Blood Opera: The Six Parties of Passwall

Six opposed PC parties in the city-state of Passwall.

    Index

Anarcho-Syndicalist Cadres

Political Officer

Cultural Officer

Militia Liaison

Foreman Engineer

Chevauchée - Knights Choleric

Knight of the Rose

Knight Hermetic

Knight of the Ring

Knight of the Arsenal

Knight of the Lion

City-State Task Force

Prosecutor

Sheriff

High Bondsman

Marshal

Thief Taker

Errantry - Knights Sanguine

Knight of the High Road

Knight of the City Wall

Knight of the Sun

Knight of the Skull

Knight of the Range

Occultist Cell

Occultist

Antinatalist Terrorist

Ultranationalist Revanchist

Businessman

Underworld Circle

Prostitute

Hobo

Burglar

Runaway Slave

Resolutions of Play

1: RPG

2: Super Blood Opera

Option: Hong Kong Heroic Bloodshed

Skill Explanation: Intimidate (Ingroup)

Anarcho-Syndicalist Cadres

    Collective Objectives

Overthrow the government of Passwall, institute Anarcho-Syndicalist union rule guided by representatives from the City of Leagues, eliminate aristocratic, occult and counterrevolutionary elements, co-opt or eliminate incorrigible lumpenproletariat elements.

    Political Officer

The overall authority within the cadre cell despite its notional egalitarianism, he is regarded by their mother City of Leagues as the first authority in political matters wherever he is present. He is concerned with converting the city’s unions to Anarcho-Syndicalism, unionizing non-unionized workers, and ensuring the city’s foremen are loyal to Anarcho-Syndicalism and the City of Leagues.

The Political Officer came up as a Peculiar Commission Inspector, a secret policemen of the City of Leagues, and his abilities as a torturer and an assassin are not to be underestimated. He secretly sees himself as a kind of smoky deity whose judgmental scowl will be capable of terrifying the city’s organizers into rearranging themselves along Syndicalist lines once his capacity for punishment has been sufficiently made clear to them.

4: Intimidation (Ingroup) - Description at end of post

3: Stealth, Interrogate, Tactical Combat, Logistics, Wits, Administration

2: Prowess, Pharmaceutical, Clandestine Tradecraft, Lore

    Cultural Officer

The cell’s representative to locals when the direct action of the Political Officer would be too heavy-handed. The Cultural Officer establishes contacts who are likely to aid the movement, and knows how to go undercover in societies which he’s studied. He is enthusiastic about local cultural elements and is capable of discussing things without an ideological slant, so he can bond with potential allies over sports, wine, shared mechanical interests and so forth. He genuinely cares for people whom the cell is allied with and revels in their enthusiasm; should the decision be made to kill them, he will weep and will not personally participate, but he will get on with the cell’s mission afterwards. Ultimately the sacrifices made by the cell’s ablative allies will be worth it when all people get to enjoy that enthusiasm and camaraderie in perpetuity.

4: Befriend

3: Undercover, Prowess, Conduct Anarcho-Syndicalist Theater, Lore, Wits

2: Stealth, Tactical Combat, Clandestine Tradecraft, Orienteering

    Militia Liaison

This man’s job is to organize the local unions into secret militias that will rise up when the employment phase of the operation is reached. He is a no-nonsense, conscientious soldier, and would execute the dictates of his state whether he had been born in a monarchy, republic, dictatorship, tribe, or totalitarian system. He happens to be from the City of Leagues, and understands Anarcho-Syndicalist doctrine as catechism; he can recite points but not make any kind of flexible argument for them. He has heard other arguments and seen other ways of life; so far he has neglected to really listen or reflect on the deep implications of what he has seen.

4: Tactical Combat, Combat Leadership, Prowess, Orienteering, Wits

3: Demo, Stealth

2: Intimidate (Ingroup)

    Foreman Engineer

This man is a whiz in industrial engineering and supply logistics, and also capable of functioning as a combat engineer (quick use of concrete, wood, vehicles and demolitions in fortification, bridging, and breaching). His job is also as a union organizer on the practical level; when a union accepts or otherwise receives Leagues’ support and/or control, experts like this Foreman Engineer are deployed to assist them in the practical matters of production. Part of Anarcho-Syndicalism’s legitimacy problem is in trying to outproduce democratic capitalists, so while the Foreman Engineer is an excellent mechanic and inventor, he’s also capable of managing working crews, ideally with aid of the Political Officer to keep counterrevolutionary elements within the workforce from sabotaging the entire enterprise.

