Tonight's Games - Holy Cow, What Fun

Well, well, well. Game Night just passed, and lemme tell you, it was one of the most fun times I've had at Game Night so far. Sadly, my girlfriend did not enjoy herself as much, because she doesn't like RPGs and was excluded from the final game (I invited her to take my place, but she declined, saying I would sulk. That's crazy talk. She's crazy for thinking it.) I'm sorry, to you, love, and I'll buy a big multiplayer game for next time so we can all play.

Now that that's out of the way, here's the description. We did three games this night. First and foremost was Toon, the cartoon role-playing game. The game describes it as if a traditional cartoon were made into an RPG, with characters having skills and attributes, goals, beliefs, etc. These skills range from Fight, to Drive Vehicle, Fire Gun, Fast-Talk (to talk someone into something), even to crazy stuff like Incredible Speed, Teleport, Coat of Arms (think Inspector Gadget), etc. All determined by four attributes: Muscle (strength), Zip (speed), Smarts (intelligence), and Chutzpah (charisma). So I had everyone roll up characters. The creations were such:

Matt: Gerbil Commander, a human who apparently wanted to rally people around his glorious cause, to fight for the GERBIL nation. His goal was to acquire a doomsday device and take over the world. He tried to Fast-Talk people into joining his cause constantly. He nearly succeeded with a few people, and did in fact manage to convince a robotic duck cop to join his side. He had Incredible Luck on his side, as well as the ability to detect a Doomsday Device at nearly any range. These often failed. Also, he had the original US Constitution, which he used like a magical scroll to justify all of his ludicrous actions. I'm not quite sure why I allowed him that.

As I say, he often failed. In Toon, failing is quite often much more entertaining and productive than success. Some people have intentionally low scores for some skills, so they can fail entertainingly and watch the results. His Zip, used for Fire Gun, was 1, on a scale of 1 to 6 with 6 being best. He described himself as "not being able to hit the broad side of a barn, even with a gun the size of a barn." He carried said gun at all times, as well as a laser that could not possibly hit anything (when he fired it, I had the blast fly in tight circles in midair to avoid hitting anything) and a lapel pin that emitted laughing and sleeping gas. He added that it made people laugh while they were asleep. This reduced me to hysterical laughter, so he got a Plot Point, which is sort of a currency in the game, used for increasing skills and such.

John: He was Paper Mario, which is like regular Mario, except he's made of paper. This comes from the popular Paper Mario series of games. He had a hammer, jump shoes, a fire-flower, et cetera, et cetera. His special skill was to have Luigi as a sidekick. The poor green-hatted plumber suffered terribly throughout the game, but that's just too bad. He's Luigi. His life is suffering, overshadowed by his more successful and more overweight brother. A few extra knocks on the noggin won't faze him much, I suppose. His goal was to rescue the princess; Princess Peach, of course. He had a special warp pipe, which would take him to wherever he wanted to go...when it worked. It almost never did.

Kevin: He was Diddy Kong, from the Donkey Kong series of games, the small and childlike companion of the mighty Donkey Kong. He had as his main weapon a peanut popgun, which he fired indiscriminately at every opportunity. Of course, his ammunition being peanuts, he rarely, if ever, did any actual damage. Sucks to be him, I suppose. His main schtick was Incredible Speed, but so often did he fail, that he was more usually seen whizzing past his desired location and hitting the wall with a *BLAM!* This became something of a running gag. Once, when he failed spectacularly, I decreed that he had Incredible Slowness instead, and he spent a long time shuffling to an area where most people had gotten to a while ago. His goal was to protect the crystal coconut, an artifact from the short-lived but much-beloved Donkey Kong Country television show. Yes, there was actually a show. Look it up. I'm not kidding.

Steve (not you, Steven, another Steve): He was Duck Dodgers, From the 24th and 1/2 Century. Naturally, his goal was to acquire fame and prestige, and his beliefs were that he was absolutely infallible and that he should naturally take credit for everything that happened. So he was mostly in character in that regard. He was slightly out of character in that he had some actual competencies in certain subjects, which the true Duck Dodgers lacked at all. His spaceship took him to and fro, to varying degrees of success. He did not start off wich much equipment, but when the aforementioned robotic duck was hit so hard he compressed into a tin can labeled "Beets," he took it and held it for the remainer of the journey. His main ability was Cosmic Shift, which is a very powerful ability which defines the essence of cartoon physics.

Some explanation may be required here. In this game, being stupid can help you considerably. If your character runs off a cliff, or goes underwater, or runs into a painting of a tunnel or similar, if he fails to roll better than his Smarts, then he does not realize the predicament he is in, and acts as if he is not bound by it (hovering, breathing underwater, etc). So a regular character can run into a painting of a train tunnel as if it were real. Only a character with Cosmic Shift, though, upon running into said painting, can cause a train to come out and plow over the flummoxed painter of this fake tunnel. Only a character with Cosmic Shift can, while sitting on a tree branch while another character saws it away, cause the tree to fall over while the cut branch remains immobile in the air. He used this whenever he could, and quite often to entertaining results, which is the whole point.

