I guess it's called gamefic now

[wendyzski]

I was digging thru my old gaming stuff, deciding what might fetch a few pence on e-bay and accepting that I have no need of copies of Dragon magazine from the early 1980s. I'll be posting some comics on E-bay and I'll also be putting up a list of scripts/librettos/'selections from's on here free for the taking. Well, free after postage, anyway.

But while separating out my photocopied manuals (keep) from my old character sheets (toss), I found some background stuff I'd written for a NOIR campaign. (that_david, I think you might have left town by this point) You got extra points for writing a backstory for your character, especially for one that set up some connections or vulnerabilities for your character for the GM to make use of.

Anyway, thought y'all might want to read something besides me complaining about my job, so...



It always seems that the really good stories in this town are about the hard-boiled private eye, that flawed man in the trenchcoat and fedora, the one that when the chips are really down can somehow find it in himself to be a hero.

Lemme tell ya, they're just stories.

Look, honey... most of them are just losers who get a charge out of being "the guy in the know". Well, how do you think they get all that info they use in the last scene, to prove "who done it"?

Every private dick worth the real 10k gold lettering on their office window has someone like me. Someone to answer the phone and file, sure...but who do you think gets to drive the clients home? Who holds their hands when the bad news comes? Who waits in the hotel lobbies, behind newspapers, and follows suspects into the powder room? Sometimes we're called secretaries, or receptionists, that is when we're called anything other than "doll". At least that's what the ad that I answered said.

Originaly I just wanted out of the steno pool at City Hall. Most of the guys there were more interested in a girls tits than her typing speed. That's why I started wearing these glasses. I don't need 'em, but that old saying is true. Anyway, I could tell that job was going nowhere, so I had my eyes open for a new situation.

I don't know if there were other applicants - if there were I'll bet Jummy scared them off. He hadn't shaved in a week and his suit looked slept in. Old coffee cups floating with stubbed-out Chesterfields...you get the picture. I had to move a toppling stack of unopened mail just to sit down. It wasn't much of an interview, really - more like I just sort of moved in. The salary wasn't great, but Jimmy seemed pretty grateful, and it beat getting groped in the elevator every morning. Never had that problem with Jimmmy. He always had this thing for blondes...but that's a whole other story.

All in all, the next few years were pretty good. Jimmy straightened out some, one he had someone to notice whether he showed up in the morning. We even started to get some real clients. You know, the kind that actually pay their bills? Sometimes he'd slip for a while, but by then I knew enough about the biz to pick up the slack. As long as he was there to close the case for them, they didn't care who really did the legwork.

Then Mom died. It looks like she just wasted away. After Mike & Bill were killed in The War, and with Robbie finally set to go to college, she probably figured it was time. I had to go back home to deal with all the legal stuff and get Robbie settled in at ____ Tech. It was only about three weeks, but I guess that was three weeks too long.

I don't know what had happened whiel I was gone, but Jimmy was back to his old self. He wasn't even bothering to hide the bourbon bottle in the bottom drawer anymore. I managed to keep things covered up, telling people he was "out of town on a case", but I knew that couldn't last forever.

Then we got that phone call. She said her name was Helen St. Croix. I knew she was trouble from the minute she walked through the door, but Jimmy wouldn't listen. Seems he and Helen had this thing from way back, and he couldn't say no to her. He has that old spark in his eye, and you coudl see he was itching to be "back in the saddle". I wasn't exactly sure what saddle that meant, and I wasn't gonna ask.

He worked like a fiend for weeks. Sometimes he was even in the office before I got in in the morning. It was kind of wierd, though. He woudln't talk to me at all about the case. Normally I knew almost as much about his cases as he did, if only from listening to him complain. But he was awfully quiet, and I'd catch him looking at me funny when he thought I wasn't looking. But there's only so much a working association gets you, so I didn't pry and he didn't volunteer.

But Jimmy's been gone for almost two weeks now. His landlady called looking for his rent. I checke dthe usual bars and the train station, but no one's seen him. I guess something, or someone, finally caught up with him.

Still, a girl's gotta eat. Most of the regular clients are used to dealing with me anyway, so I've just kept going. Robbie thinks my job's exciting, butI know better. It's just a way to get by. If I get really lucky, I can save up enough to get me and Robbie out of this town. If not...well, I'll likely end up like Jimmy.
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This was a fun but short campaign. We were running up against the wall of "real life taking up so much time that no one has time to GM". I think this was one of Aaron's ideas.

Anyway, next time I'll trot out some murder mystery ideas or maybe a plot outline for a small renfaire I wrote.

Comments

[aedifica]

That's a much better backstory than I've ever come up with...

[that-david.livejournal.com]

Very nice backstory. Sounds like it would have been fun.