Power 19: Tokyo Heroes

projects

The Power 19 are a series of questions meant to help guide game designers. I decided to take a stab at answering these for Tokyo Heroes, and later on other RPG projects I’ve been working on or contemplating.

1.) What is your game about?
Heroes that work together to beat up bad guys.

2.) What do the characters do?
Seek out, confront, and defeat bad guys.

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?
The GM comes up with the Monster of the Week. The players try to do what they characters would want to do, building up to that episode’s final battle.

4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
The game has a milleu of sorts, but the setting is left up to the individual group. From the source material, there is a notion that heroes are the same in every setting. Despite the similarities and the crossover movies, each year’s Super Sentai Series is a totally new setting.

5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?
Characters must be made as a group, with many important details decided by the group as a whole, and thus they have to be concieved as a team.

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
Teamwork is strongly encouraged; going solo is difficult at best.

7.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?
Hero Dice and Karma are the most important form of reward in the game. Hero Dice contribute to the teamwork side of things — and are all but required to win battles — while Karma points reward individuality and thereby create a certain amount of tension.

8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?
Mostly in a traditional fashion, except that at the end of each session players have an opportunity to give the GM input about what will happen in the next session/episode.

9.) What does your game do to command the players’ attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)
The heroes in this game must participate and do things in accordance with their Keys in order for the group to gain enough Hero Dice to function effectively.

10.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?
It’s a dice pool system using six-siders. The base target number is 4 (so dice come up as successes half of the time), but this varies depending on the circumstances. Hero Dice can be spent on any given action by any group member.

11.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?
The resolution mechanics are intended to strongly encourage teamwork. Characters can almost always assist their friends in some way, even if the target gets pushed up to 6. Unlike previous attempts at the game, it lets each player roll their own dice and see their contributions to the whole.

12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?
Basic character competence is improved by spending Karma points, while new weapons, giant robots, etc., are handed out whenever the GM feels like it.

13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
The fact that Karma is the basis of character advancement adds to the characters’ individual drive for achievement, and is meant to create tension. That the GM periodically plays Santa Claus draws in the source material’s tendency towards deus ex machina, but also frees players to spend Karma on improving their characters’ abilities over time.

14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?
Primarily, I want to capture the fun, melodramatic, vivid, and cool style of sentai shows, and get them to play their characters to the hilt.

15.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?
The game is mostly about a genre, so the emphasis is very squarely on conveying that genre and why I think it’s cool enough to be worth the effort of roleplaying to the reader.

16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?
Aside from the fact that it’s meant to bring what I consider to be a really fun genre into the realm of RPGs, I’m really excited to see how well the Keys/Hero Dice really work. To me it’s at the heart of the game, and a big part of what makes it feel like it’ll fit the genre.

17.) Where does your game take the players that other games can’t, don’t, or won’t?
The sentai genre has been almost completely overlooked by RPGs, even in Japan.

18.) What are your publishing goals for your game?
My main concern is putting together a fun game to play with my friends, but if I can put together something that other people would actually be interested in, I’ll probably try to get it out there, on Lulu.com and RPGnow and such. I don’t have the personality or resources to really concern myself too much with it as a commercial venture, but from the beginning I was eyeing this game as possibly something to sell.

19.) Who is your target audience?
People who are fans of sentai, or at least curious about it. It’s a small niche hobby, but as I mentioned before there’s next to nothing for it in the realm of tabletop RPGs.

Do I post too much?

projects,

Halo: The Covenant War is coming along nicely now that I can spare some time to work on it. At this point I have a few more rules to fill in, and I need to finish statting up some generic NPCs (both UNSC and Covenant), and I’ll be ready to hand it over to some friends for preliminary checking before I throw it out onto the internet. Then it’ll finally be time to actually try out the game. :3

The aforementioned we are flat idea is coming together better than I would’ve expected, and at this point I’ve pretty much decided to go with simple, forgey original systems for all three games to be contained therein. Tenatively, the three games are:

  • Magical Burst: For a long time the world was without magic, but one day the magic started to come back. The people of the magical worlds can’t survive in the human world themselves, so they would recruit humans to fight for them, to become magical girls. Only, the magic won’t stop coming. Magical girls are becoming a nuisance, and the more of them there are, the stranger and more dangerous they become.
  • Moonsick: Earth was blown up, so we all have to live on the moon, with the rabbits. Some day we’ll find a way to fix the Earth so it won’t make us sick, so we can go back, but until then the moon won’t let us grow big. Are we even human now?
  • Spores: Mommy always told you not to eat wild mushrooms, but for some reason you didn’t listen. The mushrooms don’t like you, not at all. Can you get home alright, or will the mushrooms change you?

