Return of the RED MADNESS!
May. 28th, 2003 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotnik2004A few weeks ago, I promised you all chapters two and up of The New Know Nothings, my old 1970s Mage game, but then I caught Raiders of the Lost Ark on TV a few nights ago and that put me in mind of my old space pulp Adventure! game instead. (Also, I'm a little embarrassed by how much of the later Know Nothings sessions I stole from The Invisibles. How was I to know the trade paperbacks would find the audience the monthlies never did?)
So here, for your time-wasting pleasure, is an all-in-one summary of [Insert your PC's name here] versus the RED MADNESS!, a gleeful little Adventure! romp I played about a year-and-a-half ago with Jess, Jere, John, Michelle, and Susan. It was set in an alternate 1963— 1963 as it might have been imagined in the sci-fi rocket pulps of, say, 1936, but with bits of the real 1963 occasionally poking through. The two World Wars were replaced by the two Wars of the Worlds (Wells' original and Welles' 1938 remake), leaving a dying Mars occupied by Allied Forces, and a Cold War between Hitler's monstrous Reich and a Gernsbackian Astounding Age USA. (If all this really gets you going I can dig up the history / background I wrote for the world [Edit: I did!] -- basically it's your standard Tesla-tech versus bug-eyed monster extravaganza.)
Our Heroes
They were: Captain Ben Nova (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jeregenest), a lantern-jawed pilot rocket pilot, the dashing and arrogant hero of the Space Patrol; Queen Andromeda (peaseblossom), the mysterious "white goddess" of the Venusian jungle, with her savage blue-skinned Venusian minions; John Smith, aka Mr. Immortal (editswlonghair), the hulking mercenary with a mysterious past who cares for nothing more than his next paycheck—or does he? Lulu L'Amour (Michelle), sultry blonde torch singer and gangster's moll, secretly the planet-hopping super spy Agent X-13; and Galina Vronski (Susan), a plucky "girl scientist," expert at reverse engineering Martian death rays, but hopeless in the arena of love.
I couldn't have asked for better players, and they came up with a great bunch of pulp archetypes. If we ever play the sequel (and I do indeed have one in mind), I might encourage the players to embrace the alternate history gimmick and play a bunch of famous or fictional people in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vein. But the characters we had were great as is, and everyone got way into the scenery chewing spirit.
Episode 1: The Great Brain Robbery
We began at the Martian wing of the Metropolitan Museum in Astounding Age New York. A gala in honor of the venerable exoarchaeologist Dr. Henry Jones Jr. was thrown into turmoil by the attack of a Martian cultist (John dubbed the cult "Martian Freemasons" because of their 3-eyes-in-a-pyramid symbol; this transmuted to "the FreeMartians" somewhere along the way) who sought to prevent Jones from discovering the Lost Ark of Cydonia. Captain Nova and Mr. Immortal bested the tentacled, bug-eyed monstrosity, but not before Dr. Jones was struck down by a terrible malady... the RED MADNESS!
Meanwhile, Branch 9 secret agent Lulu L'Amour was called into action after the theft of Einstein's Brain, the top secret director of America's arms race against the Third Reich. Clearly the Nazis were after Einstein's research into the dread powers of "Element X." Lulu and Mr. Immortal tracked down the perpetrators: a sleazeball named Dick Nixon and his cronies, but this trail led them straight into the path of a giant radio-controlled King Kong cyborg with a 1930s-style cabinet radio for a head. You know the type.
Cameos by Norma Jean Baker (better known in our timeline as Marilyn Monroe) as Einstein's number two scientist (a funny rivalry developed between Einstein's two protegés, Galina and Norma Jean) and Erich von Daniken as Jones' crackpot rival (he believed the great monuments of Mars were built by ancient astronauts from Earth).
Episode 2: Sky Fortress Under Siege
Hot on the trail of Einstein's Brain, and desperate to cure Dr. Jones of the fearsome RED MADNESS!, our heroes did battle with the mighty Ro-Kong in a high-speed vertical chase up the mile-high New Empire State Building. Mr. Immortal lived up to his name after plunging down the 555-story elevator shaft. Lulu did her best Fay Wray imitation in Ro-Kong's clutches. Galina managed to subdue the beast by jamming the tango music that the Nazis were using to provoke its murderous rampage with soothing lullabies. But Nova's arch-nemesis, the diabolical Nazi rocket ace Nina Goering, escaped with Einstein's Brain. So our intrepid gang went undercover on a mighty German ether zeppelin as it set sail for Nazi-occupied Mars.
