I believe there was a movie based on that concept. Some prisoner brought to an jungle island where a gamer controlled his actions so he could fight others like him.
I believe there was a movie based on that concept. Some prisoner brought to an jungle island where a gamer controlled his actions so he could fight others like him.
I’m agreeing with the others on this one. If my players caught me out on something like that I’d just smile mysteriously and say something like “Yeah....Interesting, huh. I’d decide later if it was twins or a shape/gender switcher or a disguise of some sort. Never let the players see you sweat. Everything is always part of your Games Master Plan.
I was trying to fill in a gap in activity / conversation. The denouement had... denouement...ed? -- after the completion of a long story arc (four or five months of sessions on the one arc), everyone was feeling deflated (in a good way, I mean), and there was suddenly a very long pause-- no players spoke; no characters did anything, so just to keep the silence from hitting that "awkward" stage, Earl- the maintenance guy at their base-- chimed up with "well, it's Thursday already; I've got to be going! Welcome home, folks. Don't call me if you need me; I've got custody this weekend, and I'm unplugging the phone!"
Hmm....
Think the Players. What could that be about?
"HHHmmmm....." grunt the Players. "What was that about?"
"Earl's divorced. It's his weekend with the kids. He's done this before. It's on the calendar in the office, but you guys have been so busy the past few week...."
"He's up to something--!"
And for the next hour-- real time; a couple days game time-- the start gathering intel on Earl-- everything they can get their hands on.
The next two game sessions they are _obsessed_ with Earl! To the point that they follow him, looking to see what he's up to. It was funny for about ten minutes, then it got weird....
Problematically, they got really _excited_ about the idea that Earl-- a pop-up NPC who had been running their base for honest-to-God _six years_ of game time-- was secretly a villain, or a spy, or some sort of mastermind---
Toward the end of the second session of "What's up with Earl," I had put up with all I could handle. I dug in-- Earl left his apartment an hour before sunset, took a cab to the drug store, and bought skin cream, lotion, a humidifier, and stopped at a hardware store and got rock salt.
"Where's his kids?!"
You don't see any kids--
"I _knew_ it! He's up to something! He's probably building some kind of bomb! What kind of bomb can you make with salt?!"
Truth was I had focused so hard on giving Earl something to _do_ that I had forgotten it was custody weekend. That's all there was to it.
You've already learned he lives on the top floor--
"Skylight! What do I see through the skylight?"
The skylight.... what would you do in a tenement building with a skylight? Hmmm.. ooh! Better lighting in the shower!-- the skylight is directly over Earl's bathroom--
Is he building a bomb in the bathtub? What's he doing-?!
Well, as you watch, set back from the grimy glass so as not to cast a shadow on it or to accidentally be seen, he appears to be --- running the bathwater!
"What's he putting in it? Ammonia? Bleach? Nitrogen?
crap... what did he buy.....? A hasty side glance at the notes-- uh... he's carefully measuring out the rock salt!
What? What's he up to?
There's a... Thermometer! He's checking the temperature of the water very--
he looked up! Good thing the sun is setting and you're setting back a bit, or he would have looked dead at you!
The water! The thermometer! What's it for?!
He appears to be checking the temperature of the water--
I call John! This could be it!
(john, in character) Jetstream here.
Jetstream, I don't know what it is but it's going down! Earl's measuring rocksalt into a bathtub full of temperature-controlled water! This could be it!
(jetstream) I'm on my way! Call the others!
Within moments, all the heroes are gathered, staring at Earl as he carefully checks the salinity and temperature of the water. Then he darts off to another room and comes back with a mysterious sealed container!
What does it look like...?!
Well, it's brownish, maybe quart-sized (I had been winging it, but at this point, I had made a decision). It says "Country Crock" on the side..
What? Butter?
That's margarine, idiot!
Yeah, and it's pretty---
What's he doing now?
He's lighting candles--
A ritual! Is he summoning something?! They need salt for that! Where's Mysteria--
I'm right here--
Yeah; make a skill check! Is he summoning something? Can you tell what it is--?
oh, why not.... "Go ahead, if you think he's summoning a demon." I push her player (Straight John) three dice. Natural 18! Under the circumstances, hilarious to me; frustrating beyond measure to them.
Wait! He's putting something in the tub--
is it the butter?
No; it's a small device of some sort. There's a cord that runs to it and plugs into the wall---
(to Mysteria) Are there electro-demons? (to me) is a bomb? Is the water crackling with electricity?
No. make a PER Check.... You see some kind of clear tubing hooked to the machine; it's laying on the floor-
Is it pumping the water out?!
No. The candles are lit in a pattern (now I'm just having fun with it). There are three arranged in a triangle around the tub, five in a circle beyond those, and nine outside of those. He's pressed on a button on a gizmo that looks like CD player-- at least, same size; same shape--
Does it vibrate?!
No, but when he throws a switch in the cord, the small device in the tub appears to-- a small, steady stream of bubbles begins to percolate to the surface of the water--- it's pretty dark; you can probably get closer if you want--
Yeah! What do I see?
What do I see?
Can I see what he's doing--?
He's opened the plastic tub and he reaches in... he appears to be sprinking something into the water-- like bits of potting soil and.. something you can't really see what it is--
I have telescopic vision! Where's my dice? I rolled five! What do I see--?
it looks like small worms of somekind-- not earthworms, but hundreds of small worms....
