#212 – Set the Scene 3: TMNT Redux with Sean Owen Roberson

Breakfast puppies.

This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Hi, I'm Sean Owen Roberson, and I listen to the Glitter Boys.

All right, we have an otter, a Newton, a fox. They all walk into a bar. Wait, no. The three of you, through some bizarre backstory which will take a 10 story arc to explain, as all good backstories do, ended up in the same group. And you're outside a major metropolitan area, the thriving metropolis of Chicago. Yeah, that's it. Chicago. It's the spring on the outskirts of Chicago. Someone has noticed that there have been some very interesting burglaries and convenience stores getting knocked over, and it's not your normal behavior. Most of the survivors have been in less than a pristine mental state.

I swear to God, it wasn't me.

Many of them have raved and loomed about, a quartet of hat wearing assailants who come in the night. Now, as the audience may or may not know, several of the members of this group were liberated from various government pseudo government organizations or just freed and ran away.

One of the two, they left the door open.

They left the door open.

I swear, I don't have fingerprints. You can't prove anything.

I blew the door up.

It was kind of funny. I. I bent him in the parking lot with the huge bang went off and I'm like, how did you get out?

I blew up the door. You left open.

I left the door open.

The group here to set the scene. The group has been investigating these robberies. It smells very much of what their home, their not so friendly creators and benefactors were like. And they really are trying to figure out what's going on. So as we zoom in, the three individuals, the newt, the fox, and the otter, are in a set of abandoned warehouses. They think this might be where our mysterious quartet has been headed. So what skills do people have that they think would be applicable in trying to track down our assailants?

Well, Ash Fang has advanced smell and hearing, so I think maybe in this case it sounds. It seems like smell might be applicable.

Absolutely.

I could see if I can track using my perception skill. With the bonus from the smell would be 70%. Is this.

Yeah.

An easy or a hard or just standard?

This is pretty much a standard roll. Not many modifications in this environment right now. Okay, let me go ahead and roll. Yep, go ahead and roll.

All right, I got a 63. And after the, you know, out of a 70. Yeah, that succeeds.

Okay. There's a strong kind of fur smell, wet fur smell, soiled Hair, soiled fur that is permeating throughout the area. You know what your otter friend smells like when he gets wet, which, of course, he always looks fabulous. And you know what you smell like. And this is a different animal smell. And it's very dirty. It's not, I wouldn't say, like, putrid, but it's very heavy and musky smelling, and it kind of just emanates throughout the area. And so this is a smell that you actually smelled at one of the previous sites. And it's latching on. You're like, yeah, you think this quartet is in the area, and directionally, you think it would be further south down the main road. Now, this entire complex, it's a complex of warehouses that has seen better days. This was probably really popular and a lot of storage in the 70s, maybe 80s, but it's gone downhill. A lot of trash in the area. The proverbial newspaper goes flying by in the wind. And it's very quiet this time of night. Npc, what are you thinking?

So we've tracked these narrative wells to some old abandoned houses, Is that what you're saying?

Warehouses. Old abandoned warehouses.

But we're pretty certain they're in these warehouses.

Yeah, and Ashfang has kind of confirmed it because he can smell them in the air.

Now, there's a south. A little bit further south. Yeah, it's a musky smell, I guess. I'm guessing maybe they don't smell like canines or, or, or, or, or, or felines, but just something else that's more musky than that.

Yeah. Very strong smelling. You haven't smelled this before?

Okay.

Hmm.

Well, I do not have much in the way of tracking, but if we have figured out roughly the block where they are, then we're going to take some time and rig every single building on this block to blow up separately, though they don't have to go at the same time. I'll have them linked to individual channels. And then it all comes to me wirelessly through my Blow Things up box.

I will mention my. My mutant fox has night vision. Okay, that might be appropriate here.

Yeah, might be appropriate here. So Jean Claude starts to slink around. Are you going to try to do this stealthily? Yes. Okay, so why don't you have him make a prowl roll?

Will do.

Well. Well, while Jean Claude is doing that, what is smooth doing?

Smooth is going to be looking around using his ultraviolet vision.

Okay.

Checking for, like, given we got the sense that it might be related to our creators looking for, like, out of place, high tech Trip wires.

Okay.

You know, you know, because one of the nice things about being ultraviolet vision is like, suddenly all of your nice little lasers line trips are like suddenly there, and we're in a bunch of dilapidated warehouses. Why is that one wired to the gills?

All right, one second. So how'd you do on your prowl roll?

On my prowl roll, I did a 57, under 65, 68.

So you're very stealthily moving along and then you follow up with a demo. Demo roll.

I got 72 under 78.

All right, you've set up in a matter of moments. You've set up two buildings so far, one on either side of the street.

Okay.

And they are set up and it's the next buildings to the south. You've set up to like demo them or good portions of them. They're ready to go.

He's wiring up gas mains, isn't he?

Well, no, no, he's using really good improvised explosives.

Yep.

Smooth. Why don't you make a perception roll or a detect ambush roll? Either one, and I'll give you a plus 10%.

I don't have the detect ambush roll because I've just kind of out of habit, just. I never bothered to learn that skill. Because when you have sixth sense, why do you need detect ambush?

Absolutely. But now, sixth sense, before you discover the roll, sixth sense, in this game, you must actively say you're using it.

Yeah, I'm not.

Okay. Okay, good.

But for my perception roll, I rolled a 29.

Okay, great. You are looking around and what you notice is that the next set of buildings, not the ones that Jean Claude has set up for immediate demolition should be required. But the next set of buildings to the south has black light paint that you're picking up through ultraviolet. And it has all manners of very tribal looking drawings and very juvenile, very simple writing. Stay away death here. Go away big no good. And it's kind of scribbled up and down. And these are like six or seven feet tall, kind of scribbled in this paint. And no one else would be able to see this.

I'm going to be pointing that out to Ash Fang. And then remember, without remembering the fact that he can't see it again, IQ of 7.

Right.

Like, wow, the graffiti over there is. Wow, the graffiti over there is kind of weird.

Ash Fang, as you pointed this out, you don't see anything besides the regular graffiti. And it's all pretty ubiquitous across all the building faces. You know, it's. It's one tag of one gang written over by another tag of another gang. And it's just right. Like that pile up, but doesn't look anything unique, you know, or legible. Or legible or. Yeah, yeah.

I guess I'll mentally communicate to him and just say, yeah, I can see it. The dark isn't a problem. But I don't.

I.

All I see are. Is a mess. I don't see what you're. What you're seeing.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're blind. It says stay away. Just real basic scrawl. It's. It's you. You can't see it.

Don't worry about it.

You're blind. Yeah, it's like some kids who, like. What are they called? Reavers, they go to the warehouses like this and start parties. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like that sort of thing. Yeah. Is.

Are there any, like, windows or doors, any pipes that lead to the roof?

So most of the buildings, most of the warehouses do have fire escapes. Probably three quarters of them are broken or falling down. Like, there's. There's no ladder to get up. There are lots of windows that have been broken, you know, the standard kind of warehouse windows that are up about 12, 14ft in the air with panes that are broken in. Now that you're looking. And Smooth points it out. The only warehouse that has an intact door is the one he's pointing at. And it kind of pops out at you like. Now about that time, Jean Claude gets to the next set of buildings as he's setting more demos. Yeah, I need you to make a psionic save.

For the record, I'm not going away from them.

Oh, okay.

I'm not just going down the line.

I don't know, you seem really encouraging.

I didn't just pick a direction and be like, all right, bomb, bomb, bomb. See you in an hour.

If he's ready, we can sneak forward.

So the next building there. You've. You've done the two immediate buildings next to them? Yeah, one of the next building is the one that's pointed out. There are two. You know, there's one on either side of the road.

So can I see? Well, nobody has pointed anything out to me.

