It has been a busy winter.

Writing Stuff:

The second Tom Stranger, A Murder of Manatees came out on Audible, once again narrated by Adam Baldwin. It has been doing fantastic, and the reviews are great. If you’ve not listened to these yet, you really should, because they are funny.

On the 1^st I finished the rough draft of House of Assassins (the series is called Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, this is #2 sequel to Son of the Black Sword) and sent that off to Reader Force Alpha.

I think it came out awesome. I love this series. Ashok is one of my favorite characters.

When I finish a rough draft, I usually step away from it for a month. Then I go back, read the comments from my alpha readers, and hit the manuscript again with fresh eyes. I’ve found that by taking that break, my edits are a lot smoother (if you are too close to a manuscript it is easy to miss thing). Once I edit it again, I’ll send it off to Baen, and that’s novel #19 in the bag.

Up next, I’ll be working on Monster Hunter Guardian. This one is another collaboration, this time with awesome author Sarah Hoyt, only unlike the Ringo novels which are a separate story, MHG takes place in the regular timeline (it actually overlaps with the events in Monster Hunter Siege) from the PoV of Julie Shackleford. I’ll be going over what Sarah has already done, filling stuff in, and then kicking it back to her.

Also over the next couple of months, I’ll be doing a story, and serving as one of the editors for a new anthology from Baen. I don’t think I can announce it yet, because I don’t think we’ve gotten contracts from all the authors yet. But it is going to be awesome. We’ve got some huge names and a really fun subject.

After I get done with Guardian, the plan is to go right back into the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, with the 3^rd book, Destroyer of Worlds.

I’ve also got two collaborations (other than MHG) proceeding in 2018. One is the Trench Fantasy with Steve Diamond, the other is the Space Opera with John D. Brown. They’re both excellent writers, and I’m super pumped. Both of these will be coming out from Baen.

Next solo work in the queue, after Destroyer of Worlds… this will depend because I’m not a muse writer, I’m a talk with my publisher, and figure out what makes the most logistical and financial sense writer. But I’d like to start the 2^nd Grimnoir trilogy. Though it may be the next solo Owen MHI novel. I’ll have to see.

Not to mention I’ve still got some stand alones that I need to work in there.

There is going to be a second Monster Hunter Files anthology, this time made of five novellas. But some of those authors are super busy, so I’m letting them catch up with life before I bug them. I’m not exactly lacking for stuff to keep me busy in the meantime.

It’s kind of crazy. The other day the Facebook Memory thing brought up a post of mine from 8 years ago. It was about how my second novel, Monster Hunter Vendetta, had just gotten listed on Amazon, and would be coming out in six months… So it was only eight years ago that I was talking about my 2^nd, and up above I’m talking about sending off #19, and working on #20. It sure has been busy.

EDIT: forgot, Monster Hunter Memoirs, Saints, by me and John Ringo, will be out July 3rd.

Appearances:

I will be at LTUE in Provo in a couple weeks. I’m on a whole bunch of panels. If you are a writer, I heartily recommend this event. It’s not really a con, and there’s not a bunch of fandom stuff. It’s all just writing for writers.

This year I’m going to be at LibertyCon, Origins, GenCon (but just as vendor/gamer/regular dude rather than a guest) Salt Lake ComicCon (or whatever it’s called now after San Diego’s petty bitchfest lawsuit) and I’m probably forgetting some other ones.

I’m drastically trying to cut down the number of conventions I attend. For the last few years the number of cons and business trips has been in the teens, and between that about 2-3 weeks of book tour, like 15-20% of my year was sleeping in hotel beds. Screw that noise. I’m getting old.

Other Stuff:

The MHI Savage Worlds Roleplaying Game is moving along. I’ve been approving artwork (it is awesome) and I was just sent the draft of the text from Steve Long to review. I believe everything is still on schedule.

I know you guys all want me to publish Gritty Cop Show. I’m amenable to the idea, but we’re still play testing it.

