# 000: Escape from Blacksite Delta tags: #play #game/rpg/running-breathless ![[000 - Header (illo).jpg]] The play process summary on page 19 is pretty clear, but we're going to just jump ahead and use one of the pre-generated setups because it is the classic. I'm talking about *Psyker* on page 24. Because the text of the game is actually here on the garden, I can just tuck that right in. ![[Projects/Running Breathless/Running Breathless#Psyker|Running Breathless]] ## Calculate the Successes and Scenes We are playing solo, so our total locations is the number of players plus one. That means there's two locations. The total number of successes we need is the number of players times ten, so ten total successes. Successes per location necessary is total successes divided by locations, so we need five 5+ successes per location in order to resolve that scene and then get away. - **Scenes:** 2 - **Successes Per Scene:** 5 ## Who Are You? This one is given to us by our setup, so it's easy. Is being a psychic test subject on the run from a secret lab a little bit trope-heavy? Yes, it is. Does that matter? No, it's still awesome. ## First Location and Its Problem You'll note the setup given in the book doesn't actually specify the starting location, and that is by intent. The idea is for the players to pick something that excites them, that drives them forward, and that really hooks into the characters that they end up playing. You don't necessarily have to start at the point of escape. You can kick off anywhere down the way, months, years later, if you're so inclined. I think in this case we will kick off at the Blacksite itself, since I went through the trouble of putting it in the title. We also have to figure out what the escape location's problem is, and that problem may not be related to us. In this case, I think I'm going to pick something that has a strong media referent. You can have a big No-Prize if you figure it out. - **Location:** Blacksite Delta, a lightly patrolled fenced compound in the Montana mountains. There they research induced psychic powers on about a dozen people. Conditions are spare but not oppressive, save they can never leave. - **Problem:** One of the other test subjects had a pyrokinetic flare and now the whole site's on fire with explosions going off regularly. Seems like a great time to go. ## Who's Chasing You? This setup gives us this, but it's also probably worth noting that at least for the first scene, they are going to be somewhat distracted with their own problems. We don't necessarily have to solve the problem, but we need to deal with the problem one way or another in order to move to the next scene. ## Create Your Character While we **could** use one of the provided characters, creating your own is way more fun. I'm afraid that will always be the case. I'm thinking that we would like to be playing a low-key mental dominator. Someone who can give others just a little push to get them to do what he wants. As such, he's really good at making connections with others, in part to make his psychic powers more effective, and in part because he's just weirdly charming. Part of his training was to be potentially some sort of undercover spy operative, so his tradecraft is also pretty solid. The final refuge of any spy is knowing how to run away, and he's quite good at that. Let's translate all of this into a character sheet. ### Charles "Chip" Montague **Mind-pushing Spy** - **Skills:** Connect d10, Sneak d8, Dash d6 - **Power:** Mental Push d10 - **Grit:** O - **Heat:** OOOOO ## Prep the Location We need to put slots for five tokens on our starting location, which is really easy. **Blacksite Delta**: OOOOO > [!info] Sidebar on Xs and Os > As a side note, I do tend to use capital O's in text-based games when I need to make a hollow slot, and those get filled up with capital X's as we go. It's just convenient. Sure, it looks better with a mono font than a proportional font, but don't be afraid to use what you've got. ## Kick it Off There we go. We're ready to start play. I won't run through this entire process for all the sessions in the future, assuming that there are more. But it's good to get down right at the beginning. Who knows? Somebody might read this and be interested in actually picking up a copy of the game. Madness, I know. ### Blacksite Burning Chip's awakened from a dead sleep by the sound of klaxons, explosions, and running feet. Shouts and, muffled in the distance, thuds that sound like explosions. The lights flicker as another deep "boom" shakes his fairly austere "bedroom" Unfair to call it a cell, even if it is. The lights go out and the emergency lighting comes up, red and threatening. The door makes a chuh-chunk sound and the lock pops. This can't be good. He pushes the door open slowly, feeling it's already hot. Much, **much** worse, then. Three sets of heavy boots go stomping by, shouting and dragging the thick bodied hose. Time to go. > [!faq] Sneak Check > 1d8 > [3] > [!info] Commentary > Oh, right. It's going to be that kind of day, I see. This is a success, but with reduced effect. It does not count toward the number of successes that we need to deal with this location. Lucky for us, it wasn't a roll of a one or two because that would have boosted up our Heat. But things are going to get a little more complicated. > > **Sneak drops to d6 because we used it.