This is based on the second adventure I ran in my TFOS campaign. It is built around the gadget I call the "Digital Tridee Nudie Camera". As I say under the gadget description, if you're uncomfortable with the subject matter here or you just want to run a "PG" rated campaign, you can define the camera in your universe so that it only takes pictures of people in their underwear, as opposed to completely nude. Every TFOS campaign I've been involved in so far has had it's share of female characters, regardless of the number of male or female players. This is anime after all!!! And a good thing, too, because this routine is designed for a campaign in which at least two or three of the characters are female.
If you don't have a larger number of female characters, you can do one of three things. You can 1) turn the tables and have female lechers preying on male classmates (if done right this can work), or you can 2) make sure that some of the boys have girlfriends whose honor is at stake and needs defending, or you can 3) bring the players in on the side of the lecherous geeks and see if they act chivilrous and try to bring a halt to the whole thing, or whether they reveal their hentai natures and set themselves up for a pummelling from a mob of angry girls.
However, the scenario is written with female player characters as the targets. You'll have to do a bit of work to change it around.
The Cyber-Geek Club
Whatever they call themselves, (The Secret Order Of The Knights Who Say "Ni!", The Mystical Knights of Oingo Boingo, The Unholy Order of Superior Cyber-Freaks) there exists on the campus a cybergeek club, a fraternity of intelligent and socially mal-adjusted ultra-geek tech-heads, nerds of the first order who lack all semblence of social grace and are the scorn of the school. These poor souls gather together to discuss programming, technological hardware, the specs of the latest science fiction tri-dee movies, and how to hack the most recent virtual web role-playing game so that you can cheat.
Oh... and, um, sex. Like most high schoolers, they talk about sex, although in rather embarassed tones because many of them have never experienced it. In some ways this only makes them more sex-obsessed than the typical teenager.
Unbeknownst to anyone, the cybergeeks have built a secret club beneath the school grounds where they can gather and follow their own pursuits without being looked down upon by the buff lads and lasses who are part of the "in" crowd. From this secret base they surf the virtual web, wreaking havok wherever they go. In order to shut down the Cyber Geeks, you will first have to locate their secret hideout.
But that's part of the adventure itself. First, the main members of the Cyber Geeks:
The Cyber Geeks!
Name: Taizo Kaneda Secret Code Name: Dr. Know, Master Of All! Age: 17 Hair: Black, greasy Eyes: Brown Body Size: Large and bulky Type: Human (Japanese)
Smarts 6 (the smartest being in known space!) Bod 2 RWP 1 Luck 4 Driving 2 Looks 1 Cool 1 Bonk 4
KNACKS Give Orders +1, Inspire Followers +1, Hacking +4, Kirk School Of Speech Patterns +1, Kadochi's School Of Psychotic Laughter +1
POWERS Fake Out, Run Like Heck
TRAITS Power-hungry, Lecherous, Angry At The World, Megalomaniac
ITEMS Portable laptop with VR helmet.
Taizo Kaneda, self-styled leader of geeks the world over, has such a superiority complex that he secretly believes that even those closest to him don't really deserve to be his friends. He is appalled that the world has yet to recognize his genius, never mind that most people at the school make fun of him and he always gets pantsed in PE class by the sports jocks. He always gets his revenge on the web by messing with other people's personal records (revoking driver's liscenses, messing with bank accounts, placing the names of his enemies on the most wanted lists of Interpol and the FBI, not to mention hacking the virtual identity of people when they're on the virtual web so that they appear to be somebody or something other than what they inteded to be). Another trick is to route all of the pizza delivery phone calls in the city to the phone number of his enemy.
Kaneda is one of those people who rarely shows up for class but always aces the tests (and if he doesn't, well, his grades will say otherwise). He is secretly feared by all the teachers because they know how much havok he can create for them with a few keystrokes and a click of a button.... but largely the other students are not fully aware of Kaneda's power or the extent of the secret club that he runs.
