Day in the Life of an Idiot

Picture: The rulebook for the Tingleverse... the main focus is on a half-naked t-rex headed man. There are other figures and tentacles.

Sunday at Gaylaxicon, we played this. By we, I mean tallgeese (who GM'd), naomikritzer , yhlee , and me. Oh, and we were joined by Rachel (Dachenbach?) and Rob Gates. I had thought I might be late for this, but turned out to be fairly early. I left the house at nine-thirty for a ten am panel and I NEEDED to stop for coffee, since I had been up until 2 am the night before. (I had a panel until 1 am, but then had the drive home as well as that horrible moment of WHY did I drink the espresso??)

So, I may have been a little punchy?

Before I go on to describe what I remember of the gameplay (under the cut for smut content), I would like to show off the sketches Yoon made of our characters (and a non-player character):


Picture: "Red" and character sheet.

This was the character tallgeese  made for me, he was basically a college-age version of Ichigo from Bleach, because John knows what I huge fan I am. What he doesn't know, of course, is that Ichigo is only a second favorite or possibly fourth, but I would have played a vampire night bus if asked. It was strange to be playing a human, though it made some basic things somewhat easier to imagine. We spent a lot of time at the very beginning of the game trying to figure out the logistics of hanging our in-game convention badges on the various bodies of the sentient objects.


Picture: character sheet and weirdly adorable smiling red Prius.

Yoon's character. He decided to be a sentient Prius who had a longer name, but we mostly only could remember the nickname "Crash." Alignment was not an official part of the Tingleverse RPG, but "Crash" was definitely lawful good.


Picture: "Greg from Mankato" the sentient wind turbine who was described as "a tall drink of water, looking for love." (Naomi's character.)

At one point, things happen that involve our sentient Prius needing repairs, so Rachel D. our audience volunteer played Rex, the Raptor Wizard, pictured here:




The other picture I managed to snap was of an NPC John played. A character (who I don't think was ever officially named) made of tentacles, who had a booth in the dealers' room--this character came into play after Rex lost his strap on tool during his atttempt to fix the Prius.This was taking place at an in-game science fiction convention, so of course, this creature was knitting. Because, as we all know, if there are no knitters, there is no con.




Yoon actually has a very good write up of the game-play on his DW: https://yhlee.dreamwidth.org/2996562.html

I'm not sure what if anything I can add to this, but I will try, anyway.


First of all, it should be noted that we did NOT play with the rules as laid out in the handbook. I have considered getting a copy of this for myself and some of the other gamers in my life who might appreciate it, but I'm NOT sure it's worth the 20-some bucks, given that both Yoon and John said that the rules, as written, are unplayable. This leaves a person with what? The monster manual section? From what I was told (complaints I heard), you can't even play as your own butt, so I'm not sure what the point of the official rules are. Clearly, as we proved, love is so real that if we want to just play a smutty AF game, we can just DO that, no $20 bucks required.

Not that I don't think we should continue to support Mr. Tingle in all his endeavors, but... you know, $0.99 - $2.99 at a time for his various titles perhaps, instead.

This also undercuts my theory about who the Real Chuck Tingle would be, as the couple I have been focusing my energy on are definitely gamers, and I would have thought the sorts who would not be able to send in a gaming manual with non-functioning rules. Unless, of course, this is just to throw people off the scent!

Anyway, the game.

I'm not sure 10 am was the very best time slot for this particular endeavor, honestly. For a number of reasons. 10 am on a Sunday is probably the deadest of the dead times at a con that had programing until well after midnight (some of which I participated in!) and we were legitimately playing down the hall FROM A CHURCH SERVICE.

The other reason is that I think that my coffee-fueled self may have overwhelmed the other participants. I hope not, but, you know, give me enough coffee and point me in the appropriate (or Inappropriate, in this case,) direction and I'm off running, at speeds. So, when our GM asked how we all knew each other, my character "Red" made a name for himself instantly by arriving (or shall we say COMING) to the Gay Galaxy Con (Naomi actually remembered the it's-not-Gaylaxicon title of this very meta, in-game convention) in the sentient Prius, "Crash."

