Satan's Game 4 & 5: Passing the Torch (and Burning it All Down)

IT'S HAPPENING AT LAST

It's time for another recap of our latest Action Movie World adventures! As I've said in previous installments, one of my aims with the ongoing "Satan's Game" series was to make a sort of meta-commentary on sequels in the same way AMW itself makes a commentary on action movies.

It should be obvious by now, if you've read any of the other entries in this series, that "Satan's Game" has heavy action-horror elements (or action-horror-comedy elements, if we're being honest). I grew up watching various horror franchises I enjoyed (Halloween, Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, etc.) take their good ideas  and either beat them to unrecognizable pulp or bleed them dry as dust over many sequels. I wanted to emulate that same terrible effect in gaming form (because I enjoy irony and cheap laughs, you see). Spiritually, I set out to make "films" that wanted to be Halloween but ended up being Hellraiser III. With cops.

This plan finally came to fruition with...

Satan's Game 4: Lord of the Maze (1990) 

The sequel nobody asked for! Our cast was mostly the same as the previous installment. Aside from Frank's characters, who die like dogs in every movie, we've stuck with the same crew for a bit now:

• Anna Citizen as Kelly Bishop, City Accountant turned. P.I. (Gina / Thespian)
• Berkeley Blower as Angus Bellows (Bill / Yeller / Lead)
• Garland McDonald as Pete "Muddy" O'Haran (Jerry / Musclehead.)
• James Oakley as Leon Graling, a former Wild West sharpshooter turned bounty hunter (Frank / Gunfighter). 

The face of pure evil

The movie opens on a couple making out in a car on a remote lover's lane, because I want the players to know right away: this movie is creatively bankrupt. Their impending teenage coitus is violently interrupted by an ominous figure in black. It's none other than the resurrected Dwight Meddles (Eddie Deezen), who cackles in a whining falsetto as he ends their lives. That's right, Eddie Deezen is now the villain! Standards have not fallen! This was a good choice! (But seriously, the players were very excited by the thought of fighting an evil Eddie Deezen.)

Once again, it falls to the "police" of Detroit to solve the mysterious murders. Angus Bellows, being the Lead, gets personally involved in the investigation. He, Kelly, Muddy, and Oakley go undercover at a local game shop, Merlin's Attic, to gather clues. Finally, after four movies, I get to fulfill my dream of PC cops fighting evil roleplayers!

Guest starring as one of the roleplayers is "Slade" from Razorfist: AD 1995, who starts an edition war that turns into a real war. Bloodshed ensues when the cops discover the game shop owners have some of the old Mazelord books with the psychoactive ink from the previous movie. Every gag gets re-used... that's the crappy sequel way! Slade uses "exotics" (which means he blocks with his face), but he and the other Evil Gamers are soon subdued by nightsticks, tasers to the crotch and falling shelves laden with deadly Avalon Hill games.

Oh no, it's getting pretty scary you guys

An interrogation of the devil-worshipping gamers leads the protagonists to the Corn Fun Fear Farm outside Detroit. (This is a real place, though I don't know if it existed in 1990.) There, Dwight Meddles (whose initials are DM, get it?) will prove himself to be the true master of Mazelord (because it's a corn maze, get it?) by literally summoning Satan on Halloween night. Dwight has kidnapped his own mother, Patsy, and tied her to a scarecrow pole. As the players arrive, lightning strikes the pole and the anti-Mazelord crusader messily expires. Patsy done got red-shirted.

A frantic battle ensues in which the "cops" (and bounty hunter and P.I.) battle a legion of pumpkin-headed misanthropes wielding chainsaws and pitchforks. Oakley botches a chase roll and plows his sports car into a power pole. Dwight Meddles fires Roman candles from his sleeves into the car (presumably while screaming "lightning bolt!") and Oakley is incinerated in the explosion. Vengeance move unlocked! Frank gets 2 XP and becomes a script consultant. He recommends Dwight literally become a demon at the end, proving magic and the Devil are real. I enthusiastically agree.

