This two-scene scenario is inspired by the short, 3-D film Captain Eo, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, produced by George Lucas, and staring Michael Jackson and Anjelica Huston. At the time it was made, Captain Eo was the most expensive film per-minute ever produced ($30 million dollars for 17 minutes of action).
One player plays Captain Eo, a highly successful but infamous officer in the Space Corps.
Split the remaining 4-10 players roughly in half. Half of those players portray Eo's muppet companions. Each player should come up with an gonzo name and somewhat annoying personality quirk that's liable to get the crew in trouble.
The remaining half of the players are responsible for making trouble for Captain Eo and his companions. They introduce trouble into the first act by portraying alien vessels attacking them, mechanical problems with the ship, Space Corps superiors giving Eo a hard time, etc.
The first act takes place on a spaceship, carrying Captain Eo and his muppet crew to their destination (determine where this is). Play continues, with escalating troubles, until Eo and his crew leave their ship. Perhaps the ship crashlands on a planet and the crew is captured by mechanical zombies. Perhaps Eo lands the ship near some ancient alien ruins and the crew decides to explore inside. Anything works.
The next act takes the form of a confrontation between Captain Eo, his companions, and the uncool alien forces that they confront.
One or more players who were previously in the trouble-causing group should become the leader(s) of the uncool aliens. Decide what pathology has lead the leader to become uncool and drag their entire planet down into uncoolness. Perhaps the leader is a repulsive mechanical creature covered in tentacles who really just wants to be beautiful. Perhaps the undead alien mummies wanted to live forever, no matter the cost. The remainder of the trouble-causing players become the uncool minions of the uncool leader. Decide what form these minions take and how they are likely to attack or attempt to defeat Eo.
First, there is some dialogue between Eo and the uncool leader(s), where he tries to convince them that their uncool life is flawed. But eventually the uncool minions are ordered to attack! They press their attack against Eo until the muppet companions manage to assemble their musical instruments and start playing (in reality, turning on a boombox and cuing up an upbeat Michael Jackson song). At this point, the music ignites Eo's energy powers and he is gradually able to transform more and more uncool minions into cool back-up dancers.
The first dance happens here, featuring Eo and the new back-up dancers. If possible, Eo's player should sing along with Michael Jackson.
Eventually, when all the uncool minions have been turned into dancers, the players portraying the muppet companions stop the music and the uncool leader calls on the second wave of even more powerful elite uncool minions, which are initially immune to Eo's transformative energy powers. These are portrayed by the players of the muppet companions (minus one), since those characters have mostly faded into the background. These players should decide what makes these elite minions especially uncool. Perhaps they are giant, have energy whips, and carry shields that protect them from Eo's powers. Or maybe they are avatars of the ancient alien death god, Anubaas.
Again the attack is presses against Eo and he seems sure to lose! But eventually the remaining muppet companion (whose player is not portraying an elite minion) saves the day in some fashion. Perhaps it ties the elite minions' energy whips together. Or maybe it accidentally destroys the ancient stone idol that empowers the avatars of Anubaas. Once this happens, the music is turned back on and Captain Eo can transform both the elite minions and the leaders themselves into cool dancers.
The second, celebratory dance happens here, to a new upbeat Michael Jackson song, and features all the players, who have now had their inner cool unlocked. During the dance, players take turns shouting out the ways in which the uncool planet is now being transformed into a cool one. Trees and flowers sprout across the biomechanical landscape. Ancient cities rise from the desert, etc.
I like the lack of role monogamy and the fact that characters are afforded different levels of narrative importance. I would definitely score this to songs from Off the Wall myself! Eo and his crew are completely reactive - other than the one muppet in part two who saves the day, they don't get to make any choices, except when to leave their spaceship. That' paired with the unlimited inventive freedom of the other players, seems less than ideal.
Does this game involve karaoke? I think I'm sold. Music and roleplaying is kind of a holy grail in some camps. This would be a neat integration. I also absolutely love the light tone and silly nature of the game. We could use some more of these!
Jason: Off The Wall would be a great album to pick from. If groups wanted to update it a bit, I could even see folks reaching for the "Virginia Beach sound" (Timbaland and Pharrell) and having Captain Neo played by Justin Timberlake or Missy Elliot.
I see what you're saying about the needlessly teleological structure of play, which limits the impact of player choices. What about taking inspiration from the "my rebels, my red army" lyric from the first Eo dance and making the second act an analogy for a political revolution? So maybe you have a few different sectors of society that need to be converted to the glorious cause: the proletarian masses, the bourgeois elites, and backbone reactionaries (the leaders). And these can be tackled in any particular order. So you could convert the elites and then the masses and then the leaders. Or maybe start with the leaders and work down to the masses or whatever. And each social group presents a different challenge to Eo and his companions that they have to overcome in some fashion, usually ultimately involving dancing, but the outcome is clearly something negotiated between the players, not dictated by one side or the other. (Of course, the bourgeois elites could be, uh, gene-mutants who breathe acid, but so it goes).
The first act, I think, could give Eo and the muppets more narrative authority than my initial post suggests. For example, a muppet could say, "Captain, we're getting a strange reading from a nearby space station." And then the trouble-causing players could pick up on that and elaborate from there. I guess I view the first act as already being more negotiated. Imagine Eo saying, "Quiet! Listen!" And then, in the dead silence, one or more trouble causing players make strange noises. So there's this back-and-forth of acting and reacting.
Emily: Karaoke roleplaying indeed. If you picked songs that have sing-along backup parts, which both the original Eo songs do, that definitely allows for everybody to sing as well as dance. Like, if you chose "Bad" as one of your songs, the back-up dancers could sing the "Bad! Bad! Really, really bad!" part.
And, yeah, I was hoping that the nostalgia + silly inherant in the premise would be attractive to audiences that aren't necessarily drawn to more serious scenarios about interpersonal relationships.
Yeah, I'm not opposed to the idea of restricted autonomy or even scripting really, but it felt off to have an imbalance in play. Like the evil muppet guys would have more fun while the Eo guys would be consulting the flow chart to see what they had to do next. That itself may be an artifact I'm bringing to it from my own background, who knows. If you emphasized the bits where the Eo side gets to be inventive, that would be awesome. Maybe let them define the trouble that the evil muppets are going to bring through telegraphing.
And JT would also be a kick-ass album; he's basically the reincarnation of the good Michael Jackson.