[HOE] Damn

[toadpooka@juno.com]

I was a good Marshal once.  Some people (OK, mainly just one) said I was
one of the best they'd met.  For quite a while, I feared I was losing my
touch.
But tonight, I ran the first session of my HoE campaign, and all I have
to say is DAMN.  This is arguably the best RPG session I've attended in a
loooong time.
For starters, I've got this beautifully quirky set of characters that fit
coincidentally right into the campaign plan  I've set up from day one.
[By the way, if any members of my posse are reading this, go no further.
Spoilers abound]
Here's the posse:

Ken Gomez:  He was pulled out of high school in his freshman year and
drafted into minor league baseball.  After a few years, he was picked up
by the Detroit Tigers (handy thing that there are Canadian baseball
teams, since we still don't know who owned Detroit after 1877).  He only
played two games in the majors before being booted down to the minors as
a result of a newfoud heroin addiction.  He played a few years more in
the minors, but it got boring, so he started working for a bank-robbery
outfit as a getaway driver (he learned how to drive by watching coked-up
baseball players kill pedestrians on the sidewalk, so this getaway driver
stuff came natural to him).  He worked in that profession until the War,
after which he hooked up with a nasty road gang and raised Hell.  of
course, like many such heroes, he saw the light of day, kicked the smack
addiction and set out to become a hero (along the way he did become
dependant on stimulants, especially caffiene and effedrine, which happens
when you drive all night).
After helping out folks in trouble for awhile, he recieved a visit from a
Mysterious friend.  Little did Ken know, but he is the great-great-great
grandson of Shoeless Joe Jackson.  Joe's ghost appears to him as a kind
of drunken, racist, redneck guardian angel (who's not very pleased that
his decendant is largely Mexican and Japanese, by the way).  Shoeless has
a mission for Ken: he needs to get one piece of Joe's memorabilia into
the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Shoeless was banned from the Hall because he
was implicated in the Black Sox scandal of 1919.  But it turns out that
he wasn't part of the scandal after all, not that anyone will care now
that there's no more major league.  So Ken has to find any piece of
suitable Shoeles Joe legacy and travel to Cinncinnati and place it in the
Hall of Fame there.  Little does Ken know, but the only way Shoeless can
talk to him is as a hallucination induced by the heroin withdrawal.  He
is real, but if Ken gets back on the drug, Shoeless can't communicate
with him anymore.  Hence, this chaw-spitting throwback of a ghost acts as
a force against the urge to shoot up again.  You guessed it, the whole
ghost bit was a Mysterious Past draw that we cooked up (no pun intended).
Ken is mainly a very nervous, squeamish guy.  But when he's in his car,
that passes away, and he can take on anything.  This is partly due to the
time he's spent behind the wheel, and partly due to James Dean's Air
Freshener, a relic he possesses.  The Air Freshener give a +4 to all guts
checks made by the driver of the car, but he also gians the Big Britches
hinderance with regard to driving (say, perrhaps causing him to go
careening off a cliff to prove he's got guts).

Brother Joseph MacGowan:  This player asked me if I wanted the Templars
to be bastards or nice guys in my campaign.  I told him that the
organization is mostly bastards, but there are a few good guys in the
mix, and I'd rather him be a good guy.  Joseph is a fiercely devout
Catholic and an almost fanatical Templar.  He's only gone around in
disguise so far, though the posse knows what's up.  In disguise, he's
perfectly humble, and an emblem of humility.  He spent an hour washing
dishes for the family that took him in for free when everyone else was
renting out rooms in their houses.  But you can vaguely see it when
someone tries to bully him or take advantage of his meekness.  I can't
wait to see what happens when he goes full-on knight mode...

Gramicci:  A veteran rock climber and outdoorsman.  He can survive almost
anything, and is almost uncannily lucky when it comes to things that
might kill him.  While he is a nice guy and will always help out a friend
in need, he's got a bit of a dark side going:  Once, he and a team of
"extreme" guys got stuck halfay up a mountain in a blizzard.  They took
shelter in a cave, but only had enough food to last them a couple
days...you can see hwere this is going.  Three weeks later, he clawed out
of the cave, happy as a clam.  now he's got a little Hankerin.'  This
guys about a third of the way to being a wendigo by now.  He's stronger,
faster, etc.  Of course, he makes up for all of this by risking life and
limb to protect the innocent.  Just when it's over, he tends to sneak a
snack off the bad guy.  of course, the Wendigo spirit in him manifests
itself, not as blatantly as it does with the harrowed, but it's there. 
Anyone remember the scene in Silence fo the Lambs where Hannibal Lechter
scares a man so much just by talking that he swallows his own tongue? 
What do you call an 87 on Overawe?  The victim in this case was a guy in
the holding cell next to him who happened to witness a rather
"Bloodthirsty" killing earlier that night.

Atari: A lost 14 year old girl who's been kicked around ever since her
wacky survivalist dad died shortly after the war.  The times when she
wasn't raising herself, she spent with the Sioux.  But she was too New
Ways for the Sioux, and too outback for the "advanced" world.  She's
terrified of guns, since her father was shot to death next to her at such
a young age.  Because of all the guns common around survivors, she keeps
things simple and tries to shy away.  Atari has been hanging around with
Ken Gomez lately.  He's mainly interested in finding out where her
father's old stash of guns and supplies is, but he's taken a bit of a
liking to the poor thing.

"Bubbles:" Walking around the West wearing a neon pink wig and
rhinestones where her eyebrows should be, Bubbles is probably the most
lethal of the group.  She used to be a military syker, but her psych
profile fit a certain..."moral flexibility" would be the only way to put
it.  She was loaned out to an Ranger-sponsored program, and became a
professional killer before and after the war.  Now, she's lost her taste
for it completely, and is trying to help save lives instead of ending
them.  She knows a variety of powers that help her heal, and she's trying
to be a hero and a mother figure for Atari.

That's the posse.  I'm gonna post a rundown of the first session once I
get it typed up.
What makes me so happy about this group is that people I know who always
play a "type" are going outside of that mold.  The guy who plays Gomez is
notorious for basing his characters off of Will Smith or Martin Lawrence
(he really liked "Bad Boys").  Bubbles' player has only played meek
characters that never get involved for as long as I've known her, and I'm
surprised to see her take on the role of a calm, collected killer. 
Gramicci is played by a guy who is a hobbyist rock-climber, so he knows a
flurry of terminology that I'd never be able to touch.  But he always
plays very one-dinemsional characters and relies on others to make the
real decisions.  He's doing phenomenally well at playing two very
different faces of the same character.

From Whom It May Concern,
Rich Ranallo
--
"You are a good woman...but, then again, you may be the Antichrist."
-Doc Holliday, "Tombstone"

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