Hey Man, well this is Babylon

One of the most unexpected joys of this past GameStorm was a pick-up game of Quad on Saturday night. Started initially as a way to pass the time while waiting for rides home, this game turned out to be one of the several comically hilarious moments of the con.

It all got started after the fabulous-amazing Jesus Camp Massacre session of Cannibal Contagion. After leaving the scheduled gaming room, I ran into Nick and Gilbert, and we all three had about an hour to kill. I blurted out “let’s play Quad” without thinking, and a few moments later we had started on in. After a few minutes of deliberation over what number-generator to use – for some reason they were both hardcore against using dice right then – we settled on a deck of cards. The built-in random scenario generator quickly laid out the basics:

• Setting: Ancient Earth (we decided Egypt)
• Location: An Institution (we decided a Temple of Training)
• What starts it all off: A natural disaster (we decided on an Earthquake) kills all the priests in the temple leaving only two survivors

The characters were created quickly enough, each being only a small list of good and bad Merits. One was a fairly inept acolyte conman, the other was a Pariah being beaten for the crimes of heaven or some such. I like to call them Harold and Kumar, as their dynamic was equally hilarious.

Once the core scenario’s conflict was established and the characters introduced, we quickly went to town. Nick and Gilbert were both experienced story-gamers, and thus took to the game’s mechanical concepts quickly. Within a few minutes, the mechanics were in play and more conflicts were introduced. I think for the purposes of the Pick-Up style of game play, the simple mechanics worked very well to move the game quickly along.

The temple guards took both the characters into protective custody, and one of them quickly managed to convince the guards that he was the Chosen One and the other character was his faithful Companion. A series of Sacred Rites of Testing were then undergone, which included eating (and stomaching) terrible foods, surfing the back of alligators while blindfolded, an epic game of Madden BC-199, and more. My favorite of the trials was definitely the game of Five-Card Draw, played with giant stone slab cards carried on the backs of teams of slaves. Each time a card was discarded, the stone was smashed to bits and the slaves carrying it were thrown to the crocodiles.

And there was much death by crocodile in this game. From Nick’s character’s lost arm to the gobs of sacred virgins they fed to them post-coitus, the crocodiles played an unexpectedly crucial part in the session. In fact, at the very end, when Gilbert’s character castrated himself to prove that he was in fact the REAL Chosen One (claiming the title by default, as he prevented Nick from winning), he was then fed to the crocodiles to appease the angry gods.

Within the span of an hour, we had run a pretty damn awesome game session, consisting of at least a dozen hilarious conflicts and a large handful of scenes. For me, the hardest part was actually coming up with the Seven Sacred Rites, but once the game started moving along, those came pretty easily too.

All in all, a damn fantastic session, one which all three of us have laughed about many times since.

Read all the juicy details here!

I’ll be selling the last of the signed-and-numbered copies of Cannibal Contagion’s first print run there. Additionally, I’ll be giving out free copies of the PDF to all who take part in the demos, as special thank you gifts for coming in and playing my game. I’m also looking forward to kicking some ass in the Left 4 Dead Survival Mode tournaments.

See you there!

Three updates!

First off, I want to let everyone know that the Cannibal Contagion pre-orders were put in the mail yesterday, as well as the special prize copies won during the GameStorm events. Expect them hopefully before the end of the week.

Second Update: I plan on having a new website up on the day after Zombie Day (see below). This new site will be a portal for Alliterated Games, leading to the forum, this blog, and pages on the various games.

Third Update: If you weren’t already aware, you should all attend “May of the Dead” Zombie Day at Guardian Games, on May 30th. It’s an all-day 11 AM to 10 PM (and later, for the adults and night owls) event. Events include: Two planned demos for my own newly-published survival RPG Cannibal Contagion, two separate 8-player prize tournaments of Left 4 Dead on the XBOX 360 (and all-day general playing of Left 4 Dead as well), two demos of the now out-of-print exclusive board game Last Night on Earth, some full-expansion tournaments of Zombies!!! the Board Game, six select zombie movies playing non-stop on the projector screen, a zombies-themed recurring D&D campaign, a zombies-themed demo scenario for the RPGA, some prize rounds of Zombie Flux, and multiple on-site zombie makeup artists – if you get made up as a zombie, you get a store-wide discount at the store for the day, and you are eligible for special prizes too!

I’m giving away free PDF copies of Cannibal Contagion to anyone who players in the demo sessions, as well. You should all come. It will be a grand affair indeed!

I’ll likely post an actual flier in the next week. But for now, mark your calendars, and come join the contagious fun.

And a surprise fourth update! I promise, I am still working on those GameStorm game reports. Life got unexpectedly chaotic these past few weeks, so suffice it to say I’ve been very distracted with other issues. The drafts grow a little every week, though, and I’ll be posting them when they’re perfect.

Glee!

50 fresh new copies of Cannibal Contagion were waiting at my desk upon my return from lunch. It is a good day!