Hearts, Stars, and Carnage

Event Description:
Commander John Blitzen and his team of Reindeer comman-does are the best of the best. They‘ve rescued their boss from everything from blubbery bunnies to terrifying turkeys and left a trail of dead in their path. Their leader secured, they now take flight to Ireland where Lorcan the Leprechaun threatens to turn all of the Earth‘s water green! If there‘s one thing Santa can‘t tolerate, it‘s a Green Christmas!

Santa’s Notes:
One of of my favorite moments in running Operation Santa was when Mecha-Rudolph showed up at the end, telling the characters “You fools, there’s no such thing as Leprechauns!” The genuinely dumbfounded reaction from all of the players still makes me crack up whenever I think about it. This was also the first year with a cliff-hanger ending, as Mecha-Rudolph blows up the compound the reindeer have just finished raiding, sending them out the window and into the ocean below.

Character Sheets:

Notable Quotes:

“Surely I have destroyed the one behind me with my flailing windmill of death.” JS

“What’s in that needle? Crème de minthe?” JS

“You just rolled a metal pot full of grenades down the stairs. Basically, you made an IUD. Uh, IED.” CF

“Leprechauns are flammable, right?”

“You find yourselves in a grassy field with white lines painted every fifteen feet or so.”
“Don’t try to snort it!”
“You knew right where I was going with that.” CF, JM, JS

“Chris, you should sue WOTC. A game of strange anthropomorphic animals finding technological items as one-shot treasures? This is Gamma World.”
“It is Gamma World! They have better lawyers than I do, though.”
“This makes more sense than Gamma World.” JM, CF, DA

[after someone made reference to “Judith Priest”} “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Rob Halford.” KF

[on fighting the Fighting Irish] “I’m aimin’ for their kneecaps. Even if I don’t kill them, I’m ending their careers.” JS

“I hope I didn’t get my antlers tangled in his facemask. ‘I can’t get him off!’”
“Just cut the head off and leave it there. Nobody will ever fuck with you again.” KF & JS

“So let me get this straight. You’re goring them with your antlers, but you have a chainsaw handy for cutting heads off?”
“Yeah.” JS & KF

[trying to figure out how to approximate a French-Irish accent] “’Bonjour, douchebag.’ I guess that’s more of a French-Jersey accent.”
“Yeah, not hearing the Irish there.”
“You just made me picture Quasimodo with a spray tan.” CF, RH, JM

“You should ride the bear like a big furry tractor.” RH

“I think last year we established that Vixen can twirl all six of her tassels.”
“In different directions. One’s clockwise, one’s counterclockwise, two are sticking straight out…”
“Did you ever read A Brief History of Time? There are six different states an electron can be in.”
“That may be the geekiest joke ever.”
“Illustrated with reindeer nipples.” KF, JS, CF, DA, JS

“I’ve got my chaps on. Somethin’s gonna be ridden.” DA

“Donner, you found the Confined Weasel.” CF

“It’s an antechamber. If we get it too close to a regular chamber, it’ll be a terrible explosion.” JM

“They look like normal pots of gold.”
“Normal pots of gold? Where the hell do you live?” CF & JS

“Eeenie, meenie, meth ahoy.” JS

[facing the boss leprechaun] “By the way, your cereal sucks.”
“That’s it, them’s fightin’ words.” JM & CF

“The weasel has been deployed.”
“Yeah, I’m dropping it right down his pants.”
“Are you wearing a flak vest, by the way?” CF & JS

“What the hell, we didn’t get this far by being smart. I’m shooting at one of the vats.” DA

“I understand if you have a beef with me, but leave the vats out of it. They did nothing to you.”
“That vat killed my pa!” CF & DA

“I’m just going to proceed as if this is going well…” CF