Playtest: Glass Men
this is all from a recent playtest I got to join in on of Luke Gearing’s Glass Men, a VIOLENCE scenario about horrible things happening to people who probably don’t deserve it. It reminds me a lot of the ‘PEEP SHOW’ scenario for core VIOLENCE down to the grimy eurotrash aesthetic.
Usually in such scenarios I default to what I call “Incredible Violence Man”; a hypercompetent sociopath whose skills include every way to kill or extort a human being. It’s a fun way to play the game, in the sense that Nico Bellic is a fun protagonist for a video game, but I realised that everyone else had pretty much beaten me to the punch with grizzled old boxers and standover men.
What I wanted to do, I realised, was really push the limits to that tropic of ‘comfortable disgust’ such characters engendered. I think, in practice, I failed at that. I made some pretty lame decisions still rooted in that IVM mindset, but I think when it came down to it I had a character who was always going to do something cool.
By Zippo, Arsonist, 17
Willow + Olessa get some guys together and we all get offered €MONEY. Because Honey is missing and they need us not to tell while we look. Hannibal can never know.
It’s me and old fuck and old fuck 2 and a big guy and a little guy and a drunk and a geek. their names are Bill Cliff Coyote Tony Doc and Porky.
Willolessa say boyfriend this and turkish food that and hannibal hannibal hannibal. We all go to the tower the tower where me and the girls hand out and the big room which is where the girls have beds on the floor. Honey's bed has a stash with shit uppers I took two of and HRT patches and a knife and a notebook. Pages torn out. We ask the girls natasha sofia selena leah naziha mosura usagi if they know anything and like. kinda. Natasha tells me they empty the trash sometimes so there's nothing of honey’s in there like definitely not the pages ripped out. they get some numbers that don't mean anything from the paper and the guys all get really geeked on that and then they leave with Tony hanging around in the vents to watch hannibal when he comes in and gets his money from the girls.
everyone else including meeee goes to the titty palace and waits and I don’t even get let in because I look too young. So we get fucked up in the parking lot and eventually hannibal and his guys, these big tough fucking guys, they come and bill & coyote poke at them and then hannibal has to take a call from a guy named scipio which we get to hear because we sat outside like the special fucking boy we are.
Then hannibal went back inside and I realised his car his big white fat dick of a four wheel car was just right there in the parking lot. So we popped the car boot open and texted everyone in the group chat we were gonna hide in his car and try to get to his house and stake the place out and probably break in later and set stuff on fire.
His trunk had bats and a safe and phones and ski masks and meeee in it. I sent everyone pictures then tossed the phone and crawled inside. They come back. Hannibal and his left and right nut sacs I mean. They come back and we all drive around doing errands and picking shit up and dropping shit off it's all shit all the time with hannibal the fucking mannible because he’s the specialest fucking boy in the world.
I found out later they had been to this doc named Mago who the guys were all hard over because they wanted his info and they could get it easier than like getting it from any of the tower guys. So then they got to like the tower again on rounds and the geek porky came up and tried to poke em all a little with his bit. con artist snake oil hipster but we think he’s kinda cool. He probably has a degree and a real house.
So then they pop open the trunk and inside it's meeeee and hannibal was very very pissed the fuck off. I get punched in the mouth and punched in the mouth and punched in the eye and it would have hurt like a son of a bastard if I wasn't on tasty tasty anaesthetics. They would've smashed up my knees if they thought I was sober.
I get a “warning” and I say see you guys later and run into porky and doc nearby so they patch me up a little and then the guys had beaten up Mago. Group chat said Hannibal’s house was in a block not far and we wanted to go now now now now so we did! I was going to get a gun and hurt him with it. His own gun. For emphasis. In the car we put on the HRT patch and porky called it recreational hormone replacement.
So the place it was a building and it had glass doors and they went SMASH and hannibal’s front door 2-7-2 was wood and it went CRUNCH CRUNCH SMASH with like six guys all on it. They turn his place inside out upside down like raping a plushie. stuffing everywhere.
I found nothing zilch nada in the bedroom except hustler mags and I was expecting to find honey's body all cut up in the bathtub but doc good buddy old pal our new best friend doc found a big goofy silver gun behind the mirror. And it was mine now!
then we bugged out fast peeled out and came up with plan B which was use Mago’s phone to set up a drop and get hannibal there. easy. so we did.
We all squeezed into some dump they hadn't torn down yet which seemed real cool to me and waited waited waited and hannibal and his guys came in fast. ten minutes. So we shot them. I missed though. It was against the plan I think so Coyote jumped me and drags me out to the car. Everybody else gets to beat him up and ask him questions and steal his phone and his money but do we even get to shoot his cousins and set his car on fire. No. Even though it would have made us feel better.
New plan is scipio mr head honcho mr don't fuck with me. plan is to fuck with him. go to his shawarma place and something something something find out where honey went. at this point it’s only a couple guys left coyote bill doc tony and meeee
They ask me if I might be able to set stuff on fire as a distraction later and I tell the old fuck his plan of using the laundry next door is dumb because you have to set the lint catch in the air intake on fire not the dry laundry. We don’t like him. He goes to jerk off in the back room with scipio and eventually so does coyote and it's just us and doc. us and doc. waiting. waiting.
I tell doc to bring us around the block to the alley out back with a door and a dumpster and stuff and what we do is get out and set the dumpster on fire and get the gun coyote took from me back and pull out our knife and wait in the smoke like a ninja. This is only a little waiting until a guy comes out and we stab him. Falls like a sack of shoes right kinda onto me, makes sense because all the muscles holding his ribs to his stomach are gone. Then I move onto the next guy but he is TOUGH, like TOUGH so he gets a wrench into the piss blood part of where a wrench shouldn't go. Gets a bullet along the edge of his skull like a champion though. And I keep stabbing. And keep stabbing Think I got a third guy in there.
I hear a BANG like someone dying in the building and the other guys seem to have it all handled so I jump back in the car.
What I learned later was scipio got turned to salami by Tony the plumed chicken. A big shotgun we wish we’d found if only I'd crawled through the vents and dropped down like he did. I think natasha actually paid me later. I bought stickers for my scooter.
I described Zippo as having chunks of hair dyed bright blonde and wearing a PWEI t-shirt.