the annotated

kill puppies for satan

-orthe annotated your mother

the annotated kill puppies for satan and cockroach souffle are 2001, 2002 and 2005 by the author, all rights reserved and whatever. the illustrations are 2002 by kreg moser. email him at mortis@cox-internet.com and hire him to do art for your game, yo. this is the luluduludulydoo version. maybe the final and official version, can you imagine that shit?

kill puppies for satan

yes every puppy you kill its innocent little soul goes straight to doggy heaven with all the pretty doggy angels. fortunately satan doesnt give a fuck.

character creation
take a piece of paper and write in big letters across the top: i kill puppies for satan. thats your character sheet. next write: my name is and put your characters name. you get four stats, so write them next in a little column: cold, fucked up, mean, and relentless. the scale is 1 to 5, with 1 being normal and 5 being diabolical. leave a little space and then write: evil. killing puppies (and other animals) gives you evil, which you then get to spend on doing supernatural evil things. now leave a big space and write: this many people hate me. this is where you keep track of how many people hate you. so theres your character sheet. you get 11 points to spend on your four stats. yes, 11. just give each one a number from 1 to 5 and make sure they add up to 11. remember that satan likes cheaters but the gm doesnt. heres whats up with the stats. cold this is how heartless and calculating a motherfucker you are. make cold rolls whenever you do something that requires exactness, patience, knowledge, or great care, like disarming a security system or reading a book. cold

so satan calls me on the telephone this morning. its wicked early. uh? i say. hold for satan. i do. hey vincent, satan says. hey! its good to hear from you. the thing about satan is that its true. you go too long without hearing his voice and you start to miss him. i dont think anybody adequately prepares you for that. i was reading your blog and youve done pretty well for yourself, huh? he says. what with selling so much of this game youve made where you play good people trying to serve god and do good. i was pleased to read about that. send me a copy if you think of it, id like to read this good game youve made about serving god and doing goodness. uh oh. but look, he says. i have a favor to ask. no no no, i say. no, no way. im done with that. done. please.

_________________________________

corresponds to intelligence in a normal game. a regular person has a cold of 1, and hannibal lecter has a cold of 5. fucked up this is how devious, deviant and weird a motherfucker you are. make fucked up rolls whenever you do something that requires paranoia, edginess, quick wits, or sneakiness, like hiding under a bridge or noticing that somebodys disturbed your freezer unit. fucked up corresponds to perception and stealth in a normal game. a regular person has a fucked up of 1, and that guy from se7en has a fucked up of 5. mean this is how violent and ruthless a motherfucker you are. make mean rolls whenever you do something that requires strength, viciousness, rage, or brutality, like pulling a trigger or snapping handcuffs. mean corresponds to strength and skill in a normal game. a regular person has a mean of 1, and mickey and mallory from natural born killers have a mean of 5. and finally relentless this is how gutsy and powerful a motherfucker you are. make relentless rolls whenever you do something that requires endurance, discipline, tenacity, or the will to carry on, like swimming underwater or chewing through leather straps. relentless corresponds to stamina in a normal game. a regular person has a relentless of 1, and jason has a relentless of 5. now if you absolutely must cheat, fine, take the points, satans proud of you. but the gms gonna fuckin make you pay.

i know you are, he says. i publically disavowed it! at the forge, i did! pretty much publically disavowed it! i know, he says. anyway what am i going to do? its a whole complete little thing. i cant improve it, even if i wanted to, even if i tried. plus its times past, its not even relevant anymore. its a done joke. i know, he says. fuck. a revision? i say. are you serious? but satans nothing if hes not willing to make a deal. i talk him down to annotations. hey, so thanks, he says. and do send me a copy of that other game. sure. god dammit, call me sometime when you dont need a favor. lets just shoot the shit sometime. he laughs. sure, he says. hes my favorite motherfucking asshole in the world.

_________________________________

you also get to start out with some evil points. and consult table 1. i cheated on points i rolled a 1 i rolled a 2 or a 3 i rolled a 4 or a 5 i rolled a 6

roll a d6

you get 1 starting evil, you cheating bastard. guess you stepped on a roach. you get 0 starting evil. shoulda rolled better. tough shit.

you get 1 starting evil. choose a +1 animal and a +0 way to kill it. thats what you did. you get 2 starting evil. choose a +1 animal and a +1 way to kill it. thats what you did. you get 3 starting evil. choose a +2 animal and a +1 way to kill it. thats what you did.

table 1: starting evil

and you also have to start out with some people who hate you. roll a d6 and consult table 2. i cheated on points and starting evil fuck off, you know youre this roll too. you might ahead and write down that you. its a lie though. you. gonna cheat on as well just go 0 people hate the gm hates

i rolled a 1

ooh, harsh. 3 people hate you. you must be one mean cold fucked up relentless motherfucker. 2 people hate you. mother. one of thems your

i rolled a 2 or a 3 i rolled a 4, a 5, or a 6 table 2: starting hate

only 1 person hates you. better get a move on, satan dont want no lily-livered girly-ass puppykillers in his hell.

game mechanics
now lets see, oh yeah mechanics. here they are: roll a d6 and add your stat. if they add up to at least a 7 you succeed. if youre doing something easy, gms call, they only have to add up to at least a 6 to succeed. if you and somebody else are both trying to do something, and only one of you can do it, whoever rolls higher wins. the combat system is, if youre fighting with somebody, if you roll higher you hit them, and if they roll higher they hit you. if you tie then i guess you block each other or some shit.

if somebody hits you, a. make a relentless roll or fall over, and b. subtract 1 from your relentless. it doesnt matter what they hit you with, their fist, their purse, a .45, who gives a fuck. you can stand up again when the gm says so, and the gm can feel totally free to give you whatever penalties and grief seem warranted. you get the relentless point back when youve totally recovered and healed from the hit, and the gm decides when that is too. shoulda thought of that before you cheated, shouldnt you? the gm can also have you make relentless rolls and/or lose relentless points for shock, blood loss, trauma, exposure to radiation, looking directly at the sun during an eclipse, whatever. if your relentless ever goes below zero, well there it is. better hope that a. you have a kick-ass doctor or b. hell isnt as bad as they say. when you try to do something that requires you to interact in a positive way with normal people, like getting a library card or walking into an airport, the more people hate you the harder it is. this is the most complicated mechanic in the game, so pay attention. roll a d6 and dont add anything. youre trying to roll over the number of people who hate you. if you succeed, youre fine, carry on. if you fail, the gm can do shit to you, including but not limited to: giving you penalties to relevant rolls; making the customer service people rude, hostile and suspicious; and subjecting you to petty annoyances like background checks, lame delays, and body cavity searches.

im sure you noticed, those arent really resolution rules. theyre just like some shit for people to do while the gm resolves everything by fiat. they suck. try these instead. (they are, by the way, some stolenass resolution rules. i stole the bastards straight from sorcerer. ive stupidized em down to practically nothing, sorcerers rules are waaaay more sophisticated - i did it for you, dear reader - but whatever. im a rule-fuckinstealer.) there are no more unopposed rolls, because jesus christ if theres no opposition, just give it to the sad fucker. instead, use these rules whenever anybody wants something for their character and somebody else doesnt. first go around the table. every person says what their goal is for their character, then generally what their characters going to do to try to accomplish it, including especially which stat theyre gonna roll. if your goal requires your character to spend evil to accomplish it, you better have the evil available. if someone says a goal thats incompatible with your goal, make eye contact with them. you can make menacing eye

_________________________________

on the other hand, sometimes you might want to seem loathsome, creepy, disgusting, sleazy or untrustworthy. on those occasions, you can go ahead and roll a d6, and try to roll equal to or less than the number of people who hate you. if you succeed, you get a bonus to your picking scabs roll or whatever. fucking weirdo. oh one more thing, just so you know. some npcs have different stats than you do. so like if youre in a fistfight with good-hearted and upright cops, for instance, youll be rolling mean and the cops will be rolling brave. if you hit them, theyll make a dedicated roll to avoid falling over. no biggie, i just didnt want to catch you off guard with it. (they probably keep track of how many people admire them too or some shit. fucking saps.)

what to kill
now of course satan doesnt want you to kill only puppies. satan wants you to kill all kinds of animals, but a. the cuter and b. the more beloved the better. dogs - puppies, +1 evil. - loyal beloved old dogs, +1 evil. - seeing eye dogs, +2 evil. - mean cranky old dogs, +0 evil. - guard dogs, +0 evil. - police dogs, +1 evil. contact if you want, or supplicatory eye contact, whatever, but do look them in the face. in just a second youre going to really, really care what they roll. if your goals incompatible with someones, theirs is incompatible with yours, of course. there arent one-way incompatibilities, so dont pretend there are. everyones allowed to change their goal and action if they want to. sometimes youll have to go around the circle a couple times before everyones satisfied. thats fine. ron calls this the free and clear so i will too: this is the free and clear. the gm counts as a person at the table. the gm says the npcs goals and actions. the gm is also allowed to say a danger, like the danger is that the cops will show up or the danger is that youll accidentally smash the oracular mirror or the danger is that youll light the curtains on fire or whatever, in addition to whatever the npcs are up to. the gm gets to decide the danger but anybody else can suggest good ones. as gm you can have there be a danger whenever you want, but the real reason for it is for times where there needs to be a conflict but theres nobody available to be the other side.

_________________________________

cats - kittens, +1 evil. - mean evil old cats who when they die you know theyre going to kitty hell anyway, +0 evil. other pets - bunnies, +1 evil. - parakeets, +1 evil. - mean vulgar neurotic parrots, +1 evil. - nice parrots, +2 evil (good luck finding one). - goldfish, +0 evil. - nice fish, +1 evil. - rare beautiful tropical fish in somebodys home aquarium, +2 evil. - rare beautiful tropical fish in like the dentists office, +1 evil. - ferrets, +0 evil. - tarantulas or scorpions, +1 evil. - hamsters, gerbils and other rodents, +1 evil. - boas, pythons, garter snakes etc, dont fuck with them, theyre satans kind of people. wild animals - squirrels, woodchucks, chipmunks, field mice, whatever, +0 evil. - random bugs like ants and earthworms and spiders, +0 evil. - butterflies, +1 evil. - songbirds or other everyday birds, +0 evil. - owls, +1 evil. - feral or wild cats, +1 evil.

_________________________________
second everybody rolls a d6. the gm rolls a d6 for the danger (if any) and only one d6 for the npcs in the conflict, one die no matter how many npcs. look at your d6 and add your stat to it, the stat that you named when you said your characters action. you want em to add up to 7 or better. if you want to spend evil to reroll your die, heres when. call out that youre doing it. if youre the gm, you do the same for each npc, add their stats to their roll, but since you only rolled one die for all of em its like they all rolled the same number. for the danger, add 4. all dangers have only one stat, dangerousness, and they all have it at 4. anyhow you dont have to call your totals out, since you dont get a turn, but you should call out whos got a 7+ and whos got less than 7, including the danger. third other than the gm, who has the highest total? in case of a tie, who rolled the highest die? in case of still a tie, whos sitting closer to the gms left hand side?

mountain lions, +2 evil. coyotes, +1 evil. dolphins, +2 evil. whales, +2 evil. baby seals, +2 evil. bears, +1 evil. sharks, +1 evil.

food animals - if you eat it, +0 evil. - if you dont eat it, +1 evil. vermin satan hates it when you kill vermin, because when they die they go to hell, and then he has to pay exterminator bills. - cockroaches, -1 evil. - rats, -1 evil. - mosquitoes, -1 evil. - fucking little yappy dogs, -1 evil. - ticks, -1 evil. - flies, -1 evil. - lice, -1 evil. - hornets, -1 evil.

that person goes first, then the next, then the next, and so on down to the person with the lowest total, the lowest die, sitting at the gms right. we call that person the screwed pooch. the gm doesnt get any turns; npcs only get to react, and dangers only get to come true or not. okay, ready? everyone whose total is 7+ is a winner. everyone whose total is less than 7 is a loser. this includes the danger. on your turn, remember those people whose goals are incompatible with yours? look at them again. if there are more than one, look at them in order of lowest total to highest. some of em might be pcs, some might be npcs, one of em might be the danger; its all good. - if youre a winner and theyre a loser, you dont lose your goal but they lose theirs. you say what your character does; they say what their character does; the gm says what results, and between the three of you make their goal not come true. also they lose their turn. theyre done. if they already had their turn, their goal has already not come true, so you dont need to do or say anything. if you feel like it, you can take the opportunity to piss on them or set yourself up against whos next in your turn, whatever.

_________________________________

10

how to kill it
+0 ways to kill it - put it in a sack with a couple of rocks and toss it in the reservoir. - shoot it with a gun of roughly the appropriate caliber. - brain it with a rock. - hit it with your car. - behead it on a stump with a cleaver. - flush it. +1 ways to kill it - with your bare hands. (except bugs.) - hold its head underwater/hold it out of the water by the tail until it suffocates. - bash it by the hind legs into a brick wall. - shoot it with a gun of a radically too-high caliber or with an automatic. - lock it in a cedar chest with no food and check on it every day. +2 ways to kill it - eat it live. (except goldfish.) - with a red-hot poker. - mutilate it first. - ceremonially, with special accursed tools and chanting the names of satan. - with bottle rockets.

- if youre a winner and theyre a winner, you have to choose: give up your goal to screw them out of theirs, or dont. say which you choose. if you choose to give up your goal so that they lose theirs: you say what your character does, they say what theirs does, the gm says what results, and between the three of you make both goals not come true. now youre both losers too, no matter what you rolled. your turn is done and they lose theirs. if you choose not to give up your goal and not to screw theirs: you say what your character does to get out of the way or theirs; they say how their character lets it go, and thats it. continue with your turn, theyll get a turn too, but on their turn, they skip you. its done between you. - if youre a loser and theyre a loser, you have to choose: you both screw up each others goals or else you dont. say which. if you choose to give up your goal so that they lose theirs: you say what your character does, they say what theirs does, the gm says what results, and between the three of you make both goals not come true. your turn is done and they lose theirs. if you cont choose to give up your goal to screw theirs: dont say anything. continue with your turn, they get their

_________________________________

11

well, that should be enough to fuel your imagination, you sick puppy you. come up with your own ways to kill it and the gm will no doubt reward your innovations with extra evil. unless you fucking cheated.

why to kill it
things that cost 1 evil - re-roll a die. keep re-rolling until it comes up at least a 4. - ignore a hit even though you failed your relentless roll. - automatically pass the people who hate you roll when you try to get a library card or something. you dont creep them out. - press your ear up against a door. you can hear everything thats going on on the other side, no matter how quiet. - put a sock over the telephone mouthpiece. until the end of the phone call, your voice sounds exactly like another persons, whoever you want. - jump out of a window. youll be fine when you land, no matter how far you fall. - hide in a good shadow or under something. nobody can find you until you move, unless they happen to touch you. - force somebody you just hit to re-roll their relentless (or whatever) roll. - turn any one piece of music, performed or recorded, into a muzak cover of hey jude. guaranteed to piss off the band. turn too. on their turn, they dont skip you, they get to choose whether to give up their goal to screw yours, same as you did. this is how both losers is different from both winners. both winners: whoever goes first gets to decide. both losers: both get their chance to screw both. if your opposite loser is an npc, the gm should say right now during your turn whether they give up their goal to screw yours. if so, say what happens as usual and your turn ends. the gm doesnt lose the npcs turn of course, on account of npcs dont have turns. - you cant be a loser and theyre a winner. if you are, youve fucked up either who goes before whom, who loses their turns, or else whose goals are incompatible with whose.