T'rill the Octocat Any villian worth his salt has a fat, fluffy, white cat that sits in his lap while he strokes it and contemplates blowing up Tonowanda, New York. Taizo Kaneda is no exception, only in his case the creature is a fat, fluffy, white thing. It has large, cute eyes and looks a bit like a cat, but also a bit like an octopus. It's fluffy and boneless and has eight tenacles. Whether it is sentient or not is unknown; it basically eats and sleeps, just like your typical house cat, and it doesn't even have claws to scratch you with.
Name: Shun Li "Leonard" Chan Secret Code Name: Mr. Spock, the half-Vulcan scientist Age: 16 Hair: Black, short, cut like Mr. Spock's Eyes: Brown but wears violet contacts Body Size: Tall and rail-thin Type: Human (Chinese)
TRAITS Always in character as Spock, Fascinated by technology and machinery, yes-man extraordinaire
ITEMS Phaser, communicator, tricorder.
With the exception of teachers and relatives, Shun answers only to the name of Spock. Shun is Kaneda-san's right-hand man and the creator of many of the nifty devices in their greek hideout, such as the rocket and the transporter. Shun is a natural-born yes-man who is ideal in the role of second-banana, a brilliant kid who fears acting on his own and therefore always attaches himself to someone bolder and more forthright. In all likelyhood Shun is the more brilliant of the two, and in many ways the less crazy, despite his fixation on the character of Spock.
Shun can quote every line Spock has ever said by heart. He's even watched all the episodes of In Search Of, and the Mission Impossible episodes with Leonard Nimoy in them. He openly admires and is envious of Mort's ears.
Name: Mortimer "Mort" Humphries Snodgrass Secret Code Name: King Arthur Age: 17 Hair: Long, stringy, dirty-blond Eyes: deep ocean blue Body Size: Pudgy Type: Near Human (half human, half alien; has pointed ears, webbed fingers and functioning gills)
KNACKS Know Movie/Anime/Tri-Dee Trivia +4, Talk In Gaming Terms +2
POWERS Telemove, Teleport, Temporal Funk
TRAITS Movie/Anime/Tri-Dee otaku, Gaming freak, Out of touch with reality
ITEMS Gamebox, pan-galactic boombox with fold-out large screen capability.
Mort is the club's gaming geek. He speaks in gamer's lingo ("The guy had an IQ of 2. Seriously, I had to make a saving throw against being stunned just from talking to him.") He spends all of his time designing role-playing games and/or playing them (often online virtual rpg's). His sense of what is real and what is fantasy has blurred to the point that it's hard to hold an intelligible conversation with him.
Mort wears medieval armor (usually chain mail) and carries a sword everywhere he goes. He has no idea how to use it, of course.
Mort may seem like a near-vegetable, but in fact all his years of calculating hit locations and factoring percentages have had an amazing effect on him: he is, in essense, a mathematical savaant, able to divide by zero and achieve results or calculate pi to infinity and beyond, all instantaneously and without appearing to even be aware he's doing it.
Name: Quixxl Schleppl Secret Code Name: Beautiful Soldier Sailor Skerri Age: 16 Hair: None, but he wears a pink wig Eyes: Three, pinkish red. Body Size: Fat Type: Real Wierdie -- blue skin, four tenacles, antennae, and three eyes.
KNACKS Know Magical Girl Trivia +2, Know About School Uniforms +2, Use Magical Wand +1
POWERS Noxious Amnesia Gas, Bonk Drain
TRAITS Talks Cute, Bubbly, Big Girly Eyes
ITEMS Magical Girl Wand, Transformation Amulet
- Quixxl Schleppl is a fan of "Magical Girl" shows and as a consequence he attends school in a girl's sailor-suit uniform. This might be okay if he had the decency to look like a girl, like any typical self-respecting crossdresser that you might find in anime or manga, but in fact Quixxl looks like a fat, tenacled, blue-skinned alien guy in a skirt. The fact that he wears a tiara on his head and carries a huge "Magical Girl" wand everywhere does not help.
