Ezra¶

Ezra plays Dick "The Biz" Baxter, the task force's counterintelligence man, and from The Radford Horrors onward also plays Special Agent Daniel Webster. He is the only player with two characters in the main campaign.


Role	Player
Characters	Dick "The Biz" Baxter; Daniel Webster
Sessions	All 37 recorded canon sessions
First session	Radford Horror 01

Characters played¶

The Biz¶

Ezra has played the Biz since the first session: a cynical, paranoid, chronically broke FBI counterintelligence agent with a nickname he enjoys ("I'm getting mileage out of the Biz"). Ezra asked how rolls worked in the first session. He had not planned a voice, said Australian was "like the only accent I can consistently pull off," and later settled on Columbo as the model ("You know what, Columbo is totally the voice"). (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 06)

Ezra's mental image of the character is the man "in every Japanese or Korean movie who's in his mid-40s and is fairly competent and maybe even somewhat likable," in fairly nice clothes but with a rough look: "someone who looks like he spent a lot of time in casinos." (Summer Service 04)

Daniel Webster¶

When the Biz's story took him to Russia, Ezra needed someone to play in Virginia. Asked for the new character's name at the table, he said, "Fuck me, I didn't actually come up with one," then "Daniel—Daniel Webster," and added, "I hope that that's not a real name of somebody." Webster is the Biz's opposite: a by-the-book agent who "looks about twenty-five percent more like a Fed than Andrew Howard" and suspects the old task force of having been a political dirty-work unit. Ezra plays him in "a normal, boring voice." (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)

In Radford Horrors 02 Ezra plays only Webster. In Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 03 and Radford Horrors 04 he plays both, switching between the Biz's solo scenes in Russia and Webster's scenes with the party. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 03, Radford Horrors 04)

Ezra has also named his next character in advance, should the Biz die: an Australian bush pilot. (Walkers 06)

Play style¶

The secret keeper¶

More of Ezra's game happens off the recording than anyone else's. Andre passes him private notes, pulls him out of the call and sends him direct messages, because the Biz is carrying a plot the other characters do not know about: coded messages from Russian intelligence read through a Moby-Dick book cipher, a dead drop, a camera planted in a hotel room. Ezra kept it from the other players for whole arcs. They saw only the consequences, such as the Biz limping in with a twisted ankle and slept-in clothes. Andre, to the others: "you guys don't know, but Biz is just having a rough day." (Summer Service 04, Appalachia 01, Appalachia 02, Appalachia 06)

He uses the same channel to set things up himself, privately sending Andre a plan in Summer Service 03 and the idea for the Biz's Secret Santa gift in Roulet Estate 01 ("I just made Andre's life a little bit harder"). (Summer Service 03, Roulet Estate 01)

Choosing the hard road¶

Ezra tends to pick the option that costs his character something. Asked what the Biz did after the task force was disbanded, he reasoned that this was the time for "consequences for, you know, fucking up the way that he did," offered Andre a choice between the Biz being abducted and living under the radar, and got abduction by the Russians. He burned three Luck points in a single action sequence to keep a president alive, leaving the Biz three short of doom, with the comment "Let's find out what Doomed does." (Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 03)

The skeptic¶

He plays the Biz as the party's doubter, and lets the doubt erode on schedule: "Do aliens climb trees?" in Radford Horror 05; "I now believe in aliens, and I hate them" two sessions later; and by the third arc, "before I joined this task force, my impression was that anybody who believes in any of this stuff is nuts." Webster restarts the cycle from zero. (Radford Horror 05, Radford Horror 07, Appalachia 04, Radford Horrors 04)

"I'm gonna be that guy"¶

Ezra is the table's most persistent fact-checker after Andre. He takes a sunset time to Wolfram Alpha ("All right, you know what? I am gonna be that guy") and prices the Spud Hut menu ("Expensive spud for 1992. Not gonna lie"). He also asks for "someone who's good at taking notes" when the decisions pile up. (Walkers 03, Appalachia 02, Summer Service 05)

Jokes that do not land¶

He commits to bits whether or not the table follows: "Three days out of a cave?", the dog-inbreeding saga of "Pimpy 3X," and "Is your name Frotter Cumsock?" In one early session he has Andre take his headphones off so that he can pitch a theory to the other players without the GM hearing it. (Summer Service 05, Appalachia 06, Radford Horror 02)

Signature moments¶

The toilet anaconda. The Biz's digestion is the campaign's first running gag, beginning with a corn dog in the first scene and ending, in Andre's words, when he is "finally able to dislodge a toilet anaconda." (Radford Horror 01)
Blinding the Moth. With no armor and no melee weapon, the Biz climbs the Radford Moth and gouges its eyes, then burns a Luck point to wake up afterwards. Ezra: "I'm gonna level up so hard if I live." (Radford Horror 07)
The party investigator. Two rolls of 14 on Investigate a Mystery at the lighthouse. (Summer Service 03)
Letterman. Ordered onto David Letterman's show as "the most hated cop in America," the Biz turns a failing roll into a 12 with Luck and comes out with an ally. (Walkers 01)
Know a guy. Two 12s in a row on the Biz's Fixer move produce a ground-penetrating radar and a bomb collar. (Walkers 04)
Through the ceiling. Hidden in a pharmacy's drop ceiling as the fail-safe, the Biz shoots first to save Kurt, is shot in the thigh and falls through. (Roulet Estate 03)
Saving Yeltsin. Alone in Russia, the Biz gets Boris Yeltsin out of an ambush and loses an eye doing it. (Radford Horrors 03)
Reading the title. Ezra speaks the name of the new arc over the credits: "The Radford Horrors." (Radford Horrors 01)

Dice¶

Ezra's dice are extreme in both directions. He rolled double sixes in Radford Horror 03 ("Double sixes, baby") and Radford Horror 06, and a natural 12 for a total of 15 in Roulet Estate 01. He also failed so often in the first arc that his experience track overflowed: by Radford Horror 08 he was "marking X's over top of the X's" and one failed roll away from "a double level up." (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 06, Roulet Estate 01, Radford Horror 08)

Several late sessions found him without a working dice roller or without his sheet, so Andre or Zack rolled for him. In Radford Horrors 01 he announced that he had found his dice again. (Roulet Estate 03, Walkers 08, Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 03, Radford Horrors 01)

Attendance¶

Ezra is heard in every recorded canon session. He is not in the one-shot. The Biz is missing from one session, Radford Horrors 02, where Ezra plays Webster.