The Second Worst Scenario Ever Written

The Break In

It was decided that the break-in would be conducted by Dual and Blackout (Bog Boy and Mark) whilst Ebola (Demonic) stayed outside the house in reserve. Meanwhile, Mr Jones (Bubba) and Brand (Evil G) stayed back at the hotel, for reasons that I now can't recall, but were probably related to Bog Boy's fear that they would fuck things up if allowed to participate.

They watched Andy set off to work, waited for darkness to settle, then entered via a kitchen window, disabling the security system on the way. Korelli (the husband) was in the living room, so they headed on down the passageway, up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms.

(I was of course having to make up the layout of the house on the fly, since the scenario didn't even include floorplans of the places the PCs were *supposed* to visit, let alone Andy's house).

Now, at this point, as they started to rifle through the room, I, as the GM, was in a bit of a dilemma. I could just let them find obvious evidence that Charlotte had in fact stayed in the guest room the previous night, which would be a bit of a surprise if you subscribed to the generally accepted view that she'd been blown to shit three days previously. I could have just let them found the evidence, and left it at that.

But that seemed a bit too easy. Not that I'm some kind of sadistic GM you understand. It's just that I think it would have seemed too easy to the players. Also, I didn't want them to think they could just go around breaking into people's houses without any possibility of things going wrong.

Then I had a brainwave. I thought of a way in which I could give them a subtle clue that she had only just left, but also give them a bit of a fright. Think about it. Charlotte had been staying in the guest room just that very morning. And what do you do after someone who's been staying in your guest room leaves?

You wash the bedsheets, so they'll be clean for the next guest who comes calling.

Would Jake have done them immediately? No. He was with Andy. He'd have waited until Andy went to work, and then - having some spare time - would decide to do the laundry.

That was my brainwave. I'm telling you now that this was what I thought up. But the players insist to this day that I'm lying. They insist that the laundry thing was something I thought up a few minutes later (don't worry, I'll explain when we get there) and that I then tried to make out I'd thought of it earlier.

But let's continue.

As the players rifled through the room in search of clues, I told them that they could hear Korelli walking up the stairs. I thought they'd do something - like hide for instance - but they did nothing.

So I told them that Korelli had gone into the bathroom (I figured that him and Andy would keep the laundry basket in the bathroom) and they still did nothing.

I told them that they could hear tinkling, splashing sounds from the bathroom (I figured Korelli needed a piss first).

"Standing up sounds, or sitting down sounds?" asking Bubba, ignoring the fact that he wasn't there.

There then ensued the first of the evening's "homophobia" discussions, as the various parties around the table accused other parties of holding unsound views on the subject of homosexuality, and the accused parties vigorously defended themselves.

In this particular incident, the case for the prosecution was that Bubba had been asking a "joke question" about whether Korelli was pissing standing up (like a man) or sitting down (like a women).

The case for the defence (put most vigorously by Bubba) was that he was asking whether Jake was taking a piss, or a crap (e.g. sitting down splashes), since that had a bearing on how long he was liable to be in the bog.

Actually, I do believe him, since he really isn't prejudiced, but at the time everyone had a great time attacking him. Of course, this didn't do much for the serious conduct of my game, but eventually, after several minutes, we managed to get things back on track. Ish.

Then I told them that the splashing had stopped and asked them what they wanted to do.

Nothing was the answer. I was getting a bit non-plussed by now.

So I told them that they could now see that the bedroom door was being pushed open.

Now they seemed to realise that something was happening. Blackout turned into a shadow in the ceiling corner about the doorway.

Dual shapechanged into a pillow.

A second before Korelli entered the room holding a wicker laundry basket.

What then ensued was the second of the evenings "vigorous discussions" as the assorted players accused me - the GM - of cheating. Their view was that I had spitefully thought up the laundry basket purely to shaft Bog Boy (i.e. that I only decided Korelli was carrying a laundry basket after Dual transformed himself into an item of laundry).

My defence against this accusation was that I can't actually think that fast. They still don't believe me.

