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All-American Small Town Evil Conspiracy Quest

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[X] Special Asset: Two of the men drags a jug over from their car and opens it, unleashing a dense purple smoke that drifts around her, filling the air with poisonous fumes.
 
Aleph said:
[X] Special Asset: One of the men takes off his black gloves, revealing that he has eyeballs on his palms. Anna starves into the eyes, and then takes off her necklace, staring into nothing.

Mind control. Eet r useful. Especially if it comes with amnesia. And yeah, this is a good time to tap the Special Asset, a) so that we're familiar with how effective it is, and b) because she's a kooky lady who buys occult junk and believes in the healing powers of crystals and whatnot, so she probably won't be believed if she starts raving about men with eyes in their hands controlling her mind.

Especially if her car is found crashed into a tree with the tyres all popped.

What, like a group of non-magical thugs trying to punch her? Because it seems to be doing pretty well at that. And will melt them into green goop if they push it too far and fail the roll.
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Said thugs DO have ties to the supernatural, seeing as they are able to use special assets.
 
[X] Special asset: One of the men takes off his black gloves, revealing that he has eyeballs on his palms. Anna starves into the eyes, and then takes off her necklace, staring into nothing.

Let's get Not-Danzo as a Thug Minion, guys. It'll be totally awesome.
 
ThoughtMaster said:
Said thugs DO have ties to the supernatural, seeing as they are able to use special assets.
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If we choose not to activate a special asset, they are entirely human thugs, and will still be melted into goop if they fail the roll - which is highly probable. And if merely being associated with the supernatural is enough, then that will be true no matter whether they're trying to punch her or trying to tranq her.
 
Hrmm.

That is unfortunate. Well then, CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE SHOGGOTHS OF WAR!

[X] Special Asset: One of the men takes off his black gloves, revealing that he has eyeballs on his palms. Anna starves into the eyes, and then takes off her necklace, staring into nothing.

Special Asset Reasoning: I don't want to fail damn it all. Yeah, there could be consequences to this, but with some luck we'll get past alright. Plus if we leaver he be or otherwise fail she could become more of a problem in the future. As for this option in particular? Relatively subtle, yet gets the job done well.
 
[X] Special asset: One of the men takes off his black gloves, revealing that he has eyeballs on his palms. Anna starves into the eyes, and then takes off her necklace, staring into nothing.

It is the only asset that explictly in its writeup removes the necklace, which is the source of our problem. After that one is removed we can still break her leg and plunder her car to make it look like a regular robbery of someone that gets a kick out of that. ..We might also later add something to that that make it look like one of her "esoterical incense sticks" was cut with drugs to explain away her strange memorys towards others.
 
Aleph said:
If we choose not to activate a special asset, they are entirely human thugs, and will still be melted into goop if they fail the roll - which is highly probable. And if merely being associated with the supernatural is enough, then that will be true no matter whether they're trying to punch her or trying to tranq her.
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Nah, your leg-breaking mooks are always a bit freaky unless you explicitly go find some pure human diversionary mooks in the planning stage (and they may be the dreaded 2 dice mooks, rather than 3 dice mooks). That, or you put the effort into getting local thugs as assets, which will be handled as assets (which will be covered by a later tutorial).
 
EarthScorpion said:
Nah, your leg-breaking mooks are always a bit freaky unless you explicitly go find some pure human diversionary mooks in the planning stage (and they may be the dreaded 2 dice mooks, rather than 3 dice mooks). That, or you put the effort into getting local thugs as assets, which will be handled as assets (which will be covered by a later tutorial).
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Is there any chance we can get some sort of Elite Mercenary at some later point? You know.

"Those pesky kids have foiled us one too many times, shell out the big bucks for Deathkiller the Hunter."

And then some badass celebrity-guest-star shows up for a two-parter in which the heroes are pressed almost to defeat before they manage to drive him away/beat him, but he swears to come back and in Season 8 he does as an independent villain. Or something!
 
Personally I'd rather start recruiting talent from the local High School, where we've already got ties.

Or, even better, taking the students who have decided that they can't keep up, that they aren't talented, and offering them certain... 'Enhancements', conditional on them accepting a position with our company. Make them smarter, stronger, better than their peers, offer them a free ride through college, and a guaranteed job once they graduate. Oh, and also remember to include some clandestine brainwashing to ensure loyalty while we're at it.

