Funhouse Surreal Solo Play 1

What it is

Funhouse Rpg is something +Chad Robb came up with here. I thought it was worth a spin, and enjoyed it. The d6 tables I generate aren't very generalizable - they're probably not going to help you at your table. But they're still fun to dream up.

I've been reading Itras By lately, and I suppose the surrealism is leaking through a bit. The Menagerie mentioned a surrealist game of re-entering the same room over and over again (no matter how you try to leave) but one or two things change, so that's what I used to run this.

Actual Play

When I come back to the office

1. everyone is a cat
2. computers trying to eat everyone
3. no one is there
4. raging inferno
5. giant party
6. grass is growing in the carpet

d6 => 3

The office completely emptied out before I returned. What had I left for, even? I hadn’t been gone long. The disgusting fluorescent light bathed empty swivel chairs. Computers were on, screens unlocked, as though people left in a hurry. I tried not to think of Aliens, where the marines nervously sweep and clear the vacant living quarters of the colonists on LV426.

“Hello?” I yell out.

1. YES reverberates from everywhere around me, basso profundo.
2. An alien from Aliens drops from the cheap ceiling tile, its white dust coating its bug-like visage
3. Nothing responds
4. I hear music outside the office
5. the fire alarm goes off and the sprinklers hose me down
6. I smell fish coming from behind one of the cubicle walls, which has moved.

d6 => 4

I hear Alt-J’s Matilda start up behind me. Behind me is the wooden door to the office. A narrow vertical window stretches floor-to-ceiling beside it. The hallway outside is pitch black. It shouldn’t be. It should be lit. It was just lit.

“This is for, this is for, this is for Matilda.”

My hand shakes as I turn the door handle. I step outside into the dark and am still in the office. Where I just was, on the other side of the door.

WHAT HAS CHANGED

1. Everyone is back
2. Everyone is back and have turned into cats
3. Every computer is playing that song
4. Ankle-deep in water, fish eat algae
5. Cubicle walls are now trees
6. Outside I can see the ocean

d6 => 6

The grey sky is gone. Outside I see blue. Wind thuds itself dumbly against the windows. I pull a fingerful of blinds down. 

The ocean. Waves break against the shore. The office sits at the edge of dunes, elevated, atop wooden beams. The sun is coming up slowly, languidly. 

I try to open a window to go outside

1. A voice calls out, saying, ‘Don’t go’
2. The window turns black like a TV screen dying
3. The ocean recedes, sweeps in over the beach. It carries the office building out to sea.
4. See 3 but then you fall off the edge of the earth into spaaaaace
5. The sea swallows the office up and now you’re under water
6. Walk outside and wind up back in the office

d6 => 2

“You’re not allowed to leave.” A computerized voice says, all around me. The window I’d opened is dead, black. Around me, all the other windows - the screens that imitated windows - hiss static. The other lights have gone dead, but everything is bright in the glow of the window-screens.

“Test phase two of four is about to begin.”

PHASE 2

1. Infantry flood in, weapons drawn
2. Shadows gather and cohere in one cubicle-corner.
3. 100 feral cats enter the room in search of food
4. The room begins to fill with small balls of fur which hum and purr
5. Water begins to flood the room
6. The walls start to close in

D6 => 6

The walls shudder and groan around me. They move in at me. The window-screens crack and shatter at the periphery and fall down. There’s still an office door that hasn’t been completely occluded across the way, visible over the cubicle walls. I start to run.

WHAT HAPPENS

1. The walls back up and rush in, I am crushed
2. The floor shatters beneath me and I fall…
3. The walls rush in and are made of styrofoam; I burst through.
4. I wake up with a start
5. I make it to the doorway and rush through
6. A hatch in the floor that didn’t exist in the ‘real’ office is open, I fall through into the ocean

d6 = > 4

I wake up with a start. 

It’s 6:45am. I need to get up, eat breakfast. I need to go to the office.