_________________________________

fourth so now you can see where this goes. if you reach the end of your turn and youre still a winner, you win your goal. say what your character does, the gm says what happens, you win, youre happy. if youre a loser, either youve lost your goal already and youre sad, or else youre waiting for some other loser to choose whether to screw you or let you win. then the next person goes, then the next, then the next. at the end of the last persons turn, tidy up any loose ends. like, any npcs who survived without losing their

12

- lie still. until you move, anybody who examines you will think youre dead. - say something or make some noise. people will think it came from somewhere else, wherever you want. - short out any one electrical device. - cast a first degree spell out of a satanic spellbook. things that cost 2 evil - re-roll a die. keep re-rolling until it comes up a 5 or a 6. - take telepathic control of a nearby vermin. you can see through its little beady eyes and control what it does. - add 1 to any stat for the next half hour game time. - get back all the relentless points youve lost. youre healed instantly. - this only works if youre wearing a big coat and somebody hits you. instead of making a relentless roll, your coat falls open and youre one big swarming mass of your favorite kind of vermin. you lose control of yourself but regroup later at a convenient place nearby. - spit or blow your nose on something. your snot is fire, about as hot and as long lasting as a corresponding amount of that canned fuel sterno stuff. plenty enough to start a campfire anyway. - jump up onto the roof of a house or to like a third story window. - jump horizontally over like a four lane divided road. - sprint up to 50 miles per hour.

goals, nows when the gm says how they win them. also if the danger wound up a winner, nows when it comes true. go back to the first step - the free and clear - and keep going until everythings decided. ima call this a struggle. a struggle is one or more rolls, in sequence, all about the same general things. god dammit, you know what i mean.

_________________________________

beyond falling down if you win your goal, you get +1 to your next roll, provided its a continuation of this same struggle. plus you get to choose one of these following bennies: - your opponent falls down and loses 1 relentless. if you have more than one opponent, they all do. - you get +1 to a roll of your choice in some future struggle against this same opponent. if you have more than one opponent, choose one. write this on your character sheet. you really cant use it until this current struggle is over. - you get an additional +1 to your next roll in this struggle, provided your goal is to keep what you just won. these go for pcs and npcs. if the danger comes true, it doesnt get a +1 or a bennie, but it should surely lead straight into more rolling.

13

- call satan on the phone. youll probably get his machine, but hes pretty good about returning calls. - hold your breath underwater for up to twenty minutes. - whistle a tune and while youre whistling, youre invisible. you can walk around and do stuff and nobody can see you until you stop whistling. eerie. - drive a car from the back seat. - cast a second degree spell out of a satanic spellbook. things that cost 3 evil - walk through a wall. - hide inside some solid inanimate object. it has to be big enough, like a futon or a piano, but while youre in there youre pretty much unfindable. you can still see and hear whats going on, but you cant move yourself around. - tell somebody to do something (the simpler and more concrete the better). they have to do it. if its dangerous, complicated, or long-term the gm can let them make rolls to resist. - make a dozen or so specimens of your favorite vermin appear in your cupped hands. - make a specimen or three of your favorite vermin appear anywhere you want. consider peoples mouths or ears or in their pockets with their car keys. - take on the exact likeness of an animal youve recently killed, for as long as you want. while youre transformed, you can at will a. make your eyes glow a hellish red-orange, b. speak in a tortured inhuman voice, c. leave scorching hot pawprints (/hoofprints/flipperprints/what the fuck ever) melted into the carpet, and d. have your reflection and

_________________________________

hate youve probably figured this out already. the how many people hate you roll is now just a normal roll where the danger is that youll get the body cavity search or the cops called on you or whatever, and the dangerousness is equal to how many people hate you instead of being automatically equal to 4. super obvious.

one-on-ones oh and look, these probably read like mass orgy conflict rules, but really theyre based on a super easy one-on-one thing. you both say your goal, action and stat, you both roll a die, you both add. then: if one of yous a winner and ones a loser, the winner wins and the loser loses. if both are winners, whoever rolled the higher total chooses: both win vs. both lose. if both are losers, both have a chance to screw the other, and both win only if neither chooses to screw. piece of cake. if the full rules seem too hardcore, you can probably reframe all your conflicts into one-on-ones - but if you need to do that youre a fucking unimaginative vanilla prude and come the fuck on.

14

shadow do different things than your actual self is doing. perfect for loyal beloved old dogs. - light a fire just by staring hard. - grow fangs, claws, proboscises, a tail, compound eyes, scales, fur, or whatever other animal feature you want. - fly, about as fast and as far as you can run. - trip the circuit breakers of an apartment building or all the houses on a whole block. - cast a third degree spell out of a satanic spellbook. things that cost 4 evil - make a car or a living room or a dumpster explode in flames, the kind of explosion you only get from action flicks and trash bags full of gasoline. - summon a huge swarm of your favorite vermin, hundreds or maybe thousands of specimens. they act more or less as you direct, but gradually revert to their natural behavior. - desecrate a church or holy place. you dont need to fuck up the like decor or anything (though of course feel free), just now its not holy ground. presumably theres some kind of anti-evil thing that religious fanatics can do to put it right, but meanwhile its kind of a kick. - telekinetically control vast quantities of shit, sewage, compost, muck, and litter. you can direct its flow, lift it into the air, even throw it. back up the pipes and flood out a whole city block, the fun never stops. - transform yourself into oily, foul-smelling smoke. float near the ceiling or seep under the door, and turn back into yourself when you feel like it. - create a spell or ritual and write it into a satanic spellbook. you design the effect and stuff and the gm decides what degree it is. - cast a lesser ritual from a satanic spellbook. things that cost 5 evil - make one clean, attractive and healthy normal person consider for one second having sex with you. - add twenty years to your own life expectancy. (yeah, like youre gonna die of old age, im fucking sure.) - add 1 permanently to one of your stats. - dedicate yourself to a particular animal (dont choose a vermin). whenever you kill one, using at least a +1 way to kill it, you get an extra point of evil. pays for itself. - cast a greater ritual out of a satanic spellbook. and thats that.

satan
so satans actually a pretty nice guy. set aside for a minute the fact that hes cold, fucked up, mean and relentless all at 10, he has starting evil in the triple digits, and three point six billion people worldwide hate him. underneath hes just this regularish guy who watches

15

pro wrestling and cspan. (and sure, rules hell and so on.) but i mean hes not like the other guy, hes approachable. hes not full of himself, he doesnt bogart the joint just because hes the fucking fallen morningstar, the first person ever with the balls to spit in gods coffee. (which you gotta fucking admit.) but even so, if you want to hang with him, you gotta follow a couple rules. they arent commandments exactly, because hes willing to overlook a few infractions, you know, out of neighborliness. not like that other prick. just keep em in mind is all he asks. satans guidelines - dont kill people if you can help it. if theyre bad people, satan would rather have them out doing evil in the world. if theyre good people, they go to heaven and nobody wants that. - if you must fuck with people, better to make them say why god why? than god help me. real torture leads people to find their inner strength and shit, petty meanness makes people lose faith in each other. better to hit their dog with your car and drive away laughing. - dont try to make the world a better place. i know this is a no-brainer but youd be surprised the kind of goody two shoes want to be satans buds. dont give money to amnesty international or the nra or even the fucking kiwanis club. keep your cash for yourself, spend it on cigs and porn, put it in stocks bonds and iras, who gives a shit. anyway the world is pretty much just how satan likes it, and if he wants it different hell tell you. - dont try to tempt people to sin. its a union thing, and believe me you dont want to scab on demons. just kill puppies and leave the rest to the professionals. - oh, and dont get caught, asshole. you definitely wont do satan any favors from a padded cell in willard. so great, youre ready to play, right? youre the gm, fuck off. terrific. now unless

16

gm shit
so its like mad magazine, remember, the lighter side of, only lets call it:

the evil fucked up side of... ...npcs

two kinds of npcs, right? kind number one: regular people. fig 1 is a character sheet for a regular person.
i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my dog who gives a rats ass what my name is cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 4

fig 1: a normal person

your pcs pretty much dont need to sweat this kind of npc. apply satans guidelines to them as you see fit and fuck em. kind number two: people your pcs have to be scared of. without this kind, the game would be dull as all fuck. fortunately there are a wide variety. mix and match!

heroes
you know how when you and your crew kick into a bank and wave your shotguns around and the people are all like weeping and shielding their kids with their bodies and shit and you say all right, people, nobody be a hero, somebody always fucking does? thats this guy. - heroes have different stats than your pcs do. instead of cold, theyre thoughtful; instead of fucked up, theyre so like, i fucking hate being the gm. its too hard. my goal for all the new dice stuff is to make gming easy, so i can do it without hating it - thats all. if youve read other things ive written you might think i have some sort of rpg theoretical agenda, but nope, i just gotta make this game easy to gm. its a longstanding kill puppies for satan tradition that i release unplaytested bullshit upon you, and the new rules fully inherit and partake of that tradition. thus its very possible that they arent easier even one little bit at all. in which case, fuck it!

_________________________________

17

astute; instead of mean, theyre brave; and instead of relentless, theyre dedicated. use them for basically the same things, although obviously enough you cant make brave rolls to pull the wings off a butterfly. - they dont have anything corresponding to evil, i mean they dont like do good deeds and then cash them in to set things on fire or whatever. however, they do get special benefits when other people are in danger. count the number of normal people the hero is trying to protect/rescue/help across the street/what the fuck ever. as long as theres at least one, whenever the hero rolls a die and it comes up a 1, she gets to re-roll. (or he does, you know.) so thats cool for them but it sucks ass for your pcs, which naturally is what you want. - if you feel like it, you can have your heroes keep track of how many people admire them, like i said before, but i wouldnt fucking bother. - you may feel some pressure to make heroes stats add up to 11, same as pcs. thats the stupidity talking. fuck that. - fig 2 is a character sheet for a random hero.
im not a hero, im just willing to do what needs to be done my name is liz macreedy thoughtful 2 astute 2 brave 4 dedicated 4 when im helping people out i get to re-roll 1s this many people admire me: 6

fig 2: a hero

religious fanatics
you know how when you manage to plant the satanic artifact in the antique shop and the district attorneys daughter thinks its charming and buys it and wears it home pinned to her coat and later is possessed, naturally, and the demons are having all kinds of fun hanging out in her nubile young body, but then eventually somehow a fucking congregationalist finds out and comes and rings the bell and recites the prayer and does the thing with the host and all the demons have to leave her alone and possess the fucking pigeons on the windowsill instead? thats this guy. - religious fanatics have different stats too. instead of cold, theyre pious; instead of fucked up, theyre wise; instead of mean, theyre righteous; and instead of relentless, theyre devoted. same deal though. - instead of evil, they get miracles. fuckers. miracles work the opposite way than evil, though. god gives credit. first you get the miracle, then you pay for it with prayers and devotions and doing good and calling sinners to repentance and other lame shit. (god decides when your accounts paid off of course, and hes a notorious hard-

18

on. plus hell do all this underhanded entrapment shit like giving you a miracle you didnt ask for and putting it on your account anyway. its just fucking glorified mail fraud.) - religious fanatics keep track of how many people rely on them for spiritual succor. that number is their credit limit. if 3 people rely on you for spiritual succor then god will give you up to 3 points worth of miracles before you have to pay him back. theres a short list of miracles coming up. - again, dont limit religious fanatics to 11 points for stats. - fig 3 is a character sheet for a random religious fanatic.
jesus wants me for a sunbeam my name is elder ezekiel quackenbush pious 3 wise 1 righteous 4 devoted 3 i owe god for this many points of miracles: 0 this many people depend upon me for spiritual succor: 3

fig 3: a religious fanatic

here are some miracles. - the miracle of walking across like a piddly little stream, 1 point. - the miracle of walking across a pond or lake or river or whatever, 2 points. - the miracle of turning water into wine, 1 point. - the miracle of turning oregano into pot, 2 points. - the miracle of turning saline into smack, 3 points. - the miracle of the bottomless happy meal, 2 point. - the miracle of the all you can eat seafood bar, 3 points. - the miracle of parting the traffic on the pike, 1 point. - the miracle of making something holy so demons etc dont like it, 1 point. - the miracle of making a sinner roll a d4 instead of a d6, 1 point for two. - the miracle of defeating a satanic spell, however many points of evil the spell costs to cast. - the miracle of thwarting somebody whos spent evil to do something, however many points of evil they spent. - the miracle of protecting a particular individual from a particular demon, however many points of evil the demon costs to summon. - the miracle of sending a particular demon back to hell where it belongs, however many points of evil the demon costs to summon + 1. - the miracle of making a sinner feel really guilty and low and have to go lie down for a while or get shitfaced, points equal to the sinners relentless. im such an asshole. not all religious fanatics are christians, though you wouldnt know it from reading my list

19

of miracles. there are plenty of fanatical jews, muslims, buddhists, confucianists, hindus, neopagans, scientologists, shintoists, taoists, tribal animists, et fucking c. knock yourself out.

vigilantes
you know how when you sit down at last after a long day in the meat locker and you put your feet up and set your drink on the coffee table and turn on cspan and some asshole with a beer gut and a 12-gauge comes in through your plate-glass window and bellows something about youre a slippery sumbitch hes been tracking you for eight months and this is for what you did to little flossie you sick fuck and starts blasting away? thats this guy. - instead of cold, vigilantes are thorough; instead of fucked up, theyre survivors; instead of mean, theyre vengeful; and instead of relentless, theyre driven. - they dont have evil or anything, and they dont keep track of how many people theyve kicked the asses of. they do, however, have fucking arsenals full of big-ass guns. - fig 4 is a character sheet for a random vigilante.
revenge is a dish best served right the fuck now my name is jimmy-john giles thorough 1 survivor 4 vengeful 4 driven 3 i have a fucking arsenal full of big-ass guns and a l.a.r.g.o. bumper sticker

fig 4: a vigilante

space aliens
you know how when youre sneaking across the field on a pitch black night and you slip under the live fence and belly-hump your way through the cowshit and your heart is thud-thudding with anticipation at the thought of farmer wylies new heifer and theres a weird light over there and you lift your head and theyve got these horrible tools and theyre slowly and methodically pulling sweet bessie inside out and laying her ribs in starburst patterns? thats this guy. - instead of cold, space aliens are calculating; instead of fucked up, theyre mysterious; instead of mean, theyre inquisitive; and instead of relentless, theyre inscrutable. - instead of evil, they have cosmic rays, which power their sinister technology. any given alien will have a cosmoprotonic battery holding 3 cosmic rays, which they can use and then recharge back at their flying saucer. each alien tool uses up 1 cosmic ray per application.

20

- i mention space aliens at all because theyre pretty much your pcs only competition in the cattle mutilation department. if you want to bring in the men in black and even give fucking whiny-butt fox mulder a guest spot, thats your can of worms. - fig 5 is a character sheet for a random space alien.
i like to administer anal probes my name is x-j447 calculating 3 mysterious 4 inquisitive 4 inscrutable 3 cosmic rays 3 i have a thought-form assimilator and an omnikey

fig 5: a space alien

here are some alien tools. - a thought-form assimilator makes you think the space alien is something else, like an owl or a teddy bear. - a stasis applicator radically slows your metabolism and body functions. youre still awake and alive, but an hour could pass while you blink your eyes. - an omnikey unlocks any mechanical or electronic lock. - an e-field disruptor disables any electrical device that comes within range. it doesnt affect devices powered by cosmic rays (think about it). - a thought-state disruptor makes you forget what happened to you. - a levitron makes you weightless. - a semantic impulsor projects words into your brain.

sorcerers
you know how when you break at night into the holy trinity college library and jimmy the service elevator so itll take you up to the forbidden archives on the thirteenth floor and you make your way by flashlight to shelf 444 (two thirds of the beast) and you look under diablos, christophe, 1701-1767, and instead of a book theres a fucking empty slot, and you look around and somebodys reading over in one of the nooks, illuminated by a flickering orb of blue witchlight? thats this guy. - instead of cold, sorcerers are learned; instead of fucked up, theyre insightful; instead of mean, theyre fierce, and instead of relentless, theyre resolute. - instead of evil, sorcerers have potency. they accumulate potency by observing celestial and otherworldly events, and by ritually calling up the primal forces of creation. they use their potency to cast spells. - usually they cast spells from their own sorcerous spellbooks, but they can also cast spells from satanic

21

spellbooks with no especial difficulty. the reverse is not true, your pcs will be totally baffled by a sorcerous spellbook. - they also do a whole stack of other wizardly kinds of things, like take familiars (youll have to make up stats for them yourself, but it shouldnt be that fucking difficult) and brew magic potions and fuck, i dunno what else. wizardly shit. - fig 6 is a character sheet for a random sorcerer.
i am a master of forces occult and obscure my name is julietta summers learned 5 insightful 3 fierce 1 resolute 4 potency 6 my familiar is a small to middling spiritjackal named chakr the red-tooth.

fig 6: a sorcerer

here are some sorcerous spells. - summoning the storm winds, 1 potency a fierce and concentrated wind whips and shrieks around you. everybody else has to make a relentless (or whatever) roll or fall down (but nobody loses any points, its not like when you fall down from a hit). - fist of the storm, 2 potency lighting falls from the sky and strikes whomever you want. the strike counts as two consecutive hits for purposes of rolling to stay standing and losing points of relentless (or whatever). - coat of shadows, 2 potency you are invisible until natural light (sun-, moon-, star-, or fire-) falls on you. - word of loosening, 2 potency whoever hears you speak the word, everything on and about their person is loosed. ties, zippers, laces, braids, all come undone, and they also piss and shit themselves, slobber, weep, and leak snot out their noses. buttons and snaps arent affected. - sword of the sun, 1 potency cast on any weapon and until dawn the weapon will hurt demons, spirits, vampires, ghosts, and whatever other weird freaky shit it happens to connect with. you can cast it on a bullet if you want, but casting it on the gun itself is pretty much a waste. - world of crystal, 1 potency every nonliving thing around you becomes to you (not to everybody) as transparent as glass. this lasts until youve blinked three times.

summoning the storm winds is a good example. see where it says everybody has to make a relentless roll? but now relentless rolls as such are done away with, right? so what to do? you figured this out already of course, but heres what: the danger is that everybodyll fall down.

