We are blessed with full attendance for today's game, Chuck's demo of the Silhouette rules system. All he's been willing to admit beforehand is that the game is set in the world of first-person-shooter games, and that there will be a lot of bloodshed. This is easily enough to make Chris (Hawg), Bruce (The Grizzled Veteran), Paul (The Ninja), Tim (Doc) and Mike (The Commando) very eager.
Each of us is an agent for a poorly-defined police or security service, the sort of organization that seems to have the sort of equipment usually reserved for military units and the sort of jurisdictional concerns that would make John Ashcroft drool with envy. Chris is Hawg, a ferocious wall of a man with the stamina to shrug off small-arms fire. Bruce is the Grizzled Vet ("Vet"), a rather less ferocious fellow who has already absorbed enough small-arms fire for two people and who has little desire to absorb any more unless absolutely necessary. Paul is the Ninja ("Ninja"), a murderous shrimp of a lass who knows exactly how sausage is made, and who still eats the stuff. Tim is Doc, an agent who missed his calling. Lacking the sort of empathy necessary to really throw himself into his chosen profession, he finds solace in his hobby: sausage-making. Mike is the Commando, who assured everyone else that he will be back. He carries a gun so big that his enemies often die before he even shoots them.
The session starts with the Team assembled in a conference room, listening to the sort of briefing that happens very rarely in the real world. The Liaison Officer explains that terrorists from the Brotherhood of Organized Terrorist States (BOTS) have taken over the Warren Tower. They have taken hostages, but because they launched their attack on a Friday afternoon the hostages consist primarily of middle management and janitorial staff. Hawg points out to the others, "So that means we can't shoot anyone we see, because we might hit a janitor."
The Liaison Officer ignores Hawg and continues to explain the situation. The tower is equipped with a computer-controlled surveillance camera network. The surveillance cameras can all be controlled and viewed in the Main Computer Room and the Security Office adjacent to the Lobby. There are several other points within the building with access to the camera system (but not control). The main computers are also able to control the elevators and many doors (primarily fire doors). The police have already cut power to the building, so the computers, surveillance cameras and internal lights are running off the generator in the basement. The building lights have a distributed battery backup system good for several hours of operation, so cutting the generator won't actually darken the building, but it will shut down the surveillance system. There is a maintenance tunnel from the Generator Room leading to the city sewer system.
The exterior walls of the Warren Tower are mostly tinted glass windows. Agents attempting to rappel down the side of the building will be very obvious to terrorists inside, while the terrorists will be essentially invisible to the agents until the gunfire starts. The center of terrorist activity is on the 40th floor, in the Main Computer Room. Additional terrorist teams hold the 39th and 41st floors, preventing attack through the stairwells. Another concentration of terrorists controls the Lobby. There may be small additional groups of terrorists on other floors.
The team listens to the Liaison Officer's briefing with great interest. When it is done, they take almost ten seconds to decide that the best route for attack is through the sewers and the Generator Room. They then hold a lengthy discussion on the economic viability of stripping off the terrorists' underwear to sell to gay men. And beyond. The Liaison Officer, obviously disturbed by this turn of events, quietly gathers up his papers and sneaks out of the conference room.
The characters waste no time transitioning their way to the door of the Generator Room. Ninja goes in first, protected from detection by her absolutely cinematic stealth skills. She literally walks right past a terrorist without alerting the fellow to her presence. Behind her, the rest of the team bitches about how Doc doesn't have feet, just some strange misty appendages that he can use to drift across the floor. Strangely, the terrorists don't notice.
The Ninja takes a quick count of the opposition. She sees two terrorists near the far door, and just barely notices a third terrorist hidden behind a crate in the corner. She leaps over and slashes at the third terrorist with a ninja sword, knocking him down. The Commando cries out, "Beat him to death with your gun! It's cinematic!" The Ninja responds, "It's also very cinematic to cut his head off with a ninja sword."
It suddenly develops that there are actually three more terrorists in the corners, one of whom takes a shot at the Ninja with a submachine gun. And misses. The Grizzled Vet decides that the only way to deal with this situation is to use grenades. He throws a concussion grenade at the feet of three terrorists. The grenade explodes with a deafening KABOOM! One of the terrorists is turned into a fine red mist. The other two take Deep Wounds. The Ninja gasps, "That was a concussion grenade? Nobody ever use a fragmentation grenade, ever!"
