Omega World Game One

Game 1 ( May 21, 2007)

A Thump on the Head and a Sore Behind

FREAKS:

Morley (Darren)

Janak (Alan)

Flinic (Terry)

Hogarr the Barbarian (Jim)

No, Sorry, I don't remember Jeff's whacky name. (Jeff) I'll just improvise in the retelling.

(Editorial Note: Turns out Jeff is Clen Raqis Cassel)

First up: Jim has purchased an ancient artifact in real life... the 4CD set of Thundarr the Barbarian. He forces us to watch before the first game and we spend 20 minutes mocking... well... just about everything about it :p Good times.

Paradise Valey is the home of our happy little tribe of 123 non-mutant psionicists. Little do 13 of us know that we are actually the children of an ABERRANT woman, one of the abominations that helped to destroy the world. The citizens of PV found her and brought her 13 children in and raised them as their own in an attempt to make us into honest, productive destroyers of the universe. They tell the story of how not all Aberrants were bad; Some were heroic.

We are coming up on our 16th Birthday and the time of our rite of passage. But there's an added difficulty: A trading party that included an elder has set out into the crazy world beyond our valley to make trade with the Clan Cambol and they have not returned. A dicussion is had that perhaps we should also look for them while we are out. The elders argue about that and are against it until it is left to us to convince them otherwise. By a narrow margin, one of the elders withdraws and leaves the vote in favor of our searching.

Within PV, we have two encounters though before we even leave. One is with three Obbs (One-eyed Fungi Bats). Hogarr and Flinic just wail on those while the rest of us lend minor assistance. The other fight is with a small group of loctus-like insects, which we bash into oblivion. Good move; We would find a whole horde of these on the outside later and they are a force of nature.

We prepare for our trip, get our things together, and head out into the world. The first step is to go through a deep cave through the mountain that seperates our valley from the badness. Four hours underground and when we get to the other side we find the afformentioned swarm of locusts. They are eating anything remotely edible; Trees, leaves, bark, grass, the cloak off of Jeff's Character Quasimodo's back.

You see, out in the swarming insects are some HUGE footprints. We had been warned of a local who guards the valley pass, named "Grumpy". Seems he's an enormous redwood/dinosaur. Part tree and part reptile, he'll chases anything nasty off, and would likely eat us too. But we're more concerned with his footprints right now, for caught in the well of a footprint is something shiney...metallic... And Jeff's character Mr. Mxyzptlk has an obsession with artifacts which causes him to first lustily stare at it through binoculars and then rush it with his cloak over his head to protect him from the locusts. Well, the locusts thought the cloak was pretty tastey, and eventually he answered our warnings to come back into the cave.

It was many hours before they went away and we could continue. The item was found, moved a bit away from where it had been.

If you've played Gamma World then you've had to endure "the artifact charts". Think of a flow chart. Your die roll sends you in one direction or another. A lot of times you just loop in place. Sometimes you lead to a little Skull and Crossbones (meaning you hurt yourself with the artifact while trying to figure it out). I love the artifact charts.

Sadly, no heinous explosive deaths this game. And we had plenty of opportunity, being Tech Level 0.5 guys trying to figure out much more complicated stuff (like a pistol and holster, some ammunition, and my personal favorite... Flinic's box of detergent!). But for now he figures out this particular artifact is some kind of claw hammer.

We have to sneak past the cave of Grumpy. And who best to help us do this? The grumpiest player character; Janak "pushes" his invisibility and extends it to the party. We stil have to be quiet going by, but it's easier when he Gurmpy can't see us.

Now you have to know something about Janak's invisibility... he doesn't have "attunement", the skill necessary to make his clothes and carried items invisible. This means anytime he wants to go invisibile he has to strip himself. While he started out going from full clothing to nothing in order to perform this trick, he has since downgraded to walking around in a loin cloth, his "break away" outfit for easy invisibility access. Just pull tab A. But try not to pull tab B in the process.