No one's pointed anything out. You were. You were. You're making. Setting bombs. So you set the two on either side.

Yeah. I'll come back and let them know that those two are going ready to go at any moment. I start handing out in the Molotovsky.

I, like, take this Molotov that is practically the size of my torso and just hand it back to you?

No, I'm, I'm, I'm not that big. These are, these are, these are me sized Molotovs.

These are like the nickel Coke bottles. Where he's getting those bottles, we don't know. But. Okay, so, you know, you see this building, it stands out not only from the things that the ultraviolet can pick out, but also it has an intact door, which is the only one out here that has an intact door of any kind.

So if I switch to the settings on my scope while I eventually see what's written on the wall. Yeah, okay. It doesn't specifically say ultraviolet, but it does say image mag, night vision and thermal.

So what you do pick out is that as you kind of flip through the settings, that there is another set of writing that's on top of everything, but doesn't show up in the normal visual spectrum. So either through the thermal or infra green, it kind of shows up weird. And you can see that it's very childish style writing. Big block, sloppy letters. And all of it is saying, you know, what was being told, talked about before is telling people to go away.

So it says like, what does it say again?

It's like, you know, it says go away. It says danger here. Death to all. You know, big man bad. And it's all kind of like, very much like you would see on a, like a, maybe a six or seven year old's door, bedroom door, when they're trying to keep all their brothers and sisters out of the door. It's kind of that feeling that you get from the writing. And it's, it's on almost every face that you can see. And you can see two faces right now of the building. Kind of the side that's facing would be to the east and a little bit of the side that's off to the side.

And these are supposedly all abandoned, right?

Yeah, they're supposedly all abandoned. And that writing is nowhere else. It's only on that building.

I pondered a moment. I light a cigar, ponder it further. Death here. Don't mind if I do. And I start to rig this building to expire.

Okay.

I look over at Ash Fang and adjust my fedora, the only piece of clothing I'm wearing, and kind of look at him, trying to figure out how he wants to play this.

I'll have you make a demo roll NPC.

That is an 86. That is not a success.

Okay. You've set something up. Yeah. You think it? Well, it looks fine. Like nothing could go wrong.

You are a master after all.

Yes.

If it does. We improvise. I tap out the ash of my cigar dangerously close to it.

I would like you to make psionics safe. And that would be a D20. And you did not select psionics, correct?

Nope.

Okay, so you have a 15.

Come on, Shredder.

I don't remember if there's any other bonuses for high.

I don't. I don't think so. My minimum affinity or endurance doesn't give me anything.

14. So close. So very close.

Yep.

All right. Smooth. And Ashfang. Jean Claude has gone over and is setting up one of his ex. His devices that he's. Well, you've gotten really used to him setting these up all over the place. And sometimes he takes them home and sometimes he leaves them there. And it gets really interesting when all of you see Jean Claude stand up and start to walk down the alleyway away from you. And very quickly you'll lose sight of him.

Jean Claude, I still have my cigar and just.

You have your cigar?

Can I quick interrupt? What is your ME11? Oh, no.

Okay.

You can get a bonus on your psionic save if you have a high enough. Me?

Yep. So?

So I wanted to double check.

You see, Jean Claude, you see a path, a brightly colored golden road. And every two feet is a big box labeled tnt. And in your hand. And in your hand is an old timey plunger, like a dynamite plunger. And you realize that you've just plunged it and the cable is running from the in. Very much your old timey kind of cartoon twisty. Here the line is burning towards the tnt. But it's not just one. Every five feet is another box of tnt. And this line is racing down the road of tnt.

I'm gonna take a deep breath, cry a little tear and watch the fireworks.

Magnifi.

I'm paralyzed with a decision and it's. You ever see Ocean's Eleven? Right. Remember when Don Cheadle blows that everything up and he has. No, he doesn't blow everything up. He sets off the pinch, right? Which knocks the power out. And then he has reaction to it. I'm having that reaction right now.

All right?

So unless I am being compelled to do something else.

Nope, you're not.

Okay.

No. Smooth, Ash Fang. You see? Smooth. You see, Jean Claude, he has taken a few steps. He's now out of view. What are you two doing?

Well, I think Ashvang isn't going to let him just wander off and he'll say in his mind, hey, what are you doing?

What's going on?

But he'll prowl and scurry, scamper after him.

Do I have the ability to communicate back with him or is it a one way thing? Nope. One way.

One way. There's a voice. A disembodied voice. What are you doing? Where are you going?

I would be used to me communicating

with him that way, but he would, he absolutely would. Under normal circumstances, he would recognize the timbre of your voice, your tone of your voice. But there's like this voice in the sky. Like, just like. What are you doing? Doing? Doing? Where are you going? Going, going. And the fuses are racing down and the tension's building in your mind.

Another tear falls and I take another puff of my cigar. And then I give the kaross.

Kara, you've tried to message them Ash Fang.

Yeah.

Smooth. What are you doing?

I am following after Ash. Flaying. Also prowling.

Okay, so you. So go ahead and make a prowl roll. Oh, yeah, let me roll that. Success.

I rolled a 28.

That's a success.

Now my percentage is 70 and I rolled a 72. So if. If the dark circumstances or anything help,

I would give you. I definitely give you a bonus because of how dark it is. You succeeded by the skin of your teeth. You're about to step on a tin can or something like that, and you. And you step over it, you know, just avoiding it. You guys walk up and you look down the alleyway, and Jean Claude hasn't gone far. Just in the shadow, and he's just standing there, nothing going on. And I would like.

I'm whispering, muttering to my thumb.

There's a tear going down his eye.

Have you ever seen something so beautiful?

And I will have the two of you both make a psionic save, please.

Okay, now, my character has psionics, so I guess is my saves, what, a 10? Yes.

And if your Emmy is high enough, you might have a bonus.

I do not. And I rolled a seven.

It's gonna be a short session, guys.

This is gonna be a triple.

You failed two.

I rolled six.

Okay. All right.

This is a fun session, guys.

All right, back to the top. Real quick. John Claude, I would like you to make a second save because it's. The bombs are about to go off and you're standing there.

And 17.

You realize something is not right as the first bomb goes off and it explodes in a massive explosion. And all you do is take a step back and you realize that should have killed me.

Amateur work.

The next one goes off, but when that one goes off, there's like A scream. And you have a flashback of one of the first times you were taught how to use demolitions and one of your other ottermates didn't succeed. And you quickly see visions of one of the other otters that you were trained with being blown in half. And now the box explodes. And there's two pieces of this otter standing there. And the face is looking at you, questioning, like, why?

Why?

Why did you let this happen?

Well, because who learns the most? The one who fails or the one who was standing next to the person failing. Who watches them fail?

But you really.

In this case, it was me.

But you realize there's something wrong about this. You don't think it's real for some reason, okay? You don't know why, but it's messing with you.

I'm gonna shake my head. And just for a moment, just for a moment, as I come out of it carrying forward that cartoon motif, just for a moment, as I shake my head, there's that sound that just fades away. So now what do I see?

So now you see the alley for just a second. You see your two companions standing behind you. They've come up behind you, and they weren't there before. They were, like, 10, 15ft away. And you notice that above you in one of the broken windows, there are two eyes looking down right at you. And then you drop back in the vision.

Okay, can I. I'm still in this psionic vision.

Then you're still in the vision, but you're aware that the vision isn't.

I have advanced mathematics.

Okay.

Can I mentally calculate, using advanced trigonometry, the angle for me to that particular location?

I'll allow it. Because you're still in the dream.

Yeah.

Or whatever's going on. I'm going to give you a minus 10 for doing your math.

Okay, These dice have not been good to me. Let's see if the Ninja Turtles are any better. All right, Donatello, prove your worth. Ooh, much better. That's a 17.

