After I posted the last Gritty Cop Show test game recap https://monsterhunternation.com/2018/06/11/gritty-cop-show-test-game-episode-3-ny-confidential/ author Jason Cordova asked me if I’d run one at LibertyCon. I thought that was a great idea, and since LibertyCon does so much for charity, I offered to run a game, and they could auction off each of the seats. I tagged LibertyCon’s chair, Brandy, and the next thing I knew we were having an auction.

When I found out that LibertyCon raised $1,300 for this game, my first thought was “Oh crap, I guess I can’t phone it in! I’m going to have to actually do a good job!”

If you want to know what Gritty Cop Show the Game is all about, click that link above and there’s links to the previous test games. Basically it is an RPG system I came up with in the style of TV cop shows and crime dramas. The players are running characters who are basically TV cops, and all the skills, advantages, and disadvantages are based on tropes from various movies and TV shows.

This time I stole the plot from Beverly Hills Cop 2.  Yes, 1 is the better movie, but 2 had a more easily stealable plot. Like last time I changed a few names and moved it to New York again, mostly to keep the players from catching on too fast which movie they were in. (Plus, I’ve got an NYPD hat from doing a book signing there, only I forgot my hat!)

Our LIbertyCon crew was:

Maureen, playing California surfer girl Detective Charity McGowan, who had the perks Nerd Stuff, Arson Murder and Jaywalking, and the disadvantage Trouble Magnet.

Conrad, playing country boy Detective Billy Jones, who had Crime Scene Savant, Best Served Cold, and Anger Issues.

Their partnership perk was Odd Couple, in that one of them was an action cop and the other was the brains.

Angus, playing  Detective Joseph Francis Xavier Dunbar, who had Brute Squad, Plausible Deniability, and was a Knuckle Dragger.

Scott D, as Kojack Colombo Koslowsky (his Dad really loved cop shows) who had Cut the Red Wire, Crime Scene Savant, and the disadvantage Doughnut Run.

Together they were Closers, meaning they got extra bonus evidence points at the end.

Jim was Lt. Cosmo Ivanov, who had Ice Water Veins, Gunslinger, and Good is Not Nice.

Scott A was Detective Steve McCandles, who had Gunslinger, Not Dirty But A Little Crooked, and Trouble Magnet.

That partnership was our Cowboy Cops.

When it came time for them to pick what kind of unit Major Crimes was, they decided to pick Cruel and Unusual Punishment, which meant they got a crap sack unit with a jerk of a boss. So I brought Captain Nails back to yell at everyone. (ONE MORE STUNT LIKE THAT AND I’LL HAVE YOUR BADGE!)  We decided this must have happened before Nails’ Russian mail order bride poisoned his coffee with antifreeze.

This time I remember exactly how it went down because McGowan took five pages of notes! (reminder to self, I’ve got to mail those back to her).

We started at noon on Tuesday June 24^th, when Major Crimes needed to respond to the robbery of Adrianna’s jewelry store. Our intrepid investigators started out by piecing together what had happened. And if you remember the movie, Brigette Nielsen and crew totally wrecked the place while doing a 2 minute countdown. (and to my great dismay, one of the players immediately realized which movie it was as soon as I described how they’d even shot the chandelier until it had fallen out of the ceiling, but luckily he didn’t tell the others)

So the detectives start questioning witnesses, looking for clues, and they try to decipher the coded message the robbers left there in an envelope with a big red A on it (no luck yet)

Now the thing to remember about Gritty Cop Show is that I came up with an escalating stress mechanic for it. So you want to do lots of rolls to try and find clues to get evidence points, or successfully interrogate people, but each time you roll a 1, you get a point of stress. And once you’ve got stress, whenever you do anything from then on you roll a D20, and if you roll your stress or lower, you get a complication. And that’s where stuff gets really fun. (the players have to figure out what their complication is, not the GM, which leads to everything getting all convoluted and messed up in proper TV cop style)

So the cops are started to get a little stressed. This was a high profile robbery, and Captain Nails is already screaming at them about how the mayor wants this solved ASAP.

