Winter War recap, part deux

On Saturday afternoon six players and I goofed around with the king of retro stupid RPGs, S. John Ross's Encounter Critical. The session was set on the wild west sci-fi planet where Batman has a laser showdown with the Capricorn Kid. (I can count on one hand the cartoons that are more awesome than Challenge of the Superfriends.) The PCs had each been sold 100% ownership in an Impervium mine by one Harvey Muttonchops, a fellow who was basically Harcourt Fenton Mudd as a halfling. The front half of the adventure was spent tracking Harvey through the wilderness as the little bugger tries to make his way to the starport in Bismuth City. The back half of the adventure was a dungeon crawl through the Haunted Mine ripped straight from Asteroid 1618, my bigass EC adventure module/campaign setting thingy. Incidentally, I was tickled pink that Doug, one of the players and a regular at my con games, had bought a print copy of A1618. Slowly but surely I am identifying the owner of all seventeen print copies. And then the great culling shall begin...

Anyway, back to the game. Three players made use of my pregenerated characters, selecting Obiwan Shinobi, cyaborg elf ninja/psi-with; IG-666 primitive robodroid warlock; and Princess Sweetpollen, bee girl doxy/warlock. Three players made their own PCs, using the rules I posted here on the Gameblog back in October. Doug made Chubali, the cave wookey pugilist. His origin was "What if after kayoing Superman, Ali moved to Kashyyk and opened a gym?" Chubali wears the mighty Golden Gloves of Cassius, which allows him to roll his Melee Attack skill over to Guard. Josh built the Tombstone Kid, a frankenstein warrior packing a pair of demonfire six-shooters. They say he was born when phasic lightning struck the mass grave up on Boot Hill. And Jim rolled up Gronk the Yummy, a cave hobling warlock/criminal capable of summoning giant chickens. Don't let Roderigo Mallard know, but Gronk possesses the fabled Great Grimoire of Gollibard the Gourmet! Sadly, no one played the disco klengon hitman. I'll have to use him again next year.

Over the course of the adventure the party encountered phasic coyotes (which we all decided had disco mirrorball hides), pyrexis hounds, a slime dragon, time ghosts, a spectral doxy, Deloris the Dwarven Doxy (once you go beard, you never go back, baby), the klengon hellfire and brimstone preachin' man, the lizardman sheriff of Bismuth City, a hostile cave ooze, Native Engines (robodroids like this guy), orcish gunslingers, and a mummy wearing a ten gallon hat who put Obiwan in a Byrne Lock. I have to admit that I spent quite a bit of time picking on Obiwan Shinobi. His player earned most of the attention though and took it all in great stride, even the part where he inadvertently found himself married to Princess Laughing Circuits, played by Crushinator in a Pocahontas costume. Two encounters that the party missed entirely were the Exploding Tumbleweed and a run-in with One-Eyed Jack, the cyclops bounty hunter.

The adventure ended on a happy note. The party found the magic Bronze Door, that would take them individually to any place in the universe. Since the Tombstone Kid was a local he used the door just to go back home. Princess Sweetpollen directed the door to take her to her One True Prince, from whom she promptly harvested genetic material and then injected his body with eggs. Gronk the Yummy opted to go to the homeworld of the giant chickens, where they roam free and happy. Chubali attended the Ali-Frasier fight, and was later signed by Don King. (Only in America, folks.) IG-666 used the door to crash a Slayer concert with Anton Lavey and Aleister Crowley. Slayer? Not my first choice, but then again I'm not a robodroid programmed for evil. And Obiwan Shinobi used the door to finally find his lost motorcycle, his honor restored at last. Thus endeth the mighty Obiwan Shinobi Trilogy, making no more sense than when it began.