I’ve got another game related project for 2019 that is in the early planning stages right now. It is going to be really fun. We’re going over contracts now, but I should be able to announce something in a couple months.

The Grimnoir special limited edition leather bounds are coming along. I just need to provide an intro and interview for Spellbound and Warbound. They’ve been waiting for me. So that delay is my fault, don’t get grumpy at Vault.

The MHI logo bullets are still available, and Jack has added some new swag to the store. (the link to that is under the Buy Stuff tab above)

Many of you know I’ve been a regular on the last two seasons of Joe Mantegna’s Gun Stories on the Outdoor Channel. Well, it has the same producer as Shooting Gallery, so there is going to be an entire episode coming up where it is me shooting the thousand yard class at Blue Steel Ranch. I don’t know the air date yet, but it’ll be in the next few months.

And finally, I got some exciting news on the TV show front, but I can’t really talk about it much. Hollywood is weird. Like I’ll sell options, and then go years without hearing anything, and then all of a sudden I’ll hear something really awesome. And then I go back to waiting. In this case, a really super big name, A list, person has signed onto the project. So fingers crossed. I don’t fret about it, and I don’t chase Hollywood. If it happens, it happens. It’s out of my control. In the meantime I’m just going to keep writing books and cashing their option checks.

Yard Moose Mountain:

2017 was the Year of Getting Permits. Like seriously, that was our hobby. Knowing what they do now, land developers earn their money. Winter was actually really mild here, so it is looking like we will be able to get an early start on excavation and road work.

Our well struck water, 285 feet, 20 gallons a minute. Which considering how high up we are over the valley floor, that’s like winning the friggin’ lottery. If you need a well dug in this area, contact Oliver Drilling. He is amazing to work with.

We put in a dirt road last year. Snow and run off mud showed us all the weak spots. We’re going to be changing a few things before we can bring in trucks and equipment for digging the basement. Once that’s done, we’ll gravel the trouble spots enough to get started (the drill rig ended up going down part of the hill sideways after a rainstorm). If you think that sounds like a lot of work, keep in mind this thing ain’t a normal driveway. It’s half a mile, up hill. By the time we’re done this thing is going to need something like a thousand tons of gravel.

I don’t want to say too much specific about the house itself, but it’s going to be one hell of a big project. So we’re going to be working on this for a long time.

Tom Stranger 2 is available now!

When superstar Wendell T. Manatee is kidnapped, luckily he is insured by Stranger & Stranger. Can Tom and his team of elite Junior Associates get the iconic manatee back in time, or will his people rise up to destroy the multiverse with a MURDER OF MANATEES!

https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/A-Murder-of-Manatees-Audiobook/B077K4XXKV?ref=a_a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=7TZ6Z0HQ232XAEX3ECPT&

If you’ve not listened to Tom Stranger 1, you should grab that. Trust me. This is the goofiest, silliest, action sci-fi story about an interdimensional insurance agent ever written. And Adam Baldwin is hilarious. The man is a fantastic narrator.

January 22nd, 2018, Florida.

Vast crowds of manatees are lining up in preparation for tomorrow’s Audible release of A Murder of Manatees, starring Interdimensional Insurance Agent Tom Stranger, narrated by former President of the United States, Adam Baldwin, and written by some minor author.

There is a festive mood among the manatees camped out in line. Record crowds are expected at theaters across Florida’s waterways. A Murder of Manatees is expected to break all box office records among aquatic mammals.

In the foreign market, humans and other land mammals will be able to download A Murder of Manatees from Audible.com tomorrow, but it is available for preorder now at this link: https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/A-Murder-of-Manatees-Audiobook/B077K4XXKV?ref=a_a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=7TZ6Z0HQ232XAEX3ECPT&

“Flooooooo” Cynthia P. Manatee replied when our reporter asked about how excited she and her children were to see A Murder of Manatees on the big screen. “Mooo,” explaining how this would surely make up for the let down she experienced after camping out for The Last Jedi, a sentiment shared by many manatees, and backed up TLJ’s dismal performance at the underwater box office.

