Codex Spotlight – Pizza Time!
Pizza Time! is a scenario for Lovecraftesque featured in Codex – Dark. It’s about a young man who helps his father clean a Chuck E. Cheese’s-style restaurant called Calamity Raccoon’s Good-Time Pizza Farm after hours. The scenario is one part Lovecraftian horror and one part Five Nights at Freddy’s, with a big dash of urban legend horror movies such as The Candyman mixed in.
If you have followed me for awhile, you know that I was once working on a hack of Dog Eat Dog called Chuck Eat Cheese, which dealt with some similar themes. I could never get that game into a shape I was happy with, but the setting of a supernatural pizza arcade just wouldn’t get out of my brain. When Josh and Becky announced their scenario-writing contest for Lovecraftesque, I immediately thought “I can totally do Chuck Eat Cheese in Lovecrafteque!” and then got to work. As it turns out, I wasn’t able to complete it in time for that contest, but fortunately, I know a guy who publishes an RPG zine.
What I want people to know about this scenario is there is so much of me baked into it. The urban legends that are sprinkled throughout the piece are taken directly from my days of working at a Chuck E. Cheese’s, the NPCs are inspired by people I worked with, and some of the more nasty, non-supernatural things that happen at Calamity Raccoon’s (such as employees having sex in the character dressing room) are things that were rumored to have taken place where I worked. I am also a huge fan of genre pieces I call “horror being done to children” and this scenario reflects that in a huge way.
One last note: the art for the piece (see below) was done by Ron Thomas and as part of the layout, Oli managed to recreate the old-timey Chuck E. Cheese’s logo for the title.
Codex – Dark is available for free on our website.
http://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/codex.html
You can get all the Codex back issues in our $4+ Patreon feed until May 31st!
I had a Chuck-e-Cheese related nightmare last night. We don’t even have them in my country. I blame you.
I had a Chuck-e-Cheese related nightmare last night. We don’t even have them in my country. I blame you.
Still want to play Chuck Eat Cheese, by the way.
Still want to play Chuck Eat Cheese, by the way.
Joshua Fox Yeah, I think there is still some space for Chuck Eat Cheese. It was more of a surreal workplace drama than a horror thing. Maybe I’ll go back to it someday.
Joshua Fox Yeah, I think there is still some space for Chuck Eat Cheese. It was more of a surreal workplace drama than a horror thing. Maybe I’ll go back to it someday.
I thought it sounded really promising. I mean, I know nothing about Chuck E Cheese, really, but I’m familiar with the way corporate culture can squash individual employees in much the same way that colonial culture squashes those who are colonised.
I thought it sounded really promising. I mean, I know nothing about Chuck E Cheese, really, but I’m familiar with the way corporate culture can squash individual employees in much the same way that colonial culture squashes those who are colonised.