[Big Maul] Table Chatter / Out-Of-Character

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Comments

  • Oh, Cache is fine. These two should do nicely. Esco doesn't have to see me for all my moves to work.
  • Heh. Jet has absolutely no awareness of what's happening in Cache's mind, of course. He's in his own world and sees things in his own terms (usually dramatic ones, filled with passion, conflict, last-minute twists, and a headfucking metal soundtrack). He is cutting all emotional ties with these two because they're messing with his show, plain and simple.

    But on some meta-dramatic level, what he's actually done... is give them to Cache.
  • edited April 2014
    Jet , you're headed back to show prep, right? Want to skip ahead in a new scene?
    Yup. Or back to the old one (?) Even though it didn't happen that way, when I said Jet needed some "downtime" this afternoon I was picturing that six hours of prep would go by in one paragraph, something would happen with Hot's machine, and if nothing went wrong (haha), Jet would have stayed in Work Mode until the final curtain.

    While the show goes on, I doubt we want to read too much of the performers' internal dialogue, so I plan to describe only the key beats and dramatic conflicts of the show. And obviously I expect Rich to do some stuff, and I also think that IN THE AUDIENCE of such a show is a hella cool setting for some apoc world stuff to happen. This is the underground metal nightclub scene in any cyber movie. [ETA: Now With Fucking!] You guys should make use of it as a backdrop while Jet's presenting it.

    Just sayin'. :-)
  • And I have such sights to show them.
  • edited April 2014
    @Rich - Ok so it's easy to let all the people in the maul know about a show (Yay! We'll get to meet some of them!)

    But I also want to think about whether it's true that "people come from far and wide" (as I once said, before the breeze concept was fully fleshed out) which might imply that we have a radio or some means of advertising to nearby towns...

    Or if it's the people in the maul plus "caravans and random wanderers come through every so often, not staying for long" and therefore there would be a larger number of "strangers" in the audience.

    [ETA: OH! Maybe we always do a new show on day X of the month, so people have just come to know that's a regular thing? This would easily tie in to the rent I pay Lifestyles, and TOTALLY EXPLAINS the pressure on Jet today. Sounds great to me but still want to talk about the breadth of the audience.]
  • @Rich Move question. Would you say there is a limit to how many puppet strings I can have active on a given person? Just as a practical consideration. Obviously, I'd prefer to at least have multiple. Cache is still, to an extent, thinking like a Skinner. Still functions rather like a twisted Skinner. Like Marilyn Manson covering Lana Del Rey.

    Ze got along in large part by Hypnotizing ze's lovers. Manipulated connections.
  • edited April 2014
    Another question (I'm full of em, I'm a font of fictional confabulation!)...

    Maybe it hasn't happened yet mechanically, maybe there's another line to cross, but... @Rich, could you see any justifiable way I could actually give 2 NPCs to Niko? Literally cross them off Jet's sheet and put them on Cache's?
  • Marilyn Manson covering Lana Del Rey.
    I really want to hear this now.
  • This isn't quite Jet's style as I understand it, but this song came up on shuffle as I rode the subway back from a gig tonight, and I immediately thought of the AMC.

  • OMG that was awesome. Thank you for sharing it.
  • @Rich Move question. Would you say there is a limit to how many puppet strings I can have active on a given person? Just as a practical consideration.
    One Move per puppet. So, you get the one roll, the strings are there. You can't add more until those strings are used. Make sense?

  • @Rich, could you see any justifiable way I could actually give 2 NPCs to Niko? Literally cross them off Jet's sheet and put them on Cache's?
    Mechanically? Well, Mari and Esco are members of Jet's gang, right? So, if Cache took a gang as an advancement somehow (part of taking a holding, perhaps), then yes. Otherwise, the fiction, to me, would be "they're fired" and then if Cache picks them up through puppet strings, well then, there you go.
  • I'm playing on Hangouts tonight, so I'll be quiet for a while. I may end up crashing afterwards, not sure yet.
  • edited April 2014
    Yup. makes sense (about the NPCs).
  • Understood about the puppet strings.
  • edited April 2014
    Ok let's talk about "people from far and wide" coming to the maul. How many people, how often, are they from near or far, this may lead into info or rumors about neighboring communities... Anybody got some good ideas?