The crew get suspicious when they find out that even though this place had millions of dollars worth of jewelry, the security was pretty lax. Plus the bad guys seemed to know the layout super well. So they decide to check out who owns the place, thinking that they might be involved, or maybe it’s an insurance scam (which makes them way sharper than the Beverly Hills PD in the movie).

A little bit of research tells them that the owner of the store is a local businessman named Maxwell Dent (and of course when they Google him, the picture is him golfing with the mayor). However when they look into him, they find out that another detective has also been checking into Dent. So they call Lt. Andrew Bogart in Robbery Homicide to find out why (I had to change Bogemill to Bogart because Bogemill was just too distinctive). Only they can’t reach him.

Then later they get a call that Lt. Bogart is in the hospital in critical condition due to a shooting.

So some of our cops rush to the hospital, the rest rush to that new crime scene. The detective in charge of that case is Lt. Bolgeo (and anybody who has been to LibertyCon will know why).  Our players piece together that Bogart stopped to help someone broken down on the side of the road, got shot by a drive by, and then got shot by whoever he was trying to help. (and of course, he was found dramatically in the lawn sprinklers). They also find another letter with a B on it with another code.

Bogart has a rep as a good cop, but is a bit of a loose cannon. Some of our cops go to his house (and break in, just like the movie!). They discover that he’s been running an off the books investigation into Maxwell Dent, has an ad for a place called Club 385, and some good rolls notice that he’s got an odd red mud all over his jogging shoes that doesn’t match anything around where he lives.

Dunbar and Koslowsly decide to stake out Dent’s penthouse, but they bribe the doorman into telling them that he’s not home.

At this point McCandles, who isn’t dirty, but a little crooked, decides that the best way to break these codes is to leak them to the nerd community. He rolls a complication doing this, so even though the nerds figure it out eventually, this means that it also leaks to the press (who immediately call them the Alphabet Bandits) which causes Captain Nails to freak out, and he chews everyone’s ass.

It wouldn’t be a proper Gritty Cop show if there wasn’t a visit to a strip club, so late that night our people head over to Club 385. Of course, unlike Eddie Murphy, none of our people took Fast Talker, so they end up getting in through various ways. Charity just flirts her way through, but unfortunately for Jones, his redneck personality and anger management issues clashes with the bouncer, and we have our first fight. Jones ends up headbutting the poor sap and he walks right in.

It was funny, because later when Dunbar and Koslowsky show up, the poor bouncer has a bunch of tissues stuck up his bloody nose, and he just waves them in.

Half our team are made as cops, while the other 3 manage to actually look inconspicuous. The ones who are made get met by the manager, Chip Cain, a scuzzy little weasel of a man. (because of time, I removed the whole gun club angle, and just had the bad guys be employees of the fancy strip club). Cain denies knowing Bogart. When McCandles and Ivanov ask to see the security video to see if Bogart has been to the club, a complication means that they totally screw up the system and accidentally delete the footage.

Meanwhile, back in the club, the players note that Maxwell Dent is in the VIP lounge area (along with all the New York Yankees and other various sportsball players and rappers). So they try to discretely keep an eye on him. Unfortunately some of our guys are not subtle. As in, our cowboy cops manage to both complications, and they decided that meant they really screwed up. So one of them accidentally bumped into a waitress, who dropped and shattered the bottle of Pappy Van Winkle that she was bringing to Nick Searcy’s table (yes, he was in town filming a movie, I don’t know why, but that’s the only guy I know who drinks Pappy Van Winkle so it’s what I thought of at the time).

Knocking out a bouncer is one thing, but breaking a movie star’s bottle of Pappy was too much, and three of our cops got thrown out of the club.

However, the other three were able to stay discreet (McGowan by drinking half a dozen jello shots), and they’re able to see Dent have a meeting with a tall blonde woman who matches the description of one of the robbers. Koslowsky tails her outside, gets the license plate off her red BMW convertible, and they get an ID for Karla Fry.

I also made Karla Fry ex-Army with a dishonorable discharge, and she’s now a fitness model and MMA fighter. Why? Because I really wanted Red Sonya to kick the crap out of one of these guys at the finale. (and she would!)