Many manatees were dressed in festive costumes, cosplaying as their favorite characters from the Tom Stranger series.

Saturday night I ran the 2^nd play test game of for the Gritty Cop Show: The Role Playing Game (see the last post for the recap of the 1^st one using my kids as the cops and the plot of Heat for more explanation). This game was with most of my regular Writer Nerd Game Night crew and just two of my kids (2.1 and 2.3).

This time I wanted to try a little more murder mystery/conspiracy style plot, so I borrowed the basic plot from the British cop drama, Paranoid on Netflix. So you might want to skip this post if you are planning on watching it, because I’ll be spoiling the heck out of it.

I had three extremely experienced gamers and two kids. They all liked the simple, drama based, rule set, with the escalating stress mechanic (that adds plot complications) and the Dramatic Blow Up systems, for when their cop has been PUSHED OVER THE EDGE!

I’ll be making some tweaks to the combat system before the next game. I’m trying to keep that really fast, simple, and story based, as opposed to crunchy/mathy. Plus our player who actually defuses bombs for a living came up with a couple of supplemental rules so we can try Gritty Cop Show: BOMB SQUAD.

Part of GCS is that the players partner up and get a partnership perk, and then they all together decide what kind of unit they are in, and that comes with a bonus/penalty, and determines the personality of their commanding officer. These guys picked Cruel and Unusual Punishment, which meant that their captain was a total douchebag who’d throw them under the bus in a heartbeat, but they got some individual perks to make up for it.

That meant whenever I was playing their boss, I got to be a loud, angry, yelling, jerk, who passed the buck, yet claimed all the glory. It was awesome.

We wound up with Detective Quinn, who was the by the book cop (2.1 playing her same character as last time) her new partner McRidge (2.3) who was a big dumb guy who just came over from SWAT, Jean LeDou a naturalized citizen from Quebec and former RCMP, “Tank” Middleton (think Andre Baumgartner’s character from Homicide), and Jimmy Moore, former US Marshall who is one bad day from turning into Michael Chiklis in the Shield.

In true Gritty Cop Show fashion, we opened with Sergeant Quinn coming back to duty at Major Crimes after being on mandatory leave because of the death of her partner at the hands of Val Kilmer (though she did gain some Street Cred points for taking down Robert DeNiro).

They caught a case, a random fatal stabbing in Central Park (oh yeah, we’re NYPD now, run with it), and since this was a mom/doctor/upstanding citizen just minding her own business pushing her kid on the swings, and it got caught on camera phones and had already been put on YouTube, it was going to be all over the news, so Captain Nails ordered his gang of scrubs to close it fast or the mayor would HAVE THEIR ASS!

We played from 6 PM to 1 AM, so I’m going to condense this down big time and just hit the high lights. What appeared to be a really straight forward random killing by a dude on a psychotic break, turned out to be a massive conspiracy.

The crew gathered evidence, talked to witnesses, notified the next of kin (seriously, it turns out my kids are incredibly ham fisted at that. It was actually painful to watch). Then a guy who lived six blocks away, who matched the description really well, with a history of mental problems and psychotic breaks, fell from his 10^th floor balcony. It looked like a suicide. And when they searched his place, they found a knife set that matched the murder weapon perfectly.

Open and shut case. Captain Nails was actually happy for once. Briefly.

Only the crew discovered that the doctor’s office had been broken into. Then they discovered that her ex-boyfriend had apparently done a bunch of drugs and drank a bottle of tequila before going swimming and drowned in his own pool with no witnesses the night before. Plus to make it really suspicious, they get an anonymous tip telling them YOU GOT THE WRONG MAN. LOOK INTO HER PAST.

And then everything went sideways.

It turns out the stabbed doctor used to work in R&D for a multinational pharmaceutical company… And her drowned ex-boyfriend still worked there. The next thing our gritty cops know, they’re neck deep in a giant conspiracy.

