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.

A World a Week: Many Worlds This Time

This is the Lands

 
So this is a gathering of differing spots that I have been running in with my players, but haven't really tried to to tie it together for them. They're no even certain if they want would want me to. But from Gonzop to Zark (which is actually called "Zarka"by those that know how to read maps, or just read in general) , it is about 3/4's of a hemisphere of an Earth-sized planet. The East-to-West of this map is a curving line that comes the upper left corner of the page and somewhere just above lower right corner. True north is somewhere along the left edge around the 2/3 page down part.

Gonzop in the farther eastern areas of the Lands, as they are referred to as, while Gonzop and its neighbors are in the west. Somewhere in the Graptak wastes is the Western Pole where even fairies are frightened about the things that live there. In the frosty oceans of the north near the coastlines of Greater Barbaria is the North Pole, which we'd recognize from our own world, except for maybe all the frost giants and Santa Claus being there.

Meanwhile the distance from the tip of Forestia the southern part of Zark is about from Maine to Colombia. Since December, distances have come to the forefront of my mind. Well they always have been. Even in Eighth grade in my most "American" of years as a kid, I new that the distance from Berlin to Moscow was the same as Detroit to Washington DC. I also always got that Maine was closer to Morocco than Florida, hence the curves that I put this map into. I have been traveling a whole lot this year beyond the tank of gas range that most of us the road-trippers do, while not sky-hopping from one specific locale to another but seeing only ninety miles of any place and only briefly at that like the jet-set is prone to do. Travel in my Lands is felt, even when the PCs get to sky-hop. 

Now humans are not really humans. They are clones of humans from our own world. Even when they make babies the natural way, something, let's call them nanobots, implant memories that the Player-Characters' players have. But as we're learning today algorithms for artificial intelligence are rather dumb, so the memories aren't perfect by any means. A guy might've been an architect, but he thinks that he is good at airline piloting because of a nanobot confusing building capacity with boarding gates which he designed. And that is on top of whatever the player really knows in life.

For the not "fish out of water" trope, I have various kin, that's races for you D&D-heds, for those that really want to do some role-playing.

There is the Nimby, Imby, and Bagger, which you all have heard about over the past couple of years. Nimbys, big and tall with pouches to carry any nimby young that need carrying. They change gender characteristics over the years, from kid (androgynous) to female to male, into even grumpy old puss but androgynous once again. This way I can express and the player can think about fluid gender dynamics and the roles that people play within their society without the PC having to be lectured by folks about sexuality. Imbys get the pouch and keen senses, but are too short and cute to be anything but indigenous sorts. Baggers, they get a lot of strength and smarts but get ill and die quickly. Their four toes helps them climb with a quickness when needed. Their six-digited hands (two thumbs) give them an edge with hands-on technologies.

My favorites are the Otgan. These are the ultimate surfers. Because of their heat retaining body hair and body fat, they can live entirely in water if they must. Still they are above water air breathers, fresh water and love cooked food. Even in land, one will find them hanging out with beavers and otters more than elves.

I have about a billion Mods. Mods are mostly animal-people but they can be straight up mutated human-like species. From armadillos to zebras, I got them. Yes there is an aardvark-kin as well, but no one has ever wanted to play one or thought it was kewl when I brought one in. I have 231 outlined so far. All with spiffy names. The animal-like ones are now called Therions, thank you Thess (See Uprising at Buzzard's Gulch) . I used to just call the "fuzzies." The others tend to be called mutants. These poor beings are often discriminated against by other more dominant kin around them.

I might or might not be working in the various subgenres that I write about into the take.

An Uprising in Tunnels & Trolls

So like while I have been futzing around someone else has been busy

So this is where I have been living

 

For all of my discontent, it is actually a good thing.Thessaly Chance-Tracy, Thess (pronounced "Tess" because we're krauty), is the Tesla of T&T while I am the Lee Iacocca of indy game publishing. By "Tesla" I mean the inventor while the publication might as well be the high-end car for rich people to feel good about their contribution towards saving the planet. Meanwhile, I have an idea of what works.