So, you can see the level we STARTED at.

It kind of went downhill from there? I mean, to be fair to my fellow players, we did attempt to do the things one does at a convention. Crash, I think, suggested the extremely meta idea of going to the gaming room. It's maybe a shame that we discovered his con safety violations kink due to some Roy Mustang cosplayers tossing lit matches at each other, or we all might have been role-playing characters role-playing, which to be fair to Yoon, would have been possibly the most Chuck Tingle like meta, particularly if, later, a sentient manifestation of our own roleplaying game had come to life and offered to f*ck us.

Alas, I destroyed that moment by attempting to put an end to the match-throwing by suggesting that they take things upstairs. In order to convince them, I offered that I could cosplay a good Edward and then attempted to have an orgy with all six of them, only to roll badly on my "love is real" roll and end up discovering their paperwork kink. Fun for them, boring for me.

When trying to reconnect with my party, I stumbled across another orgy in progress, this one featuring zombies (and ghosts. Because I was essentially playing Ichigo, I could see the ghosts, or at least their penises.)

What I found weirdly charming and fun about this is that because of the mechanics of the game there were a lot of failures that resulted, as things often do, in hilarity. We actually FOUGHT the zombies, even though, I initially tried (operative word "tried,") to undress in front of them, intending maybe (my motives are unclear at this point) to seduce them into paying attention to me? But, i failed dexterity and ended up caught up in the peace-bonding of my sword. It was very silly. There was maggot infested meat in this party room, which caused some distress to our paladin, Crash, and I think the food ended up electrified by Naomi's character Greg in order to cook it? Yay for roasted maggots?

I mean, this is the essential issue of trying to make a role-playing game out of the Tingleverse. I THINK that the rulebook wants you to just be a happy party of hunters having adventures tracking down the Void Crabs and whatnot, ala a standard sort of RPG, but, anyone even vaguely aware of the plots of Chuck Tingle novels is thinking "so when does the banging happen??"

I remember emailing John when he said he was going to run this that I was trying to understand how any of this would even work because, in Tingle canon, if you will, the "adventure" seems to be which sentient creature will I bang (or not bang, as in his later assexual novels) and it is NEVER difficult. Typical plot of Tingle's early novels: Thirsty young man gets a job a law firm and discovers his boss is a hot T-Rex. They bang (in a very proscribed way, that follows, shall we say, the "plot" of many PWP slash fics. First, a blow job where the giver is miraculously able to deep-throat, even if he was never with a man before in his life, and culminating in anal/pounding in the butt.) The end.

So, kudos to John for thinking about how to attempt to structure a game that was actually satisfying (AS IT WERE) and also Tingle-y (i.e. kind of meta) and playable?

I should say that many, many more actual events happened in this raucous game and I think Yoon's somewhat stream of consciousness, jumbled list of events actually also captures the sort of out-of-control feel of this particular session. I mean, as reported on his DW, there was actual door f*cking at one point and how we got there already involved bathroom sex and the wizardry of a T-Rex mechanic both stretching and lubricating the door frame to make it all possible.

Bizarre to to say the least.

But fun?

I thought so.

I mean, what audience we had at 10 am seemed very appreciative. I ended up talking to one of the audience members afterwards (he'd had to leave before the end and wanted a re-cap to which I was very "?? ... ??? okay, so a door was involved?? and a body surfing velociraptor and a porn star ???") At any rate, he thought watching the game being played was enough of a hoot that he wants to organize a similar event at I-Con, a convention he's on the con com of, down in Iowa. I was handed a business card, though no official invite. I may attempt to finagle the latter, but it's something that I will have to ponder as I seem to be becoming that person you invite when you want to add smut to a con, and I'm not sure how to put that on my resume, exactly.

So, that's my take.