_________________________________

22

- fire of the sun, 2 potency cast on a magical item, a holy object, a satanic spellbook, an accursed thingy, or any such kinda thing. whatever magic exists in it burns out in a flash of occult flame. (if its a spellbook, it leaves the ravings alone but consumes every word of the spells.) so no spells above the second degree. guess. lifes a bitch. more work for you i

demons
you know how when you make and execute a genius plan to get close to the undersecretary to the vice president in charge of requisitions prizewinning afghan hound and youre there with the dog and the baling wire and the drano and youre just waiting for the moon to come through the clouds and instead it never fails a fucking fiend from the pits of hell comes and tells you to piss off but leave the dog cause its hungry? thats this guy. - demons have the same stats your pcs do, namely cold, fucked up, mean, and relentless, in case your brain fell out. however, demons stats go from 2 to 10 instead of 1 to 5. yes, that means that some demons have to roll a 4 on a d6 to fail a roll. you got a problem with that? - demons have evil, too. they use it for the same kinds of things that pcs do, although they have many more options. they have to work for it too, and theyre pissed because they have to actually accomplish things, not just kill a bunch of stupid puppies. sometimes theyll fuck with your pcs just for that. - dont bother keeping track, though. you can basically assume that any given demon will have a dozen points of evil squirreled away for just this very occasion, and im not even gonna fucking list all the things they can use it for. if it sounds good, hell, go for it. what are your players gonna do about it, whine? thatd be new. - demons keep count of how many people theyve tempted to sin and thus condemned to eternal torment, and you can too if you want. - you cant just punch or shoot a demon until it goes away, they just laugh that shit off. you gotta use magic or evil or holy water or something. good luck. - hell isnt organized like heaven is. demons dont follow like some ineffable plan, except when satan can bribe them to. if for some random reason a powerful old big-ass demon decides that shes going to grind your pcs up and feed them to her hellhounds, satans not likely to interfere. unless they can talk him into it or buy his interest somehow or something. - oh, and lets say that a piddly-ass demon is one with stats that add up to 12 or less, a small to middling demon is one with stats that add up to 16 or less, and a big ol demon is one with stats that add up to 17 or more. see the satanic

23

spellbooks section below for stuff about summoning and binding demons. - fig 7 is a character sheet for a random demon.
ill have the filet of soul, rare if you please my name is qazach, the duchess of head lice cold 3 fucked up 5 mean 3 relentless 3 evil plenty ive tempted this many people to sin and thus condemned them to eternal torment: 8,677

fig 7: a demon

now theres one demon in particular that maybe ill talk about, and thats the man himself, el diablo, his infernal majesty, satan, the fallen archangel of light. put your hands together, hes one hell of a guy. particularly i want to give you some advice for playing the fucker as an npc, which is kind of intimidating, and face it youre gonna have to, what with the pcs calling him on the telephone all the damn time. so here goes. - choose somebody from your life. make it somebody friendly, interesting, kind of complicated but easy to like, someone who makes you smile when you think of them and who you maybe wish youd known better. for me its ms drummond, my tenth grade english teacher (who im certain would be appalled). thats your satan. youll be able to go for a while on just that persons charm alone. - pay attention to eye contact. satan looks everybody in the eye, but hes not intimidating and hes not in your face. hes just easygoing and self assured. - when it comes up, remember that simply nothing can piss satan off, and nothing can frighten him. the very absolute fuckingest bad thing that can happen to him at this point is that hell have to wait a few years until everybody involved dies, and then most of them hell get to personally torture until he gets bored of listening to them whimper. seriously, no pc (or anybody) can ever do anything worse to him than that, and its just not that bad. he can live with it. hes got no worries. - at the same time, theres no reason for him to ever put up with anything once it becomes more irritating than it is interesting. if you bug him, he can arrange for his various loyal toadies to kill, cripple, maim, and destroy the lives of you, your family, your friends, your pet, everybody whos ever shaken your hand, and everybody near you in the phone book (just for good measure). it doesnt often come to that. - and heres the trick to top it off. satan got the ever loving blue eyed shit kicked out of him, and theres no possible way for him to ever even begin to get even. hes fucking shit outta luck. the only way he could possibly

24

deal with it is to get a sense of humor. so thats it. when youre playing satan, dont take anything seriously. to a guy like that, nothing is serious. (well, one thing is serious, but man its old fucking news.)

and finally other random weird freaky shit

you know how when youve been chasing this damn dog all over town and back and you just cant seem to catch up with it and its acting like it knows youre there and its onto you and you start to wonder precisely whos chasing whom and then it surprises you by jumping out of a garbage can and sinking its teeth into your arm and before you know it its turned into some guy, i mean some fucking guy with a mouthful of your meat? thats this guy. - vampires, werewolves, ghouls, skinchangers, undead, the whole goddamn freakshow, its all out there if you know where to look. or if you dont know which side of the fucking tracks to stay on, puppy boy. - they all have their own stats and im not really inclined to make them all up. youve got the pattern by now surely. knock yourself out. ill do one to get you started. itll be your fave and mine, vampires. - instead of cold, vampires are cultured; instead of fucked up, theyre cunning; instead of mean, theyre bloodthirsty; and instead of relentless, theyre immortal. - instead of evil, vampires keep track of how hungry they are. when they use their powers, they get hungrier, when they drink blood, they get less hungry. - whenever they make a bloodthirsty roll, they add their hungry. whenever they make a cultured or cunning roll, they subtract their hungry. - only stakes through the heart, burning, beheading, magic, and garlic can reduce their immortal. they fall down when they get hit and fail the immortal roll, but unless its one of those things they dont subtract one from their immortal, and they can pretty much hop right back up. - their powers can include turning into a bat or a wolf or mist, mesmerizing people, moving superfast, being superstrong, you know, the whole damn list from that other fucking game. i know you own it. - fig 8 is a character sheet for a random vampire.

25

fig 8: a vampire

a monster i am, lest a monster i wankety wankety wank my name is elias dumond iii cultured 5 cunning 3 bloodthirsty 3 immortal 4 hungry 1 i can transform myself into the bat and transfix the ladies with my sinister yet compelling dark eyes, nyorm nyorm.

so thats npcs. pants.

make your pcs piss their puppy-killing

the evil fucked up side of... ...satanic spellbooks

now some of your pcs arent going to be motivated by spellbooks. youll set up a great storyline about a corrupt and heretical sect of congregationalists who were rooted out and (secretly) burned at the stake back in the late forties, but their blasphemous grimoire survived in the reference section of the utica public library, guarded by a reference librarian who is actually the ancient demon-god baal shebub, wholl give it only to one worthy and steeped in the blood of many many puppies indeed, and youll start dropping hints into the flights of locusts and the gibberings of npcs and the entrails of little kids hamsters, and some of your pcs will be all like whatever, lets go blow shit up. well fuck them. they dont deserve spellbooks. fuck, their enemies deserve spellbooks. kick their lame asses.

first degree spells

- good for misleading pursuit for the next full mile you walk, any footprints you happen to leave will point backwards instead of forwards. this spell takes less than a minute to cast and is only a teeny bit painful. - good for souring milk - summon up a piddly-ass demon and tell it to do something. probably itll obey, especially if you tell it to do something really really easy. this spell takes a good ten minutes to cast and is kind of pricey, like about as much as a dinner out. - good for keeping track of the parson - draw a circle on a map. if anybody who hates you is inside the circle, youll know it immediately (though you wont know precisely who). this spell takes a minute or so to cast is all, but the smoke sure stings your eyes. - good for avoiding debtors prison create a fat greasy wad of twenties. spend them quick, though, because at dawn theyll turn into a fowl smell and maggots. plus you cant

26

use them (directly) for any magical purpose. this spell takes ten minutes or so and youll want to floss your teeth afterward. listerine helps some too. - good for avoiding the mob - write a word on a piece of paper, it has to be a real word, and stick it in your pocket. next time you say that word, you transform into an ugly and ragged but serviceable seagull, and you stay that way until sundown. it takes twenty minutes to cast this spell, and it hurts like a sumbitch.

second degree spells

- good for securing a measure of privacy - pace off a circle about the size of a vacant lot (or whatever shape, who gives a rats ass). anybody who crosses into your circle before dawn smells something really really funky, and it gets worse with every passing second. only people who kinda like that smell can take more than a few steps. anybody who started out inside the circle is immune. this spell takes maybe ten minutes to cast, plus pacing the circle, and is more tiring than youd expect. - good for having back at your ungrateful relations - write a persons full name on a piece of paper and wrap it around a rock. within a week, some kind of unpleasant demon, devil, or ghoul will visit that person. this spell takes a half hour to cast and requires you to spend the twelve hours on either side stone cold fucking sober. - good for turning a wallet of tobacco into cowshit - summon up a small to middling demon and tell it to do something. probably itll obey, especially if you tell it to do something nasty. tell it to do something extra nasty and it might even try to take credit for the idea. dont bother unless youve got at least a half hour and a couple three four twenties to burn.

third degree spells

- good for doing away with the constablery - write the name of a cop and the name of a disease on the same piece of paper. the one inexplicably catches the other. only works on cops, including fbi and atf agents but not including private detectives or rentacops. this spell takes almost eight hours to cast (though it can be spread out over a week or so if its more convenient for you that way) and the last hour will make you dizzy from blood loss. - also good for doing away with the constablery - make a car (preferably one youre not in) swerve wildly out of control. this spell only takes a second or two to cast, but god damn the hangover. - good for having your revenge upon the landlord - summon up a big ol demon and tell it to do something. probably itll obey you or be wicked pissed that you disturbed it for something so trivial. anyway itll take you an hour to cast

27

and set you back a pretty penny, sometimes up to a couple hundred bucks.

lesser rituals
- good for securing notoriety - summon and bind a piddly-ass or small to middling demon. they dont like being bound so much, but it makes them a. hang around until youre ready to give them their instructions, b. obey you without fail, c. hang around after theyve completed your instructions to see if theres anything else they can do for you, and d. not try to rip open your ribcage and eat your beating heart. just in case. this spell takes an hour or more to cast and costs a couple grand. - good for taking footpads by surprise - choose a first or second degree spell from a satanic spellbook and brand it into your brain. from now on you can cast that spell without hauling out the ol spellbook and chanting the names of satan and slicing yourself with razorblades and so on. you still have to spend the evil of course but its less hassle. this spell takes a couple hours to cast and mm, scorched flesh. - good for lending verity to the contemplation of your eternal fate - visit hell. you and one lucky guest. and, uh, dont misplace your return tickets. this spell takes a few minutes to cast and doesnt require anything you wont find lying around the house.

greater rituals
- good for securing your prominence in earthly affairs summon and bind a big ol demon. and you thought that little demons were pissed when you bound em. you better not end up in this guys care after you kack. this spell takes a month to cast and will bankrupt you, plus youll never sleep through the night again. so any given satanic spellbook is going to be hundreds and hundreds of pages of ravings and contain three or four spells at most. many have only one. they usually have descriptions about as good as those above, but once in a while youll get one that says something like i used this one to get into goody halfords basement and then launch into which names of satan to chant and how many drams of quicklime to moisten with lambs blood and where to put it. what the spell actually does is for you to know and your players to find out. (if theyre ever so desperate or whacked that theyll try it, that is.) oh and if you feel like being a real fucker you can give them spells whose descriptions are just lies. good for getting out of a jam it says and then what it does is emblazon a bigass glowing bulls eye on their foreheads, that kinda shit. so thats good.

28

the evil fucked up side of... ...guns

there are no good gun mechanics in roleplaying. probably there cant be because its just too complicated. set up the shot, pull the trigger, and who the fuck knows? even supposing you hit, bullets spin and tumble and bounce, they roll around your ribs and out the other side, they mushroom or shatter into bits, the physics of bullets is fucking crazy. one guy lives through ten rounds in the torso, the next guy kills himself with an air pistol. so im not going to bother. ill give you some advice, but dont even expect any mechanics out of me. if you need gun mechanics, go play squad leader or milleniums end or whatever the fuck. so heres my advice. - the whole point is to kill. a gun that wont kill somebody in one shot isnt worth selling to children, right? so absolutely every single time somebody pulls a trigger, somebody might die. you, me, random strangers, the downstairs neighbor, theres always a chance. make sure your pcs know it. - on the other hand, theres no such thing as a sure kill. i know its a special case, but jfks brains were on the fucking trunk of the lincoln and they didnt declare him until four hours later. people get shot in the head and fall down and stop breathing and go on anyway to live normal happy lives. not most of the time, not much of the time, very rarely in fact, but it does happen. if your pcs want to be 100%, make them use a fuckload of bullets. - nobody knows whats going on in a firefight, and accuracy in the real world is for shit. take this poor diallo guy. those cops shot 41 bullets at him, he was standing in a for fuck sake doorway, and a. they only hit him with 19 or something and b. they thought he was shooting back. nothing like flying bullets to make you stupid. you dont know where you hit that guy, you just know he fell down. you dont know where the shots are coming from. dont give your pcs tactical information, tell them what they see and hear and make them fucking sort it out. - every bullet goes somewhere. roll the shot, miss, shit happens, but do you know where that bullet is now? in a stone wall? through a window and in old mrs merrihews toaster oven? lodged against the rib of a passing dogwalker? make your pcs remember to ask whats going on on the far side of their targets. - bullets dont kill you by magic, they kill you by tearing big pieces out of you. they splatter blood, they blow off fingers, they unhinge jaws and elbows, they make you puke your shredded guts out your mouth and nose. theres no such thing as a clean kill. make your pcs gag.

