Ok so, Guys Night is about a d20 Modern game I played in after changing cities and wanting to get back into TTRPGs. It is told as best as I can recall, since it was over 10 years ago.
Table of Contents
Chapter I: In the Beginning
Chapter II: Genesis
Chapter III: Enter the Mullet
Chapter IV: It's the End of the World as we Know It
Chapter V: You Can Fight City Hall
What Happened After?
So last time the team fought the evil city government and stopped a ritual. What the ritual was I don't rightly know, but it was stopped. Mullet was wrecked and on the verge of death. So he was in a nice comfy bed for the next ten days... in a medically induced coma. While he recovered, the party did a shopping session. Because loots!
Most of the party just wanted to restocked consumables. They got Mullet set up on an IV drip and took the Black "yep, they are totally stolen" SUVs into the city. Now, the party thought that since they stopped the ritual at City Hall all was right and good with the world. But that's not what happened. Bob told us so...
"So good news, the world is about to end. Hope your ready, cause the Shadow is coming and it can't be stopped."
The ritual was being held at the convergence of our plane and the shadow and would allow for a long banished evil to roam the mortal realm once more. The party stopped that, HOORAY! for our side. But the convergence still happened. Pockets of the shadow overlapped our plane of reality. Creatures of great power entered our world. Entire homelands of elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes had been laid over our reality. Tribes of orc and goblins now walked the earth. Dogs and cats living together, MASS HYSTERIA! All that good stuff.
Now I kind of tuned out for most of this session, less meta-knowledge that way. I spent most of the night helping Tony make his new character since John had died, but I do remember a few things. The most notable thing was Maurice pulling up to group of four goblins around a burn barrel and saying, "Do any of you goblins speak English..." he then looks down at his character sheet "Or Hebrew?" They did not. They rushed him with clubs and knives so he slammed that pedal and got out of there.
Another was one of the revolving players who dropped in for a session lost his character when he was attacked by Bugbears with Chainsaws. Not sure if he ever came back after that. I think this was also when Dan took the opportunity to take care of Maurice's little Black Lotus operation by having a quake destroy the lab and "freed" the gnomes.
Road Trip!
Towards the end of the session it's now two weeks later. Mullet has recovered enough to be awake and start properly healing. Since the rest of party is trying to find out where the majority of the Globodyne staff have gone he is the only one at the safe house. Mullet gets a visit from Bob. Bob says that the party did right by him and, as the new mayor, he wants to do right by us. He says that the Diamond Heart of Life™ has not yet fulfilled it purpose. That the party needs to speak with his colleague, the Cleric. His domain is in the American Southwest, ruling from a city that had burned down but was being rebuilt from the ashes. So naturally the city was named Phoenix.
He then taps Mullet with his staff and heals his wounds. Healing magic baby, its powerful stuff. The party returns with McDougal, Tony's new character. Now since I was the lowest level character and I had made 5th level after the ritual fight, McDougal was also 5th level. Now this is when things started to go a bit sideways with d20 Modern's Wealth System.
You would do a Profession check to generate wealth every time you leveled up, since he had leveled up 4 time, he had a pile of cash to burn. And what he bought was a M2A3 Bradley II.
Yeah... he bought a tank that can holds 6 passengers and 3 crew. This was for our "road trip" to Phoenix. I personally didn't want to be cooped up in the damn thing, and since we need a forward scout, I got to ride John Jones' Harley. I would scout ahead and make sure the Bradley wouldn't get stuck. Mullet modified the Harley for off road travel since most of the highways were now either broken or had entirely new landscapes overlaying the them. It took us two months to make the trip, and unfortunately it was done with a narrative hand wave. This was to give the game a "time skip" to allow for the new world order to get set up.
And that's all for this week folks. The game had a massive tone shift from a more grounded Urban Fantasy to a Post-Apocalyptic High Fantasy. It was an interest time for me to join the game to say the least. So how about you? Ever have Game Master shift the tone of game so dramatically it feels like a different game? Let me know in the comments and happy gaming.