In the previous posts I covered the general premise, the background and the playbooks of Blackout; a Powered by the Apocalypse adventure, a cross between Buffy’s Tabula Rasa and the College of Wizardry.
This installment lays out the further hooks and clues that may help the PCs navigate their predicament. This is not an exhaustive list and it is implored that the GM introduce anything they seem are necessary for their adventure.
In the previous posts I covered the general premise and the background of Blackout; a Powered by the Apocalypse adventure, a cross between Buffy’s Tabula Rasa and the College of Wizardry.
In this entry I will run through the playbooks I used to run the game, most of which came from Monster of the Week with one originating from Apocalypse World. I will relate each Archetype from the Background and I will link them to the existing playbook they correspond to. For the original playbook I implore you to support Monster of the Week or Apocalypse World. The ratings and terminology used should for the most part correspond to the Monster of the Week rule book. I will continue on to describe what I did differently with these original playsets.
Muggle: You are unable to cast spells, create potions or perform alchemy due to a lack of magical potential. Your weirdness is a measure of your knowledge of the secret magical world helping you use magical artefacts.
Moves and Ratings remain the same for the Mulder.
Badge: Detective Sergeant Wasserman
99mm [gun]: 2-harm close loud
Flashlight: 1-harm hand
Flip phone: One unread message:
‘If you are hearing this message it means they’ve got you again and they have erased your memory, killing a past version of us. The short story is these people are from a secret society of magic users, hiding amongst us. On the most part they seem just like us besides the fact that they can use magic. There seems to be some sort of government and law enforcement agency that aids in keeping their world secret. Their favourite tool to employ on ‘muggles’, (this is what they calls us) are memory altering charms. They change your lives with their power and then they take away our memories of these events.
All you know is that they don’t understand technology very well and their reliance on magic has left them complacent to physical attacks. Get in close remove their wand. Your partner can be trusted. Once you have listened to this message mark it as unread.’
Man, woman, transgressive, concealed.
Wild eyes, tired eyes, focused eyes, searching eyes, suspicious eyes, wide eyed.
Utilitarian clothing, unkept clothing, neat clothes, comfortable clothes, ruppled suit.
Muggle: You are unable to cast spells, create potions or perform alchemy due to a lack of magical potential. Your weirdness is a measure of your knowledge of the secret magical world helping you use magical artefacts.
Moves and Ratings remain the same for the Mulder.
Badge: Detective Sergeant Pavlov
99mm [gun]: 2-harm close loud
Pocket knife: 1-harm hand useful small
Car keys [BMW in fairly good condition]
Man, woman, transgressive, concealed.
Friendly face, alluring face, laughed-lined face, trust-worthy face, ‘every-man’ face, serious face.
Uniformed, casual clothed, immaculately kept clothing, street clothes, slept-in suit.
Cloistered: Blessed with magical potential you are able to cast spells, brew potions and perform rituals with roll +Weird. You are unfortunately cloistered from the muggle-world and receive -1 to all rolls when dealing with muggle artefacts. For fast magic you require a wand like all witchards.
The Moves remain mostly the same but are flavoured differently:
The Warden was also given the Moves:
The ratings were also altered to to reflect those of the Monster of the Week format. The Warden was also given one additional Ratings line:
Identification [edict of legimancy]
Warden Konstantin as part of their duty to uphold the tenants of secrecy is awarded extraordinary means to determine the truth during their investigation. This provides Warden Konstantin the authority to administer truth serums and utilise memory extraction techniques on those thought to be in breach of the tenants or protecting one in breach of the tenants, jeopardising a witcharding Conflux.
This edict is published with the authority of the Warden.
Wand: Range small
Photograph The people in this photograph are moving. It depicts two muggles within a witcharding conflux/conclave dressed in ludicrous attire, one actually appears to be wearing a bath robe.
Veritaserum: small vial potent truth serum
Man, woman, transgressive, androgynous.
Soft eyes, dead eyes, deep eyes, caring eyes, pale eyes, ruined eyes, wet eyes, scarred eye.
Ministry blue robes, tattered robes, garish robes, impractical robes, leathers.
