The Murder Maze of the Soska Sisters

I ran PLANET MOTHERFUCKER last Friday, devising a quickie adventure that is basically a love-letter to the Soska Sisters. I think I did a good job capturing the cackle they used on Hellevator.

The Characters

Runa Ravensbane, Church Burner who poses as a Scandinavian black metaller, but is secretly Sicilian

The Leather Corinthian, Living Dead Hustler, who is like Lux Interior if he were "Sears Catalogue Decadent"

Dr. MK ULTRA, Doctor Feelsbad, a walking drug lab who has trouble pushing his Purple Haze

Y3N, Unnatural Symbiote with a big toothy worm inside of them

Sault Voi Vittu, Vermin Lord from the Upper Peninsula with an army of frogs

Events

The motherfuckers were all rollin' down the road when they heard this ad spot come on the radio:

Tonight, one night only, at the STRIKEZONE!, Tomahawk Johnny & the Savages (cut to a track that sounds like a cross between Link Wray and Ennio Morricone). Come on down to the STRIKEZONE! To hear the thrilling Tomahawk Johnny & the Savages. And that’s not all at the STRIKEZONE! We’ve got jalapeno poppers and two-dollar shooters all night long. Only at the STRIKEZONE! That’s the STRIKE ZONE!, exit 10 off route 81. 

Since you don't pass up the opportunity to see Tomahawk Johnny & the Savages, they pulled in to the STRIKEZONE! The STRIKEZONE! was a sports bar decorated in wall to wall baseball memorabilia (posters, baseball cards, signed balls & bats, jerseys, shit like that); the seats of the stools were upholstered to look like baseballs and CRTS mounted around the bar were playing VHS tapes of old World Series games. However, the stage was conspicuously empty and the crowd was growing restless.

The group were approached by SLUGGER, an older, paunchy man chewing Big League Chew who used a dented aluminum bat as a cane. SLUGGER was the owner of the STRIKEZONE! and he had a problem; he approached the group explained:

"Huddle up with me in the clubhouse. We got us a problem. It’s the bottom of the ninth, bases are loaded, and we can’t find the MVPs. Tomahawk Johnny & the Savages shoulda been here by now! They shoulda done a soundcheck an hour ago.  Look at those bleachers. The fans are getting restless. Now, you folks look like just the All Stars we need to step up and find Tomahawk Johnny and the boys, bring em here, and win this one for the Gipper! Whatdaya say? There’s a signing bonus for ya if you can hit this one out of the park!"

The motherfuckers agreed to find the band and bring Tomahawk Johnny & the Savages back to the STRIKEZONE! in return for cash, free shots, and free jalapeno poppers.

The group decided to head back out on the road in the direction the band would have been coming from. They discovered the band's 70s Dodge Tradesmen veered off the side of the road in a ditch. There was no sign of a struggle, but from the tracks it did look like someone laid a trap that forced the van to skid into the ditch. Inside the van, they found a bucket of turkey legs from Madame Turkeyleg’s House of "Bird Meat." The art on the bucket showed a cartoon turkey in a Marie Antoinette wig having its leg cut off in a guillotine. The also found a crumpled up piece of paper with a phone number written on it: 867-5309.

The group decided to look for a payphone to try the number, and it turned out that the nearest one was outside Madame Turkeyleg's House of "Bird Meat." Dr. MK ULTRA called the number, and got an angry guy on the line who said, "You lookin’ for Jenny? Then you’re looking for trouble! I’ll kick your ass, man!"

Inside, one of the two pimply teenage boys working at the joint was mopping blood off the tile floor while the other waited to take orders behind the counter. Both kids were dressed as French revolutionaries, as that was the company uniform at Madame Turkeyleg's. The boys confirmed that the band had stopped in to buy a bucket of turkey legs and use the restroom. The restroom was searched for clues, and the motherfuckers found a fanny pack that a band member had left behind. Inside the found condoms, a baggy of weed, and a receipt for gassing up the van.

However, before they could ask the kids working the counter for directions to the gas station, Madame Turkeyleg's was attacked by a roving gang of French aristocrats, complete with powdered wigs and stupid makeup. Both of the teenage employees were wasted by gunfire, but the motherfuckers fought back. Runa exploded a bunch of their heads and they rest were dealt with in a similarly violent fashion.

After the carnage, they found the gas station. Inside were two identical twin sisters, dressed a bit like horror hostesses. When the motherfuckers asked a few too many probing questions, one of the sisters pulled a lever behind the counter that caused the floor to open like a trapdoor, dumping the group down into the depths below. The chamber they fell into was filled with machine-generated fog. They also noticed that there were video cameras mounted toward the ceiling, documenting their every movie.

The horrible truth: the gas station owners were the Soska Sisters. They had constructed a murder maze beneath the gas station and were luring victims into it so they could tape what happened to them as a way of recreating their glory days of Hellevator! And now the motherfuckers were caught in their tangled web! Fuckin' shit!

Following a strange orange glow brought them through a doorway done up to look like a giant demonic mouth. Inside were two doors: they could choose to enter The Lair of the Boiler Room Bastard or The Camp Minnetonka Massacre. The Soska Sisters provided commentary over the murder maze's PA system--which the mofos found extremely annoying. 

Anyway, they opted for the Camp Minnetonka Massacre. As they entered, the Soska Sisters narrated "Witness the horrors of the Camp Minnetonka Massacre, a Christian summer camp where the uptight counselors were picked off one by one by a masked killer before their season even began! Be careful if you meet the Minnetonka Mauler–there’s a dreadful secret behind the killer’s mask! Ahahahaha!" over the PA. Inside a sleepaway camp cabin, the motherfuckers interrupted a robot dressed like a masked killer in the act of butchering a topless nubile. In the fight that ensued, they downed the killer, but in true slasher fashion it got up and attacked them again when they took their eyes off it for a sec. On the plus side, they found Billy, the bass player for the Savages, hiding in a canoe.

The next room they chose to tackle was The Gunderson House, a Texas Chain Saw-style hellbilly hangout. The voiceover: "The Gunderson’s never let a guest go hungry–even if it meant feeding them their own friends and family. There’s something piping hot in the oven, better eat up before the Gunderson’s come in. They like to see a clean plate! Ahahahahaha!" Inside the house, they were confronted with an oven full of meat pies of dubious provenance. They ate them, and survived to tell the tale!

Next, they choose to enter a scenario called The Dark Angel of Riverside Hospital: "Riverside Hospital–people were sent there to get well, but many of them GOT DEAD instead! Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease! They never did find out which nurse was offing the patients. Ahahahahahaha!" This one was pretty simple: they brawled their way through hospital corridors full of murder nurses in American Mary aprons and did their best to avoid their bone saws. Y3N did get stabbed up at the door leading out, though.

They found the rest of the bandmates tied up in a storage closet. Annoyingly, the band saw Billy as their savior, giving the mofos no credit. Ingrates! Everyone exited through the murder maze's gift shop, which sold action figures of the animatronic killers they encountered and t-shirts that said "I survived the Soska Sister's Murder Maze and All I Got Was this Stupid T-Shirt." By this point, they badly wanted to tangle with the sisters, but they discovered that they had run off with the tapes of the motherfuckers' trek through the maze.

Even worse: they had stolen Dr. MK ULTRA's car. And since the doctor had a woman's corpse in the boot, the Soska Sisters were now in possession of a DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK.

