Day 11 of #RPGaDay2023. and it's a bit a head scratcher.
For each day I'll be answering the question provided, and for fun, review how I answered a similar question during #RPGaDay a decade ago. Scout's Honor, I have not peeked at the older answer.
Day 11’s prompt is "Weirdest Game I've Played"
Although I'm usually a straight shooter by the book (PHB) player, my GM style always gravitates towards the strange and unusual.
My longest running, continuous game is Illuminati Univeristy (IOU), those guys have just scraped the surface of Hol, and I even ran an AD&D game where the Harpers met the Green Lantern Corps (sadly not my original idea).
It was definitely too soon, but the weirdest games I've played involved ViscountEric, Coffee Shop, and a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Virus.
Coffee Shop was a great micro-game designed by James D'Amato. It's rules for running characters from other games, but making them all employees of a coffee shop, with all the potential drama.
On an off night for our Monday night online game, I actually removed the other game PC option, we created characters in Risus with a local taxidermy shop. The game ended with a low-speed chase involving the taxidermist and the local bbq mogul competing for the same "product".
In a group that's had college-age Yoda doing keg stands, radioactive spittoons in Texas Road House, and a Mecha powered by funnel cake fryer oil, we weren't sure how we were going to top that.
Then COVID hit the next month.
By April, I returned to Coffee Shop, added a new player to the group, and gave them a new challenge. (The following is taken from my April 2020 blog post:)
Using my only guidelines, a modern electronics store... and it couldn't be the last Radio Shack, the guys created Shockers Electronics... and Kegerators. It's décor (and employees) stuck in the late 80's, it was the best spot in the Quad Counties for all your battery needs, particularly 9-volts. Unfortunately those days were numbered, because if Grunge and the 90s didn't kill them off, eminent domain for a new interstate would make that happen any day now.
The PC Employees:
- Steve (Played by Sean) The repair guy who drove around a white van to do repairs. His family ran a small candy company, so he was known to stop and give kids candy out of the van.
- Terry Decimal (Jim) - The quintessential customer service guy at the store.. and the only one who could talk to chicks. A beer league hockey goalie and secret alcoholic.
- Jeff (Jeff) - The high-powered, high pressure salesman in the stereo department. Power suits, power ties, shoulder pads, with the Wall Street attitude to match.
- Shawn (Steve) - That one disgruntled customer who simply never goes home, and is always complaining, even if it didn't matter to him.
- Steve the Repair Guy - Got a job in Produce. He essentially squeezes the melons all day long.
- Terry - Working in the Meat Department and his drinking might be catching up to him.
- Jeff - Tries to hard sell people on milk, bread, and eggs, but his only known duty is to maintain and repair the self-cleaning robot. Funny thing, no one has ever seen the self-cleaning robot.
- Shawn - The nagging customer is actually the manager of the Supermarket.
7:00am - Shawn opens the doors to 98 seniors, most in scooters, pushing walkers, or wielding weapons, correction, canes... and zero masks or gloves. Shawn performs some acrobatics jumping from one register to the next, finally reaching lane 17 and the only working microphone to announce a special on toilet paper.
Only problem, no one restocked the TP from the overnight.
Shawn blocks the few of his illogical carnage from Manfred as Steve from Produce dashes over and frees come Vietnam Vets on scooters from the TP Pile-Up and sends to in the direction of the bread. Craig the Bread Guy, never same the slow moving vets coming and quickly succumbed to injuries.
#RIPCraig
On top of that, he hastily pulled a women with a walker out of the fray. The tennis ball covering the legs fell off and the legs impaled Steve in the foot.
Terry finally left the meat department, where he was displaying the meat alphabetically by type, then by size, and came over the the TP aisle. Jeff had been trapped in the TP aisle and was trying to soothe the elderly with his Melodica. Terry used his customer service savvy to distract the seniors from panicking.
Using electronic store sign language Terry told Jeff to steal all the batteries out of the scooters, where the trapped old timers could be pulled out one by one.
As he completed removing the batteries, Jeff came face to face with dozens of snakes pouring out from under shelves. He held his cool, but with the first woman's screams, mobility challenged geezers staggered in every direction. Terry narrowly missed getting crushed by an endcap of canned hams, but the display managed to crush poor Gladys Runger of Rosecrest Gardens. In a rather dark turn of events, Terry pulled out his meat cleaver and chopped off Gladys' legs poking out from under the endcap.
"Blood's a demerit, visible meat on the ground is an automatic fine..."
As to be expected, things got a little bit... fuzzy, at that point.
Shawn managed to escort Manfred to the doors of the meat department/back storeroom, with only a few odd glances of snakes in the deli counter. They met Terry, who was given demerits for his blood streaked face (use a face shield next time!) but no one question the women's lower legs he was holding (wearing gloves, way to go!)
Shawn had Steve grab the forklight and grab the pickle barrel that hadn't been on display since 1978... and also hadn't been emptied at that time either. Now, Jeff had concocted a device out of all of the batteries he stole to electrocute most of the snakes, but prehistoric pickle juice and smoke bombs were the company policy for snakes.
The problem? Steve had already lost his forklift operator certification and the quickly reminded everyone why that happened.
The pickle juice barrel blocking his sight, Steve crashed through the stockroom doors with the lift up, ripping apart the wall, and having the debris knock him unconscious. The forklift steamed it's way towards frozen food with Steve out like a light.
There were many heroes, but none greater than Terry and Shawn, who convinced the health inspector the social distancing taboos were happening the parking lot, and only Manfred had the authority to stop them. Once he was out the door, Shawn saw the runaway forklift, crashing through the frozen food cases, dove over to a display of Pepsi Max shaped like a football and started chucking footballs to block the wheels of the machine.
He did succeed in stopping it, but with one final lurch, the pickle juice tipped over onto the scooter-riding vets.
... at least this opening was better than yesterday's Early Bird Hour.
As this was a rousing success, I did run one more COVID game, where the same characters got jobs at a Home Depot.
 |
| Any excuse to use the fabled "Helm of Covfefe" |
We were well into our zany Star Wars d6 campaign to fit in the third installment of the trilogy, "COVIDiots Internationale." It's still hiding, waiting for the right (or wrong) time.
As I've described this game to fellow gamers, I usually get the same reaction. Half the time it's the subject matter... half the time it's for using a system other than D&D.
Ten Years Ago Today: A decade ago, the actual question was "Weirdest RPG Owned."
At the time, I still owned a copy of HōL, and had used it in my IOU campaign. It's departed my collection, but not before stretching the minds of my players.
No comments:
Post a Comment