A brief overview of my D20 Modern game.

In the order that I thought of them, here is a list of the organizations encountered by the PCs in my latest D20 modern game. (I'm convinced their sociopaths...)

This list is probably more for me than anybody, but reading it does give a sense of most of the major happenings in the game. (which has taken a sudden shift from "Heist" to "Sci-fi" in genre).

You'd think a brief overview of this game should include a list of the PCs, but honestly I don't know too much about them. I can't even remember most of their names. One is a charismatic exiled Chechnyan royal who would like to raise an army and regain control of his country. One is a ex-con art critic, who specializes in stealing object of (you guessed it) art; he got out of jail early in exchange for his help raising money for the Chechnyan. The third is a very mysterious woman from Ireland. She seems to be well educated and versed in several languages. Finally there is an Australian Doctor. It hasn't yet been revealed to me why she is with these others, making her life difficult. But she has shown the most sense; hiding when the bullets start flying, patching up the wounded, that sort of thing.

----The List----

The Government of Israel—-Wants the PCs for 7 counts of murder in Tel Aviv, theft of a national treasure. (an “Ivory Pomegranate” from the sceptre of the high priest at the ancient Temple of Solomon), as well as theft of an air plane. They have video footage of the PCs as they travelled through the airport, and an eye witness , Joseph Smith, who knew one of the PCs in college.

Turkish Rebels in Cyprus—-Bought the plane stolen from Israel in exchange for giving the PCs a safe boat passage to Italy. All told it was a pretty good deal for them, and they are probably willing to give the PCs another favour if it didn't put them at too much risk.

The Holy Roman Church—-Through their agent “Father Benito” they bargained to buy the “Ivory Pomegranate” from the PCs for $16 Million. Shortly after the deal went down, Father Benito was arrested with the aid of Detective Dupont, and sent to jail for several other crimes. The pomegranate went missing at the crime scene, and was not regurned to the government of Israel. Since there was only €12,000 of real money in the case handed to the PCs, they consider all things even.

INTERPOL—-Detective Dupont asked the PCs for their help bringing “Father Benito” to justice for several of his crimes. The PCs only agreed to help after they were shot up by “Chechnyan” rebels hunting down one of the PCs and needed a safe house to heal their wounds. Their help made it possible to arrest Benito and send him to prison for a long time.

The “Chechnyan” Rebels-—After overthrowing the monarchy in Chechnya, they are now hunting down the remaining members of royalty which escaped the country, of which one of the PCs is a member. They managed to catch up with them in Rome, where they used several AK-47s in broad daylight in the parking lot of a hotel. They managed to wound a few of the PCs pretty good, but were unable to confirm any kills. It is assumed they have lost track of the PCs for the time being.

La Casa Nostra, aka. “the Italian Mafia”--The mob contacted the PCs and asked them to help patch up one of their people no questions asked. After exchange for their work, the mob offered the PCs a discrete free trip to America, running guns in a small cargo ship. The cargo ship never reached it's destination and the Mafia is out for blood.

The CIA—-the captain of the Mafia gun running ship was also a CIA Agent Ty Bauer. The PCs discovered his connection to the CIA while searching his body after killing him and commandeering the cargo ship. As they had yet to reach the shores of America, the PCs called in a favour, and had “an expert” fake the death of Ty Bauer in Rome. It is unlikely the CIA has discovered any evidence of Agent Bauer's real body in the Caribbean where it was cut up and tossed into shark infested waters.

Haitian Militants-—in exchange for a safe harbour, and some falsified identification, the PCs traded a crate of the automatic weapons found on their cargo ship. One of the leading members of the militants was a convicted felon from France, called Guthrie, who did time with one of the PCs. He was more than glad to help out for extra weapons and ammunition.

The Office of Scientific Investigation and Research—-While following up on unexpected activity of mysterious sleeper agents called “Sandmen” Agent Lee Bryant ran into the PCs in Las Vegas. He helped them destroy several of the “Sandmen” and capture one of the strange robots that creates them. He was forced to turn the creature over to the U.S. Air Force in exchange for help deactivating the nanites injected into two of the PCs. He has exchanged contact information with the PCs, and urged them to get in touch if they come into contact with anything else the O.S.I.R. might be interested in.

Groom Lake United States Air Force Base, aka. “Area 51”--The PCs were taken to the base after being infected by nanites from a strange robotic creature. They were in the area because the machine kept asking to be taken the coordinates 37 degrees 15 seconds north, 115 degrees 49 seconds west. (the coordinates of Area 51). The specialists on the base managed to deactivate the nanites, and repair the damage done, but were unable to remove them from their bodies.

Edit:I remembered some other important groups.

The "Sandmen" and their Masters--The PCs First encountered a master stored in a lead lined crate aboard their small cargo ship they stole from the Mafia. The crate was addressed to the Research and Development Offices of ECOR International in Tulsa Oklahoma. This metallic robot creature managed to infect two of the PCs in an attempt to turn them into "Sandmen" while on their trip to Area 51. The master told the PCs that it needed to reach Area 51 because it's "ship" was there. In the end, the master was turned over to the the military in exchange for deactivation of the infection nanites injected into the two PCs.