Death at the Drive In

Once I got back from vacation, I put the call out on my Discord that I could run a PLANET MOTHERFUCKER adventure if anybody was interested. I got a bunch of interested replies, so one afternoon in a Taco Bell I sketched out an adventure and then ran it later that night. You may note a heavy dose of inspiration from Joe R. Lansdale's The Drive In, which I had just finished reading. Anyway, if you want this kind of fun in your life, head on over to the Dolorous Exhumation Press site and pick up a copy of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER.

Here's what went down in our game:

The Characters

Runa Ravensbane, heavily tattooed metal babe (Church Burner)

Remington Chadsworth IV, a goon from a long line of goons (Face-Breaking Goon)

Chet, a vampire who looks suspiciously like the Naked Cowboy (Living Dead Hustler)

Fat Elvis, exactly what he sounds like; has a feral child companion named Marsha Marsha Marsha (Wastelander)

Events

After their experience in Spaghettysburg, the motherfuckers were heading southwest in the General Lee. Along the way, they lost Dr MK Ultra, Toffy Jones, and Juice Pouch, but they picked up a hitchhiking Remington Chadsworth IV. They were doing fine on fuel for the car, but finding food was becoming an issue. But then they saw a sign for Cosmic Al's Far Out Drive In. Figuring that a drive-in theater would at least have a concession stand, they decided to pull off the highway in search of some grub.

A fat guy wearing a shirt decorated with rocket ships and planets, and wearing an alien Halloween mask over his face, was sitting by the entrance gate reading a sci-fi paperback titled Samson of Mars. He turned out to be Cosmic Al. He informed them that the drive in had three screens; one was running Prom Night, another The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the third...Bambi. They paid for tickets and decided to drive up to the screen that Prom Night would be playing on. (Runa was disappointed that it wasn't Prom Night II.)

There were already some cars parked in the lot facing the screen for Prom Night: there was a Miami Vice-lookin' douchebag talking on his car phone in a yellow Porche, two unoccupied pink Vespa scooters, a guy in a cowboy hat smoking a Lucky Strike in front of a beat-up truck (the nametag on his gas station shirt read "Corncob"), and a van with a big circle A on the side with loud, shitty punk rock coming out of it. 

The motherfuckers parked and made their way to the concession stand, where a teenage girl in a plastic "Indian Princess" Halloween mask was taking the orders of two bikini babes. When it was their turn, the motherfuckers loaded up on hamburgers, hotdogs, popcorn, and sodas. They started to eat back at the General Lee and the trailers began playing before the feature. 

Just then one of the bikini girls cried out "What's that!" and pointed to the sky. Everybody saw a big flaming rock streak through the sky and begin hovering above the drive in. It even popped open some eyes and a mouth and started laughing maniacally! As it streaked off, a wall of strange, hazy smoke rose from the ground, encircling the drive in. The motherfuckers jumped in the General Lee, hoping to find clear passage back at the gate, but no dice--the smoke had them walled in.

The motherfuckers drove back up to the concession stand where they found everybody near the edge of panic. (The punk rockers had even left their van; Fat Elvis nicknamed them "Sid and Acne.") The big flaming rock returned. Most folks kept their cool, but a few people lost their shit. The guy in the Miami Vice-lookin' suit got in Chet's face, blaming the group for the comet-thing's appearance since they were clearly "weirdos." Chet responded by ripping his finger off. He ran away, his mangled hand spouting blood. Sid and Acne decided to try to drive through the smoke in their van. Everyone present heard the result: the sound of the van's metal body being peeled open like a tin can, and then screams of agony.

The motherfuckers decided it was high time to interrogate Cosmic Al about the nature of his business here. They first questioned Shoshana, the girl in the Indian Princess mask, but she didn't tell them much. She thought that Cosmic Al was just an incompetent nerd who was too into sci-fi shit. They also paid her to take her mask off to prove that there was nothing weird going on underneath, but she was just a teen girl. She explained that the masks were simply "part of the uniform" for working at Cosmic Al's.

She did, however, point them to a small cinderblock building that served as Cosmic Al's "box office." The door to the box office was locked, and through the window they could see that the walls were covered with gore horror, grindhouse, and exploitation movie posters--but Cosmic Al was nowhere to be seen. Remington smashed the window with his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat, and Marsha Marsha Marsha, Fat Elvis's feral child sidekick, jumped inside to scout out the situation. A voice from under the desk told them to go away; Cosmic Al was cowering in fear. In fact, Cosmic Al had pissed himself in terror and asked them to go to the other concession stand, get an American flag from in back, and bring it to him so he could fashion it into a makeshift diaper.

On the way to the other concession stand, the group decided to check out who was gathered in the lot in front of the Bambi screening. One vehicle was occupied by a newlywed couple who were busy getting busy in the backseat. They were entirely unaware that they were trapped in the drive in. The other vehicle in the lot was a van with JESUS SAVES painted on the side. Taking offence to this blatant display of Christianity, Runa slashed the van's tires. The family's patriarch saw what she had done and slapped Runa across the face. At this point a horrific and murderous brawl broke out.

The mother ran to the van to get a shotgun, but Remington smashed her up pretty badly with his baseball bat; the woman fled, terrified by the gore that clung to Remington's instrument of death. The children, who were all blonde-haired little Village of the Damned-lookin' gremlins, swarmed Chet and were biting the shit out of him. Fat Elvis looked on in horror, unwilling to take part in this particular atrocity. Runa squared off against the family's father, unsheathing her ritual dagger and stabbing the man several times. 

Heavily wounded, the man tried to make a run for a weird hill the motherfuckers had noticed earlier. Runa climbed the hill after him and managed to stab him in the back. She noticed that it felt like her dagger hit something hard as it exited his body. She flipped him over and started digging into the hill. She discovered that underneath the soil were human bones and what looked to be Native American artifacts. The drive in had been built on ancient Indian burial ground!!!

At the other concession stand, they found a teen wearing a werewolf mask manning the register. They explained Cosmic Al's situation and got the soon-to-be-defiled Old Glory that Al requested. And then, the flaming rock creature reappeared! The sky cracked with thunder and lightning. A bolt struck the kid in the wolfman mask; he leapt out of the concession stand, ripped his werewolf mask off, and revealed that he had been transformed into an actual werewolf!

The motherfuckers made a run for it toward the other concession stand. Corncob was there, and he drew a knife from his cowboy boot. Soshanna looked...distinctly calm about the whole situation. The two bikini girls freaked out and began to argue about whether this was all God's judgment or the work of the Devil. Eventually, the blonde bikini girl knocked the redhead to the ground and tore out her throat with her teeth. Meanwhile, the motherfuckers were joined by Corncob in fighting off the werewolf. The wolfman knocked Fat Elvis prone, then leapt fangs-first at Remington--but the motherfuckers were eventually triumphant. 

In the conversation that followed with Shoshana, the group learned that she knew all along that Cosmic Al had built the drive in atop sacred Native burial grounds. In fact, that's why she took the job at the drive in--all of this was her doing! She was of Native descent herself and had conjured the meteor thing to trap everyone at the movies, to be killed off one by one, as a way of reclaiming the land. Now that the jig was up, she pulled out a tomahawk and prepared to kill the motherfuckers.