Uprising At Buzzard Gulch


 
Thess's Uprising at Buzzards Gulch has been coming for a while. She has been teasing me with this work for years, eight I think. This year was the year. Not to repeat myself, but the woman keeps adding on more stuff even after I've divided it in multiple parts.

I'd describe it as the spaghetti western take on Ken St Andre's Monsters! Monsters! . There is definitely some parallels between the monsters, or "illkin" as Thess calls them, and America's ethnic minorities (like Chinese, Native Americans, socialists, and cat people to name a few). Basing the heart of the things in a reservation, as in the totally racist construct by the movers and shakers of the 19th Century not calling ahead for a good table, definitely makes the point. While reading it, I felt like I was watching scenes from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly complete with the Ennio Morricone soundtrack. 

Meanwhile, as a GM I couldn't help but be seduced into incorporating elements of the author's setting into my own Red Bat take on M!M!, which has been coming out as Gonzop sessions. The Two-Dragon Queen of Sprigda now has to deal with the Army of Salvation contingent of her human-heavy realms.

I suppose not only am I publisher of this work, I am a member of its fan club.

Flash Gordon and the Sphere of Death, part 1: Black Star

It's been about fifteen years since the last Flash Gordon release and whoever controls King Features Syndicate these days hasn't licensed a new release of the brand name. I , not being one to wait, decided to do my own. That is how the mini-campaign Flash Gordon and the Sphere of Death came about. So with JerryTel, Peryton, and Iron Curtis able to jump in, I got to work on my notes.



So kind of retelling the stories from the B&W serials of the 30s, the trappings of the 1980 movie, some of the mid-Aughts Sy-Fy Channel series, and everything else that I can remember; I decided to get into some heavy science fiction as well.  Remember the floating worlds and wavy clouds of the 80's movie? Well how about a Dyson sphere around a red dwarf star, that can eat planets like Pac-Man eating dots, BUT it's not that simple. The mega structure about the radius of our sun's center to the outer reaches of our Mar's orbit, has an abundance of energy to propel itself through the intergalactic void, but a lot of its energies are spent keeping the inside habitable, meaning gravity as well as well as temperature. So Mongo is limited in its ability to play Pac-Man of worlds. Indeed its first acquisiton, the smart reptile inhabited world of Lizardo, was shattered into fragments by Ming's ill-prepared science-wizards during the process. The surviving lizard-men are causing problems for the barely stable hegemony of Mingo city over the other kingdoms around it. Still the master computer TAO (Tay-Ow) is trying to help its denizens become the rulers of the universe as they find it, but a lot gets lost in translation when it deals with organic beings.

The design notes:
The players get to play whomever they want. This can mean from Flash Gordon or Ming the Merciless to a self-created persona from the N-K system or a remote part of Mongo. The catch is that the players have to be alternated between their main characters and their secondary characters for two out of the five planned sessions.
Cut-Away scenes can lead to nine different paths that are interlaced with one another leading to about forty-five differing storylines as scripted. At the same time, I am trying to allow any divergence from the narratives as scripted. I even told my players, I can this "mini-campaign" turn into a RPG setting worthy of the comic strip itself if need be.

Session 1: The Black Star
How does Mongo see things?
So Curtis was pretty set on Ming as his alternate Character. Pery was set on Klytus, the cyborg with the great voice made of oil and shiny metal parts from the 80s-take. Jerry was randomly assigned High Priest of TAO, Zogi as he had no real idea of who to play.
The session was set during Blot Time, night among the Mongo realms. Klytus was woken up by his cyborg-awareness indicating that there was a disturbance in the N-K sector among the deep space scans. A small planet, its inhabitants called it "Earth." Right around the same time, Zogi, was awakened by visions from TAO with body-wrenching spasms and cramps accompanied with visions of this new world. Ming woke up, kicked off a shark-man pool boy, and called Klytus to tell him that he was bored.

Klytus and Ming started misusing Mongo's amazing technology, which they can't even grasp, to start to "prepare" the Earth for assimilation into the Dyson sphere. Zogi, was not so sure that this was the right way to go about things. After conferring with his one-time colleague Klytus, he knew he was right.  So the Pope of Known Mongo traveled to an isolated sky-island which he had named "Dream Island," to commune with the machines that help him better understand TAO. He then learned that Earth was indeed a prize. He also knew that Ming and Klytus would destroy the Earth using their crude ways.

