Action Movie World: Lost Sessions and DEPENDENCE DAY!

Hey, long time no see!

He Never Died

The bottom temporarily fell out of our Action Movie World playing, as we took a diversion into Pathfinder. If you are worried I'm going to start chronicling our Pathfinder shenanigans here, rest assured I am not. While our Pathfinder games are frequently hilarious, said hilarity mostly derives from giving our fellow player Jerry a ton of shit when he rolls poorly, which he does all the time, but it's less funny if you aren't there to see him bravely hide his tears of anguish behind an affable smile. Haha, Jerry, am I right?

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.

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.

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.

Voice of Paul Reubens not included

There we proceeded to gun down more alien cartel guys in an attempt to rescue the downed Space Shuttle Constellation, and by "rescue" I mean fly it into space to take on the alien mothership directly. "Star" showed up in a fresh Camaro, and executed Chad Stevens with a bullet to the head (+2 XP). After a stunt-heavy fistfight, Freedom defeated Star by throwing him into a Space Shuttle engine after a cheesy but effective One-Liner ("every star must one day burn out... today it's your turn" or something like that). +1 Camaraderie!

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.

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.

Action Movie World: "Satan's Game 3: Chaos Rising"

If Michael Ironside comes back from the dead, does anyone really notice?

I'm weeks behind on these play reports, but there's been a lot of Action Movie World happening! A few weeks back we played the third installment in our Satan's Game series of movies. As I may have said previously, Satan's Game is a series of cop movies (which have really become "cop" movies in scare quotes) about police fighting the true threats of the Eighties: drug dealers, Satanists, game shop owners, roleplayers, rock musicians, readers, and other nonconformists. The general idea is to make every installment more ridiculous and over-the-top than the previous installment, until the first Satan's Game looks like Oscar bait by comparison. 

The final scene of Satan's Game 2 ended with a gunshot and a black screen, with the audience uncertain if lead Kelly Bishop had survived. (The players, of course, knew she did -- she was the Lead!) Satan's Game 3: Chaos Rising opens a year later, with some new faces and a few familiar characters:

• Anna Citizen as Kelly Bishop, City Accountant turned. P.I. (Gina / Thespian)
• Berkeley Blower as Captain Angus Bellows (Bill / Yeller)
• Garland McDonald as Pete "Muddy" O'Haran (Jerry / Musclehead. Modeled after Richard Kiel, wields a huge hammer he's named Gloria. This will become hugely important later.)
• Jason Jaxon as Jack Cobb, brother of Jack Cobb (Frank / Pugilist. Modeled after Jason Statham. Like his brother, he dies; unlike his brother, he only dies once.)

"And you can count... on me joining the SWAT team and killing people with a hammer!" 

We also added a new player, Shane, who took to the game like a duck to water and grasped the vibe of the festivities right away.

• Chance Davis Jr. as Steve Bushman (Shane / Smartass / Lead. Modeled after Kurt Russell). Chance Davis Jr. is a closeted gay actor who is down with all the ladies on screen and has a fast car and / or motorcycle he drives everywhere. You may not know Shane (which is to your misfortune if true) but Smartass is the role he was born to play, and thankfully he knew this. 

As the movie begins, a group of mysterious hooded cultists lead unfortunate game shop owner Dwight Meddles (Eddie Deezen) into a remote graveyard, promising him an exclusive copy of the new Mazelord game. Instead, they offer him up in blood sacrifice to resurrect Damien Chaos, the henchman who died in a bloody conflagration in the first movie and who is now the new Villain. That's right, magic and resurrection is now real, this cop movie series is officially off the rails!

We cut to the hospital, where Kelly Bishop is in a coma after the events of the first film. She is stalked by one of the last Brides of Chaos, Eris (Rebecca DeMornay in a nurse's outfit because the classics never die), but Kelly comes out of her coma at a very convenient moment and snaps her neck. Adios, Eris, like so many AMW baddies you had one line and then you're dead.

