Hey guys, again, sorry for the late post; had to do a bit of a wince total rebuild, computer-wise, and I’m just getting back up to speed. Still owe y’all a novel and some cross-over. Trust me, I’m working on it. Watching ‘Cast a Deadly Spell’ for inspiration.
I’m just checking in to ask people to PM their sheet once it’s finished… there isn’t much of a rush, but I’m waiting to polish the pre-vacation blurb until everyone has finalized their sheet. I have Hoopy Frood’s sheet already, and if anyone else has already emailed it or PMed it, just tell me and I’ll try to find it. Otherwise, I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s final draft.
Hey Omi, sent you an email. Let me know what you think and if you need more (or a whole lot less).
I got your email NAF, and it looks perfect; the excessive drinking, in particular, will come in extremely handy in our first adventure. 
GOOD! I was hoping I could have some fun with that.
Alright, I haven’t gotten all the character sheets yet so the intro is a little de-personalized, but I have to leave tomorrow morning and so I’ll post it as-is. Feel free to show up at the meeting point the text indicates and RP through introductions, planning, and the like, but remember that I won’t be back until late July to GM past that point.
Anyway, I hope everyone likes it! 
Challenge #1:
They say that you can’t beat fate, but you can certainly try to avoid it with clean sneakers and a good running start. Sadly, given long enough fate will just learn to sneak up behind you, and that’s exactly what happens to a handful of unfortunate mugs in downtown Hollywood.
They say a good detective novel ought to start with a locked room, a mysterious woman, or a dead body, but this particular yarn begins with a book. A cheap pulp detective novel, one that finds itself pushed under the doors and into the mailboxes of a seemingly random collection of rakes, dicks and ne’er do wells. Mobsters and Mugshots has been inked over the title space of each cheap, wrinkled cover, highlighting a colorful illustration of a running gunfight. The cover has a habit of changing if you look at it for too long, the setting shifting from docks, to alleys, to main street, and back again. What doesn’t change, however, are the actors: the picture always seems to feature a tough, hardened gang of besuited wise guys having it out with a ragtag collection of assorted gentlemen. Sometimes there’s a lady, sometimes there are three, and sometimes one of the gentlemen begins to take on a striking resemblance to the reader.
While the cover promises a fantastic adventure full of double-crosses, gunfights, and intrigue, the novel itself fails to deliver: if one flips through the book, they will discover that only the first several pages have been printed, leaving well over one hundred and fifty blank slips of paper bound in the cheap cover. The first pages read as follows:
Of course, this is more or less where the penny-filled sack of fate comes in to cudgel unwitting bystanders behind the ear and steals their wallet: having finished the narrative, each reader will find a dusty, sketchy police dossier on the Marcello family and a beat-up hatbox sitting by their feet, a note printed on the box in bright, ominous letters:
The 3am Special, 11:30pm. Come alone, leave together.
Each hatbox may be found to contain the following items:
1 exploding cigar
1 hip flask filled with what smells like whiskey
30 inches of coiled, slow-burning fuse
A deck of playing cards
A map of LA, with several Marcello properties circled.
Alright, I’m leaving now to catch a plane… I’ll be back in about 3 weeks, after which we can hopefully start.
Wow, I just got back (2+ weeks early, I know… long story). Is anyone still awake?
And I didn’t even get a chance to compose my first in-game post yet. I figured I had least had a couple weeks…
Still here… Sort of need a refresher on what the heck I’m doing, though.
Ahhh, okies… take your time then, we haven’t officially started. And everyone feel free to PM/post with any questions you have.
Well, welcome back.
I also wasn’t expecting to start quite so soon, so I am not quite ready either. But now that you are back I will get working.
Would you be opposed to opening a seperate “game” thread once we get things started and keep this one for an “out of game” thread (Like we have for the D&D games)? It might make things less confusing.
This is my opening color. If you open a separate game thread, I’ll repost it there.
