AHWT Returns - with a Strange Aeons 2E After-Action Report!

Let's skip the fanfare and get right to the action. After all, 10 years is just a brief hiatus, right?

I ran/played in the same campaign of Tri Tac Game's Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic RPG from 1990 to just a few years ago. The core group stayed the same throughout that entire time, and we enjoyed many great game sessions. Alas, the campaign ended a few years ago due to life getting in the way, and last year one of the core members passed away. It doesn't seem like the campaign will be coming back, at least not in the form it existed for almost three decades.

I wanted to do something on the tabletop as an homage to that group, and it felt like Strange Aeons was the perfect vehicle for translating B13 to miniature gameplay. I cooked up a rescue scenario involving heroes that were tabletop reflections of the core players in the campaign, some "celebrity" allies, and a bunch of hillbilly cultists (or, perhaps more appropriately, as one of my fellow players/gamemasters described his cultists in a B13 game he ran: "trailer park karcists"  lol ). 

First up, here are the heroes investigating on behalf of the Stilman Institute for Psychical Research:

The Furnace Brothers, freelance trouble shooters, literally (representing two of my very old friends, including the one who passed):

Chester Bookman Carter Bankes, investigator for the Stilman Institute for Psychical Research (my tabletop avatar):

(My wife didn't like the name so we changed it, which is actually better because the new first name is the last name of my longest-lived horror RPG and favorite B13: StNF character.)

Lilith LeStrange, freelance witch (my wife's tabletop avatar):

And here are the members of the other team of heroes, led by a pair of monster-hunting brothers:

Sam and Dean (aka Agents Shaw and Young - only their '67 Impala, "Baby," is missing):

A professional occultist acting as a consultant (known for blazing his way through Hell):

And their "local law enforcment support," Sheriff Dingle:

Here are the bad guys: The Family, a bunch of "trailer park karcists" ("hillbilly karcists" would be more accurate) who are just minding their business, carrying out a diabolical ritual, when the heroes so rudely interrupt:

"Pa" Tucker, the high priest:

"Ma" Tucker, cultist leader:

Jethro Tucker, cultist:

Jubal Tucker, cultist:

Jeb Tucker, cultist:

And, last but not least, Jim-Bob Tucker, cultist:

The Victim - can the heroes rescue her before the Tucker family completes their ritual? Stay tuned and see!

The Report: A Shadow over Tuckers' Farm

The disappearances had been going on for months, and the local and state police had no leads. Not that they were trying very hard - it was Dunwich, after all. Strange things just happened there. And it was often best, they'd found, not too dig too deeply. But when the daughter of a powerful Boston businessman became one of the missing, the case suddenly became big news. Not only were the authorities more keen to solve the mystery, but the case had attracted the attention of outsiders who were drawn to just such odd occurrences, especially when they took place in a locale with the occult notoriety of Dunwich.

Sheriff Dingle usually turned a blind eye to the oddball cases, but when the state boys and Boston money started breathing down his neck, he knew he couldn't just ignore this girl's disappearance. And he knew exactly who "the usual suspects" were: the Tucker family. They were, undoubtedly, the oddest of the town's oddballs. Having bought the old Whately property at auction (for far more than any reasonable person would have paid for it) back in the '90s, they'd since been a weird presence in the town, their odd mannerisms and antiquated speech being the tip of the weirdness iceberg. Their apparent worship of a strange deity didn't help. (They'd often be seen driving around in their black Volkswagen minibus with "Jimbo Saves!" and "You've got a friend in Jimbo" bumper stickers plastered all over it.) They'd been implicated in the disappearance of pets and the mutilation of neighbors' livestock, but no one wanted a confrontation with them. The memory of old Wizard Whately and the troubles of the 1920s still hung over the town like a pall, and most folks were too afraid to confront such weirdness head-on.

He knew something was wrong as soon as he arrived at the Tucker farm - the air was almost electrified, and the whippoorwills were downright frantic. He would normally have called the state boys, but the feds were on the case now - Agents Shaw and Young had shown up in town just that morning, asking about the details of the case. (They had a Brit with them, some sort of "consultant.") So he got on the radio (cell phones being useless in this part of the Miskatonic Valley) and had Margie relay his whereabouts to them. He was surprised when they showed up with those paranormal investigators from the Stilman Institute (one of whom looked like an '80s Goth chick, and two of whom looked a lot like mafia muscle). But given how much the Tuckers unnerved him, he was glad for the back-up...

