Monday, June 20, 2011

MEGA MUPPET MONDAY!!! Part 1

Player 1 (As Scooter): "Master Chief? Master Chief! 15 seconds to curtain Master Chief!"

Director (Me, As Master Chief): "Thanks Skipper."

"Um...That's Scooter sir."

"Sorry. I should remember that. I need to remember that. For when you die."

"*Gulp* Die?"

(Master Chief nods and then turns to a small assembly of various Muppet Custom Characters, Whatnot Pigs, Bunnies, Rats and Chickens.)

"There is an invasion force coming. Very soon, aliens called 'The Covenant' will come down and wipe out this colony. Skitter, what's the name of this colony. My artificial intelligence companion, Cortana, is offline."

"Er...it's Scooter...and this is the Muppet Theater."

"Muppet Theater? Must be running out of good colony names. Cortana's last transmissions were garbled. No matter. We need to prepare for the invasion. Can I count on your help Skimmer?"

"Scooter!"

"I'm not gonna take the time to remember that. After all, you're just gonna die."

(Animal's Player 'drum rolls' on the table with her hands)

(Me, As Kermit - Doing my best Kermit impression): "Ladies and Gentlemen, it's The Muppet Show with our very special guest star...Master Chief from HALO!"





And with that, my Muppet Show RPG event at NerdNYC's RECESS had begun.

The event, planned for 4 hours but running only 3, featured 7 players, each playing 4 Muppets. The theme for this RECESS was video games and so I decided to choose the most visually interesting, inappropriate character I could think of. From out of a very short list, Master Chief emerged victorious.

For the purposes of the RECESS convention I went with pregens, creating almost 30 of the Muppet characters. All were Customs, with Whatnots being used primarily as NPCs unless someone had some good appropriate dialog for one and wanted to take it over for a moment (which happened a few times).

The players consisted of 5 guys between their late 20's-early 30's and 2 girls around 16-18 years of age (I am assuming). The guys were very gung ho about playing a Muppets RPG and did some amazing impressions of the characters. In addition, they were less self conscious, willing to sing (including the opening theme) and generally act silly or crazy. The gals seemed to be at a disadvantage. It definitely appeared they had never played a game like this before (though they were experienced gamers according to their parent/guardian. They were also not as familiar with the characters. This struck me as odd at first until I realized that it's been some time since a 'Muppet Show' of any kind has been one the air.

I apologize to those who played in this scenario for not remembering all your names. As I said, I'm bad with names until I've heard them or said myself several times.


As such I am going to name those I can and simply indicate a Player # for those I can't.

Steve was the performer for:
Gonzo
Scooter
Waldorf
Uncle Deadly


Wit was the performer for:
Bunsen Honeydew
Janice
Sam The Eagle
Lew Zealand


Sophia was the performer for:
Animal*
Crazy Harry*
Big Mean Carl*
Julius Strangepork


Dave was the performer for:
Beauregard
Rizzo
Floyd Pepper
Johnny Fiama and Sal Minella**


Player #1 (I want to say Alton but I may be spelling it wrong) was the performer for:
Dr. Teeth
Sweetums
Link Hogthrob
Pepe the Prawn


Player #2 (Again I apologize. This guy was great too and really excited about being in a Muppets game) was the performer for:
Beaker
Rowlf
Statler
Swedish Chef


Player #3 (The other young lady. I. can't. remember! Gah!) was the performer for:
Miss Piggy
Clifford
Fozzie
Zoot


Tonight, a recap of how we played the music, lit the lights and raised the curtain on the Muppet game...Alright!

AD
Barking Alien


*Usually a Performer can only perform a single Muppet in a single scene. I waved that a bit in the case of Sal and Johnny as long as they didn't appear in a scene at the same time. In other words, if Johnny Fiama is on stage performing and the camera cuts to Sal off stage giving him the thumbs up or saying something encouraging, I'm not going to ask the Performer to spend any Stars.

**Do you see a theme here? O_0





 


1 comment:

  1. Sorry for the delay in follow up but I'm a bit under the weather. Hope to catch up tonight but I'll have to see how I feel.

    ReplyDelete