It'll take a while to pay off, but once it does, we'll get great minions out of it.
 
[X] Special Asset: One of the men takes off his black gloves, revealing that he has eyeballs on his palms. Anna starves into the eyes, and then takes off her necklace, staring into nothing.

My reasoning is that mind control can probably induce amnesia, which makes success also eliminate the plot hook that her telling the protagonist about spooky hand-eye thugs will give.

It's subtle, and subtle is good, especially when the government will tax the literal hell out of our legal possession if they catch wind of our operation.
 
Vindictus said:
Personally I'd rather start recruiting talent from the local High School, where we've already got ties.

Or, even better, taking the students who have decided that they can't keep up, that they aren't talented, and offering them certain... 'Enhancements', conditional on them accepting a position with our company. Make them smarter, stronger, better than their peers, offer them a free ride through college, and a guaranteed job once they graduate. Oh, and also remember to include some clandestine brainwashing to ensure loyalty while we're at it.

It'll take a while to pay off, but once it does, we'll get great minions out of it.
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"On today's Very Special Episode of Black Goat Adventures: Little Timmy learns to say Yes to Drugs"
 
The Laurent said:
Is there any chance we can get some sort of Elite Mercenary at some later point? You know.

"Those pesky kids have foiled us one too many times, shell out the big bucks for Deathkiller the Hunter."

And then some badass celebrity-guest-star shows up for a two-parter in which the heroes are pressed almost to defeat before they manage to drive him away/beat him, but he swears to come back and in Season 8 he does as an independent villain. Or something!
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Yes. That would be a lieutenant, above mookness. They're assets akin to controlling an element of town, because - as we know - the villains having a named recurring underling is a big deal.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Nah, your leg-breaking mooks are always a bit freaky unless you explicitly go find some pure human diversionary mooks in the planning stage (and they may be the dreaded 2 dice mooks, rather than 3 dice mooks). That, or you put the effort into getting local thugs as assets, which will be handled as assets (which will be covered by a later tutorial).
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So the thugs are causing the amulet to react to them. In that case I would have to go
[X] Use a tranquilizer dart to sedate the victim. After she loses consciousness, use a shovel to move her into our vehicle and take her back to base without touching her.
 
[X] Special Asset: One of the men takes off his black gloves, revealing that he has eyeballs on his palms. Anna stares into the eyes, and then takes off her necklace, staring into nothing.

"Field Agent, the target appears to utilize an occult defensive system of unknown type. Penetrating it with conventional force appears... unlikely. Mission Abort is possible, but highly discouraged at this stage. Deploy the Special Asset, "Eye of Urog-Katlir", that you have been provided with for this mission - it will disable the target and all its defences for a short period, giving you an opportunity to strike. Press 4 on your command panel to deploy the asset."

I'm trying some vidya gaem tutorial-voice nonsense for this, I guess.

Omegahugger said:
If we can mine eldritch abominations, we can punch out a pendant. If she wants proper portection, she can try out our gift-shop.
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Okay, no-one else seems to be voting for this, but no-one's addressed this, either so... our thugs get 3d6 rolls. At Diff 3, this means they have to succeed each and every one of these 3 rolls, rolling 4 or higher, to succeed. These are uh... not great odds. So no, we very much can't punch out and pendant and there's a very good reason why this choice has a x0.2 modifier to it. Additionally, we're doing this in a secluded area, so barring any complications (entirely possible even if we succeed with this many dice in play), the only witness is a woman who's about to get a concussion.
 
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ThoughtMaster said:
So the thugs are causing the amulet to react to them. In that case I would have to go
[X] Use a tranquilizer dart to sedate the victim. After she loses consciousness, use a shovel to move her into our vehicle and take her back to base without touching her.
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Veto'd. You don't get to do that. You don't have the Special Assets for that. If you were a secret Men in Black government conspiracy you could have that, but you're a biohorror corporate conspiracy. Thematically you can't declare you have that without the entire Plan being focussed around it.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Veto'd. You don't get to do that. You don't have the Special Assets for that. If you were a secret Men in Black government conspiracy you could have that, but you're a biohorror corporate conspiracy. Thematically you can't declare you have that without the entire Plan being focussed around it.
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Ok, question: what do we have in the way of methods to subdue that wouldn't require us to touch the victim and wouldn't end up with us revealing ourselves to anyone who happens to drive by?
… what about a tire iron?
 