[In-Character] Truth & Justice, Episode 12

in-character

We spoke to Glenn about Razmus’ findings, and the implications of what we’ve learned. We just don’t know enough, and we keep finding ourselves thinking around in circles. Glenn told us about the history between himself and Amalgam — they both became metahumans because of the same nuclear accident — who may be the one behind all this. Or there might be someone above him. That raises the question of whether Glenn was meant to be involved in this, and so on. Circles.

Razmus and I both got our powers from our parents though, and Project Perseus was trying to use both in some way. Furthermore, there are similarities between the cellular breakdown that would theoretically be caused by normal humans using the Mega-Brace and that which we’ve witnessed in the clones of Razmus. It’s not exactly the same, but the general process — where chromosomes are broken down at specific points — is very similar. In the case of the Mega-Brace this is because it’s meant “attach” at a genetic level when activated, and ordinary human DNA can’t withstand the stress that’s being applied at the wrong points. In the case of the clones, it may be a deliberate self-destruct mechanism.

In spite of the excitement the water nymph incident caused, the people here in Aegis seem fairly blase about the matter, and reconstruction began promptly. I also visited the costume shop and got a riding outfit as intended. Thankfully that part went smoothly.

The big news today was that Aphrodite was visiting Aegis. At least in terms of PR, she is far and away America’s biggest superhero. I don’t share Raz’s pathological need to insult her at every turn — a need that in him exceeds any pragmatism — but (apart from Jack) we’re all in agreement that she’s an arrogant bitch and not qualified to call herself a superhero anymore. It was her own arrogance and impulsiveness that cost Avatar her powers and split up the Watchmen (a lesson Razmus needs to remember I think), and the moment there were no cameras around she revealed her true colors, and it wasn’t pretty. That she has fans doesn’t surprise me; it’s the absolute devotion she’s afforded. No one, human or metahuman, can even stomach the idea of her being tarnished in any way, even by a 16-year-old who to all outward appearances should be of no consequence whatsoever. People act like she’s above the law, and by now she probably believes it too. And the control of information about her on the internet and in the media is downright Orwellian. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt — she does at least give the world a positive view of metahumans — but that was a waste. She would be an impossibly powerful foe if it came to that.

Razmus has been a lot more friendly and such (and he even listened to me when I told him not to make pointless trouble by throwing a tomato at Aphrodite), but he still can’t help but find ways to infuriate me. In one of his regular visits to the comics store he picked up a Mega-Rider manga tankoubon — I didn’t know they published them in English — and when I mentioned about the extensive Mega-Rider merchandise (and Ryo’s collection of such) he immediately went conclusion-jumping and assumed that my father (you know, the one that Raz knows nothing about, much less has ever met) was a “sellout.” I’m going to let it slide this time.

I wonder if these dreams are because of the Mega-Brace. I hate feeling helpless. Two more weeks to go, and they’re passing so quickly. I called mom and told her Glenn and I — and three more — were coming. When I asked about my grandfather, she just said, “We’ll talk about that when you get here.” I suppose since she married him she must know something about my father, but it never occurred to me that there’d be something she was keeping from me. She’s always seemed so normal, and I think that’s what dad liked about her.

Too Many Goddamn Ideas

ideas

As usual, the amount of inspiration I get far exceeds the amount of stuff I can actually work on. Here’s a quick rundown of the various things I’ve been thinking about. I’m sure I forgot a few.