Then there's opening scene where Jack Cobb (wielding a samurai sword) and Muddy O'Haran (wielding a giant hammer named Gloria) break into a drug house all by themselves and massacre and maim the criminals inside. I don't know what it is about re-enacting Eighties movies that brings out garish descriptions of violence in me, but this scene was horrifyingly violent. But I figure if we're doing a Cannon Films style cop movie set in Detroit, I don't know why we'd pull any punches. We would pull swords and hammers, apparently. The hapless drug lords give up some information under duress, implying that the super-drug "Lids" is once again back in town! Never let me be accused of non-lazy writing!

Mayor Henry Post: the terrifying Ned Flanders of the Satan's Game universe

Meanwhile, after being read the riot act by Mayor Henry Post (an extremely polite Harry Anderson), Angus Bellows (now police commissioner) sends the group to the Pony Keg, hoping they might uncover the mystery of the missing kids and the return of the "Lids" drug. Steve Bushman does what any undercover cop would do, which is to challenge the menacing duo "Pop and Lock" to an illegal street race. Naturally, he wins, and gets into the good graces of the villains, Creed Ruin (Brad Dourif) and Father Apocrypha (Robert Englund). What are Eighties movies without stupid villain names? Probably movies from some other decade!

After Angus Bellows is attacked in his home by the undead Chaos himself, it's clear terrible forces are afoot. Bushman is enlisted by Ruin to assassinate the enemies of Chaos; starting with Jack Cobb, who is in his dojo. A spectacular and ridiculous fight ensues. The group made a Camaraderie roll to get an awesome weapon: a minigun which they mounted in the back of Muddy's van. A gang of Chaos Rising punks on motorcycles attacked the dojo by driving through the windows and driving in circles inside the dojo (like ya do), and got cut to shreds by Jack and Kelly while Muddy, Steve and Angus gunned down the rest of them outside. Father Apocrypha was crushed by a car (I think), but Kelly was kidnapped by the bad guys via a Separate Them director move (by this time, quite the running joke, one the player in question loves).

Super scary priest guy who was in the movie for like ten seconds

Cut to, once again, the goddamn Universal Church of Holy Waters, where the final showdown happens for THE THIRD TIME IN AS MANY MOVIES. Damien Chaos, Creed Ruin, and the remainder of the thugs square off against our heroes, who drive through the stained glass windows to the tune of "White Wedding." Jack Cobb is once again gunned down in a hail of cultist bullets; his player collects 2 XP. The rest of the bad guy mooks are mowed down unceremoniously. (After this, I resolved to have that whole church paved over. We've re-used the set enough.)

Muddy, the Lead, swings at Damien Chaos but takes "succeed at a cost;" he loses his hammer Gloria, which slides under a pew. Angus Bellows tries to fight the Villain, but takes a boatload of Harm and is thrown through the air. Apparently mortally wounded, he gives a "go get 'em" speech to Muddy and hands him the hammer, which he has retrieved. I cue up Laura Branagan's "Gloria" on the soundtrack. Vengeance Move! Muddy rises up and smites Damien Chaos for the final time. He's super-double-dead for sure now and definitely will not come back when the popularity of this series begins to flag.

So that's another hysterical session down. Our new player definitely wants to come back for more. What does the future hold for Satan's Game? Some more crappy and ridiculous sequels! Stay tuned!

Action Movie World, Session Five: "Satan's Game 2: Brides of Chaos"

Motorheads, sportos, geeks, sluts, bloods, they all think Damien Chaos is a righteous dude

After a long hiatus, I finally got to run Action Movie World again! Last night, we played a sequel to the Cop movie "Satan's Game." The first installment revolved around a plot by a manic cult to addict a city to destructive drugs. During play, I decided one of the supporting henchman, Damien Chaos (Michael Ironside) was a Manson-style bigamist and serial killer. But he didn't really get to do much, as he was vaporized in a magnificent barfight explosion. I thought it might be fun to have his wives try to avenge his death (and also include all the campy Eighties elements I didn't get to bring to bear in the previous game).

