Spatula City : The Roleplaying Game

DISCLAIMER Any relation to net.personages is strictly parody-oriented. Relaxation of the flame instinct is mandatory before continuing.

Introduction

All you need to play this game is a really good suspension of disbelief, a pencil & paper or handy word processor, some printouts of any junk here you don't feel like memorizing, 2-49 players and plenty of time to kill. The rules are very basic and meant to be ignored when they get in the way of the fun.

The Setting

• Spatula City itself.
• The World Wide Web, which will not be meta-linked again because I hate typing out hrefs. The web is a wild place teeming with things both dull and interesting, and very easy to get lost in.
• Usenet is a bit more wild at times, but easier to navigate.
• Anything Else such as MUDs, IRC, or America On-Line.

The object of the game is to A) Survive and B) Have Fun. Those who do not have fun die of boredom and those who do not survive die of death. Usually objective B is fufilled simply by going on a quest or being tossed into the mix by your SysAdmin (the Spatula City equivilant of a game master).

The Universe Mechanics

Netizens, aka the player-characters, have four main attributes.

• Modem Muscles, which dictates how well you kick ass. Used as the default value for any Combat skills you don't specialize in. Scale is 1-6. Roll one six sided die to obtain.
• Brains, which demonstrates your mental skills or complete lack thereof. When you try to Program and you don't know the routine, your brains can act as a default value. Scale is 1-6. Roll one six sided die to obtain.
• Kludge Factor, your hit points. You get kludged too many times and you're dead. Scale is 1-12. Take your Modem Muscles, multiply times two to get this... pansy SysAdmins may let you add one or two points if your Kludge Factor sucks.
• CPU Cycles are the resources you drain upon program execution. Losing all of them isn't bad, but it means you'd better seek shelter, because you can't blast people with programs anymore. To obtain your total possible CPU Cycles, take your Brains and multiply times two. We'd suggest against modifying this, pansy SysAdmins.

All skills, combat or otherwise, work the same. You roll a six sided die (or boot a random number generator) twice, add the results and check your skill; if the die roll is equal to or less than your skill at that weapon/coding routine, you've succeeded. If you screw up, roll again; if you get a one, you've made a Boo-Boo, which is generally bad news, because it means you're gonna be hurting yourself in the process of screwing up.

You can by default use any skill, using your Modem Muscles or Brains where applicable. However, MM and Brains are both 1-6... you're rolling up to a 12 for skill checks. That's not good. So, you can buy skills. Each netizen gets SIX points to toy with upon character creation. You can add to a particular skill this way, buying more than your base MM/B values.

Okay, so you have attributes, some skills, etc. Now you need to suit up. You can pick one ObWeapon and one ObProgram. Ob means obligatory, a given gift for starting netizens. Nuclear bombs are right out; let your SysAdmin decide. You'll probably want to pick a weapon that matches skills you purchased.

EXAMPLE : Kibo has a Modem Muscles of two, which is so-so, and Brains of six, which rocks. He figures he can kick ass with the Brains normally, so he concentrates on getting some Combat skills going. He pumps three of his six starter points into Blunt Objects, giving him a Blunt Objects skill of five. He also adds two points to Throwing People At Other People, giving him a four there, and the last point he invests into the Program of Flaming, giving him a nice seven to toast people with. For his ObWeapon, he picks a pointed stick, and for this ObProgram he picks a Flame.

Combat skills are nice because weapons are good solid objects that won't screw up on you. Programs are more powerful, but take CPU cycles to execute, as detailed above. Each program varies in total cycles needed; when the program is executed, regardless of success, cycles are eaten.

Fightin' works like this; the players go around in a circle, announcing attacks on whomever. We roll against the appropriate skill, 2d6. If the person succeeds, remove the roll amount from the victim's kludge.

(Yes, it would be nice to assign individual damages to all weapons and programs, but I'm lazy. This way, if you're semi skilled you can semi hurt people, and very skilled you'll be a force to be reckoned with. As I said, feel free to scrap these rules and insert your own, just keep the weapons and 'spells' the same.)