  • Thrash 2.0: The vastly overdue new version of my old fighting game RPG is turning out pretty nicely… so I just need to find time to actually work on it. Original system, though the original version was heavily influenced by Interlock/Mekton Z and SF:STG, and the new version shows a bit of Cinematic Unisystem influence too. Once I have it up and running it’ll be time to put together second edition Weird Powers rules, amongst other things.
  • Tokyo Heroes: My crazy sentai/magical girl RPG. Also coming along nicely, but in dire need of playtesting once it’s done.
  • Catgirl: A tongue-in-cheek White Wolf-ish RPG about catgirls in a modern-day setting. Powered by a weird variant of Fudge.
  • Halo: The Covenant War: A Halo RPG. Powered by a different weird variant of Fudge.
  • Distorted Futures: A dystopian ass-kicking RPG.
  • Hikikomori: A solo RPG where you play a guy who almost never leaves his room and may or may not be going insane. I want to try this as a 24-hour RPG.
  • Eternal Saga: A fantasy RPG in the style of Japanese CRPGs. I’ve been failing to work on this one for ages, though there are a few neat ideas in there.
  • Something along the lines of Alien Nine, using Sorcerer. Player characters are schoolgirls who have to live with alien symbionts. Will you stay human, or will you become something else?
  • Karyuu Densetsu: A revised version of my original Thrash campaign setting.
  • WFL: The World Fighting Leage, a WWE-ish campaign setting for Thrash.
  • Tiny Aliens/Battle Maids/Puzzle Girls: Three relatively self-explanatory campaign settings for Mascot-tan. Maybe in one book.
  • Aniverse: Exploring the anime multiverse. This was originally a BESM book, but I never really finished it, and now I have some new ideas to incorporate. If I ever get around to redoing it, I’d prolly use OVA and/or BESM d20, in order to freely use the rules on my own.
  • we are flat: Somehow I find myself wanting to try to do a mini-anthology of anime-inspired RPG settings that attempt to put some of the Superflat aesthetic into a roleplaying game. This may or may not be a terrible idea. I’m thinking there would be three in here, and one would be an even more twisted new version of Magical World. Not sure what system to use, but I’m eyeing OAV. Maybe Fudge instead, or maybe a forgey original system for each one. I have a ton of other ideas for less acid trippy anime mini-settings too.
  • Our Truth & Justice campaign has wound up developing a fairly interesting original superhero setting with a wealth of nifty characters, and once the campaign is finished I think it’d be cool to compile all of that into a book.

With this much stuff, plus a stack of indie games I want to give a whirl (mainly octaNe and The Mountain Witch), I’m thinking that when the current epic campaign finishes up I should try to organize a regular “anthology campaign,” which is to say a weekly grab-bag of mini-campaigns, one-shots, and playtests.

I’m also considering attending GenCon SoCal this year and running something too. Halo is definitely high on the list.

Character Playing Pieces

musings

I finally got around to participating on the Story Games forum, which is proving to be fun and interesting, and, as stated, a good midpoint between RPGnet and the Forge. I wound up starting this thread, which turned out to be fairly interesting.

Yesterday a friend of mine was at KublaCon, and he picked up a copy of a Japanese game at the dealers room, which turned out to be a Japanese game company’s fanservicey entries into Flying Buffalo’s Lost Worlds “fantasy combat books,” called “Queen’s Blade.” Each book represents a character, and you actually trade books with your opponent so they get a “first person” view of your character. This in turn reminded me of Cheapass Games’ Button Men, where your playing piece is a button with numbers on it, that represents a character, not to mention Brawl, where each character is represented by a specific deck of cards.

I was wondering if this approach had been tried in an RPG context before, not as a thing done just for a convention game, but as part of the design, and from the replies, it had, basically in a few different types of contexts:

  1. Superhero and other RPGs that involve highly iconic characters. The original Marvel Super Heroes game from TSR is a good example in that it was designed mainly for using the pre-made Marvel characters, and the rules for original characters resulted in PCs that were random and potentially underpowered. (The “fanfic” approach).
  2. LARP games routinely have pregens of some kind, intended to set up certain situations in how they interact, but still fairly open-ended. So (assuming I’m understanding this right) if you get a particular character, it’s assigned that he has goal X, but how and why he’s after it is left up to the player. (The “plotting” approach).
  3. There are some games from the indie scene that have their whole concept based around a specific group of characters. Jonathan Walton in particular has taken that approach in several games (e.g., Kamikaze Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan is basically a GM-less word game for two people, with two very specific, archetypal characters). (The “iconic” approach).
  4. Certain games have archetypes that define most of the stuff about a character. In Unisystem games this is more of a way providing examples and showing how to use the character creation system, while in Tenra Bansho Zero the archetypes are most of what you do in terms of character creation, on account of the game being designed for extremely fast play. (The “play aid” approach).

