Savage Worlds: Back to the Future: This Is Heavy
1 pm: Back to the Future: This is Heavy
GM: Ted Leon Guererro
The PCs were all members of the Clocktower Society, founded by Doc Brown and Marty McFly to monitor / explore the timeline.
- Me: Dr. Verne Brown. The quote on the card with his picture was, "Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." Leader. Born in 19th century, lives in 22nd.
- ???: Marlene McFly, daughter, 2nd movie, thiefish
- ???: Gerald Strickland, shotgun wielding principal from the 2nd movie
- ???: Goldie Wilson, the man who became mayor in the primary timeline. This version of Goldie was from a timeline where Doc's camera was left behind in 20s. Everyone in that timeline was obsessed with getting on film. He was a charismatic politician.
- Tyler Keidel: Jennifer Parker, Marty's wife from the timeline in the 2nd movie, iirc. The original Marty left his hoverboard behind there, and she reverse engineered it. She was a techie, and everything hovers. But, she suffers from bad luck.
- Todd Evangelista: Biff Tannen, who had been faced down by Marty's father, and who had been with Teen Marty for a time, serving as an angry bastard roadie
Everyone started with three bennie points, except for Jennifer, who only got two because of her bad luck. All of us were in the right mindset, and the guy who played Biff did a good job of keeping him stupid and annoying enough to be funny and true to the source material, rather than annoying.
The group had a DeLorean minivan and returned from a mission to Hill Valley in June 2011. However, they found a scene of devastation. There were no people, just a greenish haze. They went to a cave that was their back up meeting place, because it was a natural formation.
Inside, no Doc or Marty, but there was a video tape in a VCR.
Verne: I press the Play button!
Someone: Brilliant!
Doc (on tv): Hello, Son!
Verne: Hi, Dad!
Doc explained that folks had gone to a fallout shelter, and that it was now several years after the place was full or radiation. This news alarmed Biff, who wanted to make sure his most important bodily organ wasn't impaired.
Doc (on tv): Please assure Mr. Tannen that his reproductive organs are in good health.
Biff: I grab my crotch -- no, I release my crotch?
The group had about 24 hours in this time and place before the radiation would adversely affect the DeLorean. They decided to go to the town library to do research.
They found a paper from 11 years ago about the disaster and got shot at by a Mr. Peabody, who was holed up in the library and convinced that they were mutants.
Goldie: Would a mutant know how to do this? (tap dances)
Before the question could be resolved, the group was attacked by actual mutants, the X-Persons, trying to kill them and steal the DeLorean. They were clearly modeled on the X-Men, and one of them had some kind of power to attract the minivan.
Jennifer: Could I come up with something on the fly that would repel his attract-o?
The GM agreed that she could. Biff got into a fight with one of the female members, telling her that she didn't look all _that_ bad.
Female X-Person: You're sick!
Biff: If she put a couple of bags over her face -- nah. I shoot her.
And some dogboy type of mutant was also driven off.
The group learned, between the paper and some of Mr. Peabody's comments, that years earlier, President Needles had insulted the North Korean world leader, Kim Jong Il, calling him too chicken to use the nuclear bomb. He stalked out of the meeting, went home, promptly bombed the USA, and asked, "Who's chicken now, broo boy?"
This was a very Back to the Future style piece of delightful silliness. Needles was the person who challenged Marty to a drag race in Back to the Future 3, and the GM had created the various hand out articles with pictures and captions. It looked exactly the right sort of cheesy.
The group decided to go back to before the bombardment, but after Needles became president. Once there (then), they learned that Needles had been a very unsuccessful musician, one whose career only took off for the brief time it did due to the family fortune, which was also the only way the Independent Presidential Candidate Needles because President Needles, and thus in a position to insult touchy world leaders.
The Needles' family fortune came from the 1849 Gold Rush, and supposedly, Thaddeus Needles' 1848 Journal held the key. Clearly, present day Needles had gone back in time and given information to his ancestor the same way Biff gave himself a future sports almanac.
Hill Valley had been established in 1855, so Biff had a Plan. Clearly, they needed to go back to 1848, and he should get rich selling soap flakes!
Biff: And I will find out, as you have all pointed out, that there are many flaws in my plan.
The group needed to see the original journal, so they went to the Needles home at a time when they knew it would be empty. Marlene McFly, as you may recall, was a bit of a thief.
Jennifer: This is your mother telling you: Steal that journal!
Marlene: Agreed!
The journal described getting a package that explained where to go to make sure to be on land that would have gold. Thus, the thing to do was to make sure the package was never delivered. After all, Thaddeus Needles had no idea that he would get it.
Verne: How many horses can we get into the DeLorean?
That would, of course, be none.
Someone (referring to Biff): We can, however, get a horse's ass into there.
Someone else: And often have.
Despite Verne's protests, the obvious thing to do was to rob the train that carried the package. Verne thought they could, you know, hide in a forest and ambush the train. But, there was no forest, not even in 1848.
Biff (getting a bennie for this): Hello! Verne! That's why it's called the Twin Pines Mall, not the Jesus! This is a forest! Mall.
Verne reluctantly agreed to the train robbery plan, and did his best to help.
Verne: After all, as Principal Strickland would have it, robbers _can't_ be slackers!
At this point, I made a diagram to make sure I had the sequence of events correct.
1848: Gold Rush Needles | 1990s: Band Needles | 2000: President Needles | 2002: President Needles insults N Korean Leader <BOOM> | 2011: DeLorean, mutants
The GM confirmed that I had, and also said he liked my little <BOOM!> cloud.
Verne: That's why -- oh, Father, forgive me! -- we're robbing a train.
Someone: Stagecoach.
Verne: We're robbing a stagecoach.
Jennifer (I think): We're not robbing it -- we're taking back something that should never have existed.
As they waited for the Stagecoach to arrive, they felled a tree to block it, and then discovered an additional factor.
Someone: Also, Indians!
Someone else: No, he would have written about it!
Someone: What if they were good Indians who stopped a train robbery?
Verne: It takes a lot of planning to rob a train.
GM: It also takes a train.
And the stagecoach appeared on the far horizon:
___________________________ Indians -> | <- Stagecoach ___________________________
The group decided to make a deal with the Indians.
Indian: What you look at, Head Like Butt?
Biff: You calling me a butthead?
The group explained that all it wanted was a small package, some mail. The Indians could have the rest.
Chief Beaf Tannen: Bargain made!
Biff: And how!
Someone on the stagecoach: Egads! Indians! And... Bandits? Working together??
The diary's contents changed, now mentioning that there had been a stagecoach robbery. The package was retrieved, and Bill left a bottle with the Indians, I think. The label said: Jack Daniels -- Since 1848
Despite that, the group was able to return to the timeline they had originally left, where Needles never became president and there was no nuclear holocaust or mutants.
