Monstrous Mishaps Story: The Wood I! Hardware Emporium

• Pregen: Klaus Kleinmann, the Creep
• Pregen: Winnie Wurmstein, the Hoarder
• Pregen: Joachim Yapper, the Jerkass
• Pregen: Zelda Zoom, the Kluts
• Pregen: Bradley Bulle, the Loudmouth
• Pregen: Marissa Measley, the Moocher
• Story idea: The Race of the Rubber Duckies
• Introduction: The Rickety Raft

I am continuing my efforts to get this sample Story ready for the Monstrous Mishaps quickstart. I’ll try to be more regular with it going forward – one post every other week, and some actual forward momentum on each one. Wish me luck. This time, let’s deal with the players’ trip to the hardware store to buy materials for fixing up their raft.

The Wood I! Hardware Emporium is Gooberville’s premier (and only, thanks to some aggressive business practices) source of tools, building materials, survivalist gear, and all things rugged. It’s located in a big, square concrete building just off the freeway. A giant picture of a hairy, lumberjack-like man flexing his muscles decorates the otherwise plain exterior. Inside is an intimidating, saw-dust-smelling maze of giant, towering aisles full of bricks, planks, and sundry arcane construction equipment. There are no signs or labels, the emporium working on the principle that if you’re not manly enough to know every single item on sight, you are not manly enough to shop there.

As they walk around the building, the players find themselves followed by a trio of men. One of them is white, another is black, and a third is Asian, but their common look of suspenders, grey-speckled stubble, and looks of pompous grouchiness show them to be clearly brothers from other mothers. Their names are Ken, Ben, and Chen, and the emporium is their sanctuary from the evils of young people, womenfolk, liberals, and all that is loathsome and unmanly. The players clearly don’t belong, and the trio intends to make them realise it. Thus, they’ll stomp after the players, glare at them, mutter passive-aggressively among each other, and laugh derisively whenever something goes wrong for them. They won’t initiate a fight, but they’re hoping that the players will so they get an excuse to send them packing.

The only clerk in evidence is a listless-looking middle-aged man in rumpled clothes who is occupied with loudly lamenting his woes to the world at large, punctuated with trumpeting blowings of his nose on a soggy handkerchief. His nametag says ‘Joe,’ though his real name is Nicolaus (his boss can’t be bothered to get him a new one, so he’s having to make do with a used one). “Boo hoo hoo! Oh, woe is me! My life is a tragedy in umpteen acts! Oh, the pain! The pain!” Nicolaus is a man afflicted with a terminal lack of respect – he only keeps his job because his boss keeps forgetting that he works there in the first place, his kids keep telling people that they’re adopted, his wife has eloped with their marriage counceler, and he got kicked out of The Gooverville Bitter Losers’ Club for complaining too much.

The GM should feel free to invent as many more demoralising setbacks as she can come up with – assume that if there is some measure of being unsuccessful, Nicolaus has exceeded it. However, make sure that they are humiliating without being actively detrimental to his health, e.g., don’t afflict him with cancer. If the players start to actually feel sorry for him, he won’t be suitably annoying to them.

Getting Nicolaus to help you find anything is tricky. He only has a faint idea where anything is in the first place, and either way, his work ethic is in shambles (let’s face it, it’s not like he’d be likely to get recognised for it even if he did work hard, is it?). Even catering to his fragile ego isn’t as effective as one might think, since he assumes that anyone who flatters him is setting him up to fail. Intimidating him is fairly easy, though of course being scared makes him flustered and thus even less useful.

As the players are exploring the emporium, there is a rumble of engines and a maniacal laughter, and a forklift turns the corner on two wheels, racing down the aisle. The aisle is barely wide enough for it, and it keeps knocking things off the shelves and scraping against the sides, but the wild-haired, goggles-wearing young man behind the wheel doesn’t notice – in his mind, he’s running the Daytona. If Ken, Ben and Chen are following the players, they hide in an empty crate, run for his life, and desperately start climbing the shelves, respectively. If Nicolaus is along, he just stands there, looking like the proverbial deer in the spotlights; he’ll get hurt (and thus be completely useless; even if he just stubs a toe, his pain threshold is at approximately the center of the Earth) if a player doesn’t pull him to safety somehow. The mad driver is a clerk named Gonzales, and the players had better do something to avoid being run down by him. On the plus side, if they can somehow slow him down enough to notice them, he has a better idea where everything is than Nicolaus does.

Once the players have started assembling at least some of the items on their list, they run into town layers Bonefatius Harris and Jean-Claude DeSieve, who are apparently also out to win the race so as to get some free publicity for their firm. Bonefatius is a short, neat man with an egg-shaped, bald head and an egg-shaped, flabby body, impeccably dressed in a spotless pin-stripe suit. From time to time, when the players look at him from the corner of their eye, he appears transparent (he’s an Outsider, which is to say, the universe thinks that he’s a ghost even though he’s still alive). Jean-Claude is tall and was handsome at one point, but now his girdle fights a losing battle against many business lunches, and his golden mane of hair is an obvious wig. They’ll exchange some very cultivated trash talk with the players before going their way, led by their own clerk, Norman. Norman is slightly better than Nicolaus, but he’s not great – he mostly just agrees with the customer about everything and then recommends they pick up the first vaguely related ware within easy walking distance.

The very last thing on the players’ list is a tube of Super-Strong, Super-Lasting, Super-Resilient Super-Glue, of which there is only one remaining in the emporium – and a player manages to put his hands on it at the exact time that Jean-Claude grabs the other end. Frantic negotiation, threats, and a tug of war may follow. If the GM is feeling especially mean-spirited, the tube may have had a leak, coating its exterior with some of its contents – and now both the player and Jean-Claude is stuck on it! Remember that Ken, Ben and Chen are probably still standing around egging everyone on to have a manly fistfight over the spoils. Also, if Klaus is around, his Abhorrent Face Bane is definitely going to trigger here when tempers start running hot.

Things to keep track of after the emporium:

• Did the players have to search for stuff on their own? Then they’ll take a severe Disadvantage somewhere down the road, unless they managed a high result on a Nerdery Challenge.
• Did they get Nicolaus to help them? Then they’ll take a lesser Disadvantage from his lacklustre assistance, unless they somehow managed to motivate him properly.
• Did they get Gonzales to help them? Then they’ll take a minor Advantage later on, since he’s the best option around.
• Did they get the Super-Strong, Super-Lasting, Super-Resilient Super-Glue? If not, did the lawyers get it? They’ll get an Advantage later on if the former, a Disadvantage if the latter.