Now, the motherfuckers are generally bad people. I mean, they killed a family with very little provocation like half an hour ago. But they drew the line at racism and defiling Native lands. They were especially offended that Cosmic Al had made his only Native employee wear an Indian Princess mask. They explained this to Shoshana, and her position toward them softened. As long as they weren't going to try to stop her, she offered to tell them about a way out of the drive in. She told them to go into the walk-in freezer in the concession stand, move aside the box of Otter Pops, enter the tunnel beneath and follow it to exit the drive in via an underground passage. 

Before they left, they got to see the meteor-thing conjure Leatherface from the screen showing Texas Chain Saw Massacre and watch as Leatherface murdered Cosmic Al. Everyone else was left to death at the hands of Shoshana. Fat Elvis considered not leaving the drive in, but eventually gave in. He probably realized someone other than the rest of the group should be in charge of raising Marsha Marsha Marsha.

The group hid out for a few days, then returned to the drive in once the smoke surrounding it had dispersed. Everyone was dead and Shoshana was gone. They reclaimed the General Lee and looted the remaining cars, netting a bunch of cash, a lucky rabbit's foot, a workout book written by Charles Atlas, a big box of extra-splintery chopsticks, and a box of limited edition Jim Jones Kool-Aid.

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER PDF-Only Edition Now Available!

Now that PLANET MOTHERFUCKER has sold through most of the initial print run, I'm putting up the pdf for sale on its lonesome. Roll up and get a copy! This should make life easier for people who want a copy, but found it too expensive to ship it to ya wherever you call home. It's also a boon for you digital-only cheapskates. 

Just kiddin', I love each and every one of you.

There are still copies of the printed zine available, and frankly they're a better deal because I like making physical things. You can still grab it here, while supplies last and all that.

What's next for PLANET MOTHERFUCKER? I've got two supplements done in draft form, so when those get their chrome polished I'll put them out too. More horrible shit for your horrible games!

After the Thunderkiss

As promised in a prior post, I'm going to give you a wastelander's tour of America in the world of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER. If you like the sound of this shithole, buy a copy of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER today! Seriously, if you've been thinking about it you should know that postage rates are getting hiked by the post office in a few weeks and I'm down to about twenty copies left.

Anyway:

After the Thunderkiss

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how the game works, I want to tell you about the shithole where this all goes down: the weird wasteland of post-Thunderkiss America. 

Puritania

New England is now a theocracy ruled by religious zealots with funny black hats and buckle shoes. The capital of the theocracy is New Salem, where the Court of Oyster and Terminator governs. Covens of satanic, folk horror witches live in the deep woods surrounding Puritania’s cities, villages, and towns—they fight against the oppressive regime of the Puritanians with hellfire, sorcery, and old-fashioned witchy know-how. 

New Amsterdamned

Like a syphilitic phoenix rising from the ashes of a meth lab fire, NYC has been reborn as New Amsterdamned. New Amsterdamned is governed by a coterie of vampires led by the vile nosferatu known as Rudy Ghouliani. The ruling class of vampires largely concern themselves with siphoning blood and taxes out of the city’s still-living populace. They certainly do nothing to curb the violence and gang warfare that dominates the streets of New Amsterdamned. Hell, they don’t even keep the streets paved.

The Dirty South

Southern culture truly is on the skids, my friend. In the former Southern US, the wealthy have sequestered themselves away in old plantation houses that have been turned into fortified compounds. In the backwoods, inbred hellbillies hunt their fellow human beings and feast on their succulent flesh! 

If you want to start a rumble in the Dirty South, loudly proclaim that another region’s BBQ sauce is better than the sauce made where you’re currently standing.

Swamplandia

The Florida panhandle is now a feral wetlands known as Swamplandia. You know those lizard people that David Icke is always talking about? The ones who wear human guises and secretly rule the world? Well, they actually do rule Swamplandia. They got mosquitoes the size of horses down there, I swear.

Gnawlins

Go west across the Gulf of Mexico and you hit the City of Gnawlins. Surrounded by bayous filled with mutant alligators, Gnawlins is the domain of voodoo queens, Cajuns, and frilly-shirt wearin’ goth vampires with names like Lestat and Maurice. 

Tex-Arcana

A little further west and you hit the territory of Tex-Arcana, where spell-slinging cowboys patrol the wild frontier and protect the interests of oil barons, bullet barons, and beer barons. Ten gallon hats, tin badges, spurs and chaps, the works. All my exes cast hexes in Texas—that’s why I hang my hat in Tennessee.

Flypaper Country

As a setting, PLANET MOTHERFUCKER takes the same view as its author toward the middle of the country: who gives a shit? It’s probably a wasteland filled with warring barbarians tribes, cornfed dames, or raging Karen drag-racing soccer vans or something. Maybe the Midwest is infested with zombies, but then again, if it was—would we be able to tell the difference? 

Destroit

Okay, one thing about the Midwest worth mentioning: although it’s basically hell on earth, a Rustbelt nightmare, and generally post-apocalyptic, the city of Destroit is still the place to go to get auto parts or a sweetnew ride. Nobody does it better than Destroit. You know all those factories in movies like Terminator that are just filled with open pits of fire and molten slag? Yeah, Destroit is like that.

Sin City

Once known as Las Vegas, Sin City remains a hotbed of vice and depravity. Play the slots, wake up with a raging hangover, and pawn everything you own of value at one of the many rip-off joints on the Strip. Visit a brothel, wake up missing a kidney. See a show, wake up puking your guts out after gorging at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Beneath the glitz, glam, and neon beats the black heart of American capitalism: feed your desires, try to beat the odds, and have nothing to show for it in the end. 

Pornheim

The city formerly known as Los Angeles is now Pornheim, a bastion of the skin flick industry. The city is governed by a council of “adult entertainers” and their shithead, narcissistic hangers-on. Everything is showbiz and exploitation out there, but underneath the Teflon coating of tan skin and blindingly white smiles lurks some really dark shit. Hell, the people of Pornheim are so medically modified they practically count as cyborgs.

San Freakcisco Bay Area

The San Freakcisco Bay Area is a hot spot of scientific innovation. If an outbreak of technological horrors—murderous robots, a man-made plague, or AI cars out to run down pedestrians—were to occur, dollars to donuts that some pencil-necked geek in the SFBA is to blame for it. The City of San Freakcisco is also a party town, rich in rainbow pageantry. Slay, Queen!

The Militialands

Washington and Oregon are now heavily forested—the primeval woods seems to have erupted to reclaim the land from the trespasses of human civilization. The Militialands have earned their name because the area is dotted with strongholds belonging to militias, paramilitary groups, and extremist cults. They’d be a real danger to the world at large if they could stop fighting against each other in endless bouts of zero-sum warfare, but these well-armed morons are too stupid to get their shit together.

The Monster isles

The volcanoes of Hawaii have erupted, awakening long-slumbering kaiju who now roam the islands and do battle with each other. Daredevils continue to brave the obvious dangers of the Monster Isles just for the chance to catch the perfect wave. Surf’s up, dude!

North, South, and the Rest of the World

The frozen northern realm of Canadia is home to wendigo, moose-riding Mounties, ambulatory poutine, and the underground trade in maple syrup.

Past the southern border, you’ve got luchadors battling drug cartels, donkey shows, and desperate folks who worship Santa Muerte. ¡Ay, caramba!

As for the world at large? Beats me. Make up something cool if it comes up in your game.

The Battle of Spaghettysburg

I ran a game of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER last Friday. You know what I love about this game? I've never gotten as much laughter out of any other game. And it's not just my stupid gags that hit; everybody gets into the big dumb mood of the thing and shit just gets ridiculous. Love it.

