Heart of Glass Recap Part 7

Wow, we're finally to the end of Heart of Glass! The following is a SPOILER HEAVY recap of Heart of Glass for Street Wolves. If you missed part 1, check it out here!

As a reminder, here are the characters:

• Doc a medic
• Crash a con artist (and stunt man)
• Hornet a driver
• Cobra a thief

The Final Chapter

We kicked off at 5:00 pm. The Street Wolves had arranged a meeting with the police chief’s wife, Eileen Krause. They knew that their marriage was on the rocks and that she knew the combination to his safe that promised to hold explosive evidence that would put the bad guys in jail for a long time.

They decided to have her meet at the Hideaway bar, which was outside of town limits and a safe space for them. Johnny, the owner, revealed that there’s a hidden apartment within the bar that was originally built for use by Chicago gangsters as a hideout during prohibition if the heat got too great in Chicago.

Developer’s Note 1: There was a bar and a few places in town that were rumored to have these sorts of hideouts for gangsters. I never knew if it was real or not, but it seemed possible. Anyway, this is the first time it’s come up in a play through, though it’s been a part of the campaign since the start.

Eileen showed up to the bar and then they had a talk with her in the hidden apartment. They laid the cards on the table that her husband was guilty of a lot of things, including covering up the murders of a serial killer.

She was convinced that he had to go down. Her only request was that she be able to go home and get her sons out of the house before the Street Wolves broke into the house. They agreed and got ready to head back to Keysville.

There was a bit of debate/planning between the Wolves how to proceed from this point, but they had a plan of having her go into the house and then giving them a page that would indicate if Chief Krause was in the house or not.

The meeting wrapped up at 6:00 pm. As the Wolves were ready to leave for Keysville, their pages began buzzing from two different numbers.

Both were calls from characters they made deals with last time, the Pastor and Dr. Roberts from East Lake. They both independently called to let the Wolves know that Chief Krause called an emergency meeting of the Crusaders, likely from whatever the Street Wolves were doing.

Developer’s Note 2: Off screen, I was following along with the timeline that I developed and outlined in the session 6 recap. By this point, Krause had learned from his cops that went to Jonah’s cabin and found him tied up that someone was causing some serious problems. And from Jonah they had descriptions of what they looked like. Krause and Jonah’s congressman Donald Tate had decided to throw Jonah under the bus and have him killed.

Back to Keysville

Knowing the chief was going to hold this building at the municipal building at 7pm they knew they had the perfect window for getting the evidence. There was a tiny bit of debate to go there and monitor them and even the idea floated that they could just go kill crazy on them because all of their enemies were in the same place. However, the fact that this group was not at all combat focused that wasn’t something they wanted to do.

As they drove back, they spotted a pick up truck in the motel parking lot that was full of Fronters (the faction added to Heart of Glass). They decided to keep going and avoid a battle with them.

Once they got into the town proper, Hornet spotted a patrol car and was able to drive down a side street before the cops noticed them.

Developers Note 3: This check was pretty key for them. If they had been spotted by the cops, they would have immediately moved in to pull them over/shoot them. That would have brought more and more heat on them.

Developers Note 4: I did write myself into a little bit of bind a bit with my timeline. There are only three squad cars in Keysville. One is looking for the Wolves at this point. The other two are tied up as Jonah has killed the cops and escaped from their crashed car and the other squad has found the car and is investigating the scene.

The team made their way over to Krause’s home. They were able to make their stealth checks to get in unseen. After that it was easy to get into the safe. They had the safe’s combination and there was nobody home. Cobra grabbed everything she found in the safe. For some reason, Crash decided to shove a roll of toilet paper in the upstairs bathroom and flushed a bunch of times to cause it to overflow.

Developer’s Note 5: When they left, I presented the team with a choice: 1. If they wanted to go north, south, or east, they would have to pass by the municipal building where they would most assuredly be seen and chased (though I didn’t tell them that part). They could go East, which was a bit out of their way, but likely a safer bet.

Getting Out of Town

As they were leaving town, I had them all make yet another stealth check. They all passed. What happened was as they were driving they spotted the crashed squad car and the cops investigating it. They also made observation checks and because a couple of them succeeded, they saw the two dead cops in the car with their throats slashed. They immediately knew it was Jonah.

That discovery gave Crash a moment to gloat about how he had been right when he said they should have killed him when they had the chance.

Developer’s Note 6: Okay, so technically the crashed cop car should be on the north side of town, not the East, but with the Street Wolves leaving, I thought it would be more dramatic to have just one more point of potential failure and turn it into a chase had they failed. And also this gave them that horrible moment of realizing that Jonah had escaped and was somewhere out there.

All right, so now we’re at the end. The wolves left. But wait, where was the big climatic battle?! Or car chase?! Well, I didn’t want to force a particular type ending. The players had made all the smart choices and passed all their checks, several times! I felt like it would have been a sort of rail roading to force something on them.

The other factor in that was the Street Wolves for this campaign were not exactly built for combat. They were built for how they solved it: by being smart, and talking to the right people. And they did it! Plus, even though they won Jonah was free. It gave them a bit of a mixed bag.

Anyway, we weren’t 100% done just then.

I described a movie style montage while playing the song Paint it Black. There were shots of people like Krause being arrested. The Principal being arrested at school while kids cheered. The golden statue of Donald Tate being knocked down. Gina in a college class. And finally at the end we see a lone hitchhiker getting picked up, Jonah Tate.

And finally, we did the last end scene where the Wolves met with Cal Adder, Stacy’s father who got them started on the quest. He was able to fill in the gaps, who he is and why he had them go on the mission. He answered what questions he could and then offered the Street Wolves a job in his organization, to find Jonah Tate and kill him. The team signed up.

And that ends this run of Heart of Glass!

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on Bluesky, Threads, or on the Table Cat Games discord.