29

- dying sucks. sometimes you pass out and never wake up, sometimes you scream for an hour, sometimes you piss yourself with pain until fucking tomorrow. you shit yourself. sometimes a lateral headshot will make your brain swell up and cut off its own circulation and leave your brainstem alive, heart beating, breathing in and out, perfect for organ donation but dead fucking dead. your best bet whatever happens is to get to the hospital, but who knows. make your pcs scared to fucking death of death. (let alone that theyre going straight to hell, and demons are going to piss lye into their eyesockets for the rest of time.) - different guns are good for shooting people under different conditions. a glock 19 is good for shooting people under normal, reasonable shooting people conditions like when the fucking jocks have been pushing you around for four nightmarish years and you cant fucking take it anymore, plus theyre wicked reliable. a pump shotgun is good for making that noise before you shoot people in fucking half. a colt 9mm submachinegun is good for when you want to kill everybody in the room but you dont really want to kill the people in the next apartment, while an m16 is good for when you dont care who the fuck you kill. make your pcs use approximately the right gun for the job (but definitely dont expect them all to be gun geeks). - oh, and if your pcs dont want guns or want them only to use on animals not people, theyre super cool (remember satans guidelines). tell them right on from me.

the evil fucked up side of... ...character advancement

if by some terrible mischance you end up playing a kill puppies for satan campaign instead of just a one night stand as it were, your players will probably want some way to improve their characters. well fuck them. it costs five points of evil to improve a stat, let them save up like everybody else. whiny butts. you may want to compromise, however. if youre a softy. heres a way to do it and yet keep a few pathetic shreds of your dignity. at the end of every session, choose some or all of the following. - figure out which pc did the fucked uppest individual thing. you can just decide, or you can give everybody a vote, or you can ask for cash bribes. however you decide, give that person a point of character evil. (character evil isnt the same as regular evil, which you get from killing puppies. ill explain in a sec, just jesus christ hold your horses would you?) - figure out which pc was the fucked uppest overall. give that person a point of character evil. if this is the same pc as did the fucked uppest individual thing, only give one

30

point of character evil for both, unless they were truly fucked up above and beyond the call. - figure out which pc best followed satans guidelines. give that person a point of character evil. - figure out which pc got the most new people to hate them. give that person a point of character evil. in case of a tie, decide on the basis of how powerful their new enemies are. - figure out which pc was most helpful to your fiendish plans. give that person a point of character evil. - now divvy a couple three more points of character evil among the pcs whose players didnt piss you off. (this is another great opportunity to pay back cheaters.) - customize the numbers to how many players you have. two points average per session seems generous to me. - the deal with character evil is its exactly the same as regular evil except they cant spend it during play. naturally theyll want to spend it on something lasting, like improving their stats or inventing spells, since otherwise its a waste. (just in case its not obvious a. they can keep it from session to session same as always, and b. at the end of the session they can supplement it with regular evil if they happen to have some left.) that should make them shut up for once.

the evil fucked up side of... ...hell

you noticed the lesser satanic ritual that lets you and a guest visit hell? thats big fun. you should get your pcs to cast it sometime if you can.

the evil fucked up side of... ...god

frankly id skip it. free will and all, remember? its not that god doesnt care what your pcs do, its not that he wouldnt rather they knocked it the fuck off, its just that hes decided to let them (and everybody) make their own bed. but if you find youve got to roleplay him, id just go ahead and make him a joyless judgmental goon-squad fuck, a glorified orrin hatch (r-utah). patron of woman-haters, anti-choicers and homophobes (but not of racists, i mean what kind of sense would that make?). plus he expects you to kiss his ass. plus since a sense of humor is a way to deal constructively with being wrong, stupid, and weak, he hasnt got one. but like i said, id skip it if i could.

31

the evil fucked up side of... ...money

most people who kill puppies for satan have lousy lame menial jobs, if they can keep a job at all. they dont have a lot of disposable income, right? hand to mouth. so dont let your pcs buy shit unless they can come up with the cash in play. fortunately, this game isnt really about the cool gadgets, so most of them will deal okay. however, if your pcs want to be all independently wealthy and shit, ask them why theyre killing puppies for satan (small fucking potatoes) instead of gutting cities, murdering the poor, and raping the developing world like good little industrialists. shit, those guys are satans real toadies.

the evil fucked up side of... ...that first session

you gotta break the ice and get the stupid pcs to work together. its the plague of roleplaying and fuck if most of the time we dont just have them meet in a bar instead. you can go ahead and just do it that way if you want, i mean hell its your game, but maybe try this. have everybody make their characters. you know how in some games it says you must draw your character, to connect with the right parts of your brain or whatever? in this game, you absolutely must write i kill puppies for satan at the top of your character sheet. if you dont do it, youre clearly not in the spirit of the game and you might as well fuck off. tell your players that. tell em i said so. turn to your first player. have her introduce her character. hi, my names morton and i kill puppies for satan. hi morton. please say something about yourself. if youre gonna run the kick in the head starting adventure thats coming up, say how do you know gerald stebbins? why did he invite you to his birthday party? no, come on, its gotta be better than that, he only invited like eight people and one of thems you. are you like his friend or what? (everybody and their fucking dog compares roleplaying to improv theater. make your players work for it!) now your next player. hi, my names joanie and i kill puppies for satan. hi joanie. my mother abandoned me in the dumpster behind a post office, i was raised by a postal worker who muttered and mowed his lawn every damn day, christmas, easter, rain, snow, the fuckin ice storm of 97, he didnt miss a single day, out there with his mower grinding away at twenty two inches of solid frozen ice, i

32

mean fuck, man. thanks for sharing that, joanie. (what about you and gerald stebbins? what gift do you get him?) here it is: and how do you and morton know each other? then sit there and dont say anything until they work it out. (if its clear that theyre not gonna work it out, lazy fuckers, do something mean to them. okay, well, you were internet pen pals, you were both posing as fifteen year old virgin girls, you decided to meet at the mall, and there you were. now youre friends, with occasional benefits. suck it up.) now your third player, hi my names scooter and i kill puppies for satan. yes i was named after the character on the muppet show. hi scooter. gerald stebbins blah blah blah. and how do you know joanie and morton? so by the end of this youll have inter-character stuff going on, just what you wanted, characters talking, getting to know each other, spilling beer on each others sofas and dropping butts in each others potted plants. never fails. i guarantee it or your money back. tell the guy at the counter i said so.

33

springing gerald, the kick in the head starting adventure

gerald stebbins is a ghoul. ghouls eat corpses, thats pretty much their whole deal, and they are the lowest of the fucking low. in the great cosmological pecking order, right, it starts with the big pecker himself on the top, then our man satan, then like the other angels and demons and shit, then the rest of us fuckups and lowlifes, vampires and space aliens and the whole like i said the whole freakshow, and then regular people, then vermin, then shit, then the nasty fucked up bloody puss that comes out of festering sores, then ghouls. when we kill puppies, right, some of its for fun and some of its for getting in good with the boss, and most of its for the power. not so with ghouls. ghouls get some sort of cheap supernatural charge out of eating corpses, but it cant even touch the power we get, and it leaves them weak and crazed and craving more. ghouls are the desperate needlesharing ass-peddling heroin addicts of our world. so thats gerald stebbins and lets face it, the guy is not a charmer. hes funny looking, weasely, hes got no dignity, and his breath is for fuck all. but like pretty much everybody, even ghouls, hes got a few friends (including your pcs). theyre people who maybe just feel sorry for him, or maybe owe him one from back in the day, or hell maybe actually kind of like the guy. i mean it takes all kinds, right? and hes not a bad friend, not at all. sure he calls you for help, and says hell make it up to you and never does, but hes always so genuinely grateful that its hard to hold a grudge. hes loyal and he wont make excuses when you ask him for stuff, if he can he will and if he cant he really feels bad about it. he wont fuck you up the ass with a this is not how i run this game anymore. if i were to sit down to start a kill puppies for satan game today, heres what id do. id do the first session thing, but id say who hates you? really? you didnt put her precious in the blender or something did you? then id take a pee break. then id be like, okay, scooter? this guy what hates you? hes out there pounding on your door. hes got a cop with him. marcie, youre there too, have you guys been making out? just, man, slam em with who hates em. thats how i run the game these days. its kind of too bad though. gerald stebbins + doctor skippy = good times.

_________________________________

34

sharpened screwdriver as soon as you bend over, not like some people. you could do worse. anyway, hes having his thirtieth birthday party and hes inviting all his friends. its like eight people and hes having it on a thursday night so it wont conflict with anybodys weekend. hes saved up and booked the banquet hall at the motel 6 off the pike, you know hes been planning it for a while because he doesnt have much to spare. (he has a job sweeping up at feeneys funeral parlor, of course). hes borrowed a cd player (maybe from one of your pcs) and checked some cds out of the public library. hes even shoplifted a box of little girls birthday party invitations and carefully written in his name and the time and place. your pcs will break his pathetic ghoul heart if they dont go. plus god damn it how many friends do they have, that they can just blow one off?

at the motel 6
theres a buffet with fried chicken, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn, peas, lime jello, squares of carrot cake with a candle in each, carafes of 7-up down at the end. real 7up in jewel-cut plastic pitchers, not some store brand left in the three liter bottles it came in. no, this is a class establishment, just like gerald wanted. hed be so thrilled, where the hell is he? let the guests mingle. this is a great chance to start the set up of some other future adventure, introduce npcs who might show up again later, either ones that ive provided below or your own if youve thought about it. be sure to mention rosalie even if she doesnt talk to the pcs (just in case), and have somebody make the obvious joke about the meatloaf. before it gets dull, in comes franklin breszny. hes kind of out of his element, he wasnt sure he was going to come but he has to deliver the news. he stands just inside the doorway and like clears his throat. if there are lots of conversations going on he waits a little and then says um, excuse me. geralds not coming. he, uh. he. they. hes at willard. willard state mental hospital. so, uh, hes not going to make it. poor franklin. everybody looking at him isnt doing him much good. so, uh, im sure hed be glad you all came, he says. uh. he tries to get out without explaining any more but if somebody stops him and asks him hell tell his whole stupid story.

35

franklin bresznys whole stupid story

(im going to tell it in third person, franklin this, franklin that, but its your job as a gm to act it out. dont slack off, here. if your game sucks im sure as shit not gonna take the fall for it.) so franklin breszny once helped gerald stebbins fill out an application for a scan saver card down at the stop & shop. franklin thought it was just his random good deed for the week, but ever since then gerald has called him for help whenever he has some official document or process to deal with. he looks over geralds taxes (gerald always files even though he never has to pay). he helped gerald buy a used car. he even periodically has to explain to geralds prospective employers when they call that no, hes never worked with gerald, he cant offer them any information about gerald, gerald just puts him down on every form he fills out. yes, geralds a little strange. no, im not saying that you shouldnt hire him. for all i know he could be an excellent worker. anyway, so franklin gets a call night before last. please come down to willard and pick gerald up? would he

well, he went down to willard all right, but when he got there he found out that they didnt mean pick gerald up and drive him somewhere, they meant release gerald into franklins custody. which franklin was not about to do. so instead they made him sign some kind of form and he feels kind of bad about it but he left him there. oh, but why was gerald in willard in the first place? seems feeney jr came into the funeral parlor late, he forgot something or something, and he walked in on gerald, and gerald was chewing on old mrs merrihews dearly departed remains. (this was a surprise to franklin, a big surprise, but it totally shouldnt be a surprise to your pcs.) feeney jr just went ahead and called the police, and by the time they got there gerald was done with one of mrs merrihews hands. he must have put up a fight or something because when franklin saw him at willard his face was all bashed up. and like franklin says, he feels kind of bad about it, because as they were leading gerald back through the big barred gates, franklin cant be positive but he thinks he heard the orderly say, come on now, the needle torture isnt that bad, its for science. fig 9 is a character sheet for franklin breszny.

36

fig 9: franklin breszny

i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my dog my name is franklin breszny cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 4, but one of them was gerald stebbins. im the associate manager at big russs wholesale club.

so now unless your pcs are totally heartless pieces of shit, not just cold fucked up mean relentless motherfuckers, theyll go spring gerald. if they dont seem inclined, the unfriendly bastards, a. make them feel like the lowdown abandoning lousy friends they are and b. sic rosalie on em.

rosalie towler
rosalies been listening in. at first she was trying to be discreet, just you know kind of hovering near the conversation, but by the end shes standing there with her mouth hanging open and her fists clenched. when franklin says the bit about the needle torture she steps decisively into the conversation. you fucker, she says, you just left him there you piece of shit? shes little but it should be clear to anybody that shes way meaner than he is. he doesnt have the stomach for this, poor guy, and she chases him out into the parking lot. call yourself his friend you asshole! she shouts and thats it for franklin breszny. she spits at his car and he leaves rubber on the pavement. rosalie comes back inside with a fierce old gleam in her eye. so whos with me? fig 10 is a character sheet for rosalie.

37

fig 10: rosalie towler

i am a master of forces occult and obscure my name is rosalie towler learned 2 insightful 3 fierce 4 resolute 4 potency 3 i get 3 potency every time i get a new piercing. i kick ass, but im not the kind of sorcerer who goes around battling occult villains, im the kind of sorcerer who likes to fuck with people. make up some good stealth/ illusion/psych out spells for me, okay?

now if your pcs dont suck, feel free to skip rosalie altogether. unless you think shes cool and want her along for the hell of it, in which case draw her in at any convenient point. whatever, its your game.

willard state mental hospital

if your pcs want to stop off and kill a puppy or two on the way, id go ahead and let them. thats what the games about after all. just keep a move on, dont turn it into like a big production. but so for willard the way i see it there are three ways you could go. way one: one or more of your pcs have been inside willard in the past and you can lead them through it directly. easiest, least hassle, maybe least fun, an okay detail for a pcs background. way two: somebody else at the party (or someone your pcs can call) has been inside willard and can go along as a guide. also very easy, a good way to include rosalie or some other npc, but it can take decision making and direction out of the hands of the pcs, which is naturally not so good. way three: nobodys been inside willard before, your poor sad pcs are winging it, good luck to their asses. big fun but kind of a pain, and if your players are anything like mine theyll turn it into this like tactical fucking situation, which is yawn. way three is my preference but you gotta kill that tactical instinct and get them to jump on in. anyway, your call. on to willard.

sometimes i think that im the fucked up one in my life, but then my partner will come up with just the perfect thing and it leaves me wondering. this is one of those. willard is your high school. shut your eyes and imagine it. you go in, theres that lobby place or whatever, instead of a trophy case theres a case displaying the art/ craft or vocational projects of the inmates. off to one side there are the administrative offices, and then past

38

into the facility proper. the security is much tighter, of course, the guards inside have stun guns and those big ass flashlights, and the guards outside have handguns and tranquilizer rifles, which odds are your high school didnt. but the layout works like a (bad) dream. all the like auditoriums, cafeterias, kitchens, gymnasiums, locker rooms, and libraries stay, of course, and so do the grounds, with the same high chain fences (although now topped with inward-slanting barbed wire) and the track around the softball field and the cruddy old four-square courts and shit. even the same parking arrangement, with the drop-off circle in front of the door and designated parking places, and throw in a day-trip bus or two for added verity. inside, the history and english departments are both low security, the parts thatre most like a hospital. there are nurse/guard stations in the teachers lounges, and the rooms are full size, four to ten residents per, each with a little curtained area for a personal space. the science department is the torture wing, with all the labs and arcane equipment and shit. chemistry for drugs, biology for surgery, physics for the needle torture and the firehose torture and electroshock, earth science for group therapy and phobia encounter labs. the little greenhouse for growing plants. the theater department is vocational skills and the art department is arts/crafts. the thought of gerald stebbins doing macrame about makes me pee my pants. shop class can stay exactly and perfectly the same. same equipment, same arrangement, same teacher, same students. sweet lovely shop class. and your destination: the math department is high security, with those guard-controlled airlock doors at the ends of the hallways and the classrooms broken up into individual padded cells. gerald stebbins is in one of them. (mr halligans room to be precise, in my willard.) cool, huh? now the most important the single most crucial part of this whole very cool very fucked up thing, the most important is do not absolutely for god sake do not let your players know that its your high school. describe the lighting, the long tiled hallways, the little numbers over the doors, the sounds their feet make and the smell of the disinfectant/floor wax, ask them to turn right or left and let them wander around to your creepy little hearts content, but no matter fucking what never say the words like a high school. youll be bursting to share the joke but come on, you dont want to ruin it. savor it like the dirty little secret it is and

39

if you must you can let them in on it after theyve been and gone. i think you can see how easy itll be to make npcs for the place too. im including a couple but you know theyre just people from my high school and itll be more fun to feature your own. but like I said willard has tighter security than your high school did. lets see. theres one of those little cement buildings by the road as you drive onto the grounds, it has a couple of guards in it with guns and they control the big chain link gate. the sidewalk goes on the other side and they control the lock on that gate too. they have guns, handguns and if there are maybe six shotguns in the whole place, two of them are here. there are no like prison camp gun towers or anything, but maybe theres a bell tower or a cupola you can put a spotlight and a guy with a rifle in. every hour during the night, somebody walks around the inside perimeter of the fence, with a big ass flashlight and a handgun and a tazer, so thats good. if it appeals to you, you can have the fence electrified during the night too, or maybe it has wires running through it that when you cut them an alarm lights up somewhere. inside, the guards dont carry guns, just flashlights and stun guns and walkie talkies. at night they do rounds or wander around or whatever, but during the day they more stay put unless somethings going on. the nurses stations and shit dont have much for security at all, just maybe a big old cattle prod in a charger under the counter and a silent alarm button and a noisy alarm button too, why not? i can see where either might come in handy. during the night, they close the doors between the hallways of course, and you need to swipe your id card and sometimes enter a passcode to get in. probably they keep the doors to the science wing closed all the time. i already mentioned the airlock-style doors into the math department. the deal with those is that the guards look at you and your little id card through a bulletproof window, and if they like the looks of you they buzz you into the airlock, and once youre in if they still like the looks of you they buzz you out the other side. presumably theres a way to open both doors at once, like in case of a fire or whatever, but probably its never happened and theres a mouse living happily under the switch. oh and somewhere theres a security center, with lockers and camera screens and a dispatcher and things. in the