As the night went on, they kept finding more clues, and shaking down more leads. It turns out there is an exceedingly skilled professional working against them, and he’s looking for some evidence that the doctor left behind (she typed it on an old typewriter because she was worried about her computer getting hacked). There are more break ins, and it became a race between the cops and the mystery man to find the missing pages.

Meanwhile the drug company has a Director of External Affairs, who is a basically a very highly paid, slick, corporate clean-up man, (former FBI agent) who is officially cooperative, but behind the scenes trying to derail the investigation.

One of the cool things about this system is that it isn’t like a regular RPG where you NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY. This, I have them on the clock, so the party splits constantly, and the partners go different ways to track down different leads and work different angles. We just switch back and forth between them, timed for the best dramatic reveals. It makes it fun to plan because you never know which bunch is going to tackle which lead and also some tense phone calls like HE’S WEST BOUND ON THE EXPRESS WAY! CUT HIM OFF!

One of my goals was to add a Stress Point mechanic to emulate how cop shows always start kind of calm, but then things get more and more tense, and there’s escalating screw ups and complications happening, until at the end it is all intense freak outs and dramatic blow ups.

That part worked perfect. And as the case gets more complicated, the cops are getting more and more stressed out, and more bad things start happening. Plus you can add stress on purpose to get bonus dice for important rolls (like gun fights!). But that also increases the chance of more screw ups.

Long story short, our cops figure out where the pages are (she mailed them to a PO Box she rented), but they get there right after the bad guy. So it turned into a big car chase (with him lighting the pages on fire and tossing them out the window along the way). But then they eventually catch this dude, who has a suppressed pistol, a pile of cash, and passports and credit cards under three names. So they’re dealing with a pro hitter. (finger prints come back he’s an Austrian who has been off the grid for years, named Helmut Bookwalter)

And Helmut ain’t talking… Until all the law abiding cops aren’t there, and Moore–who has a perk called Not Dirty But A Little Crooked (thank you Luther)–ends up SHOOTING the bad guy with his own suppressed gun WHILE HE IS IN CUSTODY. (needless to say, he quickly spilled everything he knew so Moore would call for medical help). Then Moore came up with a BS story about how the dangerous hit man jumped him, and they wrestled for the evidence gun and it “just went off”.  (like really, way to go evidence tech, stick it in the baggie loaded why don’t’cha)

I then based the Internal Affairs detective who showed up on Steve, one of our regular players who couldn’t make it that night. Moore is boned… Except oddly enough the Austrian hit man corroborates Moore’s story… Because as a GM I really want this scary bastard to break out of prison next time we play and come back to revenge murder Moore.

Lots of crazy stuff happens after that.

While researching some of the names they found on the partially burned evidence, Tank rolled a Complication, which meant something dramatic had to screw him up… Well, one of the names on the partially charred page was from an old case where a bus driver seemed to just lose it for no reason, and drove his school bus full of kids off a bridge, but they found nothing suspicious about the guy, and his tox screen came back clean, so they decided there wasn’t anything suspicious and declared it an accident… But because of the complication, we decided that had been Tank’s case. HE was the detective who’d declared it just an accident. But now we’re involved in this conspiracy with international hitmen, and there’s this bus driver’s name again.

HE LOOKED THE PARENTS OF THOSE DEAD KIDS IN THE EYEs AND ASSURED THEM IT WAS AN ACCIDENT… Which means Tank screwed up before and now he has to live with that guilt.

That is so gritty cop show!

Another complication, this time for “Frenchy” LaDou. When they flubbed a surveillance roll against the pharma company exec, we decided the dramatic reason was because he got a call from his wife, asking why she just found a bag with $20,000 in cash inside their freezer beneath the fish sticks… And of course, a few minutes later IA turns up at LaDou’s house because they got an anonymous tip he’s on the take!

SET UP! We’ve got tropes for days!

Back to the wounded Austrian hitman, McRidge is guarding him at the hospital, when all of a sudden a car load of low rent scumbags roll up, because they’ve been paid to go inside and silence the witness. McRidge ends up in a gun fight, pops two of them with a Mossberg 500 (dramatic slow motion shotgun pump!) and saves the hitman (he gets dramatically grazed in the process). The other two bad guys get shot by the rest of the crew while they’re fleeing the scene.

