Author Topic: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run  (Read 20577 times)

Addled GM

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Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« on: April 20, 2016, 08:24:25 PM »
Given the increase in madcap antics of the rppr actual plays and plots, I posit the question of what is the weirdest game idea you have ever turned into a working game. 

My own would have to be a game of WUSHU in which each player created a Smurf and we ran them through the zombie episode of the smurfs. 

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #1 on: April 20, 2016, 08:27:58 PM »
That's a tough one, but it would probably boil down to my Call of Cthulhu Christmas Special in which a group of pre-teen investigators went up against a sorceror of Yog-Sothoth who had bound his foul being into the avatar-form of Saint Nick. Santa "infected" the Outer God, meaning Yog-Sothoth was going down chimneys and children were underdoing d100 SAN loss all across Arkham.

I had initially set up the house of the sorceror (who by day was a toy-maker) as having plenty of tools, arts and crafts material etc in the hopes of a Home Alone thing but turns out they just want to murder him with hammers. 

Review Cultist

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #2 on: April 20, 2016, 09:07:39 PM »
I think mine would be the session in my 1920's campaign where I essentially ran "Pastoral Manor" in Call of Cthulhu and added a lumber company vs. Redwallian woodland critter ecoterrorists subplot. It ended in a farmhouse gunfight when the party joined the woodland critters side.

...well, there was also that one time I ran a Weird West one-shot (tied to the setting of the 1920's campaign) where alien crocodile men dwelling beneath Devil's Tower, Idaho were becoming werewolf/crocodile hybrids and attacking the local town because they were tampering with the realms of Fae magic. The crew was a Colonal, a Convict, and a Mercenary Bodyguard for a travelling scholar who happened to be in the town at the time. The Merc kept loosing SAN and by the end he believed the Mothmen aiding the Crocodile mens affliction (did I mention there were Mothmen too?) were angels delivered by the lord, and that the Convict was the second coming of Jesus... oh and he got a vampiric flintlock pistol when they travelled through the Hedge to help find a cure to the crocodile mens lycanthropy. The Colonel was out gunned and forced to let the Convict go for now and thanks to the Mothmen's powers he got a nice head start as they gated him to Paris with the Merc as a bodyguard.

Oh wait!

There was another one-shot where it was a gaslight period game in Paris where the characters tracked down and fought thieving mummies and their musketeer mummy lord at the top of the newly constructed Eiffel Tower. Well one player made it to the Mummy Lord, the other's were desiccated to death at the base of the tower by a small band of guarding mummies. after a duel, the last player booted the mummy lord of the tower and left the scenario.

In hindsight, that campaign and series of spin-off games went from "street level Call of Cthulhu" to Pulpy weird fiction over the course of 17 sessions. Was really fun though and the Players consider it their most memorable campaign.
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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #3 on: April 20, 2016, 10:37:56 PM »
I ran a scenario based on the crazy story about the flaming skull from Alaskan Igloo Tales.

things got weird. . . the players sort of established their own secluded cave land

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #4 on: April 20, 2016, 11:01:09 PM »
I ran a scenario based on the crazy story about the flaming skull from Alaskan Igloo Tales.

things got weird. . . the players sort of established their own secluded cave land

Nice!

For me: willa wonka set in eclipse phase using a dirty world as the system

Alethea

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #5 on: April 21, 2016, 05:38:05 PM »
For me: willa wonka set in eclipse phase using a dirty world as the system

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #6 on: April 21, 2016, 05:49:01 PM »
I ran a player through the introductory adventure of Abandon All Hope (a campaign that was basically Event Horizon meets Doom on WH40k penal barge) with them thinking the campaign was supposed to be Oz-in-space, not Oz-in-space-in-Hell.  To make matters even weirder, he patterned his character totally on Charles Salvador's Bronson persona from the Refn film Bronson, played by Thomas Hardy.  It was equal parts frustrating and hilarious.

