The last two weeks we've been playing Esoterrorists. It's modern day GUMSHOE in which a secret organisation, Ordo Veritatas, attempts to defeat and cover up the machinations of the Esoterrorists, magic wielding, membrane-busting evil dudes.

This scenario was set in Helmand Province in Afghanistan and was a chance to try out the expanded combat options from the Esoterror Factbook. A small team of soldiers was set out to investigate a field hospital where strange things were happening. It was a partially improvised game so we could spend investigation points to make things be true, such as the presence of a tunnel in some ruins (architecture) or a way of suppressing magical comms interference using Fourier analysis and noise reduction (2 points of electronic surveillance, one of data analysis).

It was basically an extended combat mission for players who don't necessarily like that kind of thing but there was a 3:16 vibe and banter and a healthy team spirit as well as interest in the "veil out" (the OV term for cover up). And the new rules worked very well, spencerpine in particular made full use of sniping rules by taking a score of 28 in shooting and showing what an asset a tooled up sniper can be. We used the fully-automatic, critical hits, techno-macho bullshit, grenades, called shots and end of comabt refresh rules, the whole shebang really. There were moments of insane bravery such as pushing a grenade down a bad guy's trousers and then throwing him to the floor, pushing a zombie's head in the way of automatic fire and amazing called shots, shooting the driver of an armoured jeep through the back of it, just the kind of rough and tumble the genre demands.

In all, a very enjoyable couple of sessions.