** One of the security team pulling hose to put out the fire sees Chip leaving his room, scowls, but is distracted by the fire roaring at the other end of the hallway. There's shouting and over the gasping roar of the flames he *thinks* the man said, "Get out of here!" No matter; he'll just assume that's sound advice since the flames are licking at his heels not entirely metaphorically. He straight out head down beats feet to try and make it out of the subject housing building. > [!faq] Dash Check > 1d6 > [3] > [!info] Commentary > Oh yeah, this is definitely going to be that kind of day. At least it wasn't a straight up failure, but we have another complication and one of our stronger skills dropping to the bottom. > > Remember, a complication doesn't mean you don't get what you wanted. It means that it's not as effective as you wanted. The stated intent was to get out of the housing bubble. Chip did that, but there's a problem. > > **Dash drops to d4.** The building gives way as Chip hits the nearest fire door, spitting him out into the cold Montana snow shirtless, shoeless, and surrounded by people running hither and yon, fighting fires, trying to salvage research, or just crying on their knees, staring into the flames as they eat everything the poor unfortunate has known of their lives. "Lucy", one of the other subjects, is barely visible through the window of the neighboring women's housing barracks. Flames are creeping up behind her, throwing hellish light around her screaming, distorted face. He didn't know her well, just enough to nod at in the plaza, but he can't stand there and watch her burn to death. He looks around to find a thick piece of firewood they use for some of the common room entertainment and gestures Lucy back from the glass before swinging it with all he has. > [!faq] Grit Check > 1d12 > [4] > [!info] Commentary > Have I ever mentioned that random generators literally hate me and will do damage to me whenever possible? Because it's absolutely true. Sure, we just grabbed the biggest die in our pool and used it in a feat of pure determination. Greater than a 50% chance to get a five plus. What did we get? A four. Success with complication. Oh yes, and it uses up our Grit until we get to Catch Our Breath. > > **Grit: X** Chip smashes the window with the log and helps Lucy crawl out awkwardly. She's not in much better shape than he is, in fact, considerably worse, being deeply freaked out, perhaps more than might be expected even under these circumstances. "Lucy, right? Are you okay? Are you burned?" Chip gives her a once-over, looking for scorches, blood, broken bones - anything that could be life-threatening. Lucy's reply is to scream, and scream, and scream. Babbling about "hearing them in her mind!" and "It hurts, it hurts!" Ah, the teep. Lucy's the telepath, eating the fear and pain from the whole facility. At a bit of a loss, all Chip can think to do is pull her head against his chest and make soothing noises as you would a child. "It'll be okay," he says, entirely unconvincingly. "Shhhhhhh. Hush. It'll pass." A caress of his mental force may help her calm down; it's not Thorazine, but it's what he has. > [!faq] Mental Push Check > 1d10 > [1] > [!info] Commentary > You know, this is why I torture dice. Because they go out of their way to torture me. One of our biggest dice, and it comes up with a complete failure. Which means not only did we not get what we wanted, we increase our Heat. They are onto us now, and we haven't even begun to deal with the situation on the blacksite. > > It's the first time that Heat has reached step one, so we also have to narrate what the Chasers are doing or seeing as they get closer. > > **Mental Push drops to d8.** > > **Heat:** XOOOO Touching Lucy's mind is like putting your hand on a live wire. Her brain is so connected to the sensory deluge coming from all around that Chip is physically thrown back via pure psychic backlash, leaving his mind reeling as he lies on his back in the snow. Lucy throws herself to her feet as if the ground itself is agony, throws her head back and screams at the sky in a way that a human body was never meant to do. Proof of this is the blood which is running down the side of her mouth from her rupturing vocal cords. The security team has their hands full trying to fight the fire, but a few of them can't help but look in the direction of the screaming woman and the man on his back. A couple make in their direction. "Hey, what's going on over there! You're not supposed to be out here!" There's not much time to think or run, so Chip does what comes naturally to him. He *lies*. "She came at me! I think she's gone crazy!" He skitters backwards on his ass like a crab. "Better stay back, she's dangerous!" > [!faq] Connect Check > 1d10 > [2] > [!info] Commentary > You can tell that I'm actually playing this out because no reasonable person would make this series of die rolls. Like, you would think some of these would actually be successful, but no, that's not how it's going. In fact, we've got another Heat increase, as well as an outright failure, which makes sense given the context. > > Things are not looking good for our hero, if hero he is. I will point out that sometimes a failure gets you what you wanted, but not in the way that you wanted it. Success and failure have many brothers and sisters. But Christ, we've lost another skill die step. This is looking so bad. > > **Connect drops to d8.