Commando and Doc rush into the room, blazing away rather ineffectually at anything that moves. Doc takes cover behind the Generator, while the Commando simply relies upon his cinematic immunity abilities. Chuck doesn't have the heart to tell him that he doesn't actually have any "cinematic immunity." Meanwhile, the Ninja discovers that these terrorists are unarmored, and that achieving Instant Death results against them with a submachine gun isn't all that tough. Hawg steps up and points out that it is even easier to get this sort of results with a light machine gun.
The one surviving terrorist decides to attempt an escape, reasoning that a shot from Hawg's LMG is likely to go all the way through him, making it tough to figure out if he was shot in the back or in the front. Along the way he fires wildly at Doc, who barely even acknowledges the bullets flying around him. Hawg and Doc compete to gun him down. Doc wins the competition by emptying his gun at the guy. He makes impressive reloading and chambering noises in triumph.
With all the terrorists blasted to pieces, Doc rifles through the bodies for ammo. It hasn't taken him long to realize that he's going to go through SMG ammo like Barney goes through twelve-packs. He finds two full 9mm SMG magazines, which he adds to his supply. He passes two .40 SMG clips to Command and two to the Vet.
The team kills the Generator and heads up to the Lobby. Hawg takes point because he's not afraid of taking bullets like a man. On the way in, he notices a tripwire and very quickly decides that even if he has no fear of C4, he'd rather not push the situation. Doc moves forward and disarms the trap, getting an extra frag grenade in the bargain. The other characters do not notice the unholy glee upon Doc's face as he caresses the grenade.
Explosive in hand, Doc rushes into the Lobby to see that four terrorists are waiting for him behind some upended conference tables. Doc blazes away at the tables, heedless of the six additional terrorists hiding behind piles of debris around the edges of the room. With this incredible display as a distraction, Ninja and Hawg sprint for the cover of the corner columns. Along the way, Commando blows away one terrorist behind the tables.
Then the terrorists open fire. Doc finds himself stuck out in the open. The terrorists shoot him in half. Commando watches this and takes cover behind the door. He gasps with relief as he doesn't get killed.
Hawg watches as the Vet and the Commando go prone and open fire on the local terrorist population with varying levels of success. He decides that the situation demands the sort of dramatic action that can only be answered with a fragmentation grenade. Deaf to the Ninja's howled protests, he pulls the pin and lets fly, then watches with dismay as his throw lands on the wrong side of the terrorists' barricades. There is an earth-shattering KABOOM. Even with less-than-perfect placement, the grenade was powerful enough to turn one terrorist into a fine red spray and deeply wound another.
The Ninja pops up from her hiding place and sprays bullets into a crowd of people behind a barricade on the south edge of the room, noticing that half of them are actually innocent hostages only after he's wounded all of them. Later on, she explains to the others that her eyes were still ringing from the blast. Hawg and the Commando roll their eyes while the Vet whines out, "Won't somebody please think of the children?"
A horrible squelching sound rolls up from behind the characters as the Loose Cannon respawns to replace Doc. He steps out onto the scene with his ACR and calmly blows away the last terrorist behind the tables. Everyone else just acts unimpressed. They get a little bit more impressed when he realizes that he can hit the terrorist on the far end of the room without a range penalty. It is only the terrorist's extremely impressive dodge roll that keeps him at just a Deep Wound. The Vet tries to play it cool by crawling forward and emptying his SMG at a terrorist he's been having real trouble hitting, unzipping the guy. The two surviving terrorists kneel down to better take advantage of cover, strangely confident.
The reason for their confidence soon becomes apparent, as additional terrorists show up. The characters start looking around for cover until they realize that there are only two reinforcements. One of them takes cover behind debris. The other shelters behind one of the support columns.
The Vet sprints to take cover behind the overturned tables, diving to a prone position, then takes a moment of quality time to reload his SMG. The Ninja takes a different attitude towards ammunition problems: she rushes up to the several terrorists in the debris and cuts one apart with his ninja sword. She yells out, "Third kill! Do I get points for hostage frags?" The other characters speculate that the Ninja might need to respawn soon. Loose Cannon decides to help out by running up behind the overturned tables and bursting the far kneeling terrorist into a wide and viscous array of red bits.
One of the terrorists moves in on the Ninja, who dodges the man's pointblank gunfire effortlessly. The Commando sneers, "Why do you even play this game?" Of course, he has little else to sneer at, as he is busy reloading behind a column. His unavailability as a target persuades the surviving second-wave terrorist to take a shot at Hawg, who protests, "Hey! Loose Cannon's the one who's been killing people! I just Deeply Wound them!" The terrorist misses. Hawg exults, "Woohoo! I love being alive! I'm gonna go home and masturbate!"