Obviously, an RPG has different needs from a game like Lost Worlds or Brawl when it comes to characters. Each Brawl deck/character has a distinctive look and style, but the original set had no character bios whatsoever, while the Queen’s Blade Lost World books have about two paragraphs at most. “Character creation” is one of those persistent memes in RPGs, and I think even indie games haven’t challenged it all that much (YMMV, change for change’s sake is dumb, etc.).

Aside from the aforementioned approaches, I’m wondering what kinds of RPGs could put pregenerated characters to especially good use, especially in the style of the aforementioned table games with pretty illustrations and all that. I do think it’d be neat to put together a “custom build” of Thrash, meant specifically for using a particular fighting game cast. Using PCs as “playing pieces” in a sufficiently Gamist RPG might be a good way to go.

What’s in a name?

musings, random

John Kim’s LJ has been home to a raging debate/discussion about “traditional” and “nontraditional” RPGs, along with some clashing personalities here and there. The Forge has put a lot of energy into defining itself as being a community that explores and transcends traditional roleplaying games. One of the things the comments on this post bring to light is that the notion of what constitutes a traditional RPG is pretty poorly defined.

Of course, if RPG.net is any indication, there are a lot of terms for which roleplayers have fuzzy and/or divergent ideas about what they mean. I distinctly remember a thread that turned into a raging debate over what constituted a “splatbook.” The term comes from how White Wolf had Clanbooks, Tradition Books, Tribe Books, etc. for their various lines, so people got into the habit of calling them “*books online, and then the * got pronounced as “splat.” But people couldn’t agree on whether or not (for example) the class-specific D&D books constituted splatbooks. I think this is partly because the RPG hobby is small and decentralized, and even the very basic bits of terminology that everyone can pretty much agree on vary, particularly among the big players, for no good reason. If you look carefully, D&D is an “Adventure Game,” and Vampire is a “Storytelling Game.” (Mark Rein-Hagen was trying to make a point with the “storytelling” stuff, even if WW has since tried very hard to distance itself from its early pretentionsness, just as the indie games that call dice rolling processes “Conflict Resolution” are doing it for a purpose).

Anyway, one point that was raised was that traditional RPGs have a certain kind of power structure between the participants. There’s some definite variability — no two groups play the same way of course, and the GM can ultimately do whatever he wants — but in general a game like D&D does more to moderate interaction through game mechanics. Character advancement, for example, is a detailed and complex matter, and moreover something a player with the knowhow can do independent of the DM. It’s quite a contrast to, say, Fudge’s subjective character advancement, not to mention Dogs In The Vineyard. I’ve been playing with a group that consists mostly of friends I’ve known for over a decade, so I’m not having to take chances playing with strangers, and thus not feeling any need for the added moderation.

With our current campaign, I’m starting to think that doing the superhero genre properly requires a certain amount of trust, because the characters are defined in large part by their powers, yet it’s a part of the genre that circumstances can remove, alter, or otherwise fuck with anyone’s powers from time to time.

The inevitable problem with definitions is that when you create a definition from the thing in front of you it works fine, but then when you try to use the definition to decide whether or not something falls within the area of your shiny new term there winds up being a lot of quibbling, especially with regard to stuff on the egdes. A lot of Forge games are based around altering the power structure of the game — shifting narrative control in mechanically interesting ways and such — but at a certain point (say with a game like Capes that does away with the GM entirely) you wind up with people questioning whether what you’ve created is really an RPG. For that matter “nontraditional” and “indie” aren’t the same thing (and for that matter, “indie” and “Forge” aren’t the same thing either). John Wick’s Cat and Enemy Gods have an unusual take on what kinds of characters and situations you roleplay, but the game mechanics aren’t anything unfamiliar. Mostly your cat or epic hero is rolling six-sided dice and counting successes, and the GM is the GM like usual.

