ADDITIONAL! Way, way back a billion years ago in November 2020, a team-mate of mine from this game put up their own reports at Megagame Assembly! They are viewable here & here. I apologise for my extreme delay in linking to them on this post.
Recently I participated in an online megagame ran for Pennine Megagames on Discord, designed by Patrick Rose. The name of the game was “Running Hot”, a pre-cyberpunk game where corporations bought out land near Sheffield, England to run their own private city, with government approval. Alongside these corporations were the rising criminal enterprises of Runners, who essentially dungeon crawl into corporate facilities to smash stuff up and grab as much as they can carry.
In the game, I played the leader of a group of Runners called the “Facers”, who live in The Valentine Cinema and are absolutely fanatic about the actor Case Aniclog, something of a national treasure in cult circles. My cool criminal name was Next, after my character’s favourite movie, and other members of the gang included Ghost, Con, Vampire and Wicker – all named after the movies of this mysterious actor.
Unknown to me, one of the gang members – Wicker – was the only one of us with half-decent stats for Running, our main activity, and was also only kind of an ironic fan of Case Aniclog. Which, in retrospect, the idea of this as the situation escalated is very funny to me, so I am including that here. While in character, I would have viewed this as complete betrayal. Being a fan of the movie Next to the point where I would consider it my -favourite- movie seemed to me an indication of a mind working on a level difficult to comprehend, so I tried to incorporate that into my performance.
Now, to the events of the game. After a brief run-through on the basics of Running, we decided as a gang to hit up the same company, maybe even the same building, as the tutorial. It might’ve been a slightly different building, but we wanted to make sure we learned the system, so we all ran as a big family unit. I believe that the G33KS, another gang, were the ones who met up with us at the facility, having had the same idea, so we ran together as a unit. Unfortunately, not really knowing all our stats yet, I was Run Leader of the group and we ended up crashing out of the run with minor losses. But we had tasted battle with the Gordon corporation, and would not easily let go.
During the next round, we decided to hit Gordon again — and I believe that we hit the same facility, on the basis that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results was the definition of a great idea. This time, two players from the Dancers showed up, and though they could’ve gone in first, we again joined forces, destroying the security forces and gaining access to the secrets of the HQ. Since there were more of us, we split the access 2 to 1, with us grabbing cash and blackmail material, and the Dancers getting mysterious research which we were not privy to.
Back at the base, I started stewing on the nature of this research, undoubtedly highly valuable and top secret for a reason. Congratulating the gang and attempting to discuss what we might negotiate for with the blackmail material, I nonetheless started to become fixated on speculating on what they could’ve cooked up in those labs, reasoning that the highest value item would be the DNA of Case Aniclog himself, trapped in amber within a mosquito that had once bitten him.
Taking news of our victory and my speculations to the press, we decided to run against Gordon again for a while, truly our sworn nemesis for refusing to give us the DNA which we assumed they must have, possibly even a cloned baby Case Aniclog which we would put at the front of our cinema to draw the public, selling autographs, doing Q&As, that sort of thing. Being cradled in our arms. You get it. Eventually the Trade Envoy from Pacital (the American version of our experiment) turned up to ask us not to ask us not to beat up Gordon so much, and I calmly explained our demands in return, opening up a line of communication for my de-facto number 2, Ghost, to continue (Ghost had been in charge of blackmailing Gordon).
So with media corporation Gordon off the menu for our Running activities as Ghost sorted out a deal, we decided to hit up Augmented Nucleotech, I think on the basis that their name sounded like they might have some good weird stuff. At this point I was pretty much tilting at any windmill looked like it could house Case Aniclog’s DNA, and we were such an efficient fighting force that I believed we could take anything. I think actually on this one we split up, and some people hit Genetic Equity with another crew, and I was -supposed- to join them but messed up because I had last said “Augmented Nucleotech” and that was all that was in my brain. I am not a perfect leader. So, me and Wicker hit Nucleotech, and run into the security there, and we discuss Case Aniclog’s DNA while we attempt to rob the place. The security leader seems pretty chill, and asks us not to attack there again, so we agree.
