so, tonight i was supposed to run some post-apocalyptic sorcerer & sword shit, but el inspirado never really hit this week. i didn't want to let the cool motherfuckers in my group down, so i busted out kill puppies for satan and decided to run a single session of it.

we had a fucking blast, which says something about our stability, probably. i ran the scenario in the fucking book, which definitely says something about how much time i spent preparing for the game. if you haven't read it, then you need to buy the fucking book, but the characters are a bunch of losers whose loser ghoul friend, gerald, got locked in the crazy house because he tried to eat a dead guy's hand. so that's that.

vincent has some damn good advice about how to start the game. i asked dan, playing someone named - fuck, it's been fifteen minutes and i forgot already. i'm bad with names and women. we'll say he was called greg. so i asked dan, "how does your character know gerald?" he said, "he owes me $20 for pot." i said, "kick-ass." i asked james the same question, and he said "jim - my character - stole gerald's backpack." i said, "gerald's a ghoul, which this adventure doesn't say if you know or not, so i say you do. he eats people." james said, "i found a hand in the backpack," because james always comes up with the funny shit.

the adventure starts with everyone at gerald's birthday party, which is fucking sad and at a motel 6. jim was talking to this witchy girl in a pink and white gingham homemade dress with no tits. this was hard because jim lives in a crawl space and apparently has tourette's. the girl said "gerald's a good guy," and james said "yeah, he lended me a hand once" and it was so funny, i completely lost my shit and laughed for a good two minutes. jim tried to ask her what she was doing later and she said she had to go to a wicca earth-mother orgy. greg, who is an old hippie, smoked dope with the motel janitor and talked about bacos.

(vincent: here's a new rule for you. smoking pot gives you a +1 to your 'fucked up' and -1 to your 'relentless'. so that's that.)

the characters find out that gerald isn't coming because he's in the loony bin. the guy that tells them could have gotten him out, but is a prick and didn't, and the witchy girl gets all pissed and keys his car before taking off in her geo metro.

well, since this was a one-shot, the players played along well and decided to go get gerald. first, though, they wanted to kill puppies for satan, since that's the name of the fucking game. the janitor kept complaining about the old lady that lived in his duplex and her fucking german shepard that barks all day and night, so they went to his duplex and the old lady was there. they convinced her that they were meter men (she said "i don't like that metric system" but then got better.) she thought they were good christian boys, so gave them some lemonade and cookies. it turns out her late husband was a cop and the three-legged old german shepard was his cop dog, but he's dead and the dog's retired, and barks all night because of the fucking drug dealer next door. (he's an ex-drug sniffing dog, for fuck's sake. do i need to spell it out? anyway, there's a lot of evil for killing this dog.)

they scare the old lady into fainting on accident, put lsd in her lemonade and go out back to kill the three-legged, three-toothed ancient dog. remember this, it's important. the dog ends up biting greg, knocking him out, jumping out of jim's way, and leaping on top of him to hump his back and then urinate all over him. this is a fucking sad situation, folks. jim manages to strangle the dog while greg kicks him in the gut and they kill the dog, so we got to do what the game's all about. it was fucking pathetic, but we figured the game was about that, too, plus it was funny to us sickos.

the characters got to the loony bin and got to gerald, but he was all wigged out and ate a guy, so they took off in the company of some crazy woman who kept shooting up thorazine, but seemed fine. they let everyone loose, and attacked a doctor who was analyzing the brain-waves of some guy humping a rubber vagina while being horse-whipped. this doctor, apparently, was the kung-fu doctor, because he handed them their asses and beat greg in the head with a giant black rubber dildo. luckily, jim shot him in the foot and they got out of there.

they were almost gone, too, when witchy-girl showed up. good thing, too, because the thorazine bitch wanted to kill gerald for some spell. (she was a witch, too.) greg knocked her dumb ass out and witchy-girl helped them escape by using a bedsheet, getting on the roof, and casting a spell to blow them away, except greg and jim fucked up and fell on the loony bin fence, which has all that razor wire and they died.

and that's that. it kicked ass, by the way. we had a fuckload of fun.

