Cowboys & Mermaids & Sheep, Oh My!

# of players: 3

Tenets:
1. At least one lesbian
2. Magic exists.
3. Includes a time warp.
4. Involves sheep.
5. Big bad evil drug cartel
6. Tricycle of Doom.
7. Lesbian has magical powers.
8. Lambchop has an evil twin who happens to be an evil mutant sheep.
9. No volleyball. (Yes, my aunt was desperate.)
10. Lesbian is Elizabeth, who owns a sheep named Harlan.
11. Free dialogue, but pay for facts mentioned IF they're created during dialogue.
12. Q-Tips are money - dirty ones are worth less
13. Taking over control is free if current controller agrees.

Scene 1
Location: Wyoming in 1880
A glowing time warp winks into existance out in the middle of nowhere, and out step Elizabeth the lesbian mage, and Harlan, her good mutant sheep companion. Harlan, being a mutant sheep, can talk, however it's customary to only do so without observers, so as to avoid leaking the knowledge that he can talk any language. (He also has a 3rd eye just under his asshole, but we won't get to that just yet.) He asks Elizabeth why the hell they're out in the middle of nowhere doing this report instead of sitting in a nice comfy library somewhere reading books about the Wild West. Elizabeth says there's not much point in being able to make a time warp if you don't *do* it once in a while. Elizabeth magically cloaks the time warp so no one can see it.

Before they're able to do anything else, up walks a 6 foot tall cowboy named Jed. "What's a pretty lady like you doing in a place like this?" he asks Elizabeth, apparently ignoring the sheep. Elizabeth, being a lesbian, isn't about to succumb to whatever wiles Jed may have, but is secretly excited by the chance to meet a real cowboy with a hat and everything. But before she can think of something to say, a large group of riders approaches. Jed informs Elizabeth that these are the Wizards of Flatulence, typical looking wizards who happen to be able to fart whenever they want to, and their leader happens to be Jed's sister, Melissa.

Melissa dismounts and leads her horse over to Jed and the others, at which point they are able to tell that she's almost as tall as Jed. She immediately berates Jed for walking. Jed says "What's the matter with walking?" Melissa says "Because it doesn't require a horse." Melissa then comments on how weird Harlan looks, and Jed says "What's wrong with him? Just because he's a little hunchbacked don't mean he ain't a good sheep."

They decide to go back to the wizards, who are waiting a ways away, and Elizabeth gets on her sheep to ride there, producing strange looks from Melissa and Jed. Elizabeth produces her own strange look, and says "But *everyone* rides sheep!"

Just then, Harlan farts. Melissa is impressed, and offers to let him join the Wizards of Flatulence. But first, the wizards have a secret mission they need to take care of at the O.K. Corral. Jed says "Wait'll I get my horse," and walks over to the wizards, while the others ride over. Elizabeth makes the invisible time warp follow them like a lost puppy.

Scene 2
Location: road leading to O.K. Corral
Time: just after scene 1

The group travels along the road, raising clouds of more than just dust. A nameless wizard in the back of their procession has the inconvenient habit of falling off his horse every time he farts, which he does often, being a Wizard of Flatulence and all. Only this time, he falls off and injures himself in an unspecified manner, forcing the group to stop and make camp until he heals. (Apparently flatulence doesn't heal wounds very well.) Some wizards set about cooking a meal, and it is then that another nameless wizard, who keeps track of their supplies, comes up to inform Melissa that they're experiencing a most tragic shortage of beans.

Melissa sends out 3 groups of wizards to forage for beans. Elizabeth doesn't care much for beans, so she secretly casts a spell that makes only one group return with beans - the other groups return with potatoes and tomatoes, respectively. Elizabeth tells the supply wizard, who happens to be cooking, to make a sort of bean stew including potatoes and tomatoes, instead of just plain beans.

Scene 2.5
Location: near the camp
Time: same as scene 2

Meanwhile, Jed decides to go for a walk while waiting for the food, and Harlan ambles off behind him. Harlan likes Jed just a tad more than a sheep should like a man. Jed, however, has a hankering for Elizabeth, and rambles on and on to Harlan about this, figuring that even if a sheep isn't man's best friend, at least it can't blab all the gory details to all and sundry. Oops.

Back to Scene 2
Elizabeth can't get Melissa out of her head. Her dream of the ideal future is to do a "bean-weaning" on Melissa, so the two of them can live happily (and flatulence-free) ever after. Impulsively, Elizabeth asks the cook to make up a picnic, so she can go spend some quality time with Melissa. Melissa, however, has noticed Elizabeth's interest, and decides to go curry her horse to escape. She's never been too good with the whole commitment thing.

