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| He Never Died |
So anyway, Action Movie World. We did play a few sessions, which I have neglected to recap, to my shame. They were good sessions, too, full of the kind of shenanigans I've come to expect from this group. Here are the episodes we've played to date, with some short descriptions:
Star Strife: The Legend of Laser Knife
This was a game Bill ran; a rip-off of Starcrash, Battle Beyond the Stars, and other cheapie space operas. I played Reb Brown as a robot named L.A.N.C.E. (Lifelike Artificial Neutralizing Cybernetic Entity). My notes consist of only a few choice elements: Planet Jon'Uston, Count Baddo, and also Planet Gyno-4. At one point we had to escape an evil galactic slave trader played by Billy Crystal. I wish my memory weren't so shit, because this was a game worth remembering.
Warlords of the Waste
This was a game I ran for my secondary Tuesday group; a rip-off of Starcrash, Battle Beyond the Stars, and other cheapie space operas. That's not a typo. We literally had two BBOS / Starcrash knock-offs in one week. Mine actually starred John Saxon and had a bit with a Mad Max style swamp buggy chase. Both games ended with a ludicrous melee aboard the enemy star cruiser. That's about all I recall.
Satan's Game 666: Albigensian Road Trip
This was possibly the final installment in the venerable Satan's Game series, at least until one of us comes up with a new idea. It was a riff on the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, where a group of reprobates is drawn through a portal into the magical world of "Mazelord," the fictional OSR clone of the Satan's Game series. Yes, there was a little man with white hair named Mazelord. There was a Venger-style villain who rode a dragon and wanted their magical weapons. I did a scene in which Mazelord recited "fear not, Smartass, Gunfighter, Pugilist... and Yeller!" while summoning their weapons. Chances are this is only funny if you remember the show, and possibly not even then, but my players' screams of agony as long-lost synapses burned back into terrible life made the effort worthwhile. One of the highlights included a lengthy running gun battle with space goblins as the VW bus hurtled through an interdimensional portal. The story ended with the protagonists returning to earth and playing a gig at Coachella. Overall, huge success.
Attract Mode
This is the ongoing game for my secondary Tuesday group, a riff on "The Last Starfighter" wherein aliens place a video game on Earth as a training device in the hopes of recruiting a crack pilot for their actual interstellar war. So far, this one hasn't gotten off the ground (get it) -- the players are having too much fun kicking around the trailer park, poisoning the evil land developer* with expired corn dogs and shirking their shifts at the local mini-mart to play Stellar Defenders for hours a day. The alien invasion plot hasn't made an appearance yet, but who am I to stand in the way of the players' fun?
* played by a lesser Baldwin brother
And that almost brings us current, save for the game Bill ran most recently. Here was the pitch:
DEPENDENCE DAY
(c) 1988 - Aliens have landed on earth to get us hooked on their space crack. Will this rag-tag group of rebels be able to overcome their evil scheme? Maybe. Will Nancy Reagan have a role to play in it? Almost assuredly.
You liked Star Wars? Well then you'll love the Star War Against Drugs. When you see an Alien pusher, just say BLOW THEM AWAY!
Needless to say, I was excited by this idea. Bill ran this using the default Sci-Fi Flick template.
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| LET ME TELL YOU BROTHER |
Having had enough of Reb Brown for the moment, I decided to roll a new actor: Hogarth Blezinski, stage name Cheesesteak Williams. He was modeled off of Hulk Hogan in the Eighties. His character was Hoagie "Freedom" Jones, a survivalist living in Colorado and building a garden behind his log cabin to cherish the memory of his departed wife. A wife who died of a drug overdose! Cue maudlin Michael Kamen music! Freedom played the Lead.
The rest of the lineup consisted of:
- Chad Stevens, a welder modeled after Hugh Jackman (Frank / Gunfighter, I think)
- Dr. Bella Bradley, a government researcher (Gina / I forget which playbook)
- Orinoco Hammer, a badass cyborg or an alien or something, I'm not really sure (Greg / ???)