Screech BOOM Screech BOOM Screech BOOM Screech BOOM
The Mountain Goat stirred in his bed as the pounding and screeching awoke him from a restless sleep. It felt like someone with a literal axe to grind was also banging on a bass drum inside his cranium. That someone screech no doubt went by the name of Jack Daniels BOOM, a man with whom the Goat had become fairly well screech acquainted with the previous night. BOOM It had been a rough caper he had finished up two nights ago screech, but very lucrative, enough so that the Goat could take a few days off and just relax. BOOM Or at least, that was the plan, screech but the best laid plans of mice and men and all that, BOOM since apparently the workers for the company building the new high rise next door to his apartment complex screech had called an end to their strike at some point yesterday, and the construction had once again begun. BOOM RAT-A-TAT-A-TAT-A-TAT-A-TAT Ahhh, life in L.A.
“I really got to get a new place to live” mused the Goat as he stumbled his way out of bed and threw on his bathrobe. Staggering his way to the window he closed it rather ungently. While this action didn’t have the desired effect of completely shutting out the sound of his hard-hatted neighbors, it at least muffled them a bit. screech boom rat-a-tat-a-tat However, there was still the little matter of Jack and his machinations. For that, the Goat stumbled his way in a half asleep and fully hungover stupor to his medicine cabinet in his bathroom and pulled out a bottle of Advil. He then had a thought flash into his mind about the studies that have shown how excessive use of ibuprofen can be damaging to the liver, though not to the point that excessive use of Tylenol can. Why this thought decided to hijack his though processes at this moment was unknown to the Goat, but he gave up trying to understand himself a long time ago. Besides, it couldn’t be worse than the after effects of ol’ Jack. Popping three Advil and washing them down with a glass of water, he went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. There was no way he was getting back to sleep at this point, so he might as well wake up properly. Lacking anything better to do while waiting for the Mr. Coffee to finish Mr. Dripping through Mr. Filter holding Mr. Folgers into Mrs. Pot, he wandered downstairs to the front entrance to check the mail. Opening up the box he found the usual assortment of bills, flyers, and “You could already be a winner!” mailings. Then he noticed the copy of Mobsters and Mugshots. Upon cursory examination of the cover, it appeared to be little more than a specimen of the type of dimestore novels one might find in the used comic bins of a pawnshop or on the discount rack at a hobby store. Never having even heard of the thing, much less ordering a copy, he looked at the mailing label. Sure enough, it was addressed to himself, Alan J. Reyes and at his current address. “Looks like I’ve got something to do today after all: figure out where this came from. Maybe the publisher’s a local.” Closing the mailbox he opened to what he thought would be the copyright page from which he could find the publisher, but apparently the book lacked one. All that was inside it was chapter 1. He started reading, and was perplexed to find that all that existed was chapter 1. Before he even got a chance to puzzle this out, his landlord came in from her morning jog.
“Good morning, Alan.”
“Oh, good morning, Alice.”
“You’re up early, and it looks like you had a rough night?”
“A couple of the guys from work hit the late-night bars last night to celebrate a new contract. The night wasn’t the problem. It’s the morning after. And apparently the builder strike is over.” And as if to punctuate that statement, there was a resounding BOOM from next door.
“Yeah, sorry about that. Not much I can do, I’m afraid. It’s too bad you can’t switch to the dayshift. It would definitely make your life easier.”
“Yeah, it probably would. Oh, well, not much I can do. Have a nice day.”
“You, too.”
And with that she lingered a bit to meet his eyes as she unlocked the door to the landlord’s apartment on the first floor. As he returned the glance while closing the mailbox and following that up with an attempt to head back to the apartment, he almost tripped over the package that mysteriously appeared at his feet. He could have sworn it wasn’t there earlier.
“Don’t forget your package,” Alice chimed.
“Ummm…I don’t think it’s mine,” replied the Goat.
“Sure it is. The mailing label even has your name on it.”
At this point, the Goat was trying to decide if he should just run back upstairs and go back to bed and wait for himself to wake up for real this time, or to look down at the package and confirm what Alice told him. He then realized that his just standing there pondering this dilemma was probably making him look like an idiot in front of Alice, so he picked up the box and read its label. Sure enough, it, too, was addressed to him.
“What do you know, it is mine. I don’t recognize the return address, though. I wonder who it’s from.”
“Probably some hot little thing you took home one night,” Alice threw out.
“I wish!” exclaimed the Goat. “Uhhh…that is…I mean…I should go back to my apartment and find out where this address is from. Have a nice day.”
