We played my AToW one-shot on Monday and it went rather well. I had four players (although one showed up late) and here are the characters they went with:
Katie Kitsu: A member of the Civilian Guidance Corps assigned to patrol the neighborhood in question. She hates the job and wants to make a big bust to get promoted to a better neighborhood where she can window shop to while away the boring days on patrol and sees this as her chance.
Robert "Bob" Hida: Katie's partner in the Civilian Guidance Corps and pretty much her complete opposite. Bob buys into that whole bushido schtick and sees it as his duty to help and protect the people of the neighborhood.
Rabbi David Isaak Weisenstein: Professor of Theology and Languages at Tabayama University. My friend Josh put every Jewish stereotype in a blender and played it as a character and managed to be hilarious without being farcical.
Yuri Konstantinov: Half Russian Bratva, Half 80s Yakuza and Half 70s Pimp (yeah, that's three-Halves. Deal with it), Yuri was assigned to find out what's happening in the neighborhood by his oyabun as a punishment duty for being too ambitious, but not very good at being ambitious.
I hadn't told them anything about the game other than that they would be investigating a series of disappearances and ritual killings in a seedy neighborhood and they thought that the idea of a murder mystery set in the BTU was a neat idea.
I started with our Friendly Persuaders getting chewed out by their superior who was taking a lot of heat from his superiors due to the events in the Harmonious Gardens neighborhood. The neighborhood was a slum populated by lower-class workers for one of the major industrial firms on Tabayama and nobody cared about the disappearances until the workers started to organize strikes and demonstrations. Before sending in the riot squads, the CGC decided to make at least a halfway attempt at doing their jobs and the players were heavily pressured to find someone...ANYONE...to pin it on so things would go back to normal. The only lead they had was the ritualistic nature of the killings (hearts, eyes and tongues removed with nearly surgical skill) and some graffiti left behind at the murder scene which appeared to be in an unknown language. So, they were ordered to secure the help of a renowned scholar of languages at the local university, thus bringing them into contact with Rabbi Weisenstein.
Rabbi Weisenstein insists on accompanying them on their investigation and they visit the crime scenes in Harmonious Gardens so that he can get a closer look at the graffiti. He is able to determine that it is related to some obscure Terran dialect found on the African continent, but can't decipher it, other than to say that it appears to be a warning about some "Shadow Hunter" or something. The trio canvasses the neighborhood variously talking to and roughing up the inhabitants to find out more info. My friend Rob was running late, so he decided to take the Yakuza Ganger to make it easier to slip into the game. They met at a local bar after the Friendly Persuaders had been informed by the locals that someone else was investigating the murders.
Bob and Yuri pretty much decide they hate each other on sight and a firefight almost breaks out in the bar before cooler heads (Rabbi Weisenstein) prevail. They decide to work together but split up so that they can cover more ground (and so that Bob and Yuri don't kill each other). Bob and Rabbi Weisenstein continue to gather info from the locals and learn that a strange new religious organization has moved into the neighborhood. They call themselves the Order of Celestial Oneness and they talk to several of the higher-ups at the nearby factory who know about the cult, but consider them harmless so long as they keep the factory workers docile and diligently working 14 hour days to produce widgets. Bob notices that they're being followed at this point, but loses track of their shadow in an alleyway after a brief chase. They learn from a few of the locals that they Order is having a "tent-revival style" meeting at a local park tonight and that the Order teaches elevation of the mind to an enlightened state through mental contact with otherworldly entities that supposedly live in "hyperspace".
Katie and Yuri don't have much luck with their investigation, choosing instead to flirt outrageously with one another. They decide to nip off for a mid-day rendezvous at a local motel where they proceed to "get to know each other better." They also completely miss that they are followed, apparently only having eyes for each other.
When the group meets back up, they share information (well, Bob and the Rabbi do) and decide that the best course of action is to try and infiltrate the tent revival later that night. Rabbi Weisenstein decides to head back to his office to see if some of the books that he has there can help with translating the graffiti. He gets back to find that his office has been subtly searched and several books are missing that he needs for the translation work. He tries to call the rest of the party, only for a mysterious voice on his phone to tell him to meet at the faculty lounge in an hour and to come alone. Being a PC, he of course contacts the rest of the party and they help him set a trap for the mysterious person.
At the faculty lounge, he meets up with a guy who identifies himself as "Howard. Just Howard" and he tells the Rabbi that he wants to know what his interest in the Cult is. The Rabbi stalls until the party is in position to spring their trap, which they do successfully, knocking Howard unconscious. Checking his pockets, they realize that he's a member of the ISF and have the requisite sphincter-tightening moment and discuss what to do with him. After much argument they discard stuffing him into a wood chipper, because Bob is too honorable for that (and they don't know how much his superiors know). Instead, they revive him and he's understandably pissed, but decides to forgive (not forget) for now if they'll do him a little favor. Rumor has it that the Cult has some sort of "weird looking stone" that they use as a religious artifact and he'll forgive the whole thing if they'll get it for him.