40

administrative offices probably. thats where the other four shotguns and the gas masks and the tear gas are.

springing gerald
if your pcs have a brain among them, they wont try to fight their way in. not because they cant, but because then theyll have to a. find geralds room while people are lobbing tear gas at them and b. fight their way back out again, after the swat team and snipers have arrived. you might remind them of this. so that leaves sneaking and lying, both of which are possible. maybe the chewbacca gambit, with one of them acting gonzo and the others acting like authority figures? an oldie but goodie. just remember that if they want people to believe them they have to make those how many people hate you rolls. anyway whatever they do, your job as gm is to make them work for it. your pcs are gonna succeed, i know it, you know it, they know it. the question is a. how do they do it and b. how much does it cost them? the answer should be a. barely and b. a fuckload. use the imagination god gave you and satan perverted to his own cold and corrupt ends.

curves
so thats pretty simple. find a way in past the guards and stuff, find geralds room, somehow get poor gerald back out with you. enough to fill a session maybe, if you make getting in and out challenging. but you might want to take it further, you know, jazz it up a bit. throw a curve or two. here are a few suggestions to get you started. - the vacant room geralds not in his cell! where the fuck is he? cafeteria? gymnasium? macrame class? getting screwed stupid by doctor skippy? you decide! - the vacant stare geralds not in his head! hes been drugged into a loose floppy incontinent sack of meat. go on and on about how fun it isnt to lug a deadweight person around with you. (especially one that occasionally piddles on you.) - the familiar face what if miss faith baroak was one of your pcs childhood therapists? what if somebody famous is in low security? got a cool recurring npc? did one of the guards used to have a very sweet little spaniel named daisy duke who whined like the song of angels? add depth to an existing relationship.

41

- the boiler room what could be going on in its steaming hissing bowels? for the laundry.

same

- love at first sight hey, it happens. have one of your pcs fall terribly for a guard, a resident, an orderly, a lunatic, a janitor, doctor skippy, whomever! dont let the pc blow it off. make it mutual for twice the fucked upness. - supernatural security maybe the scientists who rule the place dont know it, but willards security system was designed to keep occult crazies in too. the on-duty security detail always includes a sorcerer, and the cameras and key doorways in the building are enchanted. (makes you wonder whos in there, dunnit?) - the parasite to really up the cheese factor, make willard the hunting ground of a vampire. ham it up! hold your arm over your face for a cape and do your fingers like fangs. byah, byah! i vant to suck your blood! (or if you prefer you could play it straight and make your pcs fucking weep with fear.) - porkys well, youre here, might as well stop off at the locker room peepholes. say hi to doctor skippy when you see him. - the wisdom of the damned can there be any doubt that there are satanic spellbooks tucked away in willards library? naturally theres at least one accomplished (but unfortunate) sorcerer among the inmates of high security. and dont forget the doorway to hell in the locked closet in the macrame room! - ministering angels i know its hard to imagine, but what if willard is actually a place of peace and healing? would your pcs even be able to tell? how would they react to a person of serene carriage and unearthly beauty in geralds cell? do angels have internal organs? - the random emergency fire! flood! blackout! tornado! earthquake! stuck inside for fuck sake willard state mental hospital while the world might be ending out there! anyway thats enough, fuck that. have fun.

42

like the man says, it aint over till its over

now the first thing is that gerald is in no state. he hasnt eaten in a couple of days and he was pretty damn hungry even then. maybe an animal corpse or two would take the edge off, just until he can find something more substantial? ghouls dont usually like their meat still warm, but maybe geralds desperate enough to make an exception. i wouldnt turn your back on him just now. its a real shame that he lost his job at feeneys though. now hes going to have to do the ghoul-on-the-street thing, getting his earthly remains where he can find them. its grim. (but less grim than torture and starvation in willard, of course.) plus the cops are gonna be looking for him. crash at your place. maybe he can

anyway, while your pcs are patting each other on the back and wondering what to do with gerald now, let them go ahead and forget that the cops are gonna be looking for them too. several sessions from now you can have a swat team show up at one of their dismal little homes to deliver an arrest warrant, and theyll be all like what the fuck? until they figure out that this is about the willard break in. fingerprints, dna evidence, their likenesses caught by the security cameras, freelance occult detectives, play it right and you can make them keep paying for this until (like satan) you get bored of listening to them whimper.

43

npcs
gerald stebbins friends
franklin breszny, rosalie towler, and lizzie wire, plus your pcs, plus figs 11-13: junkie bob teabag, mitchell norler, and the right reverend paul greengage.
i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my dog my name is junkie bob teabag cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 2 my life sucks shit but at least im not a fuckin ghoul.

fig 11: junkie bob teabag

fig 12: mitchell norler

i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my goldfish my name is mitchell norler cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 5, but 4 of them were therapists. i like things just so. particularly, in alphabetical order. my tortured soul wanders the earth looking for surcease in life my name was the right reverend paul greengage in touch with the times 2 psychologically whole 3 tangible 5 recurrent 3 unquiet 4 this many people know im a ghost: 3 (none of whom are at gerald stebbins party). yeah, i know im springing this on you. wing it.

fig 13: right reverend paul greengage

44

staff at willard
doctors fred coach weinel, miss faith baroak, skippy jensen, and delar ford, plus figs 14-18: stew, alan tyrell, cocoa wells, donna sherlock, dewey rensberger.
i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my dog my name is stew, im a nurse cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 3 i was a medic in the service, now im a nurse at willard.

fig 14: stew

fig 15: alan tyrell

i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my dog my name is alan tyrell, im a clerk in admitting cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 4 shit but man i like to smoke pot.

fig 16: cocoa wells

i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my cat my name is cocoa wells, im the macrame teacher cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 6 im just doing this part time until the record deal comes through.

45

fig 17: donna sherlock

im not a hero, im just willing to do what needs to be done my name is donna sherlock, im a clerk in maintenance thoughtful 4 astute 4 brave 2 dedicated 3 when im helping people out i get to re-roll 1s this many people admire me: 8 all the inmates know that ill give them free condoms no questions asked.

fig 18: dewey rensberger

jesus wants me for a sunbeam my name is dewey rensberger, im the chaplain pious 4 wise 1 righteous 1 devoted 2 i owe god for this many points of miracles: 0 this many people depend upon me for spiritual succor: 0 it used to be 1 but she hanged herself some weeks ago. now im getting desperate and whiny and im a big pest.

security at willard
figs 19-23: bill tansey, mikey simmons, carl reho, nick travers, beth moriarty.
i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i kick my dog my name is bill tansey, im a security chief cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another brutish powermongering thug: 0 if i had to choose id go with the stun gun but clocking inmates with the flashlight is a close second.

fig 19: bill tansey

46

i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my dog my name is mikey simmons, im a security guard cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 3
fig 20: mikey simmons

walking the grounds at night with my gun out makes me feel like i have a penis.

im not a hero, im just willing to do what needs to be done my name is carl reho, im a security guard thoughtful 3 astute 5 brave 4 dedicated 4 when im helping people out i get to re-roll 1s this many people admire me: 3
fig 21: carl reho

skinny smelly junkies can spit on my face and i dont lose my cool. im kind of a misogynist though.

fig 22: nick travers

bear wants me for a sunbeam my name is nick travers, im a security guard pious 2 wise 3 righteous 5 devoted 5 i owe bear for this many points of miracles: 0 this many people depend upon me for spiritual succor: 6 bear has made me a healthier influence on the patients here than the doctors are. one day im going to beat doctor skippy to death with a baseball bat.

revenge is a dish best served right the fuck now my name is beth moriarty, im a security guard thorough 3 survivor 3 vengeful 4 driven 4 i have a fucking arsenal full of big-ass guns, many of which i bring illegally to work with me.
fig 23: beth moriarty

47

inmates at willard
gerald stebbins, plus figs 24-28: warren garner, alice metier, standon waide iii, elena moon, katy gregory.
i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i chew on them my name is warren garner, im whacked cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 5 ill eat anything.

fig 24: warren garner

fig 25: alice metier

i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i yell at my invisible friends my name is alice metier, im whacked cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another sad grounddown face in the crowd: 6 i had a really weird day and killed eight people.

i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i set my dog on fire my name is standon waide iii, im whacked cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another cackling howling psychopath: 3 i think i can set fire with my eyes but really its a zippo. fig 26: standon waide iii

48

fig 27: elena moon

i am a master of forces occult and obscure my name is elena moon, im pretending to be whacked learned 3 insightful 4 fierce 2 resolute 3 potency 8 i get 2 potency every time i finish a prescription of thorazine. im starting to wonder about myself.

fig 28: katy gregory

jesus wants me for a sunbeam or ruthless agent of his destroying vengeance my name is katy gregory, im whacked pious 2 wise 4 righteous 5 devoted 3 i owe god for this many points of miracles: 0 this many people depend upon me for spiritual succor: 1, my roommate, who is (shall we say) easily led.

49

and id like to finish off the npc section of our program with two new character types, ghouls and scientists, both of whom feature in our little story. snork.

the evil fucked up side of... ...ghouls

- instead of cold, ghouls are calm; instead of fucked up, theyre reasonable; instead of mean, theyre ferocious; and instead of relentless, theyre together. - instead of evil, ghouls have hungry. it works like vampires, whenever they use a power their hungry goes up by 1, whenever they feed it goes down. - every morning when they wake up, they add 1 to their hungry. - whenever they make a ferocious roll, they add their hungry. whenever they make a calm, reasonable, or together roll, they subtract their hungry. - when their hungry goes over 5 or 6, they totally freak out and they cant use any of their powers until they feed. - they dont keep track of how many people hate them, since pretty much everybody does. instead they keep track of how many people can stand them. it doesnt do them any good, though, since they automatically fail all of their how many people hate them rolls. - figs 29 and 30 are character sheets for gerald stebbins and a friend of his.
hey, pass the ketchup, would ya? my name is gerald stebbins calm 2 reasonable 3 ferocious 3 together 2 hungry 7 this many people can stand me: 8 in the kill puppies for satan movie, im played by steve buscemi circa fargo.

fig 29: gerald stebbins

fig 30: lizzie wire

hey, pass the ketchup, would ya? my name is lizzie wire calm 2 reasonable 1 ferocious 4 together 2 hungry 2 this many people can stand me: 2 in the kill puppies for satan movie, im played by calista flockhart with filed teeth and mismatched contact lenses.

50

here are ghouls powers. - sinking your teeth in and not letting go when you make a together roll, ignore the die and just add 6 instead. - getting the fuck outta there kick open a door or pull the bars out of a window without bothering to make a roll. - running like a motherfucker sprint at about forty miles an hour for a few minutes. - scaring the shit outta somebody your teeth grow long and sharp, your fingernails grow into talons, your back hunches, your arms lengthen, and your eyes become staring dead corpse eyes. you also get +1 to your ferocious. - being happy nothing compares to the bliss and satisfaction of a corpse well digested. its almost as good as good sex, about as good as pretty good sex, which is way better than your average ghoul has ever had. too bad its so fleeting.

the evil fucked up side of... ...scientists

- instead of cold, scientists are cutting edge; instead of fucked up, theyre mad; instead of mean, theyre curious; and instead of relentless, theyre objective. - yes this means that if you get into a fistfight with a scientist, theyll roll on their curious to hit you. (fascinating the noise you make when i apply force to your solar plexus. i wonder if its reproducible.) - instead of evil, scientists accumulate publishable material. they may spend a point of publishable material to a. publish an article or b. be immune to a points worth of any supernatural effect. its a little tricky, the effect still happens and it affects everybody else same as always, but the scientist cant see or perceive the effect at all and isnt touched by it in any way. make sense? - they accumulate publishable material by conducting research in their particular study area, of course. - figs 31-34 are character sheets for some scientists you might bump into at willard.
i serve the cold blind nameless god of science my name is doctor fred weinel but everyone calls me coach cutting edge 2 mad 3 curious 5 objective 3 publishable material 2 im researching the effects of physical duress on sufferers of certain psychosocial disorders.

fig 31: doctor coach

51

fig 32: doctor miss faith

i serve the cold blind nameless god of science my name is doctor miss faith baroak cutting edge 1 mad 5 curious 2 objective 2 publishable material 4 im researching the responses of phobics to intimate contact with trigger stimuli.

fig 33: doctor skippy

i serve the cold blind nameless god of science my name is doctor skippy jensen cutting edge 4 mad 4 curious 4 objective 3 publishable material 3 im researching the electrical activity in the brains of social deviants in consensual and nonconsensual sexual contexts.

fig 34: doctor delar ford

i serve the cold blind nameless god of science my name is doctor delar ford cutting edge 1 mad 5 curious 3 objective 4 publishable material 2 i lead the willard residents choir. im researching the effectiveness of simple pavlovian conditioning in producing vocalizations of consistent quality.

52

cockroach souffle
a dozen good sized cockroaches will yield only a heaping tablespoon of meat. cockroach has a spicy, pungent, lemoncilantro-bug flavor that is intimidating by itself, but nicely permeates this souffle. this would make an ideal dish for a champagne brunch. 12 large cockroaches 4 eggs, separated 1 tbsp flour 1 tbsp butter 1 cup milk 1/4 cup chopped parsley salt, pepper and cayenne to taste preheat oven to 325. plunge cockroaches 1 or 2 at a time into boiling water and cook 2-3 minutes. cut the carapace open with kitchen scissors and carefully pick the meat from the abdomen, body, and top joint of legs. prepare a bechamel with the flour, butter and milk. when it is smooth and hot, stir in the cockroach meat and parsley, and remove from heat. beat the egg yolks well and add. season to taste and let cool slightly. whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them gently into the cockroach and egg yolk mixture. pour into a greased 7-inch souffle baker and bake until set, about 40 minutes. serve at once.

contents
cockroach souffle 54; the wisdom of the damned 55; how many fish would a blowfish blow? 60; good grief and gravy 62; i scream you scream 66; a big hairy combat example 72; wizardly shit 76; revenge of the killer puppies 80; scenario: hey, i found this, you wannit? 82; appendix a: who hates ya, baby? 87; appendix b: but you cant 87; appendix c: killing vampires is easy 87; appendix d: what would jesus do? 87.

54

the wisdom of the damned

the yellow grimoire of malthais van orley
now i have to warn you, malthais van orley (1731-1777) was one cold fucked up mean relentless motherfucker, plus he had a real gift. he could sit down and write six hundred pages in his crabby little hand and in all of them not three consecutive words would make sense. benjamin franklin wrote of him: if it is not the pottage of vermin, then it is the covetous glance he fixes upon my loyal old trey. such a damnd nuisance is this v. o. that i find myself quite off my hump. in the early fifties, van orleys (so called) yellow grimoire came to the attention of a disgruntled editor at puffin books named wilfred leer, who published it in two volumes. occasionally you can find it in a college library or one of those used bookstores specializing in books nobody ever buys. dont be put off by the fact that its totally unreadable and the frontspiece invokes a curse of pustules and pox on the reader -- you dont want it for the reading and the curse only takes effect if you open the book during a waxing moon or in february. van orley wrote three satanic spells into his yellow grimoire, but theyre tricky to pick out of the gibberish. have your pcs make a cold roll to find each one. - good for driving off vagrants, a first degree spell toss a small stone at your target. it hits with about the force of a mediocre professional-level fastball. this spell takes a second or so to cast and sometimes gives you a nosebleed. - good for having your revenge upon burglars, a first degree spell say aloud the name of something you own. the thing you name, wherever it is, bursts into fierce flame, setting anything near it alight and burning itself quickly to ashes. this spell takes three minutes to cast (by the clock) and leaves blisters on the palms of your hands. - good for cheating the hangman, a greater ritual kiss your target on the lips. you and your target swap bodies. forever. if you have magical things like bound demons and branded spells, they stay with your old body. youll still die of old age when your time is up, no matter how youthful a body youre in. this spell takes a couple of hours to cast and leaves you exhausted and puking. malthais van orley was in fact hanged on march 6, 1777, and so thats when we say that he died, but who knows?