I had to come up with a plot that would satisfy all the characters' requirements, so I said that a villain had captured the princess and stolen the crystal coconut, escaping to the 24th and 1/2 Century. Matt's character, I assumed, would find a way to satisfy his goals no matter what I did. So there were memorable circumstances that took place. Those including:

- A planet was landed on that had a massive beanstalk leading up into the clouds. So Kevin's character promptly pulled out his peanut popgun and shot it down, dazing a callow youth who had been climbing it. Feeling sorry for the lad, he threw him a banana, which the youth planted. It grew into a massive banana tree that led up into the clouds, because darn it, the plot must go on.

- The characters started on a space station that would puncture and become destroyed if anyone sneezed. A crisis with Matt's character was averted when another cartoon character stopped him from sneezing by making him eat his own nose, but that did nothing to stop the vendor who approached. "Pepper! Tear gas! Get yer nasal irritants here! Get 'em while they're irritating! Free samples!" The sneeze was the inevitable result.

- John's character went into his warp pipe and attempted to reach the top of the clouds, only to fail miserably in his roll. The pipe instead dumped him straight into a nearby bottomless pit, causing him to Fall Down, to the accompaniment of the necessary Mario death music. "Doo-doo, doo-doo-doo, doo-doo! (Doo-doo-doo!)" Nobody can die in Toon, it just doesn't happen. If they take too much damage, they Fall Down, humorously, and have to sit out for three minutes. Then they come back in fresh and ready. Upon his resurrection, he sent in Luigi first, who vanished.

- When they had all finally gotten to the top, they had loaded themselves into Steve's character's spaceship, which despite going at Ludicrous Speed (leaving a plaid streak across the sky), barely made progress. A character, realizing the logic of the situation, came to the conclusion that if the tiny castle in the distance wasn't growing much larger (as they weren't getting much closer), the obvious solution was to paint a much bigger castle on the inside of the windshield. Amazingly, this worked, for they were right there.

- Inside the castle, which was giant-sized (I had planned to put an actual giant in, but I never got around to it), the characters found themselves in a level from Megaman, featuring Gutsman. The more nerd-oriented readers will immediately know why I picked Gutsman. Mario decided to attack Gutsman at the end of the level, so he hurled his hammer. He had to roll a 9 or under on 2 six-sided dice. He rolled a 12. So I decreed that his hammer flew past Gutsman, ricocheted off the wall, clocked Matt's character in the head, rebounded and smashed the trap Matt's character had set, then flew straight at Mario's head. I then decided it was time to a new idea. Luigi popped out of the ground, directly in the path of the hammer.
"Mari-"
*BLAM!*
Luigi was down.

Much more occurred, but those are the highlights, I believe. I'll tell the rest if you're really interested. I'll certainly remember them, the night was memorable.

Then we played a bit of 1st-edition Dungeons & Dragons. I now know why nobody plays it anymore. It sucks. Instead of rolling 4 six-sided dice and dropping the lowest to determine attributes, we rolled 3 six-sided dice and took the result. We did this six times. We were not allowed to distribute these numbers as we wished, they applied to our attributes in a specific order. The numbers then determined what classes we could become. Oddly, "elf" and "dwarf" were both classes that one could become. I don't know why. So we were locked into low ability scores, distributed in a way that stripped us of control of our character creation, then were told we could only qualify for a certain class if we had certain scores in certain attributes.

The mages in our group (two) each got one spell, which they could cast once per day. And it was randomly chosen with a die roll. I, as the cleric, got no spells, but was later told that I would gain a spell upon gaining a level. All the equipment in the game, costs, damage, everything, fit on a single sheet of notebook paper. The horrendously complex THAC0 system came into play. The thief and one of the wizards ended up killing the fighter because he was inept and it was funny, and the rest of us committed in-character suicide shortly later because it was the most tedious and boring experience we'd ever had while RPing. That, and for solving a difficult situation, we only got 50 XP each, and we needed 1,000 to level up. To heck with that, we said.

Then we played this card game called Infernal Contraption, which is way too complicated for me to explain now, even if I fully understood the rules, which I still don't, really. And that's all that I have the energy to discuss. It's late. I was interrupted in this writing by an annoying fire alarm that some jerk set off in my building.

SO ON TO RESPONSES.

Vic: You COULD just come to a Friday rehearsal. We're having one this week. Of course, I told you this in real life, but I promised I'd respond, and by cracky, I will. And I warned you against taking Sanskrit. But would you listen? I love you.

Kelli: I DID?!? *scans previous entry* ARGH! Well, that stinks. I'd edit it, but I want my mistake to stand for all time. And congratulations on being able to eat things, that's obviously a step up from when you...er...couldn't? Being sick sucks.

Steve: An interesting way to put it. And yes, Olde English is overrated. Thank you for complimenting my work, even with a "Doubt it" disclaimer. And shave your beard, for goodness' sake. I know you haven't. Play your SSB:M and shave your beard. Oh yes, Sonic's in Brawl, so how about that, eh?

Later.

Oh, one last edit: Ask me about the wickedly insane awesome Halo video when next I come down, people I know back home. I'd link to it, but I have to show it to you personally. It's worth it. I'll have it bookmarked.