4: Industrial Engineering, Supply Logistics

3: Combat Engineering, Demo, Tactical Combat, Tech Lore

2: Intimidate (Ingroup), Stealth

Chevauchée - Knights Choleric

Collective Objective

Engage in an urban chevauchée, coming out of the city with as much treasure as possible by any means necessary. This can be a lightning raid or a slow burn, slowly extracting whatever valuables they can lay hands on.

    Knight of the Rose

This knight serves bounties as a way of life and has a tight relationship with the High Bondsman and the Thief Taker. He has no ideological loyalty to them, nor for anything but his way of life; for some Knights of the Rose it’s about justice, swift and terrible. For this man, it is the ultimate hunt, the ultimate game, and he has no problem working with criminals, revolutionaries, black marketeers so long as they have not been sentenced by a court that his Order regards as legitimate.

He will serve bounties here until the time to seize Passwall’s wealth by other means comes about; then, he will throw off his Order’s mantle and engage in the eldest form of aristocratic raiding.

4: Social Urban Tracking, Wilderness Tracking, Tactical Combat, Prowess, Wits

3: Interrogate

2: Urban Stealth, Orienteering, Demo

    Knight Hermetic

This man’s experiments have unearthed many tinctures and alloys capable of physically and psychologically altering their user; he saves most of them for emergencies but uses others more or less continuously. Some are applied just to keep the effects of others at bay, and the Knight Hermetic is engaged in a continual battle of brinksmanship and one-upsmanship with his own body and alchemical skill.

He has developed a psychological solvent that sends him into epileptic comas in which he apprehends every rivet and strut of a great war machine, but cannot quite yet grasp the totality; when he is able to, he will make his proposition to his comrades and they will build a weapon capable of overthrowing an entire recalcitrant polity.

4: Alchemy, Mechanical Engineering, Pharmaceutical, Demo, Interrogate

3: Tactical Combat, Prowess, Lore

2: Wits, Stealth

    Knight of the Ring

This man has already succeeded in his quest for eternal life, but he has not removed the limitations of his own bodily integrity. While his body now consists of a kind of mantle composed of a mulched composite of many people’s bodies, vitiated and composed and colored in the mode of a standard body through aid of the Knight Hermetic, he must watch for piercing attacks and explosions that could dismember him, for he could resemble a torn-apart pile of pink cotton candy yet still live. His horror is the thought that he might have to return to hte flesh pit and grind up even more people to reconsitutie his body; his memory of the last round beneath the moaning tincture and the Knight Hermetic’s hideous belching awakens him in a seizure of guilt at night, though he drowns it by sprinting from his bedchambers and hurling things until he is fully awake and able to impose structure onto his own thought.

4: Lore, Wits, Prowess, Tactical Combat, Stealth

3: Alchemy

2: Orienteering, Undercover

    Knight of the Arsenal

This man has just emerged from his Order’s training and regards himself as having a pitiful arsenal, merely a few firearms and a single hand grenade. His dream is to seize and stash away mortars, flamethrowers, artillery guns, bomber planes and such until no problem can resist him and his squires with a week or so’s preparation. His companions are interested in their own particular assets for seizure, but the Knight of the Arsenal is only concerned about e.g. gold or esoteric knowledge assuming it can be traded for armaments on the black market or aid in seizing them wherever they can be found. The Knight of the Arsenal dreams about looting the city’s military armories or patrol houses, and in the meantime he will be hard pressed to resist murdering policemen or attacking well-prepared Anarcho-Syndicalists or Knights Sanguine for their arms if he gets a chance.

4: Tactical Combat, Wits, Prowess, Mechanics, 

3: Stealth, Demo, Orienteering, Driving

2: Alchemy

    Knight of the Lion

The Sun Lion does not condone violence in service of anything but this robber knight has turned his pistols to the faces of innocents, robbing on the high roads, sticking up banks, and shooting down couriers for their cargoes. He has had to leave city-state after city-state due to gunbattles with security forces, and for a time he led a lonely existence as a highwayman. Finally he’s found worthy companions and just wishes to continue his campaign of robbery and sudden dueling with their approbation.