All right. You lob a Molotov cocktail up there, it disappears. As soon as it leaves your hand, it disappears, and it leaves the delusion that's going on. But you're pretty sure. Jacob. Yes, you are in a desert, a hot desert that is just beating down on you. You've been in the desert for weeks. Your skin is just crackling and burned.

I'm getting dry wrinkles with you.

Have you have second and third degree sunburns as your skin is just crackling and breaking up. There's nothing around but hot, hot sand that gets underneath your nails, gets underneath your skin. Your fedora blew away two days ago.

Well, we all know now what a newt screaming sounds like.

No one can hear you scream in the desert.

That's fine. I am still screaming. I. Because I still have a mouth, and therefore I scream. This is horrific.

Fox, yes.

You are in the back of an animal control paddy wagon. Oh, no.

My worst nightmare.

Next to you. On one side is a dog, and the other side is a cat. And there's this big, big, big, really heavyset dude who's chewing like three sticks of gum. And all you hear is wah, wah, wah, wah, very Charlie Brown style. And he's talking to a little old lady. And there you're trapped in the back of this truck as they just kind of wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah,

wah, wah, wah, wah.

You have a collar on you, okay? That's like a big, thick collar, and it's attached to a muzzle. So you're muzzled in the back of a animal control ban in a. In a. In a cage that's not near big enough for you. Like, just like you could put a house cat in here, but you're just kind of crammed in to this cage and they're just talking back and forth.

Wow. Okay.

NPC roll damage for that Molotov cocktail.

Okay. Only nine damage.

Okay, four.

Four yard meter of a. Four. Yeah. Four yard radius for ten rounds.

Jeez.

Fire.

Fire.

All right, so in the vision that you were in, immediately ends, and there's this tremendous screaming sound from above where you saw the eyes and the building's on fire, and you were jerked out, and all of a sudden you were back in the alleyway. You weren't where you stopped. Your improvised explosive or demolition charge is a couple of feet away. And right behind you is Smooth and Ashfang. And they're just kind of standing there. Smooth is like on the ground, kind of hands over his head, trying to hide himself from something, but there's nothing there. Ashfang is kind of huddled in a ball. Looks like he's trying to pull something off of his face.

I'm gonna turn to Ash Fang first and just kind of like grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

Snap out of it, Ash Fang. Go ahead and make another save.

All right. Hopefully this will go well. Oh, I'm at an eight.

Jeez.

Okay, I need a ten.

So you're driving now. All of a sudden, you're just driving. You're in the cage, and the cage is violently being shaken back and forth, and you're just like, it's even more uncomfortable and. And you overhear the Charlie Brown noise and they're off in the distance. You can see just barely as he takes a turn. They're going to the dog food factory. And all the animals are freaking out because they know what happens to stray animals at the dog food factory. And the ride is just much, much more turbulent. Okay, Jacob.

Yo.

You scream, I'm freaking out. I'm like looking around for any piece

of shade cover, none to be seen.

I'm like burrowing, trying to burrow in the sand as a last desperate hope.

It burns you as you burrow into the hot sand. And you see one of those damn desert geckos just go by. He mocks you, just keeps going by.

Little fucker.

NPC I'm gonna pull a rag out of the next Molotov cocktail.

Okay.

And then I'm going to. The gecko's smaller than me, if I remember correctly.

Yes, great.

Smooth. I'm gonna go up to smooth and I'm gonna start shaking him. But this time I'm gonna shove this soaked rag under his nose. That's kind of a makeshift smell smelling sauce.

Okay, I'll give the gecko another try.

Really rolled an 8. I need a 10.

That doesn't help though.

Yes, I actually was gonna give him a plus two. So you come out so superimposed on the desert, all of a sudden Jean Claude is there and he's shoving some sort of horrible smelling rag in your face and. But why Jean Claude is in the desert with you? Why you're in the desert? Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Why, why is he trying to ask me if this rag smells like ether? I, I like, I'm like. From his point of view, I'm suddenly clinging to him.

Yes.

From my point of view, what I'm doing is trying to get in what passes as shade from his body, as tight and as deep in what little shadow his short form casts.

So you realize something's wrong, because no matter where Jean Claude stands, he doesn't cast a shadow. So anytime you try to go towards the shadow, there's no shade to be found. Even though logically, even in your 7 IQ brain, there should be a shadow. But he's not casting a shadow. So it's just all heat all the time, no matter what direction you go, which doesn't make any sense.

I scream telepathically at Jean Claude. Water. Where's water? Water. Take me to water. I mean, we're in fucking Chicago There should be a puddle somewhere. It might be filled with water, oily water, but you know.

All right, so I have a flask

of whiskey

you could feed him. Whiskey? I don't know. Last time I checked, giving someone whiskey who thinks who is dehydrated isn't. Isn't great. But. But the door opens and a four foot tall figure pops his head out, looks at you, and in your head you hear, go away, go away. Roll for initiative. All three of us, just you.

Oh, 16.

You handedly beat him. He has a rock in his hand and he's probably gonna try to throw the rock at you. And he's yelling at you. A little bit of smoke has started to come out the door. Cause the fire. Something's going on with the fire inside the warehouse. Okay, what do you want to do?

I'm gonna position myself so that smooth is in between me and him.

Okay.

And then kind of push smooth forward as like a battering ram. I'm not gonna be very good at it because I'm not very strong.

I mean.

Okay, valid, valid. Okay.

All right. Woody, yell water is this way.

I'm trying to think. Okay. How do I want to handle that? That's a very non standard type of attack. Are you trying to hit the smaller figure with him?

I would be nice if I could body slam him. Okay. I'm gonna get. I'm not very strong. Just an 11, right?

I'll have you make it strike to hit attack. Yeah, why not?

Okay. Shredder's been very nice to me today. That, that's an 18.

Oh, geez. Total. Oh, nice. Okay.

Wow.

The individual is. Yeah. He's gonna try to get out of the way. So he's gonna use his action to dodge because he really doesn't have anything to parry you with. So he's gonna try to dodge, unfortunately. But it's not much better. What did you get?

Total of 18. All right.

He.

I got a 19.

Okay.

And he steps just out of the way and you push past him into the room into through the door. Basically you would have slammed him. He steps out, but he's outside now in this room. Looks like the worst like 6 year old's bedroom you have ever seen. There are candy wrappers, there's soda cans, there's all sorts of like half eaten sandwiches, comic books that have been trashed. There's a flat screen television that has been hooked up. And there's a PlayStation 2, an old PlayStation 2 hooked up next to it. It looks like they've paused. It looks like Final Fantasy or something like that. But that's all you see is you kind of push him into the room.

Okay.

So he used his action to dodge. And one of the things I tend to do is I take those actions off the bottom so he can actually try to do something. He's gonna try to swing at you with that rock, basically, and try to hit you with the rock.

And that's as intended for the action sequence, by the way. You just take it off the top of the pile.

What are you gonna try?

Can I try and parry?

Yes, you can.

Totally with him.

I was wondering if you're parrying with smooth. Yeah. Oh, you can. You can totally try to parry with smooth. All right, I got a 13.

Okay. Got a plus three on this 14.

You parry with smooth. He hits smooth in a way. Using smooth as a weapon. He doesn't actually hurt. No, no. Actually smooth. You. Okay. You feel an impact. You don't know where it's from, but a four points of damage just kind of hits you on the side like you don't know what's hitting you. It's very bizarre. But just something just smacked you for four points of sdc.

I barely notice if it's only four points.

Well, I didn't say it was a lot. So the fire is still smoking out at this time. I'm going to have. Actually, no, you have one more action, please.

I do.

What are you gonna do?

Push smooth out of the way. And I'm gonna just try and tackle this kid.

Okay.

I'm just gonna leap on him and slam him and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cocked. I mean, this will technically hit on a five.

It will technically hit on a five. He's out of actions. Rules is written. I think he can take from next round. Or is he out for dodge?

He's out.

