Bikini Shop Troubles & Commie Illithid Ninja

Ok, this is the long-awaited 3rd and final session of Encounter Critical.  For those keeping track, 1st session here, 2nd session here.

With a catch-all RPG that heeds no warning about genre boundary restrictions, as well as, pick and choose what you like from the thousands of books, movies, and tv shows that have ever been made, you've got a gonzo recipe for something disastrously awesome... or awesomely disastrous.  In a game like EC, there's no one looking over your shoulder telling you what to include, what to leave out, how far is too far, etc.  Similarly, there's no one to tell you, "Hey, look out for that oncoming truck!"

Not all gaming groups are alike.  Mine has had to deal with me for quite awhile.  For the most part, I'm fast, flexible, and willing to risk utter game collapse if it means the table might laugh instead of groan... or just walk out (no one's done that yet).

Anyway, I was getting to a point a paragraph or two ago.  What was it...?  Oh yeah, the dichotomy of too much and yet too little material.  When almost anything can be included, the creative center of the brain can feel overwhelmed.  Luckily, Joachim Heise tagged me in a post about a mysterious map of Illithid communists and Catholic schoolgirl shenanigans.  I felt like challenging myself to incorporate this weirdness into our EC game.  After all, why not?

A new player joined us!  I gave him the gist of what the party had been up to the last two sessions.  Shaking his head with laughter and bewilderment, he sat down to play a human warrior - practically unheard of in EC history.  Well, he rolled a human randomly and wanted a class that was easy to play.  Makes sense.  Luckily, everyone else convinced him to roll the maximum number of times on the Mutation Table.  His first roll was dwarfism or something that made him really short.  Think Tyrion from Game of Thrones.  His second was a birthmark entity (roll again to determine if good or evil).  A player joked about the angel/devil on his shoulder.  He rolled evil as I rambled on about Kuato from Total Recall.  His last mutation roll was the same frickin' thing!  So, we determined (yes, in a game like this most things are interpreted) that meant he did have a little part-of-himself creature on each shoulder.  Sure enough, that one turned out to be good.

Before the game, I tried my best to come up with a marriage between commie Illithids and what I thought was the lamest/best premise for an adventure.  Namely, Uncle Sal's Bikini Shop was in dire financial straights.  Unfair regulations were killing Sal's business and all because Senator Maximilian Deekstrung was forcing the Bikini Shop to go bankrupt so the Senator's son could buy it for a song.

So, the PCs traveled from the 17 headed serpent's lair - where they found a prisoner who was a human warrior midget (or little person, if you prefer).  There was talk by Lobstertron 500 (because now he was 5th level) about making this new PC his minion, sword shiner, or even slave.  Needless to say, this new addition to the party would have to prove his worth.

Along the way, they encountered a trio of Space Guild Assassins.  Didn't take too long before they were creatively dispatched.  Although, before they were all finished off, I said to myself that one of them should have a mutation of his own to make things more interesting.  Would you believe, I also rolled "Magic Birthmark Companion (50% odds of evil)!  And yes, I then rolled low enough to make the little sucker evil.  That birthmark thing had its own tiny laser which it blasted in the face of the NPC slave/hypnosis victim the party were using to do some of their dirty work.

But that was not the end.  After the little guy and the new guy saved against a fireball thrown by the itch magic finger of the Klengon Warlock, they determined the birthmark companion knew the bank account number of the dead Assassin he was attached to.  The Lobstertron 500 used his machine friend skill to turn his lightsaber into a laser scalpel.  The procedure was a complete success.  He went onto the shoulder of Sslash the lizard man criminal/bounty hunter who wielded a sun sword.  Throughout the adventure, his birthmark companion (complete with diminutive voice and Mexican accent) was outfitted with little cool extras like a laser eye, tiny ninja attire, and a couple strands of a Rambo-red bandanna to make his own badass fashion statement!