4: Ride, Stealth, Wilderness Tracking, Tactical Combat, Wits

3: Demo, Orienteering

2: Lore, Interrogate

City-State Task Force

Collective Objective

Bring long-term stability to the city-state.

    Prosecutor

He does fieldwork to make his case airtight and is used to dealing with assassination attempts in the process; he’s very hands on for a legal practitioner. He sees the storm clouds gathering and will make his play at dispelling them on the stages that are his to command: the hall of judgement, and wherever malefactors come for him in the city’s ambush alleys.

He sees the Anarcho-Syndicalists as a kind of dark mirror version of his Task Force, like a tiger waiting to drive the current government from its perch should it falter. The Prosecutor is well aware of his companions’ corrupt or totalitarian temptations, and he knows all too well that the Anarcho-Syndicalists will quickly usurp the charter of the Passwall government should the Task Force fail to prove legitimate and effective in the face of all its threats.

A well-evidenced, successful prosecution is highly legitimate to the general populace and generally removes an actor from the equation, unless he’s able to control his organization from inside prison or bust out. A convicted and imprisoned individual may remain a symbol to his followers, but nevertheless the legitimacy issue applies amongst the general population.

4: Orate, Prowess, Law, Wits, Interrogate

3: CSI, Social Urban Tracking, Tactical Combat, Lore

2: Befriend, Stealth, Undercover, Clandestine Tradecraft, Driving

    Sheriff

He is responsible for public order and runs the city’s patrol, doing as much or as little hands-on work as he feels is appropriate. This man suffers from a totalitarian disgust impulse that’s worsening all the time; he wants to impose draconian punishment given the situation and will ask for such reforms from the rest of the task force, who have wide latitude in moving the judiciary to implement such a thing under the circumstances. His desire to punish those who step outside his sense of good dealing and propriety is such that soon he will begin feeling an inner call to dispense with the city’s homeless, peddlers, squatters and certain residential outsiders by any means necessary.

4: Combat Leadership, Tactical Combat, Wits, CSI

3: Social Urban Tracking, Stealth, Clandestine Tradecraft, Law, Interrogate

2: Lore, Orienteering, Wilderness Tracking, Intimidation (Ingroup), Driving

    High Bondsman

Kingpin of the penal system, he receives bonds from inmates for their release, and he retains bail bondsmen who are loyal only to him and the golden coin. His desire is to farm inmates and expand his prison, and he lobbies the Prosecutor, the Sheriff, and the judiciary to reduce the city’s threshold for convictions. While so far he has not stepped outside his charter, he is fully aware many of his bondsmen would kill for him, and it would be just as simple to have particularly recalcitrant prisoners or certain other individuals slipped into oubliettes in the innermost reaches of his concrete fief…

4: Social Urban Tracking, Financial Acumen, Administration, Logistics

3: Wits, Befriend, Prowess, Undercover, Tactical Combat, Lore

2: CSI, Law, Clandestine Tradecraft, Driving, Stealth

    Marshal

He is responsible for apprehending fugitives, and he can deputize groups of citizens to this effect. He is permitted to resell assets seized from convicted racketeers; normally this finances public works and the operations of the task force, but the temptation to double dip on this or use it for the radical empowerment of the Task Force at the expense of traditional law enforcement and even the city’s small military has not escaped this man’s waking thoughts.

4: Combat Leadership, Social Urban Tracking Tactical Combat, Undercover, Wits, Driving, Prowess

3: Financial Acumen, Administration, Logistics, Law, Intimidation (Ingroup), Wilderness Tracking, Stealth, CSI

2: Lore, Clandestine Tradecraft, Interrogate

    Thief Taker

This man is an underworld asset shared between the Task Force’s three high officials; he’s an (ostensibly) ex-criminal, so he knows the underworld, and how to take slippery men into custody, and where to recover stolen goods, but the temptation to take bribes and abuse his power is overwhelming, and many are the capos and black marketeers who have offered him lucrative double agent status.

4: Undercover, Social Urban Tracking, Befriend, Prowess, Underworld Lore, Stealth

3: Wits, Financial Acumen, Interrogate, CSI

2: Law, Clandestine Tradecraft, Driving

Errantry - Knights Sanguine

Collective Objective

Engage in urban chivalry, bring order to chaos and freedom to tyranny

    Knight of the High Road

This man has led his companions to this place; they are his equals, but the power of his vision was sufficient to unite their aim. Many look at the city and see a pit of vipers preparing for mutual annihilation in a cloud of venomsoaked gunpowder, but he sees ten thousand people who are worth guarding as they continue on their way, but whose sanctuary is wavering between falling into the abyss or being crushed beneath an ironclad heel.