He's out. So you tackle him weekly. Weakly tackle him.

It's less of a tackle and more of a fop. I mean, I am an otter, right?

I mean, come on. So you tackle him. You'll do unarmed damage. So you're a D4 plus your strength bonus. I know you don't really have any. Or strength penalty, perhaps.

That's a one.

Okay.

My goal is less to damage him is if I can get him. I want to cover his eyes and his mouth. Oh, no. Maybe take my hat off and, like, shove it in his mouth. My jaunty beret. All right, so, no, I wasn't going to. Was a beret. It was going to be a wool beanie.

Wool beanie?

Yeah.

All Right, So you've knocked him down. You're both on the ground because you've blocked him down to the ground on your next attack. Well, he's lost initiative.

Yeah.

On your next attack, you would get a plus five if you want to try to entangle him or hold him down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm now gonna have Smooth and Ash make an initiative roll.

Right. I got a 14.

I got an eight for ash thing.

So Ash Fang got a 14. Okay, we're flipping back up to the top of the round.

How old does this kid look?

You've knocked his hat off. He had a bucket hat on. You've knocked the hat off, and you're looking at an ewok or what you think is an ewok or maybe it's a small bear. He doesn't look very old, but he definitely looks like a bear, and he's looking really disturbed, and he might be even, like, sad because you've knocked him to the ground and very disturbing. You are up.

Oh, it's my turn.

Top of the round. Yeah, yeah.

I'm gonna restrain him.

Okay. Yeah, go ahead and make a. It'd be an entangle roll.

Is that a D20?

Yeah, you get a plus five.

Okay, I got a total of nine.

All right, so he will try to defend and does not come anywhere near defending. So you have entangled him. Sweet, successful tangle. The defender must roll higher in order to get free. He has to entangle his next action. They must make. Opponent must attempt to free a limb with an attack. And then we basically can go back and forth and try to do that. So right now, he is basically entangled, and you can kind of hold him there, and he loses his initiative. So he's kind of stuck there for right now. All right, Ashfang, that the car, the truck that you're in is pulling into the dog food factory. You can see a conveyor belt of abandoned pets going into this large, comical, smashing machine, and then cans of dog food are coming out the other side of this Rube Goldberg like, contraption. I will go ahead and give you another psionic saving roll.

All right. Hopefully the dice will be with me. 17.

Nice. So it dawns on you that that's not how machinery works. Like, this is. This can't be real.

Right.

You're still stuck in it, but there's definitely something wrong with what's going on here.

Okay.

How would you like to try to fight back? If you. Can you think of anything? You're in this cage. You have a muzzle on you don't really know what's going on. But you realize that this can't be real because you were just in an alleyway. Right? You don't even remember how you got into the cage.

Yeah.

So what I'm gonna do is take

one of my eggshell bombs that's filled with, like, pepper, okay. And I'm going to jam it in my mouth.

Okay. Okay.

Brilliant.

That's awesome. All right. I'm going to have you actually make a strike roll.

Okay, I can do that.

Godspeed, Sir.

That's a 19.

All right. All right. Perfect. All

right.

Inside the room, all of a sudden, there's a. There's a. There's an impact noise, like a soft. Like a dirt clod hitting a board, you know? And above you, Jean Claude hears this. Above Jean Claude, he hears all of a sudden a bunch of coughing and sneezing, like something's going on above you. And that's also where the fire is. And it's now drawn your attention that there's stacked up crates that are all along the windows, giving people a vantage point. They could crawl up the crates and look out the broken windows. And that's where some of the fire is. And it's burning. It's not burning super fast. And there's other figures up there. And one of them has jumped down and is like rolling on the floor, sneezing and coughing and hacking and making just a hell of a racket.

Is it another delinquent bear?

It's another delinquent bear. And there's one other bear that's up there doing something.

Do these bears by chance have emblems drawn on their stomachs?

You know, it's kind of dark, but you do have night vision, right? I do. You do have night vision. They do have emblems drawn on their stomachs.

Knife, throat slit. These guys bring about the end of the world anyway, so.

Well, actually, I believe so. So we will you go. One bear rolls around with smoking and hacking. One bear is on fire. The other bear is trying to maintain on Newt. Newt still thinks he's in the hot, horrible desert. So we'll be at the top of the round. John Claude, you're up.

Oh, man. What to do.

You have this bear?

Yeah.

And the bear that you have pinned on the ground,

Just tell me which one it is.

Has a skull with. With a face, a. A ghostly face on its chest. It's like a skull cup with a ghostly face. For those who are following along at home, it's on page 111 and it is the Fear bear.

Okay, okay. Ghostly face. Oh, I see. Yeah. Well, is there cloth nearby?

There's actually some disused. It looks like there's some rags broke, like a ripped up blanket.

There's some cloth ripped up blanket.

Perfect.

I'm going to grab it and just fucking cover it over this guy's head like a sack.

Okay, so add to the entangle, basically. Get it like. Okay, I'll have you go ahead and make a roll. He's trying to fight back. He's not doing so well. You still have a plus five.

That is much better. That is a 22.

You've now wrapped him up, his head up pretty tightly. Are you trying to strangle him or

just trying to like incapacitate him?

Okay, yeah. Okay.

Just make it so that his, his evil gaze is not going to affect us.

Jumping over to Ashfang, you, in your mind, you took that pepper egg and jammed it in your mouth. But what you really did, as the audience knows, is you threw it over your shoulder. It flipped up into the air and smacked into one of the windows above you.

Oh, okay.

So you were aiming for your mouth, but you knew something was wrong with the illusion and you kind of missed your mouth. But happenstance, you threw it up over your shoulder and it hit something up there in the window and the vision goes away and you're standing there in the alleyway alone. The building above you is slightly on fire.

Slightly on fire.

Okay, well, it's burning. There's a Molotov cocktail. Okay, it's really on fire.

It's only been three rounds. Yes, well, I mean, it's an old building. It's probably got some Berber carpet. So.

Yeah.

Who knows about the asbestos, right?

Yeah.

Is it made out of asbestos?

Asbestos? This was an asbestos free zone. Why? Because they didn't look. So it's asbestos free and you're in the alleyway by yourself. There's a door 10ft away that's open. You can definitely hear a scuffling and noise and like a muffled yells coming from inside.

There's probably a little bit of muttering too.

Like

there's a bunch of French accent coming out of there. Yeah.

Grumpy accent on here.

Is there now there. Is there how, how? The windows, you said, are like, like

12, 14ft off the ground.

Yeah.

And, and, and there's no like fire escape or ladder.

No, there is a.

There's a railing or anything. Or like a, like a, A pipe.

Yeah, there can be a pipe if you want to go up that way.

I was just thinking I could I mean, my character has gymnastics and climbing and all that, so maybe he could just run up the wall and jump in the window.

Sure. Let's go ahead and make a climbing roll. Okay, cool.

I got a 70 base percentile.

42. Nice. You scale the side and look in the window and you come face to face with the back of a forefoot. It's. Is it an ewok or like it kind of looks like. Well, no, you don't think it's. And it has that smell immediately, that smell that you picked up before. It's just really strong. And you see this scene of there's a bear doing a stop, drop and roll on the ground, trying to get put out. There's a bear that's just hacking up its lungs like it ate something horrible like, you know, a pepper bomb. The back of, the back of one is looking down and you see Jean Claude wrapping another one's head up and then quietly keeping to himself is smooth. Smooth.

Which doesn't seem very smooth.

Like.

No, he's just laying there.

Well, I want to retain the element of surprise where I'm at.

Well, you definitely have it so far, so get back to you in just a second. The dude on the ground who's on fire finally puts himself out. That's all he does. He finally gets himself out. Out. He doesn't look so great because he took a. Because it goes for 10 rounds, 12 rounds, roll damage again for that.

I think it would have just done the same damage value. Okay, yeah.

