Recap: Planet Mages Session 1

I succeeded at one roll!

Welp, I've done a lot of recaps from a GM perspective, but this is an inaugural recap from me following the player perspective. I won't criticize other players or the GM (they all did well!) So I'll focus on introspection, and hopefully now that I'm playing in a game it'll help me be a better GM. Let's see how this all went down.

Cast

• Players
• Henry Poe (Myself) - A shapeshifting wannabe actor who does stunt work. Has big confidence issues holding him back.
• Sasha Ivanova - an ex member of a coven. She rejected the groups traditions when her mentor died, and took on a cowboy persona.
• Nathaniel Stone - Born around the turn of the century, an incident during World War II turned him nigh immortal. The events he in which he participated in said war have sparked a long running deadly feud with a wicked man similarly gifted.

Summary

August 21st, 2016, Moscow at 13:00.

I am attending the movie premiere of The Good, the Bad, and the New, a movie for which I did stunt work for the greatly renowned action star, Nicholas Cage. People are starting to pack into the... cozy theater, and my phone starts ringing. Geeze. I thought I turned the stupid thing off, I bet everyone is staring at me now. Oh man, it's my manager gotta take this, oh man. Keeping my head down, I get out to the foyer and my manager, Julia Mendez tells me that Nick is sick! Oh man, what a buzzkill! And she tells me... I need to get into character, get up on stage and get the ball rolling, because I'm the only one who can do it.

I go into a bathroom stall where no one can see me and start getting into gear, remembering a conversation from earlier this week and focusing on it, I'm able to transform seamlessly into the man I've pretended to be for hundreds of takes, but my voice is a little off.

Out of the bathroom, I get back into the theater, and I go up to a podium set up in front of the screen and begin my hardest to think of something good to say. As I approach the end of the speech, a man in the front row holds up a gun, points it at me, and I kinda black out I guess, and dive behind the podium screaming, as a gunshot goes off.

[At this point, a bunch of important game stuff happens with Henry Poe off-screen. Sasha uses crazy powers to shoot the gunman in the hand as Nathaniel Stone wrestles him to the ground. People are evacuating the theater.]

In the chaos, I save myself, running to the bathroom, I can't faint in front of all these people, that would be the worst thing in the world for Nick's career! Luckily, I get into a stall in time before I black out [Post-Combat Shakes. A really bad roll of 17 against a CR of 6.] chipping a tooth on the toilet.

[An important NPC is introduced that seems to want to help the players. He helps Nathaniel disable the gunman and reveals he can speak fluent English despite appearing to be a Russian. Nathaniel and the gunman, Anton leave the theater where Nathaniel does first aid. He suspects Anton of working for Onyx, his arch-enemy, but is told that Anton's boss wants to capture both him and Onyx, and ordered the murder of Nicholas Cage.]

I wake up from the blackout, looking normal again with a bloody lip and chipped tooth from falling badly, so I swallow my bitter pill, and turn my regeneration on, which always makes me sick. A guard rushes in and says he wants me to come with him. I don't know what to do, and I'm worried, so I say, ok, thinking it's better not to resist, can't do anything right at the moment anyways. So I follow him out to a Black Ford V8.

[Sasha, who stole a ticket to get into the theater is accosted by the people she stole from, she points a gun, and the guard the Henry is following emerges from the theater. Anton seeing the guard, breaks a capsule of some sort that appears to trigger a suicide drug.]

So I follow the bear of a man, and the gun crazy cowgirl into an old car, not sure what's going on, and why this "guard" who is obviously not a guard is taking me along with these obviously dangerous people. Police report?

The driver [Nathaniel Stone] tells me that I can leave, but the car is already moving, I am not sure if this is his idea of a joke. The "guard" tells us he is "sergeant Johnson," as if that means anything to me... are they all working together? He tells me that the gunman wanted to kill Nicholas Cage because the gunman, Anton, was a Nazi. Nick Cage is practically a national treasure though!

The Johnson guy talks about secret societies and Nazi stuff that I don't get, and my head is swimming, and I'm wondering if I'm gonna die. It's a bit surreal. Somehow cowgirl plugs in an iPod in this fossil car and starts listening to Johnny Cash. We get to an abandoned warehouse, and people start leaving the crowded vehicle.

Mr. Stone says some more weird stuff about Anton saying that Nick is involved in wizard stuff or something, and I'm shutting down, and Mr. Johnson says that Mr. Cage has superpowers too. The cowgirl and the bear root through the guy's stuff and find a gun, a laptop, and some cigarettes which are really James Bond type guns that shoot bullets if you squeeze them hard. I wanted to play with them, but I go to a corner of the warehouse to cool my head.

Mr. Johnson starts asking for my name for some reason. What does he want it for? I'm not sure if I should tell him, but I give in and tell him. He starts quizzing me on Nicholas Cage trivia for some reason, and I don't know why, but I oblige him. Sasha, the cowgirl is putzing with the laptop, and Mr. Johnson tells me to find a way to talk to Mr. Cage.

I call up my manager and her voice is dripping with false positivity, or so I assume, which stings a little, and I ask her if I can please get an address or anything to send Nick a card. She acts a little worried when I tell her about my tooth, but I feel like I kinda deserved it. Mr. Johnson didn't seem surprised at all that it wasn't Nick Cage. I'm such a bad actor, only the gunman was convinced. Bravo, me!

Meanwhile the others are putzing with some German files on the laptop and joking, like it's a joke, about how they can't read the German off the laptop of the guy that just died.

Mr.Johnson tells me that Mr. Stone is an immortal, and Sasha is a mind reader. She threatens to read my mind, and I don't know, I'm so outnumbered, I just bend over backwards to save my skin and tell them where he lives, hoping they don't do anything bad to him.

Thoughts and Self Reflection

• Things I did Well
• I think I stayed in character well.
• I made sure to know my disadvantages before the game began so I wouldn't need to refresh myself during the game.
• I think I did a good job staying in character
• I played my disadvantages cooperatively, rather than as a barrier to fun and progress.
• Things I could have done better
• I think I need to look over the other character bios more closely to get a better idea how to mesh with the group.
• I think I overplayed the "Self-Conscious" aspect of the character, and didn't go too far into other aspects of the character.
• Things I need to do eventually.
• I have 7 points, my first goal is to get Luck at least to the 15 point level.
• After that, Brawling and Wrestling at DX+2 for the sweet bonuses
• After that, need to start buying off backlashes for my beneficial afflictions. The drawbacks on regeneration are pretty bad.
• The combat shakes at CR 6 is pretty disruptive, I probably want to get that to at least a 12, and I probably want to remove Bad Self-Image altogether eventually, but I'm hoping to buy it off after some "character growth."
• Things That the group did well
• The GM was definitely well prepared
• The other players played their characters well.