    Travel is part of the Circus' background, so we know travel happens. Esco claims to have traveled all the way from Rio. So it may not be easy, it may not be fun, and you may lose a few to the dance before you reach your destination, but it happens. This far I'm staying within my personal creative agency.

    I think it gives us a lot more options if we increase the number and type of people that may be found in the maul at any given time. Not to mention that's a source of income for the Circus and outside commodities for the maul. [ETA: This intersects with Alan's personal creative agency, I would think, since that trade is probably a big deal to Mac.]

    But that said, we also want to retain a sense of distance and isolation, for a sense of local community and just for its creepy effect. So we need to find a balance between these two design goals, and it probably has something to do with weather and breeze patterns, right?

    At about this point I feel I'm getting near the edge of my creative agency, and wish to defer to Rich.
  • We're still in first session. I'm flexible. If there are folks outside the maul, which a traveling circus does seem to indicate, then there are folks outside the maul.

    Thing is, the maul offers something, right? But there's also a reason why those "other people", those "outsiders" aren't in the maul, too. So, that's a thing.

    I'd rather we move this into a live thread rather than debate it back and forth on out-of-character thread, though. I'm looking to skip Jet Black ahead to the show, and will open the scene asking several of these questions.

    If other players have opinions, feel free to express them. Just because a thing was true when Jet was last outside, doesn't mean it's exactly true anymore. Not to devalue anyone's creative input, just offering multiple points of view.
  • Just because a thing was true when Jet was last outside, doesn't mean it's exactly true anymore.
    Excellent point!
  • Jet Black's big number is hilariously bizarre.
  • Jet Black's big number is hilariously bizarre.
    QFT. Tod, you should totally stage pageants. And orgies. Orgy-pageants.

  • Heh. Thank you, I think!
    Slight retcon to answer Rich's question about worry.
  • Ok that's it for me tonight, got some code to write. Thank you for coming to the AngelMetalCircus, put your jingle right here, give me your hand please, thank you. Tonight's receet is a fuscia stroke on the back of your hand. Theater 9 is the evil side, theater 10 is the hero side. Drinks and personal bizniz in the small theaters. Only. There's some people selling shit in there too.

    And you're in.
  • As I head off to sleepy-land, I must report that I'm totally digging this game. Many of you have (charitably) pointed arrows of interest or enmity directly at Hottopic, and as a first time (that's the last time I'll say that) A/W-er, and as someone who's dealing with PbP in a functional way for the first time also, it's awesome.
  • Well, I'm single again. Not that it wasn't expected. Happy Cannibeaster!
  • I wish you the best in the future, @Niko. I'm not so great at being alone, myself.

    Hey @VALDIS, are you out there? Need any help?
  • edited April 2014
    Good to know. It will affect your play :->

    I celebrate the Miracle of the Selective Death of Egyptian Gentiles and subsequent Miracle of the Temporarily Gravity-Resisting Sea followed by the Miracle of Forty Years of Finding Magic Food in the Desert, myself.
  • I'm running the last session of AW over Hangouts for the next few hours. Will post later this afternoon/evening.
  • edited April 2014
    Last 60 seconds of this video includes some footage of the JetBlackCircus as we departed from our previous engagement at the A D ROCK club in (what's left of) downtown Springfield. See the guy carrying the Trouble T? That's me. (It's dramatic. Mamma can tell you all about it. Once upon a time there was this guy called Jeez and he tried to make every buddy stop paying the hardholder so they made him carry a big T - that means TROUBLE - and then they nailed him to the fuckin thing. He went to the godzone but he came back to kill every buddy on Fry Day the 13th. That's why he's the godzone guy, and that's why we say "godzone".)

