(Warning: Contains offensive ideas and offensive language… like the word cunt)

Last week I witnessed the most anarchic HfL playtest to date, a journey of debauchery and violence in old world native America. Loose, wild, and free to make gore, we waded onto the badly woven rope-bridge of cultural identity and tried to tell the story of four banished tribes people. It was the Lord of the Flies of roleplaying sessions.

We had Fleet As Monkey, the Arrogant Brave (Eoin), Hiding Turkey, the Cowardly Unwilling-mistress (Susan), Dancing Fox, the Abusive Wiseman (Daniel), and Soaring Bear, the Obsessive Buffalo Whisperer (ahem).

The Frame

Setting: Pre-colonial native America, many landscapes, people of the forest, brave journey
Adversary: Chief Running Hawk
Gore Threshold: 5
Connection: Family, last in line
Drop-Off/Objective: Bend in the River / Mountain of the Eagle God
Checkpoint 1: Pass through the Lands of the Raven
Checkpoint 2: Desecrate the Tomb of the Ancestors
Checkpoint 3: Kidnap the Dying High Priest

The road to hell is paved…

The game opened wonderfully. It seemed like there was a story to tell as Soaring Bear and Fleet As Monkey pecked for distinction, while Hiding Turkey lay against a tree, bruised from her lover’s temper, and the old Wiseman chewed on a mysterious “dreamroot.” The premise was simple. These four heroes, the last legs of the incumbent ruling family, were to be summoned for their execution. They decided to flee the tribe before they were called, and to make a journey to the great Eagle God to seek the oracle and speak with the spirits of old. Etc.

Checkpoint 1, the long story short: Race through the Lands of the Raven. Great forests. Frothing rivers. Buffalo charges.

But after that, filth and bile spewed forth from the narrative like a bad vomit. We murdered an old sage, showered in his warm blood—spilled from the arteries at his feet—and while the blood caked on our faces, we tripped out for three weeks on the poison of the local toads.

This went on for ages. I mean it. We wanted it to stop, but we kept failing Challenges. Over and over, all our characters were covered in more shit, piss and blood, drinking more and more poison, and doing more and more killing, until finally we could escape, strung out, quivering and stinking like dying dogs.

Kill the Pig, Bash him in!

All sense of our dysfunctionality was abandoned when Hiding Turkey slaughtered the children of the High Priestess before her, made her watch, and then slit her throat like a pig. To persuade the High Priest to co-operate, the Wiseman tore open the High Priest’s innards and pulled out his liver—while he was still breathing—spitting “you’re of no more fucking use to us now, you dying, old, fucking cocksucker.”

I’m not a religious man, but Jesus Christ! You know the worst part? It was fucking hilarious. We were all crying with laughter, slapping our thighs, wheezing. It was horrific. Writing this I practically hear ourselves beating out a dreadful chant “Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!”

We got our comeuppance. Hiding Turkey had her head removed after trying to blackmail a tribal warrior with a piece of woven propaganda (a tapestry of a man with a tiny cock), Fleet As Monkey got unexpectedly savaged by a crocodile, Dancing Fox got a tomahawk embedded in his skull after challenging Chief Running Hawk to a duel, and finally Soaring Bear was peppered with javelins. He dropped to his knees, half of his head burnt off, shit and blood dangling off him in threads, laughing and screaming in total, debauched madness. Ghaaaarlllguglh…

Feedback

All good fun. But sinister and unadulterated. There were more Fucks, Cocks, Shits and Cunts in this game than in any other we’ve played so far. It’s rare that you get to play a game that is so dreadful that you get to offend yourself.