55

the golden guide to satanic ceremonies

now this is a book to find. it was published in 1971 by golden books, compiled by one eliza j. jowre, and unfortunately went almost immediately out of print. the story goes that late in 1971 jowre learned that she had terminal lymphatic cancer, converted to islam and joined a fundamentalist mosque, to which she willed the books reprint rights on the condition that they never be exercised. the result is that there simply arent very many out there. for the most part sorcerers, not puppykillers, have the resources to collect them. (i have it from a highly placed source that the relevant authorities found jowres last-minute conversion entertaining, but not particularly convincing.) the guide contains 5(!) satanic spells, and an absolute bare minimum of raving. - good for souring milk, a first degree spell - summon up a piddly-ass demon and tell it to do something. probably itll obey, especially if you tell it to do something really really easy. this spell takes a good ten minutes to cast and is kind of pricey, like about as much as a dinner out. (yes, this is from the kill puppies for satan main book.) - good for interfering with the outcome of a sporting event, a first degree spell take a ball point pen and scribble on a photograph of your target. for the next couple hours, any plants your target happens to step on will clutch and grab at her feet. the plants dont get any supernatural strength or anything, so its a small hindrance, but there it is. doesnt work on astroturf. this spell takes say ten minutes to cast, and afterward the pen wont write. - good for keeping current with the times, a first degree spell turn your tv to channel one. for the next couple hours it picks up hbn, the hell broadcasting network. this spell takes a minute or two to cast, banging on the side of the set sometimes helps, and if you cast it every day your tv will burn out in a week. an easy variation lets you cast it on a radio instead. - good for demoralizing a rival, a second degree spell write the name of the person you want to fuck with on a piece of paper and leave it in a public toilet. until tomorrow, everything that happens to go into the toilet falls out of the sky onto your target. yuck. this spell takes ten minutes to cast, and you might want to choose a time when the restrooms otherwise deserted, because the noises and smells will be embarrassing and youll want to clean up afterward. - good for evading the tax-assessor, a third degree spell go peel the numbers off your door or mailbox or porch or whatever. for one fiscal quarter, your address disappears

56

from the world. you still get electricity and cable and phone service, but no mail delivery, no pizza delivery, no landlord visits, and even the goddamn mormons pass you by. this spell takes five or six hours to cast and calls for two fifths of bourbon, and after it ends your bills come back with a no shit vengeance.

the theologia of genevieve st. john

this book has a complicated history, so pay attention. genevieve st. john wrote the original manuscript in paris in the early nineteenth century. (or else the nuns of a corrupt convent wrote it, and used genevieve st. john as a pseudonym, a possibility which also has merit.) either way the book is not fucking around, with a capital not fucking around. it was published in a very small edition in 1847; ive never heard of anyone who owns an original. in 1910, sir igor bermouth made the first translation into english, called the redoubtable. it is an excellent translation, dense and nuanced. occasionally one of these will come up for sale or auction, if you know where to look; if it sells for less than say fifteen thousand dollars, its not genuine. in 1912, gregory phipps, an american, made an independent translation. his is more approachable, perhaps, but with a much more strident editorial style, and footnotes that frankly devolve into the fantastic. he was much taken with the heretical convent theory, and went so far as to identify six separate authors, whom he named after stage stars of the period. nevertheless, a valuable and informative book, and no easier to get. then, in 1941, sir igors son in law, coincidentally also named phipps, found the french manuscript sir igor had used and, ignorant of the fact that his father in law had already done so, published a translation. he believed the book to be a genuine theological tract, however, and did a lot of damage to it in order to make it one. he cut out almost wholesale the perversions and sacrileges, he made the delightful depictions of freaks and human oddities into trite sermons, and, confused, he garbled the spells beyond function. if you have a chance to get the phipps translation, make sure its the other one. and finally, in 1949, professor childe valten translated it, not from the original french, which she didnt have access to, but from an 1886 german edition. oddly, her translation contains almost a hundred pages not in any other, including an extra spell. no one knows whether theyre original to genevieve st. john, original to the german translator, original to professor valten, or incorporated at some stage from another source. professor valten published it herself,

57

so naturally its a big stupid pain in the ass to find this one too. the redoubtable and phipps(1912) editions contain two satanic spells: - good for deceiving st peter, a second degree spell - until dawn, you are invisible to angels (and demons, by extension). this spell takes one minute to cast, but you cant cast it if during the past twenty four hours a. youve killed something for evil or b. youve used any evil for anything. theres a popular belief that this spell might allow you to sneak through the pearly gates. i wouldnt count on it, but fuck, you got a better plan? - good for facing st michael, a greater ritual cast this spell on something you can hold in your hands. whatever it is, it becomes unholy. if you cast it on a weapon, the weapon will now hurt demons, vampires, ghosts etc, even angels. yes, even angels. (angels arent killable, but you can sure as shit make them run away with their tails between their legs.) you can even cast it on a gun and itll work, you dont have to cast it on individual bullets. heh heh. it takes four hours a day for seven consecutive days to cast, and, barring some other magic or miracle, the unholiness is permanent. professor valtens translation has a third spell: - good for distressing the mother superior, a lesser ritual take your target by the hand and say her full name aloud. you lose a point of evil, and she gains one, even if shes not a puppykiller for satan. she can use it just like you would, in fact shell feel a tremendous pressure to do so, shell have to make relentless or devoted or whatever rolls to keep herself from giving in. it pisses god right off when his fanatics use evil. the bad news is that some demons think that this counts as tempting to sin, and they might come kick your ass for a scab. the spell takes twenty minutes or so to set up, and aside from the evil, doesnt cost you a damn thing. plus, if you read any edition but the useless phipps(1941) one, you get a free point of character evil to spend on increasing your fucked up! what a deal.

satan!

loves!

you!!!

i found this little pamphlet tucked into a hymnal in the local lds meetinghouse. who knows where youll find it. its a tri-folded sheet of legal paper, poorly typed on both sides without margins and with very bad punctuation. its almost completely unreadable, and the anonymous authors theories (including the title) are facially absurd. it contains a satanic spell, however:

58

- good for getting away from the piggies, a first degree spell the next person who tries to put handcuffs on you suffers a sudden, temporary, incapacitating brain seizure. (if you want, you can have them make a relentless or whatever roll to recover quickly.) this spell takes around half an hour to cast, plus the time it takes you to write a random hate letter to 475w 910s heber city, ut 84032. if you cast the spell and nobody tries to put handcuffs on you in the next oh say week or so, the spell fades. dont actually send random hate letters to 475w 910s heber city, ut 84032. its a law enforcement equipment supplier if you must know, thats why them and not some other arbitrary address, and they never did anything to you. plus no matter how many hate letters you send, you still cant actually cast spells. einstein.

59

how many fish would a blowfish blow? or, the evil fucked up side of... ...zombies
lets start with a sorcerous spell: - the obedient servant, 3 potency cast on a corpse. the corpse becomes animate and supernaturally strong. it will follow your instructions but is stupid as shit. the spell lasts for as long as you want, but the corpse continues to decompose the whole while. blowfish poison is a traditional component of the spell (as we know from the serpent and the rainbow). so thats where zombies come from. now, the type of zombie you get when you cast the spell depends on just how decomposed the body is. and yes, if you keep zombies around they gradually change from one type to the next. - instead of cold, zombies are minimally sentient, instead of fucked up, theyre a pain in the ass, instead of mean, they want to eat your brains, and instead of relentless, theyre single-minded. - if you cast the spell on a body that hasnt begun to decompose, you get a zombie who can pass as living. zombies of this sort usually have high numbers in minimally sentient and pain in the ass, and low to middling numbers in want to eat your brains and single-minded. they can even occasionally talk or otherwise communicate (want... to... eat... brains...). of the three, they make the best bodyguards, not least because you can take them out in public. - heres a character sheet for a recently dead zombie.
my friends and relations might still recognize me i used to have a name minimally sentient 4 pain in the ass 4 want to eat your brains 2 single-minded 3

- if you cast the spell on a body that is definitely decomposing, you get a classic evil dead sort of zombie, vicious and aggressive, with a fucking fearsome hunger for brains. this sort has high numbers in want to eat your brains and single-minded, and lowish numbers in minimally sentient and pain in the ass. of the three, they make the best killers and shock troops, if you can keep them quiet between jobs.

60

- heres a character sheet for a classic zombie.

dead by dawn! dead by dawn! i havent had a name for a while minimally sentient 1 pain in the ass 3 want to eat your brains 5 single-minded 4

- if you cast the spell on a skeleton (or mostly one), you get an animated skeleton, of course. skeletons, being more brittle, pay more attention to their surroundings, but god damn they still crave the brains. their high numbers are in pain in the ass and want to eat your brains. of the three, they make the best protectors for your stuff, since they fold small and you can put them as an ambush into like your closet or foot locker. - heres a character sheet for a skeleton zombie.
ray harryhousen would be proud to call me his own i havent had a name for a long ass time minimally sentient 2 pain in the ass 5 want to eat your brains 4 single-minded 3

61

good grief and gravy

being the gm is the shit, and also bullshit. the shit because you get to toy with peoples little lives, bullshit because its like the goddamn sims, their little bladder meter goes all the way to the red and they cant figure out for them stupid selves to get off the stupid couch and go to the stupid bathroom. no, you gotta click on the little thing, and click on the other little thing, and they spend so long in there that they miss their carpool and get fired, and then they come crying to you, wah wah wah. feebs. right, but i mean your players. they think that if a. you didnt say so or b. its not on their character sheet, then its not true. which is a problem, because a. you can only say so many things, and you hope to god theyre more interesting than scooter, you really have to pee, do you go to the bathroom? do you make it back out in time for your carpool? and b. there are only eight things on their character sheet, and one of them is that they kill puppies for satan for fuck sake. so what you want to do as gm is make them responsible for their own pee. keep the good stuff for yourself, naturally, but give the bullshit away. killing puppies is a perfect example. the first couple of times its kind of novel, if youre into it. but since

rule number one: there must be enough evil

youre going to end up going through puppies like toilet paper. it can get a little dull. you could just hand puppies out, okay you kill the puppy and you get two evil what do you do now, but then you might as well be playing observe celestial events for potency or some other lame shit. and besides

rule number two: there must be more grief

so slacking off on it will never do. no, youve got to find a way to make the damn puppies carry their own weight. heres a way. whenever one of your pcs wants to kill a puppy and you dont want to deal with it in depth, hand it back to them: scooter: man, im down to my last couple evil. i gotta find a puppy to kill. hey, can i find a puppy to kill? you: sure. what kind of puppy do you find?

who cares what scooter says. i find a baby harp seal living under a bench in the park, i find a rare beautiful tropical fish that somebody left in a fishbowl on top of their car, i find a nice parrot. give it to them, dont even sweat it. you: thats fine. you can kill it however you want. go

62

now what you want, of course, is for your players to come up with devious, perverse, and funny things to do to themselves, without any more effort on your part. you might have to keep at it a while, but sooner or later theyll catch on. the first thing is to get them to stop thinking about their damn character sheets: scooter: uh, i get 1 to my cold for the next six hours. you: yeah, right. that doesnt even make sense. try again. scooter: well how about if i get a penalty to my people hate me roll? you: yawn. keep trying.

ahead and collect the evil. you?

what grief does it give

eventually theyll start coming up with good in character things, genuine inconveniences, not just dumb dice penalties. making enemies, leaving evidence, hurting themselves, costing themselves money or time, stumbling into weird shit that theyd otherwise miss, on and on, theyre probably much more twisted than you gave them credit for. sometimes dice penalties or new people who hate them will come out of their descriptions, and thats cool, just not vice versa. anyway once they get away from the dull mechanics-based grief, the next thing is to make sure theyre serious about it. whenever they try to get away with weak grief you might just slap them down: scooter: okay, well as im bashing the fish with a brick i nick my other hand with the corner and i get a wicked bad blood blister right -- here. you: nice try. actually, when you bash the fish with the

of all the useless bullshit in the world, this section is some. Heres some real advice: ive run like a million demos of kill puppies for satan. what i do when i run a puppies demo, i use all kinds of stop signals in such a way that the players take em as provocation. like this: me: And ... i mean ... what do you do with the (flinch) sweet little kitten? player: i put the blender on whip... me: (covering my face) player: ...i drop the kitten in. me: ugh, can you imagine the sound that must make? and the sound the kitten must make? i cant believe you just did that, thats just sick, i changed my mind about playing this game with you. you dont, yknow, drink it, do you? player: and i drink it! thusly.

_________________________________

63

show them that when they try to get away with lame grief, instead they get fucked to spare. get them looking for that magic level -- bad enough that youll give it to them, but not so bad that they cant live with it. and definitely definitely not as bad as you do to them when they try to weasel out. another fun thing is to turn it over to one of the other players: scooter: so i kill this puppy, and you: hold on. morton, what grief does it give her? morton: huh? oh, i get it. well, lets see, what was it again that she puked on me? veal and prawns? scooter: oh, come on now! you: no, go ahead, morton. run with that. whats the grief?

brick, the brick splits and theres this rush of foul air from the crack. youre possessed by an obnoxious little demon, its been trapped in there for a long time. whats your favorite restaurant? scooter: uh. pinnochios, downtown. you: great. the demon takes you downtown to pinoccios and you spend the next six hours gorging yourself on veal and scampi. you eat, what, five dishes an hour, fifteen bucks a plate, call it five hundred dollars worth of food. you skip out without paying, of course, and then the demon curls up in a corner of your mind and goes to sleep. scooter: you mean its still there? you: naturally. and i gotta tell you, it needs five hundred dollars worth of veal and prawns every day or it gets really nasty. scooter: but -- but how do i get rid of it? you: you wait. until christmas. oh, and plus, when you see morton, the first thing you do is puke on him. morton: huh? you what?

thatll learn em.

once you get it rolling, all you gotta do is decide occasionally to play a puppy killing out in detail, so nobody gets too comfortable. youre golden. oh, and of course if they fucking cheated during character creation, its your civic duty to give them grief till the blood comes out their ears. just in case you forgot. so great, youve passed off one of your more irritating duties as gm. whats next? keeping track of a world full of people is a pain in the ass, but your pcs gotta have friends. thats one of the best ways to get them into trouble, right, friends, families, lovers, naturally it is. cant do without it. like good old gerald stebbins, always getting taken off to willard or over their heads with the loan sharks. kill puppies or not, you still cant just blow off your friends.

64

anyway thats fine, but you should be hatching fiendish plots, not trying to remember if scooters friend marsey is the one who sniffs between sentences or the one who speaks in a clipped monotone. right? right. the solution is the same. farm everybody whos not important out to your players. just spring it on them, why not? it works like this: you: scooter, someones calling you. ring, ring. scooter: hello. scooter. you: its your friend marsey. hes just been in a car accident. morton, would you play marsey for me? morton: huh? what? you: play marsey for me. hes just been in a car accident. come on, dont be a feeb. morton: well, whatever, okay. scooter? (sniff) its marsey. (sniff) listen, could you give me a ride? (sniff) ive, uh, ive got a problem with my car. (sniff)

you can hand over marseys character sheet if you want, but odds are you never bothered to make one for him. sometimes its fun to tell marseys new player secrets that marsey knows, but dont feel obligated. keep an eye on it and be ready to step in and itll be fine. after a little while you wont even notice, youll wonder how you managed before. swear to god. the only trick is: dont make anybody play their own friends. got that? you hate it when two npcs have to talk to each other in front of everybody, i know you do. your players hate it too. dont do it. even if you hate them, even if they cheated like cheating bastard pigs and you cant think of any other way to make them pay. its just not worth it. so keep that up. whenever something gets irritating, figure out a way to make one of your players do it. eventually youll be left with only the cool stuff, and that is the no shit shit. gravy.