Okay, cool.

I forget what it was like seven or eight or something.

It was eight.

Yeah.

Okay, cool. And he's finally put himself out. He's like concerted effort. Put himself out. One coughs and chokes and the other one is standing there, the one that's has its back to ash. Fang is just intently staring at Smooth, focusing everything he can on smooth. At least that's what it looks like. It's like, you know, it's a jilted stilted lover who is staring from a two story balcony with a high power power rifle. Wait, no, that doesn't. Never mind. So smooth. It's hot.

Yeah, it's hot. But things were flickering a bit. They were, there were. So I'm like looking around for anything that looks like a liquid.

Oh, okay. Yeah, you there, you see a bottle?

It's a two liter of Faygo.

It's a. It, it's. It's a two liter or it's a three liter half drink. Three liter of grape drink.

Oh, I'm rolling over. To it and pouring it all over myself.

So. So Jean Claude doesn't notice this probably going on. But. But Ash Fang, you notice Smooth has. Has taken what appears to be a large generic 3 liter bottle that's half full of some sort of purplish liquid and is just drinking the entire thing.

Not just drinking, pouring all over my skin. I am a newt. I breathe partially through my skin.

So we are top of the round Otter Jean Clock.

There's not much I can do except restrain this one. Y.

You have him pinned down.

I'm just going to keep them pinned. Okay. Yeah.

I'll have you go ahead and make another strike roll. See, maybe you can like tie him up so you don't have to sit here and maintain him.

Well, I got a natural 17. Okay. So my strike is plus two.

So he keeps fight. He can't get out. You've kind of hog tied him up and he's just kind of. He's blind because you wrapped his head and you've kind of bound up his paws.

Okay, I'm gonna drag him outside.

You drag him outside. Okay. So Ashfang.

Yeah.

You watch Jean Claude drag the dude out and. And the figure that you're behind is still intently looking at Smooth.

Yeah. So even though I'm like, you know, a game designer, I'm just going to do the thing that I want to do as a player. So I'm like. Because I just. There was like some sort of like, pipe or whatever that I crawled up.

Yeah.

I want to grab onto that real tight with my legs and then I want to pull out my metal pipe and just bang this guy in the back of the head and just brain him as hard as I can. See if I can knock him out or something.

Oh, absolutely. And because he's unaware, I believe that becomes a sneak attack.

Yes.

Which it at least does that. Yeah, at least does that. Assuming you hit. So go ahead and make your strike.

Yeah. I think the main thing is he can't dodge. Can't parry.

Yeah, can't dodge. Can't parry. He is completely unaware.

18 plus 1. 19.

Nice. Go ahead and roll damage.

Okey dokey.

So 7 and check something real quick. Yep. All right. You smack him pretty good. And he is fully aware now he's kind of up there precariously on these crates as you hit him.

Oh, yeah.

So he's gonna try to hold on to his balance because he was not expecting it coldcocked from the side of the head. So he's gonna make a quick balance check to see if he actually, actually he doesn't have that check. He doesn't have that skill. Nevermind. He, he kind of goes tumbling off of the top down to the ground, takes another, takes another three points of damage. He hits, looks back up and kind of, you know, looks up at his attacker and is surprised by his attacker and doesn't do anything just yet. The individual who's finally been put out yells like, growls like this really loud like juvenile growl and broadcasts mentally not to you, but to Jean Claude. Bring back my brother, you dumb. You, you big person.

Does he not have to have line of sight?

Oh, he does have to have line of sight. So he doesn't actually. So you don't hear it. He kind of yells, but he growls. And that's what he would say. You're absolutely right. He does have to have line of sight. One of the downsides of being of talking that way and he, but he goes running out the door towards you and then he gets there and he's like. And he like and just yells at you, but that's about of all he can do. He's like run across that room and you hear him behind you as you're like dragging out his brother and you're like, oh, it's another one. There's more of them in here.

So I am now wet.

You are wet and sticky and sticky. Yes, very sticky.

This is. Am I still flipping between.

You're still flipping in and out. Something just kind of. Actually no, your vision drops. Oh, completely. And you're now in a really messy room and it's not. And you realize it's not really a room. It's just this corner of the warehouse. Lots of debris, lots of junk food, bottles of half drinking soda, a TV with a PlayStation hooked up. There's ones yelling out a door behind you. Like just kind of all hits you all at once.

I am going to unsling my Mac 10.

Oh, Jesus. Okay.

My silenced Mac 10, I might add.

Okay.

My suppressed Mac 10. And like clicking it all the way to rock and roll and be looking around going, trying to figure out what's going on.

So there's two, one is, there's, there's two of these four foot tall bear dudes that you can see immediately. One is kind of sprawling his back, the other one's hacking his lungs out still. There's a third that's standing in a doorway yelling out the doorway. And that's what you see.

I am going to just discharge a burst into the ceiling.

Okay.

Just to like everybody chill the fuck Out.

All right. So you shoot in the ceiling. They. It's. Oh, it's suppressed, so it's not super loud, but it's not quiet, you know? And in this room, it just sounds like a staple gun kind of going off over and over and over. A little bit of a bang. Mac 10s aren't necessarily known for their full suppressibility, but, you know, they're not super noisy. You get some attention, and the one in the doorway turns around.

Mm.

And looks at you.

Mm.

And yells.

Growls.

His, like, baby yell.

Cub bear growl.

Yeah, cub bear growl.

And.

And make a saving throw. A psionic saving throw. You make it. I passed that one for just a second. You think you see an atomic bomb dropping out of the sky, and then it goes away.

Oh, I didn't. I. I didn't get the Omega mission. Thank God.

All right. Choking. He fell. The one that fell, picks himself up. That's pretty much all he does. This round or this. This action. And so we go top of the round, and we have Jean Claude. Great.

That guy's no longer looking in my direction.

No longer looking in your direction.

Smashing him on the back of the head with a Molotov cocktail.

A lit Molotov cocktail.

No, I'm not lighting it.

Just smash them over that.

Unless there's, like a chunk of masonry or something to bonk them with. No, this is the hardest thing I got.

Bottle.

And, you know, if I'm lucky, he'll get dust and gasoline.

Yeah.

Or whatever the hell is in these cocktails. That is going to be a nine to strike.

All right, he's unaware because he's totally not looking at you. So you hit. So you.

For how much damage does a broken bottle do?

Page 86.

Is that what you're looking for?

Yeah, Perfect. I'm gonna smash glass. Smashing glass. So D4. D4 plus your strength bonus.

4.

4, 4, perfect.

No strength bonus, no strength.

Well, you know, we can always wish.

Does it smash?

It does smash. Oh, yeah.

He's fur that is completely soaked in FL material.

Yes.

He looks so damp. I'm envious.

And he's. He's wreaking in. In alcohol or kerosene or whatever happens to be in that. And that brings us to Ashbang.

So I can see the guy that I hit. He then fell down and took more damage.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm.

I'm going to leap through the window and just go. Full metal crowbar assault on.

Go ahead and roll a strike.

If you're psychic, you don't really like other people messing with your brain, Right?

Well, he had stood himself up. He ran over to the door and screamed. He's like. And you're like, oh, okay.

All right. Yeah. Does that mean he's not looking at me?

He's not looking at you. He's looking directly at Newt. Well, actually, excuse me, he was looking at Newt, but then Jean Claude hit him over the head with a bottle filled with some sort of flammable liquid. So he's probably still technically looking at Newt, but he, like, his head probably hurts horribly at this point, and he's covered in some sort of really smelly stuff. So. Yeah, you can totally roll.

I rolled a one.

Well, you miss bonus. What are your bonuses?

There's no penalties for round one.