The cast was as follows:

• Anna Citizen as Kelly Bishop, City Accountant turned. P.I. (Gina / Thespian / Lead)
• Javier Simpson as Faustino Ramirez, Ex-Cop turned P.I. (Jerry / Smartass)
• Chase Brody as Damien Grace, Smooth Operator Cop (Greg /Smooth Operator). Greg wanted to try out a new Playbook, so he gave the Smooth Operator a shot. 
• Berkeley Blower as Captain Angus Bellows (Bill / Yeller)
• Benjamin Baird as Sgt. John Cobb, SWAT (Frank / Gunslinger). Cobb was straight-up killed in the last game and the player asked if he could come back for the sequel with absolutely no explanation as to why or how. Of course I said yes. 

This game was intended as a riff on the Satanic roleplaying scares of the Eighties, popularized by Mazes & Monsters and Pat Pulling. The plot is literally about a Satanic cult using a roleplaying game to turn kids into homicidal psychopaths. The story opens with a bunch of kids playing an RPG called Mazelord in a footbridge tunnel. After rolling a critical failure, one of them (I described him as Troy from Final Sacrifice) goes berserk and starts killing all the other kids. Combine with a montage of a mysterious female biker gang driving into the city to the tune of blaring (and dangerous) rock music. Roll opening credits!

The scene opens a year after the events of the first movie. Kelly Bishop has been training with Damien Grace in the style of Terminator 2. Where she was "all girly" (Gina's words, not mine) in the previous movie, now she's buff and ready for combat. Bishop and Faust have opened a private investigation firm and are trying to get their business off the ground. Bishop has a conversation with Lana Williams (Pamela Hensley), the Channel 5 news reporter from the previous movie, about these "Mazelord Murders" that are rocking the city. High school and college kids have gone berserk with the rock music and pretending to be elves!

Lana Williams (Pamela Hensley)

Meanwhile, Captain Blower sends Grace and Cobb to investigate the murders. Grace is a Don Johnson-type character with a Ferrari who buys his lifestyle at drug auctions and has a devil-may-care attitude about everything. They do the Eighties thing and hit the mall, looking for a Toys-R-Us or Waldenbooks, the terrifying hubs of roleplaying game occult activity in 1987. Grace runs into a mysterious, attractive biker thumbing through a Mazelord book. This is Lilith Chaos (Jane Badler), one of the Brides of Chaos. Being a Smooth Operator, he immediately moves to seduce her and they get busy at the Sleep City next door.

Blower, who is tailing Grace to keep tabs on his bad behavior, runs into Patsy Meddles, my own take on Pat Pulling. She's played by Edie McClurg and runs MAM (Mothers Against Mazelord). She reveals her son Dwight (Eddie Deezen) runs a game shop and she fears for his life because of "this awful game." Blower promises to investigate on her behalf.

Yes, Lilith Chaos wore sunglasses. Yes, we made jokes about her being a lizard person.

The investigation eventually leads Bishop, Cobb and Faust to an occult bookstore, which I named the Albigensian Heresy. ("I have no idea what the fuck that is," said one player.) They interrogate the proprietor about Mazelord, who assures them snootily that "imagination is not a crime" and that Mazelord could not turn kids into murderers. Shortly thereafter. Lilith Chaos and a group of bikers show up outside and assault Bishop and Faust.

Faust fails a One-Liner roll and then fails his ensuing Stunt. I judge Lilith wraps a chain around his neck and starts dragging him behind her motorcycle. Faust's player asks if he can "just die" and I say sure. Faust is horribly beheaded, Jerry collects 2 XP and becomes the Stunt Coordinator. Bishop, traumatized, lays into the bikers with her sword (!) Vengeance move against Lilith is now in play. (But is Lilith the villain? Not really! More on that soon.)

