Killing Christmas Puppies

[bluegargantua]

okay,

 so, i ran kill puppies for satan tonight.

 tonight i was guided by lord lumpley's tarnished rule:

 in kpfs, prepping a plot is a complete and total waste of your time.

 so i ran with it.

 in the round of introductions we met:

 teddy -- a creepy satanic sports fanatic

 kenny fontana -- lead (and sole) member of the kenny fontana experience, formerly the kenny fontana and raoul someone project, but roul is now *out* of the band.  kenny fontana not only had two names (unlike almost everyone else), but he had a snobby attitude in relation to the other characters.  this despite the fact that he mispelled "statan" constantly and was a total whinge.

 alphonse -- ex-french chef, former french foreign legion artillery spotter, former neo-nazi.  back that up for a second -- a french neo-nazi.  does he surrender to himself?  what?  he liked to cook up everything in his path (and then eat it).

 jaw bone -- a big man who lives with his mom and does what the book tells him to do.  a man of few words...because he couldn't remember them all.

 juniper melrose -- a telemarketer on weekends and spoiled rich brat the rest of the time.  her boyfriend mark hates her, but she's loaded so he keeps trying to stay on her good side.  oh, and juniper has an evil yappy dog she loves called kiki.

 so it's christmas eve and everyone is over at kenny's house.  they dicker around for a few moments and then alphonse mentions turtle soup.  jaw points to a section in the book and shows how you can turn a sea turtle shell into a magic drum that attracts people (well...he explained it much more vaguely).  i liked the idea of a moron having a satanic book so i said "right on".  kenny liked the idea, so everyone piled into his van and they took off for the boston aquarium (did i mention we're in boston?  we are.  there.).

 after a little fumbling at the door, the goon squad breaks in.  they break into a medical/science room and alphonse tries to boil the turtle in his tank, but this sets off the fire alarm.  kenny breaks open the tank hoping that once out of water, the turtle will suffocate -- not having any water to breathe.

 meanwhile, jaw goes out to the massive tank in the main building and starts hammering on it with his refridgerator freezer door (he had a freezer door, took it special).  he busts open the main tank and water floods the building and flushes pretty much everyone out.  jaw grabs another sea turtle.

 alphonse kills his turtle and is swept out the back.  he clobbers a sea otter and then (cause he's sitting on tons of evil) turns into an otter and escapes into the harbor with his booty.  kenny manages to spot an otter carrying a fellow otter's body and a turtle shell.

 at this point, spectators arrive.  no, i mean in real-life.  some friends of the host come over and sit in.  i kindly explain what we're playing.  one of the visitors actually works at a zoo and is horrified by the title alone.  that pretty much does it -- with an audience to be shocked and horrified, killing animals is the name of the game.

 right so at this point, in the game, the cops show up.  teddy kills a bunch of horseshoe crabs (cause the horrified spectator mentioned they'd be there and then realized she was accidentally *helping* them and grew even more horrified) and wears them around (one on each hand, foot and his head).  the cop is bewildered.  jaw spends evil and causes a horde of lobsters to attack the cop (lobsters = vermin of the sea).  with the cop distracted, jaw goes out to the cop car and stuffs his turtle (sideways) into the back seat then goes to drive away.  but he doesn't have the keys so he orders one of his lobster minions to get them off the cop which it does so he leaves.  only jaw is really stupid so he drives around for awhile and then winds up across the harbor at anthony's pier four (a fancy restaurant in boston) where alphonse has arrived to prepare a meal for everyone.

 alphonse mentally dominates the ferdinan du'franch -- the guy who hates him, into providing entertainment for the evening.  then he gets out the fish from the seafood tanks and makes them into centerpieces.  jaw shows up and drags his turtle out and sets it down upside down and puts the cop car into reverse so they won't catch him.  the cop car rolls away and nearly hits the kenny fontana experience van (driven by teddy).  they pull into the parking lot to find jaw lazily spinning his turtle -- he hopes to kill it by spinning it.

 they all go inside.  jaw slides his turtle down long tables knocking off glasses saloon style.  alphonse tries to serve turtle soup to everyone.  ferdinan does the can-can.  finally jaw pitches the turtle to teddy who whacks it with his baseball bat.  jaw and teddy get evil for their teamwork.  kenny is outraged that "his" kill got stolen by teddy and jaw (after all, it suffocated being out of water and everything).  so he borrows juniper's cell and calls up satan to complain about getting stiffed on evil.  he gets the answering machine but pretends to have a long conversation with satan (including stuff about his music career) long after the machine cuts him off.  juniper's boyfriend mark shows up with chinese food (cause they were hungry raiding the aquarium), but teddy heads him off at the door.  teddy's clearly got a thing for juniper and tries to run mark off, but juniper hears mark and leaps into his arms.  alphonse force-feeds mark turtle soup, but it splashes on juniper's shirt and she flips out and makes him go buy another one.

