Sunday, June 15, 2014

The Scrappler for DCC - Meaty, Bandity, Brawling PC Class

Let me start with the answer to the perennial question "What is Scrapple, Mr. Dungeonmaestro?"

O JESUS ANOTHER MEAT BASED OSR POST
I hear that there is good scrapple to be had in my area, and for some reason it used to sell like hotcakes at the place I used to cook at.  Scrapple is a bunch of pork byproducts and trimmings - the stuff you wouldn't regularly eat by itself.  You take that stuff, grind it up, throw it in with some porridge of boiled grains, season it, and then make it into a loaf.  Then, chill it, slice it, and fry it.  Simple enough.  It's originally a thing that the Pennsylvania Deutsch (not Dutch but German-speaking immigrants) did, but the idea is likely as old as eating pigs and farming grains.  They called it pan haas - or pan rabbit, maybe 'cause it's like poor man's food.  I hear that it can be good, but most of the times I've tried it, it's been rather flat and gray/grey and it smells like a pig's armpit.  Essentially, the commercially available kinds are two of my favorite breakfast things - sausage and grits - combined and fried in easy-to-eat slices.  Haven't found anybody around these parts that does it well.

As a follow up to my long-dead post about Iron Rations, and the one about desperation in Low Fantasy games, I was thinking about what kinds of things adventurers usually eat around the fire.  Probably crummy rations and scrapple, if they are lucky.  They fight a lot, and need healing.

The premise is that the Scrappler (and a vegetarian/vegan alternative the Tofukin) are walking, brawling, thinking meat golems that have the ability to give of themselves to help their comrades with tasty, healing protein.  Yes, that's right.  You see, I've been reading a lot of L. Frank Baum lately and I picked up this charming RPG system called Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.  One of the central premises is that death and permanent injury are no-nos in Oz (I guess the thing is geared toward children, although in the Wizard of Oz there seems to be a good deal of brutal murderhobo-ery).  The "coming up with scenarios" portion of the thing mentions that situations ought to be funny and non-threatening and unique, and that fights ought to resolve into friendships and friends added to your list are a tangible asset to be used later to change the course of the narrative.  Fun ideas to consider as alternatives to wanton slaughter, even if when I think of possible games of this I try to turn it into Dark, Low Fantasy.

Brah, do you even lift?
When +Doug Kovacs prompted me to write up a "Meat Bandit" class the other day, I visualized the thing from uh - John Dies at The End.  Loopy but fun.  Others have proposed Meat Golems in the past.  But then I saw some Scrapple in the store and remembered how desperately hungry I would need to be to eat it again.

So, you encounter a Sentient Golem of Meat, go round for a bit (insert wet slapping sounds like in Fight Club), become friends, and then Mr. Meat never leaves your side.  In the course of your travels, you are often starving and of course, you agree you'll just take a little off here and there, and by the end of the adventure he's a little dirty and piqued and smells a little off, but hey, he's your pal Mr. Meat Golem and he'd kill and die for you if it were possible in this horrible place. Stupid faeries and their ridiculous banishment of Death!

I'm not clear if I will do a write-up of this one all sparkly like the last couple.  Maybe I will.  It's a fun exercise.

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