While my claim to fame as a GM is my ability to maintain continuity and campaign canon, I'm always trying to to improve upon thinking on the fly, adapting to player suggestion, the exploring entire worlds and concepts off of mere prompts.
With the last few years of online gaming, I've been able to run fill-in sessions of various games when we were short enough players, or missing essential players to an important plot. I still owe the group the final episode in the "Bigg Melons in the Time of COVID" trilogy which heavily adapted James D'Amato's Coffee Shop into a Supermarket Catharsis in a time of mandatory masks and zero toilet paper. My Canadian Cthulhu game Curse of Nevoz was born from an earlier, non-pandemic time, and my Adventures in Gulluvia BECMI D&D game was based on a warped concept, weird characters, and a few simple plot points that the crew never got close enough to.
Between my realization that our Star Wars d6 campaign was in need of, at a minimum, a palette cleanse, and the group working towards a new game (that ultimately led to Gamma World), I had an filler session with too many ideas.
- What if, during the days of the Very Old Republic, the backwards Kurabanda actually ruled Volturnus, and were advanced enough to have multiple Jedi Knights?
- What if all those Jedi Knights wanted ice cream?
- What if the session had the feel of the opening sequence of Mad Max meets Jackass: The Movie.
The result: Kurabanda Jedi Ice Cream Run is one of the few one-shots that didn't warrant it's own write-up.
Why was it not a raging success? Too many reasons to count, really, but I'll try:
- It was much too ridiculous, even in its seriousness. Bo'Non'as and Oopsa needed the Three Stooges buffoonery to offset any seriousness that transpired. The group couldn't swap buffonery for seriousness, AND Jedi powers.
- Jedi ruin everything. It was honestly the first time I've ever used Jedi powers out of the West End Star Wars game. Don't get me wrong, they actually work, especially with a group of Jedi, but I don't think that anyone's jam. The crew is much more interested in street-level galaxy hopping with perhaps a few "experts" in the group than Jedi storylines.
- It was two hours of non-stop combat. I ran the system in a bit of a In Media Res scenario, where the characters were knowledgeable in anything if they made an above average result off of 3D. Above average successes ability and stat increases. We came up with some unusual characters to say the least, but it was all jumping from vehicle to vehicle, swing lightsabers, eating ice cream. Great if you have a $50 million SFX budget, not exciting coming from a basic blogger.
Still, the characters are buried within my Star Wars notes, and could make another appearance. Any of the fill-in games could make a return if my muse (and my group's attendance) hits the right note. Or I could just lean back on The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book for more ideas.
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