Before the session, I detailed Joachim's map, with a sentence or two for each room or area of interest.  Store rooms, guard rooms, a piranha spawning pool, worship room decorated with a giant wooden Cthulhu Jesus - two characters worshiped Cthulhu and pleaded with the Warlock to clone it and shrink it down so each could wear it around their neck.  Did I mention the Illithid ninja?  Yeah, there were a lot of those.  A few PCs took some damage, but healing is relatively easy.  Robodroid repair should have been as well, but Lobstertron 500 doesn't worry about bullshit like that.

And... that's how he got blown up.  This was towards the end of the session.  He failed his save, went down to negative hit points, and then failed his survival roll.  The lizardman rolled a zero one on his percentile roll for machine friend (which doubled as Robodroid repair, we assumed).  All fixed up and ready to use his mechanical lobster claws to destroy those who would oppose him.  BTW, there was a routine machine friend roll to transform his laser scalpel back into a lightsaber - natural 100.  Not only was his lightsaber permanently a laser scalpel, but it did 1d6 damage to him as he attempted to convert it back.  Those who play and Journey Master EC (along with similar games) live for the times when a critical success or failure occurs, respectively.  Those are the moments when making up shit is given carte-blanche, encouraged by the rest of the table, in fact!

Before the session ended, the PCs encountered a Unicorn Cyclops Shark (too much Mountain Dew or just enough?).  They were going to use monster friend and bypass it when I decided to become the laziest and most voyeuristic Journey Master ever as the Unicorn Cyclops Shark told them, in lieu of nothing, "Don't take my magical horn!"  The PCs, after a solid minute of laughter, couldn't chop that thing's horn off fast enough.  Turns out, it was basically a wand of purification.

After pulling the self-destruct levers on the Illithid base, they hopped into the psionic submarine and made for greener pastures.  Oops, almost forgot.  There was something cool looking on the map near the submarine.  I decided it was The Cursed Emerald Diamond of Zalula-katan!  Jon (playing the lizardman bounty hunter) asked if it was or just looked like the LOC-NAR from Heavy Metal.  How could I say no to that?  I mean, not only is it one of my favorite movies, but we were listening to the Heavy Metal soundtrack for Taarna's sake!  So, just like that, it became the LOC-NAR.  Without touching its glowing green sentient evil - "A green jewel they must possess." - they took it with them and promptly sold it for 100,000 gold credits.  After all, the Venusians say it has spiritual powers.

Even though we have no plans to play EC again in the near future, everyone wanted to know if they leveled.  "Sure."  I said, and then 10 minutes later they finished advancing their character.

[Sigh] Wow, that was a lot of stuff.  4 hours of gonzo gaming that pretty much felt like a scifi-fantasy-pulp choose your own adventure spliced with a post-apocalypse comic book with balls, penises, and vaginas penciled into the margins.  Adolescent fun, logistical nonsense, and a hilarious romp in the Romulan Champagne Room!

Lessons learned?  Hmmm... let's see.  My normal GMing attitude is "just go with the flow", but times that by 3 for RPGs like Encounter Critical.  Attune yourself to what the players are doing, thinking, feeling, expecting, dreading, etc.  Don't always cater to them; it's fun to have things go against the PCs.  Keep your interpretation hat on at all times.  As the GM, you'll be expected to have some kind of answer or make a swift ruling - but also feel free to ask the players what they think.  A few will volunteer something totally awesome - even if it doesn't benefit them.

Can this kind of "anything goes" be inserted into your current RPG du jour?  Is the new guy wearing Transformer pajamas (Deceptions, I rolled "evil") because one of the Space Guild Assassins was bringing it back as a gift for his son and you made your Happenstance roll?  Sure, why not?

Hope you enjoyed this half as much as we enjoyed playing it.


VS

Encounter Critical review and actual play report

Somewhere deep inside, part of us yearns to see Boba Fett beam down from the U.S.S. Enterprise onto Arrakis in pursuit of Ookla the Mok and Buck Rogers who bear the one ring to city-state Tyr under dark and dying suns.

