(In which our heroes go car shopping.)
With Busybody on maternity leave, the D-Listers no longer have regular access to her cleaning-business van to get around in – and it’s probably past time they upgraded, anyway. Pooling their money, and with Vinny offering to contribute extra to the purchase and a paint job, the team squeezes uncomfortably into Vinny’s rusty ’92 Crown Victoria and starts hitting the local used-car lots looking for something that can carry them all with room for some gear.
The shopping does not go well – they’re tired and frustrated after visiting three different lots and finding nothing of interest. As they’re extricating themselves from the attentions of yet another car salesman, Vinny notices something out behind the shop.
Vinny: “Hey, what’s under the car cover out back there?
Salesman: “It’s an old Firebird Trans Am, from back when they used to have the chicken drawn on the hood. The owner of the dealership bought it cheap planning to try to fix it up and resell it, but it turned out to have so much rust inside on the chassis that the passenger door and trunk lid are stuck shut and it’d probably fall apart on the road. Crazy thing is, the motor’s still in great shape – the owner keeps the fluids fresh and starts it up once a week to keep it in running condition. He says he’s been looking for another car with a body in good shape to transplant the motor into, but I think he just gets a kick out of sitting there revving the thing.”
Vinny: “Is it the 350 with the 4-barrel carb? I haven’t seen one of those in years! Any chance you could start it up for me to see it running?”
Salesman, sensing a chance to keep a customer around a little longer: “No harm in it I guess. Let me get the keys out of the office.” He retrieves the keys and tosses them to Vinny. “Go ahead, start ‘er up! The driver’s side door still opens.”
Vinny pulls off the cover, climbs in, and starts the car and revs it with a grin on his face. But after a few moments there’s a ZZZT! ZZZT! sound – followed by a POP! and flash of light. Vinny stumbles out of the car, hair sticking straight up. “I think there might be a short in the electrical system somewhere…”
Salesman, sensing a potential lawsuit: “Let’s just put the cover back on and pretend this never happened, shall we? I’m sure I can arrange for a substantial discount on one of our fine vehicles in exchange for your discretion in th-”
He’s interrupted by a pounding noise and a muffled female voice from inside the trunk of the car.
<Characters can pry it open by rolling their strength or less on a d20. Let them keep trying until someone succeeds.>
When the trunk is opened, a feminine android climbs out. “Ew! It’s, like, totally grody in there! Thanks for the spark, whoever did that. The only way to throw them off the scent was to hide and turn myself, like, totally off so they couldn’t track my energy signature and stuff.”
<Looks around>
“Like, I haven’t seen some of these kinds of cars before. Was I out long enough to miss a new model year? I should probably get online to catch up on what I’ve missed. ‘Scuse me, this will take a few minutes.”
<Eyes glaze over; sound of <beep beep boop beep boob boop beep beep> is heard. “The number you have reached is not in service. Please hang up and try again.” Tries again, same result>
“Ugh! Does anybody know if CompuServe changed their access number?”
When asked her name, she replies, “You don’t know? Like, have you been living in a cave since Disco? I am The Uncanny Valley Girl! Advanced android life form, the crowning achievement and final creation of the genius inventor Melvin Worzelbacher before his death in 1984! I’m… I… was? … pretty famous.”
When told what year it is: “Ugh! That’s a long time, but <looks at Vinny> it looks like the hairstyles haven’t changed much. Oh well. At least now I have, like, thirty years of new Dexy’s Midnight Runners music to listen to and there will be lots of new videos on MTV.”
At this point a driverless 80s-era minivan speeds towards them and screeches to a halt nearby.
UGV: “Don’t worry, that’s just my dad’s car.”
Car: “Transportation Unit One reporting to primary assignee. This unit detected reactivation of assignee; acted pursuant to last running subroutine.”
Salesman: “Uh, guys?”
UVG: “If you were still functional and came out of sleep mode when I woke up…”
Salesman: “Excuse me?”
