Proof again that not only do I tread that line between genius and insanity, I pick up that line and skip rope with it.
Again, brackets “[ ]” denote pulls from the bag, while parenthesis “(
)” denote my thought process and out of context comments to the players.
Brady and Kevin were the first to arrive at the table, pod-casters that
were at the game last year and wonderful individuals that I invited back
this year. We were able to talk for a while as more players made their
way to the table. Apparently everyone was coming from the farthest side
of the convention to get to my table. Needless to say, we didn't get
started on time.
One thing that was nice was that everyone at the table had played Qags
before except one person, but he caught on right away. After a 20 minute
wait, we got started.
( I pulled a clump of papers out of my bag, something I rarely do. I
even told the players that I was not happy with the clumping of the
papers.)
the initial pulls (10)
man knows things he's not supposed to know
we are broken
people part company
axe-wielding maniacs
thirst for knowledge
represent the dead
big bad bertha takes on giant monster
epic
I question mother nature
cathedralpult found
the initial theme:
(at this point, I plant my face squarely in my palm. First off, this is
the third time that [we are broken ] has been pulled from the bag.
Initially, that's a trigger for some sort of genetic mismatch, i.e.
broken ones from Dnd 2nd ed. Tying that idea in with [thirst for
knowledge],[man knows things he's not supposed to know](which is a
reference trigger for anything Lovecraft),[ I question mother nature]
and [represent the dead], I've got a lot of pulls that kind of fit
together in a large clump of WTF. )
(initially, my mind reached back to the concept of the broken ones, and I
think of “the island of Dr Moreau” and I also remember the doctor from
the HP Lovecraft story “Cool Air”. I reference the doctor in my Kindle
and find the name of Dr Munoz. There's my main villain. My mind looks
across the pulls again and sees the Big Bad Bertha and I Question Mother
Nature pulls. This combination triggers a look back at 70's films like
“I Spit on your grave” and it also pulls in a bit of the character
“”Papa Ceasar” from the video game “House of the Dead: Overkill” which
is supposed to be like a exploitation/Grindhouse film.)
So, with some reluctance, I tell my players that i'm going to put
together some words that probably shouldn't go together in the first
place.
Theme: Lovecraft Grindhouse.
Character' creation: I tell my players that i'm looking for characters
from the 1970's that might be found in grindhouse films. Detectives,
private eyes, scientists, intellectuals, etc. as they hash out their
characters and talk amongst themselves about what they need, I try to
piece together an initial bit of plot.
Here's what the players come up with
Dictionary Larry: a play on Encyclopedia Brown, a kid detective that solves crimes.
Silver Bullitt: an old stunt car driver and mechanic.
Eagle-Bro: a biker who think he's a shaman and might know magic
Johnny “Lightning” Barnes: actor/stuntman/kung fu badass/ movie star
Dr Bob: Former Radical Professor Hopper Type
Ted Zepplin: seedy nightclub owner
Spanky Diggs: PhD hippie psychic
after approval and general character intro, we got on with it.
The game:
the characters all work for a public company called The Syndicate, which
does all sorts of stuff and hires people from all walks of life with
different skill sets to do things. (OOOOOKKKAY!!!???) They are called
into a meeting with Dr Barnes (no relation to Johnny) who looks like a
grizzled Charlton Heston from True Lies. He gives the agents the task of
finding Dr. Munoz (I state that there's a lot of doctors in this game
apparently). Dr Munoz is the leader of the Zowlow Clan, which is a
Haitian Voodoo/ Drug Running crime cartel thingie. Anyway, they are
coming into the Miami airport to pick-up/drop off some drug called
“grave dust” and that the agents must stop this transaction.
The group talks amongst themselves and formulates a plan to use johnny
lightning’s personal plane (an eight prop doubled plane similar to Soul
Plane with all the luxury accommodations) to trail the incoming Munoz
plane, and then proceed to perform a car stunt with Silver Bullitt and
drive her car into Munoz's plane. Ok, sounds like a plan to me.
So, as the group has a little bit of downtime, they party it up on the
plane, when they all hear a loud bang and smell smoke. Apparently, there
is another plane following them and shooting rockets at them while they
themselves are following Munoz's plane. After losing a few engines,
Johnny's personal pilot asks them what he should do? He tells the pilot
to get as close as he can to Munoz's plane and has Bullitt get ready to
drive. The group all packs into Spanky Diggs's bus, and the stunt
driver shoots the vehicle out of her plane and into the other plane
without a hitch. However, all planes collide and are heavily damaged.
