Dice Cup Nottingham Tales... Game 3

I managed to run the second part of my Tales from the Loop scenario Atomic Butterflies and Feral Buddleia’  at Nottingham’s The Dice Cup board game cafe. We had to have a long break due to me, well, breaking my leg.

NOTE: Spoilers for the Scenario continue.

I have only one of the players from before as the others couldn’t make it at the last minute but I had four new players join. Three of those players hadn’t played roleplaying games before so I had some pressure there then. Two of the new players were arriving late too so that halted to game to some extent.

We had some great player characters created though.
We had a Troublemaker called Ricky Wilde, carries his Zippo lighter with pride and has a side deal selling cigarettes to the children at school. He was anxious due to the school kids finding out his mum was a Erotic Dancer!
Our Hick was Jeremy Reynolds, who carries his multitool and drives his tractor. He was the eldest of seven siblings and he had to do a lot of work on the farm.
Matilda is our Bookworm with her magnifying glass.
We were joined by a Popular Kid, Louise with her ever-present can of hairspray.
Last but not least was the return of Victor, the Weirdo with his pad of paper and pencils.

I had to run the scenario from a different starting point as the players last time hadn’t gone to all of the locations nor had they concluded any of the plot threads.
I started with the original character, Victor, having phoned all the Kids to join him in the Mystery. We had scenes from their home life to begin, learning about the Kids situations as they were called to assemble at the Hideout.

I started with the Kids encountering the dodgy Lepidopterist in the street, on their way to their Hideout. He offered them money for them to catch the ‘blue and green’ butterflies if they encountered them. At once the players picked up that he was no good and decided to give themselves fake names from the offset. Also Ricky decided to sneak up on him and steal his wallet from his back pocket. The player rolled on Ricky’s SNEAK and got three successes by rolling three 6’s on a roll of 8 dice. Ricky discovered not only wads of British Stirling in the wallet but other currencies too, especially the Russian Ruble. He also had a CCCP membership card, could he be a Russian spy?!
Ricky dropped the wallet at the Lepidopterist’s feet and took his ‘job offer’.

They also noticed poor Tracy Edwards was putting up ‘Missing’ posters on the lampposts. Her Golden Labrador, lady, has gone missing for a couple of days and she was clearly upset. The Kids tried to console her and offered to keep a look out and took a handful of posters too.

They headed back to their Hideout to get briefed by Victor on the Mystery and to see the captured Atomic Butterfly. Jeremy checked over the mechanical butterfly with his TICKER skill using his Multitool to assist him. He rolled two successes and was able to open up the butterfly and discover not only about how the butterfly works but also the fact that it is powered by an Atomic Battery. The Atomic Battery is very unstable a would explode if hit by metal or by electrical power.  The explosion would be small but very intense, vaporising anything within a half metre diameter.
He also learnt that the Atomic Butterflies were laying the seeds of the Feral Buddleia that Victor informed them about.

After that the Kids decided to investigate and search the Lepidopterist’s Hut and what followed for the rest of the Mystery was multiple counts of arson, breaking and entering, theft of firearms, damage to property, and revelation of Government Top Secrets.

This was the only group that actually took apart the Atomic Butterflies to render them useless.

A great game and the new players, both experienced and new, enjoyed themselves and were very involved in the game. The mad fools are also happy to play again soon so expect another few games and reports to follow!

The worst bit is I forgot again to take a photo to the group, next time I will take more photos.

Thanks again go to the staff at The Dice Cup Who we’re very friendly and helpful.

#TalesfromtheLoop
#TheDiceCup