And as Alice’s “You too” floated up the stairwell, the Goat was out of sight.
It wasn’t like the Goat to be rendered speechless like that, especially around women. But Alice was different. When it came to Alice, he had a tendency to become an idiot. Alice Haynes was a little younger than the goat and had it all: looks, brains, an intriguing personality, and legs that went all the way up. Rumor has it she once had potential for a lucrative modeling career, but she gave all that up when her father died. She was tired of the glitz industry and decided to go into real estate with her share of the holdings her father had left in his will. She liked the location of this building, so she decided to become its manager as well. The Goat quickly developed a thing for her, and it was pretty apparent that if he had asked her out on a date, she would take him up on the offer, but the Goat had seen too many relationships go sour when business and pleasure were mixed. No, as long as he lived here, they would have to be content with their mating dance being limited to these little awkward exchanges in the vestibule. Fortunately, the Goat had been saving up for a down payment on a condo, and he would probably have enough within a year or, maybe, two at the most. Once he was out of here, he could finally make his move. He just hoped it wouldn’t be too late.
But thoughts of Alice soon retreated to the back of his mind as he returned to his room and addressed the issue of the address. Googling the address he found that the package was mailed from the very same bar mentioned in Mobsters and Mugshots: The 3 AM Special.
“Well, I doubt it’s a bomb,” he pondered out loud as he removed the brown paper from the outside of the hatbox and opened it. Seeing the contents and recalling the story, a chill ran down his spine. Never being one to resist getting to the bottom of a mystery, particularly one that might have a lucrative result in the solving, The Goat decided that a trip to The Special would be in order for tonight.
“Looks like I’m going to have to put off that mini-vacation after all.”
The rest of the day was spent nursing his hangover and playing solitaire with the shiny new deck of cards that came in the package. He figured it would take about 30 minutes to get to The Special, so he hopped in the Escape Goat around 6:00 P.M and drove off to the bar. This would give him a few hours to case the joint both inside and outside. One never goes into a potential business arrangement unprepared after all….
Note: The Goat will at this point use his Burglary skills to case the area surrounding the bar and spend at least an hour or two indoors before the meeting to case the inside and make note of the clientele.
No, I think that would be a good idea. I originally posted the brief intro bit with the idea that as people finalized their characters they’d be able to work out introductions, so once I have all of the finished sheets and everyone tells me that they’re ready to go, I’ll start a new thread and re-post the opening color.
Oh, and Hoopy, we’re not officially playing, so I’ll write you up a dice-backed version when we formally start, but Mountain Goat’s observations kind of help set the scene:
While the inside of the 3am Special tends to exude a type of concealed, mildly inebriated menace typical to such places, the entrance is quite unassuming: the bar itself is located underground, having been constructed in the basement of a Chinese laundry whose owners are likely unaware of or apathetic to the bar’s existence. The public entrance is a small, moldy wooden door that opens to a narrow flight of stairs. No signs or obvious markings advertise the bar’s existence, but it’s a well-known local watering hole and place of business: those who need to know about it do, and those who don’t rarely wander in to bother the clientele.
The surrounding neighborhood is a seemingly random collection of assorted low-rent businesses, chief among which are laundries, cheap restaurants, and motels. One building in particular, however, stands out among the rest: built directly across from the run-down bar, straddling tenements to either side, is an extremely glitzy pawn shop known as The Jagged Ace. The outside of the building sports a fresh coat of paint, the sign is bright, reasonably new, and very elaborate, and rubberneckers would note that the plush carpets and ornate wooden paneling visible in the entryway seem out of place, especially considering that the display window features the usual medley of cheap guns, radios, and musical instruments.
Mountain Goat is taking the time to actually case the environs, which will give him enough time to notice something unusual: although the rest of the buildings on The Jagged Ace’s block host the usual cheap merchants, the shopkeepers themselves seem unusually alert and suspicious.
Hey,
So are we still doing this? I had almost forgotten about it. I got crazy slammed personally and still will be for a few more days, but life should calm down for me soon. Is everyone still in?
I’m still in; I’ve just been waiting for everyone else to chime in and confirm that they’re still interested and available.
I’m still in.