Abandon All Hope is a dead system now but the setting/premise was great even if the rules were a bit clunky.  And Bronson is an unsurprisingly excellent film from before Refn or Harding were big names (2009).

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #7 on: April 22, 2016, 01:51:04 AM »
For me: willa wonka set in eclipse phase using a dirty world as the system

Dr. Nova's Going Away Party?

yup. pretty much every scenario I run winds up on the podcast sooner or later.

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2016, 11:52:52 AM »
For me: willa wonka set in eclipse phase using a dirty world as the system

Dr. Nova's Going Away Party?

yup. pretty much every scenario I run winds up on the podcast sooner or later.

Fixed that for ya.
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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #9 on: May 09, 2016, 07:35:02 PM »
I'm not sure if this qualifies as weirdest but it sticks out in my mind.

It's Eclipse Phase. In New Shanghai the players are investigating their own murders and have traced found links to a series of apparent morph implant malfunctions that cause spontaneous human combustion. They have two leads, a local escort who knows too much and a young free-runner/parcel delivery person who lives with a pair of uplifts at the only legitimate message parlor in the city. My players decide to go with a subtle approach and use the party face, an async obsessed with the color white, to ferret out the leads. What I didn't know what that the ferreting out would involve two, protracted Tac-Netted dating shows A La 1990's Elimidate.

We RPed out a full escort contract negotiation scene, complete with suggestions from the teammates via text message. The team mates knew about the async's mind-powers so they were guiding them through the process of arranging for some casual BDSM. They negotiated for an interrogation scene which the async used to ask priming questions for throughtbrowsing. When that didn't work they knocked them out and did a full probe. They left a heavy tip behind.

Next up they had the async "date" the free runner. They intensely researched this freerunners social media profiles and discovered that they were into female-presenting morphs and were sorta adopted by a gorilla uplift masseuse. They arranged a chance encounter at the message parlor, literally scripting a meet-cute followed by a date to the freerunner's favorite noodle place (which they had already pulled from social media). The team fell into "date small talk suggestion mode" and ended up RPing an entire first date, forgetting their objective.
So they had to arrange for a second date.

The second date was overwatched by the gorilla who was lurking a block back because he didn't trust this strange, pale weird human with his adopted daughter. Half the team ended up trying to distract helicopter gorilla dad while the other team kept up the small talk advice while they strolled through the souks. Finally the two teams came to a head when gorilla dad ended up blundering through the date, triggering a panic attack from the free runner. The async picked up on the free runners nascent pyrokinesis as a wandering noodle-dispensing robot erupted in steam, filling the scene with clouds of chicken-scented mist.

Time and other commitments ended up killing the campaign but I wish I could go back and see how many more dates they would have ended up getting the async to go on.

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #10 on: May 10, 2016, 12:47:47 AM »
Ran a game of Risus that was "You're in a band, your rent is past due, you need money."

It was based off of a game premise I heard about on these boards, I don't remember exactly where though.

But yeah when everyone learned that could play anything, we had a world famous keytarist named Hans VonLiberman a German U-Boat Captain from WWII. He was somewhere around 75, another was the Drummer and he played King Hrothgar from Beowulf. Then there was the singer, Dorian Grey from the Portrait of the same name. THen my favorite was the Bassist, who was just a 17 year old kid who sold pot in the school parking lot.

King Hrothgar tried to pay their rent in gold coins, the landlord took them but only called it half their rent. So they went and became contestants on the price is right. The Bassist used his power of being completely Unnoticeable (Nobody notices the bass player) to manipulate the big wheel.

They won the jackpot and paid their debts. It was a big hit, it's had multiple requests for a sequel over beers.

Haven't done one yet though should be a blast when it happens.
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Addled GM

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Re: Weirdest Scenario You have Ever Run
« Reply #11 on: May 11, 2016, 08:32:29 PM »
That band game was one that I set up on the boards here a while ago.  I had just finished the poor but entertaining manga "Bremen" and watched a bunch of behind the musics with a heavy dose of Spinal Tap.  I wish I could have had the success you had with it though.