Want to have this kind of fun? Buy a copy of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER today!

Here's what went down in our game:

The Characters

Runa Ravensbane, heavily tattooed metal babe (Church Burner)

Dr. MK Ultra, rogue physician prone to experimenting on himself (Doctor Feelbad)

Chet, a vampire who looks suspiciously like the Naked Cowboy (Living Dead Hustler)

Fat Elvis, exactly what he sounds like; has a feral child companion named Marsha Marsha Marsha (Wastelander)

Events

The character were all down on their luck, working at a crappy Civil War-themed Italian restaurant named Spaghettysburg. Spaghettysburg was located within the walls of Civil War World, a theme part filled with animatronics dubiously re-enacting the events of the American Civil War. Runa was working as a line cook, surrounded by pots of simmering sauce. Chet was the dishwasher, stacking plates. Dr. MK Ultra stood behind the bar, wiping down glasses. Fat Elvis was stationed as the bathroom attendant, replacing urinal cakes. Marsha Marsha Marsha was the waitress--an egregious violation of child labor laws.

And then the lights went out.

Plunged into darkness, the group could hear gunfire and the screams of theme park guests. Chet peeked his head out of the front door and confirmed everyone's worst fear: the Confederate and Union robots had gone berserk and were executing everyone at Civil War World!

(While the lights were out, Fat Elvis emptied the till of cash, Dr MK stole a bunch of booze and cleaning supplies, and Runa grabbed a bottle of Finlandia vodka.)

The group decided that Spaghettysburg was no longer safe, so they got a move on to try to find a way out of Civil War World. They decided to exit the restaurant out the back. They saw two robots, one Union soldier and one Confederate, moving toward them. They attempted to sneak behind a shooting gallery, but Dr MK Ultra was spotted and the robots opened fire with their rifles. Fat Elvis nailed one with his submachine gun and Runa let lose a scream that exploded the head of the other.

While fighting the "robots" the group noticed a strange thing: despite being told that the animatronics were just lifelike, state of the art robots, they bled when wounded. Chet tasted their blood; as a vampire he could tell that it was genuine human blood, but not fresh. They put two and two together and realized that the park was using corpses as the basis for its "robot reenactors"!

Continuing to sneak behind buildings to find a way out, they next encountered the ominously titled Andersonville Prison Petting Zoo. Expecting that there were animals in need of setting free inside the petting zoo, the group entered...and saw some truly horrifying things. In this park exhibit, the meat-based robots were behind bars and being used to illustrate the horrors of Civil War era prisons; some had dysentery, some had typhoid fever, and all were desperate and starving. Although the "exhibits" pleaded to be set free, the group determined that they couldn't be trusted. Instead, they put them all out of their misery and left.

There was some loot dropped by fleeing visitors in the prison at least: a backpack full of Homies, a couple bucks, and an unused pregnancy test.

As they crept around the back of the park, the group saw that the roller coaster was still operating...all of the cars were full of dead people, except one fat kid who was busy vomiting on himself. The group took pity on him and shut the roller coaster down. They cleaned him up and renamed him Juice Pouch. He was happy to take the new name as his parents had named him Dickbert, so this was a step up in his opinion.

While they were dealing with Juice Pouch, the group were accosted by a gaggle of meat-robot Southern belles. Chet turned on the Southern Charm and talked them into going to wait for him by the Assassination of President Lincoln exhibit.

With the belles out of the way, the group made a bee-line for the General Lee exhibit, not sure if it was going to be about the soldier or the car. Thankfully, the car was on display. Chet slid into the driver's seat and everyone else piled in. No keys! But flipping down the visor revealed 'em. The group began to burn rubber toward the main entrance and ticket-taking booths, planning to ram their way to freedom. 

However, as they sped past several exhibits, they saw a young woman with an afro pinned down behind the counter of a souvenir shop as Union and Confederate soldiers fired on her. Unwilling to leave her to die, Chet pulled a quick U-turn. The back end of the General Lee clipped a costume depot, sending bits and bobs cascading out of the building. Chet rammed the meat-robot soldiers, mowing them down handily, while Fat Elvis fired his submachine gun.

Now safe, the woman in the gift shop introduced herself as Toffy. Chet insisted that Juice Pouch and Marsha Marsha Marsha get to pick out souvenirs from the ruins of the gift shop. A couple of the others grabbed kitschy t-shirts as well. Toffy pointed out that a meat-robot with a sniper rifle had just exited the Assassination of President Lincoln exhibit. This robot stuck out like a sore thumb: instead of wearing historical attire, he was dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans. The group realized that this meat-robot was made up to look like Lee Harvey Oswald because whoever was in charge of the assassination exhibit had confused him with John Wilkes Booth. 

Three-part names, both presidential assassins...easy enough mistake, right? Anyway, Lee Harvey Oswald assumed a shooting stance, yelled "Sic semper tyrannis!," and opened fire. 

Chaos ensued! Dr MK Ultra used the cleaning supplies and booze he had stolen from Spaghettysburg to craft some Molotov cocktails. Runa began screaming an ear-piercing Valkyrie wail o' death. Unfortunately, the Lee Harvey bot was soon joined by the Southern belles, who had grown bored of waiting for Chet. One of the belles dealt Runa a vicious blow with her parasol, so she switched to her ritual dagger and began carving up Lady Antebellum. Dr MK Ultra's Molotovs were doing work, lighting up belles left and right. Ultimately, Lee Harvey was put down with a combination of machine gun fire and lead pipe to the head.

When the dust settled, Fat Elvis examined the costumes that had spilled out of the annex and found a Kool-Aid Man suit. Putting it on, he was filled with confidence that he could now burst through any wall. Fat Elvis ran full tilt at the park's iron gate and managed to break on through to the other side. Everyone else plowed through the hole in the General Lee, ecstatic to escape from Civil War World at last.

PMF May Contain Horribly Sexist Phrases like "Sorority Babes" and "Cat Women"

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER ruffled some feathers over on the official MORK BORG discord. Don't get me wrong, I also got to talk to some cool people over there too, but I seemed to strike a nerve with a few scolds who really needed to let me know that the game is bad and wrong. 

PMF has a history of rustling jimmies. A writer at Bleeding Cool got some heat from their editor when they did an article on it years ago. Someone else was asked to change the name to PLANET MELONFARMER when they ran it at a convention. Aaron Zirkelbach, editor on an edition of Swords & Wizardry, wrote me an email comparing the first edition of PMF to a shit he took, but declined to let me post the content of his message on my blog because he was afraid of how people would react if they could see his behavior firsthand. 

This time the kerfuffle started when I posted the following work in progress: a random table for generating a b movie title that would also serve as the inspiration for writing a PLANET MOTHERFUCKER adventure:

A few things on this table were objected to by a handful of denizens of the MORK BORG discord: "Sorority Babes" was judged to be a horribly sexist phrase, as was "Cat Women" (???). "Of the SS" caused offence. I was informed that "old" works, such as b movies and Big Trouble in Little China, were inherently "problematic." 

The grumpiest objector provided some "helpful" revision suggestions:

Anonymized because I don't support harassment or dogpiling even if someone is being a rube. People who have a problem with me never seem to do this.