Anyway, the party gets past the cave and were told it was best to make camp at the cairn, so we make for the Cairne. The Cairne would turn out to be a cluster of rocky outrcoppings with, at it's center, a statue of a Lion or lion-like creature. We took note of the area, rested, and would take off later. The Crystaline Forest lived up to it's name; It's an assemblage of trees that seem to be made of glass, and when the wind blows down limbs, beware of falling glass shards!

Because I can't necessarily remember the order of all the "random encounters" we had at camp/rest sites, I'm just going to name those off: At one site, we had some purple flowers in a distance react to a strong breeze by going off like fire works! We moved. At another site, a couple of players were electrocuted by tiny little snail-like insects that climbed onto them while they rested. There's a hideous yellow cloud that causes problems for the feint of heart. And then there's my favorte: The carnivore grass.

Yup, we lay down in the grass to rest in one area and discover that the blades of grass eventually react to our presence by trying to drive themselves up into our flesh. Some of us warded off the narcotic they emenate, however, Janak and Flinic (I believe they were the two) were out like a light when the blades of grass attacked, boring into their flesh. Hogarr retrieved one by doing his leaping retrieval trick. Morley got the other by stretching out to seize Janak and having the party use him like a rope to haul the secured PC out of the grass. I remove the splinters except the ones in his ass; Some areas THIS man was not meant to go.

We spy in the field a lump about 50' away. Seems someone else had the same napping problem we had. While we beging to slowly burn a parth in the grass toward him, instead it occurs that between Jeff's character Rumplestiltskin's grappling hook and my strong rope we can dredge for the body. Eventually Hogarr snags the body with a throw and hauls it back to us. On his body is indeed an artifact, which they manage to figure out without killing anyone is a gun and holster! It works too. Ladies and gentlemen: We got boomstick!

Another encounter is with bee people! They do an illusion/invisibility combo to mask their numbers and location. They demand (politely) that we come with them to meet their queen. None of us are too keen on it, but they're so darned polite for ambushers on a road and they haven't raised a hand. We are deliberating when Hogarr makes the decision we go, and the momentum goes with him.

Unfortunately, halfway there he becomes an obstacle. The bee people demand that we put on blindfolds. We are not the kind of people to give up tactical advantage to total strangers. Hogarr outright refuses. Eventually some agree. Morely agrees when he realizes that he can probably use his flexibility to stretch his facial muscles to look out from under the blindfold whenever need be. I think what put most of the team over into agreeing is that Janak is naked. Apparently he has divested himself of clothing and used his illusion ability to replace his presence there with a simulacrum. So we know he'll see where we're going. It's just sad that we have to travel with Naked Janak.

Since Hogarr refuses to be blindfolded he at Ortin (?) the lead bee, have an argument that consists of two lines: "You must put on the blindold." "No, I will not put on the blindfold". "You must put on the blindfold." "No, I will not put on the blindfold." "BUT, you MUST put..."

The rest of us continue into the forest and end up at the hive, where a bee performs his bee-entry dance. We then have a discussion which consists of the word "BEE" in great quantities. "Why would we BEE helping you?" "What would the rewards BEE?" And so on and so on. Seems they've lost bee people to some thing they refer to as the DARK EMPERORS. Questioning yields that they are enormous black vultures who perform slavery for resale and ransom. Seems our friendly party and their bees have been taken. They want us to retrieve them. After some negotiation, they will give us an artifact each in advance, and another upon return of their bee young. We agree, since that is where we need to go anyway, and trade with bee people seems pretty good... after all, they've given us ROYAL JELLY, wich is not just tasty, but healing! They give us some honey for food on the road. Mmm Mmm Good. Especially if, like Morley, you eat plants; A little honey goes a long way.

