Odradek's Drift Session 6: Everybody was Krongfu-fighting
Players
- Tulip Driblette, sponsored by Krongu Inc (EvilTables)
- Dana Zargle, sponsored by Coca-cola (Epistellar)
- Amelia Birkenstock, sponsored by Myishi Corp (Oldhawkeyes)
- Tressika Snath, sponsored by Big Rollem Cigarettes (Mistuh)
- Kim Carbide, sponsored by Dr. Bronner's Soap (Jay_zer0)
- Dame Mercedes Bacon, sponsored by her private fortune (Kwall)
Summary
The hour of the long-promised zero-g cage fight had finally arrived!
The money spent promoting the Krongu brand and the fight paid off. Spectators streamed it from around El Zocalo, plus a handful of arrivals from nearby worlds.
Dr. Aarav Papadopoulos wagered KCR 5 on the fight, and Capt. Minnow Blux bet their 1 ton of cybernetic parts on a Tulip victory.
Amid a fanfare of "Zocaline Pulsation Onslaught" electronic music and strobelights, the fight began.
In the opening round, Kim cautiously launched herself at a speed of 2 meters into the arena. Tulip and Amelia ended up grappling, leading to Amelia being knocked unconscious by a wall collision.
Dana Zargle and Tulip ended up grappling, and Tulip was able to use her astonishing dexterity to maneuver her coca-cola-sponsored rival into a wall spike, knocking her out of the fight.
With four fighters remaining, the arena shrank from a diameter of 24 meters to 18. During one dramatic sequence, Kim & Tressika launched themselves nearly parallel, furiously delivering rapid-fire moves like "exploding heart technique" and "wicked windpipe crush" that finally resulted in Kim being KO'd.
At this point, the excitement in the room was rising. The announcer's voice was getting hoarse. Spherical drops of blood formed sanguine constellations in the zero-g envelope.
Now down to just three combatants, Tressika bravely hurled herself into the arena at speed 8; Tulip deftly grappled her and steered her directly into a wall spike, instantly killing Big Rollem's chosen fighter.
It was down to just two: Tulip Driblette and the unlikely underdog Dame Mercedes Bacon. The tension in the air was high, the crowd was going wild, alternately chanting "TULIP!" and "BACON!". Though she fought valiantly, Dame Bacon was rapidly KO'd by a wall collision.
The crowd began chanting: "TULIP! TULIP! TULIP!" Flames shot forth from hidden spigots and deafening ZPO boomed from the loudspeakers. Tulip enjoyed a few jubilant victory laps across the arena, then took a big swing from her bottle of Krongu Uldradrank and poured green electrolyte drink all over her head.
The Krongu crew passed around Big Rollem cigarettes (extended and unfiltered), and Capt. Minnow Blux bought everyone in the crew a solid gold watch stamped with the Krongu logo.
Early next week, an envoy from a Zocaline bottling plant contacted the crew with an offer...
Notes
- A huge thank-you to all the players for being down to spend a whole session on the fight and testing my crazy one-off rules. Sidebar chat was going crazy the whole time, which really helped create the right atmosphere.
- The cage match rules worked about as well as I could have hoped -- very clunky but functional. I don't expect to run them on a regular basis (if ever again), but everyone seems to have gotten the hang of it.
- People favored the option to do less-risky pass-by strikes, but most of the serious damage was done by successful grapples.
- It was tough to remember that post-collision vectors are half of v1 + v2.
- It played off against Traveller wound rules in an interesting way. The randomly-allocated initial damage immediately KO'd Hawkeyes' fighter, but others were able to tank lots of damage on subsequent hits by allocating to their highest stats.
- I had initially planned to have the game proceed in discrete rounds, but we decided it made more sense to let players relaunch as soon as they hit the walls.
- I had the arena shrink when there are four players left.
- TLDraw tech:
- Use underscores at max font size as a measuring stick
- Lock the arena to the background
- When collisions happen, calculate the new vector and then delete the old.
- Tulip was supposed to be the favored fighter (hence the contract), so I gave her good stats, but the others had decent stats overall. Oddly, second place went to Dame Bacon, with the worst stats. Basically, it's pretty random and the players just got really lucky that their champion won (and EvilTables played well).
- I decided that if Tulip got first place, Krongu Green Slime would acquire the value of Liquor (10k), if 2nd-3rd Spices (6k), 4th fruit (3k), and otherwise it would remain worthless.
- I don't actually have enough experience watching combat sports (or the right temperament) to be a convincing fight announcer. Thanks everyone for bearing with me and supplying the hype in the sidebar chat.
- Good suggestions from the players:
- Put objects in the arena to bounce off
- Put a big spiked ball randomly bouncing around
- Place a weapon suspended in the middle of the arena
- Thank you to MTB for supplying the title of this post!