Chicago is a dirty town in a dirty world, especially on the coldest night of the year. Two gangs fall and a power vacuum is left in their former territory. Five homeless men die under mysterious circumstances and two detectives look into it despite being ordered to bury the case. A naive drug dealer is given a simple errand – find a man named Andrew. A pair of shady schemers looking for a bigger slice of the action drive in from Vegas. This is but a small part of a tangled web connected by Andrew’s fortune.
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Excellent AP! Well done, Caleb; you are as skilled a GM as you are a player, and a welcome addition to the RPPR crew. I can’t wait for part 2.
Aaron’s naive pot dealer may have been my favorite character.
And Ross was not stealing the name of Raymond Chandler’s most famous character: it was an Homage! At least Ross has the taste to steal from the best.
Love the Dirty World APs. Keep them comeing!
Thank you again, Mr. Gadfly! I’m really thankful for your comments.
Of course, all criticisms are welcome as well. There is a lot more to go on this, and I feel like I’ll need all the helpful suggestions I can get to bring things to a satisfying conclusion.
CRITICISMS YOU ASK FOR?
CRITICISMS YOU WILL RECIEVE.
I guess the only thing I can think of is you might need to RULE WITH AN IRON FIST a bit more. Might be just my opinion though.
Annnnnnnd Aaron continues the tradition of not being able to roll worth a damn.
Haven’t finished, but I’m pretty impressed at how Caleb GMs – he managed to keep you all from getting too rowdy.
Good stuff, highly enjoying.
I like it, though at times I’d wish Ross would let the players act on there own.
*thier
**their! I suck at words.
Caleb and Aaron make for an awesome two-man team. Caleb knows enough urban dialect to make it convincing, while Aaron knows that pot and crack… exists.
I merely provide suggestions when a player is totally out of ideas and floundering around without a clue.
Wow, Caleb is a really good DM. I didn’t expect that to happen.
Also, even though Ross may have suggested running, it was completely my idea to run down the street screaming.
This AP is great so far. Caleb, man, you’re a solid GM. I’m going to take some pointers from you on scene-framing and injecting personality into rando NPCs.
Good stuff! Caleb, you’ve got teh skillz.
I’m guessing you’ve seen The Wire? The Bubbles-ish informant and some other bits (references to ‘yos’ – though maybe that’s not specific to Baltimore)definitely reminded me of that. I’d also strongly advise Aaron to watch that show or, well, ANY modern crime film or TV series before he plays a streety character again. I say this as a socially phobic suburban white geek who is scared to even drive past a bad neighborhood.
Having said that, the scene of Aaron’s PC fleeing the seductive power of the large black hooker was one of those nice bits of accidental hilarious genius that I look for in Actual Plays.
“I say this as a socially phobic suburban white geek who is scared to even drive past a bad neighborhood.”
Even if that neighborhood was just recently gentrified?
mathey–I love The Wire. I just finished season 3. The game also takes a lot from the documentary Dark Days and Andrew Vachass novel Haiku. I probably steal a bunch of other things as well, but I just haven’t thought of them yet.
Alexander–It’s in the PROCESS of gentrification. This process just so happens to involve indiscriminate hobo murder (for reasons yet to be understood) and that is just stage one. The neighborhood is still pretty damn bad.
And Aaron’s character is great! I wouldn’t change a thing. As stated early in the game, he gets by on a refreshing impression of professionalism not often enough seen on teh streetz. 🙂
Aaron’s character is just waiting for a world where Prop. 19 passed, a world where he no longer has to deal with the dregs of society; a saner, kinder reality where a man can buy his weed using a Platinum Express card and a layaway policy.
I don’t believe that anyone has mentioned the picture Ross used for this post.
That is one dirty world.
That’s my apartment. It’s no big deal.
I listened to this AP again yesterday at work. Every scene with Aaron was great. I think he has a kind of unintentional genius.
This isn’t even like, the 4th time I’ve listened to this. Mostly these are my favorite APs. Goddamn VanHagen.
This is an awesome, awesome AP. I keep going back and re-listening to it for Caleb’s story-telling. I am also guilty of stealing “this ain’t rent-to-own, it’s weed!” for my own writing, because, awesome.
It looks like the download link is broken for this episode?
Should work now.
The tough skinhead was out-toughed by Kyle. The talky SuperJew was out-talked by Lydia. Aaron was sent screaming into the night by Cynthy…Cyntheneia.
Was every one of Caleb’s NPCs way more minmaxed than the PCs ever were? No one won a single opposed contest for the vast majority of the game up until Cody’s character Larry Cassidy chased down and tackled a hooker onto the pavement.
The hilarious failures and evil bastard-ing and all the so-whitebread-he’s-camoflaged-in-snow AaronAntics were gold. Tragic it didn’t quite derail from the main plot into an Aaron The Drug Dealer Show sitcom spinoff like Jason wanted.