During a spirited campaign of Vampire: The Masquerade(V:TM), my players found perhaps the worst solutions to the simplest of problems. For those of you who have never played V:TM, it centers around a secret underground world of vampires who battle physically and politically over domains of influence.
During this particular game, my group of five players found themselves attempting to break into a drug safe-house in the middle of the ghetto guarded by a couple dozen Hispanic street thugs. The number of guards that had been pushed up after a reconnaissance mission the night before resulted in one of the guards being loudly beat to a pulp and thrown into the dumpster behind the safehouse.
That said, my player base sat together at the table, dumbfounded as how to breach the interior of the building. After last night’s encounter, they were wary of a run-and-gun approach that might result in them taking excess damage. The recon mission had been a stealth mission, so they did not trust their powers of subterfuge.
The lunatic vampire amongst my players smiled with a flash of brilliance and asked for a phonebook. I obliged and he told me that he was going to call for a distraction. What I didn’t anticipate was what he wanted to call for: pizza, more pizza, and Chinese food… and flowers.
EVERYTHING that was open at the time and made deliveries. Through promises of big tips and large orders, they were seducing every local business they could into making a trip out of their way.
Vampires. Creatures of immeasurable influence, masters of strange occult powers that could do everything from wiping a mortal’s mind clean to punching through a stone wall, were calling for fucking delivery boys. I had to take a few minutes to process this. They had just spend thirty minutes calling every Pizza Hut, Dominoes, and Chinese joint. Hell they even called 1-800-FLOWERS.
I made a face. They made their decision.
The following hour, as they watched from a safe distance, there was a small trickle of delivery vehicles. A kid in a beat-up Honda Civic here, a delivery van there, all of them being turned away by the thugs. But it didn’t stop. Delivery vehicles flowed into the area, clogging up the street. Angry Chinese servers and frustrated drivers got out of their cars and began to argue with the hoods. Out of fear or maybe frustration, my NPCs had no choice: one opened fire in the air followed by another taking a pot shot at an enraged Pizza Hut delivery boy. The kid dropped dead on the spot.
What ensued was nothing less than a riot. Police showed up in droves, forcing the thugs to retreat into their hideout where an extended shoot-out left 15 dead (including the poor Pizza boy) and 11 wounded, all because of my smart-ass players.
I created the following to commemorate the next day’s news:
Lesson learned.