Back to Scene 2.5
Harlan decides that he's so deeply in love with Jed that he just *has* to let his feelings out, even though speaking in front of him was expressly forbidden by Elizabeth. Love conquers all, and all that rot.

Jed, however, isn't as unobservant as it seems. He's just pretending to be clueless about Harlan's lust for him. He has morals, goldarnit, and they don't include sheep-shagging.

Back to Scene 2
Elizabeth eventually manages to locate Melissa, and asks if she wants to go on a picnic. Melissa says "Wait'll I get my horse," to which Elizabeth responds by saying "Your horse is right here, dumbass," and conjuring up a Tornado of Extreme Plot Significance. She does that when she gets mad.

Things (and wizards) in the camp are blown around by the tornado. The wizards are, of course, impressed by the amazing amount of wind, and start to view Elizabeth almost like a god. Melissa is rather impressed too...it seems the tornado did more good than the whole picnic idea for Elizabeth's dream of wedded bliss.

Back to Scene 2.5
Harlan starts to confess his love for Jed, but all he gets out is "Baaaa" and bam, the tornado hits. Jed is blown into the river. Unfortunately, he can't swim. Harlan's love for Jed prompts him to jump in to try and rescue him. Unfortunately, Harlan can't swim either.

Jed decides he's more afraid of the sheep than the river, and learns how to swim in a hurry. He safely makes it to shore, leaving Harlan to flounder around uselessly in the water.

As Harlan is going down for the 3rd time, he decides it can't hurt anything to open his ass eye...and lo and behold, there's a mermaid underneath him. The mermaid gets him out of the water and he crawls onto the shore, spitting up water. He thanks the mermaid profusely in mermaid language, but she says there's no need to thank her since mermaids do this kind of thing all the time. Harlan professes his undying love to her, but she says it'll never work because they're different species. Harlan says "So? Me and Jed are from different species too." The mermaid says "But I can't live out of water," at which point Harlan gets a bright idea and says "Wait here, I'll go get someone who can help." The mermaid agrees to wait a little while and he heads off to find Elizabeth without even bothering to find out the mermaid's name.

As he passes Jed, Harlan makes a snide remark to Jed about Jed not wanting to save him even though he tried to save Jed. Jed is too busy being amazed by Harlan's ability to speak English that he doesn't have time to respond.

Back to Scene 2
After some frantic searching, Harlan locates Elizabeth, who is in the middle of having a picnic with Melissa. Without even considering that Melissa doesn't know he can speak, he pours out his story to Elizabeth and asks her to help the mermaid. Elizabeth pulls her Compact Magical Encyclopedia out of her magical fanny pack, and soon finds a spell that will enable the mermaid to breathe out of water. Elizabeth mounts her trusty sheep and asks Melissa to come along. Melissa says "Wait'll I get my horse," and Elizabeth says "Your horse is right here, dumbass." Melissa proudly informs Elizabeth "It's pronounced Doo-moss." You see, Melissa & Jed's last name is Dumas. Melissa prounces it normally, but Jed pronounces it "dumbass", because he is one. At any rate, Melissa clambers onto her horse, and they ride off into the late afternoon sunlight.

Back to Scene 2.5
Jed uses his standard line on the mermaid. "So, what's a pretty lady like you doing in a river like this?" It doesn't work particularly well, though. Not only does the mermaid feel only disgust for Jed, she's also depressed about the death of her fiance, a merman who was killed in a tragic accident when a drunken dumbass drove his wagon over some ice, which broke with the weight and fell on the merman, killing him instantly. The mermaid's goal is to find the dumbass (who is unrelated to the other dumbasses...err I mean Dumases) who killed her fiance and get even with him. Of course she says none of this to Jed.

Scenes 2 & 2.5 merge
Elizabeth and the others arrive at the river. Elizabeth needs the mermaid's name in order to get the spell to work properly, so the mermaid introduces herself as Ethel. (This means that if her fiance had lived long enough to marry her, she would've been Ethel Merman.) Elizabeth's spell not only allows Ethel to go on land safely, but also creates a switch on her right leg so she can switch between land and water modes.

