Fast Food Role-playing

 

If you've been reading my blog for a while, I am sure you have noticed that I am not above some of the more cheesy aspects of our role-playing hobby. And one of the cheesier is the fast food fandom role-playing sub-genre. While the most famous of these efforts has been with the Wendy's role-playing game released in 2019, this isn't all that new. I personally have been inserting the abominations of fast food concepts and their advertising gimmicks into my games since like the 80s.

It is at the highest levels of US culture. At least since Bill Clinton would go jogging to grab some Big-Macs up to Donald Trump's fast food extravaganza, there is the unspoken acceptance of how much fun the junk is in terms of Americans' imagination. Indeed, it can be said to be one of the finest expressions of Americana. Nobody sits around to discuss how borscht or sauerkraut is more popular in Mississippi, but we all know Burger King is more popular in the UK than Taco Bell.  So it coming to some of our daydream places in Adventure Gaming should not be surprising. 

Not available at DTRPG as far as I know

 The earliest example of this trend being kind of official that I can think of is Rat on a Stick by George R. Paczolt. Things were a bit more abstract back then. In one of my own RPG impressionable days, in the city-state of Atinsinsin, from the second of my T&T campaign, Cow Mack competed with Monarchy Burger while Tunnel Tacos took a solid third seat. As was the custom in Our Game, the world around around us was okay to parallel for fun.

In the Aughts, I would blatantly drag players from their cozy high fantasy concepts into the degenerate depths of McDonald's advertising gimmicks while they explored a house of the fairy Lands. This was in counteraction of GMs, like Thess (of DT&T-ilk) doing muppets. You see I am an artiste, don't you know. My PCs found out that it was Grimace that was behind the whole Golden Arches that drove away the leprechauns and their rainbows not really Regent Ronald the Red and Gold.

So when I played Feast of Legends in February 2020, the experience wasn't that new to me. For all your beholders and tieflings, nothing says true fantasy as the world as seen through the eyes of the hungry.

Everytime at the Table: New Tales of Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon: The Sphere of Death, Session 2 "Long Shot From Deep Space"

The ISS Centurion

We started out with the International Space Agency ship, the ISS Centurion, piloted by Canada's Colonel Nick Gilmore and the American Captain George "Flash" Gordon (played by JerryTel) en route from Phobos Station to Io B-4. Now Flash, as you know, is a pilot in Earth Central Space Force Reserves now that he is not playing Zero-Gee Football (The ZGFL) for the London Jets. Dale Arden, working for the New York Times, was traveling to Io to cover the current strikes by the miners of SulfOrg Amalgamated. While at the far side of the sun from Earth the transplanet freight-liner picked up the distress call of Dr. Hans Zarkov.
Zarkov was able to eject from the ISS Bon Fortuna when that ship, captained by Professor William "Whiz" Gordon, Flash's father no less. While the smaller ship, meant for its passengers to remain in space sleep until they could be picked up was traveling faster that anything seen in the solar system before and headed out of the solar system. 

Meanwhile inside the sphere of death, Mongo, King Vultan (Iron Curtis) of the Hawk People, has found out about his main man Nero having captured Zigo (JerryTel), the High Priest if TAO from Mingo City and an android that started blending into the background really quickly. Just as the hawkman was about to berate his general, a full squadron of Ming Hegemony rockets showed up on the radar sensors of Sky City. The Ajax, War-Rocket Ramones, and The Fabulosa along with ten Strike-Skiffs each with no less than Klytus (Robin) leading them.
Vultan, being the scoundrel that he is, without blinking totally denied any sort of wrongdoing. He stated to the rather officious Klytus, that they were "merely having lunch." Ming's right-hand woman wasn't quite having it. Zigo was sending messages to a part of TAO systems that she did not have access to. There was also the disruption of the Assimilation Rays that were supposed to be drawing the target acquisition [EARTH] into Mongo as new material and colonization territory which needed to be questioned. She demanded Zigo be released into her custody aboard the flagship Fabulosa, that Ming is so damned gay. Zigo, playing the long game, played it off like he was guest not a captive as well-- Vultan now owed the High Priest a favor.

On the surface, Edgia, the lands between Lan-N'Da, kingdom of the Lion Men, and the Mediterranean-sized holdings of  Shark City, the "North Verdid" (an ethnic of Verdid people with varying degrees of cat-ness) needed to strengthen their ties to the denizens that weren't Shark People.  So our PC, Baylin (Peryton) is betrothed by her grandmother, the Matriarch of the North Verdid, to Knz Thunn (Thun the Lion Man) of the Lion Men. Well, she, as eighth princess of the leadership of the Edgia never expected to be treated as royalty, let alone to be subject to per-arranged marriages. So stumbling upon a Mech-Man (an android) that was hiding in the wedding gifts from King Vultan of the Hawk People requesting her help to get back to "Dream Island" and do the bidding of TAO was all the convincing she needed to highjack a sky-cycle get the hell out of Dodge, the capitol of Edgia. So there the two went into the swirling clouds that make up Mongo skies most of the time.

Back on Centurion, Flash Gordon figured out a way to combine the vessel's meteorite deflection system with the laser-driven communications devices to develop a "gravitational nullification field"-- We are playing Spacers and player-driven "Technobabble" is a convention-- to be able to achieve vector parity with the life pod. Zarkov relayed that he needed his craft to left not accosted to get to where it was headed. Flash, and his now smitten Dale Arden, was not going to let him face the unknown by himself. In a tense scene, they donned vacuum-suits and transferred between the two craft. The Centurion could now start decelerating and get close enough to Earth's relay satellites and relay communications.
It was on the life pod being drawn towards the Dyson sphere that is Mongo, that Flash Gordon began to realize the enormity of the challenges he would be facing.

Back on Mongo, King Vultan was once again annoyed by outside forces buzzing his communication Tele-Visual-Audio-Com, Tev-Com. This time it was Zagzaag, the Matriarch of Edgia, complaining about one of his wedding gifts, a Mech-Man, absconding with the Bride of the Prince Thun of the Lion Men. She just knew that he was behind it. So somewhat grumbly, Vultan rallied his elite raiders to head back to Dream Island.

The episode ended with Vultan's platoon showing up interrupting the Mech-Man, Clock, from stopping TAO from consume the "Savior of the Universe."

There are a couple of things going on here.

It is awesome to see my players so motivated about the roles that they are playing. This Flash Gordon guy is so popular that it just proves my belief in role-playing as an exercise in you know playing out parts in epic tales from the players' perspective, NOT a dragged out wargame with everyone about to fall asleep with measuring how far their lead miniature can move along a grid.
I was thinking that the "two Characters: one Player" would work a certain way. Instead just removing the walls of my expectations has opened up entire segues done by the Players using alternate PCs. I realize that typing it out looks so simple, but it has taken me, at least, a while to get here. Image people playing a role-playing game liking to play roles.

My Mongo is varying from the material that I drawing from as much as that same material varied from our source material. The 2007 (8?) TV series mixes in with the stuff I knew about the 80s cartoon, and then the 1980 movie pops its head up. Things feel creative and not driven.
Besides all of this Iron Curtis's take on Ming and Vultan is worth the price of admission to begin with.