He is a man of the road and is used to dealing with bandits, pioneers and tribesmen. He can handle immediate personal danger but the complexity of a barely post-aristocratic industrial city-state and its competing power blocs and ideologies will become the true measure of his vision; will he remain fixed upon his goal of bringing order to chaos, will he expand his vision to encompass all elements and attempt to bring them into harmony or balance sufficient that the city might right itself enough to be departed, or will he be so scorched by the situation’s recalcitrant complexity and ideological underpinnings that he gives up on his task and resorts to draconianism or descends into corruption?

4: Ride, Wits, Tactical Combat, Wilderness Tracking, Prowess, Orienteering

3: Lore, Interrogate, Orate, Stealth

2: Law, CSI, Befriend

    Knight of the City Wall

The Knight has a one-pointed commitment to investigating and destroying the Occult; he will aid his companions in their quests, but expects that in return they will devote themselves as well to uncovering methods of combating the Occult and assaulting it whenever it is found. He is not interested in combatting predation and totalitarianism assuming it is not underpinned by the Occult, and does so only mechanically when aiding his companions. Unlike most of the aristocratic, idealistic knights in his company, he has no problem dealing with the Anarcho-Syndicalists or the underworld; they are human things.

4: Lore, Alchemy, Demo, Tactical Combat, Wits

3: Prowess, Orienteering, Wilderness Tracking, Stealth

2: Orienteering, Interrogate

    Knight of the Sun

The Sun Griffon has little doctrine regarding nonviolence; virtues are battle prowess, health, and masculine gallantry, not moderation. Furthermore, the Griffon’s faith provides little defense against secular ideologies whose methods of discourse ape the scientific method. The beast is easily abandoned in an industrial age. Nonetheless, this knight will seek battle against ‘the forces of darkness’ until he sees what they’re really made of, and then the battle over his soul will commence.

4: Tactical Combat, Prowess, Befriend, Drive

3: Wits, Interrogate

2: Lore, Stealth, Orienteering, Demo

    Knight of the Skull

An old man who has scrupulously maintained his health; his white beard spills from open helm. He attempts to counsel people in high places, but tends to neglect those who are humble but influential, and he cannot always see that an example, a dilemma, or a forced impetus to action may be what is required for a leader to take adaptive action, rather than earnest argumentation.

4: Befriend, Lore, Ride, Wilderness Tracking, Orienteering

3: Orate, Tactical Combat, Prowess, Stealth, Wits

2: Interrogate, CSI, Alchemy

    Knight of the Range

He has an instinctive sense of fair play, but range wars have given him a greater trust in frontier justice than due process, and he is more prone to the quickdraw than people are used to in a city not yet in chaos. While the Task Force is aware that aid from the Knights Sanguine could turn the tide in their favor, if they come to be viewed as just another gang of careless, chaotic outsiders, their presence will work against the Task Force, perhaps fatally for one party or the other.

4: Tactical Combat, Prowess, Ride, Orienteering, Wilderness Tracking, Wits

3: Stealth, Interrogate

2: Lore

Occultist Cell

Collective Objective

Expand obligation to the Entity in the city-state of Passwall until you bring about a situation where the leaders of Passwall, whoever they are, are under the direct dominion of the Entity.

    Occultist

Derive Occultist and Entity from this post or use one of the sample Occultist-Entity combinations (When You Wish Upon a Star or Day of the Tentacle).

The Occultist remains enslaved to Entity. Reroll Catharsis - Freedom results.

4: Aberrate

3: Derive from character

2: Derive from character

(Sample spread:

4: Aberrate

3: Lore, Stealth, Interrogate, Wits, Alchemy, Pharmaceutical, Intimidate (Ingroup)

2: Befriend, Clandestine Tradecraft, Prowess, Administration)

    Antinatalist Terrorist

This man started out killing people out of sheer hatred of the human race, but while the rest of the members of his loose social network ended up on the gallows or plunging headfirst from bridges and buildings, he found that he was able to keep one step ahead of the law by going city-state to city-state, eventually finding some sense of purpose by selling his services as a mercenary terrorist. Guns and arson were gradually joined by bombs and booby traps, until finally with his final client he found the sense of purpose he’d lacked. The Occultist who’d hired him served an actual supernatural Entity, the closest thing to a divinity imaginable by the erstwhile mercenary, and he gave himself heart and soul to the creature- retaining his Antinatalism, which was a matter for humans, anyhow.