Having finished reloading, the Commando opens up on a terrorist. Instant Death! The Ninja gets terrorist blood all over her nifty ninja threads. She responds by rushing the second-wave guy behind the column and missing him. The Ninja grumbles, "I need a better melee skill..." Hawg blows the man away. Once again the Ninja is sprayed with blood. She yells at Hawg, "Stop stealing my frags! I kill people with honor!"
Loose Cannon gets an excellent shot but realizes that he's got no terrorists to kill, so he offs a hostage instead. The Commando realizes that there aren't any terrorists left alive in the room, so he starts asking questions about whether or not he can use two submachine guns akimbo, or possibly gangsta-style. Hawg is too busy salvaging Doc's medikits to pay attention. The Loose Cannon is far too busy gathering up spare ACR ammo to even acknowledge the presence of the rest of the team.
With few surviving hostages to deal with, the characters head for the elevator shaft and the 40th floor. The Ninja calls out, "I wanna climb up the shaft first!"
The characters demonstrate their tremendous physical conditioning by free-climbing the elevator shaft all the way to the 40th floor. Once at the proper floor, the characters execute a plan so beautiful in its simplicity that it should be framed and hung in the Louvre. Hawg is the strongest, so he gets the job of forcing the elevator door. Loose Cannon is the most violent, so he gets to toss the frag grenade out among the higher-grade terrorists in the corridor. The Commando and the Vet are more restrained, so they are assigned the task of throwing flashbangs out to torment any survivors. Hawg reflects upon his role and offers, "I think the door will close automatically on it's own." The Vet, mindful of the last time a fragmentation grenade was used, observes, "We may need to get it closed quicker." The Ninja decides that too many people are using too much explosive in too confined a space and rappels down a couple of floors in hopes of surviving.
The door opens. The terrorists start in surprise. Grenades are thrown. Hawg forces the door shut. And everything shudders. Loose Cannon is thrown from the side of the elevator shaft by the grenade explosion. The Ninja catches him before he follows Dojango into history. On the business side of the door, the blast takes out two high-grade terrorists and leaves the third blind and Deeply Wounded.
Hawg pushes the door open. The Vet unzips the wounded terrorist with a full-auto burst, "just to make sure." Loose Cannon rushes out across the hall into an office with guns blazing. He shoots the kaboozies out of some middle manager's luckless PC. "Windows 95! Die!"
Hawg covers the left end of the corridor by tossing a flashbang down it. There are some shouts of dismay, particularly from the four terrorists lurking in the Break Room.
The Commando advances around to the right. He notices that there are a couple of terrorists waiting in one of the side rooms around the corner only when they start shooting at him. He yells for help, a call that is answered by the Vet, who tosses a concussion grenade among the terrorist just as they blow holes all the way through the Commando (2 Deep Wounds). He stays up, which is more than the terrorists can say after the grenade goes off. The Vet drags Commando back out of the line of fire for some quick medical aid just as the Loose Cannon leaps forward down the corridor. He tosses a frag grenade around the corner. A second later, he adds four more terrorists to his frag count.
The Vet uses up a couple of medpacks healing up one of the Commando's Deep Wounds. He is pleased to discover that Doc originally had two medpacks and four first aid kits, plenty to heal up all manner of terrible injuries.
The Ninja advances upon several terrorists in the Break Room, ninja sword swinging. Hawg helps out by stepping in and throwing a fragmentation grenade. Things don't go exactly as he'd planned: he forgets to pull the pin. Hawg groans, "Oh crap. We're dead." The Ninja complains, "Why do you people keep on using those things?" Hawg offers, "cause they kill entire rooms full of people!" Still blinded by Hawg's earlier flashbang, the terrorists in the Break Room provide gunfire that does little more than annoy the characters. Hawg announces, "I'm gonna shoot those guys... No, wait! I'm gonna use a flash grenade!" The grenade goes off. None of them are hurt. Every single one of them is blind!