Dunbar and Koslowsky decide to tail Dent back to his place, and stake it out. So I switched it up from the movie version, and this time the attempted murder/drive by happens to them while they are parked there. So at like 3:00 AM these two guys unmarked gets shot like a zillion times. Neither of them gets hit, but the engine is shot to hell and the bad guys are getting away.

So in Gritty Cop Show style, Dunbar asks to commander a vehicle. So I say the only thing available is a city garbage truck. 😀 So then we had a car chase with a garbage truck chasing down the drive by shooters. Dunbar hangs out the window and shoots the passenger dead and wounds the driver. At this point they’re smashing into parked cars knocking over parking meters. Then Koslowsky gets a good driving roll, and wants to know if he can use the lifter on the front of the garbage truck to flip the bad guys’ car. HELL YEAH! GRITTY COP SHOW!

So the bad guys car gets flipped into the river. McGowan and Jones have caught up now, so they dive into the river and dramatically swim after the sinking car. They get out the driver, but a failed first aid roll on dry land and he dies.

That morning, Captain Nails is super pissed. They’ve got dead perps, an angry rich businessman wanting to know why cops are punching out his employees and smashing movie star’s fancy booze, thousands of dollars in property damage, and a wrecked squad car. (in a salute to the original source material, Dunbar and Koslowsky’s replacement car is a shitty sky blue Chevy Nova)

But McCandles leaking the codes to the internet has paid off, and someone has figured out that there is some GPS data in there, and that address is the City Deposit Bank. That’s a C!  Our guys roll!

Now this next scene was nuts. Our guys try to force their way into the City Depository, but Jimmy the minimum wage gate guard is having none of that! And since he’s talking to McGowan and Jones, who are still covered in blood and smell like the East River, he thinks they are crazy people and sounds the silent alarm—which cuts short the robbers plans, forcing them to flee! So next thing they know an armored car bursts through the front gate.

Another car chase ensues! One car gets clipped. The Chevy Nova crashes into a taco truck! The armored car is just smashing into quite literally everything. Fire hydrants get knocked over and spray (sure, they don’t do that in real life, but GRITTY COP SHOW!)

Some good team work and tire shooting moments later, the armored car spins out of control, flips, and slides on its side through the front wall of a convenience store (the clerk ran for his life). Our guys drive up, lights and sirens, and they jump out FREEZE SCUMBAGS! I rolled for each of the bad guy’s stress, and two of them immediately threw their hands up and surrendered. However, the other two were all YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE PIGS and got it on! Gun fight ensues!

Now this next part is hilarious. Some of our cops are extremely good shooters, and they’re just dropping bad guys… Except Billy rolls a complication. So the driver, who is getting out with his hands up, yelling “I surrender!” gets shot right in the forehead. The other surrendering guy is crawling away as his buddies are getting plugged and spraying the neighborhood. And in the next round, three or four of our cops roll complications AT THE SAME TIME. That’s too glorious to miss, so the gas tank of the armored car gets hit (and bullets totally make gas tanks explode on TV). MASSIVE FIREBALL!

The 7-11 explodes. All the bad guys are blown up. Then burning money rains down from the sky.

Back at the bank, Nails is apoplectic. THE MAYOR HAS HIS ASS! HE WILL HAVE YOURS! (and because of the massive destruction, I had to move up Chip Cain getting offed as a patsy bit up to the bank robbery instead of the race track) so Chip Cain was found shot by a security guard, and of course the C letter is super easily solved, like ha ha, you’ll never figure out my brilliant scheme, hugs and kisses, Chip.

Of course, our guys are too smart (and now about half of them have figured out which movie plot this is) so they know that Maxwell Dent has set Chip up as the fall guy, and he’s going to flee with all the stolen money and then get the insurance money too. So while Nails is telling the press that the Alphabet Bandits have been stopped, our cops are going off the reservation.

Our guys break into Karla’s apartment, but she’s not there, and it looks like she’s leaving town. On her computer they find she’s going to Costa Rica. Also they discover that she’s got a bunch of betting receipts from Doniger Fields race track recently, like she’s been casing the place. IT STARTS WITH A D!