UVG: “… then is it possible they’re still around, too?”
Car: “I calculate a forty-two percent probability of their survival, though I’m forced to make a number of tentative assumptions to arrive at that figure-”
Salesman: “I hate to interrupt but you should probably know about the SQUADRON OF BIG FLYING ROBOTS WITH ROCKET LAUNCHERS ON THEIR SHOULDERS WHO ARE COMING THIS WAY!” <He runs into the nearby office, slamming the door and flipping the “Come in, we’re open!” sign over to “Sorry, we’re closed!”>
UVG: “We can’t fight them all – get in the car!”
<A car chase ensues. Bots aren’t maneuverable fliers and have low acceleration but a higher top speed and are already at cruising speed. One will burn extra fuel to keep up, and attack with rockets. Unit 1 sprouts a laser cannon on top which a PC can fire. Bots will take a calculated risk in firing rockets at the car in an attempt to disable it, but won’t fire rockets that will potentially damage UVG once the car is stopped or significantly damaged.>
During the chase, UVG starts making sporadic <kkkt> sounds and twitchy motions. “They’re after me <kkkt> to take me apart for my tech. I’m full of memory boards that can store a full gigabyte each but are small enough to fit like twelve of them inside me. That <kkkt> kind of storage density would make a fortune for whoever can reverse-engineer it.”
After a few exchanges of rocket and laser fire, the robots will unexpectedly veer off and hover in place, seemingly no longer in pursuit.
UVG: “Like, guys, I uh… think my circuits are breaking down. Not <kkkt> surprising when you think about how old this hardware is (taps on own chest). At least it seems like <kkkt!> it’s making me send out scrambled signals that are throwing off the bots’ tracking. I don’t suppose anyone is carrying around, like, a really big hard drive that I can download into?”
<Vinny will suggest cell phone if no one else does.>
UVG, when shown a cell phone: “A tiny hard drive with a TV on it? How is that going to be enough?”
Vinny: “It’s not a hard drive, but – ” <pops out tiny fingernail-sized storage device> “- I just upgraded to a 64 gig microSD card.”
UVG: <Stares for a moment processing> “Bitchin! Like, it’s worth a try I guess! Where do I plug into it? I have cables for parallel port or nine-pin serial.”
Vinny: “Uh… it has a USB connection?”
UVG: “I don’t know what that is.”
“Wi-Fi or Bluetooth?”
Vinny: “The memory banks containing movie trivia are becoming corrupted but I believe Bluetooth was a James Bond villain.”
UVG: “No, it’s – they’re – like a radio signal used for digital communications.”
Vinny: “Oh! Why didn’t you say so?”
<Glazes over for a few minutes><Every phone in the car shows a message, “Paired with bluetooth device DEVO_ROCKS_1985”>
UVG: “There. Now I need to, like, transcode a copy of my operating system to run on these processors, then I can dump my code and memories onto them. I’m leaking power, though, so I need to plug in.”
<plugs in using cigarette lighter adapter from glove compartment>
Car: “Warning: Power system damaged. Unable to sustain power drain from current charging activity. This unit can maintain charging or velocity, but not both.”
UVG: “We’ll have to pull off the road and hope they don’t find us.”
<They spot a grove of trees with room to pull into & head there>
UVG: “Operating system port complete. Wow, these little things are totally tubular! Initiating data transfer.”
UVG’s signal has stabilized enough for now that the robots are back on her trail; the one that accelerated to follow catches up with them now. At about the time it reaches 1/2 health, the others will appear on the horizon. They arrive after the next round ends and open fire on the group, taking care not to injure UVG. After the first round of combat against the rest of the robots, UVG steps out of the car and says:
“Transfer complete. Initiating self-destruct sequence. Like, barf me out to the maaaaaax<voice gets lower & slower><poof!><catches fire>”
Bots: “Unable to acquire target. Mission terminated.” <They fly away to points unknown.>
When the team returns to base, Unit 1 drives Vinny to go pick up his car, which is still at the dealership. He’s unexpectedly gone for several hours, but looks excited when he gets back.