The artifacts gained: Flinic draws first and selects... a box of some kind of poweder, which foams up like mad when introduced to his tongue. He does his mad-dog impression and we decide it must be some kind of foaming agent though for what purpose we don't know. Later it seems to work pretty well at causing electro-snails to foam up. Morley draws a box with 5 little objects inside which with some experimentation seem to blow up when you smack the metal part (Shotgun shells); Then there were 4. I'm having trouble remembering the others... I seem to recall a container of insecticide...

Back on the road we meet up with Hogarr and head for the village to the south where the Cambols live. They perform trade with our people. Turns out they're slightly paranoid (with good reason) and have lots of bits of metal and things like that but not much in the way of healthy food. Things we would never keep they have no problem growing for food. They're thinner and less healthy, but they're probably approaching tech level 1. We trade some grain and our chicken with them for some moderately useful metal pieces we can trade later to the people to the south. Then we head to that village with a warning that they are more devious Cambols.

We came to a river and a bridge. Nearby could be heard a humming noise, not unlike the bees. An investigation of the sound by invisible naked Janak yields an electroshock as he tries to reach through some brambles. The inexplicably curious, Jeff's character Cthulhu F'tagn, becomes obsessed briefly with locating the scene of the electrocution, but fails to track it down. So we cross the bridge, see but do not fight some lovely electro-fish, and continue.

Along the way we encounter... Holes! There are three holes in the road. We cautiously aproach them but then BOOM, there's a 4th hole. A couple of badger-men (Badders) show up with better armor than us and they attempt ranged assault on us. Jeff's character Channukah Harry, closes in, and Janak does his trick that works well on most foes: He creates an illusion for them to waste their actions on! pretty soon they're vulnerable to the leap/cleave action of Hogarr, who unceremoniously plays wack-a-mole, er--uh--badger. Their bones crunch but mysteriously they are uncut. They fall unconscious.

And that is where we end. I'm certain I've forgotten many details but it was a pretty packed game.

In all, the game was solidly entertaining. Between Janak's nudity, Hogarr's "Thundarr" references, and the bits of Gamma World nostalgia that kept bubbling to the top of my stream of consciousness, it was a pretty good time.


	Game 1 ( May 21, 2007)

