Boring GM Stuff: Houndstooth, Rare Metals, Moab (73-78)
/Hello to everyone reading this. I don’t know why I feel obliged to start every one of these articles with a “hello.” That’s so weird. No one else who writes articles starts like this. “Hello I’m Thomas Friedman and welcome to my opinion column. Sit back relax and get ready to enjoy my stupid and shitty opinions.” You don’t see that when you crack open the New York Times, and yet, that is what you see when you come here to read these blog posts. Why is that?
It simply must be because I am a revolutionary genious, and a voice of a generation. Hello, reader. Welcome to Boring GM Stuff.
Anyway, welcome. Let’s go through my notes through the last batch of episodes.
Ep 73: Dead Man Riding
In this ep, the crew finally skedaddle out of Phoenix. fun fact, I first assumed the crew would head west from Phoenix into the desert. I was casually thinking about how the crew might run into the Sonoran Leviathan, Neon Guard Mechas, or run into desert bandits guarding treasure in a downed blimp. Then Mike told me he was interested in pointing Xanadu north east, to make their way to the Moab Lich. Pretty wild - I was trying to figure out how I’d wrap up that story if the crew never delivered the message. Now it’s a big hook! You never know with this show, even if you’re the guy drawing the maps.
Speaking of maps, here’s a look at the NeoScum’s journey through the new New Mexico Technopolis, broken down by ep.
Total time in NNMT: 2 days
One more cool thing about this episode - I had no idea where the crew was going to deal with Darius Pender. My best guess was they would just dispatch him in the back while they were en route to Moab. Z’s request to find a street doctor caught me by surprise, so real quick I had to come up with something that made sense for the area they were traveling through. I had the idea that crystal magic was a major facet of Neo New Mexico Tech life, and thought this would be a good way to weave that in. Bingo bango bongo, the crew are traveling to Houndstooth to get crystal healing.
Ep 74: Oracle
To prep for this episode, I measured about how long the crew had been on the road, and determined that Houndstooth would be about where modern day Sedona is located. It was a good match, because Sedona is rife with some very silly new age-y, yoga instagram influencer style gunk along with some spectacular natural scenery.
In reading up on Sedona, I decided that Houndstooth would be a small mining community to the south of the main city hub, and that Kiss of Quartz would be located within the modern day Chapel of the Holy Cross.
In case the crew decided to kick their heels up in Houndstooth, I wrote up on a ton on the history of the region, and decided that, broadly the area was defined by a violent struggle between a mining union and the owners. I figured that kind of conflict would justify why a street doctor could operate a business outside of the previously established private insurance based function of the other hospitals in the Neo New Mexico Technopolis. The general vibe I hung onto was painted signs, filthy 70s carpet, air thick with the smell of cigarettes and roast chicken.
There’s a note here that references solipsism in relation to meditation healing - that’s probably not the right way to do it. I try to anticipate where big monologue moments might pop up, and try to make those moemtns more collaborative. In the end, I’m really happy with what Dak and Tech put together in the following ep.
Once I figured out the rough vibe and power relations in the town of Houndstooth, I mapped out exactly the area where the NeoScum would be parked. I made a map just in case one of the scum went rouge and just fled into the town.
The ice cream joint would be one of the little squares to the south of Kiss of Quartz. Fun fact: to the south west of the church, there’s this absolutely hideous, sprawling mansion. An unbelievable eyesore among some spectacular scenery. I figured some of the major elements of the mining union would be working out of there.
Also, I had fun portraying an NPC that actually was interested in helping the NeoScum complete their murderous objective. I figure the nurse would be ambivalent to the violence, understanding that clearing any trace of the act would be more beneficial to the facility than attempting a violent encounter with these strangers. Also the Nurse has a giant auto crossbow, because I established that guns are mostly banned in the Neo New Mexico Technopolis.
Ep 75: Goodnight
I’ve heard some people wondering about the “entity” introduced at the end of this episode. I like to think the entity was first encountered as the NeoScum fled the RoboBison back in episode 5, and that every flashback Z experiences was the entity “knocking on the door.” The technomancers of the Denver Cube were able to connect Z to Legacy of Adam from the unique matrix signature from whatever this entity was. Finally, the dying Cleaner in Phoenix mentions to Z something about an “organic matrix entity.” Anyway, that’s just my theory. I’m sure I’ll understand more as the events unfold.
Ep 76 - 77
For these next two episodes, I built out the settlement of Rare Metals. I had no idea how off the rails the ep would go, so wrote a lot. Here’s the map:
And here are some pics of the cool guys who live here":
Ep 78: Ruin Town
This is the map I made and was working off of. I wanted to set something up where there were many avenues to the Lich, and had no idea what direction they’d go.
At the end of the ep, they run into some other shadowrunners. Here’s what they looked like:
The Story of Crange
Finally, I would like to humbly offer the official crange playlist i made in 2017. i can attest that it still rocks, and is the official music to crange to:
The term crange was created back when me and Mike worked for a tracking logistics company. they would play music through the whole building, the same 3 playlists of classic rock, "indie", and country. One song that I heard a lot was some Cage the Elephant song where the guy sings "you can find a reason/ a reason to change/ standing in the pouring rain" being an incredible genius of satire, I would sing the song changing the word "change" to "crange."
I would get lethally caffeinated on the worst office coffee in the world. back then, two cups of coffee would send me into such an incredible tailspin I would either feel like god or like I was dying. I would pound as much as I could handle. this is "Cranging."
So this song would always play and I'd be out of my gourd. I would declare to Mike that this lead singer was actually singing about how the "pouring rain" gives him reason to "crange," taking an insane drug that makes him feel like a burning corpse. I thought this was very funny.
This is the story of crange. I liked to think doing crange felt like living in this robert williams painting. anyway, do me a solid, drink 3 coffees over your limit and listen to the official cranging playlist today