PS: Dick Nixon got stomped by the Ro-Kong.
Episode 3: Another Sky Fortress, Also Under Siege
Undercover aboard the great ether zeppelin, the Graf Von Zorbo, our heroes set sail for the red planet. This whole episode was a string of great cat fights waiting to happen, as torch singer Lulu L'Amour fell afoul of the Prussian diva Eva Hauptmanvogel (a Nazi version of Tintin's Bianca Castafiore), and Queen Andromeda clashed repeatedly with Nina Goering. Alas, no pulp girl on girl action, but all the built up tension was relieved at the end of the session when a fleet of Martian flying saucers attacked and destroyed the zeppelin.
Cameos by Sonderkommando H ("Hex Files") agents Mueller and Sculli. Oh, and the PCs found Einstein's Brain.
Best in-character line: Nina Goering and Queen Andromeda were having a "this blimp ain't big enough for two cruelly beautiful ice queens, sister!" staredown. Jess, playing the Venusian queen Andromeda, tells Goering she's clearly got a bad case of "Venus envy." Hee.
Best out-of-character line: The players, thinking all the bad guys are in cahoots, are taken aback when the Martians attack the Nazi zeppelin. "Oh no," I say. "The Martians and the Nazis hate each other." And Michelle chirps, totally straight-faced, "Just like in real life!"
Episode 4: Death Cults of Mars
Escaping from the doomed zeppelin, our heroes were stranded, along with Einstein's Brain and the Prussian Nightingale Eva Hauptmanvogel, in the red desert of Mars. I stole most of this episode from the old AD&D adventure Pharaoh. Mr. Immortal was infected with the RED MADNESS! and got his feet bitten off by a giant starfish. Don't worry, he's Mr. Immortal. They grew back.
(Why does the image of a Wagnerian opera singer-fat lady, Viking helmet, spear, blond pigtails-trudging across the red sands of Mars resonate so strongly with me? Is it from an old Warner Bros. cartoon or something?)
Our heroes found a downed flying saucer and befriended Uvanek, the bug-eyed Martian pilot within. He told them the FreeMartians were only trying to prevent the return of N'hee G'hee, the Old One-worshipping prophet from Planet X (aka Yuggoth) who enslaved the Martians millenia ago. But no sooner had this been explained than they were captured by a Martian Death Cult (just like in the title of the episode) and dragged off on their sand sleds to be sacrificed to the Great Face of N'hee G'hee (you know, that big face on Mars, the one NASA says doesn't exist).
Episode 5: The Nostrils of Doom
I love this. Lulu and Eva (both singers) foiled the Martian cultists who were about to sacrifice them by singing a high note and shattering their crystal daggers. A lot of this game was heavily railroaded, I admit, but this scene was absolutely unexpected by me. Kudos to Susan for thinking of it, and Michelle for running with it. Who put the opera back in space opera? Damn straight.
From there our heroes plunged into the Nostrils of N'hee G'hee (which looked strangely familiar—the face, that is, not just the nostrils), wherein they discovered the Lost Ark of Cydonia. You knew there had to be a Lost Ark, right? But it wasn't the "carry the pieces of the covenant" kind of ark, it was the "carry two kinds of each animal" kind of ark, a giant golden spaceship (a la Planetary #4) in which the Elder Race (which, it was revealed, were none other than those cosmic bad asses known as Homo Sapiens Sapiens—guess Von Daniken was half right after all) escaped the doomed Planet X before coming to Earth and enslaving Mars. Inside the Ark, our heroes found the cursed Tablets of Ubbo-Sathla, which not only told how to summon, uh, let's call it Cthugha (I know, Sandy Peterson would be spinning in his grave if he were dead, Mythos consistency be damned!), they also happen to be made of chunks of the exploded Planet X, which just happens to be the galaxy's only source of the dread Element X. Which, you may recall, is what the Nazis were after, way back in Episode 1.