Ivanov has a couple points in Command (that’s why he’s the Lt.) and part of that is you get a couple of low stat beat cops to serve as your lackeys. The GCS random character generator gave him two female uniforms (Storm and Zealot) but Officer Zealot actually wound up with a 2 in Research which is pretty good. So she calls Ivanov to tell him that she’s been looking into Dent, and that his finances aren’t doing well, but his insurance is paid up on a few of his businesses, including the jewelry store and a race track.

And it just so happens that there is a big race today at the track! And I couldn’t remember what the race track was actually named in the movie, so I called it Doniger because I’ve been watching season 1 of the Expanse.

Our guys rush to the race track and enter, playing it cool and quiet. Most of them make their Undercover or Infiltration rolls and get in without being spotted, but Lt. Cosmo doesn’t, so Karla Fry spots him. She gets the drop on him and sticks a gun in his back, and tells him to keep walking. Charity is the only cop who sees this, and she breaks off to follow them.

Most of the cops rush to the money room, to find that it’s already been robbed, and the employees have been gagged and tied up. Then they realize that they are missing two of them, and rush back out.

Cosmo is in a bad spot. Crazy Karla has a gun in his spine and they are headed down the stairs to the parking lot. Charity tries to sneak up and hit Karla, but Karla spots her reflection in the window and hits Charity first. Cosmo goes for his gun, but Karla kicked him in the chest and he falls down the stairs (and I made them long stairs!)

Karla and Charity go hand to hand, but Karla is basically Rhonda Rousey and Charity’s perk is Nerd Stuff. 😀  Gun fire is exchanged and this causes everyone at the race track to panic stampede. But then Cosmo hits the bottom of the stairs, and shoots Karla. She’s wounded, and runs, vaulting over the turnstiles dramatically. But then the other cops have run out, and Koslowsky shoots her in the back. Karla goes down!

Billy manages to save her with first aid, and they question Karla in the parking lot.   Allow me to quote from Maureen’s notes here… “Interrogation (slight brutality involved)” 😀

Karla tells the crew that Dent is at his stables (and of course, there is the red mud from the jogging shoes).

A note here, at the beginning of this game I had to explain that in Gritty Cop Show certain things like law, physics, and geography don’t follow reality, they follow TV reality. So yes, there are horse pastures and oil derricks in front of a dramatic sundown right outside of a New York City race track. Run with it.

For our final scene, our cops roll up hot. There are a pile of bad guys there and a massive gun fight ensues.

There were only two complications this time… Things ended rather abruptly and unfortunately for a very expensive race horse.

Maxwell Dent fled into a nearby building, so Cosmo and McCandles gave chase.

One bad guy in particular (my random name generator said his name was Ray Murphy) was a BAD ASS, and this dude had hot dice. In Gritty Cop Show gunfights are fast and super lethal. So you both roll your gun dice, and then compare the two, the winner is whoever is higher, and the damage is the difference between the two. Plus I’d given him a shotgun so he was rolling three dice.

But on the bright side, if your cop has specified that they are wearing armor, when you get hit by a pistol or shotgun, you roll a d6, and evens mean you get hit in the vest, odds you get hit in the body and you’re taking all that damage.

Luckily for the THREE cops he beat, all of them got hit in the vest. Right before Ray Murphy could finish off Charity, he got his head blown off. But with hot dice like that, you totally know there’s more Murphy Brothers out there, and now they want revenge. Because Gritty Cop Show.

Back in the nearby building that Dent fled into (apparently it was a pigeon, chain, and slowly turning fan factory), Cosmo and McCandles squared off with the boss. He gets the jump on them, but Cosmo shoves his partner off to the side just as Dent fires but then the two Cobwoy Cops used their partnership perk to shoot him like twenty times. Riddled with bullets, Jurgen Prochow fell into a big industrial fan. SPLAT.

The loot is found. Most of the bad guys are dead.

However, remember in GCS, you get evidence points for all the clues you pick up along the way, and the goal is to put any of the remaining bad guys in jail. So they tallied up all their evidence points (and got a bonus because Dunbar and Koslowsky are Closers) then rolled a D12 (representing the jury) and added the two. It’s a slam dunk. Karla Fry goes to prison for robbery and shooting Lt. Bogart.

