I was asked to tell this tale in the Rockerboy thread in the main section....
I suffer from severe bile fascination so I must ask.
So blame videopete for this....
In the late 90's NW Arkansas was hit by a blizzard and ice-storm combination that was devastating. Fayetteville, where most of friends were from, lost power almost immediately... so they made the long drive out to my place. I had a fireplace and plenty of booze, food, and cigarettes... Soon after they arrived, the power went out at my place as well... we decided that since we were all pretty much snowed in, we should game until they could get home... what follows is the true tale of 4 days of hell...
I asked what they wanted to play...they said they wanted to play in a Rockerboy campaign...
I share some of the blame for the next part... I said yes...
First I ask them what kind of band they are wanting to play... thinking they wanted to play a band like Rage Against the Machine, or the Clash, politically charged rockers raising their fist at the oppressive society that wipes its feet on the little guy... that could be fun maybe...
They wanted to be a punk rock themed cover band... as in Me First And The Gimme-Gimme's.... only without knowing how to play their instruments or sing....
I think the concussive force of my eyes rolling back into my head at terminal velocity must have knocked me out... And apparently I can GM on autopilot when I am unconscious...because when I woke up, the game was going on... I had to look around, and felt the urge to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming... then I had the urge to punch the player next to me in the taint just in case I wasn't...
Apparently in my delirium I just decided, what the hell, run with it...
The first session of the game was them travelling in a cramped van they had conned from one of the characters sisters. The game lasted 4 sessions, 4 sessions of them actively running from anything remotely interesting... plot hook after plot hook fell in their lap, and they squealed like 14 year old girls with shoes full of spiders and hid under the bed anytime danger came calling...
However, they had a manager... a low rent fixer who hated them... hated their music... but he would book them... in shittier and shitter dives... They would play gigs behind chicken wire on a stage still soaked with the vomit of last nights act... Finally they confronted their manager, not to ask for better gigs... or even music lessons... but they wanted a pyrotechnics guy for their shows... Not only did the band manager agree, he also sent along 2 other guys, who would act as their driver, and roadie... They questioned this not a bit.... for stars were in their eyes and their ears were full of the deafening ring of soon to be broken dreams...
The gigs wee still shitty, their music still awful... but now they had fireworks.... and they were happy... as the gigs took them further and further away from home, they believed they were about to strike it big...
On the last night of the game, a snowstorm was raging outside... it echoed my mood in a way that let me know the gods themselves were as tired of this farce as I was.....
The band had been sent to biker bar out in death valley. The place was swarming with Raffen Shiv, not the friendly ones either... The band arrived, the roadies carried their gear in and set up the stage... then like always, they kind of disappeared into the back room. The band began to play... and they played the best they ever had... two of the group even managed to roll critical success on their play instruments... which combined with their skill gave them each a total of 13... The outlaw bikers in the bar didn't even turn on them... then it happened..
A shot range out, the power on stage went out, and the driver came out of the back holding a woman under her chin with one arm, and a gun in the other... The front and rear doors burst in as FEDS and HI-Way swarmed the place... The fixer had been using the band to ferry drugs from one bar to the next, but the law had caught on. The boys in the band at this point, after cowering in fear and speeding away as fast as their sisters 4-cylinder 1984 Dodge Caravan could take them whenever a random hooker even winked at them, chose to be brave. As the feds had been pretty much ignoring the teens on the darkened stage up until this point, and were instead trying to diffuse the hostage situation and prevent the bikers from escaping...
The bass player hurled his instrument at the Fed trying to talk the driver down, braining him hard. The Lead singer, infused with the ghost of a should have died long ago Axle Rose leapt off the stage, diving into the backs of a group of Hi-Way... The drummer, who had made it a habit to mention he always, ALWAYS, had a burning cigarette in his mouth, gripped his drum sticks and tried to follow the lead singers cue... but rolled a fumble... then backed it up with a ten... landing face first into one of the pyrotechnic cans laid out on the stage...
I won't describe to you the effects, though my players were told of the spectacle in graphic detail... What followed was something of a blur, as first everyone stared in stunned silence at the human equivalent of one of those cheap Magic Fountain fireworks you get at the Fourth of July... the ones that seem to go on and on far longer than they should...
As the display degenerated into nothing more than a few small candle like flames burning around the edges of the nicely cauterized pit in the center of what once was the drummers head, chaos erupted. The driver was shot down in an eruption of gunfire, in retaliation the bikers surged forth against the Fed and HI-Way. The band members tried crawling out among the stomping maze of motorcycle boots and government issue loafers... The bass player made it to the door, but the lead singer was hauled up by his ponytail. In desperation he tried using the beer bottle he had picked up off the floor to on the biker now slamming his head into the bar as if he were auditioning to replace the bands percussionist. The bottle broke against the bikers head, and in response the biker snatched the gutter knife from the vocalists hands. In the ensuing struggle, the singer tried to dodge a stab from the broken bottle now being turned on him, and rolled his own fumble. The biker caught him with the broken bottle right around the mouth, and twisted... ripping the tone deaf songbirds lips from his face and leaving only torn and jagged meat and broken teeth behind...
The bass player ran to his sisters van, only to realize the driver had the keys. He fled into the desert... alone, without food or water... and with the survival skills of a newborn snail on a bed of salt.
The bar still stands. Occasionally in my games players will stumble across it. It's said the place still smells of burning hair and afro-sheen. And while the bass player was never seen again, there are legends of a crazy man who rides the back roads with the worst of the Raffen Shiv... a horrifically scarred lipless angry man who sings the songs, the songs of Abba....
And this my friends, is the true tale of the Cyberpunk 2020 Rockerboy campaign known only as On-Tour... or at least as true as I want to tell it. And this is also why I will never again run... a Rockerboy campaign...