Campaign Toybox
The Story: I’ve always liked the fact that in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, one of the signs that the Queen’s power is shrinking is that Santa is able to return to the land. I like the idea of a multiversal Santa as a perennial force of goodness. And as the holidays approach, I start thinking about a Christmasy toybox for you all ....
Somewhere, in the centre of the omniverse, lies the True Pole. Here lives the great one, the ancient, immortal, Santa Claus. He is an agent of good, of a time when, even in the darkest worlds, truth, and joy and the simple wonder of togetherness can shine out, if only for a moment. Where he passes, he leaves worlds better and brighter. The stronger his presence, the more the darkness fades, the more evil is driven back. But it isn’t an easy job. Evil is everywhere, and powerful, and it hates Christmas. And every universe is different. Sometimes it takes subtlety. Sometimes it takes magic elves. And sometimes, it takes guns.
Lots and lots of guns.
Think of dark worlds. War zones. Apocalyptic wastelands. Worlds in the grip of terrifying opressors. Worlds with guards and walls, where happiness is illegal and joy is hunted down with extreme prejudice and masive firepower. To get Christmas into a world like that, you need something special. You need the Slayriders.
There are always eight of them, and they come from all over the omniverse. They are the best at what they do, but, it must be admitted, they are also bad men. Or they once were. Because they never got what they wanted for Christmas. Then one day, a man with a Russian accent gave them exactly what they wanted: a chance to do what they do best, and now for a cause. For the best cause. For Christmas.
Style and Structure: For a long-running campaign, the work of a multiversal Santa squad could take any form, as could its agents. For a one-off Xmas Special though, it is best to focus on one kind of agent and one kind of world – dimension-hopping in a single story is hard to pull-off. But worlds where Christmas is problematic and needs gun-toting superhuman death squads to achieve are everywhere. Consider the totalitarian futures of the Buro in Feng Shui or the Imperium of Dark Heresy, or those in films like Brazil, THX, V for Vendetta or Serenity. Consider savage battlezones like the Sprawl of Shadowrun or the earth during the Aberrant Wars. Ponder human zoos like in Dark City or The Matrix. Thanks to C. S. Lewis, you can even consider fantasy worlds – did Santa come to Minas Tirith when Sauron’s forces were amassing? Did the Empire outlaw Christmas on Coruscant?
Given the silly premise though, an earth-grounding might be more appropriate. So let’s think about the Dirty Dozen. How do you get Christmas into a prisoner-of-war camp deep inside Nazi Germany in December, 1943? Or into a refugee camp in Sarajevo, December 1992? You ask the Slayriders. They go where only reindeer dare.
Personally, I like the WW2 motif, as it provides plenty of English folk missing an old-fashioned plum-pudding Christmas and it has just enough kitsch to make it work. But you can pick any period. Then all your have to is dig out your favourite heist scenario, print some building plans off the internet and let your players figure out how to get in, fill the stockings and get out again.
PCs and NPCs: Speaking of reindeer, this crack squad of elite specialists only refer to themselves by codenames, chosen to match their unique skills. Dasher does vehicles and extraction. Dancer is the infiltration master, dancing throught the shadows. Prancer is the hand-to-hand expert, and he can kill five men before the first one’s heart has stopped beating. Vixen, she’s the face, and strong men have told her everything they know after one bat of her eyelids. Comet handles communications and surveillance from base, Cupid is a sniper extraordinaire with over a hundred confirmed kills, Donner can blow up anything you can name at any time you want and Blitzen is the electrical and security breaker who can build a ham radio out of two socks and a cigarette lighter. Stat them up, then have Rudolph, their mysterious Russian handler, give them the brief in mission form. And don’t forget to give them a budget: almost all players love to go shopping before a mission, especially for guns and grenades.
Plots and Villains: If you’re gonna for some hard-core action, you want your villains to be people that nobody minds shooting and blowing to all hell. Nazis work well in that regard, as do any soldiers or thought police of oppressive regimes or agents of apocalypse and genocide. Against such enemies, nobody considers moral dilemmas or stops to count the bodies. Restraint is a dirty word and overkill has no meaning. Which – along with high-powered guns and explosives - is just what players love. And shouldn’t this be their Christmas as well?
On that theme, don’t make the heist too complex or too difficult. This shouldn’t be a mission that would expect a high casualty rate among the heroes. Defenceless peasants can be facing death or maiming, but not our heroes. They’re the best at what they do, and the players should feel that. The trick is to not make it too easy or let everything the players try work perfectly, but rather to just generally err in their favour. If they think to cut the power, then that should give them a big advantage. If they don’t, then ruining their whole plan because nobody thought of the electric fence is no fun. If one guard getting away will raise the alarm and turn the infiltration into a bloodbath, make sure the slayriders get a chance to run him down and silence him before that happens. It should never be “if you fail this roll, it’s all over”, but rather “man, if this goes wrong we’ll have to shoot a lot more guys – or break out the grenades!”
Sources: As mentioned, I love the WW2 feel and it has plenty of awesome mission films for inspiration and for enriching your life. Work your way through Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen and Kelly’s Heroes and then come back here and I’ll give you some more names. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade are the textbook guides to killing Nazis and are easier to find. Garth Ennis’ insane comic In The Rifle Brigade is appropriately gonzo, and the British comics up to the 80s were filled with WW2 heroes. Biggles began in WW1 but he plied his hand against the Nazis in his later career and if you want a perfect RPG plot, any single one of his fantastic novels (by W. E. Johns) will provide. For Christmas spirit, American classics like Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life are better than their kitschy reputations indicate – and Bad Santa was massively entertaining. For more English Chrsitmases, try Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, the Harry Potter novels and any number of novels and TV shows about The War At Home. Twas A Night Before Christmas is a great checklist of elements - keep it handy for puns and adventure scenes. For war and Christmas together, the recent French film Joyeux Noel was amazing, but not really silly enough – look to Futurama’s A Tale of Two Santas for a better model, with lots of pulp action. But nothing quite says Xmas Warfare like the definitive text of Die Hard – just make McLane’s mission to bring Christmas cheer to Yakatomi Tower and you’ve got the form.
RPGs: 1PG’s Santa’s Soldiers has surfed the yuletide before, and was excellent. For WW2 RPGs you can’t go past the amazingly researched Godlike (Santa is not above granting his soldiers superpowers), although it is a little gritty for our purposes. For more pulpy wartime fun, Pinnacle’s Weird War Two is perfect. If you want to go more modern, there’s actually a depressing dearth of modern-day action RPGs – Milennium’s End got the vibe right but had a poor system and is way out of print. Extreme Vengeance, Hong Kong Action Theatre or Feng Shui are all excellent choices for big guns, bigger explosions and buckets of cigar-chewing cheese. For a little more reality in your modern-day, Aberrant and several GURPS books (Black Ops, for one) have some nice details on modern battlezones and wartorn regions. Shadowrun is a great source for heist adventures, and is full of awesome guns and explosions (and you can imagine a dragon having his own reasons for ensuring Christmas happens in the Sprawl), and nothing perhaps has quite as much potential for merry-mega-damage as RIFTS. Given the silly vibe, however, I recommend simplicity be your watchword – consider Risus, FUDGE or the gonzo action genius of OctaNe. And have a merry Christmas.