65

i scream you scream or, the evil fucked up side of... ...ghosts
the pain in the ass with ghosts is that you have to think about whats up with them. their history, their psychology, their whole backstory. i mean, i guess you kind of have to with every npc, but ghosts you actually really have to. nah, fuck it. ill make a little table for you to roll on instead. - ghosts mostly dont realize that theyre ghosts, and a lot of the time the people around them dont realize either. a lot of ghosts are visible and have jobs and seem like everybody else. - instead of cold, ghosts are in touch with the times; instead of fucked up, ghosts are psychologically whole; instead of mean, theyre tangible, and instead of relentless, theyre recurrent. - ghosts are most fun when they fail rolls. when a ghost fails an in touch with the times roll, it is simply incapable of figuring out whats going on around it. when it fails a psychologically whole roll, it reveals the gaps left in its personality when it died. when it fails a tangible roll, it becomes translucent, silent, odorless, weightless, frictionless, something cool like that. and when it fails a recurrent roll, it disappears entirely and returns to some earlier state. - instead of evil, ghosts have unquiet. the theory is that every ghost has some unresolved something thats keeping it here. when the ghost resolves its deal, its unquiet goes to zero and on it goes to its well-deserved rest. - since ghosts mostly dont know that theyre ghosts, they mostly have no clue what their own deal is. Theyre basically winging it, going where their unquiet leads them. - theyre also pretty easy to fool. say a ghost is hanging around until it gets to attend its daughters sixth birthday more actually worthwhile gm advice, speaking of ghosts: have your players create some npcs! let em stat out the people who hate them, random other people, just like pass the book to them open to the npcs section and be like all, hey, make up some npcs while im on the potty, yeah? theyll come up with good shit, and when you inflict it upon them later, theyll be happy. its a thing. also, check this out. this is from a game i ran: putricene and kaylen are PCs, they hate one another. theyve horked flaming snot and gushed vast shit and between the two of them they managed to kill one metric fuckload of maggots (=2.2 fuckloads imperial), which satan called them up about and wasnt too pleased - have you seen the state of my

_________________________________

66

party, and its daughter is forty one and married and living in ohio. you can help the ghost out by having everybody act the party out, pretending to be its daughter and guests and so on. get enough details right and itll work fine. - ghosts dont spend unquiet to do things. instead, their level of unquiet determines what they can do. or rather, what they can do easily, since they can do things from other levels of unquiet, but when they do, their unquiet increases. bear with me, itll make sense. - a ghosts unquiet goes up (by 1 point) every time a. it fails a roll on any of its stats, b. it uses a power from a different level of unquiet, or c. something happens that will make it substantially harder for it to resolve its deal. - a ghosts unquiet goes down (by 1 point) when a. it makes a significant move toward resolving its deal or b. it forgets about its deal for a long time. its unquiet can never go to zero until it totally resolves its deal. - sometimes it makes sense to keep track of how many people know that its a ghost. - heres a character sheet for a random ghost.
my tortured soul wanders the earth looking for surcease in life my name was annabella brockminster in touch with the times 2 psychologically whole 1 tangible 4 recurrent 3 unquiet 6 my deal is that ill hang around until i get to go to my daughters sixth birthday party. this many people know im a ghost: 0

here are some ghostly powers. at zero unquiet, remember, the ghost goes away forever, buhbye ghost.

office? he said - and they burned down each others houses and shit. anyhow Putricene runs through the neighborhood peering in the windows until he finds somebody with a wallsized tropical fishtank, he jimmies the door, and he feeds the fish with speed and pcp. he slaps a sticker on the fishtank that says dare to keep kids [scratched out] fish off drugs. im like, cool, somebody hates you for that! its ... lets say a vampire. hes asleep in his coffin in the basement right now! hes a vampire who keeps tropical fish. we cut to something else. fluffy crucifying the kittens in the church sanctuary? atilla chucking mutilated kittens through the window into the ymca 1st-grade swim class? both?

_________________________________

67

at low levels of unquiet, from 1 to 3, the ghost can do any or all of these: - hold down a job. - remain corporeal in high-pressure or high-sensation situations, like while competing in a bicycle race or having sex. - sleep, shit, and feel hot and cold. at middle levels of unquiet, from 4 to 6, the ghost can do any or all of these: - participate in conversations. - remain corporeal in low-pressure, day to day situations, like while pushing the button to call the elevator or watching tv. - walk through walls. - haunt people by making them see things out of the corners of their eyes and hear weird noises. - eat, drink, blink, and feel pain. at high levels of unquiet, from 7 to 9, the ghost can do any or all of these: - remain invisible and intangeable for long periods, just watching and waiting. - manifest as a spectral figure, a chill wind, laughter, heavy footsteps, things like that. - manifest as it appeared when it died, a la sixth sense. - move things around without touching them. - give people bad luck. - attack people astrally, doing psychological damage instead of real damage. and at very high levels of unquiet, 10 plus, the ghost can do any or all of these: - make blood gush out of the water fixtures or pour in through the windows. - possess people. - manifest as a terrifying, horrific, monstrous thing, a la jacobs ladder or the first half of the house on haunted hill remake (the movie was whatever, but gimme a right on for geoffrey rush). (shit man we were mean mean mean to the kittens in that game.) anyhow then kaylen catches up with putricene in time to see him applying the dare sticker. kaylens still covered in shit, so he starts throwing it at putricene. they fight, and Putricene gets the worst of it. kaylens there smacking his head into the refridgerator and im like, did I mention that theres a tropical-fish loving vampire who hates you asleep in the basement? and theyre like, yeah, and Ill bet the sun just went down, and Im like, yeah. so Im like, okay, should this be a scary vampire or a like vampire: the sucking vampire? lets vote. scary wins, 4 to 2. putricenes player and kaylens player were the 2 opposed.

_________________________________

68

- do very bad things to people, like making them drop lit matches or sinking their rowboats or dragging them screaming and bleeding into (and i mean into) the walls. - anything else scary and cool you can think of. and heres that chart i promised you, so you dont have to think. roll a d6: i rolled a 1 i rolled a 2 the ghost will hang around until somebody convinces it that its dead. showing it its own obituary might help. the ghost will hang around until some particular thing happens to some particular person. like maybe the ghost wants revenge on its killer, and will hang around until its killers death. the ghost will hang around until it gets to see or do something it was waiting for when it died. like yeah yeah i know youve heard it enough but like maybe its daughters sixth birthday party again. the ghost will hang around until it gets to interact with someone who it really wanted to see when it died. like maybe its wife or dog or whatever. the ghost will hang around until somebody finds or does some particular thing with some particular object, like the deed to its land or its gold locket or its bones. the ghost will hang around until some particular situation is restored to how it was before the ghost died. like maybe until its famiy farm is restored to its family or ivy covers the old boathouse again.

i rolled a 3

i rolled a 4

i rolled a 5

i rolled a 6

while im thinking of it, go rent lolo. its a frenchcanadian flick on new line home video. it doesnt have

so youre there smacking his head into the fridge, right, and the front door, its been open, it swings - slowly slowly - shut. click. kaylens player pantomimes holding putricene by the collar but not smacking anymore, looking around scared. lets, uh, take this somewhere else, he says. dude! i did two cheesy special effects, the closing door and someone unseen touching Kaylens face, and they were running around in circles squeaking and waving their arms! pissing themselves! all because the vote got them to buy into a scary vampire. thats some cool shit that is. you can do that kind of thing too.

_________________________________

69

anything to do with ghosts or killing puppies for satan or anything, but its a strange, beautiful, fucked up movie and if youre like me youll realize youve been missing it all this time. anyway so fine, and at the higher levels of unquiet they can be kind of disruptive, but your pcs shouldnt get all altruistic and shit just because theyre ghosts. sure you could follow the ghost around and figure out its deal and reenact its daughters goddamn sixth birthday party or whatever, but why would you? ghosts are just too much fun to fuck with, and they can also make damn useful friends. for instance:
my tortured soul wanders the earth looking for surcease in life my name was captain mike harvers in touch with the times 1 psychologically whole 2 tangible 5 recurrent 4 unquiet 5 my deal is that ill hang around until i get to eat some homemade strawberry ice cream. this many people know im a ghost: 2

hands down my favorite bit of world war ii trivia: bomber crews would take a canister of cream, sugar, sometimes fruit, sometimes chocolate or coffee, and bolt it to the outside of their plane. this would expose the cream etc to a. the below freezing temperatures at their flight altitude and b. constant shaking so no grainy ice crystals would form. if the plane landed safely, theyd celebrate with c. lovely fresh ice cream. no lie. so this captain mike harvers guy. he was a tail gunner on a b24 in europe and the plane landed safely, but he didnt get any ice cream. hed personally taken substantial flack. they rushed him from the plane to the field hospital and not long afterward he went back to the states. he lived in the va for a little while and then went home. he married his sweetheart and five months later climbed the big maple in his back yard with a deer rifle. he shot his wife three times as she came around the house with a watering can, shot at the neighbors dog and missed, and then blew his own brains out. the next owners cut the tree down and by whatever route it ended up that the city made park benches out of it. Thats where you can find captain mike harvers today, sitting on one of those benches downtown, tossing peanuts at the pigeons. sometimes he goes and stands in front of the ice cream cart, and reads and rereads the menu, looking for something he cant remember and will never find.

70

poor unhappy guy. dont you just want to hug him? here captain mike, i made this just for you! Strawberry ice cream, your favorite! well, i didnt mention one very interesting fact. captain mike notices and remembers every single thing that happens anywhere in that park. hes like ten thousand camcorders aimed at one of the places where shit goes down. if youre a little lucky and you ask him the right question, well, i think you can see the possibilities. drugs, sex, puppies, incriminating evidence, your enemies on a stick. ask captain mike. not so anxious to help him out now, are you? getting used to the idea of him being there, arent you? told you so.

71

a big hairy combat example (because god knows the main book didnt have one)

if you think for one second that im going to go through the dumb hassle of writing up a new combat example to exemplify the new rules, shit brother, you got another thing coming. oh for fucks sweet sake. okay, look. scooter: you wanna piece of me! you wanna piece of me! come and get it, you shambling piece of rotting flesh shit! ima haul off and smack you one right in the nose. jiggo: fine with me, i got single-minded out the butt. when you get close enough ima grab your head. want... to... eat... brains... scooter rolls mean, for a total of 6; jiggo rolls want to eat your brains for a total of 8. jiggo: heh heh. scooter: aigh! get it off! my brains! ima do a knee drop onto your foot to make you let go. jiggo: yeah right. ima hold you up by your hair and chew on your head. ima take the +2 too keep what i just won. anng anng anng. announcer: thats gotta hurt! morton: hey! you cant treat my friend that way! ima vault into the ring. scooter rolls mean again for an 8 this time; jiggo rolls want to eat brains +2 for a 9; morton rolls mean for a

_________________________________

scooter: you wanna piece of me! you wanna piece of me! come and get it, you shambling piece of rotting flesh shit! i haul off and smack him one right in the nose. my mean roll totals to 6. jiggo: yeah, right. i let her. my single-minded roll is a 10. i dont even stumble. when she gets close enough i grab her head. my want to eat your brains roll is an 8. want... to... eat... brains... scooter: aigh! get it off! i do a knee drop onto his foot. my mean roll is a 9! yes! jiggo: duh. i hold her up by her hair. announcer: thats gotta hurt! scooter: doh! morton: hey! you cant treat my friend that way! i vault into the ring. jiggo: whatever. i chew on scooters head. anng anng anng. scooter: no! get it off! get it off! announcer: is that blood? morton: i get jiggo in a headlock! my mean roll is a 7. jiggo: want... to... eat... brains... morton: i squeeze! come on, make your roll!

72

_________________________________
6. scooter and jiggo win, morton loses, scooter goes first. jiggo (looking at scooter): we both win, we both lose...? we both ... lose. scooter: okay. so...? jiggo: so you dont get away but youre like thrashing around and i cant get a good bite in. morton: but im in the ring? jiggo: yeah, im too busy trying to land my teeth to notice. scooter: whew. hey buddy! morton: the awesome. ima get you in a headlock! jiggo: dude, im a zombie. i already dont have any blood going to my brain. morton: oh right. instead ill ... grab a folding chair! and clobber you with it! and ill take the +1 because i won my goal last roll. scooter: i spend evil! i spend 2 evil! i blow my nose on you jiggo! its flame! bwah hah hah! announcer: your goal is to make him let go? scooter: yeah, that. announcer: cool. and also the danger is that all that methane jiggo generates will go up with a noise like: foomf.

jiggo: dude, im a zombie. i already dont have any blood going to my brain. scooter: i use some evil! i use 2 evil! i blow my nose on him! its flame! bwah hah hah! announcer: can she do that? jiggo: um, hey! oh... no... not... fire... i let go and try to beat it out with my hands. announcer: actually, all that methane you generate? it goes up with a noise like: foomf. you fall down. youre on fire. lose a single-minded. scooter, morton, make relentless rolls. scooter: got a 7. morton: owie! a 4! stop drop and roll! announcer: youre down too, morton. you both lose a relentless. morton: smooth, scooter. scooter: well at least it wasnt a head lock, morton. duh. jiggo: im kicking and thrashing. do i set anything else on fire? can i make it to the ropes? pharus: my zombie! i jump into the ring. i bring my folding chair. morton, scooter: oh shit. morton: i cast a satanic spell! i cast the one where i summon a big-ass demon! youre going down, wizard boy! announcer: morton? that spell takes an hour to cast, plus youre on fire.

73

_________________________________
jiggo: fuck. announcer: goal for jiggo, please? jiggo: oh right. um, eat... brains... i... guess... everybody rolls. scooter rolls mean for a 5; jiggo switches up and rolls single-minded for a 9 (nobody minds); morton rolls mean +1 for a 5; i roll dangerousness for an 8. announcer: does your goal oppose the danger, jiggo? i dont believe it does! jiggo: you figured that out all by yourself? announcer: heh. jiggo: i eat scooters brains! i notice that you suck this time, scooter, what with that 5 and all. how bout i get down to skull? scooter: this is butt ass. jiggo: ha ha. i choose for you to fall down and lose a relentless. furthermore i keep you between me and mortons chair. morton: i dont accidentally hit you, do i, scooter? im like, sorry girl! get out of the fuckin way! scooter: you bastard fuck. announcer: but: foomf! i choose: you all fall down and lose a relentless. except you, jiggo. you fall down and lose a single-minded. morton: the danger gets to choose a bennie?

morton: oh right. i guess i keep rolling around. announcer: good. pharus: i hit morton with my folding chair! remember that i enchanted it with fist of the storm? announcer: oh, i remember. morton: noooo... scooter: oh no you dont. i tackle him from behind. my mean roll is an 8! announcer: pharus, make an astute roll to notice the sneak attack! pharus: you mean insightful? announcer: whatever. pharus: i got a 6. scooter: ha ho! jiggo: hey, what about me? do i make it to the ropes? announcer: Scooter, you plow into pharus from behind! he goes sprawling -- lose a resolute, pharus -- and the folding chair of the storms fury flies up into the air! wheres that d4? it falls on ... morton! kazap kaboom! morton: urk! announcer: you know the deal, morton. two consecutive hit. pharus: plus the chair. announcer: plus the chair. morton: i rolled a 7, a 4, and a 3, but it doesnt

74

oh for fuck sake. i forgot that i wanted to have a ghost in there, so that i could show you how cool it is when ghosts fail their recurrent roll and have to go back to some earlier time and place. the wizard was going to cast like sword of the sun and the ghost was going to be four combat phases behind for the whole rest of the thing. well, whatever. you can imagine it perfectly well, and no way in hell am i going back and rewriting it. what you see is what you get. jiggo: hey vincent? are you sure that decomposing bodies produce methane? announcer: shut up, on fire zombie boy.

matter. im down to 0 relentless. im seein tweetie birds. announcer: so sad. pharus: victory is mine! announcer: not so fast. jiggo, you do manage to pull yourself up on the ropes. but just as you do, scooters flying tackle carries pharus practically right up your flaming ass. you fall back down on top of him. scooter: eat hot flaming undead, wizard! pharus: aiee! jiggo: owie. sorry... boss...