Quixxl's tiara encirlced his third eye, which is located in his forehead above and between the other two (sort of like Pai in 3x3 Eyes, only it's always there). The effect of this is to make his third eye look a bit like a part of the tiara -- a gem of some sort. The tiara also has a power built into it: a magical girl-style transformation sequence. In essense, all it really does is project a holographic image of Quixxl spinning about in the air while all of his clothing flies off (not a pretty sight) and then new clothing forms on his body. In the meantime, it alters Quixxl's clothing -- to another, fancier, sailor suit, with more bows and ribbons and pastel colors. Quixxl gains no powers through this transformation, and he does not become a girl... he still looks like a wierd male alien in a sailor suit.
Quixxl's Magical Girl Wand does three things. One, it emits a beautiful flower-popouri scent. Two, it creates holographic visuals of neon pink and red valentine hearts in the air when he waves it about. Three, it plays the theme to "It's A Small World After All". Over, and over, and over...
Should you want to know something about a Magical Girl show -- any show -- or details of a particular school uniform -- any school, any uniform, even boy's uniforms, for any time period -- then Quixxl is you man. He can recite facts and statistics so quickly it'll make your head swim.
Quixxl is not a fan of hard-core tenacle-sex anime. In fact, he considers such stuff "speciesist" and highly offensive.
The Noxious Amnesia Gas that Quixxl can emit is something all members of his race can do. The cloud of gas is light green and smells extremely foul, and causes people who breathe it to forget everything that has happened in the last two hours.
Name: Haruki Ishigawa
Secret Code Name: Haruki Ishigawa
Age: 16
Hair: Black, short
Eyes: Brown
Body Size: Average
Type: Human
KNACKS Look bewildered so they don't hit you +2, Cower +1
POWERS Fake Out
TRAITS Unassuming, Quiet, Often bewildered
ITEMS Haruki ususally has his camera on him. He does not own the Virtual Tridee Nudie camera, however... that belongs to the club.
Haruki is the least "geeky" of all the geeks. In fact, he's a bit of an Otaku Wannabe, a novice and a lackey who is looked down on and mistreated by the other Geeks because he is too normal, not "geeky" enough to fit in. He's the Keichi Morasato type (Ah! My Goddess), the guy in the red shirt who stands in the background and takes all of the abuse. He's not even geeky enough to merit a secret code name.
Haruki likes to take pictures, but not quite enough to become a photo-otaku. It's quite possible that he will grow out of otakudom altogether and become a normal student, but for now he's a hanger-on to the Cyber Geek Club who gets handed all of the dirty jobs.
Others: There are a lot of other otaku at the club who don't stand out. Some suggestions for other otaku: the Survivalist Otaku, dressed in cammoflage gear and hiding under the debris in the kitchen; the Space Ghost Otaku, who has an armband communicator; the Stuffed Animal Otaku, who carries around a stuffed Hello Kitty; the tenacle-sex anime otaku, who is almost as disgusting a sight as the aliens in the shows he watches.
Good Guys
Good and evil are such relative concepts in a TFOS campaign. However, we have one NPC who is a brilliant hacker but is not a member of the Cyber Geek Club, and who is intended to be a compatriot of the player characters should one be needed..
Name: Yuki Davidson
Age: 16
Hair: Light brown
Eyes: Brown
Body Size: Average
Type: Human (half Japanese, half African-American)
KNACKS Hacking +5, Know Computer Stuff +2, Look Confused So They Don't Hit You +1
POWERS Fake Out,
TRAITS Chivalrous, Shy, Computer Geek
ITEMS Like his "evil" counterpart, Yuki always has a portable laptop computer with all of the latest equipment and accessories attached.
Yuki is the one computer geek in the school who is not geeky enough or morally ambivelant enough to be a member of the Techno Geek club. He exists as a potential ally of the player characters should they need one. He is the one person in the entire school whose computer knowledge and hacking skills actually rival those of Taizo Kaneda's, and thus Taizo considers him a bitter rival. Yuki is unaware of their longstanding deep and bitter rivalry, however.