    Anyway. We were forced to leave town unexpectedly due to a little misunderstanding with the establishment owner over fees versus favors. Dumb fucker actually tried to seize Nan and hold her as collateral. He soon discovered she's good at cutting other people, too.

    The body wouldn't be discovered for hours, so we had time to leave town in style. This dap dude who watched us as we departed? He ended up being the new Maestro'D down there. I think we scared the shit out of him. Can't recall his name.

  • This is great, Tod!
  • edited April 2014
    Whoa - Mari becomes human. You're gonna make me feel bad now! :-P
  • Posh cat's name was Newton.
  • edited April 2014
    @Rich, You know I am a fan. But right now if we were f2f I'd be looking you in the eye across the table, having just nodded once, turn my head ever so slightly while retaining eye contact, move my palms a little further apart, mouth slightly open in a nonverbal "yes, and...?"

    [silence]

    I perform similar motions, eyes wider, more exaggerated this time. As everyone knows, when performed a second time, the meaning of this gesture changes from "yes and...?" to "that's it?"

    The show's just, like, already over, time to move on? I need to figure out how process this sense of anticlimax. First instinct is to rewrite my last post to change it to past tense, add some more detail, turn it into dialog, move it after your last post, delete its old version, and say Jet is recounting the story to someone else, perhaps Hot, after it's all over. Right now it reads like a narrative structural metaphor for the word "bathos".

    I'm trying to figure out why I was given the setup I was, if the ending was to be the way it was. It kinda sounded like you were telling me that one of the gazillion NPCs tied to my establishment was going to do something before the show ended, therefore I shouldn't narrate the entire thing.
  • edited April 2014
    Well, Tod, you took the ball and ran with it. Then you scored, did a touchdown dance, went up into the crowd, gave some autographs to adoring fans, went into the locker room, recorded an interview, took a shower, dressed, then headed out to jump I to your spiffy sportscar and drove off.

    In my spot, I felt like I could either interrupt, but it felt like a dick move on my part to just break it up, to insert complications. Or I could nod, say "right on", ask questions so I get how that all works and then set things up for next time around. I chose the latter.

    What would you prefer I do? Keep in mind, I'm still learning your preferences here.
  • edited April 2014
    I'm trying to learn and adhere to yours as well. Was I wrong in my understanding that you were telling me not to end the show yet? Read my final post closely and you see that per your request, the show has not ended yet. It's just before the climactic scene. I am on the count of four, and will hit the stage on the count of eight. It's not exactly in "the middle", because I saw a chance to give you (and my fellow players) a *hell of a lot more options* by positioning the breakoff where I did.

    We have...
    - "will Hot's machine work?"
    - Did Playboy come to the show? Mac? Sweet?
    - the whole connection with Hot, Playboy, and the words "Can we Fix/Brake it"
    - I have five regulars and two NPCs with establishment interests in addition to the cast

    I even suggested a move for myself, which might have given you a hard move against me if I failed it.

    Plus now we have...
    - killer setting IIDSSM, it kinda would have been cool to see it from the audience' perspective
    - lots of "strangers" in the audience tonight
    - will Jules make the jump over the machine?
    - Franc's "found sounds" running through the speakers we established are tied to the muzak system
    - the crowd is in a state of highly-charged sexual anticipation without resolution
    - even Jet says it's working better than he thought it would but "I need to let these people off the hook soon, or they'll go berserk."
    - and is this all going on at the same time Hottopic is talking to Furby? Cuz I kinda think it *is*...?

    I feel like I did a good job of providing hooks all over the place for lots of characters to do lots of things (and to link the scene to circumstances beyond the Maestro D's little world), but no characters did anything. Now I'm deflated by the way the chapter flows. Your post makes me feel like I should have just narrated it all the way through to a climactic ending and done a touchdown dance, but when I wrote it, I was sure that would have been totally wrenching your plans.

