wrong Horse to be reincarnated as a pack mule. He believes this is unjust and wants his son sent to a better Court, with a better reincarnation.
O'Brien has a few confidantes within the casino that the team can follow up for leads. They choose to investigate an older woman from Parkchester Bronx, known as Shining Ostrich. She was an infamous cat burglar / femme fatale back in the day, but today is on the straight and narrow due to her bout of lung cancer, and she now speaks with an electrolarynx. She is an Eritrean immigrant, and her grandson, who has ties back home and throughout the world, is hedge fund manager of an Ethiopian hedge fund with Chinese backing, which also it seems has ties to the casino.
On the way to the party, a child attempts to rob them. They chase after the child and recover the stolen item, and the child turns into an ethereal being, reveals themselves as a Poltergeist, and flies off, saying something to the effect of "just wait until Pepper Pan and the Recess Rascals** find you, you'll see!"
In exchange for providing the team information on the casino, she asks the party to help her deal with some street punks in The Oval outside her apartment, to prove to her grandson she can still live independently, and to relive her glory days. After viciously taking down the punk kids, the apartment complex around The Oval itself comes to life. While Jack, Pauling, and Watson hold off the apartment-monsters outside, Dori, Alco, and Shining Ostrach break into the main building to deactivate the monster from the inside, fighting monsters and blowing holes through the floors floor-by-floor until they get to the fuse box in the basement. After defeating the apartment monster, a portal opens up.
* I accidentally used the name Barret twice >.<. In the module writeup, I'm changing it to Barry.
** The prominence of Pepper Pan and the Recess Rascals is fallout from the original campaign for which I wrote The Court of Those Who Succumb Prematurely to Crippling Expectations, but never wrote a full play report for the whole Poltergeist Investigation. If the original team had done things differently, it's possible that this event and where it's heading would be totally different.
PR 4
The team have found themselves in The Court of Those Who Bet on the Wrong Horse. It's themed after The Wrongside Racetrax sports bar chain (like an off-brand Applebees) and is full of sports gambling, including Karmamare races. The Court is sparsely populated and seems to be falling apart. The archdevil of the Court, Barsabbas, puts on a strong front, but it becomes clear rather quickly that he's been weakened. He believes that Pepper Pan and The Recess Rascals, on behalf of the archdevil of The Court of Those Who Break Their Toys who models himself after the Toys R Ours mascot Joffrey the Giraffe, has been sabotaging his Court. It turns out Junior never arrived at his Court, and he was the one who created the apartment monsters and opened the portal, believing the party was working with Pepper Pan and the Recess Rascals.
As a means of winning his respect and appeasing his Devil nature, they accept a Karmamare Racing bet with Barsabbas. If the party wins, they'll be able to escape the Court. If Barsabbas wins, they have to serve him.
At some point before the race starts, the team learns, inadvertently through Watson, that this Court had actually been decommissioned, but due to bureaucratic error, Barsabbas was never informed. So while he thinks Joffrey has been undermining him and trying to take his territory, which may be true, his undoing has actually been driven by this fact.
Alco and Pauling make Karmic Attachments with Karmamares and enter the race against the Jockey Devil, a cyborg centaur creature that is half humanoid, half Karmamare, HALF RACETRACK. They do a Mario Kart*, and are going to win the race.
In the meantime, Jack investigates a few things from the sidelines. He eventually proposes to the team and to Barsabbas, that they'll throw the race, allowing Barsabbas to save face, in exchange for assistance against Pepper Pan and the Recess Rascals, and for the right to use The Court as a temporary refuge as needed. They accept the deal, and that's where we leave off.
* More details on "The Mario Kart" in the "module" posts to come.
PR 5
After returning to New York, they learn of an upcoming Christmas Toy Drive Festival in Forest Hills Queens, and that Pepper Pan and the Recess Rascals first appeared at the Christmas in July in August Toy Drive Festival at the same location. They have the option to explore O'Brien's other lead, or go straight to Forest Hills, or...
Pauling had previously made a Karmic Attachment with Baek Yesu to help him rediscover his creative inspiration for his music. Towards the end of the prior session, he worked out a deal with Barsabbas to try to get Baek Yesu a new record deal, to help inspire him. It turns out that Rick Barret and Baek Yesu have been hiding out in New Jersey, waiting to find out whether or not there is a warrant for their arrest, although this appears not to be the case, and they suppose that there's been some kind of coverup. Chester also mentions that there's a gangster in Newark, Romeo Suzano aka Sweet Romeo, who owes him money. So the team decides to head to Newark
Barsabbas' agents Ox-Head and Horse-Face meet up with Pauling, Alco, and Baek Yesu at The Prudential Center in Newark. Barsabbas owns a partial stake in the New Jersey Devils and intends to work out a deal for a live performance. They find some sneaky language in the legal jargon and use poltergeist features to alter the nature of the contract in Baek Yesu's favor.
Meanwhile, Jack and Dori strongarm their way to Sweet Romeo, and convince him that "the family" has it out for him, and he gives them the Hell Money, which they load into a QlippothNet crypto-currency account.
They also learn of an experimental ternary-logic AI + Tibetan Buddhist monkey robot art exhibit at The Newark Museum of Art, and that the museum is supposedly being haunted by a rogue Poltergeist, and they choose to investigate this. The museum curator The Worcestershire* walks them through the exhibit. The "Do No Evil" monkey robot claims to recognize Pauling, but that must be a mistake...
They come back to the museum at night and find a security guard who is clearly just The Worcestershire with a Groucho Marx disguise. They do some investigating and eventually find The Bear, a large were-bear woman in a baseball outfit, the rogue poltergeist. She juggles three baseball bats as balls of magical energy appear and repeatedly spikes them out in all directions. The team has to subdue her while also protecting the art, which they manage to accomplish.
After all this, they return to New York, to be continued...
* Another NPC from the first campaign that I never wrote up in a play report, but he's become a personal favorite to roleplay because he has a very goofy schtick.
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