They fall from the sky and the group blacks out.
The group awakens, having manage to survive the crash with barely a
scratch. They realize that they are no longer in Miami, but on a large
jungle island with much dense vegetation. Their ride, the bus is
completely trashed and unable to be repaired by the mechanic/stunt man.
The hippie decides to climb a tree and finds that there is one lone
beach directly to the east and a large mansion to the north of the
island.
As they travel through the dense jungle with the hippie at the lead,
they fail to notice (on several different occasions) that the jungle
sounds are extremely different in this area. ( I was going to have them
try to notice that there were sounds of some creature nearby that seemed
to be some sort of growling form of communication, but the players
failed the rolls every time.) As the group nearly reaches the mansion,
the hippie sees a large shadowy creature trailing them on the left side
of the jungle he gets a bit freaked, but he has Johnny Lightning come by
and take care of the situation the best he can (which at times was
great because the character was a big mean talker, but would often
either make the matter worse, or react completely different to the way
you'd expect him to.) The creature leaps out and gets the drop on poor
Johnny Lightning, who is now screaming like a little girl. Both the
hippie and the seedy nightclub owner try to help out and eventually get
the creature subdued with a serious handful of downers.
Upon examination of the creature, they see that it is a composite
animal, a hybrid of human and animal [we are broken] put together with
some sort of operation. This discovery leads them to [question mother
nature] but They shrug this off and move on, being more cautious as they
finally get to the mansion. Spanky knocks on the door and is greeted by
a curt and callous small german fellow. The crazy hippie manages to get
into the mansion, talking his way in and admitting he has to use the
bathroom. He gets in and the rest of the group follows in. the german
heads upstairs and a loud conversation starts with what can be assumed
to be the master of the house. After a few minutes, the german comes
back to the room, and offers lemonade to the group. The german lets the
group know that he is supposed to offer hospitality to the group, but
that they must leave soon because they are very busy running the
mansion.
As the hippie searches the house, he gets a look around and sees several
other servants running around and each is more diminutive in stature
than the last. Also, the hippie is more lucky than good (his gimmick)
and finds a hidden passage. The hippie returns to the group, then leads
them down into the passage where they find a huge rough laboratory,
there are several animals in cages, and some are being occasionally
shocked by electricity. Others are being force-fed chemicals and IV's of
various meds. Johnny assures the group that this is all necessary for
good makeup products (typical meathead machismo, and a great spot to
drop it). Additionally they see a large bay door that has been torn and
bent as is a large creature escaped. The group assumes that the
creature was the one that they subdued in the jungle. Further research
around the lab reveals a door that has been weakly padlocked. Strange
sound emanate from the room beyond the door.
The kid detective decides to try and pick the lock. He gets a quirky
success. He takes the lock off opens the door and stares directly into
the yellow eyes of a panther that jumps out and takes him down. The
action star tries to help out, but ends up getting scratched across the
face for his efforts. The action star and hippie try to find a natural
predator to the panther, perhaps a large lizard that’s poisonous enough
to subdue the big kitty. As the two go off and start looking for a
predator, the stunt woman whacks the panther over the head with her
wrench and rolls ridiculously well. So the scene that unfolds goes like
this:
“The Hippie and the Action Star are going through a montage with “Come
on, get Happy” playing over the whole scene. They are going through
several different doors in a hallway, and each time emerging from a
different door. They have a few good laughs as they play hide and seek.
Finally, they find the cage of a large lotus eating lizard of reasonable
lethality. The duo smiles, slaps high fives, thumbs up, etc, then
return to the panther, only to find the beast dead on the floor with a
wrench sticking out of its skull an a self satisfied smirk on the face
of the stunt driver mechanic. The soundtrack “Come on, get Happy is
abruptly cut off with a loud scratch on the album.”
Eagle-Bro , the biker-turned magic man gets an idea, knowing that this
panther larger than what it's supposed to be, and decided to imbue the
dead panther with the metallic soul of his motorcycle that was destroyed
in the plane crash (yes, it was on the plane. Go with it). So now, we
have a large panther cycle for transport. I decided that this was an
[epic] moment. Anyway, the group looks around and finds that this is the
room where the hybrids are held and prepped for shipping. Apparently
there is a company called Optimus that better then half of these hybrids
are being shipped to their warehouse. It seems that whoever is doing
these experiments is being paid quite well. At the back of this holding
room there is a large cellar door with a rusty lock. Again, the kid
detective picks the lock and heads down into a crypt where there are
pieces of the dead everywhere. Some of the pieces are fresh, some are on
the verge of rotting, but it becomes all too obvious that these are
some parts that are being added to the animals to make the hybrids.
