Hey Club Kids!
Well, the 1st Monday of June has come and gone... This entire month will most likely come and go, and you won't hear a peep out of me about scheduling a session. Frigging adulthood sucks. :(

Hopefully we can play sometime next month or something.

Anyways, in the meantime, here's some story seeds ripped from today's headlines!

• Austria finds stolen Stratavarius

• Spain threatens the Odyssey treasure ships

EDIT: OH! How can I forget!?! 'Ocean's 13' opens this weekend! I'm so psyched!

Current Mood: okay

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Ripped From Today's Headlines!
1. A former secretary at Coca-Cola tried to steal the secret formula and sell it to Pepsi!

2. Pakistani peacekeepers in the Congo have been smuggling gold and weapons!

Current Mood: good

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Ripped from Today's Headlines!
Half a billion in sunken treasure recovered here!

Actually, this company, Odyssey, would make a great modern day-setting campaign frame. Maybe not for Caper, but def. for a traditional rpg. Man, wouldn't this be a cool company to work for?

Oh no! Switzerland Invades Liechtenstein! (okay, not really a Caper story idea, but this headline makes me smile.)

Maybe the Swiss were there to loot some art... and sell it to Liz Taylor.

Current Mood: good

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I've been sitting on this one for a couple of weeks since I've been so busy..
So, on the way to the last session of Horatio Club (which only entailed just hanging out and having dinner and drinks... well, it is a social club after all), I heard this story on NPR about a guy and his baseball card collection:

When Evanston resident Lionel Carter purchased his first baseball card, Babe Ruth was still hitting home runs.

Seventy-four years and about 50,000 cards later, Carter, 89, has been forced to put his collection up for sale.

Burglars ransacked Carter's home last November. They took his wife's jewelry and emptied a drawer filled with a number of his baseball cards.

The stolen cards were recovered, but the jewelry was not. Carter feared the thieves would return. He said the police gave him two options to ensure his safety: Either put the cards in a safety deposit box or sell the collection.

"I sold every one of the cards because I didn't want anything to remind me of them," Carter said. "They meant so much to me (after) so many years of collecting. They were just a big part of my life.

"But you can't put 50,000 baseball cards in albums in a vault, so I had no choice but to sell them."

Here's the full story.

And another linky.

I'd love for the Horatio Club to travel back in time and kill those punk ass kids before they ever even steal this poor guy's collection. But I'm an old softie. I'm sure the session would develop in all sorts of entertaining ways as players did what they wanted. ;)

Current Mood: good

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Oh Crap!
I just remembered we have Horatio Club tomorrow! Christ, time flies.

I will double check w/ Sean at 21 Nickels and make sure we're all set with getting the back room.

I will look at the polls later tonight to figure out what story idea we're playing.

See you guys there around 6. Who's coming btw? Off the top of my head, the head count is:

Me
vampyrusgirl
head58
rayan4d2
ioianthe

Anyone else?

Gotta run-- time for father in law's b-day dinner!

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Polls for Session Three, Monday 30th

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Story Pitches for Next Monday
Anybody want to throw a story idea into the ring for next week? So far we have:

1. 'Steal the 2000 Election'
2. 'Track down and take out Lou Perlman'
3. Steal a bunch of Americanna.

If you want to pitch an idea, drop a comment here.

I will put up a poll later this week so we can vote on the Mastermind.

Current Mood: okay

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Stories Ripped From The Headlines!
Pointed out to me by head58. So much great Horatio Club fodder to be had here, I had to post the article in it's entirety to save it for posterity:

( Treasure Trove of Plot IdeasCollapse )

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It'd be like 'The Italian Job' remake, but with a godawful soundtrack.
So, here's a pitch to offer up for next Horatio Club episode on Monday 30th:

Hunt down and take down Lou Pearlman, former manager of the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync, who has bilked investors and banks out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and is currently on the lam. He was last seen in 2/2007 at an awards show in Berlin with his latest boy band US5, who won a Goldene Kamera Pop International Band award.