(refresh changed to 10)

Scene 3
Location: the town of O.K., in which is located the O.K. Corral
Time: unspecified amount of time after scene 2/2.5 - Market day

After a long and boring journey, during most of which Ethel rode Jed's horse so Jed could get some quality walking time in, our noble heroes and their wizard companions arrive in the town of O.K. It's market day, so stalls are set up all over the town square (which is actually shaped like a triangle). They decide to get a little quality shopping time in, and come upon a stall selling tricycles. There's a nice red one that Jed really really wants, although he can't explain why. (Of course it's really the Tricycle of Doom, which is sentient and is telepathically influencing Jed to want it.) It costs 60 Q-Tips, and Jed moans about not having any. Elizabeth, not understanding the money system, asks him why he'd want to clean his ears at a time like this. He says "But they're not worth as much dirty, why would I wanna waste good money?" Elizabeth catches on, and produces a large baggie of Q-Tips from her fanny pack. Jed's jaw drops at her wealth, and starts to have the hots for her again. Or, more accurately, her moolah. But she buys the Tricycle of Doom for him anyway.

They wander off to shop some more, the 6-foot Jed practically doing the splits to manage to ride the trike, and saying "Vroom vroom!" a lot along the way. He names his trike Todd, which is kind of odd since he never even named his horse. But this IS the Tricycle of Doom we're talking about here. Melissa is also impressed with Elizabeth's wealth, and starts to follow her around like a lost puppy. The mermaid, noticing that the others seem to be materialistic bastards, stays close to Elizabeth as well, presumably for moral support. Harlan doesn't mind this at all, given that Elizabeth is riding him and thus he's close to his true love.

A short while later, the group is kicked out of the square because the wizards were raising such a stink. The wizards decide it's time to head to the O.K. Corral on their secret mission, which isn't really all that secret given that there's 40 of them. The wizards, dressed in bluish-purple flowing robes and matching pointy hats with gold stars on them, and riding horses equipped with scarlet tack, attempt to skulk through the town. Elizabeth hangs back and takes pictures with her digital camera, laughing mightily.

The wizards arrive at the stable of the O.K. Corral in groups of 2 and 3, to avoid notice. It turns out that the O.K. Corral is basically a stable and a racetrack, the stable housing racehorses in between races. The wizards come here regularly to gamble, which is how they fund their order. This, it turns out, is their secret mission.

Elizabeth decides to enter Harlan in the next race. The official race organizer type people decide that this is ok, since he'd be such a long shot that quite a few people would bet on him in hopes of making mega profit, but he'd probably lose so the corral would make mega profit instead. Harlan isn't too enthused about the idea, but Elizabeth threatens to tell Ethel about his brief affair with the Big Bad Wolf, and he acquiesces. Jed wanted to enter his nice new trike, but even crackpot organizers have limits, so he instead enters his horse, who is billed as The Horse With No Name. This is intended to impress Ethel, but all Jed's efforts are in vain.

The race begins, with Elizabeth riding her trusty sheep and Jed riding his horse. Jed's horse wins, with Harlan in second place. Most of the wizards bet on Harlan to show, so they get a lot of money, but a few of them bet on Jed's horse to win, so they made a lot more money. It seems their order won't quite manage to fall apart for a while.

After all that time running behind it on the track, Harlan develops a crush on Jed's horse (which may possibly explain why Harlan didn't win the race). Harlan asks the horse what its name is, and the horse says Jed never bothered to name it. Harlan flirts some more, and finally the horse tells him that it's not into the cross-species thing.

Jed and Ethel are standing nearby, but of course can't understand horse speech. So Ethel asks Jed what its name is and Jed says he never named it. He doesn't care about impressing her anymore, so he says if she thinks it should be named, she ought to be the one to name it. She asks what sex it is and he says he never bothered to check, but Harlan pipes up with the information that it's female because he was staring at her ass all through the race. So Ethel decides to name the horse Blbl, which means horse in mermaid language. Harlan tells her what the English word is, and so "horse" is her first non-mermaidish word.

Being rather tired after the day's excitement, Elizabeth & Co. decide to head off for the local Motel 6. The wizards, hyped up on an excess of Q-Tips, head for the local saloon, which is known as Eat Joe's. It was supposed to be Eat At Joe's, but the guy who painted the sign was drunk.

Notes about gameplay (I figured that last post was long enough :P):

I was playing with a couple of family members, who like to write stories but not play traditional D&D type games. When I told them they had to pay for everything they created, they balked. They made snide comments. They made me seriously consider giving up, but luckily I didn't. See, they're used to having total control, and the thought of only giving an element a few traits and leaving it to someone else to give it more bugged them. They were of the "but if I can't afford to do anything cool, why do it at all?" mindset. This is far different from the previous traditional RPG players you all have mentioned, so I figured I'd bring it to your attention.