In the center of this crypt, there is a pedestal that has a large book
upon it. It turns out to be a scientific journal/ledger/black book that
has all sorts of bad bad stuff in it:
to paraphrase (and this is where I was able to really offload a ton of
my initial pulls), the passages of the book had the following info.
Journal area: the writer says that he has [learned something that man
was never meant to know] and that his [thirst for knowledge] has led him
to new discoveries about life. He has [represented the dead] by giving
dead tissue a second chance to live, and that the living that uses it
has a chance to benefit from such a union. He also mentions that the
shocking of animals and chemical induction can both augment the
creatures on the molecular level, making them [overly energetic] and
more aggressive/ docile (whatever the needs of the clients might be.)
Ledger area: the book holds information about this Optimus group. The
writer refers to them as a [“people part” company] it seems that this
company is bringing in the components to make these hybrids, and in
return the hybrids are being brought to optimus to put them into slave
labor, such as mines and dangerous work. There is also a bit of
information that optimus wants to get into [deep space operations] which
is something completely unheard of in the 1970's.
Upon further examination, the handwriting is clearly that od dr Munoz.
The group hears footsteps coming down the stairs in the laboratory, so
they take the book and hide as best they can. Dr, munoz emerges from the
upper lab, looks around the crypt, then notices that the book is
missing, he goes to leave, but the action star kicks some equipment onto
the doctor, while another drugs the doc to subdue him.
The doc is interrogated some more, and tells them that he's a bad guy.
The drugs (grave dust) is just his side business, but this is where the
money really is. He's defiant even under sedation. He does tell the
group that there is a group of [axe-wielding maniacs] on the east side
of the island, and that is why there are so many hybrids in his
possession. He also mentions that he has a boat standing by on the west
side of the island, manned at all times by a servant named pedro.
The group thinks that the best plan of action is to get munoz off the
island and back to the syndicate. They wish to avoid the axe maniacs at
all costs. So they head out. Munoz gets more courses of drugs from those
select few that took some drugs from the lab. (mostly the professor,
the hippie, etc.) munoz realizes in a drugged stupor that the time warp
can indeed be created again with just a jump to the left [rocky horror
picture show](yes, that's an actual pull from the bag)
the group comes across a large bayou with a ramshackle shack. There's an
old black woman sitting on the porch with a shotgun in her hands. She's
rather mean spirited to the group as they approach, but the whole
conversation gets cut off when a large bear-like creature breaks through
the tree line. The woman, who is known only as big bad bertha, begins
fighting the giant monster [big bad bertha takes on giant monster]. The
action star gets in on the action, but again proves to be ineffective
against the giant beast. Big bad bertha takes the monster down, looks at
the action star and calls him a “sucka”. (the action star's dumb fact
was that he was a sucka, just once. It was a sore point for him) anyway,
the two get to fighting, and the action star takes the woman down. He
is glorified and feels that he has reached the apex of his conditioning.
I go along with this, and let him see if he can obtain this zen-like
pinnacle of perfection. He makes the roll, I reach in the bag, and
extract [lake wizard] on a piece of paper. The action star, now has lake
wizard powers, and gains a [talisman] that grants him his powers.
The new lake wizard tries to use the bayou to make a wave to ride to the
west side of the island. After several attempts, he gets a small wave
that makes it a little faster for travel.
The group makes it to the dock with the boat. They find Pedro on the
dock...and on the boat...and in the boathouse... there's blood
everywhere. The group looks to the treeline as the mechanic tries to
hot-wire the boat. As the boat roars to life, and everybody piles in, an
axe comes flying out of the treeline and embeds itself into the hull of
the ship. There are axe maniacs everywhere on both sides of the dock,
and they are flinging their axes with some seriously crappy accuracy
(stupid dice)
as they are traveling, the lake wizard is trying to navigate by locking
his senses onto the nearest lake, which should take them back to Florida
at least. During this time, the professor is “science-ing the panther”
and mounting the shotgun from Big Bad Bertha into the mouth of the
panther. Additionally, the several course meal of drugs is still being
administered to Munoz, who is looking green and sickly. He's still
slightly coherent, but pretty much is in a semi vegetative state.
The group gets back to Miami. They dock the boat, head to the Syndicate
building, when all of the sudden the whole building collapses into a
large [pit]. The group looks down into the pit to see a gibbering mass
of tentacles, teeth and eyes rise up to greet them. The colossal beast
emerges from the depths, looks squarely at the seedy nightclub owner and
demands the book. (mainly, the creature picks out this player because
he failed his nerve roll) the nightclub owner is grabbed by the large
Cthulhu like creature, and is carried off into the city.
