How to start a Weird Science Fantasy game.

(Who doesn't love Pete Mullen?)

Here's a quick idea for some Olde School Weirdness in the EC Comics tradition.

Step 1. Don't tell your players anything about the game they're about to take part in.

Step 2. Get the pre-game blather, gossip, inebriates, etc, out of the way.

Step 3. Pass out blank character sheets. Tell your players not to roll any dice, or do anything character related just yet. Move on to step 4 before anyone gets weird about it.

Step 4. Each PC awakes in a metal sarcophagus. The lids are opened and a dim glow emanates from above. Each character is naked, unequipped, and covered in a thin layer of amniotic slime. They have no memory whatsoever of anything prior to their waking up two minutes ago.

As they explore their surroundings, the PCs find themselves in a dome shaped room. A large area of the dome is torn, blasted, or bitten open, revealing a night sky full of alien constellations. The hole in the dome appears to be the room's only exit.

Instrument panels with no discernible functions line the walls. Red lights blink for unknown reasons. There is also one extra (empty) sarcophagus in the room. Depending on your plans, this could have been vacated anywhere from an hour to a decade ago.

Step 5. Escaping from the dome begins a series of Attribute Checks by which the PCs actually learn their attribute scores. Basically, no player knows what his Strength or whatever is until he needs to do something Strength- or Whatever-related. Probably best to set a low-ish target for most of these checks, as their only real purpose is to determine attributes.

Some (brief) ideas:

• Climbing out of the dome: Strength
• Determining the purpose of anything in the room: Intelligence
• Deciding how long the Other Sarcophagus has been empty: Wisdom
• Breathing a lungful of alien atmosphere, or ingestion something found in the dome: Constitution
• Picking a lock on an equipment locker to scavenge what few supplies remain: Dexterity
• Look cool naked while covered in a thin layer of amniotic slime: Charisma

Step 6. Just outside the dome, the PCs find the half-eaten corpses of a party of adventurers (one for each PC). The corpses are dressed in tattered spacesuits which still function as light armor, but do little else. Eerily, each of the corpses looks exactly like a decomposed version of one of the PCs. The name tags on the spacesuits are all visible, and the players are free to determine what those names are, since the characters they're playing are clones of these unlucky bastards.

Step 7. As soon as the PCs have scavenged some of the gear, Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy attack! NOTE: My vision is Kirby specific, but you could just as easily drop a Gorn, a Shoggoth, a Wampa, or a Beholder, etc up in this bitch. Don't roll for Hit Points until someone gets hit.

Step 8. If the PCs defeat the monster, they notice a trail of bootprints (tread identical to their own) leading off into that desert, mountain range, alien wilderness, or Black Ziggurat on the horizon. If the PCs are captured, they are taken as slaves to wherever you want those footprints to lead.

Anyone who dies in the encounter wakes up 2D10 hours later in a metal sarcophagus inside a dome shaped room…

Here's the fun part: The Other Survivor can be anyone you want them to be, from Mcguffin to Big Villain. The PCs could follow his trail from place to place, always one step behind, hoping that he might know something when/if they finally catch up to him. Or maybe she hatched a while ago and has set herself up as god-queen of an alien cargo cult. Or maybe it's Doctor Smith and he just screws with the PCs because he's like that. Or maybe it's a heroically bare chested American astronaut who's fallen into the clutches of some damn dirty apes, and you can have his + 3 blaster (but only if you pry it from his cold, dead hands).

Anyway. That's how I'd do it.

(...or Virgil Finlay?)