Cloistered: Blessed with magical potential you are able to cast spells, brew potions and perform rituals with roll +Weird. You are unfortunately cloistered from the muggle-world and receive -1 to all rolls when dealing with muggle artefacts. For fast magic you require a wand like all witchards.
Combat Magic, Tools and Techniques are ignored for this archetype, it is assumed that the wizard is able to cast magic appropriately.
The Moves remain mostly the same but some are flavoured differently:
The remaining Moves remain the same. As do the Ratings.
Signet ring: On your finger is a signet ring looking around the room you notice a coat of arms over the mantelpiece that matches the ring. The name Van Maldergem and Quia Divina et Humana Prudential.
Wand: Range small
Pendant: Set in one panel is a small photograph, which includes yourself and someone that looks suspiciously like you. On the opposite panel are the words.
‘Never Forget Avalon’
Man, woman, transgressive, concealed.
Sly eyes, fierce eyes, weary eyes, sparkling eyes, soft eyes, ancient eyes.
Fashionable robes, ink stained robes, gothic robes, casual slacks.
Hedge mage: You are an illegal magical practitioner, you did not attend any of the magical colleges and learnt the craft through trial and error. Most die before they come of age, those that do normally dabble in crime, dark magicks or both. They often bear the marks of their unsanctioned experimentation on their person. For fast magic you require a wand like all witchards.
For the Magus; Curses, Natural Attacks, Mental Dominion, Unquenchable Vitality and Incorporeal are ignored.
The Moves remain mostly the same but some are flavoured differently:
Ratings remain the same for the Magus.
Wand: Range small
Bag of salt useful
Stick of chalk useful
Vial of viscous crimson liquid useful
Ritual Dagger: 2-harm hand small
This dagger has a living bloodshot eye fashioned into the hilt like a gemstone which follows the holder.
Hand: animated useful
Man, woman, mysterious, transgressive.
Tattooed face, manic face, scarred face, soft face, aged face, gaunt face, monstrous face.
Archaic robes, tattered robes, singed robes, stylish robes, animal skins, white flowing robe.
Next we will delve into the manor itself.
The HP inspired adventure first mentioned in Blackout: or How I Stopped Worrying and Love Powered by the Apocalypse. Blackout features five different player characters archetypes; the Mulder, the Scully, the Warden, the Scion and the Magus.
Some time the Mulder and the Scully as police detectives stumbled upon the witcharding world. After their first encounter with it their memories were obliviated. Fortunately, the realised something was amiss and were enraged by the fact that erasing their memories was akin to murder. They put measures in place so their memories though they were erased the Mulder was reminded that they don’t remember everything.
Along with the Scully they begin investigating these witchards eventually making it to a conflux of this magical beings. But they also discover that kidnappings and murders made five years ago were connected to a group of fundamentalist witchards. To their shock they soon find out that not all the perpetrators were arrested, that some to this day still lived. This is when the Mulder and the Scully hatch a plan to arrest the Scion for their crimes.
Discovering the Scion addressed they address a letter and attach it to an owl setting it free. They follow the owl to the address with a sneak-a-scope (to detect hidden things) and discover the Scion’s manor out in the cold northern country side.
~~~~
The Warden is a member of the Magical Ministry and has been tasked to investigate two muggles who have continuously ‘relapsed’ from their obliviation. He has been given privileges to use leglimancy to disseminate the cause of their relapsing, and put an end to the tirade once and for all. Keeping their distance on their broom the wary Warden follows the muggles to the Scion’s manor…
~~~~
The Scion is the last of their bloodline, once they were two. Twins. But their twin took the wrap for the kidnapping and murders of those muggles. See they were members of the Iron Legion, a group of witchards that don’t see magic as dark/light but as a haze of grey. They champion that demonology, blood magic and other dark magics can be harnessed if used appropriately.
The Scion’s twin was put to death for their crimes and the Scion became obsessed with their death creating a shrine of sorts in the twin’s old room. Eventually the Scion turned to the Magus and imploring them trying to help resurrect their dead sibling.
