Wings Over the Pyre - March 27th, 2006

02:09 am - SNAKES of a PLANE

chadu has produced the most brilliant of RPG scenarios.

Snakes on a Plane: the Adventure

C'mon, folks, there's snakes! On a plane! Its the perfect movie, and the perfect adventure.

Current Mood: impressed

05:03 pm - Snakes on a Mother Humpin' Plane!

OK, you knew it was inevitable.

---

Snakes
Long, Short, Venomous and Writhing!

Abilities

5 Venomous Bite (P)
4 Concealment (P)
1 Scaled Skin (P)
3 Serpentine Speed (P)
2 Fangs! (P)

Styles

2 Sneak Attack!
1 Cold-Blooded Calculation (P)
3 Poisonous Side-Effects (P)

Attitudes

1 Cold-Blooded
4 Sneaky
3 Hungry
2 Agitated

Notes

They're snakes! Long, short, thick and thin! Some of them are poisonous and some of them are not, but why take the chance, right?

---

On a Plane
(NPC Location) On a Motherhumpin' Plane!

Abilities

1 Stews
5 The Tiny Bathroom
3 Overhead Bins
4 Cargo
2 Rows of Seats

Attitudes

1 Sick
2 Tired
3 Terrified

Free Conflict

Event: Someone pulls out an air-sickness bag!

Notes

You can't have Snakes on a Plane without the plane! From the long rows of seats, to the harried steward{s|esses}, to the feelings everyone has when they have been in the air a couple of hours. Inevitably, someone'll pull out an air-sickness bag, and whether its full of yuk, hides a gun, or a snake jumps out is up to the resolver!

---

Snakes on a Plane in Capes is probably only worth one Scene in most folks' games, though if it really gets rolling, that Scene can go a goodly number of Pages. The plane part of things itself will be fairly reasonable if someone brings it on as an NPC; the blocking Traits will make sure that the standard tropes (the tiny bathroom, for instance) won't get too abused, and the Free Conflict just begs for lots and lots of bidding escalation.

Just as in chadu's Truth & Justice version, its probably a great idea to have your characters' Secret Identities or latent forms on the plane for some trumped-up reason, then bust this out. As such, probably not an effective opening Scene, but a damn fine option for when you've got some Story Tokens to burn on bringing in one of your usual characters, the Snakes and On a Plane, all at once! Good Conflicts to break out include:

• Event: A snake slithers across someone's foot!
• Event: A snake drops from above, off-panel!
• Event: A woman screams!
• Event: A snake bites someone!
• Goal: A stewardess stops screaming!
• Event: Someone dies!
• Goal: A snake dies!
• Event: The pilot pulls the plane out of a fatal nose-dive!
• Goal: Someone convinces one of the passengers to pilot the plane!
• Event: A hero takes the pilot's seat!
• Goal: The plane returns to a semblance of calm!

The best part about all of the above Conflicts is that they're all blocking Conflicts; once introduced, until it's resolved, the postulated situation simply doesn't and can't go away. So if you narrate everyone goes into paroxysms of terror and drop Goal: The plane returns to a semblance of calm! it simply can't return to calm until the Conflict's resolved ... and might not return to calm as a result of that Conflict, given it's a Goal and not an Event! (After all, someone might want to stymie attempts to calm things down -- like the snakes!)

It's hard to write about Snakes on a Plane without using entirely too many exclamation-marks.

I'm thinking that this might actually be my Convention Starter Scene of choice. Give everyone two Story Tokens to kick off, and either burn both of mine to bring in both Snakes and On a Plane, or conspiratorially arrange to have someone else bring in Snakes after I set the Scene, bring on one of my usual Characters, and pop off On a Plane ...

Post Scriptum:

This just in.

SNAKES ON A PLANE
The Roleplaying Game
of Personal Discovery
Dire Combat
And Motherf%king Snakes

Current Mood: creative

08:13 pm - Jon Coulton, Demand It!

Jonathon Coulton is the brilliant musician and songwriter responsible for Skullcrusher Mountain and much other music of like mind. It'd be great to convince him to, say, hit Atlanta for a gig. But to do that, well, he needs to know there's an audience.

On the right there is a clickable link to a site that manages such requests. I know where all the best tools are!

Current Mood: sleepy

08:27 pm - TrustFlow results for zamiel

I tried out TrustFlow II for LiveJournal. The following people not on the friends list for zamiel are close by:

• 200 - 250: miluda, space_coyote
• 250 - 300: mrnuclearman, mediocredeity, crimsonnite
• 300 - 350: ladyjestyr

Created by ciphergoth; hosted by LShift.

TrustFlow II: Who is closest to your friends list?

Current Mood: curious

10:06 pm

Current Mood: tired