The Vet turns, confident that there is nothing left alive behind him (possibly including his team-mate) and blazes away at a guy next to the Ninja, doing nothing. Ninja downs her already-wounded opponent, then moves back to cover. By this time, the Loose Cannon has made it around two corners and is able to throw frag grenades to hit the swarm of terrorists running out of the Main Computer Room. He complains because he's not allowed to count unconscious guys as frags. The Ninja ignores his protests as she cuts up one of the terrorists wounded by his grenade. The Ninja takes a hit, but her armor saves her. This is only the second time that anyone's armor has actually prevented an injury, so she is understandably exultant, calling out, "The blade came down, but I caught it with my bosom!"
Hawg ignores her as he mops up the blind terrorists in the Break Room and beyond. He then turns to find the Ninja surrounded by three terrorists armed with combat knives. He watches her jab one to little effect, then yells out, "Ninja! You need help?" The Ninja's response is instant, "Yes!" Hawg plays Chocolate Moose and sprays the two terrorists closest to him with automatic fire, vaporizing one and scratching the other, without even mussing the Ninja's hairdo.
Loose Cannon belly-crawls around the corner to shoot a terrorist. Too bad for him, the terrorists have been waiting for someone to try just that trick. They open fire. Loose Cannon complains, "But I'd only wanted to expose myself to one of them!" Hawg responds, "See, that's the problem with your fighting style - you keep on exposing yourself." The Vet looks up from reloading his submachine gun to comment, "Hey, boy! Get yo hand offa yer zippah!" There is much gunfire, but nobody gets hurt. The Vet continues this trend by throwing a concussion grenade around, but forgetting to pull the pin.
The Ninja chops down last opponent in her immediate vicinity, boasting, "Ninja swords are not as clumsy and random as submachine guns!" then goes running down the corridor to meet up with the Loose Cannon, who is still valiantly chewing away at a squad of terrorists under cover. She runs right into a hail of gunfire. A hail of very inaccurate gunfire. On the other flank, Loose Cannon and the Vet both reload. When Hawg joins the three of them, it is only a matter of time before all the remaining terrorists are lying in twisted-looking positions on the floor. Unfortunately, before that happens one of the terrorists does manage to get a good shot in on the Ninja, Deeply Wounding her.
Hawg looks around at the carnage and comments, "If this were Shadowrun and we could sell body parts for money we wouldn't have anything left." He prods the body of one particularly beat-up terrorist and asks, "How much do you think we could get for ankles?" The Vet ignores him: he's too busy expending all four remaining medikits to heal up the Ninja.
The characters find themselves at the door of the Main Computer Room. Once again, their plan revolves heavily around explosives: Loose Cannon and Hawg will throw flashbangs into the room and blind everyone. This part of the plan works great. Then everyone will rush in and shoot every terrorist they can see. This part of the plan doesn't work so well, as even blind terrorists can spray bullets at a doorway.
The Vet avoids the gunfire by dodging across the doorway while shoving the Loose Cannon out into the room as a distraction. The Loose Cannon was totally distracted by his conversation with Hawg, and didn't even notice. The Vet takes further advantage of the distraction to shoot down one terrorist. Hawg and the Ninja runs out and dispose of two more. Loose Cannon, finding himself in a target-rich environment, sprays two more and drop them (though one is only unconscious, and doesn't count as a frag. Loose Cannon complains bitterly).
The characters make very steady progress against the blinded terrorists. Their confidence is quite high, as they find that killing blind people is not the most difficult thing do to. The Ninja falls into an almost epileptic combat style, performing running attacks against several terrorists in quick succession. She crows out, "You guys can't imagine the dodge bonuses I get for running!"
Things get a bit touchier when someone throws a grenade right next to Hawg and the Ninja. The Ninja dives underneath a convenient desk. Hawk simply ducks. A nearby hostage doesn't even notice the grenade and gets obliterated when it goes off. Fortunately, she looked like she was a member of middle management.
The characters poke their heads up to see that the grenade-thrower was the last, and presumably toughest, terrorist. Hawg and Loose Cannon blaze away at him, impressing him not at all. He carefully aims his return shot. Loose Cannon obliges by simply walking into it and taking 88 damage, dying instantly.
The Ninja runs at the terrorist, determined to avenge the death of her unstable comrade. Her battle cry of, "Cobra-la-la-la-la!" rings across the room. The other characters conclude that that particular cry is bad luck, as the Ninja's attack has no effect on the terrorist. The Vet finishes reloading his gun and shoots desperately at the terrorist, killing him only seconds after he sends a second grenade at Hawg and the Ninja, both of whom are thrown across the room by the blast.
Hawg picks himself up from the floor and looks around. Noticing that the only terrorists around are quite, quite dead, he declares victory. Woohoo!