This is turning out to be longer and more rambling than I intended, but that’s okay.

Really, the main thing I like about the indie RPG scene is that it’s done a lot to bust wide open what’s considered appropriate genres and whatnot for an RPG. Ten years ago, if someone told you there’d be a brilliant RPG about mormon cowboy inquisitors, you’d probably have called them crazy. And now he have DitV, Cat, The Moutain Witch, Dead Inside, Breaking The Ice, and so on. Of course, White Wolf was started with a similar breaking down of walls in mind; you don’t have to kill the monsters, you can be one (and not quite in the Flying Buffalo Games’ Monsters! Monsters! sense), whether for deep roleplaying or simply a new breed of power fantasy.

I am so not going to comment on the social aspect of this traditional/nontraditional divide, mainly because it involves extensive wankery on both sides.

So, I’ll revisit that “I am 3d6” post from a while back. I’ve been playing New Super Mario Bros. on the DS, and looking at previews of Super Paper Mario, and realizing just how incredibly cool the Psychotronic Mario Brothers thing that dyjoots posted to RPGnet really is. I was in one of the castles in NSMB, and it occured to me that Bowser has the power to force his Koopa Troopers to serve him even after death, and for that matter he’s recruited rogue mushrooms, living bullets, and ghosts to his side, in addition to having statues of himself that shoot laser beams (in SMB3) in his main castle. I also noticed something that would only happen in a video game when Mario died from being caught between the scenery and the edge of the auto-scrolling screen. So the list of one-shots and mini-campaigns I want to run now goes:

  1. octaNe
  2. The Mountain Witch
  3. Halo: The Covenant War
  4. octaNe (Psychotronic Mario Brothers)

[In-Character] Truth & Justice, Episode 11

in-character

It’s been a long day. And a long night. After the water nymph incident was finally done with, everyone broke off to do their own thing. I went to look at motorcycles, and learned that I don’t have anywhere near the funds to get something that would actually support my armor. I picked up a book on metahuman genetics to give me something to do in my free time (I need a new hobby), and wound up having dinner with Glenn, Sam, and Jack. Over dinner, Glenn suggested we look into getting some kind of superhero costumes, for anonymity. Considering that Pinnacle and who knows what else are out there, in principle this sounds like a good idea. No tights for me though. I’m thinking a motorcycle riding outfit.

I’d suspected that Raz had slipped off somewhere to indulge his martyr complex, and it turned out he had in fact gone off hitchhiking to the south of Aegis. The guy from the Super-Mentors gave us a lift to go look for him, and we found him on the side of the road. He got his powers back (as I was sure he would, one way or another) and then some, so at least he’s got one less thing to complain about. When he was in the car, Raz handed me something he’d picked up, a folder of experimental data. And the watermark on every page was the twin snakes and sword of the Perseus Project.

Now, here’s the funny thing. He insisted that the two of us talk about it in private. He’s confiding in and trusting me. And reminding me a lot of Ryo, actually. Anyway, from what Raz told me and what was in the file, it looks like the project has facilities in the U.S., including an abandonded one that’s too close to Aegis to be a coincidence. The files showed chemical, genetic, and radiological experiments–stuff that the project’s stated ethical guidelines expressly forbids–being used on human subjects. The data is incomplete, a sheaf of surviving pages from at least a dozen different lab reports, and the chemicals and processes being used are exceedingly complex, but I’ve started trying to piece it together. More importantly, Raz said that in the facility — which was left wide open — he found another clone, only this one had been left in a tube of some chemical compound, and telepathically begged him for release, for death. He also found out the locations of some of the other clones, most in the Americas, but a couple in Japan. I told him about what they were planning with the Mega-Brace. I keep thinking I left something out.

He told me to call him “Razmus.” I don’t know what that means exactly, but I suspect it’s the beginning of the end of the friction between us.

Does the cellular breakdown that the Mega-Brace would cause to humans have some connection to the way the clones of Raz turn into a dehydrated black goo? I need to go over that data again. Plus Raz brought me some new samples. Having him around really is like having another little brother at times.

I need answers. This whole thing is driving me crazy. And now more than ever I think I’m only going to find those answers by going back to Japan. If I don’t get some kind of answer, some kind of sign, I may just decide to drop the superhero act and try to live some kind of normal life. It’s not too late to apply to Todai again.

