For today’s RPGaDay, I’ll go with a game I played on Saturday at Gen Con, a Cthulhu Live! scenario called People in Your Neighborhood (link to Facebook photo album, because why not). There be spoilers in this writeup, so if you are going to play this excellent scenario by Elder Entertainment… stop reading now.
The premise of the game is that it’s 1972, there’s a happy, friendly street where children and muppets sing about numbers and letters and get along just great. Unfortunately, that street is eight blocks from the drug-riddle shit-hole where we live: Parsley Street.
Yes, Parsley Street is what happens when the Muppets take Methamphetamines. Unemployment is rampant, prostitution is a way of life, and racial tensions between felt and flesh are high.
Into this morass steps Alderman Wally Crisp, with progressive views and a rocking-hot assistant (ahem… played by yours truly) who wants to bring people together in a spirit of unity and cooperation. By hosting a political rally today!
Except Crisp is a typical politician, corrupt as hell, and he decides to adopt an abandoned Muppet baby just before the rally (that side-plot was completely off-script, by the way, but the storytellers loved it). This had me scrambling to get an ugly muppet kid on stage, all while I’m also trying to ratchet up everyone’s emotions in preparation for the coming of the Hand From Heaven.
Because, of course, I’m a cultist.
The game was about 4 hours long, and it was pretty much plotting and back-stabbing all the way. I murdered two people– one to kick off the scenario, and then another when the police dog was doing a good job and was on my trail. Couldn’t have that– the human police officer was corrupt and incompetent, but the dog? The dog needed to be put down. When I got a chance… I took it. Earned me a dog bite, but I took that puppy out and told everyone he’d been rabid.
Since I was a cultist trying to end the world, I expected to fail. To lose. To be killed by a well-meaning and more successful and less nihilistic human.
The surprising part of this game is that did not happen. In fact, the Hand From Heaven arrived, scooped up the Earth and threw it into the sun.
I sang “He’s got the whole world in his hand” while it happened. Seemed appropriate, you know?