What is your. What is your. What is your bonuses? Any chance you actually get above a five or some. You get a five or greater one to scribe. Okay, so you jump down, you miss, and now you're interposed between the Newt Smooth. And the dude with atomic weapon on his chest. And okay, so the individual who is no longer on fire yells and does his bear roar again. And Ashfang attempt another psionic save.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

14 successful.

All right. For just a second, every nerve ending in your body lights up like it's on fire. You feel as if someone is just poking you with a thousand hot pokers. And then you kind of shake it off. And it's obvious that the. The. The bear that was on fire wanted to make everyone else feel like they were on fire. The. The bear that's all wrapped up continues to be all wrapped up. Smooth, you were up

Smooth. Realizes now that he's got a bigger sense of what's going on, that the Mac 10 might be a little much.

Maybe you don't know.

I am going to charge the one that's closest to me, which I think is the gas soaked one.

Yeah, the gas soaked one is like right next to you pretty much.

And grapple him.

Okay. Make your to hit. He will not stand there for this. So he will attempt to dodge. So he will go ahead.

I'm a trained wrestler.

He'll try to dodge anyway.

Yeah, I roll a 13.

I only got a 10. Okay, you.

I haven't grappled.

You have him grappled?

Yep. I automatically get a hold on my opponent, so I got a hold on him.

Cool. All right, so next round, if you want to entangle him, you will make that check or next action, rather. Because one of the things that I'm noticing, we all have two actions and the bad guys all have two actions. So without a new initiative, you have three. I messed up. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had three. You took boxing.

I did.

These are things that the GMs supposed to pay attention to. So actually, basically we're at the bottom of the round. The person's still choking. He is entangled. So actually, I will go ahead and give you your next action. Okay, now this. The gasoline smoked bear is in grappled with Smooth.

Well, that kills my plan. I thought it was gonna be all cool and set him on fire.

You still can, but Smooth probably won't appreciate it. But Smooth can regenerate, so it's fine. Right?

Smooth can regenerate.

Smooth can regenerate.

Higher, low. How about some fire, Scarecrow? Light a match, watch it burn.

Okay, so top of the round. So you were first, John Clark, because you got the high initiative originally. So you're up again. Was it 2d6 damage with fire? I think the Molotov.

Oh, I just had that up. 3D6.

Oh, okay.

For 3D4 rounds. All right.

Roll damage. I thought you just rolled.

That's gonna leave a mark.

No, I'm gonna let. If PCs want to hurt PCs, I make the PC roll the damage. It's not my fault.

8.

Oh, okay. No.

9.

9.

All right.

All right. So you ignite it. So you go.

It doesn't explode for 10 rounds.

Jeez. All right, so I'm gonna give Smooth a chance to dodge away as he watches the back of the bear ignite into flames. Or you could shove him out the door directly into Jean Claude.

You mean do a throw attack?

Yeah, sure.

That would be an un. Unsuccessful.

Okay. Okay. So you take nine fire damage because you are entangled on your actual action. I will. I will let you try to mitigate that. You are up, Jean Claude.

I'm gonna yell fire in the hall.

A little late, but better late than never.

Gotta strike everything off the list.

You know, checklists don't have to be done in order.

Right.

So there's a four foot bear in the door on fire, grappling. Smooth. You have a bear behind you that's all gaffered up. You hear? Probably combat up. Actually, no. You may get flashes of Ashfang through the doorway because he jumped down to try to hit the bear that was in the doorway but missed.

I. You know, I'm gonna leave the doorway and I'm gonna go the other entrance, the one that Ashvang is.

So he's crawled up one of the pipes. I'm pretty Good at that. Okay, so go ahead and make your climbing check. Mm. I can see this in my head. The animator looking at the storyboarding. What, what?

44 underscore.

Okay, you. You. You shimmy up the side. No problem. And you look over the window ledge, and now you're above everyone. So you're like 10ft up, 12ft up the air. And you see one of the bears is still hacking up along, like it's on the ground. You don't know what's going on with him. He's just, like, coughing and hacking and hacking. The other bear that was on fire, there's. There's one just standing there, kind of looking dumbfounded. Nothing happened. And then there's the mess of everyone else. There's the, you know, the two on the doorway. You can kind of look straight down and see the two on the doorway. And then, of course, you see Ash Fang with his. His boat, his metal bow staff, basically standing there.

I'm just gonna look and wait. Yep, yep. My turn's over.

All right, your turn's over. Ash Fang, you're up.

Okay, so I see there's a. There's a. There's a. There's one of these bears on fire.

One of these bears is on fire.

That's the name of this episode.

One of the bears is on fire. Smooth is on fire. But Smooth isn't doused with flammable Smooth, just for clarity. Smooth has a contact fire, so it's like a contact high. But as soon as Smooth can get away from the bear, he shouldn't stay on fire.

Right.

And then there's a bear that's choking and hacking like no tomorrow.

Still.

Still. Because I believe that lasts for quite a while.

I wonder if he ate the egg maybe.

Yeah.

I mean, usually you throw it and it gets in the eyes. So since he ate it, I have no idea.

And then there's one bear just by himself that's standing there. He was the. He was the. He looks singed. Very singed. And he was staring. He was doing something. Try to do something to Smooth, and didn't succeed.

Okay. So he was trying to get smooth. And so I realized he's part of the problem.

Oh, of course.

So Ashfang's gonna run up and. And. And I guess. I guess I'll tackle him. And then I'm gonna try and maneuver so I can get a hold, like, you know, like a choke hold, so. So he can't look at me.

Okay.

And I can maybe push his face so he can't look at My buddies.

Okay, go ahead and make your attack.

Get him into a good triangle joke.

Right, right. Oh, I got a great. I got a two. I got a three with bonuses.

So he like the bear, just kind of like takes a sidestep, watches you fly by, wonders what the heck. Okay, well, that was entertaining. He goes next. Make a psionic save.

Ugh.

Don't roll a two.

I rolled a nine. And no bonuses.

You feel like your body's on fire, but you can't see it. Every nerve ending just screams in pain. You are currently biomanipulated pain for. Yeah. For four to 16 minutes. How do you get four to. Okay, here.

44.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, right. Okay. That work?

If only they had just written 4 to 4. 4D4.

You know, I. Yeah.

For 13 minutes. Yeah, we got to get that guy on here for 13 minutes. You have a minus six to strike. Parry and Dodge and you take one hit. Point of damage per minute.

Oh my gosh.

Who's next?

Guy who's bound, stays bound. Smooth.

So I'm standing in the middle of this semi furnished corner of the warehouse right outside. There's a bear that's tied up.

There's a bear that's on fire. That you're in direct physical contact with.

Well, I threw him. Which I attempted to throw him. Which meant I released the hold.

Right.

I am on fire.

You're on fire.

Has anyone ever seen a just slightly taller than a yard, thinly built but well muscled newt go full hulk before?

No, and I'm not seeing it now.

Not either.

At the one that was on fire.

Oh, okay. The one that kind of just olay and allowed Ashvang to just fly by.

I stare at him for a split second, lick my eyeballs as newts do. As newts do. And just charge on charge at him while I'm on fire trying to tackle him.

Okay, make a title.

Well, that is a nine.

Okay. He will attempt to dodge. He didn't actually have to attempt before.

Right.

And does not dodge.

Taking the sassob to the floor.

Yes.

A flaming angry newt kissing in his face.

What we have learned from much palladium grapple. Bring him down. Those body blocks and pins are brutal.

You tackle him and you basically take him to the ground. The dude that's choking just keeps choking. I don't think he can actually get out of that, to be honest.

Oh, it only lasts. I mean, the block. Normally it causes blindness for 1D4 rounds.

Okay, so. So he's probably coming out shortly.

But if it was maximized and I figured this is probably the fourth.

Yeah. It's probably about when he's going to come out. So he'll be free next round. And then we have the poor dude that's on fire, takes another nine points of damage, screams a bit more, and will try to put himself out. Start trying to roll or he drops to the ground. Although he's already on the ground because you kind of tried to throw him but didn't work. So he's trying to put himself out right now.