** > > **Heat:** XXOOO One of the security team fluidly draws his Glock and aims it precisely before pulling the trigger once, splattering Lucy's juicy brains all across the snowy landscape beside the women's barracks. Chip feels a few misty drops hit his shoulder and feels a momentary twinge of guilt for getting a woman killed and the commensurate embarrassing flush of the sense of relief that it was her and not him. The shooter's backup, a thin, lanky man whose name tag reads "Thomas", is already on Chip mere seconds later, dragging him to his feet with a muttered, "You're coming with me," before he begins dragging Chip by the shoulder toward the plaza in the middle of the compound. "Dylan, it's time to make sure the guests aren't heading for the hills. Let's take this one and get him on one of the salvage teams." Dylan, all 6'7" of him, seems to fetch up a sigh from his bootheels and holsters his gun as if it weighed nothing, just a cheap plastic imitation. "Whatever, man. Test monkeys gotta be good for somethin'." The plaza is a relatively open area with a clean cobblestone circle in the middle. There's a fire pit, which is ironically raging quite well, around which 3 or 4 test subjects are crouching. Chip joins the group with an almost thankful sigh, because running around in the Montana winter with only a pair of thin lounge pants and no shoes is perhaps not the best way to spend your 2 a.m. You would think with half of the compound clawing at the sky with crimson flames, it would be considerably warmer, but it doesn't seem to reach anyone. Chip only recognizes a couple of the other subjects. They keep them separated for the most part. "Greater focus on their training" is the usual line, but what it really means is no opportunity to organize an escape. Dylan and Thomas are deep in conversation with what can only be assumed to be the rest of the security team via radio. Thomas has his hand up to his ear in the classic "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" pose while Dylan is just watching the test subjects as if he were waiting for one of them to do something marginally stupid. Chip decides his best choice is to do something marginally stupid. He walks straight up to Dylan and says, "Hey man, it's really cold out here. I need to go find some clothes. That's the scientist hut over there, right? Mind if I go find a coat, if nothing else?" > [!faq] Connect Check > 1d8 > [3] > [!info] Commentary > How in the world does this keep happening to me? I'm going to have to stick these dice in the refrigerator or something, or I would if they weren't digitally implemented. > > I would normally say this is the worst run of luck I've ever had, but the truth is, this is how my usual run of luck goes. Holy Christ, this is terrible. At least it wasn't a complete failure. It was success with a complication. It could have been worse, but not much. > > The real problem is our skills are dropping down to the level where we are going to have to Catch Our Breath, and we are going to have to take the Heat increase for doing so. We still haven't made a single step toward dealing with the Blacksite issue. > > **Connect drops to d6.** Dylan's sneers, "Sure, let's go," which wasn't exactly what Chip wanted to hear, but doesn't get in the way of his plan because right now, a plan is not something that he has in mind. Nothing beyond actually finding some real clothes, so the shivering cuts back a little bit. Thomas is too busy dealing with orchestrating the security team's firefighting operations to see Dylan wandering off with Chip, nor does he see Dylan very consciously put his hand on his pistol and make sure it's loose in the holster. Housing for the scientists is not a lot better than the subject housing. More personalized, sure, but not much more roomy. It's laid out as bedrooms opening onto a shared common space with a big screen TV, a kitchenette, and a few other amenities. Chip is just hoping that he can find something that'll fit. > [!faq] Scavenge Check > 1d10 > [2] > [!info] Commentary > Fuck me running. Really? I thought I was being generous, giving the Blacksite a solid d10 for its scavenging value. But no, that's not how it turned out. Instead, what we got was a real problem. At least scavenging doesn't increase the Heat when you completely blow it. It just introduces a complication. Unfortunately, I've already set up for a complication, which is quite complicated indeed. > > **Scavenge drops to d8 at Blacksite.** The first scientist's bedroom that Chip starts digging in, apparently considered his assignment to the Blacksite akin to a monastic calling because aside from being way too small for Chip to wear his clothes, you could have said that they were made of sackcloth and colored with ashes, and it would be entirely believable. It was when Chip walked out of the room that he first noticed something was wrong. That something wrong was Dylan with his pistol in hand, pointed straight at Chip's forehead. "I am so tired of babysitting you motherfuckers out here in this godforsaken wasteland. I'm glad it's burning to the fucking ground. Nobody's going to miss you, and I'm not going to miss you from this range." The look on Dylan's face backed up his words to a degree that made Chip think that some of the other test subjects