Demon worms!
nanobots!
Alien parasites!
(if you're wondering: tubifex. Tubifex was the correct answer. No one got it).
You see Earl start to tremble-- his hands are shaking, and he's having trouble with his balance--
He's in a trance! It's beginning! Mysteria, get up here, front and center!
Be careful! All of you, make an easy PER check (no failures) The moon is coming out, and you're perfectly silhouetted against it--!
Crap! (rolls dice) I want a stealth check to creep silently to the other side of the skylight!
No problem; you make it. You see--
oh, me too!
I don't have stealth! Can I just creep over slowly--
Got an 11-!
You're all on the other side of the skylight, and have the perfect vantage point to watch a fifty-four year old man strip. Clearly, this is one of your finest moments.
No; he's up to something--!
He's also naked. He's staggering; he can barely stand--
Should we help him? maybe he's being possessed!
No; he's summoning something, or building some kind of weird bomb
I don't think Earl is a bomb....
Maybe it's the control pod for like an entire mech hidden on the floor below--
In someone else's apartment?
He probably rents that one, too! (to me) How much do we pay him?
"Not enough for him to catch you watching him undress, or rent two apartments.... He kneels down beside the tub and rolls over into it and begins to spasm.
Here it comes!
And as the moon finishes rising, complete and full, and its silvery light shines through the skylight, you see him twist and writhe and--- He's shrinking! Something's happening! He is getting smaller, his arms are shrinking and his fingers are getting nightmarishly long--
It's a transformation! He's becoming some kind of Hell beast!
He's becoming a fish-
WHAT?!
Right there, before your eyes, you-- The Seven, the mightiest defenders Campaign City has ever seen-- stand aghast as you watch a naked old man (this was long enough ago that I thought 55 was ancient) shrivel and shrink and gasp for air and sprout scales and turn as silver as the moon-- and within moments, where Earl had been, there is a smallish fish, swimming around the bathtub, lazily eating tubifex worms.....
WHAT?!
THAT'S _IT_?!
THAT is what we've wasted two entire sessions on-?!
No one is more upset about it than I am; I promise.
Why would you do that--
_I_ didn't do it! _I_ was getting tired of telling you that know Earl, you know his ex-wife, and you know his sons, but _you_ wierdos decided he was some sort of Soviet spy---!
Well how where we supposed to know--?
And more and more in that vein...
I have said it before: Players do the most confounding things. Just roll with it. If you don't leash them too tightly, they'll build you an entire world.
Headphones hell, that didn’t do a whole lot of good to my poor I-pad speakers either! 😁
But at least now we have a good reference for the term “Ranged Killing Attack: Sonic”.
Sitting in the parking lot at the Pop Vault of the little nowhere town of Jesup, GA (you know: jes' up de road from Brunswick. )
Stopped here with Noisy and went and plundered a few vintage games. The kid at the register starts adding things up and I ask him "hang on a minute. Do you mind if she runs out to the truck and makes sure these things boot up?" I placed my driver's liscence and a C-note on the counter. "I will stay here till she gets back."
"Oh sure--" then something clicks in his forebrain. "You have a PlayStation 1 in your truck?"
Noisy looks at him and says "and a 2 and a Sega Genesis."
Blank look from the kid behind the counter. Finally, "you're messing with me."
"In my defense, it's a really old truck. It was a cool thing to do at the time."
Noisy again "Oh, and a DVD player, but mostly we just put movies on our tablets." The she grabs the stack of disks and heads to truck.
"You're serious?"
I just nodded. "Dude. When the kids are little, they get bored by the scenery on road trips, when they start to get cranky, I push a button and suggest they play a game with each other. Worked great when they were little."
"No PS 3? Or 4? Or 5?"
The only place to get a 5 in this country is from a scalper, and I am not doing that, and the others- I need to build output adapters to make them compatible with the headrests and sun visors, but at this point, the kids have kind of outgrown the need for travel video games, so I never got around to doing it."
"You're serious?"
Noisy came back in and handed him one game (Defender for PS2). "This one doesnt work, but the others are fine." Then she turned to me. "Can I play Spy Hunter on the way to Brunswick?"
"Keep the volume down."
I am currently taking a minute to post this while the sales kid is rooting around in the back seat of the of the Leviathan. He apparently has never actually played a PS1, and I think I am stuck here until another customer shows up. Noisy is cutrently spanking his butt in Tekken 2.
I want room service ! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker ! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo
The guy who used to be dedicated tractor driver had just had some sort of procedure done-- not surgical, but diagnostic, so not too terribly invasive.... I guess? Anyway, they were trying to rule out /rule in IBS and Crohn's Disease. He's dragging a load up onto the truck and suddenly just goes wild with a sneezing fit that generally you'd have to observe a housecat to witness.
As he comes out of it, his face drops and he gets that horrified thousand-yard stare.
"Yo, Matt (pseudonym)! What's wrong?"
His head starts bobbing just a bit, we can hear the humming, and he proceeds to climb off the tractor. "I'm goin' home. Bye."
Tjack got a reaction from SCUBA Hero in E-Wars
Tjack got a reaction from Duke Bushido in GM Goof-ups
Tjack got a reaction from tkdguy in A Thread for Random Videos
