Last Origins Post
Forgot to post about this earlier. This one is mostly for dragonscholar and trdsf, the resident MST3K fans.
Thursday night at Origins, I had barely wandered in the door when I saw someone (Brian R.) I know from the B5 CCG in previous years. He was holding up a small sign and said, "You want to play Schlock, don't you?" "Um..." "Come on, we really need one more player." "Okay..."
Schlock, for the uninitiated, is a part-tabletop-part-RPG game based on The Smithee Awards, which celebrate truly bad B movies. Each player is a film-maker making a B movie. You get a randomly selected hero, sidekick, villain, and plot point. Then you have to start creating your movie using the randomly selected cliches for each of three rounds (acts).
My plot point was "...stealing the Sacred Power Crystal", so I decided that clearly my title had to be Illinois Smith and the Country of the Power Crystal. After generating a title and movie poster concept, we create a scene for each act. In Act I, the cliches to incorporate included "Silliest Looking Monster" and "Deus Ex Machina". My villain was a horribly disfigured scientist. So I decided my monster was going to look like a cross between the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthulhu. And after the heroes are trapped by the Cthulhu Spaghetti Monster, they wonder if it might be vulnerable to marinara sauce, and oh gee look, there just happens to be some sitting back here from the scientist's dinner, and it cripples the monster long enough for the heroes to escape. This naturally won me the "Deus Ex Machina" category. I was beaten in "Silliest Looking Monster" by the guy who had killer bees represented by yellow cotton balls on strings.
But it gets better in Act III. One of the cliches was "Cutting Butter with a Chainsaw", for the most extreme overkill. The scientist sends Cthulhu Spaghetti Monster to destroy the heroes, and they fire a rocket launcher at the monster, which sends it flying backwards into the river, which happens to be the Amazon. Where, of course, the Cthulhu Spaghetti Monster gets devoured by piranha.
The other players said the piranha clinched my win in the overkill category. I also took the "Inane Dialog" category for these brilliant lines when the heroes first met the monster: "It's big." "It's really big." "I wonder if marinara sauce will hurt it?" "Oh, look, there just happens to be some right here!"
And I snagged the "Worst Acting" category for the disfigured scientist's impassioned monologue at the death of his beloved pet Cthulhu Spaghetti Monster, which I (and the scientist) delivered in a perfect imitation of William Shatner.
Should I be frightened that I managed to win 4 out of 19 categories? (There were 5 players.)
Thursday night at Origins, I had barely wandered in the door when I saw someone (Brian R.) I know from the B5 CCG in previous years. He was holding up a small sign and said, "You want to play Schlock, don't you?" "Um..." "Come on, we really need one more player." "Okay..."
Schlock, for the uninitiated, is a part-tabletop-part-RPG game based on The Smithee Awards, which celebrate truly bad B movies. Each player is a film-maker making a B movie. You get a randomly selected hero, sidekick, villain, and plot point. Then you have to start creating your movie using the randomly selected cliches for each of three rounds (acts).
My plot point was "...stealing the Sacred Power Crystal", so I decided that clearly my title had to be Illinois Smith and the Country of the Power Crystal. After generating a title and movie poster concept, we create a scene for each act. In Act I, the cliches to incorporate included "Silliest Looking Monster" and "Deus Ex Machina". My villain was a horribly disfigured scientist. So I decided my monster was going to look like a cross between the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthulhu. And after the heroes are trapped by the Cthulhu Spaghetti Monster, they wonder if it might be vulnerable to marinara sauce, and oh gee look, there just happens to be some sitting back here from the scientist's dinner, and it cripples the monster long enough for the heroes to escape. This naturally won me the "Deus Ex Machina" category. I was beaten in "Silliest Looking Monster" by the guy who had killer bees represented by yellow cotton balls on strings.
But it gets better in Act III. One of the cliches was "Cutting Butter with a Chainsaw", for the most extreme overkill. The scientist sends Cthulhu Spaghetti Monster to destroy the heroes, and they fire a rocket launcher at the monster, which sends it flying backwards into the river, which happens to be the Amazon. Where, of course, the Cthulhu Spaghetti Monster gets devoured by piranha.
The other players said the piranha clinched my win in the overkill category. I also took the "Inane Dialog" category for these brilliant lines when the heroes first met the monster: "It's big." "It's really big." "I wonder if marinara sauce will hurt it?" "Oh, look, there just happens to be some right here!"
And I snagged the "Worst Acting" category for the disfigured scientist's impassioned monologue at the death of his beloved pet Cthulhu Spaghetti Monster, which I (and the scientist) delivered in a perfect imitation of William Shatner.
Should I be frightened that I managed to win 4 out of 19 categories? (There were 5 players.)