Road Trip Remix -1: The Chicken Dance

While I already wanted to run Road Trip, I had never run anything in the One Roll Engine before. I'd listened to APs of Monsters and Other Childish Things games, so I wasn't completely in the dark, but I knew that if I was running a campaign I'd need to at least run one game of MAOCT. There's actually very few published MAOCT one shots, and none of them struck my fancy as something to run. Deciding to dive in whole hog, I committed to designing a scenario.

Knowing I would do the same for the brand new legs of Road Trip, I felt that I should use facets of my childhood to design the scenario. With how MAOCT uses the relationships between children and monsters (or weird kids and their normal peers), the system urges reflection in play by the relationship system. By betting on your relationships, it helps you get in the mindset of why these relationships help you in your present situation.

I had already dove into the well of my childhood in Red Markets for the Mega Playground / Discovery Zone job, so it felt easy to dive right in again. I knew this scenario needed to be self contained, but could connect with Road Trip. A birthday party felt natural for a one shot. Looking back, I remembered parties at the local roller rink. Admittedly, my memories of that focused more on playing arcade games and awkwardly flailing on the rink, but those were usable.

Another thing I never was able to complete on the skates was the Chicken Dance skate. That memory gave me the idea for the All Chicken as a boss, the dance as a method to summon it. I now had everything I needed to run the scenario! I was excited for our game night.

Then... we played. I still felt weird running it, and I know I got stuff wrong while playing. Getting initiative right felt hard, and I know I built the enemy monsters too weak for the adventure. Also, the different attributes for attacks flew right over my head. However, the important aspects of the playthrough were successful. The players had fun, and we all learned how to play MAOCT and One Roll Engine games. With that experience in hand, we were able to play Road Trip, and thus far it has been successful. We'll see how things proceed as we get ever closer to the end...