Diggs, our hippie drug user who communes with the spirits, has a
fantastic idea. He attempts to switch spirits between the seedy
nightclub owner and the lizard that they saved from the mansion. (yes,
they still have the lizard, go with it). Diggs enters a trance like
state, and manipulates the energies to make this happen, and
surprisingly it works, so the nightclub owner is now a kung-fu fighting
lizard.
Instead of giving chase to Cthulhu, the group peers down into the depths
of the pit and see a distant fire burning on the bottom of this pit,
and there is the sound of chanting wafting ever so faintly from the pit.
Using both the motorcycle panther and a stunt car, the group gets to
the bottom by death spiraling around the pit at top speeds to keep them
stuck to the side of the crater. (genius!) they reach the bottom to
find a makeshift alter, torched mounted on the wall, and there is a
walkway leading into another room. The group goes through the passage to
find themselves in a large circular room with metal catwalks on the
walls and an empty floor with a large seam that run across the room from
north to south. A very large window is up high on one of the
cylindrical walls. The lizard decides to climb up the wall, and takes
the professor along for a ride. The two scale the wall with reasonable
difficulty, but make it up to the window to peer in. they see people in
robes with hoods manning several different stations with technical
readouts, keyboards, and monitors. There are also five men in orange
jumpsuits with numbers on their chests chained together, and one of the
robed figures hands each a different weapon (generally something that
looks scary and does a lot of damage in the right hands. Machete,
chainsaw,etc.) odd, right?
the large circular room gets bathed in red lights and sirens go off all
around the group. The seam in the floor splits open [beneath their feet]
and a large rocket rises into the room. The group realizes they're in a
missile silo, and that they need to stop that thing from launching. It
is about this time that the lizard and the professor bust into the room,
and the professor uses a vial that he procured from Munoz's lab. The
vial breaks open upon impact and there is a [gooey caramel nexus] that
looks like the Mars company made a black hole weapon. It swirls around
the room and takes the cultists and killers with it before it seals
itself up again. (cool!)
meanwhile, Diggs decides to have a close look at the rocket, and climbs
up into the cockpit area. There, he finds a file called “project alpha:
aka [serial killers on the moon]. For what purpose this project was for
is still unknown, but Diggs was sure that their math and theory was way
off and that the project was doomed to fail. Moreover, Diggs shuts down
the rocket.
Now the epic part:
there's still a cthulhu running around town, and that needs to be taken
care of immediately. The team decides to create a fighting machine out
of the motorcycle-panther. With many rolls and yum yums, the group
disassembles the rocket, then builds it into the panther. The result is
Giga-Panther
this robotic beast was described as such:
shotgun enabled roar
powered by lakes
the soul of a motorcycle
the heart of a panther
it has the gooey caramel nexus laser
it is kung-fu compatible
instantly, I think that the creature is missing something (having seen
way too many monster movies) I look over my list of pulls and notice
that i've forgotten something. I tell them that the cultists had found a
special weapon from ages ago, and now the group had [found the
cathedralpult]. Needless to say, we all decide to mount the weapon on
the Giga-Panther
we break the workload down into several stations before the fight with Cthulhu
Johnny Lightning controls the power systems (lake wizard powers)
Eagle Bro and Spanky Diggs are using a spiritual guidance systems
Silver Bullitt is running the engineering
Dictionary Larry is looking through the book, trying to find any sort of ritual that could weaken or banish Cthulth
Dr Bob is running the science area
Ted Zepplin/ lizard is hooked into the kung fu interface and running weapon systems.
So the battle rages on for a while, then eventually the cathedralpult is
fired. The damage roll is terrible, but it's enough to stun the
creature. The Giga-Panther grabs cthulhu and throws him high in the air,
then fires the gooey caramel nexus at cthulhu, who basically turns into
a heath bar and is trapped and ported away to another dimension.
The game ends with the character's planning on rebuilding and running
the new syndicate, they find that Munoz is dead due to extreme
chlorophyl poisoning, and the group lets Giga-Panther free to defend the
world, which walks away in the tide towards the setting sun, raising a
steel paw to the sky and roaring loudly.
So I have to say this: the game was fun, though I really had to work
just to get several pulls out of the way all at once. It was still
random, but slightly more structured than most years. I really look
forward to next year, and I hope to get to run this event real soon.
That's all for now
MK
