Season Details.

Episode 2: "Rosebud"

• Catchup: Meanwhile...
  Finishing up the last episode and getting stuff in order before the start of the next episode.

• Scene 1: Weirdness
  Jonathan meets Rose, his mystery date. Faith punches Donnan. Casey goes walkies again, and cops weird them both out. Patroling in a group, a weird supernatural crowd is spotted.
• Scene 2: Parking
  Jonathan dates again! Vamps in the park and attacked homeless people and the gang dispose of some vamps after a tense fight. Mary has a run in with some Jocks. Faith goes postal on some vamps. Mary is becoming untrusting of cops and paranoid in general. Jonathan tries to explain stuff, but people grill him about his date instead. Gemma and Casey bicker at lunch.
• Scene 3: Weirdness building...
  Jonathan follows police who are searching near the VC's mansion and he hears shots. Twins real birthday, exchange useless presents, hear their Dad in the attic, but he says not to go up there. Casey goes walkies again and Mary goes worried. Cop watch meeting for Mary and Casey. Prepare for party central!
• Scene 4: Party
  Social goings on at the party of the century.
• Scene 5: Rosebud
  Argue at the party, Faith dragged off by the cop twins, Mary and Jonathan confused. Mary and Jonathan, chase down the twins and Casey in the VC's house and go try and rescue them (with Angel who has just rocked up and scared Jonathan). Shooting, but noone is killed (other than Angel who is already dead). Flee!
• Scene 6: Rosebud (conclusion)
  Disarming the situation with Faith, people settle back to a quiet night. The next day the discuss possible solutions to the Rosebud situation.

Episode discussion

Ok. I admit it. America scares me. When we went to visit some friends in the US, it amazed me because it was so close to Australia, yet so different.

The oddest thing was on the first day when we went to visit the BART station in SanFrancisco. There we saw some BART police with pistols and three extra clips (just incase the first 30 rounds didn't drop the target). Shudder. I was also upset by the huge number of homeless people in the streets. World's richest country? I saw so many more homeless people than one does in Australian cities. Something was weird there.

Anyway, taking those ideas, I cast around for a plot that would use some of those ideas. Reading my Lonley Planet guide for SF, I noticed a refence to (a misspelt in the LP guide) Rosebud Denovo. Some web searches returned some fascinating material about this intelligent and troubled woman.

Looking further into the story, I found some weird stuff such as some accounts suggesting that Rosebud lived in the same house as the Unabomber when he was in Berkeley. I considered using the house as the focus for the story, but that seemed wrong. I felt that Rosebud's story deserved to be told and not trivialised or 'explained away'. The story was tragic and moving enough without adding weirdness or wackyness.

Anyway, I convinced some of the other players (Kate and Rachel, with Damien guest starring) to help me 'replay' the tragic events for Ken and Richard (Mary and Jonathan).

Now that we are at the conclusion, I just hope that the story was done the justice that it deserves. I am pleased that all of my players seem to be moved after reading the Information on rosebud text. All of them find it disturbing that such a tragic event was allowed to happen.

If you want to run this story yourself, then I suggest that you read the links below and draw your own conclusions, but I think you will find a tragic story how ever you read this.

Links...

• Information on Rosebud (local cache)
• Berkeley page mentioning Rosebud
• Berkeley cop watch
• Berkeley cop watch winter report
• Why things like BART cops scare me
• US law on your rights and cops...
  • Know your rights quiz
  • Berkeley cop watch: your rights
• Just incase you think that things are better in Australia. Lets not even talk about the UK where you have no rights at all.

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