Then our brave cops went to Ox Knuckles for a drink.

This was a fun game. Everybody had a good time. We were in the regular con game room, so we had people coming up and listening in all night, but that still worked out really well.

People have been asking me about it, and yes, I do plan on kickstarting Gritty Cop Show once we get all the bugs worked out.

Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints by me and John Ringo is out now.

I just saw John this weekend at LibertyCon. The booksellers there got a few cases early, and we sold all of them.

This is the last book in the Memoirs trilogy and it’s my favorite of the three. I hope you guys enjoy it!

((Note from Jack: if you haven’t read it yet, avoid the comments here. People are dropping spoilers…))

Anybody can nominate books for the Dragon Awards. The deadline is July 20th. Just go here. It’s free an open to everyone.  http://application.dragoncon.org/dc_fan_awards_nominations.php

Don’t nominate me for anything though. Share the love. I’ve already got mine. Go nominate some other people. 🙂

The Dragon Awards are open to everybody, It doesn’t cost anything to participate. DragonCon wants as many fans as possible involved.

Also, if you are an author, don’t be afraid to promote yourself for the Dragon. They encourage authors spreading the word and getting their fans excited. There’s none of that fake civility nonsense where only some approved writers are allowed to flog their work, and everyone else is expected to sit quietly for their turn. That’s nonsense. If you are proud of your stuff, and you’ve got fans, tell them!

I went on the Tom Wood’s Show again, this time to talk about the political goofiness in the publishing and game industries.   https://player.fm/series/the-tom-woods-show-129947/ep-1181-against-sjwism-in-sci-fi-and-fantasy-larry-correia-returns

This Saturday we ran another play test of Gritty Cop Show, the role playing game.

If you want to see what Gritty Cop Show is, here is the recap of the first test game (where I stole the plot of Heat) : https://monsterhunternation.com/2018/01/19/gritty-cop-show-test-game-recap-1/

And the second (where I stole the plot of Paranoia) :  https://monsterhunternation.com/2018/01/22/gritty-cop-show-test-game-episode-2/

We made a few rules tweaks after those last two to improve and streamline the system a bit more. It has been several months since the last test games, but that’s what happens when you’re a busy writing books, one of your regular players gets deployed, and another ends up working every weekend.

So I invited over the regulars and then a couple of neighbors (one of whom used to play a lot of D&D, and the other who’d never played an RPG before), and this time I stole the plot of L.A. Confidential. Only since I wanted to test out character growth, we moved it to 2018 New York.

If you read episode #2, you’ll remember that Detective Jimmy Moore shot a professional hit man while he was in custody. IA couldn’t prove it, but when we pick up with this session, Moore has been demoted and been “riding the boat” (yes, I love the Wire). Detective Tank Middleton is still at Major Crimes.  Since Detective Quinn and McRidge couldn’t make this session, we decided that Quinn had gotten promoted, and McRidge had quit the force, bought their local cop bar (now renamed Ox Knuckles’) and married the super hot waitress (I rolled a 10 on a d10!).

Major Crimes was joined by two new detectives. Vimes (a practical law and order guy who came over from SWAT, his advantages were Ice Water Veins  and Arson, Murder, & Jay Walking. But his disadvantage was Got A Feeling That I Can’t Let Go. and Detective Stiles,who’d spent the last couple years under cover with the Irish mob, who had Brute Squad, Fast Talker, and the disadvantage Flinch.

Since there are partnership advantages, Tank and Moore are Good Cop/Bad Cop while Vimes and Stiles have Cowboy Cops. Because it ain’t a gritty cop show unless you’ve got your cool partnership dynamic.

And yes, I’ve got four pages of advantages and disadvantages based on every cop show trope I could think of. My favorites are Doughnut Run, Fists of Ham, and Good is Not Nice.  Each one has a mechanical bonus, and is also kind of a guide for the player how they should play their character.

I didn’t tell the guys what plot I’d stolen this time (I figured everybody has seen LA Confidential, and if you haven’t, you should, fantastic movie) but I kept all the NPC names the same. Only there was no Exley, Vincennes, or White because the PCs replaced them. Plus, since these are different characters entirely, I just skipped all the early scenes set up, and we opened up with the shotgun massacre at the Nite Owl Café.