 at this point, alphonse rigs the gas lines to blow the place sky high and satan returns kenny's call.  while others flee to safety, kenny has a long talk with his boss about the accounting errors in evil payouts.  finally, convinced by alphonse to get the heck out (and clearly blown off by satan) kenny leaves just in time for an historic boston restaurant to blow up.  

 more cops.  they pile into the van and head north.  teddy wants to go to a strip club ("last year they said don't come back for a year...so it's time!").  this gets cut short because juniper wants a new shirt.  so they go to the mall.

 the mall...oh god.  ok.  lots of last-minute shoppers.  alphonse has a tropical fish wrap with hummus.  kenny and jaw liberate the rats and pocket the guinea pigs and mice.  teddy gets some kittens.  alphonse gets stopped by security, but dumps a huge pile of excrement on him and gets away.  kenny and jaw throw rodents from the third floor down into the food court.  jaw (the big guy with the freezer door) slips away when the cops show up, kenny gets nabbed -- but then he makes the mall sound system play the musak version of "hey jude" as performed by the kenny fontana experience.  in the confusion, he gets away.  teddy gives a girl a kitten and then tries to go out with her.  alphonse spoils his fun.  juniper buys a new shirt.  too many mall cops.  time to go.

 there's a high speed chase with the mall cops.  one tire and one bag of kittens later, it's all over.  the goon squad continues to flee north to new hampshire where they will buy liquor and illegal fireworks.  they will then find cows.

 find cows they do.  along with three strange little men who use a big machine to eviscerate cows and then use weird doo-hickeys to mess them up.  teddy short circuts their gear and they flee.  alphonse engages one and the other two hop into their ufo (much to the rage of the one left behind).  jaw jumps up onto the "windshield" of the ufo and because of that (and because teddy partially sabotaged it) it crashes.  the alien with alphonse tries to cut a deal.  kenny wants alphonse probed.  teddy gets really sly.  jaw comes to just in time to catch one of the aliens leaving the ufo and force feeds it "beef jerky" but it has a reaction and gets big boils that spew green ick.  teddy remembers what he learend in auto repair class in high school and starts to fix up the ufo.  jaw wants walkie talkies.  the alien trying to cut a deal says he can get them.  he runs inside the ufo and makes a call.

 santa shows up.  alphonse tries everything to kill the reindeer.  hello!  it's fuckin' *santa claus*.  no dice.  the aliens mindwipe everyone and they all wake up on christmas morning at kenny's place.

 jaw got the walkie-talkies.
 juniper got a muzzle for kiki.
 teddy got alien sports collectables and a thank you from the aliens for turning their ufo into a "bitchin' ride".  it included a picture of them standing next to their souped up ufo with hot earth babes -- including the girl teddy gave a kitten to.
 alphonse got...i forget.
 and kenny got a probe.

 the end.

 whee!  a couple of points:

 1.)  no one wants to dwell on killing animals?  not this game.  maybe it's just a case of reading the title, but damn.

 2.)  yeah, the rules with regard to IEEE are pretty sloppy.  it's ok though, the stakes are how much deviant laughter you can generate not some system fidelity.

 3.)  this thing is the ultimate shaggy dog story.  it just sorta rambles as people kill things, get grief, and then go ravage someplace else.  i had the weird experience of just railroading the ending a bit as there didn't seem to be any sort of way to wind things down.  teddy was all set to use the ufo to go after jesus (oh, santa = jesus and jesus = santa.  no, i don't know why either).

 4.)  having a moral spectator was a lot of fun.

