Our first games of Technoir:

1.1 Snatch and Grab

For the first game, 1.0, we made up characters.  We’ve got

Ezekiel Starkweather a.k.a. Zeke, a linked-in reporter

Jane Roland, a.k.a. Scar, a veteran soldier courier

Captain Alexander Finch a.k.a. Finch, a helicopter pilot (“Doc Holiday but with a helicopter,” Aaron said).  Solid

I rolled for 3 items on my Plot Map.

I got two Connections and one Place:

• Jasna Duke, Resevoir Director
• Draga Zhang, Lawyer
• Resevoir Fortress

Huh.  They bought stuff, used Connections and a few tidbits got added to the map but not much.

• Brat, Veteran of Low Earth Orbit Wars

I was bummed that so much cool stuff didn’t end up on the page but okay, that’ll be for next time, I reckon.

I had ideas but those ideas were also inspired by stuff not yet on the map.  I told myself that I’d keep the idea to myself, see how the dice rolled.

Jasna Duke, rich and powerful reservoir director, can’t find his daughter and he wants this crew to track her down.  They’re hired by Draga, the jurisdiction lawyer, who works on retainer for Jasna and in this case, is just a people-who-knows-people.  Draga calls them in, explains the job and sets them on it.

First thing’s first, they want to talk to Jasna.  They circle the Reservoir in Finch’s helicopter and are given the landing clearance.  Zeke is a smart-ass, turns out he has a link to Jasna; he’s Jasna’s biographer.  They ask some questions about how the daughter hangs out with.  I roll on Duke’s table and get the Manhunt Squad.  “She hangs out with a gang of bounty hunters lately.”  Cool.

They asked about her cell phone and Jasna said it was off-line and I added or its been hacked to seem off-line.

Jim umped on that and has Zeke roll his Hack verb and added the Adjective: Traceable.

The crew tracked it to a club near D.C.’s hub, now buried by urban levels, nearly entirely underground.

The club was fairly well guarded but Aaron has Finch roll XXX to find a weak point in security.  They wait until a guard walks away from a door to help a musician with gear and they walk in the back door.

And there is Eve Duke, the Paris Hilton of the cyberpunk age.  She’s partying it up in the V.I.P. section of the club with a gang of bounty hunters.  But oddly, there’s Eve Duke, walking up the stairs towards the V.I.P. section, when a bouncer approaches her, she wrist-locks him and throws him down the stairs.

They decide to watch.  She pulls a gun and fixes a silencer to the barrel.

Scar tries to subdue Angry Eve but her roll ties.  Angry Eve pushes her aside, kicks a table over, puts Scared Eve against the wall and puts her gun to her head.

Finch decides to fire on the bounty hunters, driving them away.  Adjective: Running for cover (not really an adjective, so sue me)

Scars rolls again and this time puts a solid adjective on Angry Eve, Adjective: Unconscious

They zip-tie both of the ladies’ hands and feet and get to the helipad.  Police sirens are in the distance.

End of 1.1

1.2 WTF

A quick infra-red scan reveals that Angry Eve is in fact a synth.  Scared Eve is petulant and not talking.  Some things aren’t adding up.  Scared Eve has been texting with dad constantly over the past 24 hours and her phone isn’t the one they were given the tracking info on.  Angry Eve’s phone is the one they were given access to, the one they were told to find.

They consider throwing the synth into the ocean but decide against it.  “Plus, she might just swim her way home.”

They decide to head to Brat, a war veteran turned black market splicer to make ends meet.   Brat lets them know that Angry Eve is not just any Synth but a bleeding edge top-of-the-line synth, probably out of Hong Kong.  He has never seen her equal.  He’s also an Eve Duke fanboy and suggests that this is the reason she’s been long-rumored to be in two places at once.

They call Jasna and he’s an asshole, talking to them like he talks to any indentured servant on his payroll.  Here’s the thing: Finch is loyal to Jasna and doesn’t want to eff him over.  But they’ve grabbed two daughters and not just one, dammit and Jasna lied about the gig, knowing damned well they were in fact sending them after a dangerous synth.

“This was a measure taken to insure that my daughter was able to get an education and not fear being kidnapped.”

*click*

They decide to take Scared Eve back to dad and keep the Synth with them while they negotiate their pay.

End of 1.2

We’re playing in short half hour bursts, which is interesting.  The flow of dice is interesting.  There was a moment where I had enough push dice to make the roll a 7 but that seems like a Dick Move.

I didn’t have much from the initial Plot Map, so I added a few things in from the Master Table to spice things up.  The session didn’t seem to have legs until the second Eve showed up.