Sunday, March 13, 2016

From the Journal of Rick Wallaby, Day 1...

Wednesday, August 19th

            When I woke up this morning, I was dreading today. The three-hour drive combined with move-in, and finally some lame freshman orientation thing this place called “Sweat Lodge” just did not seem like it had the makings for a good time. I mean, I’ve been to a couple of freshman orientations already. Don’t they count for something? Turns out that I was wrong.
            I was right that the drive sucked (too long). Plus, move-in sucked. It didn’t take that long as Dad made me leave a LOT of stuff at home. Important stuff like my gaming laptop, my movie collection, and anything he called “a distraction”. I mean, I understand where he’s coming from, but jeez. I’m an adult. I can handle it. Sort of.
            Anyway, near the end of my moving in, I met my roommate, Jason. Jason’s a great guy. He’s really smart and he didn’t tell me to “fuck off” with the first hour. We’re going to be the best of friends!
            Once we got settled in, and got an idea of where we were supposed to go, we head over for the “Sweat Lodge”. I was expecting this to be some mind-numbingly boring thing, and the first part of it was. Droning on and on, some old fart sang us a bad fight song, and I was sure that I would not leave there with my sanity intact. Turns out, I almost didn’t leave with my life! It was great!
            Once the droning ceased, we were all directed to rooms in small groups where we to get a “sage advice” from a senior here. Ours was some cool dude named Robby. Well, he started out cool, but then turned lame once he offered up his “advice”. Of all the things he could have told us, what was the one thing he stressed most? “Be a zebra”. I shit you not. Be a fucking zebra. Really? Five years of this place and that’s the best you got? We’re fucked.
            Speaking of we, I suppose I should talk about the other freshman in the room. First, there’s Jason, my roommate. Like I said before, he’s a great guy. He’s gotta work on his cardio, though. Next is Tommy. Tommy’s a dick! At first he seemed cool, acting like my friend and handing out advice on how to get girls. His advice sucks and he sucks, too! Next there’s Dylan. He’s here on a football scholarship or some such. He’s okay. Can’t fight worth a damn though. The one girl in the group is some chick named Mina. She’s hot. She’s also a soul crushing harpy. I’ll probably hang around her because, well, she’s hot. And boobs. Can’t forget boobs. Lastly are two are other guys named David and Stevie. David’s kind of squirrely, but he’s pre-med, and knows a bit about first aid, which is good because this group is going to need it! Stevie is a pretty basic dude. ROTC cadet. Kind of has a jarhead army mentality (be a zebra, anyone?), but he’s cool, and nice. Stevie’s also the only one who seemed to care after Mina shot me down hard while using Tommy’s shitty advice. If I haven’t said it already, Tommy’s a dick!
            Going back to the rest of the night, after the useless be a sheep-goat-mongoose-zebra-whothefuckcares piece of wisdom got handed to us, we heard noises from back upstairs that the band they had brought in started playing. They were okay for a local act. The university also sprung for free pizza from a local place called the “Pizza Barn”. Yeah, I don’t know what you folks were thinking there. I cook my pizza in an oven. Most barns don’t have ovens, last I checked. Business name fail.
            So I’m drowning my sorrow in some diluted rat piss they call punch and chewing on my third piece of sauced cardboard from this place when weird things start happening. First, some of the security guards got sick. REALLY SICK. Like, head for the toilet and don’t leave for three days type sick. Must’ve had the pizza. It was around now that Jason or Stevie, I’m not sure which, noticed that someone had painted on the walls with red paint. The folks in charge blamed it on senior pranks, and never seemed to care about it, taking it all in stride like this happens every year. Then my man, David, catches the eye of some other hot chick and takes off with her. SCORE! That’s when I tried to get to know Mina a little better only to find out that Tommy is not my friend and that I’m not sure I want to get to know Mina any better.
            So I’m sulking in the bathroom, and it turns out that David’s hot girl was a REALLY hot girl and tried to set him on fire. He said something about a ghost, but I wasn’t paying much attention. That was right about the time the red paint started setting the gym on fire. Everyone freaked out about that like they had never been in a fire before. It’s a big concrete building, we have time… besides, I noticed a bunch of fire extinguishers in another room downstairs. I was about to go get them when some dickhead security guy showed up and tazed me. Prick.
            I laid there for a bit, trying to get my head around me, when the others notice and get David. The pre-med thing is going to work out for him. Really. He gets me up on my feet and I’m stumbling around for a bit gathering my wits and trying to figure out what to do as all the other sheeple are freaking out over the fire that’s happening. I stumble downstairs to find Dylan and David fighting with the same dick security tool that tazed me earlier. Fucking zap me and attack my friends? I don’t think so Hillbilly Bob! I ran over there and clock the guy a good one, and this jackass goes and hits me again with the tazer. Son of a bitch! So after some more twitching, I get up with more help from David, and find my main man, Jason, just pepper spraying the hell out of that fool. Yeah! Take that, Rent-A-Flop!!!
            Then some other stuff happened that you’re just going to say was a side effect of the meds, Dr.Grafmeyer, so we’ll leave it at that. Oh yeah… We put out the damn fire. And I **TOTALLY** kicked that guy’s ass!!!


Best. Day. Ever.

the Birth of Rick Wallaby...

A few weeks back, I started running a Savage Worlds campaign for the East Texas University setting using the "Degrees of Horror" plot point campaign. It's a cool setting that is pretty much described as Buffy-Goes-To-College, but there's no "chosen one", and the stuff that happens at ETU is wierder.

During character creation, one of the players took the "Annoying Roommate" hinderance. Drawing a card on the appropriate table indicated that the source of the annoyance was said roommate's ADHD condition. I kind of ran with it from there. One order of annoying, highly distracted motormouth coming right up! Thus, Rick was born...

While we played the beginning of the first plot point for the game ("Sweat Lodge"), it turns out that Rick began to flesh himself out quite quickly. At the end of the night, I had determined that Rick was going to have a journal of sorts, kind of detailing the groups adventures from his point of view. The in-game reason for this journal is as an assignment from his therapist, which Rick sees twice-a-week in an effort to control his ADHD condition, instead of letting the condition control him. The first game ran long, so we had to pick up the rest of it two weeks later. That happened Saturday night...

A good time was had...