When they question the surviving thug (also based on Steve, ironically enough), it turns out he got paid off by this scary South African guy who just arrived in town. With one pro hitter out of the way, the conspiracy brought in a replacement killer. He paid the thugs half up front, and they’ll get the other half when he sees on the news that the Austrian was killed at the hospital.

So Quinn lies to a reporter, so they run a report that the hitman got murdered, and then go stake out the spot where the new hitter is supposed to pay the thugs the rest of the money. Of course, I made that a night club. Because strobe lights and rave music.

And a complication (I love that rule) on an Under Cover roll at the club, Tank gets spotted, and the next thing he knows he’s got this scary African dude standing right behind him, polite as can be saying in his ear, “Cooperate or I will kill you. Tell your friends we are walking out of here nice and slow.” It was super tense.

“What is your name, officer?”

“Tank.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Tank. I am Jonathan. Do as I say and I will not sever your spinal cord.”

It was very a very Gritty Cop Show moment. With them all talking into the radio to poor Tank’s ear piece, doing a 3,2,1, count down to a distraction… So obviously that turned into a gun fight, then a foot chase through the alleys, and finally a fist fight (Moore got knifed, but he knocked the African out).

The cops end up cutting a deal with the replacement killer (Former police detective in Johannesburg, who became a “security consultant”, and he’s also into black magic and skinning people… seriously, I ended up loving this character and wanted him to get away so he could come back and cause trouble in the future). So he rats out some of his collaborators, and calls his employer to tell him that he’s been made and has to flee the country, but one of the collaborators is going to talk to the cops, so if you want to stay out of prison you’ll need to remedy that ASAP. (which didn’t give the big bad guy a chance to hire more pros to do it for him)

I didn’t even talk about the poor sucker they set up. He was the psychiatrist that helped the bad guys find a perfect patsy to toss off a balcony. Tank had a dramatic blow up interviewing him earlier, had threatened to beat the truth out of him, and was going to get sued by the shrink for harassment. So good thing he turned out to be guilty!

So the cops hid in the shrink’s house, waiting for the main bad guy to tie up his last loose end. A gun fight ensues. The clean-up man flees through back yards (but bad guys can burn stress for extra dice and roll complications too… and complication) so he ended up being attacked by someone’s dog. They bust the former FBI man with a labradoodle biting his ankle.

So by the end of the night (5 long days in game time) they’d exposed a four year old conspiracy to cover up an experimental drug trial that had gone horribly wrong (it was an anti-depressant. Side effects may include getting you to drive your school bus off a bridge, or setting fire to their houses while you are inside of it). We tallied up all their evidence points, and they had 9. So they had to roll at least a 3 on a D12 to convince the jury (I love that mechanic). They rolled a six. GUILTY!  And in exchange for leniency on his sentence, the clean-up guy spilled the beans on everybody else on the board of directors who knew, and he’d even kept some of the discontinued experimental drug to use as leverage.

Sure… Everyone’s 401k took a hit, and like 5,000 people got laid off in the ensuing corporate melt down, but all those school bus kids finally got justice.

We did a ton more than what I wrote about. There were cover ups, chases, interrogations, fights between cops (I know you shot that hitman with his own gun, Moore! HE KILLED THREE PEOPLE IN MY CITY, LEDOU!). There was also awkward flirting with a judge (who we decided looked like Jeff Sessions) in order to get a warrant, a very stoned post office employee, and me doing a terrible accent as Paco the Sicarrio.

Of course at the end Captain Nails took all the credit, got an award for valor, and a promotion out of Major Crimes. We decided that he died later that year because his Russian mail order bride had been putting anti-freeze in his morning coffee for months.

I’m going to be tweaking a few of the rules based on this play test, and will probably be running this again next week.

As many of my regular readers know, I’m a gamer nerd. I really enjoy tabletop role playing games. As a writer I find that they help me recharge my creative batteries. And if you’ve got a good bunch of players, it’s kind of like improvisational collaborative novel writing on the fly.