To increase a skill beyond the six spending points given intially, players must complete a full mission. One to three points for more spending are given out by the SysAdmin based on sheer entertainment value of player antics.

SKILLS

• Combat Skills
  • BLUNT OBJECTS. You can take chairs and lamps and Pepsi(tm) cans and beat people over the head with them. Or, better yet, you can get a Spam Tin or Louisville Slugger and own it for close encounters, removing the need to find impromptu blunts at the sign of trouble. If you don't have a blunt handy but want to use this skill, you'll have to grab a nearby object (bar stools work nicely) and have your SysAdmin decide how much total damage it can do.
  • BLADE OBJECTS. Cut 'n cut 'n slice 'n dice! These are a bit harder to find lying around, which is why you'll want to buy a knife to utilize this.
  • WAE SPAT, the Recent Art of Fighting, with spatulas. Spatulas work like combination blunts and blades, so you can cut or bash whatever you'd like. Notice that Blunt and Blade together do not make Wae Spat, nor does Wae Spat imply you can use Blunt and Blade.
  • THROWING STUFF AT OTHER PEOPLE is like throwing knives, darts, medicene balls, etc. Pretty basic.
  • THROWING PEOPLE AT OTHER PEOPLE is very fun in the middle of a brawl, and your SysAdmin can decide how much damage the tosee does based on weight.
  • DEFENSIVE DRIVING is handy when you're in a car, plane, web browser or whatever and you want to play bumper cars.
  • SPAMMING enables you to chuck Mystic Usenet Spam at people, which typically does twice the damage of normal blunt objects. Spamming is the equivilant of chucking ultradense lead slabs at people.
  • MARTIAL ARTS is fun for breaking skulls with your bare hands. Any Anime based Netizen will be requiring this. Cool SysAdmins will let you combine this with the other skills, so you can have stuff like Martial Arts Spamming, although how this combination would be done I have no idea.
  • GREEN CARDS are deadly plastic cards that, when thrown, do cutting damage from across a room. Green Cards act like normal throwing weapons, but with an added bonus; any spam chucked at the victim in the next round is double-damage!
  • DOOM skills are basic weapons skills, like shotguns and uzis and rocket launchers. Anything that requires aim falls under DOOM.
• Programming Routines
  • The ever-popular FLAME is a way to blast someone with mystical fire from your own Ego. It's a basic Usenet weapon and is typically found there. Flames can do anything from toast lightly to make a hole in rock depending on your skill level and anger. Flaming takes a single CPU Cycle. BOO-BOO will direct the damage at yourself!
  • CROSS-POSTING can double the strength of your next combat attack, NOT programming routine. It essentially clones you off into two parts for a short time. If you have the CPU cycles and enough forewarning, you can have a nice strike force comprised entirely of crossposts! Crossposting takes a lot of CPU cycles -- three to be exact, and five for any clones beyond two. Netizens that can apply this skill creatively to non-combat situations can get a discount on cycles, SysAdmin permitting. BOO-BOO can mean anything from simply failing to shrinking yourself depending on SysAdmin sadism.
  • BAD HTML is a stun tactic, which can prevent the victim from acting for a single round. It slams the victim with huge, SLIP crunching images and gaudy blinking text. Cost, one cycle. BOO-BOO will stun yourself and anybody near you.
  • CANCELLING is a very, very deadly program which costs a full ten cycles to execute, since it means instant death for the victim. BOO-BOO on this is harsh; the netizen executing it dies!
  • KILL FILE is a weaker cancel, which only costs two cycles. Succeeding with this will multiply your success roll times two and reducing your victim's kludge by that. BOO-BOO knocks you our for three turns and takes away your own kludge.

