Dante¶
Dante plays Kurtis "Kurt" Leonard Larson, the task force's ex-CIA consultant, and the alien prince Derk in the non-canon one-shot.
| Role | Player |
| Characters | Kurt Larson; Derk (one-shot) |
| Sessions | All 37 recorded canon sessions and the one-shot |
| First session | Radford Horror 01 |
Characters played¶
Kurt Larson¶
Dante has played Kurt in every recorded canon session. Kurt is an Expert: a Vietnam veteran and former CIA case officer from a unit called UTAW, on loan to the FBI, with an armory, a wheeled travel case and a contact for everything. Andre confirms the playbook at the table more than once ("you're the Expert, right?"). (Radford Horror 01, Appalachia 09, Walkers 04)
Derk¶
In Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable Dante plays Derk, a near-indestructible and very dim alien prince who was raised on scorpions and loves dogs and hot dogs. It is the opposite of Kurt in every respect. Dante admitted, "I really pushed all the onus of, like, actual thinking, planning onto Rita for this one," and Andre replied that "it's amazing how Derk being fucking stupid has dominated the tone of this one-shot." Derk's best roll of the session was a 15. (Philosopher's Fist)
Play style¶
Procedure first¶
Dante plays Kurt as the person at the table who knows how the thing is actually done, and he brings the detail himself. Searches are run as an inverted wedge with every print photographed. Rooms are entered as a four-man stack. Caves are navigated by glow stick with a kneeling front rank. He lectures on the fatal funnel, calls for "Ear pro!" and has Kurt check a stopped car with a bare non-dominant hand. By Roulet Estate 03 Kurt is lecturing at Quantico, and the lecture is Dante's. (Appalachia 02, Appalachia 03, Appalachia 08, Walkers 03, Roulet Estate 03)
The same instinct makes him the party's usual lead in interviews, phone calls and crime scenes: the autopsy in Radford Horror 05, the Whateley break-in in Radford Horror 06, the arcade in Radford Horrors 03, most of the detective work in Radford Horrors 04. (Radford Horror 05, Radford Horror 06, Radford Horrors 03, Radford Horrors 04)
The trunk¶
Kurt's Preparedness move lets Dante produce gear on a roll, and he has used it to build the campaign's longest-running prop joke: a trunk containing stilts, wolf urine, waders, a wetsuit, a welding mask, a Super Soaker and, when challenged on any of it, the answer "Like, why wouldn't I?" The stilts keep coming back; in Utah Kurt says, "I had those stilts since Vietnam." Dante's more serious acquisitions include an M28 Davy Crockett and a P90. (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 06, Summer Service 04, Walkers 04)
Tall tales¶
Kurt's backstory is delivered as a stream of unverifiable anecdotes, most of them invented on the spot: three of Castro's body doubles, a dictator poisoned through a handshake, a tulpa summoning that may or may not have worked, four molars loaded with different drugs. Dante says outright when he is making something up: having Kurt reminisce about college in Appalachia 09, he admitted he could not "think of, like, a good plausible college right now." He also habitually adds small details to past scenes after the fact (Kurt was counting his paces all along). (Summer Service 04, Radford Horror 05, Walkers 01, Radford Horror 03, Appalachia 09, Appalachia 03, Appalachia 01)
Arguing the fiction¶
Dante pushes back when something seems implausible, in or out of character. He insists a Claymore and gunfire underground cannot go unheard, that forklifts are fast and ape-proof, and that a hostage taker run by the GM "knows everything the DM knows" and so should not be taken at his word. He predicted that a guide's plan had "too many steps for this to possibly go correctly" ("Statistics is against us"), and it did go wrong. He is still annoyed that a pharmacy once had a mobile phone and the team has never kept one. (Appalachia 08, Appalachia 09, Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 01)
Gallows humor¶
His jokes are dry and usually land on Kurt's past or the party's condition: "Once immolated, twice shy"; "Ask your doctor if being worms is for you"; "We're switching the Biz to a different, higher-fiber wet food." His one-line summary of an entire arc finale was "Got the real Andrew back, fucking killdozered a community center." (Radford Horror 04, Summer Service 03, Radford Horror 08, Walkers 09)
Signature moments¶
- Spitting LSD into Agent Murphy's mouth. Set on fire by Agent Murphy, Kurt bites his LSD tooth and spits it into his attacker's mouth. (Radford Horror 03)
- "Aw heck." The first arc's climactic session cuts to black on Kurt's line. Dante's first pitch for it had been "I still love you." (Radford Horror 07)
- The Davy Crockett. Dante burns a Luck point on Kurt's weapons contact and comes back with a tactical nuclear recoilless gun, then spends the finale teaching the rest of the party to fire it from the back seat of a stolen car. (Summer Service 04, Summer Service 06)
- Women's-shelter cards. Kurt carries a stack and presses one on every Covenant member he meets. Andre loved the idea. (Appalachia 04)
- The ape-whisperer. Underground and surrounded, Dante talks his way through with a ketamine-and-Combos plan, a hotwired forklift and three rolls of 11. (Appalachia 09)
- "Parlez-vous français?" Faced with a coyote standing on two legs, Kurt throws baloney and tries a verbal flashbang. (Walkers 04)
- The spear gun. Kurt is hassled over it at airport security, decides it would have "presence" in an interrogation room, and finally uses it to nail a rabid mouse to a motel floor. (Radford Horrors 02)
- The Vietnam flashback. Digging in the Roulet basement, Kurt hallucinates a prison guard and empties his sidearm into the hole. (Roulet Estate 02)
Dice¶
Dante's luck runs in streaks. There is a run of 10s in Radford Horror 05, three 11s in Appalachia 09, and a night in Walkers 08 of which he says, "I've genuinely just been rolling really fucking good tonight." Against that: snake eyes in Radford Horror 06, Radford Horror 07 ("so I don't have a shovel") and Appalachia 03, and a 3 in Summer Service 01 greeted with "This keeps happening." He grumbles about his dice in Radford Horrors 01. (Radford Horror 05, Radford Horror 06, Radford Horror 07, Summer Service 01, Appalachia 03, Appalachia 09, Walkers 08, Radford Horrors 01)
Attendance¶
Dante is heard in every recorded canon session, Radford Horror 01 through Radford Horrors 04, and for the one-shot. Kurt has never been absent from a recorded session.