_________________________________
announcer: yeah. morton: thats not in the rules. announcer: its in the example. morton: but... dude that theres pretty fuckin selfreferential, is what that is. announcer: anybody have a goal? scooter: my goal is to roll a 10. jiggo: im on fire, so lets see. my goal is now to eat mortons brains. no i mean my action is now to eat mortons brains, but my goal is to light the whole fuckin world on fire. scooter: my goal is to get the hell out of dodge. ima do it by crawling and scrambling. jiggo (making menacing eye contact): my goal opposes yours. just in case you were wondering. morton: my goal is to knock you the hell down and stay down, jiggo. with my trusty folding chair. scooter rolls relentless for a 9, even with her -2. its not a 10 but she gloats. jiggo rolls want to eat brains for a 6; morton rolls mean for a 7. scooter: oh yes. the times they are a changin for you, on fire zombie boy. done! thats good enough for satan, its damn skippy good enough for you. ive got work in the morning.

75

wizardly shit
sorcerers are such bastards, yknow? they can cast our spells, but we cant cast theirs. theyre rich, suave, educated, and they take showers. they dont need to kill helpless animals to do magic and their magic isnt mostly vermin-related. plus their spellbooks are engaging and well written and not full of the ravings of some paranoid whack-nut. jerks. they can bite me.

fine and worthy diversions for a winters evening

like take this book for example. its a grimoire by reynaud copersley, published in 1899 by upstate press. it includes hilarious descriptions of fourteen victorian parlor games (including piggy piggy, where one person, blindfolded, sits on the lap of someone in the circle, who squeals like a pig, and the first person has to guess from the squealing who it is, and in the well, where theres some stuff and then everybody makes out with everybody else); recipes for roast rabbits and game fowl; a delightful account of a year spent travelling to oregon and back, full of well-drawn characters and stirring events; and four sorcerous spells. - the companys repast, 2 potency a fabulous meal appears: quail stuffed with venison sausage, roast potatoes, egg and cheese pies, wild salad herbs, spiced lobster bisque, and roast nuts and relishes, serving fourteen. the food is real, nourishing, and expertly prepared. - shadows of memory, 1 potency as you tell a story, beautiful translucent phantasms appear in the air before you as illustrations. the spell draws them from your memories, imaginations, and dreams. - the horsemans ease, 1 potency cast on a smooth stone and put the stone into a bath. whoever takes the bath is overcome with a warm, tingling, soothing relaxation, which eases sore muscles and heals small scrapes, scratches, and bruises. the sensation lasts until the bath begins to cool, and leaves the subject invigorated, calm, and in good spirits. - the subtle tutor, 2 potency cast on a book. while you will it, until the book is done, a quiet voice whispers the words of the book into your ear. you can direct the voice to repeat itself, to skip ahead, to skip back, and to resume where it left off. as you can see, reynaud copersley was a right fucker and if he were around today hed need his ass kicked.

76

gifts of rock and fire

heres another one. this one was written by one of those larger-than-life world-travelling adventurers of the twenties, a woman named adelaine north. at the end of her adventuring career miss north was initiated into an order of mystics and magi in egypt, and she retired to the riviera to study and write. gifts of rock and fire is her memoir. its moving and insightful and it contains three substantial sorcerous spells. - untying the knots of the wind, 3 potency the local weather changes, precisely as you direct. you control the weather for a full day. - jonahs carriage, 4 potency cast on the ocean. a gigantic fish of white adamant, with diamond windows for eyes, rises from the depths and opens its mouth for you to board. it will take you by sea to any port in the world. its sumptuously provisioned for a journey of up to several weeks. - the moon in the earth, 3 potency cast on a fire. when the fire goes out and the coals cool, each one will be a lump of silver ore. can you believe that shit?

the undisclosed history of the dread covenant of hellfallow hall, a novel

this book was published in 1943 and its one of those irritating books that pretends to be a novel when really its a polemic. (so thats good. at least one of these damn wizards grimoires is irritating, id be pissed with a capital pissed if none were.) the great wizardess isabel estafen wrote it, but before she was especially great. it contains three sorcerous spells. - the divining glass, 2 potency cast on a mirror, and name a person aloud. that persons image appears in the mirror, as though someone were following her around with a camcorder. - speaking silent words, 1 potency write a sentence or two on a piece of paper. your target hears those words in her head, recognizably in your voice. - eavesdropping on the past, 1 potency name a time oclock. you hear in your head everything that anybody said, in your current place, at the time you named. whatever. shit. thats not so very cool. we can do that kind of

77

the wartime grimoire of stephen bullherald

this ones cool though. stephen bullherald sent it with his son to france in 1916. its written in a clear and nononsense style and contains four very practical, pretty easy spells of the sort were particularly jealous of. like check out the fourth one. - to stop bleeding, 1 potency the wound doesnt like close or seal or disappear or anything, but the blood clots rapidly and the bleeding stops. - to hit your mark, 1 potency cast on a gun. next time you fire it, you will hit what you aimed at, all other considerations aside. the spell is nullified if somebody else fires the gun before you do. - to hide and remain hidden, 1 potency stomp a bootprint into the dirt. As long as you can see the bootprint, even out of the corner of your eye, you are silent and invisible. - to stay safe in gunfire, 3 potency until one hour passes, no bullet can harm you. how it is exactly that stephen bullheralds son lost the book and didnt come home from france alive, no one knows. but i hardly need to point out that it probably served him right, wizards brat.

making magic items

the easiest type of magic item to make is called a suspended spell. what you do is you take the spell and then instead of casting it, you attach it to some physical object. the pairing of spell and object should make sense, since in order to release the suspended spell you have to do something appropriate to the object. a good example is pharus folding chair from the big hairy combat thing. he suspended fist of the storm in a folding chair, and when he hit somebody with it, the spell went off. you decide yourself, when you suspend the spell, if only you can release it, or if anyone who does the right thing can. suspending a spell costs one extra point of potency and takes only a few minutes. next is potions, powders, salves, unguents, ointments, tinctures, blah blah blah. there, you take the spell and you invest some stuff with it. herbal pastes and concoctions are traditional but anything goes. greasepaint is more and more popular. anyway, choose a spell that makes sense for it, but think flexible. invest the divining glass into grated nutmeg and sprinkle it on the mirror, invest gunpowder with to hit your mark and load bullets with it. anybody can use a potion, if they know to. consider labelling it so that somebody doesnt sprinkle it in their eggnog. making potions

78

costs an extra point of potency per dose, and takes at least an hour per dose too. and then the big stuff, actual enchanted objects. thats like if the folding chair of the storms fury had unlimited charges, or like the mirror were always a divining glass. it should always take at least three or four times the potency to enchant an object, plus require months or years, plus it should depend on the correct celestial circumstances. other than that, go hog wild. hog wild sounds like: squee! squee!

79

revenge of the killer puppies

sooner or later you know its going to come to this. just too perfect. i dont see how you can avoid it. its - instead of cold, werewolves are assimilated into human society; instead of fucked up, theyre sly; instead of mean, theyre ferocious; and instead of relentless, theyre dogged (ha ha). - they have different ferocious and dogged (ha ha) scores in human form than they do in wolf form, and in wolf form they range from 6 to 10, like demons, so thats serious. oh, but they cant make assimilated into human society rolls at all when theyre wolves of course. - what is it that hurts werewolves? silver bullets, right? garlic doesnt? yeah, thats it. silver bullets. i have no earthly idea where somebody would get a silver bullet. if your pcs claim to have some, ask them where the fuck they got them and dont let up until they admit that yeah, yeah, youre right, they couldnt possibly actually have any, no they were just trying to get away with it. - if you feel like it, you can give individual werewolves unique weaknesses or spiffs of their own. the moodier and fucked upper the better, naturally. im thinking of one who keeps her heart in a jackal-headed funary jar in her office, that sort of thing. - anyway, meanwhile, until you get your hands on some silver bullets or the heart in the jar or what have you, whenever werewolves change form, they immediately heal any injuries they might have, plus theyre unkillable. - werewolves can change form pretty much whenever you want them to, usually a. when theyre in deep shit and the other form will be better able to handle it, and b. when theyre wicked hungry and the other form will be better able to stalk, catch, and eat it. changing is instinctive, totally out of their personal conscious control, but it happens when its called for. - werewolves are not happy. they arent ecowarriors or anything else spiritually fulfilling. they go flipshit under the full moon and eat their friends, and they know that nobody will ever love them, really love them for whats inside. as a result theyre bitter, lonely, vindictive, and full of hate. - heres a character sheet for a random werewolf.
i walk on silent paws under the moon my name is deborah tyrone assimilated into human society 1 sly 3 ferocious 3/8 dogged (ha ha) 2/7 i must pass my curse on to another before i may be free. (hey, now theres something fun you could do to a pc...)

80

now this is key. do not fuck around with werewolves. make them mean, vicious, terrible, and shocking. they are humanitys inhumanity incarnate, they are the ripper and the hunter and jeffrey oscar-meyer-balogna-song dahmer. they will fucking kill you and fucking eat you, i kid you not. theres no excuse for lame werewolves. over there. dont make me come

81

scenario: hey, i found this, you wannit?

so poor pathetic gerald stebbins has been doing the ghoul on the street thing. which is sad, but hell, theres only so much you can take of him sleeping curled up on your loveseat with his skinny-ass ankles sticking out of the ratty afghan he uses for a blanket and him getting up at all hours and checking on the mousetraps again, slobbering like maybe theyve killed another snack for him since he checked ten minutes ago, and would he please just go back the fuck to sleep, its seven in the morning for crying out christ, not that (he says) eating former rodents is at all even the real thing, and you oughta try it sometime, it tastes goo-ood and its more fun than bad crack cut 50-50 with soap flakes. he says hell make it up to you, please dont put him out on the street, but he always says that and instead he just eats your corn flakes and leaves gray infected toenail clippings in your bathroom sink. so whoda thunk when the feeble bastard shows up three weeks later with the no shit choirboys ring?

briefly, the choirboys ring

the choirboys ring is an ugly like high school class ring style ring, gold tone, with a big glass stone thats not quite the right color of red. instead of greek letters or a motto or whatever, the design has the word choirboys around the band. to look at it, its quite obviously worth shit for money. its a demonic device, though, steeped in satanic humours and imbued with their sinister sympathies. when you wear it, what you do is touch somebody elses skin with it (shaking hands is perfect) and lean close to them and whisper a short, simple, you-directed command in their ear. vote for me, sleep with me, forget you saw me here, take a bullet for me, give me your wallet, that kind of thing. they dont do it right away, as though mesmerized no, it sinks into their brain and they never think of it again, until an opportunity presents itself. when it does, bang! they do it. (if you feel like it, you can have them roll relentless or whatever to resist, or fucked up or whatever to notice that theyre waiting for it, or whatever. its your clambake.)

82

you bet your ass i wannit. question is...

who else does?

pilchard jeffers widow, estranged

i am a master of forces occult and obscure my name is erneztina jeffers, although i usually use my maiden name, andrzaj. learned 4 insightful 5 fierce 3 resolute 3 potency 8 my familiar is a big ol spirit-raven named war.

ms andrzaj split with her husband ten years ago or so, and took lets say 40% of their little magical order with her. she may have cursed him to death, and she knows to the one what sorcerous and satanic artifacts he owned.

pilchard jeffers former pupil

i am a master of forces occult and obscure my name is paul markson learned 3 insightful 5 fierce 2 resolute 5 potency 3 i get 1 potency every time i have sex.

naturally, mr markson feels that he should inherit his mentors books and paraphanelia. he may have murdered pilchard for precisely that reason, or because pilchard was an old prude and didnt like the way his rising star was carrying on. either way he too knows exactly what pilchard owned. it might be fun and twisted to play erneztina and paul as secret ex-lovers from before the split, or even current lovers, possibly conspiring. but enemies is fun too. the choices, man, the choices!

83

pilchard jeffers older son, a big disappointment

i dont kill puppies for satan, but sometimes i audit people my name is pilchard jeffers jr, but people call me jeff cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 1 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just the shark in a suit who wants to take their house away: 6

jeffers jr doesnt have any idea what stuff his father owned, but better, he has a list. odds are good that he wants his estranged mother to get none of it, but on the other hand theyd make excellent allies too. he may have murdered his father in a fit of penis envy or whatever freudian thing.

the munson county scorched earth party

i am a master of forces occult and obscure my name is matilda jeffers, but i prefer to be called matt learned 2 insightful 3 fierce 4 resolute 2 potency 2 i get 3 potency every time i personally affect the outcome of a political election. revenge is a dish best served right the fuck now my name is j. hiroshima bird thorough 5 survivor 2 vengeful 3 driven 3 i have a fucking arsenal full of a fraction of a gram of weaponized smallpox. i serve the cold blind nameless god of science my name is kev barret cutting edge 5 mad 4 curious 2 objective 2 publishable material 4 im researching the effect of internetdelivered subliminal messages on borderline personalities.

84

i dont kill puppies for satan but sometimes i stomp on peoples heads my name is d_vorn402@myaccess.net, im whacked cold 1 fucked up 1 mean 2 relentless 1 evil 0 this many people have ever noticed me as a human being, not just another frowny emoticon on the chatboard: 1 kev, to whom i am fanatically devoted (which i dont find odd) can use a point of publishable material to give me +1 mean for an hour or so.

matt jeffers knew at least about the ring, and probably most of the rest of her fathers stuff too. she may have murdered him to get his power and because she hated him for his radical (by comparison) just-right-of-center politics. oh and no matter how they pester her, she wont sleep with any of the rest of her political party.

a small assignment of credit

if it werent for mr. ron sorcerer edwards, none of the above people would have been related to / fucking each other.

okay but the real question is...

who even gives a hairy white rats ass who killed the old fucker? not me. dont even use this as an excuse to play out some dumb agatha christie murder mystery lameness. ah, but what you didnt realize, jiggo old fellow, you nor the constablery neither, is that miss matilda jeffers is secretly (dum-dum-tum) the butler! no. the point is, your pcs have the ring, they love it, its fun to play with in the bathtub, but all these other extremely random weirdos keep showing up and trying to take it away from them. i cant believe you were even considering the murder mystery thing. weak.

85

oh, and the bad news, before i forget

remember how the choirboys ring is a demonic artifact? the bad news is that demons have, you know, plans for that kind of thing. particularly, they give them to otherwise good upstanding moral kind boring people, to ready? tempt them to sin.
ill have the filet of soul, rare if you please my name is kektak, junior arbiter of leeches and maggots cold 3 fucked up 3 mean 5 relentless 2 evil plenty ive tempted this many people to sin and thus condemned them to eternal torment: 2,464 im in charge of the choirboys ring.

kektak doesnt want your pcs to keep the ring, because theyre already condemned, right? if they commit sins with it, so what? he doesnt get any credit a-tall for tempting them. but, and this might be good for a giggle, if your pcs give it to somebody, or maybe even if somebody manages to get it from them by cunning or stealth, then theyve tempted that person to sin. and have i made it perfectly clear yet what demons like to do to pcs who scab on them?

86

appendix a: who hates ya, baby?

youll notice that theres never any mention in the rules of how to get new people to hate you. thats because: use your imagination god damn yez. mechanics would totally miss the point. totally miss it. that said, id think that the last thing youd want to do is add your friends to the stat. i mean, fuck man, theyre your friends. what else you got going for you?

appendix b: but you cant

you can screw your friends, and you can screw the pooch...

appendix c: killing vampires is easy

...if a. youre in the know and b. youre forewarned and well equipped and c. you have the wherewithal to hold a supernaturally powerful uber-predator who personally survived the civil war, the burning times, the age of enlightenment, the third reich, the great depression, the renaissance, the reformation, and the for fuck sake spanish inquisition too, and who during that time killed people numbering in the mid five digits, I mean all alone, no death squads or crematoriums, with bare hands and fangs, can you imagine the cunning and energy and ferocity, and youd only make it a very slightly larger five digit number, my mind boggles, it makes pol pot look like mr for fuck sake fred h. rogers anyway but hold that voracious fucker bastard down until sunrise. id run.

appendix d: what

would

jesus do?

hang there whimpering and eventually die.

87

88