This past session we did something a little different. Muse was already going to be missing and Thomas had to cancel more or less at the last minute. Unfortunately, I was out watching the Champions’ League final at a bar when I found out and I didn’t get home until almost right before we were going to start the session. I am cruel and heartless enough to have run might be the last session of our Lonely Coast campaign without one player (sorry Muse…nothing personal) but, apparently, I’m not cruel and heartless enough to do it if two players are missing. Or at least not enough to actually make that decision myself…so I left it up to the players in attendance. The majority didn’t want to continue (end?) the LC campaign without the others present. So now what?!?
Rachel suggested that we could just play a board game, like Descent, but as the conversation continued, we settled on still playing D&D. So everyone created a character and everyone (with one exception) used the Fifth Edition Character Sheet app which made certainly sped things up and my brain continued to be muddled and not settling on anything (it was because I was tired and hungry…honest…I only had two beers watching the game). By the time everyone had a character ready and I had had some dinner, my brain was working again…more or less.
During the earlier conversation, murders, the television show CSI, and Orc & Pie had come up and that all somehow seeped through my brain as murder and television shows. Once it got through to the other side of my head and actually made its way out, the Deadliest Link pilot show was born (rather rough around the edges).
Four contestants awoke in a darkened room and, as they opened their eyes, bright lights flashed and a disembodied voice enthusiastically shouted out, “Welcome to the Deadliest Link!” The last thing each contestant [i.e., the player characters] could remember was signing some waiver or contract. The voice explained, directing itself towards some unseen audience, that the rules of the game were quite simple. One of the contestants had murdered the baker [a body in baker’s clothing was lying, facedown, on the floor nearby with a knife in its back with a pie sitting on a pedestal just behind the body]. It was the contestants’ task to not only determine which of them had committed the murder but to also survive the Dungeon of Doom. By the end, only one of the contestants would leave alive as the Deadliest Link!