One Shot Wednesday – Unbelievable Macho Bullshit

The Cast of Villains:

  • The Vice-Bishop of Violencé
  • Jäsön
  • Dr. Claw
  • Dick, the WoW player from South Park
  • Dr. Inconvenience
  • Anvil, security-conscious AI
  • La Sombra, the Ecuadorean Ninja

In most RPGs, you play the hero. In Unbelievable Macho Bullshit, you play the villains. This is a GM-less game about action, violence, and most importantly, dying another day.

Oh shoot, looks like you’ve been fired!

Anonymous hero, wielding a flaming gun-sword, as he sliced/burned/shot through La Sombra

The rules are mostly straightforward. Every turn, someone is chosen as a target of The Hero. That Villain needs to describe where they are and the evil plot they just completed that drew the attention of The Hero. The other players then figure out who The Hero is and what he’s armed with, and wager their Minds, Mooks, and Muscles to fuel The Hero’s Relentlessness. After some dice rolling to determine how Relentless The Hero is, the target player spends his own resources to defend himself.

Your robbery attempts were really…gettin’ old!

Old, confused man outside bank, who clobbered Dr. Inconvenience to death with his walker

If the target player beats The Hero’s Relentlessness, he has escaped pursuit, and gets to choose who The Hero’s new target is. Otherwise, they have a Final Showdown with The Hero. They spend all of their remaining resources in a bloody, protracted, action-packed fight to the finish. If they come out of it with anything left, they escape to enact their villainy another day.

You’ve been disconnected!

Neighbor kid who knows stuff about the Internet, as he de-rezzed Anvil

If they run out of resources during the final fight, they hang on the edge of death just long enough for The Hero to get in a one-liner, provided by the other players. They have ten seconds to come up with a one-liner related to the villain, the crime, or the method of execution. If they come up with one, The Hero is successful, and the villain falls.

Looks like you got ring tossed!

The Carny, as he stabbed Dr. Claw to death with a screwdriver

This game was a blast. The poor folks with desks outside of the meeting room where we play commented that they wished they had as much fun as we did at the office. It took a little while to get up and running (the way the stats operate in terms of success/failure takes a little bit to get used to, because it changes during pursuit vs. showdown), but given the cheesy theme of the game, we were getting into it as soon as we had characters thought up.

It was foolish of you to think you could Type-II dia-beat-us!

Wilford Brimley, as he defeated Dick by withholding life-saving information about diabetes

We got through this game in a little less than an hour, and if we were to play it again, I’m sure we could do it in even less time. In that time, though, it packs in a lot of room for creativity. The villains, the origins of their resources, the crimes, the locations, and the heroes and their weapons are all up to the players, and it’s entirely cooperative as long as you’re not the villain looking down the barrel of The Hero’s gun/sword/fire/McDonald’s serving tray. The dice play isn’t terribly strategic, but that’s hardly a problem for a game that’s so short and drives so much comedy. I look forward to playing this one again.

Looks like you’re going to another plane of existence!

Harrison Ford, as he crashed his plane into the underground catacombs of The Vice-Bishop of Violencé

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