Cobb (who, by the way, has been dressing like a ninja and sharpening his knives at every opportunity this entire time) throws a knife to support Bishop. I decide the proprietor is in on the attack, and he brains the cop with a heavy copy of Frazer's Golden Bough. Lilith manages to get away, but the rest of the bikers are cut down. In the shop, Cobb discovers some mysterious green ink, which he deduces is being used in the printing of the Mazelord books. The green ink is "Lids," the psychoactive drug from the first movie. Mazelord really is turning kids into crazed killers!

After Faust's funeral, the group decides to end this once and for all. Gina rolls a Soliloquy move for her Thespian and declares the biker gang is holed up in the Church of Holy Waters, the location where the last movie ended. Cool, this will really keep the budget down! The PCs make a frontal assault in Action Movie World style. Bishop drives her truck into the church and starts a fight with Lilith. Outside, Grace and Blower begin mowing down bikers, but a "succeed at cost" roll from Grace means a biker rocket-bombs his Ferrari and blows it to smithereens. "Can I have a Vengeance move for my Ferrari?" the player asks.

Tragically not appearing in this episode: Eddie Deezen

The highlight of the battle comes when Cobb's character picks up an assault rifle, takes five harm, and is gunned down in exactly the same fashion as the first movie. He's even standing in the exact same place. 2 XP for Frank.

There's even the same soundtrack and the same flock of doves flying into the sky. Bishop finishes off Lilith with her sword. The remaining bikers are killed or driven off, and we pull back from the wreckage of the burning Church of Holy Waters. The threat is over... or is it?

Cut to a final scene. Bishop is packing up Faust's personal belongings at the P.I. office. Lana Williams, the reporter who has been Bishop's only friend, stops by to see how Bishop is holding up. She drops off a file with information on the Brides of Chaos. "Turns out there was one last Bride," Williams explains, "the mastermind behind the whole thing."

Bishop opens the file. Inside is information on Clytemnestra Chaos, the right hand of Damien Chaos. The picture is of Lana Williams. Bishop hears the click of a revolver hammer being drawn back. Stealth villain! This was the unveiling of the "villain reveals she has been in disguise the entire time" move.

"Do you really want it to go down this way?" Bishop asks, looking at her gun lying in the desk drawer.

"You take what you can get," says Clytemnestra.

The players decide the session ends there, with a hard cut to black and the sound of a gunshot.

Mechanical Notes

• This was my second session running with a Smooth Operator in the group, and I have to say that playbook isn't my favorite. I find the harm-nullifying move kind of disruptive and drab. But it's not a game-breaker by any means, and as long as the players are having fun, I'm fine with it.
• I put together some custom moves for this game (here's the actor script if you want it), which ended up with mixed results in execution. I need more practice making them fit the "feel" of the game. 
• Camaraderie went almost totally ignored this game, except to bump it to 3 and leave it there for the bonus XP. That's becoming by far the most common use of Camaraderie in our group. 

The players are already anxious for Satan's Game 3!

Action Movie World, Session Three: "Satan's Game"

It's time for the recap of our third session of Action Movie World: First Blood, "Satan's Game"! This is my first time at bat as Director, and I was a bit nervous. This is the first time in a long time I've come to a system after other gamemasters, and the first two sessions went so well, I was tempted to try to account for every possibility. But I resisted the siren song of overpreparation, and so was not lured onto the rocky shores of dullness. Anyway, on with SATAN'S GAME!

This session used the Cop playbook. The basic plan: to make a cop movie assaulting the great boogeymen of the Eighties: drugs, rock music, Satan (for some reason) and nonconformity. The setting was Chicago, 1986, and rather than go into laborious detail about what I intended for this monstrosity, I'll reproduce the voice-over trailer I read off before the session began:

Satan's Game Trailer (1986)
[Done in the voice of that one guy who did movie trailers in the late 70s / early 80s, just before Don la Fontaine] 

