Author: Slade Stolar

Last night’s game of Misspent Youth was great.

Jericho and Alexa (16) and Jamie (14) were meeting in the Camp Scouts room in an undefined city in the year of 2334. They are the only people who commonly go outside the barrier that rings the city. They need to get their classmates outside the ring in order to convince them of the insidiousness of the constant monitoring and “suggestions” from MotherCorp, the company that makes all technology.

Their scheduling software gave them a ping that they were late for class. They really didn’t want to be late, because all status and benefits in this world derive from obedience to “suggestions”. So, they book it down the hall.

They had a struggle to get to class without getting a negative mark on their records. They had to mess with the camera systems (Jamie) and do crazy parkour (Jericho) and distract a teacher (Alexa) in order to win.

After that they hopped on a golf cart and made their way to class.

Later, Jericho kissed one of the android teachers, Ms. Stetson, which caused her to malfunction. They “stole” this robot and burnt out its circuits such that it set off the smoke alarms and fire suppressing foam launchers in the school. They managed to re-program her to drive a bus full of students out of the city. Although, she did mention that she always wanted to leave the city.

Ms. Cole didn’t like this, and went full T-1000 on their little bus plan. Ms. Stetson floored it. Ms. Cole grabbed onto the back of the bus and wouldn’t let go. After a long battle of hitting the robot teacher with backpacks and trying to pry off the bumper, Ms. Cole rattled to the ground.

Once outside the city, Ms. Stetson shut down. The students gathered firewood, and Jericho and Alexa shared hugs and kisses by the fire. Jamie, feeling left out, tried to do some magic tricks for the other students.

In the end, Casey, one of the more annoying students, threatened to activate his safety beacon and alert the authorities. Then Jamie bum-rushed him.

And we had to cut it there.

Last night’s Macchiato Monsters was neat-o.

Wildhorn, the minotaur having taken vengeance for her murdered father and reeling from being slimed by an acid ooze; Gangor, a human warrior still seeking some decent equipment and feeling hungry; and Flavius, an illusionist and actor and enigma, continued their search of The Caves of Chaos.

They chose another cave to enter, in search of goblins. The found some pretty quickly and Wildhorn set out a bear trap and threw a net, hobbling the goblins attempts to attack. After a few blows exchanged, the heroes captured one in the end, and sent him forward to the next door.

The captured goblin betrayed them and called for help, and so, was kicked through the open door onto the floor in front of three other goblin guards. A well-placed crossbow bolt from Flavius burst a lantern, showering the goblins in burning oil. Only two goblins escaped.

Around this time, Gangor decided to eat nearly all the food that the party had in an attempt to heal himself. Snail soup, turnips and butter, and even tinned dungeon rations, all gone away to feed his insatiable hunger.

They fought some hobgoblins who had taken a group of merchants hostage; they then led the merchants and their guards out of the caves. The merchants were sure to add the names of their saviors to the walls of The Halls of Merit back at the keep.

Epilogue

Now, many years have passed.

Wildhorn continued questing, making friends at every opportunity.

Gangor spent his reward money on a tavern, and grew fat and content.

Flavius took over the torchbearer and loot-lugger guild and supplied future delvers with equipment and retainers.

Last night’s Macchiato Monsters was kind-of awesome.

Wildhorn, a minotaur seeking vengeance for her murdered father; Gangor, a human warrior seeking some decent equipment after being captured by goblins; and Flavius, an illusionist and actor, all met on the road to The Keep on the Borderlands.

The Keep was impressive in the distance and they whiled away their time discussing song lyrics and the merits of taking revenge on the dwarf that killed Wildhorn’s father. They hid their weapons and entered The Keep. They cast an attractiveness illusion on the minotaur before going into the tavern.

Moments later, that murderous black-hearted dwarf entered the tavern; a chase ensued, and our heroes managed to corner him. After a few rounds of fruitless combat, with the city guard closing in, the dwarf gave himself up, only to be shot by Wildhorn with her blackpowder weapon.

Our heroes went looking for some government authority to pay the bounty. The Castellan (governor of the area) was on his way to clear out the Caves of Chaos when they all met. Rather than collect the bounty, they were hired to clear out the caves.

The caves were dark and wet. Wildhorn got glommed onto by some water-dwelling acid ooze and almost died. Our heroes retreated to the outside world to re-think their plans.

Random highlight: “Do you even know the fat content of snail soup?!”

Nothing ever goes perfectly with technology. A short rant follows:

So, I was supposed to play Lacuna Part 1 with Rich Rogers Tuesday night, but that didn’t quite happen, sad to say.

Rich wasn’t there but “Spider” was. He had some kind of accent, kinda British, maybe. Fraser and Kyle were also able to join only this Spider game.

I think what happened was that ████████████████████████ from before the session started. Then, ████████████, but that’s not MY fault. Fraser ██████████████████ and █████████████████ ████████████████████ for a god-damn wristwatch.

But I’m sure that ████████████ before our next session.

The Return of OSR Tuesday

My (alternate) Tuesday nights should be opening up around December/January for some OSR Tuesday gaming. I think I’ll run the old Temple of Elemental Evil module using one of the following systems. What system are people most keen on?

Just finished a two-shot of Into the Odd with some fine Gauntleteers!

I’d like to run something on Tuesday nights in the semi-near future. Are people most interested in Whitehack, The Black Hack, The Rad Hack, or Perdition? Or drop your preferred OSR system in comments.