Welcome back as we continue a SPOILER HEAVY recap of Heart of Glass for Street Wolves. If you missed part 1, check it out here!
And a quick reminder that these sessions about two and a half hours long, so if you want to get a gauge on session count to hours there you go.
As a reminder, here are the characters:
- Doc a medic
- Crash a con artist (and stunt man)
- Hornet a driver
- Cobra a thief
Starting the Session
We opened up where we left off at 11pm on Friday night. The team had just discovered a dead body and a list a suspects in the closed down bowling alley in Keysville, Wisconsin. The Street Wolves decided to sleep on it and start checking the suspects the next day.
Saturday rolls around and the team split into two to cover more ground. Doc and Cobra started looking into local high school teacher Jonah Tate while Crash and Hornet went to visit local loser Tommy Olson to see if they could get a lead on his friend Sam Palmer who was on the suspect list and had left town some time ago.
Their plan was to meet back up to do a third thing: Investigate the support group that meets every Saturday that is run by Pastor Werther, who was also on the list of suspects.
Designer's Note 1: It's fun hearing how players make decisions. They picked Jonah as one of the first people to talk to because his last name matches the name of the big shot Donald Tate who is one of the lead Crusaders and a congressman. Jonah also didn't appear to be a Crusader, so it seemed like he might be a bit safer to talk to.
The Interviews
Doc and Cobra looked up Jonah Tate in the phone book, got his address, and headed to his place finding a split level home. He lives in the top floor with an older woman retiree living in the bottom apartment. They sat in their car and waited a few hours and after nobody but the neighbor (Ruthie) let her dogs out, so they decided to talk to Ruthie. Their cover story was that they were writing a book about the town's history.
What followed was a fairly long scene with the Wolves chatting with Ruthie. She informed them that Jonah was Donald Tate's brother and that Jonah had land "up north" that he went to almost every weekend and was likely there now. She was able to clarify a lot of things, but wasn't able to provide any red hot leads. At that point Doc and Cobra decided they needed to break into Jonah's place while he was gone and they hoped to later get some sort of distraction for Ruthie to leave her home.
Meanwhile Crash and Hornet visited Tommy Olson. They had previously had an altercation with him, but this time they took a different angle. They convinced Tommy that they were going to make a movie and they essentially love bombed him into joining the project, after all Tommy has movie star looks (he doesn't) and he's an amazing guitar player (he's not).
They got Tommy to reveal that his friend Sam Palmer had been busted by the cops back in '81, the horror movie that had been working on was taken from him, then later that same film showed up as evidence that a Satanic cult was killing people in the town. Crash then conned Tommy into loaning him his truck, since they needed an extra vehicle and Tommy was now a producer on the project and therefore obligated to lend them a hand.
Oh yeah and a scummy thing Crash did was mention that Tommy might still have a chance with his ex Gina, the waitress at the diner who left him because he's a huge loser. Yikes.
Designer's Note 2: These two scenes took up a good amount of table time, but the players seemed into it so I let them play out for awhile. Also, I never named Ruthie's schnauzers in the book, but on the spot gave them the names Peaches and Cream, so feel free to use that.
Designer's Note 3: This is the first time I've run this adventure where Sam Palmer's name wasn't crossed off on the list. I'm not sure why I had done it that before, but it really works, especially if you want the players to find out more about the movie situation.
Designer's Note 4: Sam Palmer was found a few years ago, dead and floating in the Hudson River and was registered as a John Doe. It is possible for the Street Wolves to find this out if they have any kind of law enforcement connections/background. This team did not so I didn't even bother hinting that they could potentially track down what happened to Sam in New York City.
The Support Group
After getting the team back together and doing some planning, they decided that Hornet and Cobra would go to the support group meeting as it might seem odd if all of them went in at once.
The support group played out pretty much as outlined in the book with people confessing to minor transgressions while Pastor Werther runs the show. As the meeting was wrapping up Cobra approached Paster Werther. Werther offered to give Cobra some one on one guidance, but she didn't learn anything that much from other than he's a fire and brimstone type of preacher.
Meanwhile Hornet spotted peanut butter cups on the snack table, raising his suspicions since peanut butter cup wrappers were found next to the body they discovered in the bowling alley. He also made a little headway with Nick and Angie, two local teens forced to attend the support group meetings.
They left the meeting with Paster Werther being their top suspect.
Designer's Note 5: The Support group mainly exists to introduce Players to the creepy preacher, give a bit of a red herring, acclimate them with the town's backwards views on sin and morality, and also have a couple of teens there that can provide more info. It also serves as a milestone moment for the Players to plan on doing when they start the investigation. Instead of having a list of nebulous leads, they have at least one thing they can hang there hat on as a certain event that will move the story forward.
Designer's Note 6: This is the first time I've run this where Werther invited a Street Wolf for one on one coaching sessions. The nature of Cobra's confession in group, that she drew a lewd photo, triggered me to think that Werther was going to creep on her. She def got a creep vibe and likely would have met with him later on. This would have been the opportunity to reveal Werther's drug addiction and the extent of his creepiness, but events played out where they may not bother with Werther going forward. I think it would have been a really fun scene, but once they broke into Jonah Tate's apartment they moved the focus of the investigation to him.
The Football Game
The whole team went to a local high school football game later that evening at 7:00 pm. After spotting Ruthie there, Doc and Cobra realized it was a good time to break into Jonah's apartment, as they were less likely to be heard tromping around by the downstairs neighbor. Crash and Hornet stayed at the game until they spotted the local cool teens hanging out in a nearby park. They had a bit of an in from Hornet's previous interaction with Nick and Angie and the teens revealed a couple of things. The first was that the school's principal and one of the school board members were having an affair. But the big reveal was that Jonah Tate, their science teacher, was a huge creep.
Designer's Note 7: High school football games don't happen on Saturdays and it's not really written in the text as something that happens, but I figured it would be a good event to shake things up after a lot of talking. They players could potentially run into other characters, talk to the teens, or even use it as a distraction to do things like break into Jonah's apartment. And they did!
Designer's Note 8: It was really fun to do the "Jonah's a creep" talk with the kids and we immediately cut to the two Street Wolves breaking into his apartment.
Jonah's Apartment
Cobra and Doc took their time investigating Jonah's digs. They were on the look out for anything suspicious and wow they found a treasure trove of clues including tons of peanut butter cups, weird writings in high school year books, a really suspicious photo album of Jonah hanging out with people at camp grounds and national parks, the address of his land up north, and a scrap book filled with news articles on missing people across the country.
And with their main suspect identified, the session was over. With it being the weekend and knowing that Jonah is at his land they decided that they wanted to make a trip up there to confront him. They have no clue how unprepared they are for this encounter with a serial killer…
Until next time!
Designer's Note 9: So far this is the first play through where players didn't go to the mental health facility where the only surviving member of the Keysville Three resides (the kids set up as serial killing Satanists). They're missing some key story elements, so I wonder how much they will have missed by the time this all wraps up.
I'm also wondering with them going to Jonah's if they think confronting him/putting him down is going to end the whole thing. There's still some evil people in charge of the town that could be busted for orchestrating the cover up and ruining innocent lives.