I’ve got a good game group, they’re mostly a bunch of writers. (If you want to see some really good Legend of the Five Rings fan fiction while we were learning to be pro writers, type The Drowning Empire or The Burning Throne into the search engine here and get ready for a novel worth of reading). But my other game group consists of me and my kids. Who are actually really hard core RPGers, because I got them all started at a young age. Family tradition, News Years Eve I run a special one off game for the kids.

I’m also a sucker for crime dramas. Procedurals, murder mysteries, heists, serial killers, etc. That’s what I binge stream in the background while I paint. I don’t really watch sci-fi or fantasy because that’s too close to what I do all day, so my brain starts to edit it or critique the writing, and that’s no fun. Basically I watch a lot of cop shows.

So one day I got on a kick and decided to homebrew an RPG based entirely on gritty cop shows, and that name kind of stuck.

I made up some simple rules, where everything is based on the standard tropes of TV cop dramas. There’s Action Scenes and Investigation Scenes. It’s designed to be cheesy. It’s like Luther, Bosch, Longmire, Blue Bloods, or Justified had a baby with D&D. There’s no magic, but you can take skills like Cut The Red Wire or I’m Too Old For This Shit. And there aren’t any curses, but there are disadvantages like Punchable Face or Fists of Ham.

There is a chance for dramatic complications with every roll (and the players have to come up with what the screw up is). Of course, it wouldn’t be a gritty cop show if your character didn’t get increasingly stressed until he has a Dramatic Blow Up. (seriously, think of every cop show ever. This is mandatory!)

And the best part for the GM, plots are easy to make up. Take any cop show plot, and replace the movie cops with your players and turn them loose. Boom. Done.

On New Year’s I ran the first test game of Gritty Cop show. Because my kids had not seen the classic movie Heat, I used it. Only instead of Al Pacino, they were led by smooth talking Detective Quinn (played by Correia 2.1), crime scene expert Detective Bishop (played by 2.2), former undercover cop Smirnoff (played by 2.3 who insisted he use a Russian accent and wear a track suit), and SWAT officer Cole (played by 2.4, who is the youngest and didn’t really know what was going on, but he’d wander off until it was time to roll dice during the action scenes and that made him really happy).

Shockingly enough, even though they range in age from high school senior to kindergartner, my kids all made way better detectives than Al Pacino.

I explained to them the goal wasn’t to just pop the bad guys and loot their corpses for treasure (2.4 who usually plays an orc barbarian was very disappointed) but rather to gather evidence so they could put the bad guys away. The goal was to get 12 evidence points. Why 12? Because at the end, I would roll a D12 to represent the jury members. D12 plus however many evidence points you gathered, greater than 12, you convinced them all and got a conviction. Less than 12, someone has reasonable doubt, and the bad guy gets off.

So we opened with them reconstructing the tow truck ramming of the armored car. And since I know most my readers have good taste, and have thus memorized Heat, you know this is where Waingrow had to Get It On and started shooting guards. So my kids used their detective skills to recreate the crime scene, look for clues, and interview witnesses.

And strangely enough, they were shockingly thorough. I’ve attached the picture of some of the notes 2.2 took during this case. Nothing gets past that kid.

 

They started following the leads. Where did they get the tow truck? Where did they get the explosives? Where is the get-away car? What did they take from the armored car? Where did they get an ambulance to block the road? “I want to check the tow truck for hair or DNA!” “I want to use my two points in Streetwise to interview the local hobos!” “There aren’t any hobos here.” “DAD THERE ARE ALWAYS HOBOS!”

So on and so forth. They were so thorough I had to start making up a bunch of crap. Thankfully the IMDB page for Heat has a very in depth synopsis.

Next thing I know, my kids are off shaking down their local CIs asking about armed robbery crews operating in town, and interviewing hookers. And this idea came from my kids, because they’d watched enough cop shows to know that you always interview the hookers!