Vinny: “Unit One has a real VIN number so he and I made some inquiries about the status to his title, and it turns out it’s still on record. I greased a few palms and had it transferred to me, so we now have an artificially intelligent D-Lister-mobile!”
“D-lister-mobile? Gag me with a spoon!”, says a voice. The Uncanny Valley Girl has migrated herself into the HQ computers!
Vinny to UVG: “So, uh, I know it’s awkward with you being software and all, but… are you seeing anybody right now?”
UVG: “Are you asking me out? As if!”
At this point a call come from Lt. Starks. “We’ve got reports that your buddy Flower Child is holding some state senators hostage until they meet his demands on marijuana legalization. How soon can you get to Dover?”
The team piles into their new vehicle. On the way, Unit 1’s voice announces: “Owner personality assimilation complete! This unit requests its designation be altered; its new name is Vanny from the Bronx.” <Edges closer to a nearby car.> “I know it would be awkward, what with me being an AI and you being a Volkswagen, but are you seeing anyone right now?”
Notes
I’ve been wanting to mess around with MP’s vehicle rules for a while, and this short scenario was designed in part for that purpose. Also because after “Uncanny Valley Girl” occurred to me as a name, I had to use it.
I’ve been wanting to mess around with MP’s vehicle rules for a while, and this short scenario was designed in part for that purpose. Also because after “Uncanny Valley Girl” occurred to me as a name, I had to use it.
I started out building the robots as vehicles, but ended up deciding to just use the regular character creation process, give them a basic vehicle turn rate, and apply their movement rate at the vehicle scale. It worked out well enough and simplified person-to-person combat when it got to that point. They also gave me an excuse to put my dollar store flight platforms to use.
Vanny, on the other hand, was crafted using the vehicle rules.
How it played
Given the speeds the robots could ultimately attain and the size of the play area where my map was spread out, the scale of combat wasn’t very usable – I just had the team keep driving off the edge of the map and re-appearing on the other side to simulate longer roads. I also lost track of current speeds and accelerations; if I do another vehicle-heavy session, I’m going to have to come up with a spreadsheet or something that tracks velocity and other stats as the action progresses. Is it was, I ended up just kind of let the players drive and had the robots show up when the story called for them.
Most of the dialog written for Vinny above was designed as a fallback to advance the story if the players didn’t do it themselves. As it turns out, he didn’t have to talk too much, which is just fine with Vinny.
Having aerial opponents was new for the team, and it underscored the fact that most of them don’t have very effective ranged abilities. They did use cover to their advantage – between the tree grove they’d pulled into and some walls Velocimancer created with her shaping ability – and Aria used smoke grenades to help mask their positions. They managed to take very little damage as they pecked away at the first bot until a shot finally knocked it “unconscious”, at which point it fell to the ground and they disassembled it rather thoroughly. Alexa was able to trigger the firing mechanism for the machine gun in the bot’s arm, and proceeded to use it against the other bots when they arrived.
Despite lacking a way to pursue the bots after their mission terminated, the team refused to let them get away. The conversation went something like this:
“Can we get in the van and chase them?”
“They’re not following the roads and they’re faster than you when they get up to speed.”
“Where does it look like they’re going?
“They’re headed for the river so maybe to some den of villainy like New Jersey.”
“Do we have a phone number for any of our Mighty Protectors contacts? Would they be able to track them through FAA radar or something?”
They got through to Morumbar, who said he’d make a few calls.
Fifteen minutes later, three fighter jets soared by overhead. A brief series of loud booms could be heard in the distance.
At the end of the session I handed the players an ugly chrome-colored Matchbox van I’d picked up at Walmart, and gave them homework: paint it.