Yeah, my note-taking was great!
The best part of this session -- and I'm not sure Bill would agree with me here, but I feel this strongly -- it flew right off the rails almost right away. It derailed and it stayed derailed, and turned into one of the most gloriously over-the-top sessions of AMW ever.
The story began with the space shuttle Constellation, piloted by Scott Andrews (Bill Paxton) and a multicultural crew, running into some space radiation and making an emergency landing in Nicaragua. A news team dutifully reports the incident, but are interrupted by a manic Randy Quaid warning of an impending alien invasion. For the record, this was not Randy Quaid playing some character in the fictional movie, but actually Randy Quaid.
Quaid was hauled off by government agents, and Freedom and Chad depart to rescue him. I know it's egotistical to quote oneself, but I'm about to, because I'm proud of my One-Liner move (for which I rolled a 12, thank you very much):
"Look, Randy Quaid and I have been through a lot together. I didn't give up on him when he burned down fourteen hectares of Nebraska cornfield looking for discarded alien rectal probes. I didn't give up on him when he bulldozed the dinosaur museum in South Dakota because he thought it was run by Saurians. I didn't give up on him after that six-hour standoff at a Piggly Wiggly in Tennessee because he mistook the clerk for Whitley Strieber. And I'm not going to give up now."Camaraderie +1!
At the police station, the heroes ran afoul of the Villain, a black-suited government agent named "Star" (Michael Ironside), who wears sunglasses and drives an infinite series of red Camaro sports cars. We blew one up in almost every scene, but every time the Villain reappeared, he had a new Camaro.
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| historically accurate food reference |
Freedom and Chad are foiled in their attempt to rescue Randy Quaid, but manage to track him to a local Taco Bell. Meanwhile, Bella and Hammer have made off with the experimental spaceship they were working on (you see what I mean about the rail-flying-offing) and move to intercept.
What followed was an extensive bloodbath taking place entirely at the Taco Bell. Outside, the alien ship rained gunfire down on federal agents and Nicaraguan drug lords alike. Inside, tables and plastic trays were wielded as weapons. In a climactic scene, Freedom defeated government agent Renee Auberjonois by shoving two extra-saucy Enchoritos into his eyes while screaming some Taco-Bell related one-liner I can't recall. I think I made reference to the Bell Beefer because that was on the Taco Bell menu in the Eighties. That's how I roll.
Anyway, here's where it started to get pretty weird. We learned that aliens were distributing a drug called SPAZ, which made your eyes turn green and gave you increased combat prowess even as it turned you into a zombie for the loathsome alien cartel. There as also an anti-SPAZ, a red pill that turned you into a raging Red Hulk type creature, while also counteracting the effects of SPAZ.
We rescued Randy Quaid, but he was controlled by the aliens and had an alien bomb in his chest, which he planned to use to blow up the White House. Chad made use of his Script Move to modify the experimental alien ship piloted by Bella and Hammer, which sort of fused Randy Quaid with it in a Cronenbergian body-horror nightmare. So we're flying to Nicaragua in an alien ship that is part Randy Quaid. The crew touched down in Nicaragua, heavily damaged and no longer airworthy.
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| Voice of Paul Reubens not included |
Not yet finished, the crew scrambles aboard the Constellation as it takes off. Bella flies the shuttle close to the alien mothership, and Hammer takes one of the red anti-SPAZ pills, promptly Hulks out, and spacewalks over to the mothership to start beating up aliens hand-to-hand. Not content to settle for this pugilistic come-uppance, Freedom and Bella fire an oxygen tank directly into the mothership's bridge and ignite it, blowing up both the ship and Hammer (+2 XP). Earth is saved! I guess!
The story closes on Freedom finishing his garden out back of the log cabin, where he has added commemorative photos of Chad and Hammer to the flower arrangements. Freedom and Bella head off to new adventures. No word is given on the state of Randy Quaid, the sentient experimental spaceship. But that's a gold mine just waiting to be plundered.
This episode set a new bar for wackiness in our group. It's going to be hard to top.
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