So now we have a slightly awkward situation. Dual is shapechanged into an additional pillow. Korelli has come to strip all the laundry off the bed. The players think I'm cheating, and I think they're taking the piss.

Now you have to remember that this was our first game of Aberrant, and we were still feeling our way through the rules. So, we hadn't yet had a chance to establish a house rule on how to do a "spot suspicious extra pillow" roll.

Cue five minutes of arguing, which included discussions about whether gay men might be more houseproud, and therefore more likely to notice that extra laundry had appeared.

Eventually, a consensus was reached on how I could roll to see if Korelli managed to notice that there were now *three* pillows. I rolled. Amazingly, it had not occurred to him that there was now an extra pillow.

But we weren't out of the woods yet.

Because what do you do when you strip the bed? You take the pillowcases off the pillows, one by one.

I made a roll to see which pillow he would strip first... and it was Dual.

Cue five more minutes of arguing.

What we were arguing about now, was precisely what would happen to Dual when Korelli attempted to separate the "pillowcase" from the "pillow". Bog Boy was still sulking about the whole laundry basket thing at this point, so he was mostly a silent partner in the discussion, but the rest of us tried to work something out.

Eventually, one of us - can't remember who - clicked on the perfect solution, involving a piece of equipment that Aberrant characters can possess, called a Eufiber suit.

(When I say "can", I do of course mean *all*. The background might say that some Novas wear them, but you aren't going to find many PCs without one.)

The Eufiber suit (which you "buy" at character creation with background points) has two very useful features:

a) You can mentally change its shape and appearance (which is obviously highly useful to a shapechanger like Dual).

b) It soaks up damage rather effectively.

Our solution was this: Simply say that Dual was the "pillow" and that his Eufiber suit was the "pillowcase". So Korelli could simply remove the pillow case, put it in the laundry basket with the rest of the bedding, then go back downstairs - leaving the pillow (a.k.a. Dual) behind.

It was a good solution.

And it was totally unacceptable to Dual.

"Bollocks! I'm not losing my Eufiber suit!" he proclaimed. "I'll just say that the pillowcase is my finger."

I pointed out that this meant that when Korelli removed the "pillow case" he, Dual, would have his finger ripped off.

"That's all right!" he declared. "I've got regeneration, I'll grow it back."

Cue more discussion.

Eventually Bog Boy shortcutted all the discussions by announcing that he was shapechanging into: "a really horrible nightmare looking monster". Under normal circumstances I would have said that the shapechage power required him to be a bit more specific, but I think we all wanted to get the action out of the bedroom.

So he shapechanged, Korelli - who to be fair must have been slightly shocked at his pillow turning into a monster - fumbled his fear roll and therefore bricked it, Blackout dropped down from his hiding place, and they both piled down the stairs followed closely by a now somewhat upset Korelli.

Blackout reached the kitchen window first, and dived out headfirst onto the lawn. Dual attempted to follow him, but was grabbed by the chasing Korelli, who then proceeded to give him a bit of a slapping.

Now do you remember when I said that we were still a bit hazy on the rules, and that I knew even less than the players? Well, at this point we started to discuss just how the combat rules worked. The two options on the table were:

a) Bog Boy's understanding: Roll to attack. Every success (7 or over on a D10) you get over the amount you needed (which I think was one) counts as an automatic level of damage. Then you roll your damage, and the number of successes you get there counts as additional level of damage.

b) My understanding: Every extra success you get on your attack roll gives you an extra dice to roll on your damage roll. Then every success on the damage rolls counts as a level of damage.

As you can see, Bog Boy's method would results in much more damage being done per attack than mine (probably more than twice as much). A week or so later, when we properly read the rules, we realised that I was right, and he was wrong, but on this occasion I deferred to him (the rules expert) and we used his damage rules.

Which were bloody deadly.

Korelli basically gave him one hard punch, and it took him though unconsciousness and into a near-death coma. I was a bit perturbed by this, because although Korelli was supposed to be hard, so was Dual. What kind of superhero system was this?

Enter Ebola...

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