 5.)  everyone seemed to have a pretty good time.  the woman playing juniper was rather sedate, but that may be because she'd just gotten out of work -- oh, and she was pregnant.  that's right:  pregnant women have played kpfs.

 it was a lot of fun.  good quotes were:

 kenny (upon hearing alphonse killed a sea otter):  there are *mammals* here!?!?

 kenny:  turtles can't breathe out of water.  it takes awhile for them to drown because they store water in their humps but eventually they die.  it's an excruciating death -- drowning in oxygen.

 kenny: we could have secret santas!
 gm:  hello!  you're *satanists*!  celebrating the enemy's birthday isn't real smart.
 jaw:  we could have secret satans?
 gm:  you'd have to do terrible things to each other.
 jaw:  and then guess!

 alphonse:  it really smells like gas in here!  we should really be going!
 kenny (on the phone to satan):  hello!  long distance!

 teddy:  do we get evil for tattooing a kitten?
 jaw:  what if we shave the kittens and then tattoo fur on them?

i'm very happy
tom

[MPOSullivan]

kenny: turtles can't breathe out of water. it takes awhile for them to drown because they store water in their humps but eventually they die. it's an excruciating death -- drowning in oxygen.

kenny: we could have secret santas!
gm: hello! you're *satanists*! celebrating the enemy's birthday isn't real smart.
jaw: we could have secret satans?
gm: you'd have to do terrible things to each other.
jaw: and then guess!

okay, after eating four packets of pop rocks and it being three thirty in the morning local time, i do honestly think that these are the funniest things i've heard in weeks.

[Rob MacDougall]

This was a lot of fun. Thanks, Tom, for running it, and my compliments to Vincent for the game.

Tom's summary hits all the, um, "high" points, so I'll just respond with some of my reactions to his reactions.

1.) no one wants to dwell on killing animals? not this game. maybe it's just a case of reading the title, but damn.

It's true, as a group we spent a lot of time killing (and eating) animals. I think in the absence of anything resembling a mission or a goal, that's gonna happen. The violence was pretty cartoony and we didn't dwell on it with descriptions or anything. I actually enjoyed spinning out what a jerk my character (Kenny) was more than the killing of puppies (Kenny really was quite feeble when it came to actually serving Satan - I think he killed one animal in the course of the game. But he did increase the number of people who hated him four-fold.) or marine life (the Aquarium was fun, but killing sea creatures doesn't seem quite as demented/despicable to me as killing people's beloved pets - hence Kenny's in game comment about mammals). But others in our group seized on the acquiring (and spending) of evil as a real raison d'etre and were extremely creative in their wrong-doing.

2.) yeah, the rules with regard to IEEE are pretty sloppy. it's ok though, the stakes are how much deviant laughter you can generate not some system fidelity.

True enough. A lot gets decided by GM fiat, or by enthusiastic players sorta snowballing the GM into letting them do something. For all our incompetence, we never did get thrown in jail or beaten to a pulp or punished by Satan or Santa or anyone. I wonder how the game would play with tougher / more austere consequences of actions?

3.) this thing is the ultimate shaggy dog story. it just sorta rambles as people kill things, get grief, and then go ravage someplace else.

I'll say. The fact that we had no mission or goals underscored how pathetic we were. "What do you wanna do now?" "I dunno, what do you wanna do?" Especially given it was Christmas Eve. I'd be curious to play with a little more of a plot mixed in, though. Not an actual positive goal for us to accomplish, but just a bit more Situation to bounce off of. I really liked when the aliens and Jesus (Santa) showed up, for instance.

The game made me think of the cartoon "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and the sort of rambling, non sequitur laden "adventures" they have that all basically involve staying at home and being pathetic. That show would probably be my model for future KPFS scenarios.

4.) having a moral spectator was a lot of fun.

Absolutely. Everyone should consider playing kpfs with an animal-loving zookeeper sitting in, not playing, just being horrified.

5.) everyone seemed to have a pretty good time.  

I had a great time. I was in a pretty wretched / stressed mood when I arrived, and went home grinning from ear to ear.

Rob
aka Kenny Fontana
of the Kenny Fontana Experience No Longer Featuring Raoul Damone
I kill puppies for Satin

[Ron Edwards]

Wee hee! I love the way recounting a kpfs session always falls into the hysterical ranting prose style of the rulebook.

Hey Tom, you can see that your IIEE point and your "funny, I had to railroad the ending" point are related, right?

Best,
Ron

[Bryant]

The game made me think of the cartoon "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and the sort of rambling, non sequitur laden "adventures" they have that all basically involve staying at home and being pathetic. That show would probably be my model for future KPFS scenarios.

What they all said.

I'm probably just making it up, but the whole session struck me as an accidental simulation of drug addiction. Probably meth. I started out with no evil, and twitched around until I could get some evil, and then I spent some evil, and that was GREAT cause I had POWERS so I WANTED to spend my evil as soon as I got it but then I had no evil again and that made me twitchy. Also that "ok, I scored, this is great, OK, I can hold out just a little while longer before I shoot up -- no I can't" thing.

