FOGREs and Aussies

Beth said, about me:
"...who took a little while to figure out who the demented female with
the funny accent
was "what is this a stealth trip?". How on Earth did we manage to
unintentionally keep a 
secret from TomB?!"

Tomb:
I've been off the main list for more than a year or year and a half now,
only keeping up
through list members, conventions, and the test list. So, it was, in
effect, a stealth
trip. I didn't find out about it until late Friday afternoon. If I had
known, do you think
I would have allowed visiting Royalty from Tasmania, the veritable Queen
of Nowhere
Squared, to return home without proper gifts, such as a bottle of
Canadian Maple Syrup and
maybe some Canadianna for the kiddies? No, not likley! Alas, I did not
know until moments
beforehand...
and my mortification remains. 

The pleasure of your company, OTOH, was all mine. I am very happy you
could make it and
hope to see you again, perhaps next time with the rest of the Fulton
cadre in tow, even
that Derek fellow ;) 

FOGRES:
When I first saw the model, I thought to myself: That's big. Then I saw
they were playing
in a mere 15mm. If I was to buy one, I'd have to make it for use with
Dirtside....
<Muahhahahahahaa!>

The Weight of Command:

Tom McCarthy made an interesting point about 'optics'. He knows my
scrupulous honesty, so
he knew that I didn't kill the Arms Dealer leader and XO out of some
sort of
plot-manipulative spite. He also knows that when he lost a squad leader
and the SF
interpreter, that wasn't an intentional machination. I just forget
sometimes as I ref how
these things might appear to the players - it might have seemed a plot
manipulation of
sorts. The reality was, in the latter case, I'd decided to start
counting casualties with
the SF liaison, and Tom rolled hits on 1 and 2 (the liaison and the
squad leader right
beside). Of course, if one didn't know that ahead of time, one might
think I picked them.
Similarly, when Beth interrogated the first NPC, I had a QD vs. QD check
for info, and
resolved him as a casualty (with a medic present because she was playing
nice). This
represented impromptu interrogation by PA. In the second instance, with
the Arms Dealer
leader, I asked Beth how nasty she was willing to be, and she said "Any
means necessary"
so I resolved him as QD vs QD for info, and then as a casualty without a
medic for
survival. Bad luck got him dead. And it just had happened, again
accidentally, that the XO
was already dead (I made a roll to see how generally distributed the
codes were, something
I hadn't thought to pre-decide, and the higher the number, the more
widely distributed - I
rolled a 2. A 1 would have meant Arms Dealer CO alone. I made 2 CO + XO.
Sadly, both were
gone by this point). 

The long and the short of it is: In some types of scenarios, players
will doff their
tinfoil hats for long enough to look for conspiracy in the results. As
it turned out in
TWOC, I didn't communicate my systematic and equitable decisions, so it
might have
appeared to some that I just arbitrarily killed off the people with the
code or who might
be useful translators, etc. Next time, I'll be more clear on my method
to dispel confusion. 

At the same time, all that led to Aaron getting a chance to play the
hero. And he did have
several really sharp ideas! 

Beth, and the others who I played with at ECC, you're all (with one C
notable H southern R
fellow I who S might LASERLIGHT be an exception) welcome in my games. I
have to make the
one exception due to the fact I think he is actually either an alien
inflitrator or else
he has some sort of infernal connections. In either event, I can't shoot
him....
successfully... and that makes me feel baaaa-d. Mind you, not half as
bad as knowing he
didn't have the players save my soul in Africa this year, which only
means he'll be goaded
on to more of the same! I'm just happy Adrian pulled a fast one on Chris
in the very last
moment... it is nice to see the goat getter get his goat got grotesquely
(say that fast
four or five thousand times...) LOL! :) 

Fun, fun, much more fun than the code that followed.... :)

Tomb