Can you stop, drop and roll when you're covered in gasoline, you can try

not saying it's gonna work. It's like,

I will.

You are made a fur.

Right.

I would say that that would be the same as trying to do it in a goose down parka. And so it is achievable. It just kind of sucks.

Okay.

Badly. Really badly.

All right.

For all intensive purposes, he's out. I'm gonna. I'm gonna make a funny roll. We'll go high roll. And he doesn't roll onto his friend who's wrapped in old rags and suspend, you know, gaffer next to him, basically. Yeah. He does not. He misses his friend that's outside, but he's rolling around on the ground. But there's a good chance he could have rolled right into his friend and caught him on fire. So. And we are at top of the round.

Jean Claude, man, he keeps grappling people that I want to set on fire.

Well, that didn't stop you from setting them on fire the first time.

To be fair, I'm kind of setting him on fire as well.

You've gone out okay. Yeah. You basically just took a. You got burned because he was on fire, so.

Oh, how far away is the one who's choking?

He's basically in the general vicinity. Same vicinity.

And I'm up in the window.

Yep.

Can I like flying wrestler tackle him.

You can totally fly in wrestling. Do not. You know, failing could be bad, but yes.

Come on, Shredder, don't let me down. I mean, that's a nine total.

He doesn't know that there's yet another person coming from the air. So you hit him.

And right as I hit, right as I'm about to hit, I go sneak attack. Yep.

So go ahead and roll a D4 plus your non existent strength bonus 4. And this is the choking dude that you jumped, right?

Yeah. These feather dice are hard to read.

Yeah. He didn't know it was coming, so he really can't defend. So you've basically jumped him and that's your second for this. Top of the round, Ashfang. Your second attack for this round.

So I'm in bad shape here. Is there, is there like any cargo netting or rope or anything around here?

There are, yeah, there's probably some beat up, you know, rat eaten rope around that's, you know, lengths of it now how good it is, how long it is. Really hard to tell how much. Empty crates, Lots of empty crates. Pretty much any sort of detritus or debris you can imagine in an abandoned warehouse you'd find readily.

Okay, so basically with this pain attack, he's gonna try and like break line of sight and run off into the, into the, you know, somewhere and cover in the warehouse. But his goal is he wants to get to. To like an open crate so he can like flip it upside down and try and trap one of the bears in it.

Okay.

If he can sneak. If he can, you know, he wants to like break line of sight so he's not getting like bio manipulated and then grab a crate, you know, hide and grab a crate so he can jump one of the bears when they're unawares. With a crate.

Okay, that's pretty easy for you to do. You break line of sight.

Do you want me to roll prowl

or so what it says.

I mean, breaking line of size. One thing, them knowing exactly where I am.

There you go. Okay, so I'll have you make a prowl check. Okay, cool. Cool. Because that's what's needed. You have to break the exact known location. And if you just hide behind a box, he's like, I know he's right there. So it should work, right?

Yeah. So I succeeded.

Okay. The pain subsides.

Okay, great.

All right.

And that's your action. So the fire guy is on the ground. So he's going to try to, I guess, break. Try to break away from you because you've tackled him by the fire guy. No, no, no. The guy who was on fire who ended. You just jumped on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Because you. No, wait, hold on. Missing something you jumped on. That's on fire.

He's on. If they are who I think they are, then he is on the pain bear.

Yes. Yeah. So you're on the pain bear because. Yeah, he's. Because you jumped on top of him.

I'm guessing this is nightmare Bear.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. And you're gonna try to get away from him and he's gonna try to get away from you. Frayed. Frayed. He's not necessarily thinking all that straight right now though. So he's just gonna try to punch you to get you, try to kind of break the. The beginnings of what I think eventually. I'm assuming eventually would be a grapple or an entangle, right?

Yep, yep.

So he's gonna try to punch you to get you off of him. It may not go very well for him because they. They really aren't the. The greatest. He will hit you with a 13.

I want to try and parry that.

Okay,

let's try Donatello. Come on, donatello. That's a 14.

Oh, geez. So you dodge the attack or you parry the attack quite handedly.

Yeah.

All right, he's bound. We are back to smooth.

So since I tackled this guy last round successfully.

Yeah.

I'm gonna try to transition into a hold. Since I tackled him last round. I get a plus five to that.

Yes, you do.

Oh, is that a thing?

Yeah, that's a nine.

Yeah. He will attempt to get away. Stop thinking that's. Oh, fuck. So he. He doesn't. He doesn't get fully entangled, so he fights off. Yeah, but you still have him. You're still grappled together. Right.

But he can punch kicks.

Right. You can still do stuff if he wants to. Okay. Those guys, he burns. So your third action for the round.

Okay. I'm going to try and slippery otter myself onto his back.

Okay.

And then get him a. Get him in a hold.

All right.

I'm guess it's the same plus 5.

Yeah.

15. Yeah.

It only works on your next attack after, and you have to be going for a hold, so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 15.

So it's like you're transitioning to your ground game.

So you grapple him.

Okay.

You grapple him up, and he's now, like, struggling. Like this seems really familiar from what you did before. And he's on the ground, and you have him entangled up, so top of the round. Jean bought us up.

I'm going to grab something if they're nearby. If there's a ship, there's lots of debris.

Yeah.

All sorts.

Basically doing the same thing. All right, stop startling. Just let that happen and wrap them up.

All right, go ahead and make a strike.

Roll 12.

Okay. He has tried to fight you off. He's not really good at that. No, that's a two. So he does not. And you've. Again, you've wrapped up his head, and you're starting to really disable this poor dude. Okay. Those tackles, they're so good.

Yeah. You want to dodge or parry those because it. After that, it becomes a strength Game.

Okay, so we have one guy's on fire outside. So this was the top of the next round. So the top of fourth round. Oh, that's right. So you have him. You have him. Geez. Okay, Ashfang, you are actually up. You've broken contact. You're away. You're hiding behind a big box. Or are you? You know, no one really knows where you've hidden. You've faded. You've shadow melded, basically. But not. What are you going to do?

Yeah. So is there a bear left in here?

No one is fighting the not on fire newt, and the other one's been started to get bound on the ground. So you, like, pop your head up and you're like. The landscape has changed dramatically from when you got out of eyesight. You hear screaming outside still, because someone's still on fire.

Right. We'll let him deal with that. So the one that's fighting the newt, I'm gonna. I'm gonna like, do the whole, like, creep up behind him with a box and then just try and put the

box all over him. Okay.

So we can, like, you know, get it, you know, then get some. Get another, you know, board and box him up.

So I'm gonna. I'm gonna let your prowl stand because they kind of lost sight of you. So go ahead and make an attack roll. Okay, cool.

Natural 20.

Yes. Okay, so. But I'm going to make the newt dodge.

You see what that is with bonuses? That's a 16.

All right. You didn't have to fight the natural 20, but you kind of had to roll off. Just as the big natural 20 box came down, this box comes slamming down on top of the nuke.

On top of the dude.

Wait, no, on top of the bear. Well, everyone else. The other dude. Your other friend attacked the dude. I mean, why?

I mean, only sort of.

Only sort of.

We're gonna have words about it when I break us into the next trucker's hotel so we have someplace to sleep overnight. I'm not sharing the bathtub this time.

So that image aside, you have a newt and a.

There has to be a time split.

So you box up the other bear, and for the sake of time, you're able to disable the. The other bear that was half wrapped up. And very quickly, the bear outside. Well, you've captured three of the four terror Bears. The fourth terror bear, by the time you get out there, there's not much left of him, and he's a pretty nasty mess. And you discover in the pile of refuse, a Bunch of paperwork that indicates that these might have come from the same lab that two of you came from, all under the name of a Dr. Beryl. And that's where the scene ends.

