The Hicksville Reaper

Foreword

Back around 1992, I realized that I had been a member of the RPGA Network for five years without once submitting anything to the Network’s Polyhedron Newszine. Polyhedron existed entirely on membership submissions, and I kept telling myself I should submit something (and if it got accepted, move on to bigger magazines like Dragon), but I just kept putting it off.

After a while, I got annoyed at myself for being so damn lazy. Polyhedron regularly ran contests asking members for submissions based on a particular theme, and I figured contests were easy, so I swore to myself that I would enter something in the very next contest that came along.

Imagine my chagrin when the next contest was issue 66’s "Monstrous Mayhem" Contest. Polyhedron printed an illustration (by Jim Holloway) of some ugly horned humanoid, and said “write a monster to match the picture”. Egads. Monster-design is one of my great weaknesses as a gamer. I never have been able to design an AD&D monster that I liked enough to use in a game. Still, I swore I was going to submit something, so I scoured my bookshelf for some other games that might use a giant horned humanoid as a monster, and ended up designing monsters for Ghostbusters, Star Frontiers, and It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show.

To my continuing shock, the submission below actually won Third Place (and got my RPGA membership extended a year). You know, I’ve never actually played It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show. I’ve had the rulebook for years, but I’ve never found enough people willing to play the game. Got that? I have no real experience whatsoever with the game, and Polyhedron says it’s my best work. Jeez.

Polyhedron only published the First Place winner, and it’s one of the only things I had on disk that wouldn’t get me sued by T$R, so here it is. For what it’s worth, my Ghostbusters submission, “Bossie, The Meat Locker Menace” received an Honorable Mention. My Star Frontiers entry didn’t win anything, and I’ve been playing Star Frontiers longer than any other game. Go figure.

I still haven’t submitted anything else to any gaming magazines.

Golem, Bovine (a.k.a. The Hicksville Reaper)

(A monster for Stellar Games’ It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show.)

Size: 7′ tall       Brains: 5

Speed: 150          Fame: 20

Build: 200          FX Roll: 70

SP: 150             Damage: 30

Talents: Stalking, Tracking

Combat FX: Bite, Claw, Weapon (see below)

Other FX: Detect Aliens

Immunities and Weaknesses: normal

Props: Cows

Description: Put together from the remains of dead cows, the Hicksville Reaper is big, ugly, and little lop-sided (nobody said farmers had to be good anatomists). Carrying a weapon made from an old plow, he loves to chop up teenagers, but has a soft spot for farm animals (most of them are old friends of his).

Background: Lots of strange things happen to cows in the Midwest, foremost among them cow-tipping (when bored teenagers push a sleeping cow over just to see it freak out) and cattle mutilations (caused by devil-worshippers and aliens, of course). The Hicksville Reaper was made from the bodies of mutilated cows by an irate Cultist/Farmer (who was tired of having his livestock abused) in order to exact vengeance on teenaged pranksters and to get some respect from those uppity urban Cultists.

(Admit it. You didn’t take Cultist/Farmer seriously when I first said it, either. Did you? You could be next buddy.)

When first appearing in a Series of Movies, the Hicksville Reaper will be lying in wait for the local cow-tippers, and begin stalking them, one by one (or maybe in couples, if it’s an R-rated movie). Of course, they won’t be able to convince any adults that a bovine golem is after them, and will have to solve the situation with a dramatic showdown.

If the Director wants to use the Reaper again (and the Actors didn’t off the farmer), it can always come back to harass a new generation of teenagers, or city-slickers stranded in Hicksville when their car breaks down.

And if you want to turn the poor beast into some sort of anti-hero, he could actually help the Actors fend off an alien invasion. The Reaper can smell aliens, and might start stalking any Subtle Invaders or Infiltrators who are stationed in Hicksville. Who knows? Maybe the sheriff is one….

Design Notes

Obviously, the I named the Reaper’s hometown “Hicksville” for laughs;it’s a perfect name for an game setting of exaggerated small-towniness. The sad truth is, though, I picked up the name from two old college friends who actually grew up in Hicksville, Ohio. After years of suspecting they might be making it all up, I visited “The `Vil” myself in August 1994, so I know it’s true: Somebody actually named a town Hicksville. Zowie.

More frightening still, there are Hicksvilles in Arkansas, Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. It appears to be a fairly popular name. I tell you, sometimes the research for these games is more horrifying than the monsters.