I popped in a few gimmicks I thought might be useful, only we didn't end up using them as intended anyway, heh. See, I couldn't get them to understand that who created what doesn't matter, and since I was writing everything on the cards anyway they decided we wouldn't mess with control, which means no complications either. They thought complications would be too...errr...complicated to be fun. We didn't do interruptions either, although technically we did I guess. There were a lot of times when one of us would be narrating and someone else would say "hey, why don't you make him do this?" and the narrator would slip it in. There were several times when I either didn't have an idea or had multiple ideas I couldn't choose between, and I asked the others what they thought would work well.

The Wizards of Flatulence were a Master Component, and I don't think we did them quite legally, but it wouldn't have been feasible to pay for 40 of them wandering around, especially when we hadn't decided whether 40 was all there were period, or if there were more back at home or something.

Scene 2 we forgot to bid for, but since I was the only one who had an idea how it started, no one minded. Scene 2.5 just kind of split off naturally, and when each of us took a turn we'd say what was happening in scene 2 and scene 2.5 in the same turn. We probably didn't do it the official way, but it worked out rather well anyway.

Just before scene 3, we decided to increase the refresh to 10, because we were poor due to lack of complications, and we all tended to spend up to 10 coins on our turn. None of us ever came anywhere close to running out of coins, but my aunt especially was paranoid about the possibility. (And yet she spent more during some turns than the rest of us did, heh.)

Overall, once we got into plotting and building on each other's ideas, they enjoyed it much more. We talked about continuing the game some other time and I suggested next weekend, and they were like "we have to wait THAT long?" My aunt even seems willing to use control & complications next time, although I'm not so sure about my cousin heh. They came a long way from "but how is it fun to pay for everything you do?" heh.

(And yes I know you guys are all sitting around shaking your heads about our rather blatant kitchen sinking, but that's just how we are with everything. It'd probably be harder to get them to do a serious story than it was to get them past the tenet phase, heh.)

Heh...that may replace my recent GenCon demo for most bizarre story ever. Q-tips for money...demented :-)


I REALLY hope you'll continue to play. I've had a very limited amount of feed back of how Uni is enjoyed by free formers for whom the turn structure and Coins are considered MORE limited rather than less.

I'd love for you to get a few games experience under your belt and then, if you'd care to, write up an essay about how Uni mechanics are perceived by free form players. What aspects they actually found really useful once they got used to them...etc.


BTW: for your 40 wizards, the simplest way mechanically would have just been to assign a Trait "There are 40 of them" to the Component. It would be worth 1 die in Complications where there is an advantage to having numbers and provide 1 die of importance (making it cost 1 more Coint to eliminate them). Additionally, if desired, you could say "There are 40 of them" x3 (pay 3 Coins to purchase the same Trait 3 times) making the numbers more of advantage and giving you room to have "There are 10 of them" x1 or "There are 20 of them" x2 as Traits for smaller groups (not necessary but available for those who like the extra granularity).

This is called a Group Trait in the rules and there are no guidelines for how many Coins for how many numbers. That's all individual group determination.

Well, I figured having the wizards be a master component would be the easiest way - we could easily add in a trait specifying that there's 40 of them, and if at some point in time we find out there's really 100 or something, just change it. But we wanted to have individual wizards doing important stuff, and the way we did it allowed for that. I'd venture to say that if we run across lots of mermaids at some point, we'll add a master component for those too.

A lot of the stuff we did was retroactive, for that matter. We didn't actually give the characters behavioral traits (Harlan being fickle, for instance) until they'd done plot stuff that implied they had those traits. So we considered those traits free, since they already existed in our heads based on previous actions. This probably isn't the way it's supposed to be done, but it worked for us, at least in this particular story.

I'd love to write up an essay once I persuade them to at least try the default control/complication mechanic. At this point my line of reasoning is that they should try it so they can have something to compare other options to. It's easier to modify something you know how to use than to come up with something totally different. And I can't think of a better method than complications to resolve things once we get far enough to have a confrontation between the evil mutant sheep & the good guys, heh.

So we considered those traits free, since they already existed in our heads based on previous actions. This probably isn't the way it's supposed to be done, but it worked for us, at least in this particular story.

Actually, now that I think about it, the only time we did that was when we decided as a group that given their behavior, the wizards could be considered generally stupid and/or delusional, heh. There's an interesting story about Jed though. When I created him, I neglected to give him a horse for some reason. So when someone created Melissa, she decided to add "prefers to walk" to Jed, and fixed my oversight by giving him a horse. This set up a cute little family drama, provided setup for the fact Jed had never bothered to name his horse, and just generally gave us a better idea of what Jed was like. I love how accidents can turn into interesting & essential elements of the story like that. :)