---
"Hi, my name is Teddy, after Ted Williams, and I kill puppies for Satan."

[bluegargantua]

Hey Tom, you can see that your IIEE point and your "funny, I had to railroad the ending" point are related, right?

Possibly...my understanding of IIEE is that it's more of a mechanics-level thing.  I thought that the railroading effect was produced in one of the bigger "boxes" under your new model (or maybe not, I can only read the theory so long before the words become a gray static).

See, I think there were two things going on:

 1.)  I did just sorta let people go off and do stuff without any real direction.  If I'd given a goal, even a fairly simple one, people would've eventually succeeded or failed and we could've called the game right there and then.  As it was, they had no reason to stop.

 2.)  When people really get into the whole "I kill puppies for satan" mentality, things like goal-setting (beyond killing puppies) kinda falls by the wayside.  As characters, their highest aspiration in life is to find a baby seal and some bottle rockets.  Petty revenge against anyone who gets in their way is a close second.  So without a big stick to drive them towards the goal, I can easily envision a party that constantly veers off-course and maybe never reaches the end.

 So without a goal, they never find an end point.  But even with a goal, it seems likely that it might be completely avoided.  Take Gerald Stubbins.  Even if a party starts out trying to save him, they might wind up taking so many detours that they never get around to springing him.  Heck, they may decide to go raid his place and try to steal his stuff.  They're pretty pathetic after all.  There's a contradiction in having no goal and being forced to railroad an ending vs. putting forth a goal and railing them down the track to get going.

 I could easily be overthinking this.  I could just count on years of RPG indoctrination to help out in this regard.  If I give players a goal, they'll go for it because that's what you do when you play an RPG.

 I also think there's something about the short-duration of the game.  With the exception of your game, I don't think I've ever heard about a game that ran for multiple sessions.  The game just isn't built for long-term play.  You might do a series of disconnected one-shots with the same characters, but it's a bit like South Park -- Kenny dies every episode and comes back at the start of the next and no one notices or cares.  Now, in a Gamist-style game, this wouldn't be a problem.  There'd be a clear win condition that everyone would drive towards.  Here, there's not much of a metagame goal to drive the action and the characters themselves have no real focus.  I think it's interesting that people considered their evil count to be a "score" of sorts.  But I'm perfectly willing to admit that in the abscence of any plot goal, people just came up with their own.

 So if/when I run this again, I'm pretty sure I'll actually apply a little more structure to it than the completely freeform no-plot deal I ran this time.  By all accounts I think it went pretty well, but it left me kinda scrabbling to find an endpoint.   But I definately want to run this again.

later
Tom

[lumpley]

So here's me, dead.  I'm standing on a cloud before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.  I'm suprised that being dead is like this.  I kind of expected being dead to not be like anything at all.

"Now about this kill puppies thing," St. Peter says.

"Well," I say, "okay, see, the thing is, when I said that God is a joyless judgemental ... what I said?  That He has no sense of humor?  I was, um, joking, see, and--"

St. Peter gives me such a look - oh such a look - and I shut up quick.

"Allow me," he says, and really I'd be more comfortable if he didn't, but he does, "allow me to refer you to this 'post' on 'the Forge,' which I understand to be some sort of computer thing, where..."

that's right: pregnant women have played kpfs.

Oh fuck.

-Vincent

[Meguey]

2.) When people really get into the whole "I kill puppies for satan" mentality, things like goal-setting (beyond killing puppies) kinda falls by the wayside. As characters, their highest aspiration in life is to find a baby seal and some bottle rockets. Petty revenge against anyone who gets in their way is a close second. So without a big stick to drive them towards the goal, I can easily envision a party that constantly veers off-course and maybe never reaches the end.

Between this and Rob (aka Kenny Fontana) leaving in a good mood, It seems clear that at least the game is cathartic. I would play KPFS tonight. The chance to purely indulge in the sort of petty revenge Tom mentions is gleeful. So many games revolve around great and worthy causes, high morals, and complex questions, andI love games like that. KPFS hides all that sort of stuff far beneath the pure and simple joy of 'hey, you have more cookies than me. now i beat you with a rabbit.' It's kind of like letting your inner 3-to-7 year old be totally unleashed. With flamethrowers. Merry Happy Day.