Strada Alta Chapter 5: Too Good to be True

Chance has presented you with an opportunity to acquire some extremely valuable information, currently in the head of a ‘Doctor’ going by the name of Harlequin. Harlequin is currently trapped in a war zone on the planet Ulbacka, but for mercenaries a war zone means profit.

You have a contract for your new fleet to assist the democratically elected government of Ulbacka, the IUU, with the last stage of their civil war to take control of their world. The opposition are the Ulbacka Royal Family who have been strip mining the planet for their own profit. Based on your intel the contract fits well within your operational parameters, it will make for excellent publicity, and it’s very well paid. Once it’s complete pulling Harlequin out of the capital will be trivial.

You couldn’t hope for a better shake down run for the fleet.

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“Travel the Galaxy! Meet Fascinating New Life Forms, Then Kill Them!”

Set in the universe of the long running webcomic Schlock Mercenary, Planet Mercenary is a fast paced and hopefully humorous game about trying to make money by shooting people, or in this case via a major military operation to wrest control of an entire world from some pretty awful folk.

Knowledge of the game system or previous chapters is not needed, knowledge of the comic is a bonus!

You're goblins, sneaky, smelly goblins. You lie, you cheat, and you have a mission.

Christmas has just passed, and there's a labour dispute at the North Pole. The leader of your clan sees an opportunity to get in at the ground floor. Whether you're there as union busters, applying for a job, or just swiping whatever you can and setting the place on fire as you leave, is up to you.

This is a slightly modified version of the game "3 goblins in a trenchcoat" By Daniel Rodriguez. It's super rules light, there's no prep needed, and you get to wander around being goblins in (and out of) a trench coat, fooling those stoopid hoomans and elves.

While I don't forsee there being many triggering themes, we'll be using lines and veils and the X card in this game.

It is a time of superheroes. Paragons of strength, justice, and freedom patrol the skies seeking to stop evil in it's tracks. The guild of heroes is organised into strings. The A string deals with planet wide threats, the B string deals with national threats, the C string deals with more localised threats and so on. The guild of heroes provides training, regulation, lawyers, makeup, and PR for heroes so they can focus on being beacons of virtue (and getting great endorsement deals)

But not every super is a hero, and not every power is wonderful. You are the G string: Supers with powers (or personalities) too strange, unstable, or ridiculous to be allowed to wander around loose, but who haven't done enough wrong that they can lock you up (yet).

The jerks at the guild would rather you didn't exist. They'd have you fetching coffee if there wasn't a solid chance you'd blow it up, so you've been banished to some backwater city. Your secret base is a janitors cupboard, and your companions are the residents of a retirement home that isn't all it seems. Maybe you want to prove yourself and rise in the ranks, maybe it was this or jail, maybe you have a score to settle, or maybe you just took a wrong turn and no one's told you what's going on yet.

This game leans heavy into the tropes, the more ridiculous the better. The goal isn't to win so much as to be as bizarre as possible while doing it.

We will be using lines and veils, and the X card. Pregens will be provided, but some customisation (as time allows) can be done. We may deal with themes including addiction, (comedic) nudity, and mental health, but this will be discussed before the game starts and we'll rule out themes that folks are uncomfortable with.

A group of strangers compete for fabulous prizes on a reality TV show. Alliances will form, tensions will flare, bonds will be broken, heads will roll - Wait, what?

A modern fantasy/horror game that leans into the tropes. Plenty of room for comedy too. The object isn't to win the game so much as to play out the shenanigans, try to survive, or die amusingly trying.

Remember high school? All the angst, drama, rebellion, gossip, crushes, homework, exams, scholarships, careers, family obligations, fashion, music, and being very misunderstood?

It's no different when you're a student at Innsmouth High School. Well, all right, maybe it's a little different - maybe in other towns they don't go skinny dipping at Devil's Reef, maybe other teenagers don't have arranged marriages with Deep Ones to worry about and maybe other teenagers don't have to worry about how their gills look with the latest looks in Cosmo. But other than that, it's not much different being a teenager in a decaying town trapped in an ongoing alliance with a race of underwater monsters.

You were on your way to a pre-graduation party, and now it's the next morning, and you don't remember anything between arriving and the party and, well, now. Your head hurt, you're covered in dirt, seawater, and blood, and you're pretty sure you said some stuff you really shouldn't have... what the hell happened last night?