    I'm willing to back up and go either way with it. I think the most *expedient* solution (requiring no new content, only some edits) is what I proposed above. Still no mid-show drama, but I can segway it smoothly into another conversation. Of course "most expedient" does not usually equal "most artful".
  • Okay, cool. I get more of what was going on in that post from your POV. I can see where you put the point of tension. For some reason, your latest post in the thread, where you began with counting, I read that as not "on the precipe of the last act", but "this is what happened at the last act", which included the nearly standing room only crowd going wild and devolving into a huge orgy.

    I've got a presentation this morning, but I'll mull over a different response for the scene, Tod. Thanks for understanding.
  • edited April 2014
    Tense shift. That's my way of letting the reader know how the show's story ends, without literally taking the narrative all the way there. All three passages in Chapter J1.5 are Jet thinking to himself while preparing to enter the stage for the final act.
  • I'll be around the computer most of the day and evening. Busy, but not scheduled.
  • And yes, if any PCs plan to attend the show, I will totally pause right there until they catch up in time to where I am.
  • Waiting for a response from Playboy and Cache on that, Tod.

    I'm not sure about Big Mac and Sweet N Sour's post rate. Currently chalking it up to the holiday weekend, but I'm a little worried. I put out feelers to see if I can help them out if they're stuck.

    I think Hottopic is otherwise engaged (she has a hot date with an otherworldly being)
  • edited April 2014
    Rich, you asked about security & door. I don't know how to answer that without talking with Alan & Ben, because my thought was Jet probably hires one of their gangs to do that for a night.

    Based on the playbooks, I reckon it costs me 1/7th of a barter (whatever that means) to hire a gunlugger (say) for one 24-hour period. So if I hire 7 of them I owe 1 barter. But in practice I would probably try to work it out in trade. Example: Mac sends me 7 goons 1 night a month, and in exchange the AMC sends 7 performers to the foodcourt (in small groups or solo, as requested) over the course of the month. These are "special in-house performances". The best metaphor would be like hiring a very talented stripper or a private sex show. Happy endings are frequent, but not part of the official package.
  • edited April 2014
    Also, in case any PCs (or NPCs, I'm not judgemental) wish to take advantage of this: I imagine that on show days after a breezestorm clears, there's such an influx of new people that the small theaters are turned into 1-day mini-marketplaces as people from outside the maul trade shit with people from inside the maul. This is a good spot for an enterprising merch dealer or a fucking pickpocket.
  • edited April 2014
    Or to find test subjects lovers nobody will miss in need of comfort.
  • Quick question, when one "Advances" a basic move, what exactly does that entail? I'm probably blind, but I can't find anything in the MC or Player books that details this.
  • edited April 2014
    It isn't in the Playbooks. On the AW 1-up book, page 185. It gives new options for a 12+ roll on Basics.

    You can get it after 5 advances.
  • Niko, did you just create the "Arresting Brainer" move? Ha.
  • Hehe. Something like that. Gotta get people alone somehow...

    Revamped some images on the wiki. Rooney Mara's Lisbeth is pretty much exactly what I'm going for, with less hair.
  • Tod, you're a genius.
  • Jet's the genius. He's hit on what we in the bizniz call a "formula".

    I'm taking +1 Forward and +1 Hx with Cache, as you can probably tell. And Cache goes to +4 Hx with Jet, rolls over to +1, and takes one XP. Right?

    Oh yes, did I "learn a little something" about Cache?
  • Yes, Tod. Jet "learns a little something" about Cache.

    Whenever your HX rolls over (reaches +3 and then add one more, so that it resets to +1), you may ask that PC one question which they must answer truthfully. It can happen through dialog or through psychic communication or just "something you found out". But your PC knows it.
  • I'm talking above about Cache's Hx with me. It's already +3.

    I'm crashing out for a while. C U on the other side!
  • Dangit! Well then, flip that.

    Cache asks a question of Jet.
  • Well OK then. What does Jet Black expect of Cache in the long run?
  • Oof. And that's Snake Eyes on SBF against one of my own "staff." Whee.
  • Cache is posted.