~~~~
The Magus is an unregistered witchard who is known through the circles of the Iron Legion, mostly known as a mad diabolist. Most self-taught witchards dabbling in dark arts are either driven mad or killed but the Magus is savvy and has beaten the odds. The Magus’ illegal practices means they need to keep moving to avoid Ministry attention.
The Scion in need of the of the experimental expertise of the Magus and has agreed to harbour the Magus in their manor during the duration on their resurrection experimentation. The theory behind resurrecting the twin is to create a body or vessel that will be able to house the soul and memories of the deceased twin.
The Magus plans to contact a demon of the choir of destruction and arrange a pact that will attain the memories of the twin. Together the Scion and the Magus are gathered in a hidden room in the cellar of the manor gathered around a summoning circle that will bring the demon into our plane. They begin the ritual but are interrupted when intruders barrel through the front door of the manor and they disapparate and confront the intruders (the Mulder and the Scully, and soon the Warden).
~~~~
While upstairs gunfire and spells are fired; downstairs in the cellar the demon, Anamnesis swirls into existence, the ritual that would normally bind it is incomplete. It takes this advantage its smoke-like form to central chimney of the manor to attack everything in the manor. Devouring their memories leaving them with nothing of their past.
Unable to vacate the premises due to the sunlight outside, the demon waits for night to come.
The player characters awake in the disheveled lounge of the manor.
Wednesday night leading into a heatwave we held the fourth Weekly One-shot meetup in the comfort of an air conditioned meeting room. Tonight it was my rotation to host a game. I decided to playtest a home brew adventure of mine I’ve penned as Blackout with those that attend our weekly games.
An adventure for 3-5 players, Blackout would interest players interested in investigating and those who enjoy conflicting agendas between the player characters.
You wake up to find yourselves in chateau, with no memory of who you are or how you got there. As you all try to piece together the events of the previous few hours from things on your person and from the house, you begin to realise that something definitely went wrong. But will you be able to stop this threat before you tear each others throats out?
This year I plan to attend the College of Wizardry LARP in Poland which probably inspired the adventure. Other inspirations include Sir Poley’s Harry Potter and the Natural 20 as well as JK Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series. The themes I wanted to capture in this adventure are heavily inspired by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Tabula Rasa where the player characters play a mixture of muggles and witchards that find themselves in a strange manor with no memory of their past.
Since the beginning of this year I have been tossing up what system to use. The adventure would be heavily investigative so Trail of Cthulhu came to mind but didn’t quite serve the PVP that might ensue. So I turned to Fate which I have previously used in Potterverse RPGs but figured that Aspects that linked the players may give away too much of the mystery. Finally, I decided to road test Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) even though my adventure goes against the very tenants of the system and improvisation. But I felt that how the playbooks aid quick character development and the Moves really suited the adventure I had planned (also this year has been a bit of a showcase for the PbtA system).
Monster of the Week was the PbtA system of choice, the idea of each ‘episode’ contains a mystery with a monster of the week, which was the driving premise of my adventure. I had a couple of ideas that differed from Monster of the Week that I thought would suit Blackout. The ideas I wanted to experiment with included:
Alpha Test of Blackout
The adventure was played with 3 players and ran for 3.5 hours. There were enough hooks in the adventure flags that the adventure could be easily played over two sessions, especially with more players.
The HX mechanic I introduced unfortunately was not utilised to enough to truly gauge if it was effective.
The players felt that the most of the Basic and Hunter Moves were appropriate to a Potterverse world but a couple of Hunter Moves just did quite work with the amnesia or a one-shot setting. The hooks that were found on each character were effective, though once again sort of goes against the intent of PbtA.
Overall the players enjoyed the adventure and the hooks. The only thorns from the players was that one didn’t really like investigation games but he said he just made up for it by causing conflict.
Conclusion
I plan to run the adventure again the next time we run a introduction to RPG session. I haven’t decided yet if I will continue to use PbtA or try a different system like Trail of Cthulhu.
Over the next couple of weeks I will post the adventure in segments for those of you who would like to try out the adventure which will start with the background for Blackout.
Wiz-visible Ink 