Yesterday, for Story Game Sunday, we didn’t have enough people for Hillfolk (which requires a huge number of players), and so instead we played an insanely fun game of Kingdom. If you read only one session recap on the Gauntlet this year, please make it this one.
So, our Kingdom was Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory after an adult Charlie Bucket and Grandpa Joe have gotten control of the place (disregarding the events of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator). Charlie has turned out to be an idealistic and kind-hearted young leader, but also utterly incompetent. He is focused on charitable efforts to help the poor (through his foundation, Buckets O’ Plenty) and not so much on the profit maximizing demands of running a major business. Outside investors have come in, established a charter, and formed a board of directors to represent their interests. The Chairman of the Board is a gent named Daniel Powers, a life-long diabetic who cares nothing for the whimsy and fantastical nature of the Wonka factory, but rather is focused squarely on profit. Grandpa Joe is deeply corrupt, skimming from the profits, selling R&D secrets to Slugworth, etc.. The oompa-loompas are starting to agitate, thanks to their militant leader, Roomba.
For the first half of the game, the question was whether the factory would engage in a cross-licensing deal with Slugworth. Daniel Powers and Grandpa Joe were in favor of this plan, but for different reasons. Daniel saw it as a lucrative revenue stream, whereas Grandpa Joe was acting on orders of Veruca Salt Nuts, which was using the licensing deal, and its subsequent weakening of the Wonka brand, as a trojan horse to gain leverage on the Wonka factory for an eventual buyout. Roomba and the oompa-loompas were opposed to the plan, believing it was not in the spirit of how Wonka had run the factory, and also showing concern for the business practices of Slugworth Candies being imported as part of the cross-licensing deal (Slugworth had moved all his operations to China, noting “Who cares about the plight of the workers? We just hang-up the suicide nets and call it a day!”)
Internal strife reigned. Roomba formed a band of rebel oompa-loompas, armed with lollipop truncheons, to spread fear and terror throughout the factory. Daniel Powers, ousted as Chairman of the Board by Grandpa Joe, sought to curry favor with the board and earn his place back by integrating with the loyalist oompa-loompas, and training them to stand with Grandpa Joe. Grandpa Joe, now fully in control of the company, locked the directors in the board room and refused to let them leave until they agreed to vote in favor of the cross-licensing deal. Meanwhile, Charlie had gone underground, established an elicit relationship with an oompa-loompa princess, and began to function as a sort-of spiritual guide to the rebellion.
Eventually, the Wonka operations fell apart in a blaze of violence. Roomba’s forces began engaging in terrorist activities, a la Al-Qaeda, going so far as kidnapping the board members’ daughters and threatening to club them to death with lollipop truncheons if the cross-licensing deal wasn’t rejected. Grandpa Joe responded with “We don’t negotiate with terrorists!” before leaving a loaded gun in the middle of the board room table, suggesting the only way they were leaving the room was if someone shot the ‘nay’ voters. Daniel Powers and Charlie Bucket were killed in the great battle between the oompa-loompa rebels and the oompa-loompa loyalists. Grandpa Joe, now ‘confined’ to a wheelchair (though he regularly stands up and sings about how “I’ve got a golden ticket…and her name is Veruca Salt!”), is drowned by a redirected chocolate river.
But the Kingdom is rebuilt from the ashes, which is where we picked-up for the (extremely bizarre, but no less fun) second half. At this point, Veruca Salt has bought a controlling interest in the factory and renamed it Veronka Candies and Nuts. In this portion of the tale, we see that Veruca Salt has grown into a sexual sadist with an intense god complex. Her masochistic pets are Willy Wonka himself (who she has collared with a giant lifesaver candy and occasionally silences with a gobstopper ball gag) and her own father, who she makes grovel at her feet and who she delights beating with a whip made of black licorice. In fact, Wonka is secretly working with oompa-loompa rebels, who are now hiding out in the rock candy mines, to retrieve some experimental pop rocks that have the destructive potential of plutonium. Finally, a messianic figure has arisen from the ranks of the oompa-loompas. He is the child of Charlie Bucket and the oompa-loompa princess, and his name is Choompa Bucket. He is a sort-of Paul Muad’dib of the oompa-loompas, ready to go to war with Veruca Salt if necessary to lead his people to a promised land.
The question is whether Veronka Candies and Nuts will allow the oompa-loompas to practice their religion. I won’t go into the tick-tock of it, mostly because it is disturbing on many levels, but the final outcome was: Veruca Salt turns over operations to her father in exchange for regular oompa-loompa worship (the oompa-loompa elders have convinced the others that she is a holy mother of sorts); Choompa Bucket becomes the spiritual leader of the oompas; and Willy Wonka is convicted as a traitor and stoned to death with gumdrops.
This session definitely stands at the top of my favorite list for 2014 (so far). Thanks to Rob Ferguson Shea Herlihy-Abba and Ferrell Riley !