2:00 AM Major Crimes gets a call. Six people have been shotgunned in the bathroom of the NIte Owl Café. Tank, Stiles, and Vimes arrive to find a mess. One of the victims is identified as Dick Stensland, former detective, forcibly retired for beating a suspect on Christmas and getting caught on video. And to bring Moore back in from his exile to the harbor, Stensland used to be Moore’s partner.

Remember, Major Crimes has a new Captain now because the old one got murdered by his Russian mail order bride. In this game the PCs pick what kind of unit they are in, so this time instead of Shit Detail they are a Black Sheep Squad, so their new Captain only cares about results, not reputation.  So the new Captain thinks there is no way Moore actually shot an Austrian hit man inside the station, and he knows one of the vics, so should be useful, and brings him back.

The PCs start investigating, and immediately the new guys flub some rolls and add some stress. (remember, in this game there is an escalating stress mechanic that leads to complications and eventually a Dramatic Blow Up). Once you’ve got some stress points, you start having the potential for dramatic screw ups. And when you roll a dramatic screw up, it’s on the players to decide what happens to them.

Some good forensics rolls and they start to piece together what happened. It was obvious Susan Leffarts (who looks a lot like Scarlett Johansson) was eating with Stensland. (there were two female vics, but one was the waitress, and there was lipstick on the glass across the table from where they found Stensland’s blood, and it matches Susan’s)

Vimes and Stiles head out to Long Island to the address on Susan’s ID. One thing about using existing cop show plots, the GM needs to be ready to roll with it whenever the PCs do stuff out of order. So as they are talking to Susan’s befuddled old mom, there is the scene where they smell something rotten and see she’s got a towel stuck against the bottom of the door. So Stiles ends up in the crawl space under the house where he finds the rotten corpse of Buzz Meeks, another former NYPD detective.

So the plot is now out of order, but that’s fine. The PCs just know there is a conspiracy a bit earlier is all.

At the same time (in Gritty Cop Show you totally split the party) the other two are going through Stensland’s stuff (he drives a really nice car for an ex-cop who didn’t even make his pension), and they find some mysterious business cards that Tank recognizes (steetwise) as coming from a high end prostitution ring.

The next morning at the briefing, Deputy Chief Dudley Smith (I described James Cromwell, but left off the accent and didn’t call anybody Boyo to keep them from realizing what movie this was yet) passed on the tip about the three men in the red Mercury (changed to crappy ’97 Sable).

A bunch of research and streetwise rolls (shaking down chop shops and drug dealers) led our PCs to three bad dudes who matched that description.  (I skipped the kidnapped girl bit and escape from the station bits because of time) and they arrive at the home of Sugar Collins, to find two detectives from Robbery Homicide, Brunig and Carlilse at the Mercury. Brunig swears that they saw these three sawed off shotguns on the back seat, but Vimes is really suspicious that they just planted them because what kinds of idiots would leave three murder weapons in plain view.  (congrats, you are more observant than Guy Pearce).

But Carlilse lies convincingly and says that the guns were actually hidden on the floor boards, and they just moved them to the seat so they’d have probable cause, now you want to let these scumbags get away or not?

Vimes is ticked, but the three bad guys are upstairs, so the PCs, along with Carlisle and Brunig, swoop in. Of course, a running gunfight ensues. Moore gets grazed in the arm and shot in the vest (dramatically) but the three dudes get shot. Stiles tackles a 4^th crack head who just happened to be there (Stiles has Flinch, so sucks with guns).  Of the three suspects, only one survives (eBay Fontaine, because I had to come up with street names on the spot for the other two dudes).

Moore is going to the hospital anyway, and since he and Tank have Good Cop/Bad Cop,  and Tank stuck most of his points into interrogation they ride in the ambulance with eBay. They grill him, but its pretty clear he’s a total scumbag criminal guilty of pretty much everything, but he doesn’t know a thing about the Nite Owl.

Meanwhile, Vimes and Stiles question the crack head (I was basically playing Tyrone Biggums, itching and all) who can alibi Sugar. (honest your honor, I couldn’t didn’t commit those murders because I was busy selling crack). So it’s a crappy alibi, but it’s an alibi.