I have an idea on closing it out.

Okay.

Why were we here in the first place?

You were trying to figure out who was causing all these robberies because they were getting too close. The police investigation was starting to get close to where you three hide. And you're like, we better stop these dudes before they find us. Because the cordon was getting tighter and tighter.

Okay, so here's how I want to close this up. This is my idea. We drag the bodies. Sorry. We drag. Well, the bodies. All four of them. We drag the bodies out, line them up, and I make a phone call for the driver who was waiting for f. Something. 50 pulls up, and we throw them into the back, getting ready to go drop them off at the station, and we all pile in, and the driver looks over and just says, bear. And then they leave.

And as they ride off into the sun, I mean, as they ride off into the warehouse district that is now caught on fire because the roof was still burning.

I turn to my two companions, retrieve my fedora, put it on my head, smooth the brim, look at both of them, and telepathically say, reavers and their damn Molly.

And then Ashvang turns to them and says in broken fox talk that he's never spoken before. Bears on fire.

That's where the scene ends. That's where the scene ends.

I had to have a callback to our first animal episode with Bears. The driver.

Bears. The driver. That's right. Bear.

Yes.

So that's a set the scene for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other strangeness. As you can see, some of the abilities are pretty powerful.

Yeah, yeah.

The mind trap and the. The bio manipulation. Pain. Now, one of the things that when a person is holding those, they can't do anything. So if they're fully immersing you into one of those illusions, that bear can't do a dang thing until you figure out. And there's ways to get out and there's ways to break out. And it's pretty difficult once they get locked in.

What I really liked about this was there's an innate drive to figure out all the creative ways you can use the combat system in this because it's. It's more approachable than, like going through the encyclopedia ninjas and super Spizika.

That's fair, but.

And it. It's smooth. And the combat bonuses are generally speaking, within the same realm to each other, that you're not just wanting to spam your best attack, but figure out the most creative, effective use for that specific situation.

So, Sean, what did you think?

Oh, it was fun. I mean, it's interesting. We had the conversation on the other episode about, like, the stat that the initiative stays the same from round to round, and that really gave us a big advantage. But it does turn it into more of, like, a greet, a gritty street fight.

It also makes it hard on the GM for when all the attacks are different. Like, I kept on shorting Jean Claude's character and attack because I. Because I was like, oh, everyone has three, but because one has. Everyone has two. But because John Claude had three, he actually would have had an extra action each round at the bottom when no one else could have gone. And I missed that, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that can happen no matter how many actions.

Absolutely.

But, yeah, and there's something to be said about homogenizing the action economy a bit, but in the end, I think it. It was. I thought that was really fun, and it was fun. It's fun to also use skills within the situation. And I think that the movement played out very well. I mean, most of the movement we did was actions, and I think that's natural for Palladium. I know that's something people. It was less defined before this Redux edition, but that's how Kevin usually runs it. And so it felt really natural here, too. So I had a great time. You know, I didn't really build the character to be like some monster. I was just going with the themes of.

Of what we rolled up.

Right.

But.

But no, that was really fun, and it's cool. And it's the.

The.

I don't know. It's just. It's interesting because you're right. I mean, these. These characters, they. They're much more locked into, like, one power because of how much Bio E they cost to get the different psychic powers. So. And they can't. You know, they don't. As opposed to, like, other, like, Rifts or something else where you've got ISP and a whole power list.

It's.

It's. It's my. It feels. I don't know, it feels more like a comic to me, where very much one or two tricks. Yeah. So, I don't know, just kind of reinforced to me. And of course, you guys obviously love Palladium and love the turtles, and so it was really fun to game with you guys because I feel like we could take this and give it to an artist and they could make it into a comic, right?

Yeah.

And then they'd all be. It would be contacted by mental health services. But yeah, yeah, no, this, this was fun. This was fun to run.

Yeah. The cutscenes with that would have to be in that, where there'd be the panels that are either him in the back of the animal control vehicle or me in the middle of the desert.

Those would be great.

Great.

Yeah.

The. The Terror Bears.

I've.

I'm so familiar with Terror Bears because I'm like, okay, I just, I can't metagame this.

Right. And I wanted to use them because they were the Terror Bears. If you read them on surface level, you look at these four, basically four foot tall Ewoks. Right. Like, it's a great way to describe them. They're not. They're terrifying. They all have one or two cool powers. And if they didn't have the downside of being locked down and couldn't really do anything, they would be horrifying.

Yes.

I mean, they're horrifying because of the mental images and things that they'll do with you, the mind trap ability. But if they could also come after you and beat you up while you're literally locked in this vision that you can't get out of. And I will say that I was playing a little loose because it says you have an option to get another saving throw, but you don't get out. You just become aware something's wrong.

Yeah.

Right. So you're still locked in the dream, the terrorful, the hidden thing. So.

Which you did a little bit of that. And I think the way you handled it was very good.

Yeah. It's an interesting ability. Yeah.

And it's, you know, these abilities. This is an older game and it's from an era when things were a little bit less defined and it was more. It was assumed that the GM would be making the right calls for what kind of story they want to tell with the players. Right. And so I think that was handled really well in the spirit of how the game was written. I know that can be frustrating for modern gamers. They're like, oh, I want everything defined and laid out and all that kind of stuff. But when we were working on the redux, I wanted to make sure everything was as clear as possible, but I wanted to make sure it was the same game with the same powers and abilities.

Right.

Cleaned up a little bit, maybe rebalance a few things here and there. But in general, we want it to feel like the same game. And to me, it feels like the same game.

Yeah.

So it's a lot of fun. It's really fun to throw down on a table with you guys. It's almost. Forget how fun how easy it is to build the characters too. I mean, we built those pretty quick.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Sean, thank you so much for spending time with us today and talking to us about Palladium. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sitting in a game with us. This was great and we really appreciate it. It was fun.

I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, it's great that we've been able to have both you and Kevin on now. And you know, who knows, maybe in the future we'll get lucky and some other luminaries of Palladium's past or future will join us.

Oh, yeah. Even if just for a chat. But I would love to get a lot of them in. You know, just a little bit of playing with some of the greats.

No, that's really cool. Yeah. You should see if Matt Balance available. I'm not sure.

I think he might be. Yeah, he hangs out on our Discord server. Oh, really? Okay.

That's awesome.

Yeah, he plays a lot of Seven Days to Die.

Oh, I like that game.

Yeah. I may end up just starting up a breakfast puppies. Discord. Seven Days to Die.

There you go.

There's enough of my people.

Well, thanks again, guys. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you all being like the ultimate benefactor for the Turtles Redux Edition. It's something that's really close to mine and Kevin's heart and then just supporting us and being able to come on here and game with you guys has been a blast. I haven't done that in a while with, you know, it being recorded like this. So that's really fun. I think we the pinnacle does that a lot. Maybe we should be doing more of that on. On Palladium as well, but on the playoff side. But yeah, thank you guys. And I. I just hope everybody that listened to this enjoyed it and go out and get the books. They're at your local game shop. You can order them from the Palladium Books website. But they're out there and people are loving it and I hope you guys will love it too.

Well, thank you so much. And we will definitely ask you back some other time if you're available. And thank you to all the listeners and we will catch you next time. Starships, Magic, Mystic Martial Arts, Romance. All of these can be found in a cloak of Blades by Isaac Sherry. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today. Have a good one.

You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys, Rifts, the Megaverse and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order [email protected] and their entire catalog is available digitally at drivethrurpg as well. Our opening music is 8 bit bass and lead by furbyguy from freesound.org this closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross available at freemusicarchive.org all sound effects effects used are self made or acquired via Creative Commons zero license. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as TheGlitterBoys. That's B O I S and check us out [email protected] glitterboys and also join us on the Breakfast Puppies network [email protected] Discord and if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for your listening. We'll catch you next time.