He discovered a deep-space exploritory vessel from Earth within five lightyears from Mongo. Using his arcane teachings and general brilliance, he captured Professor William Gordon (Colonel William Brandt Gordon of NASA) and his copilot. These petty Earthlings seem to have an insight into gravity-control far beyond the rest of their primitive planet. The Mongo Docking Bay 56, placed them and their ship in Cell 1,047 of 2,000 for inspection later.

Zogi was interrupted by a band of pirating Hawkmen who appeared and claimed the floating mountain as territory of the Sky City. They took him and his assistant, and android named Bolt, as prisoners.  Meanwhile General Kalla of the Mingo City Security Forces detected the abduction. Klytus has dispatched five war-rockets to pursue the hawkmen and their catch. She has not bothered to mention this to her Emperor Ming, who is busy playing with gravity beams on the Earth.

Peryton and me at GenCon 2005

So some discourse on current gaming patterns
So one of our players, the one playing Ming, mentioned to me, 'Sure I am gay, I can be as heterosexual as the plot demands me to be.'
"Why would I do that?" I asked in bewilderment. "King Kalla of the Shark-Men, along with his niece, General Kalla, are tried and true supporters of Ming. If I cannot provide pool-boys with fins to my Ming, why am I running roleplaying games?"
"Ming has a daughter." He said evenly.
"I don't care about your trials." I replied. "Mongo has cloning vats if need be."

I am a libertine. I want ppl to have fun while roleplaying. I will handle the high art as I am a capable GM. My players might have to stretch but I won't lecture them. I want to see where it's going as much as they so.

Review: World of the Last Sun

 

"Gonzo" has become the buzz-word in tabletop roleplaying over the past three years, maybe more but I noticed it around then.  Adventures with loose settings that might be post-apocalyptic, multi-dimensional, Sphere Fantasy, furry-Tolkien, etc... etc... have boiled down into this catch phrase, which really has been helpful for inner librarian that most RPGers really are. No longer does the person have to say "Well, it's multi-genre..." and go into a list of those genres, maybe even subgenres, unless they really want to. As for myself, I have been picking  RPG products that mention the word "gonzo" like I did "weird fantasy" (Clark Ashton Smith, Tanith Lee, Lovecraft) during the early-80s for the same reasons, not so much for gaming ideas but for some strange reading.

John Tarnowski, AKA the RPGPundit, has released a compilation of selected works of his gonzo campaign known as World of the Last Sun. The material was released in bits and pieces through The RPGPundit Presents series over the last few years. In the book the best parts, at least in his estimation, of an OSR ("Old School" d20/D&D) campaign which has not stuck to boundaries of any strict type of fantasy and has been used to parody various aspects of gaming culture over the last fifteen years or so. So the subtitle Old-School Gonzo-Fantasy Setting though over hyphenated is very appropriate.

The world of the Last Sun, itself is a Dyson sphere where the ancient engineers that built the place are long gone. Those that were supposed to take care of it, such as a super-duper computer named G.O.D. and elves, have been warped and degenerated over time, to where everything is magical if not dysfunctional sci-fi.
The text takes one from the Middle Northern Lands, to the Northern Tundra, to the Zombie Empire, the Theocracy of Lariel, to the Floating Islands (both the Lower and Upper Bands), and then from there into the Ten Dimensions. Having caught their breath, the reader continues into City of Arkhome, the Freeport of Highbay, into the wastelands and environs around the Shithole. The chapters move to highlight the previously mentioned the Grand Floating City of Lol and Fuck Station Aleph (another floating city) . The Grand City of Goldhalcon, stronghold of a specific breed of mutant (off-color demi-human Character Kin/Race) returns one to the surface world. Other aspects like the Azure Order of Wizards, the Ice Dome, and the Ancient of Trees fill out the final pages of the 275 material enclosed.