  • Hoi Polloi has to be the name of my next PC in whatever game.
  • Hoi Polloi has to be the name of my next PC in whatever game.
    For this game?
    http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/128127/Palaces--Ponies-Basic

    :P
  • Nice! I might have to get that to play with my daughter.
  • Is this a new house rule, Rich? I seen "reveal a secret" used on levelups but never "You must answer a question".

    And my question about learning something on Cache was because of the Circus move.
  • Is this a new house rule, Rich? I seen "reveal a secret" used on levelups but never "You must answer a question".
    It's a house rule, yeah.

    As for learning something on Cache, per the move:
    - You've learned a little something about a PC in attendance, and they've seen the content of your heart, choose one and each of you get +1 HX
    The mechanics was swapping +1 HXs. The fiction? You share a secret, Jet, and Cache does, too. Would be cool if it happens in scene, since Cache is headed to see Jet now?
  • Ok, to the fiction mobile!
  • edited April 2014
    @Niko - Cache definitely knows about the trapdoor, and knows that Jet often decompresses in his office after a show. It's kinda SOP for him.
  • Poor Godiva. As this is the out of character thread, I can just sigh.
  • edited April 2014
    Sorry about that Paul! It's like our NPCs are under crosshairs or something! :->

    I had already written that Cache had vacated zir seat and time had passed, but now ze is coming toward me, so I felt a tactical need to create distance. I am assuming that Jet glanced over at that part of the theater just *before* Godiva started being a dick.
  • I am assuming that Jet glanced over at that part of the theater just *before* Godiva started being a dick.
    Just as easily, the seats of the theater obscured the view of them on the floor.
  • edited April 2014
    Yeah, and strobelights, smoke, people moving around, etc.

    PS - Ball Pit is hot! She wouldn't happen to be an exhibitionist, would she? :-)
  • @Rich - "Trade for today's work?" - Attagirl, Rache. Jet would be proud if he was there.

    This office scene is gonna be demanding of Niko, I think, but we all know it's gotta happen some time, right? I'll hold while Niko prepares.

    We need to see how much of Cache's old life still exists in zir memory, and how ze feels about it, if anything at all. And when I say "we", I mean Jet, and the imaginary audience he always envisions reading his life story. :-)
  • edited April 2014
    Hi, I'm still here. I dunno about Valdis, he seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth.
    If it works better we, can skip my next scene to during or after the (totally sick-nasty) show. I could find Pickles before it, too.
    That's a beating offense, falling off your bike and going unconscious... Not VK at-tall.
  • Valdis (Alan) emailed me yesterday, he's had a family emergency. He hopes to post soon, but just to make things sync up, Ben, I'd like to skip you ahead to the AMC show aftermath.
  • On burials, Ben threw this up on the Google Hangout chat that I wanted to share:

    I figure we haul them (the dead) out to the industrial site into a sort of mass grave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhma

    (also it attracts animals to hunt, so win/win)
  • I figure there are multiple traditions. I wonder if it's just burials, or if there's something like actual religion going on?
  • edited April 2014
    There are little ragged pieces of the story of Jeez and the Trouble T.
    Mamma told those stories to Jet. Not sure if it qualifies as religion though. More like hero myth.
  • Cache posted. Chaos is mostly clearing here.
  • Ok me too. I'm about to have dinner so take your time.
  • Rich, over in the Can We Brake It scene, I have questions outstanding from you and also an end-scene directive. I can't follow both sets of instructions. What do I do?
  • Whoops, Chris! Sorry about that. I really do want to see those answers. I un-ended scene, please answer those and then we can bring the scene to a close once we have a good stopping point for Playboy.
  • edited April 2014
    HEADS UP! I am working in the office today and tomorrow so my posting during the day will be infrequent to non-existent. I will catch up tonight.
  • Sweet Orenthal James Simpson. Caretaking charge/dad needs a blood transfusion and a suicidal ex girlfriend.
  • Heads up here, too. My nights belong to Mozart for the next week or so, and I'll be out of touch most of the day on Friday, as well.
  • Man, I can think of things worse than being locked into Mozart. I mean, I can't sing to save my life, but a job where you get to listen to (or better, make) great music doesn't sound too bad. :-)
  • It's true, for sure. I do other (webbie/data-y) stuff, but it's a good thing to make good noise.
  • Valdis (Alan) emailed me yesterday, he's had a family emergency. He hopes to post soon, but just to make things sync up, Ben, I'd like to skip you ahead to the AMC show aftermath.
    Yeah, let's do that - can't really find someone when everybody you'd want to squeeze for info is busy with an orgy.
  • edited April 2014
    [edited - taking it to the fiction.]
  • Suite nimble fuck, today's sucked. Sorry about the glacial posting speed.
  • Niko, can you define "blood opera" for me?
  • Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs, the more lascivious versions of Dracula, A Song of Ice and Fire. A lot of Hong Kong movies fall into a blood opera genre, and it's a good fit.

    Basically, very grand guignol story featuring doomed love affairs, heroic bloodshed, life-obsessing oaths, and JUSTICE.
  • edited April 2014
    Ah that custom Front 242 move rocks! Of course Ben had to pick that song out of everything in Franc's collection. How different it might have been...

    When you try to get Closer, roll +Hot. On a 10+, pick three. 7-9, pick two:
    - you fuck them like an animal
    - you feel them from the inside
    - your whole existence seems a little less flawed
    - you get closer to god

    On a fail: You let me violate you.
  • The "violate you" bit made me laugh out loud for real, Tod.
  • EDIT: Whole existence is flawed ;)
  • I feel like this might be a good time to remind everyone that the AMC cast & crew are a gang (2-harm gang small 0-armor). Thank you, have a nice day!
  • Oh, well if it comes to a gang fight... I think that the Violence Kings, as befits their name, have the upper hand - 3harm, gang, small, savage, 2armor.
    Yikes. BLOCK WAR!
  • edited April 2014
    BTW... Where were you guys when I was looking for a security detail? ;-P
  • edited April 2014
    Well, when you were asking around for a security detail, we were out in the tunnels, running down rats and salvage, carting bodies away, and being free. The Violence Kings like leaving the Maul - nothing gets the blood pumping like the threat of your very existence being stolen away from you.
    That, and Sweet n' Sour is a little opposed to any authority over his own.
    He also has a habit of cutting people up and beating them half to death, non-consensually. Not so good for business, if your head of security is a vengeful sadist with severe mood swings who thinks shoving a gun barrel nearly up someone's nose is a great joke.

    I think I should add that under your Hx section on my sheet :D
  • edited April 2014
    beating them half to death, non-consensually
  • edited April 2014
    beating them half to death, non-consensually
    < Insert discussion here about the nature of consent in highly violent BDSM scenes, and whether it's even possible to meaningfully consent to, for example, having your finger broken >

    (My original post was half tongue-in-cheek, half serious)
  • I see. Upon careful consideration, we have decided that a career with AMC may not be the best choice for you at this point in time. We do, however, welcome you to express your freedom in the direction of any outmaulers you happen to encounter causing a scene. Solidarity, bro.
  • edited April 2014
    I see. Upon careful consideration, we have decided that a career with AMC may not be the best choice for you at this point in time. We do, however, welcome you to express your freedom in the direction of any outmaulers you happen to encounter causing a scene. Solidarity, bro.
    ... And that was Sweet n' Sour's first rejection letter. Fortunately, his new idea of delivering his resume wrapped around some broken glass, into someone's eye-socket, landed him the job he wanted in only a month!
  • BTW my weekly session has begun. I prob won't be avail til after midnight.
  • Sweet Orenthal James Simpson, what a fucking day. Cache post is up. Sorry for the tardiness.
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