Fifteen times!

A new record, somebody tell the moderator...oh wait. Yeah, that's right.

Never mind.

Fang Langford

p. s. Let's not forget three and four and, well...one. Still a grand total of 23! The numerology of it must count for something.

For the record, James played Greg and I played George.

Other notable moments included George trying to bite the head off a pigeon to gain a little evil mojo, and then failing to keep it down because the beak caught in his throat.

And the Bac-Os. Can't forget the Bac-Os. Or the lima beans.

The whole thing was just utterly hysterically funny.

-DaR

Holy shit, guys.

I mean, holy shit.

Sorry for swearing in public.

Love, Vincent

OhymyGod someone played it. This is great!! The author is a very bad man and should be kicked to death by radical feminists, gamers, and animal-rights activists. Vincent, the link seems to be acting funny, for my browser anyway. Double-check so people can get the game.

Now, I must clarify, KPFS is not one of the funky narrate/dice/author weirdo games that has cropped up lately (Trollbabe, Le Mon Mouri, Otherkind, Donjon, etc). Its system in the main book is pretty basic stuff. But it's everything Hol, Violence, and any other "I'm so crude and in your face" game is not. In those games, the authors distance themselves from the material and are all "ironic" and shit - but in this game, it's truly underground, truly vilely what it is.

I lovingly anticipate seeing hard copies for sale at the Forge GenCon booth next year, along with Le Mon Mouri. That'll make the RPG intelligentsia drop their dentures!

Um, by the way, judging from a comment or two on the RPG.net Elfs review, not everyone out there is really going to enjoy playing ... or hearing about ... or knowing about KPFS.

Clinton! Did you get to play Dr. Skippy? Please tell me you used Dr. Skippy. He's my favorite NPC in that scenario.

Best,
Ron

(coughs, getting his normal voice back)

First - apologies to Dan and James about getting your characters' names wrong. I'm horrible with names.

Second - Vincent, I think the game is better than it appears to be in many ways. Paul Czege was right when he described the heart of the game: you are a loser, and very painfully so. I don't think I could play it every week, but my group and I discussed pulling it out every two or three months just for a little humbling. (We plan on using the same characters each time - and killing them at the end of the game, as well.)

I know this is a delicate question, but - have you played it, Vincent? I'd be interested in contrasting our experiences.

Ron Edwards wrote: Um, by the way, judging from a comment or two on the RPG.net Elfs review, not everyone out there is really going to enjoy playing ... or hearing about ... or knowing about KPFS.

Clinton! Did you get to play Dr. Skippy? Please tell me you used Dr. Skippy. He's my favorite NPC in that scenario.

Fine question, Clinton. No, I haven't. Everyone I know is a radical feminist, a gamer, or an animal rights advocate.

(That sounds bitchy. I'm those things too. I love my friends. But they will not simply will not ever play puppies with me. On this they've been quite clear.)

In fact, I've been pretty much content with people reading it and snorting coffee out their noses. Now what am I gonna do? You've raised my expectations.

The idea of killing off the same PCs at the end of every game makes me all twitchy with glee. Also, I don't read RPGnet (curse you, workplace netnanny!), but if somebody there'll get all riled and send me hate mail, by all means post that bad boy. As far as I'm concerned. (What did they say about Elfs?)

I'll check the link, Ron. And damn, "truly underground," you're way too kind. My head's all swelled up.

Edited in: looks like my site's having weird probs, more widespread than just puppies. I kinda suspect server issues, not site or link issues, but I'll see if I can't track it down.

-Vincent

Just for the record, I (Meguey, Vincent's wife) would play Puppies, but the *rest* of our gaming group refuses, at least so far. We're playing Hungry, Desperate & Alone tonight, and she said she'd never play that either. So we'll see.