They went and harassed William Fitchner demanding to know who would know about his bearer bonds. And yes, though he looks slimy in this photo, you just know he’s in on it, you can’t just violate his civil liberties by shaking down the victim of a robbery. WHATEVER CAPTAIN-DAD YOU DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! And I’m all like one more stunt like that and I’ll have your badge! So at this point this is really shaking out like an actual gritty cop show.

I had pictures of all the characters (thanks IMDB). Pretty soon they were getting descriptions of Robert DeNiro and Val Kilmer. But the big break came when Benny the Snitch (here’s a picture of Henry Rollins. HE LOOKS SHIFTY DAD. Yeah, no kidding, let me play you some Black Flag) gave them some info on Waingrow.

Then there was the incident where Waingrow almost wound up in the trunk, and my kids were hot on the trail. Only unlike Pacino, there was nothing sentimental here. They were going to put these punks in jail OR IN THE GROUND.

It turned out the whole interview the hooker angle was smart, because if you remember the movie, Waingrow was a serial killer. So the hookers rat out Waingrow, and they go to pick him up at this sleazy hotel. They jump him, but it turns into a big fist fight and a chase. 2.1 and 2.3 basically get the crap beat out of them in the process, but they arrest their scumbag.

And then they grill him. I added Partnership Perks (it wouldn’t be a cop show without partnership perks) and 2.2 and 2.4 took Good Cop/Bad Cop. And since 2.4 is a 6 year old who usually plays an orc barbarian, this part was actually hilarious. Waingrow agreed to flip on his old crew (who wanted to cap him anyway) BUT he wanted immunity for killing the guard, and would plead down to manslaughter.  (2.2, pretty pretty princess cheerleader then surprises her father by taking this deal, and saying, don’t worry, a psycho like that won’t last long in prison once I spread the word he likes to hurt little kids… And I’m like, damn girl… You learn a lot about your kids by playing RPGs with them).

Waingrow knows where Cherito lives. (it made sense at the time). So my kids down Tom Sizemore and put a tail on him. (which ends badly when 2.2 ended up getting mistaken for a prowler by Tom Sizemore’s next door neighbor, who for whatever reason, turned out to be an obese lady named Brenda, who hit 2.2 with a beer bottle). Sizemore is in the wind!

But they still know this crew is up to something big.

Then, just like in the real movie, I deliver up the famous bank robbery scene with a conveniently timed phone call from Benny the Snitch as it is going down.

At this point, I put the super climatic bank robbery scene on in the background, with that really cool soundtrack (dun dun dun de de de dun dun dun) and DeNiro’s whole We Are Here For The Bank’s Money Not Your Money bit, and my kids are like HOLY CRAP WE HAVE BEEN PLAYING IN THAT MOVIE THAT HAS DAD’S FAVORITE GUNFIGHT (and they’ve all stopped to watch that gun fight with me several times over the years) GET TO THE BANK! and they bolted out of there like the cops did in the movie.

But then 2.2, with 2.4 in the passenger seat, flubbed her Driving skill roll and DRAMATIC COMPLICATION crashed her police car into a garbage truck on the way to the bank. So our best shooter is going to get to the bank one round late.

2.3 arrives first, and spots the getaway car (with Dennis Haysbert behind the wheel, who I describe as “picture a younger version of the All State Guy”). So being all stealthy and undercover, Smirnoff decides to walk past the car, and stick his knife into one of the tires. I say go for it. He rolls beautifully and I let him pull it off. The tire is leaking. Why not? The kid is thinking outside of the box.

2.1 rolls up, and since she put a couple of points in Command, she gets a bunch of uniform cops to arrive with her. They’re trying to play it cool, just like in the movie. They don’t want the bad guys to take hostages.

But then I stop the movie at the exact instant that Val Kilmer walks out, spots the cops, and opens fire. HA HA HA IT IS ON NOW!

And since this is Gritty Cop Show, I made the combat rules super brutal. In this game, bullets MESS YOU UP.