ECOR International--A large corporation who was supposed to retrieve a special "package" delivered from Italy very discreetly. They are currently looking for the whereabouts of the package, and it is only a matte of time until it is located.

On writing "things"...

I was thinking today, about writing another post here

I was thinking that, for this blog to survive, it is going to have to simply be an exercise in writing "things". Writing things has never really been my strong suit (I mean..I'm an engineering student after all...) but somehow I have collected around myself a lot of people who either write a lot (more than I do),or have words just pour out of them. I've never really had that pleasure, whenever I try to write things, from lab reports, to essays, I always seem to be caught struggling. Most of the struggle is with how do I get all these thoughts I have in my head out onto paper. How do I frame them for this or that audience who I don't know particularly well? Usually I struggle until the day before the thing is due, then tell myself "Just fucking write it already" and quit thinking and just type, and eventually I come up with words on paper. Which was the goal to begin with.

Another trick I've found, which works better than anything, is to talk to Travis. Which isn't the same as to ask Travis for help (as he is one of those people who seems to have a much easier time writing things than me, one might think the gut instinct is to ask him to write it for me..) What I really mean is to just IM him with my thoughts on something, or where I'm stuck writing something, and the act of writing it down to Trav in a way that he will understand does exactly what I've been trying to do all along--get the ideas out of my head and onto paper.

It was only recently that I've come up with an explanation for why this helps. One of the classes I had to take last term was called Oral and Written Communication. It started out with talking about the "theory" of how language worked, but as it was a class aimed for engineers, ended with lots of practical "here is what you need to do to write a good resume", "here are the elements of a good interview", "here are the elements of a good visual aid". It was a very practical course in the end.

Anyway, this course discussed the "language triangle" which lists three things to consider when writing something. You have to think about what it is you want to say (duh!), but also how your audience is going to receive what you say (I mean, it's not going to be easy to walk into a Synagogue and convince people good Jews don't go to heaven) and how your audience receives you (Your credibility and reputation and stuff.)

Now that it's all in place: What I'm saying is that by talking to Travis, I've given myself a (blessedly critical at times) audience to present my ideas to. An audience that I know quite well, and have plenty of practice talking to. Which is an audience way easier to communicate with that "Stuffy potential employer #8".

I guess this all sort of begs the question "Who is my audience now?" (begs the question in the "makes me think of a question" sort of way, and not the "logical fallacy" sort of way). Truth be known--I really like to hear the sound of my own voice. Even when something I write has little content, and is structurally poor, it still looks good to me. (which would likely be a problem--if I had to take more than one English class.)

Speaking of English classes--I have to take one, and I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. (though my lack of participation in it may be the source of some of these problems.) It is a course on poetry (which despite all my troubles writing, I usually don't usually choke writing poetry as much as I do writing other things) It's not the poetry itself I have trouble swallowing. There is just a subtle underlying hypocrisy's that drives me up the walls!

Let me explain; In this English class, the prof has been very adamant that "If your references page so much as loses sight of the rest of your essay, we will drag you up in front of the class and hang you as an example"--in other words "don't plagiarize". Yet, class after class, she stands up in front of the class and explicates all these poems we're supposed to be reading. It's not that she's ever claimed "these are the one true meaning and the author's intent when they wrote this piece", it's just that she doesn't say "this is what I think this means".

I mean, I know it's implied, but if your going to be so melodramatic about plagiarism, shouldn't there be some disclaimer?

Nevertheless; since I don't have the faintest idea who is reading this blog, other than myself, I'm going to write it assuming I'm the audience. So far it's paying off--I'm pretty easy to talk to.

Sometimes it's handy to be a little narcissistic.

Coincidentally, my inner narcissist also likes it when you tell me what you think of me. (I think this sort of thing is mandatory to include in a blog once in a while...)

notwithstanding

notwithstanding--"adv : despite anything to the contrary"

It just seemed like a good word / title for a blog. Now I won't lie to you, I'm mostly creating this so I can post comments on a friend's blog. This is sort of a good racket they've got going here. Or maybe I'm just slow and didn't have to create a blog to post a comment--(I was interrupted while writing this here and during the break I was informed this is the case...too late now I say.)

These impaired thinking processes might be do the the lack of sleep I'm running on, which is ok. Though a little tiresome in that it's the second time this week I've "skipped" a night of sleep to get back on track, or to do an assignment or whatever. (I hate lab reports. Especially lab reports for this lab class. The first two have been worth 25% and 35% of my mark respectively...that means after today I've finished 60% of the class and have no idea where I'm standing. I mean, what if I did something offensive with the formatting...I've heard of people killed for less...)

I also have a midterm I should be studying for--but due again to lack of sleep (god scapegoats are wonderful) I'm having a hard time concentrating. Well, maybe that and I'm blogging instead (*shudder* never thought I'd say that...)

Not too much homework to do this weekend though, so that's a plus--and we are gaming Sunday. gaming = playing d20 Modern = watching my group of players play sociopathic characters who travel around the world stealing things, killing things, and meeting aliens. It's a strange game, but I do enjoy it.

So, despite all that I said in the past about not ever wanting to do it;
this is my blog--notwithstanding.