I have a couple notes on the above:

1) "Just to give you food for thought" is an amazing dork-ass version of "I'd like to speak to the manager." I used to think letting this stuff roll off my back was the way to go, but we're living in an era where someone with a grudge got C. Derick Miller fired from his job for writing a "gross" novel, people tried to paint Gretchen Felker-Martin as a criminal over Manhunt, and somebody called Andrew F. Sullivan an "eco-fascist" due to the ecological themes in his latest novel. And I won't ever forget what "concerned citizens" did to Isabel Fall. Now it feels like you have to push back against all the little self-appointed moral guardians, even in extremely minor cases like this one.

2) Each of those suggested changes fuckin' blows. Absolute dogshit, baby-brained stuff. Trade the flavorful "Sorority Babes" for the vanilla-ass "Cultists"? You've got to be kidding me. Look to WotC or Paizo if you want pure milquetoast. 

Also, what's up with changing "Of the SS"? Clearly "Of the SS" is meant to describe the bad guys of the scenario--if you think we should never depict real-world villainy, I don't know what to tell you. Inglorious Basterds is worth seeing just to watch fascists die horribly. Fuck Nazis. I can't be any more clear than that.

3) I'm fine with the game not being for everyone, but come on, PMF does not hide what it brings to the table. The game has the word "Motherfucker" in the title. The cover has a woman in a bikini straddling a fuckin' missile. PLANET MOFO does not engage in subterfuge or subtly. 

The thing that surprised me is that this pushback was coming from a segment of the MORK BORG community, but as a friend pointed out, it shouldn't have. As she noted, despite the elements of grimdark misery and pretenses to brutal violence, MORK BORG does seem a little "smooth down there," if you know what she means. It's all Thanatos, no Eros. 

The attitude looks like this: Violence? Yes. Depicting a misery-laden apocalypse? A-OK. Drugs and Satan? Sure. Alluding to sex as either the intimate act or biology? Hold up, you can't do that! I'm not even talking about role-playing sex scenes--do what you want at your own table, I'd rather not with my pals, and PMF doesn't ask you to do this--I'm talking about the game noticing that sex is a thing that exists and has a ton of cultural baggage attached to it.

It's a stance I see a lot of nerds adopt these days. Ironically, despite the blasphemy that MORK BORG often revels in, some of the game's fans assume a stance that is essentially and deeply Protestant. By which I mean: ambivalent about depictions of violence, horrified by any mention of sexuality, full of hypocritical pieties, giddy at the prospect of castigating others, and steadfast in the belief that their preferences carry moral weight.

While this handful of pearl-clutching fellas (and they all appear to be guys, according to their bios) perform their sensitivity to each other for approving reaction emotes and generally speak for women instead of to them, I'm over here busy packaging up copies of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER to send to the women who bought the thing. 

Food for thought, innit?

To state things bluntly: PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is an exaggeration of all the weird violent and libidinal shit that lurks in the dank bargain basement of the American Dream. It's a tongue-in-cheek critique through the lens of b movies, trash culture, shlock, and outrageousness. It's a fun excuse to gather at the gaming table with people who aren't shitheads and get loose with the dark side of America's atomic levels of ridiculousness. Uptight Good Boys are less likely to get that because part of what the game has in its crosshairs is them. 

Find out what all the fuss is about: buy a copy of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER today! This is a game by and for sickos. Squares and goons need not apply.

Shticky Fingers

Now that PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is out, I can talk a bit about some of the design choices I made with it. This post is going to be about the game's "Shticks"--basically the available character classes in PLANET MOTHERFUCKER.

The PMF zine presents seven Shticks. I've copy-pasted the flavor text from the zine in italics, then followed it with a commentary chaser. Here's mud in your eye.

CHURCH BURNER

You are a heathen devotee of extreme metal, empowered by the Metal Gods to go forth and wreak havoc on this blighted world.

Church Burners are basically the bards of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER, but true to the game's ethos they aren't about bolstering their friends by singing songs of great triumphs. Instead, they're extreme metal fanatics who bring extremely bad vibes.

FACE-BREAKING GOON

You are a brute shaped by a lifetime of downtrodden struggle, bad luck, and hard times. Everything looks like a nail to you because you are a human-shaped hammer.

Face-Breaking Goons are designed to be simple to play; if "fighter" is the default choice in D&D, Face-Breaking Goons fill that role in PLANET MOTHERFUCKER. When you play a Face-Breaking Goon, your gameplan is pretty straightforward: approach every problem as something that can be solved with violence. It'll probably work.

HELLFIRE PREACHER

Whether a born-again holy roller, a gun-toting nun delivering fire-and-brimstone sermons, or an apocalyptic cultist, you have been chosen to spread the “Bad News” of what’s to come.

Hellfire Preachers resemble PLANET MOTHERFUCKER's clerics, but they aren't relegated to the "healer" role by design. Since your starting ability is determined randomly, your Hellfire Preacher might having some divine healing, but you're just as likely to get kick-ass martial arts depending on how the dice land.

LIVING DEAD HUSTLER

You used to be alive, then you were dead, now you’re somewhere in-between. You might be a zombie prostitute, a ghoulboy stripper, a Frankenhooker, or a vampire go-go dancer.

Living Dead Hustlers are built for resilience. Being undead has some perks; you're probably really hard to put back in the grave. One of the neat things in some of their abilities is the temptation to court death because you get some bonuses when your "hit points" aren't topped off.

SATANIC WITCH

You have made a pact with Satan and have been granted the eldritch secrets of the blackest magic. Hail, Satan!

Satanic Witches are the wizards and warlocks of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER, but their shit isn't all tied to spells spells spells. And, of course, their abilities are explicitly black magic--no "white" witchery here, my friend. This was the Shtick I probably had the most fun working on.

SCUMBAG

You are a thief, a sneak, a liar, and a cheat. And probably worse, if you were honest with yourself about how big a scumbag you are. But you’ve never been honest with nobody. So why start now?

Fuck your noble rogue with a heart of gold! Scumbags are what rpg rogues should be: morally compromised dirtbags on the make. Imagine if Han Solo had a meth problem and never came back to help the Alliance and you're on the right track with these shitbirds.

WASTELANDER

You are a road warrior, an amazonian barbarian, a badlands marauder, a high plains grifter, a monster hunter, or some other kind of shithead who travels the wastes looking for trouble.

Wastelanders are closest to D&D's rangers, I guess, but they're actually fun to play. Lots of unique shit in their abilities list: bitchin' motorcycle, feral kid sidekick, big fuckin' shotgun, etc. There's even a bit of Conan baked in as a possibility if the dice decide to hand you a big freakin' sword. This shtick probably has the widest range of interpretations.

Sound good? Buy a copy of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER and let the good times roll. I've got less than half the print run left, so don't be a slow-ass about it.

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is Out Now!

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is now out as a complete game in zine form from my Big Cartel site! Here's the hard sell:

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is role-playing game set in an alternate-reality Earth where the worst fears of the Cold War came to pass in 1965—the Year of the Thunderkiss—when some fat-fingered bureaucrat pressed the shiny red button and set off Armageddon.

Instead of resulting in a grim, gritty wasteland where humanity struggles to survive, the atomic fallout warped the fabric of reality itself. America was twisted into a psychoholic grindhouse realm where mutant ratmen drag race hot rods against murder-minded robots, where lunatic wolfmans square off against brick house amazon princesses, and where doom nuns and foxy witches command the awesome powers of the bump ‘n’ grind occult. The mood and aesthetics of B movies, outlaw comics, and trash culture have bled into our world, creating a fucked-up melange of cartoonishly overheated sex and violence.