Special Note: Yuki means snow in Japanese. This is a name that is probably more often used for girls than for boys, but this is not a gender-specific name so Yuki Davidson can be male or female depending upon your needs for the adventure. Yuki is provided as an NPC who can help the players achieve their goals in a game where none of the player characters are computer-savy or have any useful computer-related skills. "Let's get Yuki! He knows computers! He can help us!"
THE ADVENTURE
Scene One
Begin the adventure with Haruki Ishigawa, one of the least geeky of the cybergeek club members, asking one of the female player characters (or their girlfriend) to pose for a yearbook/school newspaper photo. He will try and pick one of the more gullible and good-looking girls if he can, and will ask them to assume a rather unusual pose, their hands up in the air, their feet apart. He'll explain that "you're supposed to be cheering for our baseball team that just won a game." After he takes the picture he will say thanks and disappear as fast as possible, before people begin to comment that A) he's not on the yearbook/school newspaper staff, and B) the baseball team hasn't won a game all year!
If you have any players who are on the yearbook or school newspaper staff or the baseball team, or would have any reason to see through his charade immediately, they should be distracted by something else... something that one of Haruki's friends has arranged ahead of time, or even something that you (the GM) arrange which just happens to distract them long enough for him to get away.
If he's pursued, he'll ditch the camera in a locker (Spock's locker). It won't be found when the locker is opened up again, and he'll deny any knowledge of anything unusual. "We haven't won? I must have been mistaken. I was going to give the photos to the paper, I'm freelancing, that's all, okay?
Scene Two
Later, or perhaps happening simultaneously to another character in another classroom, another female player character will notice that many, if not most, of boys in the class are staring at her. She won't be able to find out why, unless she happens to beat one of them within an inch of their life and forces them to confess. That would speed the plot along considerably, so try to pick a character that wouldn't have such a reaction to just being stared at.
Scene Three
As one or more female characters walk across the campus they hear noise coming from some nearby bushes. Perhaps they hear the sound of a camera being operated. Haruki Ishigawa is in the bushes, taking more film of the girls on campus. It's entirely up to the GM whether he wants them to catch the perpetrator in the act at this point, or whether he should wait a bit longer (Haruki will move to the lunch room next, where he will be more visible near the back of the lunch room, near an emergency exit. If that doesn't get people to go after him in search of what this is all about, have him try to sneak photos of the girls as they change clothes in the locker before P.E. That should be enough to get a rise out of the players).
Haruki Ishigawa has on his person the camera, which will be unusual but only a person knowlegable about the latest modern technology should be able to tell exactly what it is just by looking at it. He has two computer chips in his pocket, which are special virtual memory chips used to set up a computer interface with the virtual internet. He will have a scrap of paper with a virtual internet address on it, which just happens to be the address of the Techno-Geek's hidden virtual nudie gallery. (If you like, this address can be gathered from the chips somehow as well... my players focused on the chips and had a computer friend examine them, so I allowed them to somehow come across the address in that way).
Along with all of this, Haruki can be beaten within an inch of his life (or merely threatened) and he will blab that it's not his fault, he didn't design the place, etc. and basically give out the virtual internet address that way. Some of my players did this as well, while the others were inspecting the chip).
If all of your players are computer illiterate then you will want to use Yuki Davidson as an NPC friend who can help them accomplish their goals.
The Secret Hidden Virtual Nudie Gallery
This location on the virtual internet is quickly becoming the worst-kept secret in the school. Every day more boys find out about it and go to visit, so it's inevitable that the players find out eventually. If you want to, have one of the boys at the school slip the information to a male player. "This is a really cool site, you should check it out!"
The players will have to find VR helmets and a computer with a virtual web interface in order to check this site out. Make a point of asking if their online persona is any different from their real self -- they can pretend to be someone else, with an "avatar" that looks very different than them, if they wish.