A Thump on the Head and a Sore Behind
FREAKS: Morley (Darren) Janak (Alan) Flinic (Terry) Hogarr the Barbarian (Jim) No, Sorry, I don't remember Jeff's whacky name. (Jeff) I'll just improvise in the retelling. (Editorial Note: Turns out Jeff is Clen Raqis Cassel)
First up: Jim has purchased an ancient artifact in real life... the 4CD set of Thundarr the Barbarian. He forces us to watch before the first game and we spend 20 minutes mocking... well... just about everything about it :p Good times. Paradise Valey is the home of our happy little tribe of 123 non-mutant psionicists. Little do 13 of us know that we are actually the children of an ABERRANT woman, one of the abominations that helped to destroy the world. The citizens of PV found her and brought her 13 children in and raised them as their own in an attempt to make us into honest, productive destroyers of the universe. They tell the story of how not all Aberrants were bad; Some were heroic. We are coming up on our 16th Birthday and the time of our rite of passage. But there's an added difficulty: A trading party that included an elder has set out into the crazy world beyond our valley to make trade with the Clan Cambol and they have not returned. A dicussion is had that perhaps we should also look for them while we are out. The elders argue about that and are against it until it is left to us to convince them otherwise. By a narrow margin, one of the elders withdraws and leaves the vote in favor of our searching. Within PV, we have two encounters though before we even leave. One is with three Obbs (One-eyed Fungi Bats). Hogarr and Flinic just wail on those while the rest of us lend minor assistance. The other fight is with a small group of loctus-like insects, which we bash into oblivion. Good move; We would find a whole horde of these on the outside later and they are a force of nature. We prepare for our trip, get our things together, and head out into the world. The first step is to go through a deep cave through the mountain that seperates our valley from the badness. Four hours underground and when we get to the other side we find the afformentioned swarm of locusts. They are eating anything remotely edible; Trees, leaves, bark, grass, the cloak off of Jeff's Character Quasimodo's back. You see, out in the swarming insects are some HUGE footprints. We had been warned of a local who guards the valley pass, named "Grumpy". Seems he's an enormous redwood/dinosaur. Part tree and part reptile, he'll chases anything nasty off, and would likely eat us too. But we're more concerned with his footprints right now, for caught in the well of a footprint is something shiney...metallic... And Jeff's character Mr. Mxyzptlk has an obsession with artifacts which causes him to first lustily stare at it through binoculars and then rush it with his cloak over his head to protect him from the locusts. Well, the locusts thought the cloak was pretty tastey, and eventually he answered our warnings to come back into the cave. It was many hours before they went away and we could continue. The item was found, moved a bit away from where it had been. If you've played Gamma World then you've had to endure "the artifact charts". Think of a flow chart. Your die roll sends you in one direction or another. A lot of times you just loop in place. Sometimes you lead to a little Skull and Crossbones (meaning you hurt yourself with the artifact while trying to figure it out). I love the artifact charts. Sadly, no heinous explosive deaths this game. And we had plenty of opportunity, being Tech Level 0.5 guys trying to figure out much more complicated stuff (like a pistol and holster, some ammunition, and my personal favorite... Flinic's box of detergent!). But for now he figures out this particular artifact is some kind of claw hammer. We have to sneak past the cave of Grumpy. And who best to help us do this? The grumpiest player character; Janak "pushes" his invisibility and extends it to the party. We stil have to be quiet going by, but it's easier when he Gurmpy can't see us. Now you have to know something about Janak's invisibility... he doesn't have "attunement", the skill necessary to make his clothes and carried items invisible. This means anytime he wants to go invisibile he has to strip himself. While he started out going from full clothing to nothing in order to perform this trick, he has since downgraded to walking around in a loin cloth, his "break away" outfit for easy invisibility access. Just pull tab A. But try not to pull tab B in the process. Anyway, the party gets past the cave and were told it was best to make camp at the cairn, so we make for the Cairne. The Cairne would turn out to be a cluster of rocky outrcoppings with, at it's center, a statue of a Lion or lion-like creature. We took note of the area, rested, and would take off later. The Crystaline Forest lived up to it's name; It's an assemblage of trees that seem to be made of glass, and when the wind blows down limbs, beware of falling glass shards! Because I can't necessarily remember the order of all the "random encounters" we had at camp/rest sites, I'm just going to name those off: At one site, we had some purple flowers in a distance react to a strong breeze by going off like fire works! We moved. At another site, a couple of players were electrocuted by tiny little snail-like insects that climbed onto them while they rested. There's a hideous yellow cloud that causes problems for the feint of heart. And then there's my favorte: The carnivore grass. Yup, we lay down in the grass to rest in one area and discover that the blades of grass eventually react to our presence by trying to drive themselves up into our flesh. Some of us warded off the narcotic they emenate, however, Janak and Flinic (I believe they were the