The FBI can go after him in the here and now, but the Mountebanks are equipped to take him out before he even spawns those ungodly abominations known as boy bands upon the world. ;)

Current Mood: okay

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Horatio club rules adjustment?
Last night, at the Elks installation, Bill leaned over and whispered that next Horatio Club session we should steal the grand high exalted rulers jewels... and I laughed... and then I started thinking about Horatio Club... I was thinking about how the time travel kind of cuts out the need to spend blue chips to dramatically edit, since you can just walk through a door and into the past or future as needed... and I was thinking that maybe next time we play, we could try making it so anytime you want to "use a door" it costs a blue chip. Like, let's say we establish that we're planning the heist two days in advance... if you want to go to the year before or the day after, it would cost you.

Just a suggestion I thought might work :)

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Vote for a Mastermind for Monday 3/5


See you Monday!

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Notes for Monday's game
I just confirmed the reservation for Monday, and I just found out from Sean Gavin (the owner of 21 Nickels) that there is a $20 per person minimum when using the private dining car. I don't think it'll be a problem (dinner and a drink or two should easily cover it), and I joked that if anyone is falling short, I can order a single malt scotch and make up the difference. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I thought I'd mention it.

Also, they do have wifi, so feel free to bring your laptops. We've found that the great and powerful Wikipedia adds a lot of flavor to stories. ;)

The address again is 21 Nichols Ave. in Watertown. I'll probably be there around 6ish (with a stop in Harvard Square first to pick up vampyrusgirl and anybody else who needs a ride, drop me a comment or email if you want a ride). If you get to the Nickel before I do, just tell the guy behind the bar you're there for the card game.

I really hope this place works out a venue. I hope playing in an old railroad dining car will balance out any uncomfortableness gaming among civilian waitstaff. Plus, in Caper you're not really gaming, you're playing cards and talking. ;)

See you Monday!

Current Mood: tired

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Call for caper pitches!
So who would like to throw their hat into the ring for being the Mastermind in Monday's game?

Please leave your story pitch in the comments the next day or two, and I will then make a poll on Friday afternoon so we can vote on who the Mastermind for the session will be.

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Session on Tuesday 2/6?
So, I see there were rumblings from head58 and ioianthe yesterday for maybe putting together a Caper session on Tuesday 6th. Is this something we should try to officially organize?

Pitch a heist idea here! I'll put up a poll over the weekend so we can vote on a Mastermind before we play...

If we do play, I'd like to try out some of the other optional rules... like maybe Double Agents... I'll put up another poll so the Mastermind can select which widgets we use.

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Session Pitch: The Laguna Niguel Heist
Synopsis:
In 1972, the largest bank robbery in United States history was committed at the United California Bank in Laguna Niguel. Amil Dinsio and his crew broke into the safe deposit box vault and made off with an estimated $30 million in cash, jewels, and bonds.

One of the safe deposit boxes belonged to then President Richard M. Nixon, its contents a closely guarded secret. But there are rumors of what could have been inside that box...

Our client, a Horatio Club 'Secret Historian', wants to find out.

Details:
Dinsio initially planned the heist to happen on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1972. But they had to bail when they discovered their preposition cache of tools had been discovered and taken by the Sheriff's Department.

They actually pull off the heist on March 24, 1972.

We can go in before the Dinsio crew (maybe using their first cache of tools), or we can rob the Dinsio crew during or after their heist to acquire the Nixon box for ourselves.

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Session Pitch: "The James Ossuary"
Synopsis:
The crew has been hired to steal The James Ossuary, and sell it to Moses Shapira, a Victorian-era dealer (and later exposed as a forger of) Holy Land antiquities.

Details:
Possible windows where the job can be pulled:

Oded Golan's Tel Aviv estate before November 15, 2002.

The Royal Ontario Museum, where the ossuary was on display between November 15, 2002 and January 5, 2003.

From January 5, 2003 on, the ossuary is in storage at an undisclosed Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) warehouse, pending resolution of various court trials against Golan and his alleged cabal of tomb robbers, forgery ring, and smuggling network.

The anonymous buyer ('Mr. Smith') then wants the ossuary sold to Moses Shapira in 1881.

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