Also, there was a tense Frodo-and-Sam-at-Mount-Doom moment when Nova and Immortal almost killed each other over what to do with the Tablets of Ubbo Sathla. Was it the mind warping powers of the Old Ones or just players getting punchy after too much Mountain Dew at the gaming table? You decide.
Episode 6: The Return of N'hee G'hee
Everything hit the fan. Martian cultists attacked. Nazis attacked. Mummified pairs of all the flora and fauna from Planet X attacked too. The US army attacked, led by General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Occupying Forces on Mars. Say, General MacArthur looks a lot like the big stone Face. Uh oh, it turns out MacArthur is the reincarnated Yuggothian Prophet N'hee G'hee, come to conquer Mars once again. MacArthur summoned Cthugha. Cthugha attacked.
Our heroes used the Element X to construct a crude "atomic" device and blew the Ark, Cthugha, and General MacArthur into so much irradiated Mars dust. For some reason the explosion returned water to the dying planet. And for some other reason the water healed everyone who was suffering from... the RED MADNESS. Hooray!
There was a very nice final scene in which John (playing Mr. Immortal) revealed that Immortal was so touched by the Martian struggle for freedom that he was reforming from his mercenary ways and joining the FreeMartians, a la Laurence of Arabia, in their continuing struggle against Earthly colonialism. Immortal and Uvanek walked off into the Martian sunset, trailing slime. (Well, only Uvanek was trailing slime.) Mr. Immortal: "Uvanek, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
...
Fun, fun game, railroading and all. My only real regrets are that I didn't get the players to the moon for a Casablanca rip-off, and that Galina never got to live her dream of hijacking a Martian War Machine. Ah well, that's what the sequel (RED MADNESS 2: THE LEMURIAN CANDIDATE) is for...
So here, for your time-wasting pleasure, is an all-in-one summary of [Insert your PC's name here] versus the RED MADNESS!, a gleeful little Adventure! romp I played about a year-and-a-half ago with Jess, Jere, John, Michelle, and Susan. It was set in an alternate 1963— 1963 as it might have been imagined in the sci-fi rocket pulps of, say, 1936, but with bits of the real 1963 occasionally poking through. The two World Wars were replaced by the two Wars of the Worlds (Wells' original and Welles' 1938 remake), leaving a dying Mars occupied by Allied Forces, and a Cold War between Hitler's monstrous Reich and a Gernsbackian Astounding Age USA. (If all this really gets you going I can dig up the history / background I wrote for the world [Edit: I did!] -- basically it's your standard Tesla-tech versus bug-eyed monster extravaganza.)
Our Heroes
They were: Captain Ben Nova (
jeregenest), a lantern-jawed pilot rocket pilot, the dashing and arrogant hero of the Space Patrol; Queen Andromeda (peaseblossom), the mysterious "white goddess" of the Venusian jungle, with her savage blue-skinned Venusian minions; John Smith, aka Mr. Immortal (editswlonghair), the hulking mercenary with a mysterious past who cares for nothing more than his next paycheck—or does he? Lulu L'Amour (Michelle), sultry blonde torch singer and gangster's moll, secretly the planet-hopping super spy Agent X-13; and Galina Vronski (Susan), a plucky "girl scientist," expert at reverse engineering Martian death rays, but hopeless in the arena of love. I couldn't have asked for better players, and they came up with a great bunch of pulp archetypes. If we ever play the sequel (and I do indeed have one in mind), I might encourage the players to embrace the alternate history gimmick and play a bunch of famous or fictional people in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vein. But the characters we had were great as is, and everyone got way into the scenery chewing spirit.
Episode 1: The Great Brain Robbery
We began at the Martian wing of the Metropolitan Museum in Astounding Age New York. A gala in honor of the venerable exoarchaeologist Dr. Henry Jones Jr. was thrown into turmoil by the attack of a Martian cultist (John dubbed the cult "Martian Freemasons" because of their 3-eyes-in-a-pyramid symbol; this transmuted to "the FreeMartians" somewhere along the way) who sought to prevent Jones from discovering the Lost Ark of Cydonia. Captain Nova and Mr. Immortal bested the tentacled, bug-eyed monstrosity, but not before Dr. Jones was struck down by a terrible malady... the RED MADNESS!