But at the hospital, while Moore is getting stitched up, Deputy Chief Smith shows up with a pile of reporters to talk about the heroism of his officers for catching these killers so fast. Moore is back In Major Crimes, hailed as a hero, and everybody is calling him Shotgun Jimmy. (which I think is when this particular player realized what movie this was).

But the PCs know something is up. This smells like a frame job. They confide in their new captain (and since they took Black Sheep, he’s got their backs) so they keep investigating, but they are supposed to keep it on the down low.

The next day there’s a great scene between Moore and the IA detective who hates his guts and got him put on the boat, where he finds out how dirty Stensland and Meeks were. (this was when I got to sneak in Russell Crowe’s awesome line about a Big Rat in the basement). Of course, the IA still thinks Moore is dirty and wants to ruin him, because Gritty Cop Show reasons.

This is getting long, so I’d better condense. I introduced Sid Hudgens (I can’t do a very good Danny DeVito) who now runs a gossip blog called The Husher. More investigation leads the PCs to Lynn Bracken (and when I describe her as young Kim Bassinger, then they all knew which movie this was).  But when they stick Lynn into protective custody, this goes back to the Deputy Chief, and the next thing they know they’re getting yelled at by the DA. Stress is building. More and more complications are occurring.

Then Moore and Tank go out to Martha’s Vineyard to interview playboy Pierce Pratchett, who employed Stensland and Meeks as “drivers”. When he offers a thinly concealed bribe (he’ll give them $20k to moonlight as “security” at one of his “parties”) Moore flubs a roll, has one too many stress points DRAMATIC BLOW UP and breaks the millionaire’s nose. They get tossed out by security.

Meanwhile, Vimes and Stiles get the black mail photos of the DA from Danny DeVito, and go to confront the DA. They were smooth fast talkers, and didn’t even need to drown him in the toilet or dangle him from a window. He spills the beans on Dudley Smith.

(and because nobody ever went alone to talk to Smith, nobody got the Rolo Tomasi treatment)

When Vimes and Stiles realize just how high this goes, and that they put their one witness in protective custody (which is under Dudley Smith’s command, and he knows where every safe house is, and who is in it) they rush to where Lynn is being guarded by Nobs.

Oh yeah… Officer Nobs. Okay, so one of the things I wanted to test this game was random extra cop character generation. It’s designed so that you can create an extra NPC cop helper, fully statted out, in like 30 seconds (the system works fantastic). So the rookie cop who found the bodies at the Nite Owl had been assigned as Major Crimes gopher/helper. And he was the one guarding Lynn Bracken at the safe house.

Vimes and Stiles get there. Nobs and Kim Bassinger are missing. The lock has been picked. The (hidden) security cameras were all disabled.  They got Nobs! The bastards! They call Tank, who has just gotten back into the city.

With a witness and the rookie kidnapped, Moore and Tank decide to directly confront the two detectives who planted the shotguns (oh yeah, those matched the hulls at the scene).  Of course, this doesn’t go as planned.

So when they see Carlisle and Brunig in an alley, Carlisle immediately shoves down Tank all like “how dare you accuse me of being dirty!”.  Moore sucker punches Carlisle.  Who takes it, spits out a blob of blood, takes his coat and tie off, and hands his gun to his partner while telling Tank, “If either of us cheats, feel free to shoot us” See, these guys ain’t run of the mill mooks, I statted them all the way up with as many points as our PCs.  Alley fight!

Moore and Carlisle proceed to have a dramatic fist fight, which ends badly when our PC tries to smash the bad cop’s head into the car door, and instead ends of getting bounced across the hood. However, during this, Tank accuses Carlisle of kidnapping Nobs, and Carlilse is shocked. It’s one thing to frame scumbags who really need to get put in the ground anyway, but he obviously doesn’t know anything about kidnapping cops.

So a few hours later, instead of dispatch sending the heroes to the Victory Motel, it’s Carlisle giving them a tip. One thing about GMing is that when your PCs derail your plot, just roll with it. This guy is dirty, but he likes Nobs, and wasn’t down with that.

