Edit: This post was imported from Point of Play, my gaming blog, which I’ve collapsed into this one.

Roll opening credits: Oasis.

Scene 1: Matthew calls for Plot, Kitty’s Office, Andrew talks to Kitty about Holloway.
I called for the first scene, setting up Andrew going to Kitty’s office to talk to her. We had some confusion over why Andrew would be there and what he was after, but after some stumbling and stuttering, we sorted it out. Andrew knows that Holloway is up to something and wants him exposed publicly for it. He relates what he saw in the alley (with a flashback scene for the viewers) to Kitty, and she muses on it, then decides to tell Andrew what she’s gotten on Holloway so far. No conflict in this scene.

Scene 2: Jake calls for Character, Andrew’s Car, Andrew picks up Caroline from school.
Andrew’s working hard to be The Good Father in this scene, asking lots of questions about her schoolwork, yadda yadda. It comes out that her grades went into the toilet after her mother died and she’s been having to work pretty hard to get back on top of things. The two of them break into what’s obviously an old argument and we cut to the conflict. What does Andrew want? He wants Caroline to recognize that he’s trying to be a good father. At this point, I brought up a question. Our spectator, Aaron, was set up to play Caroline, and I wondered if he could set up stakes for her. I had a pretty good idea that he shouldn’t, since we don’t have an Issue or anything, and figured that it would almost certainly be some serious Drift of the system. We laid out the cards and Andrew won it with a bare margin. Caroline breaks off the argument and tells Andrew that she understands what he’s trying to do but that he’s pushing too hard. Her grades are getting better, and she needs him to lay off a little. He agrees to ease up and they make plans to do something fun together soon.

Scene 3: Rob calls for Plot, Juanita’s Apartment, using his Next Week On snippet.
I set up Holloway going to try to persuade Juanita to go on a cruise. He goes to her apartment, pauses before he knocks, and detects something amiss: the music coming from the apartment is skipping. Holloway draws his gun, knocks, and says “Juanita, I have something for you!” For a few moments nothing happens, then shots explode through the door, narrowly missing Holloway. He whips to one side, and we hear Juanita scream at him “You aren’t gonna keel me, you son of a beesh!”

“I’ve got your money!”

Heels quickly clicking on the floor, deadbolt flips, chain rattling, and the door opens. Juanita smiles sweetly. “Chu have my money?” Juanita has a tiny dog who stands behind her feet and growls at Holloway. He gives over the money and a ticket on a cruise, but she’s suspicious. “You want me out of town?” She tears up the ticket.

Holloway sighs and tells her that she has to stop shooting her mouth off and how does she know he’s working for the mob, anyway? We stop to discuss it and come up with the idea that she’s sleeping with some low-level mob thug. She throws that in Holloway’s face, and we pull up sharp for a conflict. Rob’s stakes: Holloway wants Juanita’s to assure him that she understands that she has to keep her mouth shut. Looking back, I think we should’ve stated this as “Holloway wants to convince Juanita that she has to keep her mouth shut.” When we flipped the cards, though, he lost anyway. While Holloway was trying to explain why she has to keep quiet, her new boyfriend shows up at the door mad as hell. Holloway still has his gun out and when Tony sees it, he starts to reach for his own gun, but Holloway has the drop on him. Holloway says “I don’t have time for this,” and bails.

Scene 4: Bonita calls for Plot, a Restaurant, Kitty eavesdrops on her father and gets threatened.
This was a plot scene, but we thought that hitting the father-daughter relationship between Kitty and Bruce would dovetail nicely with Andrew’s Good Father complex, making it work well for Andrew’s spotlight. This was supposed to use Bonita’s Next Week On snippet, but we had some severe confusion over how exactly that snippet was framed, so I just ran with it. We had some serious difficulty with trying to pre-script this scene rather than just letting it play out and had to pull back hard and restart a couple of times to get the flow correct.

Kitty enters a high-class restaurant and tells the maitre ‘d that her father’s secretary told her that Bruce was having lunch here. He waves her through and she heads back in that direction. She bumps into a waiter on the way, drops her notebook, and stops to pick it up when she overhears her father talking to…someone. We can’t see who it is. He’s seated at a booth, and Kitty slips into the next booth to eavesdrop. We get a nice shot from the side of the two of them sitting back-to-back. Bruce is saying “There’s only one casino in this town that they don’t own right now, but from what I’m hearing, they’re closing in.” Then Bruce starts asking questions about issues that need addressing, including “Is the Holloway thing taken care of?” and the other party responds to all of them with a “yes.” Finally, the other person says “Are you sure your daughter isn’t going to be a problem?” and we (and Kitty!) recognize Steve Nguyen’s voice. The camera pulls back to show him as Conway responds “If it looks like she will be, I’ll take care of it.” Nguyen nods, finishes his drink, and leaves. Conway gets up to leave and spots Kitty. He says “What are you doing here?!” and drops into the booth across from her. Kitty: “Spying on you! What are you doing here?”

An argument develops rapidly and it closely mirrors the one between Andrew and Caroline, with him saying he’s trying to keep her safe and her saying she doesn’t need to be protected. Conflict! Bonita was a little torn on what her stakes are for this one. On one hand, she wants information from her father, but we realized that the important stake, the stake that tied to her issue, is that Kitty wants her father to recognize that she’s an adult and stop trying to shield her. Ryan threw in a nice idea for Kitty to say something about having done her homework on this story to help develop the mirror with the earlier scene and got some good fanmail for it.

We flip and Bonita wins it easily. Kitty bristles and argues that she’s a big girl, that she’s done her homework, that her story is important, and the doesn’t need him protecting her. Bruce gets cold and steely-eyed and tells her that she’s on her own and that she needs to understand that some stories should be left alone. He finishes with “I’m involved with these people; I know what I’m talking about,” and then storms off.

Kitty pulls her mini-cassette recorder from underneath the table and turns it off.

And now, a word from our sponsors.

I’m about ninety minutes into the three and a half hour recording. I’ll pick up here tomorrow.