Tell me you wouldn't watch that TV show!


The Gist

For those who don't already know, Encounter Critical is a scifi fantasy roleplaying game meant to belly flop along the razor's edge between fanboy mashup and absurd homage.  It's a self-conscious mosaic of tried and true influences so deeply etched into geek history that our meme-filtered experiences shine like surreal diamonds in a cyber sky.  EC is a collage of everything awesome... brought down to an adolescent level of slapstick debasement.  It's porn for RPG nerds, not created to elevate the worlds of sword, sorcery, lasers and starships, but to get one's rocks off on the shameless gratification that comes from playing a Vulkin warlock casting Demon Master or an Amazon/Robodroid doxy [space prostitute] seducing her way to Conan's throne.  EC is Spaceballs crossed with Mad Magazine and Traveler... but Traveler from a parallel universe where it has a goatee and wears an eyepatch.


The Origin

Encounter Critical did not come out of Racine, WI circa 1979 but from the demented mind of S. John Ross around 2004.  He had most of the roleplaying community fooled for awhile, then announced it was a hoax.  People still play the thing, though.  Most notably old school RPG blogger Jeff Rients.  I stumbled onto EC awhile back.  Didn't pay much attention, forgot about it, then tripped over it again and thought I should take a closer look.  What I saw confused and amazed me to the point of needing to play it... just to see if EC was as special (in both meanings of the word) as I suspected.

Anyway, I posted an ad on a local geek meetup looking for players.  Not as much interest as I'd hoped for.  I guess a game people have never heard of with a half-baked premise that extreme turns most off.  Fortunately, the people I've been gaming with recently attended, as did one other guy - a local news reporter who wanted to record our session.  I convinced him to take part in the craziness a la Hunter S. Thompson... gonzo journalism at its best.  Seemed fitting because EC is one hell of a gonzo RPG.

The Hunch

There's one thing in particular I was dying to know about EC. Were the rules (game mechanics) an integral part of the design?  Could a Journey Master replace the system with something more streamlined and elegant than being slapped in the face with a fish and still have as much zany, madcap sci-fantasy-sploitation fun?


The CharGen

We had approximately four hours to try this game.

Character creation was tedious.  It tested the players' mettle.  After the first hour I almost regretted my decision of having everyone make their PCs from scratch.  But at the 90 minute mark, it was finished.  Luckily, one of my players had his tablet or ipad or whatever there with the Encounter Critical PDF available to share.  That sped things along.  Of course, it didn't help that the reporter had never played a RPG before in his life.  Not that I'm complaining.  I love running games for the uninitiated.  I pride myself on being an easy going, noob friendly GM.


The Party

There was a Robodroid that looked like a lobster.  Its name was Lobstertron 300, naturally.  He was a warrior with a ton of hit points, his Robot Nature ability score was a 20, Strength 19, Intellect 16, Dexterity 5, and everything else in the middle.  We had an Amazon warlock who could phase through walls, blast people with some kind of energy or fire magic missile.  She had mutations like detachable limbs and super speed in short bursts.  A Lizardman bounty hunter (criminal) with an atrophied psi-lobe, death prone, and a 4 Intellect seemed so handicapped that he couldn't help but awesome-up proceedings.  A Klengon warlock constantly enslaving dudes with some kind of transport and an Elf pioneer who explored the crap out of underground caverns rounded out the party.

I couldn't help but create a few random tables for such things as prior professions, known and secret affiliations, personality traits, and god worshiped.  A little bit of Paranoia RPG influenced the selections, as well as, the idea of secret societies and the like.  Adding another layer or two only helps the game, in my opinion.  After all, those things can always be ignored if they don't move the story along or aid roleplaying.  For instance, the reporter rolled "depraved" for his PC.  This allowed him (gave him "social permission", if you will) to act like a complete bastard, taking his characterization to places most people sitting around a table full of strangers wouldn't go.