Meanwhile, Branch 9 secret agent Lulu L'Amour was called into action after the theft of Einstein's Brain, the top secret director of America's arms race against the Third Reich. Clearly the Nazis were after Einstein's research into the dread powers of "Element X." Lulu and Mr. Immortal tracked down the perpetrators: a sleazeball named Dick Nixon and his cronies, but this trail led them straight into the path of a giant radio-controlled King Kong cyborg with a 1930s-style cabinet radio for a head. You know the type.
Cameos by Norma Jean Baker (better known in our timeline as Marilyn Monroe) as Einstein's number two scientist (a funny rivalry developed between Einstein's two protegés, Galina and Norma Jean) and Erich von Daniken as Jones' crackpot rival (he believed the great monuments of Mars were built by ancient astronauts from Earth).
Episode 2: Sky Fortress Under Siege
Hot on the trail of Einstein's Brain, and desperate to cure Dr. Jones of the fearsome RED MADNESS!, our heroes did battle with the mighty Ro-Kong in a high-speed vertical chase up the mile-high New Empire State Building. Mr. Immortal lived up to his name after plunging down the 555-story elevator shaft. Lulu did her best Fay Wray imitation in Ro-Kong's clutches. Galina managed to subdue the beast by jamming the tango music that the Nazis were using to provoke its murderous rampage with soothing lullabies. But Nova's arch-nemesis, the diabolical Nazi rocket ace Nina Goering, escaped with Einstein's Brain. So our intrepid gang went undercover on a mighty German ether zeppelin as it set sail for Nazi-occupied Mars.
PS: Dick Nixon got stomped by the Ro-Kong.
Episode 3: Another Sky Fortress, Also Under Siege
Undercover aboard the great ether zeppelin, the Graf Von Zorbo, our heroes set sail for the red planet. This whole episode was a string of great cat fights waiting to happen, as torch singer Lulu L'Amour fell afoul of the Prussian diva Eva Hauptmanvogel (a Nazi version of Tintin's Bianca Castafiore), and Queen Andromeda clashed repeatedly with Nina Goering. Alas, no pulp girl on girl action, but all the built up tension was relieved at the end of the session when a fleet of Martian flying saucers attacked and destroyed the zeppelin.
Cameos by Sonderkommando H ("Hex Files") agents Mueller and Sculli. Oh, and the PCs found Einstein's Brain.
Best in-character line: Nina Goering and Queen Andromeda were having a "this blimp ain't big enough for two cruelly beautiful ice queens, sister!" staredown. Jess, playing the Venusian queen Andromeda, tells Goering she's clearly got a bad case of "Venus envy." Hee.
Best out-of-character line: The players, thinking all the bad guys are in cahoots, are taken aback when the Martians attack the Nazi zeppelin. "Oh no," I say. "The Martians and the Nazis hate each other." And Michelle chirps, totally straight-faced, "Just like in real life!"
Episode 4: Death Cults of Mars
Escaping from the doomed zeppelin, our heroes were stranded, along with Einstein's Brain and the Prussian Nightingale Eva Hauptmanvogel, in the red desert of Mars. I stole most of this episode from the old AD&D adventure Pharaoh. Mr. Immortal was infected with the RED MADNESS! and got his feet bitten off by a giant starfish. Don't worry, he's Mr. Immortal. They grew back.
(Why does the image of a Wagnerian opera singer-fat lady, Viking helmet, spear, blond pigtails-trudging across the red sands of Mars resonate so strongly with me? Is it from an old Warner Bros. cartoon or something?)
Our heroes found a downed flying saucer and befriended Uvanek, the bug-eyed Martian pilot within. He told them the FreeMartians were only trying to prevent the return of N'hee G'hee, the Old One-worshipping prophet from Planet X (aka Yuggoth) who enslaved the Martians millenia ago. But no sooner had this been explained than they were captured by a Martian Death Cult (just like in the title of the episode) and dragged off on their sand sleds to be sacrificed to the Great Face of N'hee G'hee (you know, that big face on Mars, the one NASA says doesn't exist).