Being on the Virtual Web is a lot like standing around on a street or in a room, but travel from one site to another can be virtually instantaneous, and most of the rules for how things work don't apply to virtual reality. On the Virtual Web, anything is possible.
All the players have to do is name the address of the site they wish to visit, and they will be transported there. This can be accomplished via teleportation or light-speed travel, but if the GM wants to make it more interesting and have them board a bus or hail a taxi cab that's perfectly fine.
The place appears to be a small private art studio in an old brick building on a downtown street. There are cement steps leading up to the entrance, and a huge, nasty-looking humanoid with the head of a bulldog guarding the entrance. This is a watchdog program; it will not allow anyone in who is not male -- it is impossible to go around or foil the program, it is capable of doing whatever necessary to prevent women and girls from entering.
Of course, the watchdog program reads only the person's avatar and the information associated with it, so if a female character had said ahead of time that she was going to use a male avatar, she can walk in easily. Otherwise female characters who wish to enter will have to: A) log off and then log back on with a new avatar; B) use a "morph" program to change their avatar (assuming someone happens to have such a program at their disposal or can write one quickly), or C) use a copy routine to duplicate the avatar another player is using. Copy routines are more common and easier to come by than morph programs, but there is a danger that the computer will become confused as to which of the copies is which, and will return the players to the wrong bodies (this is a feature that, while it makes little sense in real life, makes a lot of sense in a TFOS universe, because it causes disorder, confusion, and chaos, and is also pretty easily reversible if you have some personality-swappers lying around!)
Inside the building are several large rooms with white walls and natural lighting (for a VR world anyway). These are art galleries, and the art on display is the pictures taken by the Digital Tridee Nudie Camera. These pictures are life-sized full-color three-dimensional "statues" or images of naked girls. Think of it as a three-dimensional web page with gifs of naked girls.
Lots of boys from the school are walking around, staring and drooling. It should be enough to disgust any sensible girl, especially when she finds the one of herself!
If Yuki is along, he will become extremely embarassed. If Yuki in this incarnation is female, she will automatically start trying to hack the system and crash it.
Should anyone Lose It Completely and start bashing on one of the boys there, it's up to the GM what effect that might have. Generally speaking, you are bashing on a VR "avatar" and not the actual person, but they might feel pain anyway. If they pull the plug or log off, their avatar will suddenly wink out and vanish. Or perhaps, if you're feeling generous, you can allow the program to shut the connection down automatically if it determines that the user is recieving too much abuse.
If anyone has a computer or hacking ability, they may attempt to interfere with the other player's interfaces or the VR room itself. It will probably be one of the goals of the players to shut the whole thing down, especially if they are prominently displayed inside. Yuki is good for this if none of your players have the right skills. You can even allow Yuki to enter into a short computer-hacking battle with some of the Techno-Geeks as they try to stop him from destroying their labor of lust.
Cyber Geek Command Central
The final goal of the adventure should be to permenantly shut down the Techno-Geeks so they don't just put up their virtual gallery all over again. This involves finding their secret headquarters. The GM should remember that these "villians" are kids, and while they may be technically brilliant, they may also sometimes be practical idiots. It should not be too difficult to find the location of their secret headquarters... after all, the fun isn't in finding it, but what happens when the players do find it.
. All you have to do is step inside the locker of the geek known as Lu "Leonard" Pang, (secret code name: Spock), and close the door. That's right, step inside the locker. We're assuming full-height lockers of the sort that I know are rare in schools these days, but your school is a bit old-fashioned in that respect. Still, it's going to be a tight fit, especially for some of the larger and more sedentary members of the group. But it's only for a half-second or so.
. On the inside of the locker door is a poster of Spock saying "Beam me down Scotty". This happens to be the words that activate the teleporter which you are now standing upon. Once activated, you are instantly teleporte about 20 feet down and some 100 feet or so away, to a very large underground complex. The main room looks exactly like the deck of the Starship Enterprise (it can be the Starship Yamato if you prefer, or anything similar, just so long as it says "I'm an otaku (ultrafan) geek!" in mile-high neon red letters).
