Powered by the Apocalypse, Deconstructed by Monkeys

I complain about a lack of painting time, but in reality, proper role-playing time has been at a premium since before the holidays.  

Our last story-line D6 Star Wars game was prior to Thanksgiving, and intentionally left on a pretty serious cliffhanger.  I had intended to knock out our more light-hearted holiday game well before Christmas and cruise gently into January with some lighter fare before returning to dramatic resolution for the campaign.  That final session of the holiday game finally got finished on January 10th.

Except I've been crazier than even at work and home.  I've actually overslept a 9pm session, I've been the last one online a bunch of times, just to find that only one or two people made it.  To make matters worse, our Wookie's player took a new job, which was a lot less stress, but still a ton of late hours which interferes with life, and our Sipsk'ud player continues to go through long-distance care of a loved one, and ultimately their hospice and cleaning up their estate.  Everyone is desperately hoping for a resumption of the campaign, but it hasn't been in the cards.  

So, in the last month, we've gotten two one-shots completed:  A Texas-Fried Cthulhu game, complete with new characters, and completely random one-hour shot when I ran really late and knew we need to do SOMETHING for everyone else's efforts of showing up on time.

I remember there being a popular Call of Cthulhu published scenario that was a hit at conventions.  The characters started off with no memories of anything, and it was up to the player and keeper to determine how the characters remember who they are.  

I went with the vagaries of that scenario and used the basic resolution of Apocalypse World, as the characters were kidnapped, the vehicle transporting them crashed, and they had a chance to escape. 

A chance was a relative term, as they were CDC monkeys who crashed in Central Pennsylvania. 

The resolution system worked out well, as the players were inundated with soft hits and misses, complicating many things like a crashed truck full of monkeys would.   

Tossing playbooks at my players might not be the smartest choice for now, but if PBTA is good enough for my daughter, I might revisit the system in a more constructed format.