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RedFox
02-03-2004, 03:51 AM
Well, all I can say is that Midknight found his groove. I played in a Mage game he ran last night. I haven't played in any of his games since I became disillusioned with the best WoD game ever (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?threadid=31857).

He's acquired the book Tales of Magick: Dark Adventure for Mage, and started basically a really fun retro pulp game. (It's like a cross between pulp serials ala Adventure! and Austin Powers)

I ended up designing an Ecstatic stuntwoman, raised by monks in the far east and expert in martial arts. I got a mysterious letter and met with a british agent on the beach while shooting on location in Hawaii.

He claimed he worked for "The Company" and that I was special agent Lei Fei Wong. The great great grandson of the Red Baron apparently broke into a base on Pluto and stole the plans for robots. They believe he's marshalling an army of nazi robots on the moon, and I must stop him somehow.

On the way to the field office, we had an exciting chase scene with lots of stunts and crazed nazi thugs. It ended in a "Get Smart" style series of secured doors in the back of a pineapple canning plant and I met with the mysterious assistant director of "The Company", who ended up being an old computer AI secretely in charge of the whole thing. He also made allusions to a "League of Exceptional Individuals" that still needs recruitment (She's a tremere antitribu with nothing to lose! He's a bastet abomination filled with loathing at what he's become! They fight crime!).

I discovered the director's secret identity, but I agree to work for it for now because I want to know why there's supposedly a secret agent with my name and nearly my description that's gone missing (she has different colored eyes and slightly more slender arms, but looks otherwise just like me! The british guy showed me photos from a manilla envelope). He promises to reveal all if I help them out for now.

The Company is apparently a secret agency answerable only to the Councel of Nine Mystical Traditions to help defend the world at large against extraordinary threats that the Sleeping world cannot face. And do so covertly.

Then I got fitted with a belt / CD-player with an artificial intelligence program named "Candy" inside and followed an animatronic seal to R&D for a gearing-up sequence. Then I'll be taking a telepod to Pluto, where I'll get a rocket ship from Pluto Pete's Used Shipyard and get to the moon before the mad Baron unleashes his nazi robots from beyond the moon in seven days time. (I can't take a telepod to the moon due to interference from the Baron's sattelites, and there's apparently no rockets I can take on earth at the moment.)

In other words... it's hella good campy fun. I can't wait to take my rocket ship to the moon and fight the mad Baron's nazi robots!

EDIT: Oh yeah, I got a cool secret agent name too... Virgo!

Sammael99
02-03-2004, 03:57 AM
Kool...

I don't think I could ever pull such a game with my players, they just wouldn't be in genre. But I wish I could...

RedFox
02-03-2004, 04:03 AM
Originally posted by Sammael99
Kool...

I don't think I could ever pull such a game with my players, they just wouldn't be in genre. But I wish I could...

It's really not that hard. So long as you just throw in retro-elements without trying to say, get everyone wholly "mod", it starts getting the same vibe. Midknight had stuff like the mysterious "Assistant Director" who introduced himself by being behind a large desk with the chair turned around and a big metal gauntlet being the only thing visible (shades of Dr. Claw). The reveal for that was spot-on for the kind of camp cheasiness of Austin Powers. Likewise the Get Smart door sequence, and the big red plastic phone that the british guy used to get into the assistant director's office. (Big phone blinks red like the Bat Phone, brit picks it up, says "It's for you." I pick it up, the wall turns around, rotating so that we're inside the office.)

The nazi thugs chasing us in a volkswagon earlier culminated when I shot the chains holding some pipes secure on the bed of a flat-bed truck trailer. Big cartoonish explosions ensued. The ramifications of the civilian casualties and property damage were gleefully ignored.

All sorts of tropes and send-ups are thrown in left and right... from the Dr. Claw riff to the reveal that the assistant director is actually a big reel-to-reel computer instead of a person. :)

Sammael99
02-03-2004, 09:04 AM
Originally posted by RedFox
It's really not that hard. So long as you just throw in retro-elements without trying to say, get everyone wholly "mod", it starts getting the same vibe. Midknight had stuff like the mysterious "Assistant Director" who introduced himself by being behind a large desk with the chair turned around and a big metal gauntlet being the only thing visible (shades of Dr. Claw). The reveal for that was spot-on for the kind of camp cheasiness of Austin Powers. Likewise the Get Smart door sequence, and the big red plastic phone that the british guy used to get into the assistant director's office. (Big phone blinks red like the Bat Phone, brit picks it up, says "It's for you." I pick it up, the wall turns around, rotating so that we're inside the office.)

The nazi thugs chasing us in a volkswagon earlier culminated when I shot the chains holding some pipes secure on the bed of a flat-bed truck trailer. Big cartoonish explosions ensued. The ramifications of the civilian casualties and property damage were gleefully ignored.

All sorts of tropes and send-ups are thrown in left and right... from the Dr. Claw riff to the reveal that the assistant director is actually a big reel-to-reel computer instead of a person. :)

Oh, I get it. Maybe it's just that there are a lot less 'valued' cultural references in campness in France... My players would see that as a comedy game, most likely, and even though it would be funny, it wouldn't be camp or pulp. In fact I proposed a game of "Adventure !" recently, to little interest. ;)

Midknight
06-01-2006, 05:10 PM
that would have been a fun game. i got to run it 2 maybe 3 times and then the other players that whated in never showed up after they had their "team" put together. there were on their way to fight the nazi robots from beyond the moon and it was over. maybe some day i'll revamp the game and fix a couple of bug, and run it again.

RedFox
06-01-2006, 05:21 PM
that would have been a fun game. i got to run it 2 maybe 3 times and then the other players that whated in never showed up after they had their "team" put together. there were on their way to fight the nazi robots from beyond the moon and it was over. maybe some day i'll revamp the game and fix a couple of bug, and run it again.

I suggest using Adventure! for it. The dramatic editing stuff would really fit, and it's fairly easy to tone Adventure! from pulp up to camp.

Coyote's Own
06-01-2006, 05:46 PM
Not to rain on anybodies parade, but Redfox should this thread be in the Actual Play forum?

RedFox
06-01-2006, 05:57 PM
Not to rain on anybodies parade, but Redfox should this thread be in the Actual Play forum?

There was no Actual Play forum when I posted this, man.

Coyote's Own
06-01-2006, 06:02 PM
There was no Actual Play forum when I posted this, man.

Didn't notice the date. :o

It most have survived the mass movage by remaining hidden. Guess it will be tansfered soon.

Stephenls
06-01-2006, 07:24 PM
Moved to the Actual Play forum.

IIRC, when I did the Big Move, I only went back about fifty pages. Maybe this was before that.

God, that took a long time.