The teleporter booth is located in a small room much like the one seen on the old Star Trek shows. A short hallway leads to a platform about ten feet above the main floor of the "ship bridge". There are stairs leading down. Rows of computer consols are occupied by school geeks, some of them with VR helmets on (obviously hooked up to the virtual web), others dressed in costume and hacking away while taking orders from the head geek, Taizo Kaneda (secret code name: Dr. Know). Kaneda-san sits in the Captain's chair, overseeing his little geek empire, and barking commands in his best imitation Kirk (or Picard) voice. In his lap will be T'rill the octocat (see above). On the wall is a world map detailing Kaneda-san's plans to control the world anime cell market.
A stairway leads from the teleporter to the main floor. Several small side rooms contain beds to crash in, a toilet, a reference library, and a kitchen with large glass-door refrigerators full of pop, bags and boxes of munchies (chips, cookies, crackers, hostess twinkies), and a lot of garbage that nobody has bothered to throw away because they're too busy hacking.
Kitchen Extras!!! (Things my group of friends suggested). The pile of garbage in the corner has developed sentience. The GM can decide what that leads to, exactly. There is a picture of fruit punch stuck to one of the cooler shelves. There is also a coolaid pitcher guy inside the cooler, who is actually an odd-looking foreign exchange student. One of the Cyber-Geeks is a survivalist otaku; he's hiding under the mounds of debris in another corner. For no reason other than it was a cool thing to do, the gravity has been reversed in one of the coolers, and all of the cans of pop are upside down, stacked on the bottoms of the shelves.
One room in the complex may have the same effect -- the room's gravity has been reversed, and anyone stepping into it will automatically fall to the ceiling.
There is a back stairway that leads from the secret club complex to one of the steam tunnels that run beneath the school, but the door is kept locked. The only way in or out normally is via a functioning teleporter. The only other way out is the secret villian's emergency escape rocket.
That's right, a room near the back of the complex houses a rocket for Dr. Know to make his escape in. He's a bit afraid to use it, since he's not sure if it will launch him into orbit or crash three miles away in a spectacular fireball, but any leader of a secret cabal organization needs a secret escape rocket so Kaneda-san has one. It's stocked with pop and chips and recent copies of several girlie magazines, not to mention enough hardware to hook up to the virtual net and hack away. If they're lucky, one or two of the other cybergeeks might be able to fit in with their illustrious leader.
Finding The Secret Headquarters And Taking It Out
Eventually your players should observe people entering Spock's locker and not coming back out, or several coming out all at once. If they don't (for some reason) pick up on the "Beam me down Scotty" clue, then you can assume they get transported down by accident anyway. After all, you want them to find the secret hideout. Otherwise the game will go nowhere.
Assuming they have recently crashed the Virtual Nudie Gallery (possibly with Yuki's help), they will find the "bridge" of the complex in full Red Alert, Cyber Geek hackers frantically trying to repair the damage to their precious online universe. They will also go into "Red Alert Battle Mode" when they realize that there are intruders aboard. This might involve Dr. Know barking order from his command chair, Quixxl doing his Magical Girl Transformation and talking about the power of love in a cute voice, Mort screaming "attack" and flailing his sword about uselessly (he will yell "run away" if confronted by any opposition at all), and possibly Spock trying out his "Vulcan Death Grip" which can be very annoying. Other otaku will run about or hack more furiously.
Should the otaku meet with any amount of resistance, Dr. Know will bolt for his rocket, possibly with Spock and the others in quick pursuit. Whether he can successfully launch the rocket, and what happens to it, depends largely on the player's actions and the GM's discretion. As a rule, whatever causes the most chaos is probably a good idea, but the players should be given a realistic change of stopping and capturing the nefarious leader. In my game the secret headquarters was discovered by Mittens, who, when threatened, monstered out into a fifty-foot batteroid, growing through the roof of the complex and rather effectively destroying it. After that, stopping the rocket was rather anticlimatic.
Arachnophilia 3.4
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