two) were out like a light when the blades of grass attacked, boring into their flesh. Hogarr retrieved one by doing his leaping retrieval trick. Morley got the other by stretching out to seize Janak and having the party use him like a rope to haul the secured PC out of the grass. I remove the splinters except the ones in his ass; Some areas THIS man was not meant to go. We spy in the field a lump about 50' away. Seems someone else had the same napping problem we had. While we beging to slowly burn a parth in the grass toward him, instead it occurs that between Jeff's character Rumplestiltskin's grappling hook and my strong rope we can dredge for the body. Eventually Hogarr snags the body with a throw and hauls it back to us. On his body is indeed an artifact, which they manage to figure out without killing anyone is a gun and holster! It works too. Ladies and gentlemen: We got boomstick! Another encounter is with bee people! They do an illusion/invisibility combo to mask their numbers and location. They demand (politely) that we come with them to meet their queen. None of us are too keen on it, but they're so darned polite for ambushers on a road and they haven't raised a hand. We are deliberating when Hogarr makes the decision we go, and the momentum goes with him. Unfortunately, halfway there he becomes an obstacle. The bee people demand that we put on blindfolds. We are not the kind of people to give up tactical advantage to total strangers. Hogarr outright refuses. Eventually some agree. Morely agrees when he realizes that he can probably use his flexibility to stretch his facial muscles to look out from under the blindfold whenever need be. I think what put most of the team over into agreeing is that Janak is naked. Apparently he has divested himself of clothing and used his illusion ability to replace his presence there with a simulacrum. So we know he'll see where we're going. It's just sad that we have to travel with Naked Janak. Since Hogarr refuses to be blindfolded he at Ortin (?) the lead bee, have an argument that consists of two lines: "You must put on the blindold." "No, I will not put on the blindfold". "You must put on the blindfold." "No, I will not put on the blindfold." "BUT, you MUST put..." The rest of us continue into the forest and end up at the hive, where a bee performs his bee-entry dance. We then have a discussion which consists of the word "BEE" in great quantities. "Why would we BEE helping you?" "What would the rewards BEE?" And so on and so on. Seems they've lost bee people to some thing they refer to as the DARK EMPERORS. Questioning yields that they are enormous black vultures who perform slavery for resale and ransom. Seems our friendly party and their bees have been taken. They want us to retrieve them. After some negotiation, they will give us an artifact each in advance, and another upon return of their bee young. We agree, since that is where we need to go anyway, and trade with bee people seems pretty good... after all, they've given us ROYAL JELLY, wich is not just tasty, but healing! They give us some honey for food on the road. Mmm Mmm Good. Especially if, like Morley, you eat plants; A little honey goes a long way. The artifacts gained: Flinic draws first and selects... a box of some kind of poweder, which foams up like mad when introduced to his tongue. He does his mad-dog impression and we decide it must be some kind of foaming agent though for what purpose we don't know. Later it seems to work pretty well at causing electro-snails to foam up. Morley draws a box with 5 little objects inside which with some experimentation seem to blow up when you smack the metal part (Shotgun shells); Then there were 4. I'm having trouble remembering the others... I seem to recall a container of insecticide... Back on the road we meet up with Hogarr and head for the village to the south where the Cambols live. They perform trade with our people. Turns out they're slightly paranoid (with good reason) and have lots of bits of metal and things like that but not much in the way of healthy food. Things we would never keep they have no problem growing for food. They're thinner and less healthy, but they're probably approaching tech level 1. We trade some grain and our chicken with them for some moderately useful metal pieces we can trade later to the people to the south. Then we head to that village with a warning that they are more devious Cambols. We came to a river and a bridge. Nearby could be heard a humming noise, not unlike the bees. An investigation of the sound by invisible naked Janak yields an electroshock as he tries to reach through some brambles. The inexplicably curious, Jeff's character Cthulhu F'tagn, becomes obsessed briefly with locating the scene of the electrocution, but fails to track it down. So we cross the bridge, see but do not fight some lovely electro-fish, and continue. Along the way we encounter... Holes! There are three holes in the road. We cautiously aproach them but then BOOM, there's a 4th hole. A couple of badger-men (Badders) show up with better armor than us and they attempt ranged assault on us. Jeff's character Channukah Harry, closes in, and Janak does his trick that works well on most foes: He creates an illusion for them to waste their actions on! pretty soon they're vulnerable to the leap/cleave action of Hogarr, who unceremoniously plays wack-a-mole, er--uh--badger. Their bones crunch but mysteriously they are uncut. They fall unconscious. And that is where we end. I'm certain I've forgotten many details but it was a pretty packed game. In all, the game was solidly entertaining. Between Janak's nudity, Hogarr's "Thundarr" references, and the bits of Gamma World nostalgia that kept bubbling to the top of my stream of consciousness, it was a pretty good time.