Up until now, we’d mostly been hitting up facilities left to be guarded by Facility Control, so the prospect of actual communication with a team member was thrilling – we got a possible lead on some signed merch and went off only slightly wounded from the ordeal. Meanwhile, the other team had prevailed, so it looked like Genetic Equity would be our new target.
Somewhere along the line through all this, the Business Times press called for Runners to meet up and discuss the possibility of being sent to the Council as a representative. Despite presenting myself and my position clearly and with great humility, the rest of the Runners decided to cruelly gang up against me, siding with the team with a mere double of the Facer’s notoriety points, at 22 to 11. This representative would turn out to be the worst choice that they could have picked, naturally, but it did lead me to announce war with the Council and severe disappointment with the Gruffsters gang.
Both of these went largely un-noted by those involved.
With Genetic Equity as our new target, we hit their facilities as a family again, our reputation sullied by the callous press (and someone from the Gruffsters, which in retrospect I should have seen coming). This time, our mission was an unqualified success, as we got a bunch of money and a hot scoop in the form of a research card – Rosales from Genetic Equity seemed to be hiding something.
Back at base, we briefly discussed this with our Runner Control, who explained that we could continue the plot thread by hitting Genetic Equity again, or discussing it with their players. Having already made up my mind that Rosales, by virtue of existing and being suspicious, must be hiding Case Aniclog’s DNA from me, I decided to do both, immediately heading to Genetic Equity and confronting whoever I could find there. This turned out to be their security officer, who explained that they didn’t have Case’s DNA, but this denial was pure obfuscation – though I still knew in my heart of hearts that Gordon was most likely to have the holy relic we needed, we were still waiting on them to deliver some signed T-shirts or something so the path ahead was as plain as if I had been gifted the second sight.
We decided to hit Genetic Equity again, a storm brewing outside as the game approached its final moments. The security officer, that I had just spoken with, was there to defend the facility. We all fought valiantly, but ultimately I left, badly wounded, with 1 health remaining. It was at this moment, discussing our next move, when someone came to the box office. It seemed that someone had incited the spark of revolution, and they wanted as many gangs as they could muster on the streets. But this was a Gruffster, and they wanted to know if we were corporate stooges. I told this Gruffster what I’d told my gang right at the start. I didn’t care who anyone worked for, who sold information on the side to who. Get your money and your deals how you can. But I will trust anyone, anyone at all, who tells me they enjoy the movies of Case Aniclog.
I wrangled a deal for the future, post-Revolution, wherein we would be in charge of all culture and media, told the gang, and then ran off on to the streets to go smash things up (mostly we ended up smashing a lab that Augmented Nucleotech had already agreed could be smashed up, because they wanted to go home to Iceland). My gang had stayed behind at the hideout, so I was left charging down the streets, nearly dead, with a katana at the end of the game. It later turned out that the Gruffster who’d brought me on to the Revolution had been the one that started the rumour about us being corporate spies.
Now, I don’t really know what happened back at the base. I hear a lot of things, and I’d love to hear clarification from the team. But I heard – and I believe, more importantly – that Gordon had never had the DNA to begin with, but having heard us bang on about it so much in the news and to anyone who would listen, did seek it out. And that not only had they bought the rights to Case Aniclog, hoping to launch a Case Cinematic Universe, but that right there at the end, our team was gifted with simple gift, a small, perfect block of amber. With a mosquito inside.
So anyway, this was the game as it happened, as far as I can remember it. Later, I found out that Ghost hadn’t realised the whole time that Case Aniclog was an anagram — for something other than “a coalescing”, which was pretty funny, and a few other details which I’ve used to fill in the gaps in the story above. I had a really great time and I think the team I played with was extremely good, and I recommend playing this game if it ever shows up again. I feel like the narrative as it worked out is probably about as good as I could hope for, and maybe next time I’d like to try Control to get a different side of things, or Press also.
I missed a couple of things on the day but, that’s megagames, and I think somebody was recording it — I didn’t run into them at all except possibly to give what I think most likely sounded like very unhinged ranting at the debriefing (I was still in character), and that’s about that. End of post. Anyway, thanks to all for the day. Bye for now!
The Wretched Beast 