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is ultra-violent, maxi-trashy, supra-lowbrow, and über-depraved. The characters are larger-than-life and garishly hued in neon technicolor and greasepaint. Horror movie monsters prowl the wastes and clown gangs rampage through the streets of what used to be called civilization. Fuel up your chainsaw, pop a clip into your Uzi, and rev your V8 engine—it’s gonna get messy out there.

The rules for PLANET MOFO are a hack of MÖRK BORG. The rules have been tuned-up and turbo-charged to make the characters super-sized and about as competent as the morons in a low-budget action flick. Characters in PLANET MOTHERFUCKER might still die, but they aren’t failsons right out of the gate. That shit is as useless as tits on a tractor.

About this zine:

- Contains all the rules you need to play: setting, character creation, action resolution, combat, enemies, adventure seeds, npcs, random tables, and more!

- 48 pages printed  in b&w on color stock (blue or green paper). This things is bulging with content, just like your favorite XXX star.

- Cover printed in full color on glossy cardstock. It's a thing of beauty that will be sure to attract romantic attention should you read it on the subway, at a bus stop, in line at Taco Bell, etc.

- Hand-assembled, the way zines were meant to be made. None of this pro shit masquerading as DIY. This is the real deal.

- Every purchase comes with a free pdf and a form-fillable character sheet pdf. Put the numbers in the boxes or you get the hose.

- Printed zine ships in a bubble mailer. So safe, so secure.

- Recommended if you like Rob Zombie, the Goon, Mandy, Joe R. Lansdale, Preacher, Big Trouble in Little China, Sin City, Escape From New York, The Venture Bros.

- Not recommended if you're allergic to juvenile humor, foul language, and bad attitudes. 

Interior pics:

Dead City Radio

It's a pretty satisfying feeling when one of your regular players requests that you run a game and setting that you wrote yourself. So, we played PLANET MOTHERFUCKER last week. It's also very satisfying when one of the players remarks afterward that it was one of the most fun games they've played in recent memory. At this point, I'm just bragging, so on with the actual play recap of what went down.

The Characters

Runa Ravensbane, heavily tattooed metal babe (Church Burner)

Dr. MK Ultra, rogue physician prone to experimenting on himself (Doctor Feelbad)

Aleister, occultist with a ferret-shaped familiar spirit (Satanic Witch)

Events

The motherfuckers rolled into Buttrock, New Jersey after getting into trouble elsewhere. It was early morning, so they were looking for a place to get some grub. And then they saw the neon-and-chrome paradise that is Cholula's Tex-Mex Diner, a joint where every entree was accompanied with a side of refried beans. The sign out front showed a man with a sombrero running with his hands clapped over the back of his pants; beneath it, it said "Our huevos rancheros will have you on the run!" 

The only other customer in there was a literal lounge lizard--Franky Naugahyde, a lizardman who was moonlighting as a lounge singer. When Diabolita, the waitress, took their order through to the cooks, the two-ways doors to the kitchen banged open and shut; the motherfuckers could hear the sound of a radio tuned to WHOR, 66.6 on the FM dial, which was playing a morning zoo show apparently hosted by "Norman Necrosis," who was apparently playing voodoo drumming as part of the programing. Their food came, and then...

...zombies attacked. From two directions, no less. The line cooks came shambling out of kitchen and a bunch of zombies came shuffling in through the front door. With parlay off the table as an option, the motherfuckers sprang into action. Dr. MK Ultra injected himself with a experimental serum of his own creation; he began to hallucinate, but was imbued with the ability to bend the whims of the universe in his favor. Runa let out a high-pitched metal screech that exploded the heads of several zombies. The rest were finished off by Aleister, who summoned his own zombies to match the ones creeping toward them. 

As Aleister's zombies munched on their fallen undead peers, Mr. Cholula, the diner's owner, appeared. He told everyone that he had been watching the news and it was reported that zombies were attacking all over Buttrock. He noticed that the motherfuckers were capable (read: violent and skeevy), and being a civic-minded man made them an offer: clean up the zombie menace in return for a payment of some kind. The motherfuckers insisted on a load of drugs as their reward, to which he agreed. Not a problem, he knows a guy.

The motherfucker put two-and-two together and had realized that Norman Necrosis's radio broadcast was responsible for turning people into zombies. The next step seemed to be locating the radio station itself to bring Norman Necrosis to justice. Diabolita threw in that she remembered the Norman Necrosis show having two big sponsors: Big Chan's Unpossessed Autos Emporium and the Butterface Exotica Lounge. 

Predictably, they opted to visit the Butterface Exotica Lounge. The motherfuckers got into their vehicles (a motorcycle with blood-splatter decals for Runa, a coffin on wheels for Dr. MK, and an old Buick with a pentagram on the hood for Aleister) and made their way over to the strip club. The sign out front showed a cartoonishly buxom woman in lingerie, but she had a stick of butter for a head. Even though it was still morning, the strip club was surrounded by Mormon protestors. Inside, the place lived up to its name. The two girls on the clock had rockin' bodies, but also had faces as rough as sandpaper. 

The motherfuckers asked to see the manager, who proved to be a scarred-up John Waters lookalike. While speaking to the motherfuckers, he unwrapped a stick of butter and began eating it like a Snickers bar. He clearly didn't like Norman Necrosis, even though his business bought airtime on his commercial block. He told them that Norman was a particularly pathetic specimen who had tried to make it as a voodoo-themed shock rocker, but failed to excite the youths or even piss off their parents. As he went to fetch the radio station's address from his office, zombie Mormons began spilling into the club. A stripper had her throat bitten through, but the group again engaged the undead and turned them into mincemeat. 

Address in hand, the group left the Butterface Exotica Lounge and immediately saw what had turned some of the Mormons into zombies: a pickup truck was parked nearby with its radio pumping out the Norman Necrosis show. The group peeled out, leaving the living Mormons to fend off the dead ones.

The radio station was deep in Crippletown, an apocalyptically bad neighborhood in Buttrock. The motherfuckers spotted what must have been Norman Necrosis's car parked in the lot; the tell-tale sign was that it was a black station wagon trying to look like a hearse--it had Halloween decorations glued to it and it had a Norman Necrosis and the Necropolitans bumper sticker. The motherfuckers smashed the window with a lead pipe and searched Norman's car. In the back they found boxes of unsold Norman Necrosis and the Necropolitans merch and a rolled up blacklight poster of a wizard pondering an orb.

Rather than launching a frontal assault on the radio station, the motherfuckers decided to smoke Norman out of the building. They piled up his band's merch around the perimeter of the building, siphoned gasoline out of his car, and lit it on fire. The fire alarm went off and two people exited the building with a quickness. The woman who left through the front door was a purple-haired lady dressed in a business casual blazer. She spotted Dr. MK Ultra, who was serving as the group's lookout, and promptly ripped her blazer off, revealing a blue leotard and a chain whip. She came at the Dr., but he managed to talk her out of a confrontation. That's the power of de-escalation, folks.

Dr. MK Ultra ran behind the building, where he found Aleister and Runa battling Norman Necrosis, who had his face painted up like Baron Samedi and who was wielding a skull-topped cane, who was trying to make his way down the fire escape. Norman Necrosis used his dark magic to summon zombies, light the motherfuckers on fire, and turn momentarily invisible, but he was taking a hell of a beating. Runa stabbed him with a ritual dagger and he got brained with a lead pipe. At one point he was being gnawed upon by both of Aleister's zombies and his ferret familiar. The necromancer shock jock was ultimate put down with a brick that caved his head in.