had been getting up to shenanigans with the security team long before now. The thud of another explosion outside suggested that somebody was still up to shenanigans. Chip put his hands in the air and took a step backwards into the room. "Hold up, man. I never did anything to you. We're cool, right?" The gun and the look on Dylan's face were clear indications that they were not, in fact, cool. Chip was running out of games to play. But when you're faced with a man with a gun in his hand, and he's looking at you with blood in his eye, and you happen to dominate people's minds for a living, you don't have a whole lot of choices. > [!faq] Mental Push Check > 1d8 > [1] > [!info] Commentary > This is beyond silly at this point. You would think that I would stop actually rolling dice and just start picking numbers so that this playthrough actually looks like something sane, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to show you what it looks like when you're me and playing a game with any degree of randomness. > > I set up this situation. I'm responsible for how it plays out. Like any good solo RPG player, I am willing to follow the fiction wherever it leads, and since I wrote it, I have no excuses. Absolute failure. > > Heat has to go up by three points because that's the fiction. There is no way to get out of this without taking a complete dead-on gunshot, and that's three Heat. It is what it is, which means Heat is full. One more failure is going to result in our capture, or worse. > > **Mental Push drops to d6.** > > **Heat:** XXXXX Dylan's mind was like trying to grab wet glass. It slithered out of Chip's grasp in a way that suggested he'd already been exposed to some alteration. It makes sense, Chip thought, working security over a bunch of psychics. Of course he'd be altered. But it did make him flinch, just long enough for Chip to push the gun down away from his forehead. Unfortunately, right into his gut at point blank range. So he did the only thing he could think of at the moment. The only thing that made sense. He crumpled to the floor like a pile of wet towels and lay there bleeding out. Dylan looked down on him, disgusted as if he had just got his hands covered with the guts of a slug and not the blood of another human being. Chip continued his mimicry of someone who had taken a slightly more fatal wound than he did until Dylan seemed satisfied. He did provide the "corpse" with a couple of sharp steel-toed kicks to the ribs on his way out, and he did spit directly in Chip's face. But he did leave. Blood loss was going to be a problem. If Chip was really lucky, he could find a medkit somewhere in here. But the way things had been going, the universe was clearly out to get him. What originally he thought of as providential had turned diabolic in a hurry. > [!faq] Scavenge Check > 1d8 > [6] > [!info] Commentary > Well, it's about goddamn time. Unfortunately, it's not a skill check, so it doesn't actually work toward helping us get the Blacksite Delta resolution, but at this point I'm willing to take any positive I can get my hands on. We have managed to find a medkit of at least d8. Since it's slightly higher than five, I'm going to say we've got a d10 medkit. Sure, now it's slightly harder to find something in the blacksite, but I'm going to call that okay. > > **Scavenge drops to d6.** > > **Item:** Medkit d10 The trail of blood that Chip was leaving as he ransacked the scientists' Quonset hut was regrettable, but apparently the scientists had been the first ones they evacuated when the fire started. He had the feeling that they weren't going to be coming back anytime soon. In fact, given Dillon's propensities, he wondered if they had already been taken care of before the test subjects were considered. In fact, looking back on it, if that explosion hadn't disabled the electronic locks, he might still be trapped inside a burning building and less of an accounting excuse for requisitioning more ammo. The medkit he found was one of the nice ones. Compression bandages, filler cyanoacrylate for closing open wounds. God only knew why his guts weren't falling out his spine, given the shot at that range, but he guessed it was his only opportunity for good luck. He wasn't going to squander it. > [!faq] Medkit Check > 1d10 > [1] > [!info] Commentary > Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously, is someone trying to punk me right now? Has someone infiltrated my computer and changed the random number generator in a way that keeps it from being truly random? Because this is some bullshit. > > On the positive side, at least it doesn't destroy the medkit. It only steps it down by a die level. Technically, it doesn't say that it doesn't work, although technically it should have been used with another skill check. Also on the positive side, at least it doesn't increase Heat. > > Narratively, I think we're just going to say that Chip tries to patch himself up and doesn't do a particularly good job. So the med kit isn't going to help out a lot in improving his position for things that would be harder if you take a round to the intestines. > > **Medkit drops to d8.