"That's just not right..." -- Jeff Simmons

"What sick bastard thought this one up?" -- anonymous passerby

"I found myself wandering the aisles of our local dollar store after watching the sugary horror that was "Sgt Slaughter in Bun-Bun Land" Friday night. 1:600 Napoleonic ships are nothing compared to a sudden compulsion to buy hundreds of prepainted resin bunnies with ice cream carts..."  -- Hundvig, on TMP

Their (sic) was a rather disturbing game set up in the hall outside the room where my game was played. A large table was set with pleasant mushroom shaped buildings in pastel colors and small white bunnies filled the streets. My next time past the game master was asking if player was going to use his sword or throw bombs at the bunny in front of him. Sounds like a great game. -- "termi-nate" "Historicon 2004 Report" on Brain Cylinder 

"And I wondered about Walt's sanity when I happened to pass his bunny game at Historicon, where he loudly announced to the gathered children to, ".. pull out your knives and stab them..." Right. I want Walt watching my child after that one. Nice. I would say the average age of the boys and girls gathered around his table was about 8 to 10 years old. Now, aside from his questionable judgement when dealing with children,"
-- Mr. James McGaughey, HMGS Issues and Answers Yahoogroup

(For the record, Mr. McGaughey is incorrect-- he misquotes part of the description of melee combat to turn me into a monster here. At the time, he was attacking me on another issue and this was just icing on the cake to make me look like a nutball. I'm a loving father, counselor, scoutmaster and soccer coach, so I think somebody out there trusts me with children.)

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Here are a few pictures from my Friday Night game at HISTORICON 2004

Here are a few more, provided by Brett Abbott (and many thanks to him)

1. Detail of the Bun-Bun Village
2. Detail of the Bun-Bun Village, near one of the Ponds
3. Walt (me) running the game.

SERGEANT SLAUGHTER IN BUN BUN LAND.

Sergeant Slaughter and his gang of not-so-elite Galactic Patrolman have pursued their evil alien foe through a spacetime portal on a derelict spacestation. Now they are faced with a situation outside of their experience and training-- whoever these critters are, they surely don't look like the evil Vilssh they are pursuing are supposed to look.  Of course, nobody's ever seen the Vilssh, when you get right down to it.  So I suppose they could be evil aliens.  To top it right off, the warp gate's power cell is shredded.  The only source of power is a throbbing ziggeraut outside of the village. Like it or lump it, fate has given Sergeant Murray Slaughter the role of making historic first contact.  They will need that power to get home with.  How will he do?

THE GREAT BUN-BUN LAND DEBATE!

For several months on the Society of the Daisy Yahoogroup, a battle royale raged in miniature over the very idea of throwing this game.  I was actively asked NOT to.. and told it was a horrible concept, and compared to Nazis, abusive prison guards, and everything but Josef Mengele.  Read the gorey details here

RULES

Machismo Science Fiction Skirmish was a chaotic set of science fiction skirmish rules I wrote for this game. I literally printed them out the night before the con so they weren't exactly 'fine tuned'... Here are some features of the rules:

Activation by "Go Fish" (random card picking to generate an activation number.
RPG style skill levels, and not many of them: Shooting, Fighting, Communications, Wrenching, Leading. Roll versus skill level (ten sider) to get a result.
Lots of cards: I love card mechanics, so there were several card based submechanisms in the game-- KILLABOT2, cranky but loveable assassin droid, is programmed using a series of plain english "command cards" that are drawn randombly and played in any order you like.. "Killabot, go forward! Killabot, left! Killabot, KILL!" You could also attempt to communicate with the bunnies (this is a first contact game, for God's sake) using a special set of Communications cards (you had to roll vs. Comms to make the attempt). If the right series of icons are generated in sequence, you get a clue about the nature of the bunnies.
Hidden Powers: The rabbits all were color coded on their bases, and there were several different skill sets: Greeter Bunnies, Groomer Bunnies, Mental Bunnies, Feeder Bunnies, and two very special bunnies that could possibly communicate in plain Galactic. The thing is, I didn't know where they were, because I asked the players to put them out on the table without looking on the bottom, in random order, while I was setting up.

In general, I was pretty happy with the results, and I handed out Rabbit's feet to all the players as a special prize.