4: Demo, Stealth, Traps

3: Tactical Combat, Interrogate, Wits

2: Orienteering, Prowess, Undercover, Driving

    Ultranationalist Revanchist

His foreign city has been defeated on the world scene and has been subjected to permanent losses of assets and a subordinate position. He is so utterly consumed with rage that he has made a Faustian pact with the Occult. His desire is for the destruction of his society’s erstwhile enemies and the ultimate vindication of their cause (or the Occult destruction of the world, though he’s never explicitly articulated this). He is no longer in control of his fate but he has not yet been shown this clearly. He’s willing to do whatever it takes in this city to win the Entity’s power in service to his goal.

4: Tactical Combat, Stealth, Demo, Wits, Orienteering

3: Wilderness Tracking, Prowess, Interrogate

2: Lore, Orate, Driving, Undercover

    Businessman

Co-opted by the Occultist; he had a chance to pack up and leave, but even though he’d benefitted his employees, provided value to customers, and even engaged in philanthropy, he had no deep wisdom or conviction to stand on when the Occultist began moving to capture him, and ultimately he capitulated and adopted the Entity as his superordinate cause. His own subordinate motivation is to eliminate the Anarcho-Syndicalists, and the Entity has stoked his resentments in this direction; he now blames them for the nascent Union movement within his workforce, which is actually coming about for the first time due to his own budding misconduct. The Anarcho-Syndicalist cadres attribute this new unionism to their own efforts, but can’t figure out why they can’t win the full cooperation of these particular unions; the Political Officer is considering eliminating the foremen and enforcing co-option of the Unions, the Cultural Officer is attempting to moderate the Political Officer’s view and get the unions to come over to Anarcho-Syndicalism, the Militia Foreman is scouting worksites to have the men buried alive when the order comes down, and the Engineer is too busy focusing on the logistics of their production apparatuses to weigh in on the political issue.

4: Financial Acumen, Administration, Supply Logistics

3: Befriend, Driving

2: Wits, Prowess, Stealth

Underworld Circle

Collective Objective

Get rich or die tryin’ 

    Prostitute

She almost made it. Streetwalker, then call girl, then courtesan, and she was on her way to madam before an unfortunate development of the HSV variety took her out of the demi-monde. She swore that she would never return to the streets, but nor would she take some ugly job in the service industry where her lowborn former johns would sneer at her. Instead, she took up with a new band of hell-raisers on the littoral stygian, joining in the relatively newer profession of thievery.

Now that she’s left the world of paid sex and companionship (making a possible exception for fraud), the part of her that wishes for a genuine, deep romance is awakening, but she’s forced to engage in a twin struggle with her serious complex around sex and with how to approach her latent genital herpes when she meets an available man whom she respects. This is not even to begin to deal with the other ways in which her former life could present her challenges in such a thing; she has little regard for wives, she’s gotten out of the habit of dating poor men, she has little experience dealing with honest ones, and her ability to be genuinely vulnerable has not quite yet awakened.

4: Wits, Allure, Social Urban Tracking

3: Financial Acumen, Befriend, Stealth, Drive

2: Lore, Prowess, Interrogate, CSI, Pharmaceuticals

    Hobo

Some things are simple, some things are not. The Army of Periapt was simple. The assembly line was simple. Getting arbitrarily laid off was not simple. Going hat in hand was not simple. A life without pride, purpose, without context was not simple. It broke him night after night.

He was one of thousands downsized but he blamed himself until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Moonshine dulled the pain, gave him a sense of adventure and fun he’d never known before. He struck out with a band of hobos one day, just like being on patrol but as loud, as footloose and as drunk as he cared. They passed around a pipe filled with something teal. He looked at it for a moment. It shimmered. He smoked it. The others became demons and he realized he was already dead. He would inhabit a nether realm where none but the demons could perceive him for all time. Their smiles terrified him and he ran until everything was an underworld where every flicker of light carried the utmost provenance; a place of cosmic import and cosmic alienness. 