With the mouthpiece of the damned killed, the zombie epidemic was ended. The motherfuckers made their way back to Cholula's Tex-Mex Diner and found a suitcase full of pills awaiting them. The suitcase even had a big red bow on top.

Inspiration for the adventure:

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER Returns

I regret to inform you all that I am working on a new edition of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER. Gird your loins, shitheads, it's coming this summer. 

As the pile of rumpled and stained printouts to the right indicates, I'm deep in the editing process right now. The previous version was a largely system-agnostic setting book with some slight mechanics compatible with Savage Worlds. The new version will be a complete game unto itself with mechanics more or less in line with MORK BORG and related games of that ilk.

The print version of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER mark II will (probably) be a 48-page zine. The plan is to get the pages printed at a legit copy shop. As with all my zines, this will be a true DIY, hand-assembled project. No fancy booklets bound at the shop by professionals--I will personally be working the long-arm stapler, as tradition and honor dictates.

In a few posts to come I'll be dropping a broad-strokes setting description of where the game takes place, a sample character rolled up hot and fresh using all the random tables in the zine, and a sample random table from the book. For now, here's the sales pitch on what PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is all about, straight from the zine's introduction:

WELCOME TO PLANET MOTHERFUCKER

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is role-playing game set in an alternate-reality Earth where the worst fears of the Cold War came to pass in 1965—the Year of the Thunderkiss—when some fat-fingered bureaucrat pressed the shiny red button and set off Armageddon.

Instead of resulting in a grim, gritty wasteland where humanity struggles to survive, the atomic fallout instead warped the fabric of reality itself. America was twisted into a psychoholic grindhouse realm where mutant ratmen drag race hot rods against murder-minded robots, where lunatic wolfmans square off against brick house amazon princesses, and where doom nuns and foxy witches command the awesome powers of the bump ‘n’ grind occult. The mood and aesthetics of B movies, outlaw comics, and trash culture have bled into our world, creating a fucked-up melange of cartoonishly overheated sex and violence.

Prototype of the Deluxe Edition of PMF

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is ultra-violent, maxi-trashy, supra-lowbrow, and über-depraved. The characters are larger-than-life and garishly hued in neon technicolor and greasepaint. Horror movie monsters prowl the wastes and clown gangs rampage through the streets of what used to be called civilization. Fuel up your chainsaw, pop a clip into your Uzi, and rev your V8 engine—it's gonna get messy out there.

Professor Crotchington's Crabs

Aos had a joyous occasion to celebrate, so while his Spelljammer campaign was on hold I snuck in a little Planet Motherfucker--this time powered by Savage Worlds. Here's what went down:

The Characters

Herk Supreme, funky starman

Silence Jameson, hellfire preacher

Milhouse, ninja urchin

Riley Stiletto, undead rockstar

A Night at the Circus

The characters were all currently in the run-town town of Old Bay in what used to be Maryland before the apocalypse. It was mid-autumn and the circus had come to town. Each of them knew the ringmaster, Professor Crotchington, and he had invited them to dinner at the circus. When they arrived, the fairgrounds were hopping; barkers were saying outlandish shit to get rubes to buy tickets to see the Wild Cro-Magnon of Cincinnati or get a peep at Tattooed Mimi, the Obscene Human Tableau. The rides, operated by shifty looking motherfuckers, were are all awhirl. Somewhere in the distance they could hear the sound of a badly played calliope. The crowd was pretty dense; there were a lot of sailors in their little sailor outfits about--every few seconds one of them drunkenly shouted "SHORE LEAVE!"

The group found themselves seated for dinner within the so-called Tent of Curiosities. Surrounding them were a number of glass cases holding the tent’s exhibits. Among the other dinner guests were Chuckles the Fuckface, the circus’s most popular clown, although his name may have been Fuckles the Chuckface, no one is sure; Bertha the Blockhead, who still had a nail protruding from her left nasal cavity; the famed contortionist Dirk Fleximan, of the New Hampshire Fleximans; and of course Professor Crotchington, resplendent as always in his striped trousers, waxed moustaches, and monocle. 

As dinner was being served, dinner being a motley collection of fairground food like funnel cake, deep-fried hotdogs, jalapeno cheese fries, and cotton candy, Professor Crotchington rose from his chair to address his guests: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have gathered you here today to tell you of a great discovery I’ve made in the field of…”

Just then the lights went out.

The circus’s generators must have all cut out, as they could hear people yelling in surprise outside the tent. Then, they heard the sound of breaking glass coming from inside the Tent of Curiosities. Herk quickly fashioned a pair of glasses that acted as a spotlight wherever he turned his head; from the illumination he provided, the group could see a bunch of thugs in striped shirts and black masks wielding wrenches, lead pipes, and baseball bats. The thugs were stealing exhibits from the curiosities tent. The group sprang into action, taking down the thugs--but leaving one alive for interrogation.

The remaining thug spilled the beans and told them that the theft was actually a ruse to make their break in look like a robbery, and that the real target was Professor Crotchington, who had been abducted by thugs who had fled. He also told them that their gang was led by Freddie the Finger--whose home address he gave up pretty quickly under the threat of a leg-breaking. Searching the pockets of the now-deceased thugs revealed that they each had a wad of opium and some broken poker chips that seemed to have a tiki logo on them.

Inside the Lair of Freddie the Finger

Somewhat incautiously, the group went over to Freddie's apartment and kicked the door in. What they found was that Freddie the Finger lived in a squalid room, complete with a stained mattress on the floor, lots of empty cup o soups, and gross dirty socks strewn around. Piled by the mattress was a stack of magazines that turned out to be Big Unnaturals, the rag for the gentlemen who prefers bosomy mutant women. Also scattered around were a lot of wallets and wristwatches--the fruits of many muggings. 

Investigating Freddie's place uncovered some gambling slips indicating that the Finger carried a big debt at Chief Comeoniwannalayya’s Pleasure Hut--the slips had a tiki logo that matched the poker chips found earlier. 

Bad Times at the Pleasure Hut

The group found the entrance to the Hut down a dark alley. Loitering in the alley were some shady-looking characters, including some sailors who occasionally muttered “shore leave” under their breath. The door to the Pleasure Hut was barred, with a slit in the door to examine would-be entrants. A woman answered their knock at the door, but Milhouse promptly poked her in the eyes, causing her to back away from the door while it was shot open by Riley. 

The inside of the Pleasure Hit was dank and dingy, with a carpet covered in truly disgusting stains. The place smelled of cigarettes and cheap incense. Everything inside was tiki themed: bamboo on the walls, waitresses in fake silk “Chinese” dresses scurrying to and fro with tiki mugs, etc. Most terrifying of all: an all you can eat crab leg buffet. Also, many gambling tables!

Every eye was on the party after their forced entry into the tiki speakeasy. Presiding over the operation was a pudgy guy in a Hawaiian shirt and straw fedora (though if you called it a fedora he would tell you it was a trilby); he questioned what they were up to, but when they told him they had been misinformed and told that shooting open the door was the special "knock" required for entry, he bought it and let them go about their business.

