Total Party Kill
So I finally got that bum Clevinger off my couch, and I’m free to fart in my house again. I think we had a pretty good time, despite the flooding and horrible weather. Ironically it got nice the day Brian left, and stayed sunny and warm for the rest of the week.
While Brian was here we visited Double Midnight Comics, ate and both Red Arrow dinners, plus a 3rd down in Nashua who’s name escapes me. We also attempted, in good New England tradition, to go out for ice cream in freezing cold weather. For a couple of days it was a glimpse into what it might be like if we lived in the same town and shared a studio. Not really productive, but a whole lot of fun.
Artist's interpretation of Brian Clevinger. Not an actual photo.
I also introduced Brian to my gaming group. Now normally my “gamer-shame” keeps me from talking about RPGs too much. But this is a blog about a couple of guys who make comic books for a living. If you think RPGs are somehow nerdier than comics, you’re living a lie my friend. And to be honest, Brian and I have gotten more ideas for characters and comics from RPGs than we can list. So screw you, you judgmental fuck! =D
Now, in the same breath I’ll gladly tell you how much I despise RPG Grognards, which, to give you a visual, are a lot like comic book Fanboys. They both mindlessly obsess about Dungeons & Dragons/ Superman, bitch and moan about changes to “their” game or comic, (which is not their game/comic, it belongs to the publisher who is free to do whateverthefuck they please), Feel they have a sense of ownership or entitlement towards said game/comic simply by virtue of the fact that they are Fans, and generally just skeeve me the fuck out whenever I have to deal with them.
And before anyone gets all self-righteous on me, recognize that I self-identify as a Big Fucking Geek, and I’m bitching with a big grin on my face and my tongue stuck firmly in my cheek.
Luckily, my gaming group has a strict “No-Grognards” policy. Unlike the Grognards and Fanboys, we have learned to invest less time in our back-issues and character sheets, and spent more time exploring the mysteries of soap and social etiquette. I would say that I’m the biggest Weirdsmobile in the group, and while I’m pretty insufferable, the group average is pretty good.
So unlike past gaming groups who I tell no one about and go out of my way to avoid socially outside of game night, I was excited to introduce Brian to these guys. Especially since I’ve been running a Beta-Action Scientist game. Mostly what I’ve learned from this is that I have no idea how to run a game and make it feel anything at all like an Atomic Robo comic. I mean, yes, we did have veggiemen and fungus-monkeys, steampunk zomborgs, a manbat, and mooks out the wa-zoo. But considering how much sweat Brian and I pour into every bit of the comic I’m starting to think it’s impossible (for me) to ever run a game that feels as zany.
None the less, I was very excited for Brian to meet the guys and spend a night rolling dice with us. I did not anticipate that a TPK was on the horizon. The Action Scientists have been shunted to an alternate dimension -mostly as an excuse for me to play with some monsters and technology that wouldn’t fit in the regular Robo-verse. I create an NPC for Brian, (That’s Non-Player Character, for you muggles). So for the night Brian will be playing Bruce, the 4-armed cyborg who rides a robot horse with machineguns in it’s nostrils. Unfortunately for Bruce, when the other guys find him his horse is dead, he’s pinned under it, and his extra set of arms has been disabled. Oh and he’s being attacked by ghouls.
As the Action Scientists rush to aid Bruce one of them looses a hand in a catastrophic weapon failure -but that’s okay, once he’s stabilized and semi-healed he has someone duct-tape a remote detonator to his stump so he can plant/throw wads of plastic explosive and then slap his stump into his thigh to make it go BOOM.
For reasons that don’t matter, the group decides to go underground and clear out the nest of ghouls. They fight a big undead orge-thing and are commenting on how underwhelming a foe the big brute was when in swarm a dozen and a half hungry ghouls, drawn by the sounds of gunfire, exploding C4, and blood curdling screams.
It was not my intent to wipe them out, and I even went so far as to plant a machinegun in the room with tons of ammo. But some bad luck with the dice, some really dumb tactics, and my mis-interpretation of a rather important rule, they were mobbed, and then torn limb from limb by the ghouls. The last one on his feet nearly tripped over a bloody arm with a detonator duct taped to the stump that had once been it’s hand and depressed the trigger, instantly killing himself, the surviving ghouls, and the two other Player Characters (and Bruce the cyborg) that were incapacitated, but not quite dead yet, in a fiery blast of C4 awesomeness.
From the moment Joe’s character lost a hand until the second Chris used what was left of Joe’s dude’s hand to kill everyone we were doing a lot of laughing and joking. And since the purpose of any RPG is not to “win”, but to have fun, I guess we succeeded. But I still felt bad.
It has been decided that in the 12 or so game nights that I’ve got left before we move to NYC we will be playing RIFTS. Which I loved as a kid, and spent most of Sunday re-writing to make it not suck for adults to play. The first thing that had to go were the basic game rules. They are terrible. So we’ll be running it with Savage World’s game mechanics, which are what we’ve been using, and what will be used for the eventual (read: when we have time to write it), Atomic Robo: Two-Fisted Tales of Action Science game.
The next dozen game nights should be a blast. . . I hope.