A no-to-low costume comedy larp for ten players. As they say at Innsmouth High - it's only funny until someone gets sacrificed to Dagon. Then it's HILARIOUS.

A manor that speaks of old money grandeur sits slowly decaying on a large overgrown section. The owners have all long ago departed in bloody circumstances surrounded by rumours and fear. Considered haunted and cursed, it’s been left by the town of Wistal to fall into disrepair. No one ever goes into Schwartzkonig Manor, or if they do, they've never come back out to say so. It’s the perfect place for a bunch of teens to tease each other about being too chicken to enter, especially on the day of the most spooky celebration in Isen. Until one of them actually does. Now you’re standing outside the gates and you can feel the Manor’s eyes on you …waiting to see what you’ll do. It’s up to you to save your friend. Will you be brave enough to enter? Will you survive what’s inside?

Using the system Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, 4 - 6 level 1 characters will explore a Haunted House, fighting the monsters that live there, solving problems and depending on their rolls seeing visions of someone mysterious in the house. This is designed to be a session that can also teach new players how to play, so come along to learn if you want!

Warnings: While this session is fairly fun and super welcoming of all ages, abilities and who folx are or want to be, there are one or two moments of blood filled scenes. Just the usual spooky house stuff but I like to be upfront and keep my players safety in mind at all times. Any questions regarding this, please ask. I'm more than happy to adjust if we have a whole group that is uncomfortable with these things or if some kids want to play.

'Hallowed Festival of Frights' is set in the homebrewed World of Isen, created by Brad Zimmerman. Session DM’d by Julz Burgisser who plays Marley Kraff in the D&D 5e actual play podcast ‘Fate of Isen’ available for download on iTunes, Spotify and all good podcasting apps. See www.fateofisen.com for more details on Isen.

What's it gonna be? You met up with your mates for a night out, but now you're in a motel room and have no idea how you got there. The floor's covered in seawater, the bathtub's full of dead fish and on the wall is scrawled, in what could be blood, 'Previously on The Mentalist.' And who the f**k is the Pikelet Man?
Based on the award winning podcast you've never heard of.

You are the most famous and powerful adventuring party in all the land.

You haven’t done much adventuring lately, though. A few years ago you defeated a Mindflayer in its dark underground lair and discovered something valuable on the way out: There was gold in the mountain. You retired and set up a mining operation.

But early on your Cleric pointed out that the tax on earnings from a mine is much higher than the tax on adventuring loot.

So you worked something out with a nearby goblin tribe.

They work in your mines, you get to pretend you stole this gold from them, everyone gets a cut, everyone’s rich.

But now you’re being audited.

A clerk sent by the Queen herself is coming with you on your next ‘adventure’ to confirm your tax records. So now you have to make it look convincing as you descend into your own mine to ‘steal’ from the goblins who work with you.

When the dead rose, the employees and attendees at Blue Sky Corporate Communication Seminars handled the problem the way they handle every problem: leveraging synergy, shifting paradigms, roadmapping strategies, and holistically approaching the disruption of the world as we know it.

In other words, they barricaded themselves inside their fancy hotel, updated their sensitivity training programs to reflect the need to occasionally shoot their colleagues in the brain stem, and carried on with their mission: teaching better communication strategies. Which was all fine until a ragtag group of survivors managed to break through their defences, get inside, and start demanding food and weapons. Clearly the newcomers could benefit from a few communication skills workshops. Good thing the Blue Sky employees have all the guns!

How to Succeed in the Apocalypse Without Really Dying is a very silly LARP about corporate drones, talking sticks, and zombies.

The big fish of this small, dusty, backend of nowhere pond has a job for you. Unfortunately you owe him, and while his thugs are not near as scary as they think they are he does have a gunship and just now you don’t. He keeps his word though which means if you do this job you’ll be free of him.

That means either the job’s not nearly as easy as he’s making out - or it’s worth a whole lot more.

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“Travel the Galaxy! Meet Fascinating New Life Forms, Then Kill Them!”

Set in the universe of the long running webcomic Schlock Mercenary, Planet Mercenary is a fast paced and hopefully humorous game about trying to make money by shooting people. Knowledge of the game system is not needed, knowledge of the comic is a bonus!

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/archives/