"In a city rocked by crime…"
[a pair of old people is menaced in their home by Satanic lunatics]
"In a time ruled by fear…"
[a hapless student on a stone slab weeps as a leatherbound creep raises a knife]
"In a world in the grip of Satanic madness…"
[some college kids sit around playing a roleplaying game, Lairs and Labyrinths]
"Who will be the winner of SATAN'S GAME?"
[Splash screen with garish, shitty font and blood dripping down]
"A drug created by Lucifer's right hand man!"
[Michael Ironside appears in a robe in a shitty drug lab] “This city will burn! Lucifer rises!” [he injects something into his neck, his eyes glow green]
"The people in the hands of a corrupt politician!"
[a back-alley assassination of some poor dope, possibly carried out by Kurtwood Smith because why not]
"The innocent seduced by the thralls of the devil!"
[evil rock and roll music in a smoky club, excessive cleavage, butts and neon lights]
"Who will stand against the pawns in SATAN'S GAME?"
[Some shadowy figures emerge from a backlit darkness, looking a lot like the player characters...]
"Rated R!"

I'LL BLOW THIS PLACE UP AND BE HOME IN TIME FOR CORN FLAKES

So there you go. The basic plot, as it rolled out: corrupt politician Leslie "Buck" Kendrick (Ronny Cox) introduces a new drug to the city so he can solve the problem he just created and become a hero. To do so, he hires a vicious Satanic psychopath, Damien Chaos (Michael Ironside), who distributes the drug to the kids, who start listening to the rock music and sitting in basements pretending to be elves. Nothing could go wrong with this plan! Also, in case you are wondering: yes, this plot is lifted directly from the likes of Judge Dredd and Demolition Man.

The play group consisted of:

Benjamin Baird as Sgt. John Cobb, a corrupt SWAT team leader with a conspicuously expensive lifestyle. Works with the Colombians on the side. (Frank, playing his first game, using the Gunslinger playbook)

Javier Simpson as Faustiano Ramirez, an ex-cop who quit the force after the murder of his sister by Mayor Buck Kendrick was covered up. (Jerry, again using the Smartass playbook). Faustiano is the Lead for this session.

Anna Citizen as Kelly Bishop, a city accountant who has uncovered a money laundering scheme and is now in the line of fire. Former informant to Faustiano. (Gina, playing the Thespian)

Scott McCheddar as Adrian McGruder, a renegade cop on the edge known as "The Fist." Has disciplinary problems and beats a lot of suspects to death. Faustiano's ex-partner. (Greg, as the Pugilist)

Berkeley Blower as Captain Angus Bellows, the department captain who sat behind his desk the whole session yelling MCGRUDER, I'M TIRED OF CLEANING UP YOUR DEAD BODIES (Bill, using the Yeller playbook)

Come on, Michael, you have two lines and then you're shot

Unfortunately, it’s been a couple weeks since we played, and I didn’t take detailed notes during the session (one of my shortcomings as a GM / Director). But the plot went something like this:

We open on the subway, as Faustiano rides home after a weary day of job-hunting (or whatever it is he does with his days). A menacing punk tries to steal an old lady’s purse as the train empties. Faustiano tries to reason with him, but the punk is obviously drugged out, and a fight ensues. Faustiano slams the punk’s head into the center pole and leaves him for the “actual cops.” Eighties tropes everywhere, right out of the gate! 

Later that night, Kelly Bishop, working late at the city offices, discovers the mayor is laundering money through the Universal Church of Holy Waters (led by the Pastor Brian Rivers). As she saves this to her 3.25” floppy disk, she hears a noise in the office. A group of menacing punks with glowing green eyes close in on her and attack her with knives. She takes some Harm, but escapes with her life (and the disk, which gets damaged in the escape).

Across town, the corrupt John Cobb leads a SWAT raid on a drug facility. One of the perpetrators is a contact, Pancho, who reveals in secret that Juan “The Donkey” Sanchez is moving some new drug for a mysterious new player in town.