Cool Junk

• Unholy Mace. Pretty basic blunt weapon.
• Assorted knifes, cleavers and chainsaws make great blades.
• Throwing Spatulas. Perfect for Wae Spat, since you can slice up close and throw from a distance. Sleek, aerodynamic and affordable.
• Attack Spatulas. Basic spatulas, designed for close combat and meelee... they can act as blades or blunts and are relatively lightweight.
• Ukyou Special. Takes more Modem Muscles to heft one of these, but it's worth it; you can throw, flip, pound, cut and mutilate quite a bit with one.
• Spam. Comes in a variety of sizes, each in special radiation shielded containers. VERY heavy, hard to throw without spamming skill; impossible, really. Spam is a very dangerous substance and can mutate if left out of the container too long.
• Hotlist. A small book with blue pages ("Always... blue pages...") which you can use to link to places. Eliminates the need for kite string when travelling the web, but can lead to limb degeneration from lack of walking. Go play MYST for a good use of hotlist books. :) It's not a weapon, btw.
• Really Big .SIGs act as blunt weapons, although they're considered poor sportsmanship to use.
• The Book of ObCultRef is a MiSTie's bible, and provides light entertainment when on the road. Beware, reciting cultural references too often can lead to people pounding you. Not a weapon.

The Realms

Spatula City

The World Wide Web

WARNING. Netizens should enter the web with a bit of string tied around thier waist and secured to the bike rack outside Spatula City... the string will let them return safely. There is no instant 'back' button in THIS web. If you're lost, you are lost for good. Eeek.

Usenet

Other Places

Net.Folk

NPC CHARACTER SHEET : Twoflower
DESC :
     Twoflower owns Spatula City.  He's a shortish, sarcastic
little person who enjoys slackness and superior HTML and really
wishes he had some CGI-BIN.

MODEM MUSCLES : 2
BRAINS : 4
KLUDGE FACTOR : 6
CPU CYCLES : 12
SKILLS :
     Running Away : 8
     Wae Spat : 5
     Kill File : 6
INVENTORY :
     1 Walkman loaded with a NIN remix tape
     1 Grunge tape
     1 Anime tape
     1 Garage Door Opener
     1 Hotlist
          LINKS :   IUMA, Ranma Homepage, Spatula City, Afterlife
                    of Bob, Cybersight and others
     2 Assault Spatulas

NPC CHARACTER SHEET : Ukyou
DESC :
     Ukyou is the owner of the Okonomiyaki Shop at Spatula City, a
branch out from Ucchan's in Tokyo.  She has a bandolier of small
throwing spatulas and one large Ukyou Special.
MODEM MUSCLES : 6
BRAINS : 4
KLUDGE FACTOR : 12
CPU CYCLES : 3
SKILLS :
     Wae Spat : 12
     Cooking : 12
INVENTORY :
     1 Hotlist
          LINKS :   Ranma Homepage, Spatula City
     15 Thowing Spatulas
     1 Ukyou Special

NPC CHARACTER SHEET : The Duck
DESC :
     The Duck is a small bath toy, made out of a blend of metals
and plastics, chemically treated to be slightly malliable and soft. 
The blend includes the body of a New York checker cab, a Volvo, and
the same stuff they make little girl's dolls out of that survive
plane crashes so news crews can find them.
MODEM MUSCLES : 1
BRAINS : 1
KLUDGE FACTOR : Infinite
CPU CYCLES : 0
SKILLS :
     Squeaking : 5

Other potential NPCs you can use : Kibo, Joel Furr, Adam Curry,
Serdar Ardric, Andrew Beckwith and Wednesday.

A Mini-Adventure

THE TASTE OF SPAM, or THE SPAWNING OF CANCELMOOSE

NPC CHARACTER SHEET : Insane Usenetter
MODEM MUSCLES : 2
BRAINS : 2
KLUDGE FACTOR : 4
CPU CYCLES : 4
SKILLS :
     Babble Incoherently : 8
     Provide Useful Information : 4
     Flame : 5

What do your players do? If they sit back and laugh and continue goofing off, three days later Canter and Seigel will storm Spatula City in part of a campaign to commercialize the Web and plaster the netizens with spam that suffocates and kills them. That ought to teach them not to follow an obvious lead.