The climactic battle ends with Angus Bellows, the police commissioner, impaling the demonic Dwight Meddles on the charred pole that held Meddles' deceased mother. So, that's horrifying! But the threat is ended, and Satan's Game finally comes to an end... OR DOES IT, QUESTION MARK?

No, it doesn't.

Satan's Game 5: Evil's Conduit

And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach Smooth Operator!

After the end of Satan's Game 4, the players were inexplicably eager for more. I said I would be happy to see more, but it was time for me to step aside and let someone else take over the franchise. I'd beaten it as far into the ground as I personally could. Frank volunteered, and the next week we continued with yet another sequel, doubtlessly cranked out in a white heat by the studio for a buck-fifty.

The cast included the usual suspects, plus:

• Chase Brody as Damian Grace, Smooth Operator (Greg /Smooth Operator / Lead)
• Randall David Guy as Raymond Zen (Me! / Gunfighter)

Let Me Tell You About My Character: I based Raymond Zen on Reb Brown, but not playing as a Yeller. I focused on the "crying" and "stiff acting" aspects of Reb Brown's style. I only occasionally descended into the Brownian "screaming like a banshee," but it never had any mechanical effect. My meta-story was that the actor did lines of coke between some takes and would seem inexplicably manic on screen. The best of all possible worlds! Raymond and Damian Grace were old Vietnam buddies, so naturally we had some Vietnam flashbacks and monologues about "the war" during the game.

So, on with the story! After the events of Satan's Game 4, the gang packed up and moved to the West Coast, where they formed G.L.O.R.I.A., the Government Led Occult Research and Investigation Agency. If you recall, Gloria was also the name of "Muddy" O'Haran's hammer, which is convenient because it pretty much sums up how we approach investigative problems.

Apparently, Dwight Meddles' attempt to summon the Devil at the Corn Fun Fear Farm in Detroit resulted in a "conduit" being opened between this world and the supernatural, meaning all sorts of inhuman baddies could come through, and it's up to us to stop them.

"So basically, we're Scooby Doo now," said Jerry, Muddy's player. No one could find it in their heart to disagree.

The face of pure evil

The story begins with some missing kids on Venice Beach. "I have never prepared less for a game," Frank says just after we start, and personally, I take that as a feature and not a bug. This is no longer a "cop" script, or really any of the scripts as written. I'm not sure what it is now, but we had a blast anyway.

Our protagonists interrogate beach-goers and find out there's a coven of vampires in Venice Beach. Raymond Zen gets coked up and rides his motorcycle all over the beach, unnecessarily spraying sand everywhere. I also take the opportunity to use the one-liner "you might be from another world, but I'm Ray Zen Hell," which made everyone want to die and was the whole reason I named the character the way I did.

Satan's Game 5: Evil's Conduit was simple and to the point. There were some vampires. They kidnapped Kelly Bishop (the trope still in effect five movies in!) The head vampire (played by Edward Hermann) gave a monologue explaining his plan. The rest of us laid assault to his lair (an office building) with automatic weapons and wooden stakes and put paid to the lot of them in a bloody conflagration. Venice Beach's vampire problem is solved!

Not appearing: oily Lost Boys saxophone guy

Mechanical Notes:

This was one of the few games where we used Camaraderie to get an awesome weapon (a Gatling gun that fired stakes), and personally, I'm a big fan. Bonus XP is nice. Insane weapons that create absolute mayehm are nicer.

At the end of the session, Frank explained that every character in the game was either named or based after a character from The Lost Boys, which was perfect. The soundtrack consisted mostly of The Go-Gos, which was also perfect somehow. I couldn't say what otherworldly terrors the members of G.L.O.R.I.A. will encounter next, but I'm eager to see where it goes... and kinda glad I'm not in charge.

Whatever AMW games I run in the future, I want them to be from fresh playbooks. We haven't even visited the Ninja, War or Sci-Fi playbooks yet at all. There's a lot of territory left to cover, and I'm eager to break out into new ground.