The Story

Rather than going with the short introductory adventure included in the manual, I decided to create my own planet, history, and plot.  Using Vanth (included in EC) as a guide, both visually and when it came to thinking up intriguing places, such as Ambush Alley, Cold One Tombs, Tribalistic Gibbering, and the City of Crimson Hawk.  I hand drew the map in under 20 minutes so that it could pass for something scribbled during study hall.

I borrowed stuff from Thundarr the Barbarian, Zardoz, Logan's Run, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Terminator, Krull, Dune, Otherworld, Flash Gordon, Ice Pirates, Alien, Blake's 7, and Battlestar Galactica!  Somehow, I just kept piling more references on, squeezing characters and equipment and god knows what into a glorious rip-off of epic proportions.

Basically, earth was ravaged by a runaway comet, the United Federation of Planets had invaded the planet (renamed Thaavn), and Emperor Ming created The Protected Zone.  The PCs were each given a message to meet at a strip club in Nova City, inside The Protected Zone.  A bounty hunter messenger clone offered them a mercenary mission of recovering pirated ice from a space cruiser crashed in the Southern Jungles.  Shortly after that, Emperor Ming asked them to collect a secret cache of the spice melange from the same crash landed cruiser.


The Highlights

Wizard merchants traveling by caravan traded the PC's newly acquired AT-AT (enslave spell) for a bunch of cool stuff including a lightsaber, protocol droid, and a green skinned slave girl.  A glaive laid at the bottom of a molten lava stream.  Cryogenic chambers were disturbed, releasing silver robed humanoids with overly large brains and psionic powers.  A war-band of mutants destroyed.  Mutant and magical powers were used, as were skills.

As random as the skill names were, I found them strangely user-friendly and intuitive:  logic, happenstance, clue, saving throw, melee attack, machine friend, see the future, and psi resist.  Those and a few others came into play at one point or another.  Less time was taken up debating if skill x, y, or z was more appropriate for the situation than I've seen in a lot of RPGs.

There were no fatalities, though a warlock who rolled few hit points almost died.

The Answer

I'm still not sure if the Stalinist bureaucracy that is EC's system and layout makes the game or if they can be thrown out in favor of something better.  Time will tell, I suppose.  There's probably no way of being sure without running it again after re-writing bits of it.  Something I'm already tinkering with.


The Verdict

The reporter said he enjoyed himself, and he certainly appeared to be having a good time; however, he has nothing to compare it to since this was his first paper and pencil tabletop RPG session.  Of the four other players, one liked EC a little better than our standard D&Desque campaign, another liked it a little less, and the remaining two thought EC was roughly comparable to it.

For myself, it was a much needed release.  I dared to be stupid and won... won big, in fact.  But I don't know how far that rabbit hole goes.  It is sustainable?  Does it get better?  Worse?  It fulfills one kind of need while leaving another high and dry.  Perhaps these questions are moot because they can't be answered definitively or objectively.  Gaming is not science, it's an art.  Just as I wouldn't want to only look at impressionist paintings and nothing but impressionist paintings for the rest of my life, there's no single RPG that I'd want to run or play until the end of time.  Variety is the spice of life, and EC is chock full of variety... and spice if you're lifting from Dune!

Obviously, you need a sense of humor to enjoy this game.  It's a fine line between cheesy awesome with a side of ridiculous and super-sized silliness taken way too far.  The former can be liberating and refreshing, but I have a feeling the latter just might be a complete and utter shambles.  Of course, that all depends on if your group would enjoy playing Toon the cartoon RPG with scifi and fantasy tropes.

If RPG success is judged primarily upon the benchmark of fun, then EC is an unqualified triumph.  Lots of laughs echoed through the library meeting room earlier this afternoon.  I'm going to run it again and again.


VS

p.s.  Ok, just got a phone call from one of yesterday's victims... I mean players, and he was really into it, apparently.  He told me EC is probably his favorite RPG now.  So, that means I'll definitely be running an EC campaign in the near (mutant) future.

p.p.s.  Want to read about sessions two and three?