We had three players, so two players played a "Threshold team" each (Sam and Dean's team and the group from the Stilman Institute) and I played a 30-point Lurker group (the Tucker family). The scenario was The Fight with the variant The Raid. The Lurkers also had a Damned Altar, although the rules were modified slightly to represent a dark ritual that had to be performed. The Tuckers were trying to summon a daemon, and instead of getting blessings from the Altar, they were trying to complete the ritual. The Tuckers got victory points for taking out the heroes, for completing the ritual, and for summoning the daemon. The heroes earned victory points for taking out the cultists, stopping the ritual, or - failing that - defeating the summoned daemon.

Here are some pictures from the pre-game set-up (I apologize in advance for any out-of-focus pics - my old eyes have trouble seeing the details on the screen of my phone, so I can't tell if they're in focus or not until I get them on my PC):

The whole table:

The heroes assemble:

Business as usual at the Tucker farm - Ma sends the boys to town...

...While Pa heads to The Grove to perform the ritual.

The heroes prepare:

The Lurkers prepare:

The first few rounds of the game featured everyone jockeying for position. The Stilman team went toward the barn, carefully moving behind the bushes on the river's edge to avoid drawing Alert fire from the eldest Tucker sons (Jethro and Jubal) by the minibus. Sam and Dean took their team behind the fence/stone wall toward the house. Ma sent her youngest boys (Jeb and Jim-Bob) toward the edge of The Grove to defend Pa, while Ma herself tried to get into a better position to help direct the family's actions. (The family started very spread out, so organizing nominations was a bit tricky for the first few turns, much to the heroes' benefit.)

The action was kicked off by the Tuckers, when Jim-Bob got Sam and Dean's team in his sights and took a shot - which hit the stone wall to no effect.

Then, Constantine used Bless Characteristic on Sam's DEX, and Sam - armed with a sawed-off shotgun, stepped out into the open and fired with both barrels...

...Hitting Jim-Bob, Jeb, and Jethro (who'd moved to support his little brothers)...

...Taking out all three!

Behind the barn, Jubal fell to Ezra Furnace's two-gun shooting. In one turn, all of the Tucker boys had been laid low, leaving only their elderly parents to hold down the farm.

The heroes moved up as the chanting from the wood grew louder, accompanied by the manic cries of the whippoorwills. 

(The skull tokens represent the number of consecutive actions Pa has spent performing the ritual. After any ritual action, the Lurker may choose to complete the ritual at which point they roll a d6 and add the number of actions to the result. On 11+, the daemon is summoned.)

But then those sounds were drowned out by the roar of a chainsaw as Ma stepped forward to exact her revenge! Carter and Axle fell to the octogenarian's wrath...

But Ma was soon laid low by Sam's shotgun, and he and Dean quickly advanced on Pa. Unable to draw his ritual out any longer (two more actions and summoning the daemon would have been a certainty, but it was time Pa no longer had), Pa brought down the blade of his sacred shovel on the bound victim's neck. The cries of the whippoorwills suddenly ceased, and a peel of thunder rumbled from the Altar. No daemon appeared (the Lurker, me, missing the roll by 1 point) but Pa's body contorted and writhed as eldritch energy coursed through him. The daemon had possessed him! He roared at Sam - whose shotgun roared in return - and Pa's daemon-infested body fell limp behind the Altar (because the Lurker player, me, missed rolling his cover save by 1 point):

(Pa actually had 8 tokens by this time - we were just too excited to follow proper form and lay down the last two. He only needed a 3+ to summon the daemon - and I rolled a 2!)

Because of the Lurkers' fragmented set-up, it took several turns to get everyone in position to properly do a nomination chain. This gave the heroes plenty of time to move up and prepare, and the combination of Sam Winchester, improved DEX, and a sawed-off shotgun proved to be an amazingly effective daemon-summoning-cultist deterrent. Still, it was a fun game - a couple of better die rolls on my part, or one more action to perform the ritual, and the outcome may have looked very different.

In the end, the heroes won, 9 VP to 7 VP, and their two injured characters made full recoveries.

Just in time, as Fate would have it, as the sounds of gurgling growls drifted across the field. The heroes stood and watched in horror as a pair of massive, shambling forms loomed out of the darkness behind the barn...

Next time: Monster Attack! (In which we learn that the only thing deadlier than a shotgun-wielding Sam Winchester is a knife-wielding Dean Winchester!)

.............................................................................

So, what better way to return but with a battle report for the same game I kicked off this blog with. But I guess that counts as a loss, huh? Woo-hoo, I'm back, baby - it's like I never left!!!

A Hard Won Thing Scoreboard:

3 wins / 2 draws / 20 losses