And Val Kilmer spotted poor Detective Smirnoff as he was walking past the getaway car. That track suit isn’t too low key here.

It’s on like Donkey Kong now!  (and there is no initiative order in Gritty Cop Show, everybody says what they intend to do, and then it all goes down at once. Then you sort out what happened based on the results and what makes for the most dramatic scene. Repeat until it’s over. Combat goes really fast that way)

2.3 gets hit by Val Kilmer, and dives for cover. 2.1 engages the perps and wings Val Kilmer. Tom Sizemore shoots at poor injured Smirnoff as well, as Robert DeNiro runs out of the bank.

Round Two! But then 2.2 rolls up in her damaged car and bails out with her MP5. (in real life her favorite gun is a CZ Evo, so I figured an MP5 was LAPD appropriate). She hits Dennis Haysbert in the face as he pulls away.

Unlike Pacino’s cops, my kids actually dropped a bunch of their points into Shooting. And 2.4, being our barbarian, well, we helped him out and put all his points into shooting, face punching, and general manliness. He’s basically Ultimate Action Guy. It’s like a cop played by 1980’s Arnold Schwarzenegger just wandered into our Michael Mann movie, flexed his massive biceps, and opened fire.

2.4 asked for a machinegun, so I gave him an M16 (old school A1 complete with carry handle, because this is a Michael Mann film, it demands gun accuracy), and he yells I SHOOT THE BAD GUYS! Which bad guys? ALL THE BAD GUYS! And then he rolls his fist full of dice, and it’s like a pile of sixes, so we decided that he hosed Dennis Haysbert and Tom Sizemore in the car. Windows shatter. Tom Sizemore opens the door and falls into the street, riddled with holes!  It’s like Saving Private Ryan all over again! (my kids stare at me blankly).

Robert DeNiro and Val Kilmer make a run for it, but my kids aren’t having none of that! Val Kilmer catches a couple of rounds from the MP5, and then 2.4 wrecks his face. Sorry Ashley Judd, your husband ain’t pretty no more.

And then the whole final airport scene goes right out the window, because before Robert DeNiro can steal a car, 2.1 foot chases him down, and nails him with her pistol. (she even declared I MOZAMBIQUE HIS ASS!) Sixes.  DeNiro is down! DeNiro is down!

Action Scene over its time for everyone who got incapacitated to roll on the incapacitation table Which I made funny, with injuries ranging from Just a Boo Boo, to Walk it Off, to mandatory retirement (we got you this nice watch) all the way up to death. 2.3 got plugged with two rounds of .223 from Val Kilmer’s Colt Commando, but looking at the numbers, as long as he rolls anything other than a 20 on a D20, he’ll pull through. He rolls a 20.

So 2.2 has points in first aid. She valiantly tries to save Smirnoff. Of course, she rolls a 1. SMIRNOFF NO! And he dies in her arms. KILLED IN THE STREETZ.  (I started playing Taps. It was very tragic).

Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, and Dennis Haysbert were dead at the scene. (seriously, 2.4 did a mag dump on Sizemore, he would have needed to roll like a negative four on the table to no die). However, Robert DeNiro survived (we decided 2.1’s head shot hit him in the teeth).

So we totaled up all their evidence points. They had accumulated 9. And then the ghost of Smirnoff rolled like an 8 on behalf of the team. That puts it over 12. Guilty! Bang the gavel. Court dismissed. And Robert DeNiro, who said he’d never go back, gets life without parole. DON’T HAVE NOTHING YOU CAN’T WALK AWAY FROM IN LESS THAN THIRTY SECONDS WHEN YOU FEEL THE HEAT ON? I DON’T THINK SO. GO TO JAIL SCUMBAG!

That was our first test run of Gritty Cop Show.  I need to make a few rules tweaks, but it has got potential.

Tomorrow night (assuming we don’t have a blizzard) I’ll be doing another test run for my regular game night guys. Because they’ve watched more movies, I picked a lesser known British cop show to steal the plot from. Only I moved it to an American city, so our gritty detectives can actually carry guns.