[Wids]

Meanwhile (or, rather, some time in the early 2000's), our troupe's Technocracy party had uncovered a plot about the Neo-Technocracy (a secret splinter group within the Technocracy) trying to usurp control of the Technocracy itself by wiping out several Technocratic control stations and whatnot...

Kenneth (as Agent Echoes): "Hicks! I'm inside the warhead, taking fire from two sides while I'm trying to redirect the guidance system! What are your orders?"
Ben (as Lieutenant Hicks): "...hold your position."
(Echoes was crammed inside the warhead of a Neo-Technocratic antimatter nuke, sitting on the missile's antimatter containment unit and reprogramming the guidance computer so that the missile would come right back down on the Neo-Technocracy base and detonate, all while Hicks and the rest of the Last Resort team were exchanging fire with Neo-Technocracy defense teams on the other side of the missile silo...and the other side of the missile. It was a very precarious place for Echoes to be.)


Years before that, I ran a GURPS Horror one-shot for Robert, Kevin and Lenny while Dobie was away on a TDY for a month or two and Screech had to stand guard at Malmstrom's arsenal that night. Just as Palladium games are good for munchkins, GURPS games are good for obsessive-compulsive Game Masters who want a dice table for everything down to what color the character's boss painted her toenails that morning. Every other type of Game Master tends to find GURPS tedious and nitpicky as all hell, and so I did. But I still ran this one-shot, and I baited-and-switched my players by not telling them that it was a horror game, just that they were playing a bunch of college guys heading down to Camp Lakeside on Flathead Lake to drink beer, play some sports and schmooze with the college girls. So Robert rolled up Jughead, Kevin rolled up Moose and Lenny rolled up Reggie because my players were jerks. Then night fell, one of the college girls told a campfire legend about a killer maniac named "Crazy George" Freeley who killed off a mess of campers up in those same mountains twenty years ago. Guess who showed up a little while later and started picking off college kids one by one.

Lenny (as Reggie): "Jill! We're getting everyone to the ranger station! Where's Stephanie?"
Me (as Jill): "Stephanie? She was all stressed out over Crazy George killing her boyfriend, so she went down to the beach to take a hot shower."
Lenny and Robert (together, as if on cue): "She's dead."
--Lenny and Robert, being dangerously genre-savvy. Sure enough, they found Stephanie hanging from from the showerhead, right where George caught her mid-shower. Have two-dozen Halloween and Friday the 13th movies taught us nothing? :P


Me: "The front door to Ranger Station 13 is a few inches ajar as you all walk past the Montana Park and Wildlife Service truck and approach. From somewhere inside, you hear white noise crackling from a radio...."
Lenny: "Let me guess. All the rangers are already dead."
Me: "There were only two. But yes."
--Lenny, being genre-savvy again.


Robert (as Jughead): "All right, Crazy George! You can kill us all you want, but that duck? You done fucked up now!"
--Crazy George tried to spook the kids out of the ranger station by snapping a duck's neck and hurling it in through a closed window. Jughead did not take kindly to that.


Me: "The still of the night is suddenly shattered from the staccato reports as Lenny empties the last three hollow points from the ranger's revolver into Crazy George's center mass. The killer stumbles, then falls backward onto the grassy sand in a shower of gore, where he writhes in agony for a moment, then lies very still."
Lenny: "Yes! Kick ass!"
Robert: "All right! Is Crazy George finally dead?"
Me: "Are you checking to see if Crazy George is dead?"
Robert: "...okay, yeah. I check to see if Crazy George is dead."
Me: "Okay." (rolling six-siders) "While Jughead is leaning over Crazy George and checking him for signs of life, he suddenly feels the sharp bit of George's pickaxe punching through his abdominal wall for 12 Dam...."
Robert: "Whoa, whoa, whoa! I did mention that Jughead's checking him from all the way over here, right?"
--Sorry, Robert. No takebacks. :D


Dobie (having returned from Guam, now hearing our account of the GURPS Horror adventure): (as me) "You've all showed up for a fun-filled weekend at Camp Crystal Lake! What do you do first?" (as himself) "We leave."
--Sorry, Dobie. I had a contingency in place for that possibility too. I think of everything. ;)


Me (to an SP walking into the dayroom with his German Shepherd): "Hi there. Can we help you?"
The SP: "Somebody down the hall called us and said that they heard screaming coming from this dayroom...?"
Dobie: "Oh. That was us. Sorry."
--Some other Airman in the barracks called the cops on us, so we had to explain to the SP that everything was fine and that nobody was actually being murdered. I guess we might have gotten too enthusiastic carrying on about the GURPS one-shot.


Later, during that aforementioned Marvel Superheroes campaign...

Dobie: "He spent five years at Alcatraz before he finally realized that it's not really a prison anymore. So he left."
--Dobie, trying to help Robert come up with Blockhead's backstory. Robert didn't bite.


Okay, who's next? :)