Figuring they don't have much choice since they just cheesed off a member of the secret police, they decide to do it. The plan is to attend the tent revival as new converts and then see if they can find out about the stone. Howard gives Rabbi Weisenstein a transmitter device to use for if they need "backup". They party attends the tent-revival in disguise as workers and the sermon is mostly a rambling mess about "otherworldly intelligences" and "divine wisdom". During the revival, they learn that new recruits are required to touch some "sacred stone" which will open their mind to the cosmos. So, they are brought to the front along with several other new recruits. When their turn comes up, Rabbi Weisenstein goes first and when he touches the Shining Trapezohedron, I give him a note card with what he sees written out. I basically gave him a description similar to the ones that they use whenever someone makes a Jump in the BTU. He nods sagely and says, "Interesting," as he walks away with a dreamy smile.
Next up is Bob, who doesn't want to touch the stone, so he decides to play the authority card and whips out his badge and shotgun and tells everyone there that they're under arrest. Of course the PCs are outnumbered 30:1, so when he fails to cow them, they attack, planning to overwhelm the "false faithful" and sacrifice them to something they call the "Haunter". A firefight breaks out and Rabbi Weisenstein is badly injured, so he activates the transmitter and calls for help.
"Help" arrives in the form of a squad of DEST troopers in Void suits who proceed to mow down everyone in the vicinity, seemingly not caring if the PCs live or die either. Bob is killed in the fight with the crowd and Rabbi Weisenstein is knocked unconscious when he's trampled by the crowd fleeing. Yuri grabs the Trapezohedron (careful not to touch it) and runs for it, planning on trading it to the ISF for assurances that he won't be killed. Yuri and Katie hold up in an old tenement, hoping to evade the BA when the building starts to shake. Looking outside, they see a Panther taking out buildings in the neighborhood to eliminate the scattered cult members and realize the jig is up. They hide the Trapezohedron and surrender to the Panther, promising to reveal the idol's location if they're spared.
After interrogation by Howard, they pretty much immediately sell each other out and give up the location of the Trapezohedron and the ISF realizes that they don't really know anything of dangerous import. So, they're "recruited" by the ISF (In For Life!) and set free. Katie loses her job with the CGC due to the debacle and Yuri loses several digits, but they both survive. Katie decides to go to the "dark side" and join the Yakuza as a low-level enforcer, because a girl's gotta eat, right?
Rabbi Weisenstein wakes up in a hospital several days later, his head full of strange knowledge. Thus the cycle begins again...
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So, the game was pretty well-received and (after a bit of a learning curve) came as a shock to most of them on how much easier it was to play than they thought it was. Of course, a big part of that was me taking chargen into my own hands. We have the D&D game this weekend and the ShadowRun 5E game the weekend after that, so we're still working though the game possibilities. The game ran for a little over four hours and they managed to miss several of the clues:
-The guy following Bob and Rabbi Weisenstein was a local graffiti artist who'd starting having strange dreams and the only way to get them to stop for a time was to "let them out" by graffiti tagging. He was actually leaving the graffiti "before" the murders happened.
-The murders and disappearances were to secure material to feed the "Haunter" and all occurred during the frequent blackouts in the neighborhood, with the blackouts caused by one of the local officials who was a high-ranking member of the Cult. The blackouts also took out any local surveillance cameras and the like. Non-cult members were the targets and the murderer was either doctor who ran a local clinic and was in the cult or the actual Haunter, depending on whether I wanted to go Full Supernatural or not.
Despite that, the plot only really went off the rails when they decided to ambush the ISF agent and when Bob decided to go Judge Dredd and try to arrest 150 people all by his lonesome. As experienced CoC players, they figured out what was going on when they were speaking to the ISF agent and he mentioned the Cult of Starry Wisdom. As much as I wanted there to be a fight between a Haunter and a Void suit, I decided to avoid the overtly supernatural.
Also, people familiar with L5R can probably tell it was our last game by Katie and Bob's surnames. ;)
Katie (also her real name) was voted Worst. Lion. Ever. in that campaign when her character Ikoma Miyori (a Kitsu shugenja with the Ancestor Enemy Flaw) asked "So, how much opium do I have to take before I stop giving a crap that my dead Grandfather keeps yammering in my ear about what I crappy Lion I am?" :0