I’ve been a different person once before. There was that little space between when my father died and when I started middle school, when I was the klutzy crybaby, and apart from the teachers, the only one in my class who wore glasses. Oneechan (who was actually my best friend Chiaki’s older sister) was the one who helped me grow up a little. She also exposed us to a fair amount of second-hand smoke, but nobody’s perfect. Chiaki, Miho, Karen, Oneechan, and me. I think Chiaki’s family is still in Yokohama.

I had that dream again. I really miss my father.

Ugh.

in-character

There’s this and there’s this. The comments add more context to the story, but ultimately make your brain melt. If I ever let myself get caught in stupid flamey arguments about games and thereby wasting time that could be spent creating or enjoying games, someone please slap me. Games are for having fun. Stupid flamey arguments are not fun.

I’m oversimplifying. My workload is wearing on me. Outside of my close friends almost no one reads this stuff anyway.

…

Or do you?

Oh yeah. I ordered The Mountain Witch (IPR was having a sale, so I finally caved in), and finished reading it the other day. Along with octaNe and the Halo game I need to finish writing, it’s now on the list of games I really want to try out.

Current Mood: Exhausted
Current Music: Pink Floyd – Time

[In-Character] Truth & Justice, Episode 10

in-character

Today I got to feel useful.

We took a private jet to Aegis, in the middle of the night. I keep mentioning Raz, but no one else feels the need to shove so many things in other people’s faces. He has a way of looking at the world that draws out the flaws in others. So, he accused the metahumans of Aegis of xenophobia. I suppose there’s a kernel of truth somewhere in there, but it’s leaving out so much of the story, seemingly to give him an excuse to look down on an entire city of people he’s never even met. If there’s anyone who should understand the desire to get away from people prejudiced against those who are different, it’s Raz. Instead, accusations, conflating cause and effect.

Aegis is small and flat and new, and populated not only by metahumans, but their families, and an entire secondary population that takes care of much of the day to day matters. Especially for a nonprofit organization, the facilities of the Super-Mentors is impressive. We signed the paperwork that made us a super-team. Officially. Unfortunately, not too long after we had two problems emerge — and at this point I can only assume they’re in some way related. Sam was feeling exceedingly tired, and had to be hospitalized, while Raz… seemed to have lost his powers.

I decided to investigate what I could, comparing the original samples with the black goo and the new samples taken by the medical center. The metahuman element in Raz seemed to have simply vanished, while Sam was… growing a third DNA helix, making him something unique in the world. It’s hard to say what exactly this means, except that it created a new incident. As the process was nearing completion, the water in the medical center started to go crazy. He started creating water nymphs, just like Raz said he did at Sunspot’s house, but this time there were several hundred of them, and they began to combine into two colossal ones.

I stopped Raz from going in there. He wants me to trust my instincts and make snap decisions, and that’s what he got. He said something odd; he asked how I would feel if someone took the Mega-Brace. I made some lame comment about how “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” but once again he doesn’t understand how I think. I’m not proud of it, but if my conscience would let me be rid of it, I would. If the Mega-Brace hadn’t entered into my life, I could be attending Tokyo University right now, and instead I’m lying to my family, risking my life, and wearing my father’s mask, all for ideals I haven’t really been able to fulfill yet. The only life I can definitely say I saved was that of Swan after all. He said something about how his powers are how he knows who he is. Is this a teenager thing? I know who I am, even if I’m not always happy with it, and the Mega-Brace is at best a symbol, not the article itself.

Glenn and Jack rescued the comatose Sam from the medical center, and I used the Mega-Beam for the first time to help defeat the giant water nymphs. It was quite a sight to see more than 50 metahumans working as one, and an amazing feeling to be a part of something so big. The first one we literally evaporated, and the second one Glenn put oxygen tanks into, and I detonated. I wound up using it four times, and it took a lot out of me.

When the dust settled, the medical center was all but demolished, Raz still had no powers, and Sam was feeling exceptionally healthy. Maybe “Stormcrows” would be a better name for our group. When disaster doesn’t come to us, we bring it ourselves, one way or another.