Episode 5: The Nostrils of Doom
I love this. Lulu and Eva (both singers) foiled the Martian cultists who were about to sacrifice them by singing a high note and shattering their crystal daggers. A lot of this game was heavily railroaded, I admit, but this scene was absolutely unexpected by me. Kudos to Susan for thinking of it, and Michelle for running with it. Who put the opera back in space opera? Damn straight.
From there our heroes plunged into the Nostrils of N'hee G'hee (which looked strangely familiar—the face, that is, not just the nostrils), wherein they discovered the Lost Ark of Cydonia. You knew there had to be a Lost Ark, right? But it wasn't the "carry the pieces of the covenant" kind of ark, it was the "carry two kinds of each animal" kind of ark, a giant golden spaceship (a la Planetary #4) in which the Elder Race (which, it was revealed, were none other than those cosmic bad asses known as Homo Sapiens Sapiens—guess Von Daniken was half right after all) escaped the doomed Planet X before coming to Earth and enslaving Mars. Inside the Ark, our heroes found the cursed Tablets of Ubbo-Sathla, which not only told how to summon, uh, let's call it Cthugha (I know, Sandy Peterson would be spinning in his grave if he were dead, Mythos consistency be damned!), they also happen to be made of chunks of the exploded Planet X, which just happens to be the galaxy's only source of the dread Element X. Which, you may recall, is what the Nazis were after, way back in Episode 1.
Also, there was a tense Frodo-and-Sam-at-Mount-Doom moment when Nova and Immortal almost killed each other over what to do with the Tablets of Ubbo Sathla. Was it the mind warping powers of the Old Ones or just players getting punchy after too much Mountain Dew at the gaming table? You decide.
Episode 6: The Return of N'hee G'hee
Everything hit the fan. Martian cultists attacked. Nazis attacked. Mummified pairs of all the flora and fauna from Planet X attacked too. The US army attacked, led by General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Occupying Forces on Mars. Say, General MacArthur looks a lot like the big stone Face. Uh oh, it turns out MacArthur is the reincarnated Yuggothian Prophet N'hee G'hee, come to conquer Mars once again. MacArthur summoned Cthugha. Cthugha attacked.
Our heroes used the Element X to construct a crude "atomic" device and blew the Ark, Cthugha, and General MacArthur into so much irradiated Mars dust. For some reason the explosion returned water to the dying planet. And for some other reason the water healed everyone who was suffering from... the RED MADNESS. Hooray!
There was a very nice final scene in which John (playing Mr. Immortal) revealed that Immortal was so touched by the Martian struggle for freedom that he was reforming from his mercenary ways and joining the FreeMartians, a la Laurence of Arabia, in their continuing struggle against Earthly colonialism. Immortal and Uvanek walked off into the Martian sunset, trailing slime. (Well, only Uvanek was trailing slime.) Mr. Immortal: "Uvanek, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
...
Fun, fun game, railroading and all. My only real regrets are that I didn't get the players to the moon for a Casablanca rip-off, and that Galina never got to live her dream of hijacking a Martian War Machine. Ah well, that's what the sequel (RED MADNESS 2: THE LEMURIAN CANDIDATE) is for...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-05-28 07:17 am (UTC)Also, there was a tense Frodo-and-Sam-at-Mount-Doom moment when Nova and Immortal almost killed each other over what to do with the Tablets of Ubbo Sathla. Was it the mind warping powers of the Old Ones or just players getting punchy after too much Mountain Dew at the gaming table? You decide.
---
Huh. I don't remember this at all... But I assure you the white bread fly-boy must have started it. Lilly-ass do-gooder. ;)
Lemurian Candidate? Bring it on! :)
no subject
Date: 2003-05-28 08:32 am (UTC)Bastard. I wish I had succeeded in blasting you.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-28 08:52 am (UTC)Hopefully one day we will meet again on the field of battle-- the Shining Desert beyond Syrtis Major perhaps?-- and we will bring this to a resolution, you damned boy scout.
Long live the Martian Revolution! Cast off the Imperialist yoke! Raise the Tri-Eyed Triangle on high and sing a song a freedom boys!