They can’t tell anybody, because it’ll just get back to Dudley Smith. So they gun up, armor up, and drive to New Jersey so we can have a big ass gun fight at the abandoned Victory Motel.

This happened in two waves. First was them trying to sneak in to rescue Kim Bassinger and Nobs, only most of these guys aren’t sneaky, so it turned into a big ass gun fight. Lots of drama happened. Stiles (who can’t shoot for crap) gets pinned down behind a car that’s getting riddled with bullets. Moore boots the door and spends two rounds shotgunning a bad guy in the vest. Tank dramatically saves his partner’s life by shooting a guy who came up behind him. And Vimes actually put a bunch of points in shooting, and asked for an AR-10. So he was pretty much just popping heads like grapes. (I made guns super lethal in this).

The hostages are saved. Tank takes Kim and Nobs out the back.

Only that’s when two more SUVs with lights and sirens come flying in. When Vimes looks at them through his scope, they aren’t from Jersey. They’re from the NYPD, which is a bad sign since they are dealing with an army of crooked cops.

Moore goes out to meet them. (a variation of the badge scene from the end of the movie, very fitting).  Only one SUV stops, and the other sweeps around the back toward where Tank is trying to get away. There’s a tense confrontation, but then the bad guy (Brunig) does a count down for Moore to turn over Kim Bassinger or else, only when he gets to one, Vimes (who is hiding in the trees) blows his head off.

(in the words of William Defoe) AND THERE WAS A GUN FIGHT!  Stiles gets shot again, and has a complication with his shotgun (kicks himself in the face with it, we decided it is a PGO). Moore ends up having a close contact hand to hand/John Wick moment with the driver of the SUV, and it ends up driving violently into the side of the hotel.

And in the back of the hotel, the other SUV opens fire on Tank. He takes one in the vest and goes down. But then Tank asks me if he can see the gas tank from there. I say yeah, but being a pedantic gun nut automatically say gas tanks don’t blow up when you shoot them in real life. But Tanks says this ain’t real life, this is GRITTY COP SHOW! Excellent point Rule of Cool always wins.

So Tanks rolls great, and Suburban goes up in a huge fireball. The bad guys even stumbled away, on fire, waving their arms, stunt man style.

Only Tank rolled a complication (and to illustrate how dramatic complications work) as Tank stands up, and Kim Bassinger runs to hold him, one of the on fire bad guys is still alive (play Karl music from Die Hard here! DUN DUNDUNDUN DUN DU!) and Tank sees him just as the bad guy is about to blow him away (and this is when I step in) BUT Rookie Officer Nobs suddenly fires a gun he picked up, and shoots the bad guy right between the eyes, saving Tank from certain doom!

Because Gritty Cop Show!

In the aftermath, now the PCs had to add up all the evidence they’d collected during the session, and I assigned points. Remember, the goal in GCS is to get as many evidence points as you can, and then roll a D12 and add them to it. You need to get at least a 12 total (representing the jury), or Dudley Smith, the DA, and Pierce Pratchett will walk.  They got a whopping 10 evidence points, and luckily managed not to roll a 1!  Boom. Convicted. Case closed.

And I almost forgot, one of my favorite dramatic complications during this session?  As they were driving back from Martha’s Vineyard, there was a call over the radio, the deadly hit man, Helmut Bookwalter, has escaped from prison! (he killed a guard with his TEETH). BOLO. Extremely armed and dangerous. Do not engage, hide and call SWAT. Better yet, call the National Guard.

Remember, Moore shot this psychopath in the stomach. He’s a bad dude. And when I say bad dude, I made up advantages and disadvantages for creating nemesis level bad guys, and his are called Plot Armor and Killing Machine. 😀  And the funny thing is, he never even showed up in the session. Just the threat of him being out there was enough to change the dynamic. I love dramatic complications. This is what happens when you watch a thousand hours of cop shows.

So that was our third test game of Gritty Cop show. The tweaks we made to the wound/health system worked good, but since none of our guys got incapacitated this time, I only had to test it on bad guys. Also the random NPC generator works great. It’s literally a few dice rolls, and they’ve got skills and a basic personality.