Milhouse joined the poker table while Silence chatted up a man at the bar. Their recognizance paid off: they both realized that people kept slipping down a dark hallway of the Pleasure Hut. Reconvening with Herk and Riley, they slipped into the hallway themselves and found it lined with framed pictures of the latter-day Beach Boys. Touching a photo of the Beach Boys eating sushi off of John Stamos opened a secret door leading down into the depths of the Pleasure Hut.

On the stairs down, the team could smell the sickly sweet aroma of opium being smoked. At the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves in a full-blown opium den with people lying on big, fluffy cushions while blissed out of their minds as they chased the dragon. A woman who looked like an aging Wendy-from-the-fast-food-place asked what their pleasure was. Milhouse pretended that he was the son of Freddie the Finger and said he was looking for his dad. Not-Wendy ushered the group behind a brocade curtain, and there was Freddie, a few thugs, and a tied up Professor Crotchington. Freddie took one look at the group and exclaimed, “It’s them! The mooks from the circus! We gotta scram!” 

The Final Battle!

A couple of thugs grabbed the Professor and ran off with him down another hallway while Freddie and his gang engaged the group in fisticuffs. Additionally, a number of ninja from the Leg Clan (they dress like ninja on top, but wear fishnets and high heels down below) emerged from the shadows and attacked as well!

This is where things got weird. Milhouse produced a boombox that began to play "The Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which triggered the ninjas of the Leg Clan to start dancing. Riley joined in, using his movements to commandeer the ninjas and steer them out of the fight. Freddie the Finger and the thugs were soon dealt with, and the group was in hot pursuit of the other thugs and the kidnapped Professor Crotchington. Before the thugs could spirit the ringmaster away into an unmarked van, they were taken out and Professor Crotchington was freed.

But why was Professor Crotchington abducted in the first place? And what was he about to say before the lights went out back at the circus? Professor Crotchington explained that he had been exploring the occult mysteries of summoning giant crabs from the eldritch deep. Which meant that someone operating in the shadows had hired thugs and ninjas to kidnap him because they wanted Professor Crotchington's crabs.

Wanted: Papa Juice Tank and Trixie LePoon

I got a chance to playtest a new version of Planet Motherfucker for a couple players last week, here's what went down:

The Characters

Marion Clarence, a Face-Breakin' Goon

Violet Hacks, a Chainsaw Paladin

The Adventure

Marion and Violet had been tracking Papa Juice Tank and Trixie LePoon, two notorious outlaws, and had nearly caught up to them on numerous occasions, but the duo managed to slip away. They had heard that Trixie and Juice Tank had holed up in a small mining town called Contrition in the Militialands. The town stood at the foot of a mine bored into the mountains; off to the side was an abandoned sawmill and a foothill strewn with gravestones and crosses serving as the local burying grounds. As they approached Contrition, they could see that it consisted largely of abandoned buildings, dotted here and there with businesses (mostly bars and brothels) with lit neon signs.

Of course, they were immediately jumped by a couple of hoodlums, one wearing a Limp Bizkit jersey and the other sporting a fried chicken bucket as a hat. "Your money or your wife," cried the Limp Bizkit fan, brandishing a pistol. The two would-be thugs were quickly dealt with; Marion and Violet moved on into Contrition. 

The first stop in their search to find Juice Tank and Trixie was a bar called The Road to Ruin. The Road to Ruin was a rough bar catering to the local miners; a bar brawl seemed to have sprung up solely out of boredom and a lack of entertainment options. A group stood nearby the fight, cheering on the combatants. Among that group was a man who looked like Papa Juice Tank picture in the wanted poster in their possession: he was tall and thin, wearing a stylish pimp coat, a necklace of shark teeth, and a top hat decorated with a skull emblem. 

Marion and Violet sidled up to Papa Juice Tank and took him by surprise. Juice Tank got a gut-punch for his trouble, then he reached into a pouch of "graveyard dust" at his waist and blew it into Violet's eyes, blinding her. Marion was about to clobber Juice Tank again when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned his head and was immediately popped in the face with the butt of a shotgun by a guy with mutton-chop sideburns, a ten-gallon hat, and leather chaps. As Violet and Marion turned their attention to the interloper, Papa Juice Tank took the opportunity to flee. The interloper was dealt with by a combination of a beer bottle broken across his face and a heft punch to the jewels.

Unfortunately, when our heroes finally got out to the street, there was no sign of where Juice Tank had gone. They scoped out an unpopular brothel called The Cootchie-Coo, Keno Harry's House of One-Armed Bandits, a noodle bar called Miso Horny, and the local mines. Papa Juice Tank was not hiding out in the mines, but the duo discovered that the miners of Contrition were not extracting anything as mundane as gold or silver--they were mining glowing green rock that pulsated with light and felt cool to the touch. Violet stuffed a few fragments of the weird rock into her pockets for later examination.

Waiting for them at the entrance to the mine was Ten-Gallon Hat. He was still walking funny from the pummeling he took to the nads previously, and he was insistent that Marion and Violet were not going to steal the bounty on Juice Tank and Trixie out from under him. He let fly with a blast from his shotgun, but the pair laid him down for dirt nap. Marion took the badge he was wearing, which turned out to be the prize from a box of Buckaroo cereal.

Their next stop was VoltzMart, the local convenience store. As soon as they walked in, the proprietor turned a paranoid shotgun on them. Perhaps a little frustrated by their hunt for Juice Tank, Violet and Marion were not having it. Marion grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and laid the guy out with a punch. After tying him up and rousing him back to consciousness, he was questioned quite forcefully. The man told them that Contrition had formerly been devoted to logging and lumber production until Mr. Eyres, the owner of the town's sawmill, discovered veins of the strange glowing rock in the mountains. After which, he immediately closed his sawmill and employed his workers as miners. Although the man didn't know what the rock did or what special properties it might possess, he did let slip that men came into town to cart away the rock--and that the men wore what sounded like hazmat suits of some kind the whole while.

Violet promptly discarded the slivers of glowing rock she had taken from the mine, just in case.

The man also told them that Mr. Eyres still lived in the depths of the abandoned sawmill. Deciding that they need to have a chat with Eyres, they descended into the sawmill's creepy basement. An eerie green glow coming from a room in the basement seemed to call to them. Inside, they found old man Eyres hooked to an elaborate machine. They looked on in horror and awe at the monstrosity that was Mr. Eyres. Unphased by their entrance, Eyres answered their questions. When asked about the glowing rock, he showed them how it served to power the machines he was hooked up to and revealed the glowing patches of mutant skin on his body that were doing battle with an end-of-life illness to keep him alive. He claimed that the rock was a lucrative venture, and that his business partners shipped the rock to other ailing and wealthy oligarchs through America.

Ultimately, Eyres point the duo to Boot Hill as Juice Tank's likely plan was to use his voodoo to raise a little backup from the dead. They set off to the cemetery, only to find that Papa Juice Tank was headed back down to find them--with a posse of zombies and glowing mutant miners in tow. Violet revved up her chainsaw and made a mess of Juice Tank's zombies. The battle was joined by a whip-wielding Trixie LePoon, but Violet shredded her whip, rendering her mostly defenseless--except for her steal-toed cowboy boots. Juice Tank offered prayers to his voodoo gods and called down lightning strikes against our heroes, but a well-placed shot took him down. Their morale broken, Trixie and the remaining miners surrendered. 

Papa Juice Tank's head was taken to fulfill the bounty and Trixie was tied up to be marched out of Contrition to face justice for her crimes. But where had the strange rock from the mine been going and who was being changed by its strange, and perhaps unholy, properties?