Upon arrival at Usenet, the smell of spam and carnage hangs thick in the air. Users are buried here and there in knee-deep spam. Movement is very hindered because of this; netizens will get one turn compared to anybody elses's two turns unless they can figure a creative way to surf the lunceon meat piles. Very few people are of any help here, but by studying the damage a pattern develops, which allows them to follow the trail of destruction.

The spam runs thicker near where C&S have recently visited, and stops after alt.culture.internet, the last stop before the stairwell up to the last of the Usenet heirarchies. Inside, the netizens will find a small girl who is still alive because she managed to flame any incoming spam, creating a blackened circle of meat around her. (Since flames don't normally cut spam, this is a clear sign of innate programming POWER.)

NPC CHARACTER SHEET : Moose
MODEM MUSCLES : 2
BRAINS : 6
KLUDGE FACTOR : 5
CPU CYCLES : 200
SKILLS :
     Suck : 100
          SPECIAL SKILL : Transfer CPU cycles or skills from
                          victim to herself.
     Flames : 12
     Kill file : 5
     Cancel : 2

The party continues up the stairs, to the next floor; REC. (Not the next floor, I know, but it seems to be C&S's next target). There, the trail ends at rec.music.industrial, where C&S themselves are busy coating the room in a thick layer of spam.

NPC CHARACTER SHEET : Canter
MODEM MUSCLES : 6
BRAINS : 1
KLUDGE FACTOR : 25
CPU CYCLES : 5
SKILLS :
     Spamming : 10
     Blunt Objects : 7
     Green Card : 7
INVENTORY :
     Unlimited Industrial-Strength Green Spam
     24 Green Cards (24)
     1 Briefcase (blunt object)

NPC CHARACTER SHEET : Siegel
MODEM MUSCLES : 3
BRAINS : 6
KLUDGE FACTOR : 18
CPU CYCLES : 30
SKILLS :
     Spamming : 6
     Green Card : 10
INVENTORY :
     Industrial-Strength Green Spam (unlimited)
     Green Cards (48)

Note : Both are impervious to flames or kill-files.

If the netizens lose, Moose will escort them to safety on the ALT floor to recover at 80% strength. Every failed attack on C&S after that point reduces the recovery by 20% until they hit 0% and die. If the netizens can't beat them off, they need to find a creative way to destroy the spammers, which is generally more acceptable than blindly whacking them. Canter is fairly gullible, but Siegel is not; any attempts to trick them require Brains rolls on the spammers' behalf to see if it works. Both will fall for unconvincing disguises.

The adventure can end three ways.

One, if the players can't take down the spammers at all and die. Canter and Seigel get out of control, Usenet shuts down from the sheer bulk of spam weighing it down and they move onto conquering the web. It is a dark day for the net. Game over.

If they're floundering around and going nowhere, Deus Ex Machina has to be employed. Moose explains her Suck power, and that if she could remove skill points from the players, she could build up her Cancel enough to destroy Canter and Siegel. If the players refuse, they'll be toast. Otherwise, she'll strip from the player's highest skills (a little punishment for them not being able to do jack during this whole adventure), pump up her Cancel and go after Canter and Siegel with a vengance. SysAdmins can roll out the NPC- on-NPC fight if they'd like to assume Moose wins. Go to the happy ending.

Two, if they manage to defeat Canter and Siegel, we skip directly to :

THE HAPPY ENDING. Canter and Siegel are dead on the ground, but the spam still prevails. Many Usenetters have died horribly, drowned in the meat. It's a dark day for the net.

But wait! Moose advances on the zoned lawyers, and employs the Suck power. With some really wildly awesome Digital Domain style special effects, Moose changes into CANCELMOOSE, heroine of the net and destroyer of spam. She proceeds to vaporize spam all around Usenet, and thanks the netizens for helping her discover her true calling. The cleanup continues as the netizens go home, with smiles on thier faces and blood in thier hearts. Award skill points to everybody and have some nachos.

That's all, folks!

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