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[X] Special Asset: One of the men takes off his black gloves, revealing that he has eyeballs on his palms. Anna starves into the eyes, and then takes off her necklace, staring into nothing.

IC, we don't wanna lose our thugs or let her go - that would be embarassing or legitimately a risk to us. OOC, These are the opening scenes of the first episode - we need to win here in order to come across as a real threat!

ThoughtMaster said:
Ok, question: what do we have in the way of methods to subdue that wouldn't require us to touch the victim and wouldn't end up with us revealing ourselves to anyone who happens to drive by?
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I'd imagine none on hand. We're the "guys in rubber monster suits" conspiracy, that doesn't lend itself well to subtlety on the part of our thugs. Also, being a sight risk isn't necessarily terrible - we'll be getting complications on 1s and 2s anyways, at least this way we have an idea what complications might arise, instead of leaving it wide open.
 
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ThoughtMaster said:
Ok, question: what do we have in the way of methods to subdue that wouldn't require us to touch the victim and wouldn't end up with us revealing ourselves to anyone who happens to drive by?
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None. If you want us to subdue her, vote to use a Special Asset. If you don't want us to reveal ourselves, vote to run away. It is fully intended that we play to genre here, which means voting honestly and not trying to cheat. Trying to work out a way to get Special Asset or Trusted Lieutenant success rates without the corresponding downsides is cheating.
 
EarthScorpion said:
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Question on Flukes and Complications: Do you keep count of how many of each we roll during the course of a Plan, then at the end take the difference into the future, or is each roll independent?

Or, to put it another way, will the Fluke we rolled during the first stage of the Plan cancel out a single Complication from this second stage, or if we roll one will we just end up with one bad thing and one good thing happening?
 
Ginger Maniac said:
Or, to put it another way, will the Fluke we rolled during the first stage of the Plan cancel out a single Complication from this second stage, or if we roll one will we just end up with one bad thing and one good thing happening?
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The latter, although there's a chance that the first thing may be cancelled out or partially mitigate the second one if I don't want to complicate things.
 
Thinking about the eye dude as out special asset, would it maybe backfire if her necklace has some kind of protective aura?

Maybe instead we could go for a physical assault?

[X] Special Asset: One of your men removes his jacket, exposing his arms and white shirt beneath. Beneath the light of the stars, the flesh sloughs off his limbs and falls to the asphalt with muffled 'splats'. The now exposed bones are studded with lip-less mouths, their teeth chattering but producing no sound. He reaches towards the road, hand dipping through it with a suddenly audible keening, reminiscent of a dentists drill. When he stands again, he holds a chunk of asphalt, clasped in a cage of bone and madness. His arm winds back, and he prepares to throw.

Tl;dr: Lovecraftian baseball.
 
NeverDies said:
Thinking about the eye dude as out special asset, would it maybe backfire if her necklace has some kind of protective aura?
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The protective aura requires 3 successes to defeat it.

If I understand the mechanics right, it doesn't particularly matter which special asset we use, because they all add 5 dice to our pool. Mechanically, there's no difference between one of the examples ES wrote in, and any given write in.

I did briefly consider having all of our guys reveal that they were secretly shapeshifting superpowered ghouls instead, because if there are long term results from this Special Assets vote it'd be pretty funny to have our thugs be a literal 'Ghoul Squad', but I decided not to because Budget-Rate Danzo already had a few votes and it sounded fun.
 
Can somebody just... Run her over with our car?

Is that a thing we can do?

Edit:
Aleph said:
None. If you want us to subdue her, vote to use a Special Asset. If you don't want us to reveal ourselves, vote to run away. It is fully intended that we play to genre here, which means voting honestly and not trying to cheat. Trying to work out a way to get Special Asset or Trusted Lieutenant success rates without the corresponding downsides is cheating.
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Ah, not so much then? Blast.

Hmm. Give me a minute to think... Right.

[X] Special Asset: One of the men takes off his black gloves, revealing that he has eyeballs on his palms. Anna starves into the eyes, and then takes off her necklace, staring into nothing.

Mind control! Helpful. It leaves the amulet intact, it won't leave her with any odd scars, at least physically, and maybe we'll get amnesia out of it.

Maybe.

Honestly, given it's a one third chance of a complication on each dice and we're rolling 8, we're going to be eating something, but hey, it's the tutorial stage, I want to see how this goes so we at least know going forward how this sort of thing pans out.
 
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