Kelly seeks out Faustiano at his apartment, seeking out his protection. Faust looks out the window and finds it staked out by more green-eyed punks. (The drug makes the punks’ eyes glow green. It’s also how you know they’re evil -- I mean, aside from their clothing, nonconformist hair, and taste in music. We are running an Eighties cop movie, after all). Faust calls McGruder, who shows up and beats both punks senseless in a spectacular and bloody altercation.

Eventually, the trail of clues leads the gang to “Club Anarchy,” where Damien Chaos, insane Satanic rocker Johnny Scofflaw (played by Gavan O’Herlihy), and his Satanic bassist Rikki Maleficent (played by Tawny Kitaen) have gathered. This is where things get complicated. Faust, McGruder, Kelly and Cobb all arrive at about the same time.

Cobb approaches Damien and company and tries to make a deal, because he is, after all, the corrupt cop. He successfully ingratiates himself with Damien Chaos, then waltzes out to his car, gets out his assault rifle, walks back in, and opens fire. Meanwhile, McGruder and Faust have discovered the club staff making the mysterious drug in the back room. Two simultaneous firefights ensue. Frank (Cobb’s player) rolls an epic Violence roll and hits Damien Chaos and Johnny Scofflaw with a -area, -messy attack. We decide on the spot that the drug is highly flammable, and the two henchmen are incinerated. So long, Michael Ironside, you barely had a chance to overact.

Hey, remember "Witchboard?" Yeah, me neither

I get a chance to make a Director move, and I decide to do what you’d do in the Eighties: I separate the group by kidnapping the female character. Rikki Maleficent chloroforms Kelly Bishop and drives away with her. The cops track her to the Universal Church of Holy Waters, where she is about to be sacrificed to Satan by Mayor Buck Kendrick himself. I have a few precious moments to deliver a Ronny Cox villain monologue before the hero cops wade in and start the bloodbath.

When this final scene approached, Frank eagerly declared he wanted his character to die, so he arranged for John Cobb to walk into the church with two assault rifles, open fire on a massive crowd of insane cultists, and then be mowed down in a hail of gunfire while doves flew into the air and O Fortuna blared in the background. We milked it for everything it was worth, and it was pretty glorious.

Then came the final showdown between the Villain and the Lead. McGruder held off the hordes of cultist baddies while Faust delivered his own monologue and then entered into a vicious final battle with Mayor Kendrick. Jerry (Faust’s player) pulled off a wicked stunt where he managed to get Kendrick stabbed by his own henchman, Rikki Maleficent. Kendrick then shot her, because it’s not an Eighties movie unless a villain murders their own henchman for screwing up. Then Faust took Kendrick’s big sacrificial knife away from him and beheaded him with it.

At the end of the session, Bill won MVP for his performance as Captain Angus Bellows. Throughout the game, various characters would come back to the station house and Bellows would scream at them. Bill brought the house down a number of times and had a number of terrific one-liners (sadly, I didn’t write any of them down, so they’re mostly lost to the ravages of time). Bellows grounded the session and kept everybody on track, despite spending most of the runtime at his desk.

This session was tremendous fun, and I already have an idea for a sequel: SATAN’S GAME 2: THE BRIDES OF CHAOS*. There was a whole subplot involving some evil roleplayers and a Pat Pulling character, as well as a game shop owner played by Eddie Deezen, that I didn’t even get to put into play. Obviously, my life will not be complete until that happens. There's also the Pastor Brian Rivers and his daughter. Brian Rivers is played by Cliff Robertson and is obviously corrupt. I can wring at least two crappy sequels out of this turkey before we're through. 

Mechanical Notes

I don’t have much to add in terms of mechanics this time around -- I do, however, have the actor script in PDF with a custom move if you want to have a look at it.

Anna Citizen (Gina) is up next to play the Lead. I’m not sure when (or what) we’ll play next, but I’m looking forward to it!

* because, see, Damien was a Manson-style killer and bigamist who had a whole bunch of brides, and they'll have to avenge his death. For Satan. This stuff writes itself!