As a setting for an RPG should be there is A LOT of material for the browsing GM. Specific details such as NPCs and in-game artifacts (including fantasy drugs) are scattered throughout the chapters. A campaign favorite PC, Bill the Elf, is mentioned complete with his impact on the campaign around him. There are plenty of charts to help the GM that wants to randomize sessions that they are running within the setting.
The box is without a ribbon though, so to speak. This is not a bad thing. Despite an interesting color cover, artist not specifically noted, there is not a lot of polish between the separate parts. That is not a bad thing for a guy like me. It is rough notes from a campaign that was played in. Works for me. I loved reading the pamphlets of the Arduin Adventure back in the day that was obviously designed for D&D (maybe AD&D) but left in rough note form while it was implied that it was another game altogether, which would be published seven years after their last installment during the big RPG boom of the mid-80s. But a lot of the RPG crowd these days are used to big time publishers like White Wolf and Chaosium with their paid-by-hour formatters and editors working in pages worth of babble and pointless graphics to make prettier book insides being called "small press," so this will be a negative to more than a few purchasers
It breaks a rule that setting books should heed to. From Dark Tower to Griffin Mountain to Wobble, the info needs to be there for the GM. Stats and highlights of various mutants and creatures are not often mentioned. Indeed, most are, relegated to the purchaser to go to the original RPGPunit Presents issues where the this book, I think, was copied and pasted from. I have only previously bought The Shithole from those issues but I did not find any variation in my copy and the included part in this work. Still publishing a setting as opposed to a whole Kickstarter-ed role-playing game is a brave move. Shows the confidence of Tarnowski as an Adventure Gaming GM/author and his publishing house.

World of the Last Sun was not going to be a Godzilla because of too little art. It is not quite a King Kong because it has no stats or a convention where I as a GM can make my own. As a cat owner, I am sure Pundit (Tarnowski) knows that other people's cats are nice to pet but your own is awesome and speaks only to you-- the point being I have too much gonzo stuff in my notes to be finishing stuff from other people's suggestions. It is still a damn fun read for the weird fantasy reader and "gonzo-GM" definitely a Big Foot and well worth the price. The magical drugs from Highbay and BOLT-1 were rather inspiring, as well as seeing someone else mention a Dyson sphere.

Rough Spuds In the Oven

Somebody, Samwise Seven from MeWe.com, happened to mention that Dennis Hopper and David Bowie broke into a mental health ward to give Iggy Pop cocaine. I heard this tale back in 2014. Rehearing it has not made me believe it anymore than I did back then. But upon rehearing it, I did remember that I wrote a scenario for Wobble back in 2017 or so. You see, Beckett, of Beckett fame, and me were sitting around during some downtime at GenCon 2016 talking about the potential scenarios that David Bowie could lead to. He came up with the premise where players play "good" David Bowie personas versus the "bad" David Dowie (somewhere around Station to Station and Low). While making my notes up for that daydream, I stumbled across the Hopper, now Harry Dean Stanton, and Bowie and Iggy Pop tale again. So in a quick session, I got the work out of my system. Thank you Pery, Sea Shelly, and Jack for the time of our lives up to that point. Michelle did the best BowieS one can think of, while the other two looked on rather bemused, while waiting to roll two six-sided dice at my request.

So I woke up last night, at around 2:45am, I went to bed too early, actually. Still, I just had to find my notes on the scenario again. After digging through some already filed away things, I found the "Works Book", the journal where one makes notes notes during the day-to-day playing of games at tabletops, not so much video spots. Finding a half-filled notebook, right around the first third, I found my "Aladdin Sane Versus the Radio Apes". Done before Wobble  was even going to be a product. I was still confusing the T&T MR versus  Red Bat's (was the system even called that back then?) the Quick.
Then I rediscovered about a dozen others. Well, I stayed up until 4:45am or so, reading and beaming with pride at all the scenarios that I had written within two pages. Even interspersed among Spacers notes, my Wobble  items dominated the schoolyard primer.

I really was on some rolls there. Perhaps, since releasing Wobble, I have been worried a little too much about how things look. I am going to to try to motorcycle start some sessions again.