** Chip was starting to wish that he had paid more attention in those field trauma treatment classes because he was pretty sure he had done a shitty job. The best he could manage was wrapping some bandages around his torso so that he didn't bleed out immediately. But given the rate at which those bandages were turning red, he may have only delayed the inevitable by minutes, probably not hours. He stretched out on one of the scientists' beds in pain, exhausted, and not a little bit terrified. Outside were screams and fire and blood, and at least one man who was happy to use a gun because he simply found what Chip was disgusting. At this point, Chip wasn't sure he could argue. What he could do was close his eyes for a minute and relax, just for a moment, maybe for the last moment, but at least one. > [!faq] Catch Your Breath > All skills returned to full. Grit resets. Heat increases by one step (but it doesn't matter since it's already at full). Introduce a complication. > [!info] Commentary > It's a good time to take a breather in a very literal sense. Running strictly by the implications of the text, Catching Your Breath while your Heat is at five should cause the endgame, just as a failed skill roll should. But things have gone absolutely sideways this whole time, and I think I deserve a break. So we're not going to do that. If you're interested in what happens in the alternate universe where that happens, Chip dies while lying on that bed, bleeding out. > > In this universe, skills reset, we get grit back, and there's a chance that we might be able to get some successes toward resolving the Blacksite, but no promises. The dice have not been kind. It was the sound of something heavy coming down in the middle of the roof and then through it, which woke Chip up. That and the sudden onrushing burst of heat. He had neglected to close the door on the little bedroom he had laid down in, so the bright orange light bouncing off the far wall told him everything he needed to know about the state of affairs out there. That was no little amount of fire. Then he heard the shouting, the groaning, the yelling, the incoherent jabbering, and he knew what had happened. The pyrokinetic was still loose, still burning, and was in the hut with him. "Fuck." Chip dragged himself to his feet unsteadily and shambled to the door to see another of the test subjects, wreathed in flame from head to foot. Skin burned away across most of his body, naked but featureless. Hatred and heat radiating in equal amounts. A mindless lashing out at whatever he saw. There was nowhere to go because the only exit was the main one from the common room, and that was on the other side of the hut entirely, on the other side of the flame. Choices were few, time were short, and tools at his disposal were minimal, so Chip reached deep in himself to pull up what shreds of his power he could consolidate, shoved them together into a rough spike and forced them forward into the living flame in something akin to a vain hope. > [!faq] Mental Push Check > 1d10 > [2] > [!info] Commentary > Honestly, I don't know why I bothered. That outcome was foreordained. > > Sometimes you just see the patterns of what is to come and accept that these things are inevitable. On the positive side, Chip is not going to go out like a punk with a gut shot. > > No, now things can be so much worse. > > **Endgame.** The thing that used to be a man turned toward Chip as the mental compulsion was immediately consumed by the form's psyche. Perhaps it didn't even have a mind left, just an inchoate urge, a hunger, the manifestation of flame, the want to burn and destroy and cease without restless end. Whatever it was, Chip had made the vital mistake of attracting its attention. He wouldn't have to worry about cauterizing the wound in his gut because the wave of fire that dropped over him did a fine job of it, and little was left for Chip to do except to scream mindlessly in time with the creature, made one in union with its suffering. He could feel his hair going up, his eyelids burning off, so that he couldn't even close them to get away from the sight of it getting closer. His legs, already weak, finally giving out beneath him. The Quonset hut was burning. He was burning. The thing was burning. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't even die. Some unfathomable time later, all he could see was a gauzy white ceiling's fluorescence through white medical gauze. He couldn't feel his arms or legs, which he figured was probably for the best. He heard a heartbeat monitor and the whisper of a respirator. There was no point in keeping his eyes open anymore, but nor could he close them. Chip figured they weren't done with him quite yet. "Fuck." ## Exunt This, my friends, is part of why I generally avoid things with random resolution. Reality does not like me. Statistics do not like me. Statistically unlikely series of negative events really like me. I feel sorry for Chip there. Things took a bad turn. I promise the numbers work out such that you have a chance of succeeding about half the time, at least if you don't roll like me. If this has interested you or you are curious about it, feel free to pick up the entire text of the 1.0 release of [*Running Breathless* over on itch.io](https://squidlord.itch.io/running-breathless). I'm probably going to be putting out an updated version sometime in the next week or so with a few layout tweaks so it can be published by Lulu in a physical version. Until then, check it out. Have some fun. Try to roll better than I do, and I'll see you for the next session sometime soon.