He woke up in Attar. Another continent. He was a changed man; he had gestated in the place of cosmic miracle and its numinous, involuntary power.

From that moment he suffered oracular visions accompanied by violent seizures and glossolalia. He was burdened by their terrible truth.

Perhaps he was meant as an oracle, a prophet, and there would be no escaping that even in death. But he was still a body, and if he was to execute his charter, he would have to eat, be warmed, perhaps be sheltered. He had become a survivor, no matter what, for the weird fire burned within him, and he joined with several others that they might summon up enough riches to bring about their respective destinies.

4: Oracular Visions, Scavenge, Stealth, Lore, Orienteering, Wilderness Tracking

3: Prowess, Tactical Combat, Traps, Demo

2: Interrogate, Befriend, CSI, Mechanics

    Burglar

Some stole from expedience; a few from absolute necessity. He stole from sheer perversity; he had a good life as a shoemaker’s apprentice when his urchinage terminated with the smile of a kind cobbler, but after awhile he made out with a sack full of expensive shoes and started on the high road, never again to work his fingers raw (except on a lyre or a lockpick). They were delicate like a pianist’s, and he’d picked pockets until he realized that the richest artifacts short of High Lane jewelry were to be found behind lock and key.

His tale has been an annal of thievery since that day, the thrill of it exceeding the pleasure of the plunder. Sometimes the night turns to absolute terror and he swears off his ways, but as he runs with stifled cackle from a crime scene or precinct house, he forgets his vows and longs for his next stolen score.

4: Stealth, Wits, Mechanics, Prowess, Undercover, Drive

3: Financial Acumen, Lore, Social Urban Tracking

2: Tactical Combat, CSI

    Runaway Slave

Life started out in a shack on the fields and that was where he worked until his good looks and poise took him into the great house as a suitable representative of the nobility of his captors. He waited their tables and tended their linens until the master’s daughter used him in a sexual experiment; though he was a servile, evidently his readiness from being on a blade between death and wild freedom offered the lady something she’d not found among the pallid princelings of their latifundia network.

Suspected with unprovable transgressions, he was cast into the mines by his master; this was a deed that would not disrupt the master’s familial relationships to the extent that an execution would have, yet nevertheless amounted to an execution. The lady’s favorite struggled in the mines, growing mighty but losing every ounce of fat until his body threatened to consume itself as so many had; on the night when he felt the weakness begin to overtake him, she came to him and undid his chains.

He ran until his feet bled and then he crawled. He escaped those lands and swore that he would grow as rich and mighty as the men who had held him prisoner all those years, and then he would come back and liberate his love as she had liberated him.

4: Stealth, Orienteering, Ride, Wits, Prowess

3: Lore (though illiterate), Undercover, Wilderness Tracking, Befriend

2: Agronomy, Mechanics, High Society

—

This situation can be played at two resolutions.

Resolution 1: RPG

Resolution 2: Super Blood Opera.

    Resolution 1: RPG

Each player controls a character in the same party.

Roll at or below your Skill to succeed in a 6-second period of PvE or PvNPC conflict.

The GM decides what happens when you fail, except:

If you fail in Combat you are Pinned and struggling for your life. You can either wait for another player to help you, or try and Break Out with a second combat test. If you fail again you roll a d6 and are killed on a 1-2, incapacitated with severe wounds on a 3-6.

You can increase a skill if you fail with it a number of times equal to your current skill level.

Skills max out at 5.

If you don’t have a skill listed, you have it at 1.

    Resolution 2: Super Blood Opera

Each player character controls a party.

Go around with each player making a single overworld action with each character they control each turn. Resolve noncombat PvE and PvNPC checks using PC skills as Resolution 1.

Resolve combat at the end of the round.

Characters have Fighting Skill of d4, d6, d8 or d10 depending on their highest Tactical Combat (2, 3, 4, or 5).

Characters who are in combat in the same place roll Wits, and a d20 on the side.

If you equal someone on Wits, the d20 is your tiebreaker. If that’s equal then you act simultaneously. Otherwise there is always an order based on Wits.

The character that goes first designates a target. He or she rolls Fighting Skill. The defender rolls Fighting Skill. If the attacker gets equal to or greater than the defender, the defender is killed.

The attacker is only killed if the defender attacks him or her on the defender’s turn (assuming the defender’s still alive).

