Henching International Temporary Services

Despite my grumblings about the rules, I had good fun playing Risus last night.

It was a superhero scenario, where the PCs were the henchmen of a supervillain. Actually, we were temps. We worked for H.I.T.S., Henching International Temporary Services.

I played a big dumb thug. My attributes (called "cliches" in Risus) were:

• "Want I should whack dem now, boss?"
• Gettin in ta fings.
• Keep on Truckin.

We were using this house rule where every PC also has a boon and a bane, which can boost or penalize other actions. My boon was "immovable object" and my bane was "big as an armored car". The later was applied literally. I was a normal human from the waist down, but had something like a 14 foot shoulder span.

We'd been hired by a supervillain named Chow Fun Yung, The Yellow Peril. He was an exageration of ridiculous pulp villains like Dr Fu Manchu. He gave us all spiffy yellow costumes and proper henchmen names tied in to various Asian menu items.

• I was Yam Pot,
• Sarah's wiry contortionist acrobat was Udon Noodle,
• Eric's unappreciated yes man was named Pig's Ear,
• John's aged, possum-playing, Henching Union organizer was named Thousand Year Egg,
• Steve's crooked beat cop was named Special Pork Surprise.

We were hired to rob a charity benefit. The supervillain's alter ego was the caterer of the event. He pretended to have nothing to do with the crime, and was an "innocent victim" of our attack, so he could have an alibi. That was a fairly clever way for the GM to keep the NPC supervillain from overshadowing us PC henchmen. Of course, it meant we were without guidance from da boss for most of the session, which meant we improvised... fairly poorly. The group tended to splinter, because half of us were dumb, and the rest incompetent. Jolly good fun.

I got beat up by Miss America - the superhero who once won a major beauty pagaent. I also got beat up by her Red, White and Blue Helicopter. I awoke in jail, and had a hard time getting reunited with the rest of the group. I was really good at getting in ta fings, but not so good at gettin out uv um. Once I got moving, though, it was hard to stop me, thanks to "Keep on truckin".