Ran Metal Opera on Friday...

[sirogit]

My regular friday game(TROS) wasn't happening so I ran this one-shot of Metal Opera with the people that showed up and it was a blast.

Special note: I barely remembered playing Metal Opera before. I definately don't remember contribuiting to it. I was very pleasantly suprisied to see myself credited in the new version, even if it was abit hallucimnatory.

Anyway, I got a group consensus of doing a spin on Goldpsirit where the masses are homeless cyborg-zombies captivated by holograms of Madonna(The singer AND the religious icon.) dancing and telling them what to do. Very 80's arcade game metal.

The characters are:
Chris M - A communist Robot doing it for the Workers, armed with a keyboard guitar which set of a deadly arsenal.
Chris H - Ozzy Ozbourne as glam rocker that was taken back from the dead by his roadies.
"Jerri" - A ninja with a guitar stuffed iwth ninja stuff.
"Squidget" - An angry preacher with a crucifix. Very religiously confused once the Ninja re-crucified Jesus Christ.

There was a lot more momentum in this group than the last one, and a hell of a lot more zanious(Yes.). I can not tell you how fucking glad I am that I can get blasphemously-self-mutilating stripping and moaning mothers of gods while zombies masturbate to it with crowd approval without having to put it in the game myself.

One side-effect is that I wasn't playing as to the letter of the rules in regards to the conflict-resoloution with the power of metal, but the game didn't really suffer that much.

So the problem they made up was: While on a set, Their Bizarrio versions(Capitalist Caveman, Jesus[Ozzy Ozbourn is Bizzaro Jesus.], A Samurai and a Satanist/catholic cute girl.)crashed the stage, stole their amplifier and told them they're taking over. In addition to this they're being hyped as a boy band.

So we started out with a pretty damn crazy fight scene. After their place caught on fire and they had to finish the set outside after hooking up to the vaguely-facist-infocom system, stopping the police from taking control over the cyborg-zombies, alter the Madonna holograms to the aforementioned sacreligious scene, transform into Heavy Metal Voltron to take down gigantic space scorpions, barely find and get inside of their Van-Which-Can-Withstand-Anything while a good part of the country exploded in a mushroom cloud.

I felt we got a fair bit accomplished in an hour, even if not many points were gained due to lack of 6's, everyone told me it was so awesome that they needed to play another game of it. The funny thing is that I barely said anything all night. I'm all for the completely unsubstantiated credit I'm getting.

The one snag into it, is that I didn't really enforce the rule about not being able to solve the iniatial conflicts without getting the Power of Metal, because by the time I could remeber the rule the Capitalist caveman was already beheaded and the samurai was shitting himself. What I decided to do was just escalate their persecution by the state, which ended pretty much with nuclear-prepared space scorpions.

Anyway, an extremely good time was had by all, I hope to run it again, my theoretical hat is far off of me.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm not sure if you're working with the updated rules or not, but you should be. The new rule is that you can resolve the initial conflict(s) whenever you want, but that once they are resolved, you just do another "In the Crapper" (now called "Another Nail in the Coffin") and proceed from there. We had at least four rounds of the group making up worse problems for the band in our game.

I recommend that you keep playing. It's good to establish the habit among one's gaming group that if you are enjoying a game, not to quit after one session.

However, I strongly recommend reading my Actual Play posts, because the rules-tweak we inserted turned out to be crucial.

Best,
Ron

[sirogit]

Yeah, I was confused about where it says in the text about "Not reaching the next part until the Power of Metal."

By the habit, do you mean to say that I should establish "If a game is enjoyable, we should play it"(Which of course, is very obvious, but happens to elude some groups I know.) or to establish "Hey, since you guys made that one fun, I'm gonna run another for ya." in which case, Is obviously a great idea, but I don't want to interupt my brother's game if its avoidable and my week-ends are strecthed tight as it is.("Jerri" and "Squidgit" play in like fifteen games. Don't ask me about that.)

As is, we have a situation where if Chris is running his TROS game life is good, and if Chris is not running his TROS game life is good as well.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello

By the habit, do you mean to say that I should establish "If a game is enjoyable, we should play it"(Which of course, is very obvious, but happens to elude some groups I know.)

That one. Yes, that's what I mean. It eludes a lot of people I know, too, for some strange reason, which is why I mentioned it.

As for the rules, do review them. They seem like mere fluff, but there is a system there, and it's really fun and it'd be a shame if you miss it.

Best,
Ron

[sirogit]

...

...

All I can is, I had two house rules developed in the next session:

1. Put your head in the couch, get an extra die.

2. Nothing can kill The Grimace.

It was patently more bizarre and wonderful and soul-warping than the last game. I still have a headache from head-banging. It will be very difficult to describe.