~Meguey

But no pressure, right Meg?

:)

(I'm "the rest" of the gaming group.)

--Emily Care

Stick to yer guns, Em! Don't let them bully you!

Mike

Awww, c'mon, Em! Kill a puppy with Meg and Vincent ... c'monnnnn ...

They can't play if you don't join in-nnn! Why do you have to be so selfish? C'monnnnn ...!

Best,
Ron

(Now Mike and Ron must flee!)

Actually - and I'm not pressuring anyone - I found kill puppies for satan to be a thoroughly rewarding experience. Vincent and I have been discussing why this morning.

The reason is that it seemed to break down any real barriers between my players and I. In the past, I've felt uncomfortable broaching certain subjects or doing certain things to their characters in game. By the time we finished kill puppies for satan, I didn't see any barriers left - it pretty much forced us into being more honest with each other than ever before.

I have the feeling that our next game will be greatly enhanced by this week's game.

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: I have the feeling that our next game will be greatly enhanced by this week's game.

A recipe for love:

So, you're at GenCon, and your boyfriend is toting playtest rules for his latest indie game design, My Life with Master, so fresh off the press the ink is practically still damp. When the dealer room closes at 6:00, you find yourself at an open table with him, Josh Neff, and Mike Holmes, playing in the game's very first playtest ever. You've seen him blow the doors off running The Pool, and fail quite miserably running The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, a game of his own design. So, geez, you hope it goes well...

And it does, real well. But you haven't eaten. You're tired and hungry. By 10:00, you could fall asleep so easy. But you don't. It's real hard, but you force yourself to stay awake and engaged, and creative and funny the whole night.

Vincent, it seems, is lucky this way too.

Paul

Romantic partners who game, huzzah!

?????

Romantic partners who game, and who are fiercely supportive of your design efforts...despite discomfort from circumstance or subject matter. Don't get no better than that.

I've always thought that I had qualms about playing truly nasty characters. Clinton showed me kill puppies for satan several months ago, and although I thought it was fascinating as an artifact, I could not imagine myself playing it or wanting to play it. Too nasty. Too creepy.

But all it took was writing "I KILL PUPPIES FOR SATAN" across the top of my character sheet, and I was drawn in. (From then on, I was filling in the piece of paper with large, psychotic block print.) I haven't read the book, but the character generation process and the names for attributes totally set the mood. After Clinton gave us a quick rules overview and read a few choice passages, we had to jump in with character introductions. A minute later we had established our character's relationships to the central figure of the scenario and we were thrown into the most pathetic birthday party ever.

I had a blast, but I still don't quite get it. The subject matter, dealing with modern-day satanist zeroes who kill defenseless animals, would seem to be about as disturbing as could be. But somehow the game set exactly the right tone: terrible and absurdly funny in equal measures. We knew what our characters were doing was just not right, and it was joyous. And I feel no remorse now.

I don't know why, but I feel like a better person for playing this game. Perhaps I should buy a car so I can put an "Ask me about killing puppies for Satan!" sticker on its bumper. (I don't think so. I don't think I could I could explain to many people in my life why this game is a good thing.)

(I think Vincent took on a difficult task with this game, and his success with it is a major accomplishment. The rule about having to write "i kill puppies for satan" on the character sheet is brilliant.)

Yasha "James" Cunningham

Hi there!

And, um, good lord. Can I quote you?

I don't know why, but I feel like a better person for playing this game.

We knew what our characters were doing was just not right, and it was joyous. And I feel no remorse now.

Hey! I found my way here from rpg.net thanks to Clinton's link to this thread. I loved the game description so much that I spent much of Friday afternoon trying to get to the website. I finally got the PDF and I can't fucking wait to run this game. Some of my players are twisted enough to appreciate it.

While watching my son's soccer game this morning, I was thinking about a possible opening for a game -- an alternative to "how do you know Gerald?" And then it came to me: "Why are you in anger management class?"