After the first round, anyone can run away who wishes to.

Anyone who wishes to follow them: Make a competitive Wits, Prowess, Ride or Driving roll. Lower wins.  Reroll if equal.

The type of roll is Defender’s choice.

If the pursuer catches the escapee, perform a single combat round. Multiple pursuers can pursue a single target. Only one must succeed at a Drive check.

    Option: Hong Kong Heroic Bloodshed

For each player character in RPG mode or 1 character per party in Super Blood Opera:

d4

1: Select a character in a decidedly opposing group from your own (so not Task Force + Errantry, or Occult Cell + Criminal Union; more like Task Force + Criminal Union or Anarcho-Syndicalists + either Knight group). That character is your beloved sibling. 

2: One of the Task Force high officials is your father: roll d4. 1: Prosecutor. 2: Sheriff. 3: Marshal. 4: High Bondsman. You are unsure where your loyalty will lay if push comes to shove.

3: Pick a member of your group; its leader if it has one. That member made you kill someone you loved to prove your loyalty to the cause. After your mission here is complete, you have sworn you will kill the companion that you named.

4: Select a character as per result #1; you are an undercover agent for that character’s group, and they are your contact.

    Skill Explanation

Intimidate (Ingroup): On a success, if the subject shares your specific belief system and you are an authority within the belief system, they can either comply with your demand or break their belief system.

If your Intimidate check is to cement ingroup loyalty and it succeeds, characters gain +1 to future checks to Intimidate (Ingroup) that character.

If they break their belief system, they’re Unmoored and roll on the following table to determine the orientation they turn to (if it’s their current belief, they return in time to the one who Unmoored them):

(d12)

1: Ultranationalism: The character turns to their cultural group as their ultimate source of meaning and attempts to submerge him or herself in it as a movement; the character may become a vigilante acting “on behalf” of the city-state of Passwall and the Task Force, may act as a fifth column if they’re abroad, or may lend their strength to the Ultranationalist Revanchist in the Occult party if they’re of the same culture

2: Anarcho-Syndicalism: The character seeks out and finds the Anarcho-Syndicalist Cadres for service in their underground or auxiliary.

3: Occult Petition: The character seeks out something of tangible divinity and finds the Occultist and his or her Entity.

4: Nihilism (black pit): The NPC bitterly resists being co-opted unless the offer appeals to their immediate need for a psychological balm. Re-roll in a month, if Nihilism (black pit) again the character commits suicide

5: Nihilism (might makes right): The NPC becomes an illegalist anarchist and enters the city-state’s underworld, eventually rubbing elbows with the Underworld Circle party.

5: Romanticism (Aristocratic) or Penitence (Theist): 50/50 chance of Romanticism or Penitence. The character becomes a follower of a knight; 50/50 chance of joining the Errantry or the Chevauchée.

6: Antinatalism: d4 - [1] The character commits a mass shooting, [2] The character seeks out and joins up with the Occultist party based on the reputation of the Antinatalist Terrorist serving the Entity, [3] the character becomes an illegalist anarchist but does not socialize in the underworld, [4] the character joins a bureaucracy and attempts to curtail the future of the human race however they can

7: Existentialism: The character withdraws from the conflict to think; the outcome after that is up to GM

8: Theocracy: Lay theism is not enough for this character, they submerge themselves in a faith and seek to radically advance it, attempting to drown and erase other systems as a way of cementing their faith’s centrality. They become aligned with (d6): [1-2] Ultranationalism (on behalf of a Theistic State), [3-4] Penitence (Theist) with the Errantry or Chevauchée (attempting to spur them to a Theocratic orientation) 50/50 chance each, or [5-6] Occult Petition (radical supplication to Entity as deity figure)

9: Hedonism (d6 after one month): [1] Obesity / [2] VD / [3] Poverty / [4] Addiction / [5] Enervation / [6] Exhaustion with way of life (reroll)

10: Personal Pursuit: They retreat from the grand game and enter a way of life that reflects their own personal deepest interest, perhaps becoming monklike or isolated along the way, at best producing something of great value, at worst whiling away their days in the all-too-familiar, neglecting their possible contribution to the meta-situation)

11: Simplification: The character attempts to retreat into a common workaday life without considering the issues too deeply

12: Exodus: The character leaves the city-state and gets as far away from the situation as possible.

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This was partly inspired by this post.