Ages since I’ve posted – if it’s age or not, I don’t know, but I seem to have less energy at the moment. I’m also finding a lack of imagination when it comes to coming up with game ideas – hopefully this is only temporary. I had to come up with a game a couple of weeks ago, and I had very little inspiration. So I came up with a Zé Zé Bastide game (a female Indy working in South America in the 1930s) as they are by their nature quite linear and easy to write.
 
I had a jumble of ideas – all very familiar – and I put them through Dr Rotwang’s Adventure Funnel. You don’t know about the Adventure Funnel? It’s a great tool if you have lots of crazy ideas but are having trouble fitting them together. Check it out:
 
https://xbowvsbuddha.blogspot.com/2006/10/adventure-funnel.html
 
This is a long report on the game I came up with. It’s around 1600 words, so you don’t have to read it if 1930s treasure hunting pulp is not your thing, but you might find it amusing, and it beats looking at cat videos. (It’s basically a gauntlet game.) It starts in 1937 Havana…
 
Zé Zé and Jack Rodman (a rich playboy pilot and Zé Zé’s business partner) agreed to fly Jack’s old college buddy, Dexter Franklin (a NYC blue blood polo player) and his associates to Guatemala from their base in Havana. Franklin’s business associates included a taciturn Mexican called Solana (Zé Zé made him as a bodyguard) and a loopy British archaeologist Dr Dudley Chalk (who had disgusting personal habits!)
 
But they wanted Zé Zé to go as well. A local ‘fixer’, a short, plump Cuban called Pedro Fernandez, has told Franklin of Zé Zé’s exploits as a ‘recover of lost artifacts’. Dr Chalk explained that he has discovered the location of the capital city of the suposedly mythical Xalpe culture. If Zé Zé and Jack joined their exhibition as well as providing transport, they would be entitled to a cut of the profits. Over a meeting in the Hotel American bar, their percentage was agreed.
 
The next morning they met at the port where Jack’s Grumman Goose was waiting, with Casey the mechanic. Also with the party was an unwilling Pedro Fernandez who had been forced to join the expedition, as he knew too much about their plans to be left behind. (“But I’ve barely left Havana before, never mind Cuba!”)
 
A long flight to Guatamala included an unscheduled stop over in a diversion to a city some way from their destination. Here they met the true leader of the expedition, a Mexican businessman and sometime politician called Enrique Aviles. This very rich man had an obsession with mesoamerican antiquites and was used to getting his way. It became clear that Solana was his bodyguard rather than Dexter Franklin’s. Dex appologied to Jack Rodman, saying he presented himself as the expedition leader as Aviles valued his privacy. This was clearly a looting expedition rather than an archaelogical one.
 
Aviles ‘renegotiated’ the cut that Zé Zé, Jack and Casey would get from the loot, but softened the blow of a reduced percentage by giving Zé Zé a rather attractive and expensive broach. Was he getting sweet on her? Aviles had two Amercans in tow to help with the mules and the three local men who looked after them. O’Malley and Walsh looked like the sort of toughnecks who would sell their own mothers down the river if it suited them. They were secretly a couple of armed bank robbers on the lam. O’Malley was actually on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, but neither Casey, Jack or Zé Zé recognised them. (They got to roll on Mind but they all failed the roll.)
 
They flew on to the small riverside settlement in northern Guatemala which was their jumping off point into the rainforest. 
 
To add to his old service revolver, Jack took his scoped Mauser sniper rifle from the cache of weapons stored on the Goose. Zé Zé took her Winchester rifle alongside her Colt .45 automatic. Casey stayed behind with the Goose, which he slept in every night cuddling a bottle of bourbon and the team’s ‘acquired’ and highly illegal Bergmann M28 smg.
 
Up to now the game had been full of odd little clues that all was not as it seemed, with Dr Dudley Chalk acting ever more eccentric (and disgusting), Solana acting more menacing (particularly to poor ‘fish out of water’ Pedro Fernandez), Franklin acting more up-beat, and Aviles acted ever more imperiously. The trek through the forest took three days to reach the site of the Xalpe city. Dr Chalk was consulting a worn notebook of his and some local forest dwellers they had hired as guides, and eventually they reached a shallow river.
 
The guides would go on no further – “This is evil land, please do not cross the river!” Disgusting Dr Dudley started acting more odd, capering from foot to foot – “Bah! We don’t need those fellows, I know the way now! We are right on top of the city!!” They crossed the river, as the guides watched them go, shaking their heads sadly. But Dudley Chalk was right. They soon walked up rising ground, and cresting the rise they looked down into a river valley, with a the top of a worn pyramid visible above the encroaching trees.
 
The shady yanks unpacked the supplies from the hobbled mules revealing that one mule carried dynamite. Aviles explained they were going to blow the top off of the pyramid. “But these pyramids are usually solid,” said Zé Zé. “Not this one!” said Aviles. “Don’t worry, the two Americans,” he pointed at O’Malley and Walsh, “know what they are doing when it comes to explosives. That’s why they are here.” The top of the pyramid, the weathered remains of the shrine and the seemingly solid floor it stood on were blown off. A shaft dropped straight down into the dark. Dexter and the two other Americans secured a rope and dropped one end down the shaft. Aviles handed Zé Zé an electric torch. “Would you?”
 
Zé Zé Bastide led the way, and Jack Rodman followed. One by one the others came down. And then the fun started. Up to now the game had been one of rising tension and growing unease on the part of both Alison and her PC Zé Zé. Now all hell broke loose.
 
At the bottom of the shaft there was a natural tunnel leading off to the left. All could hear the sound of running water and the chitter of something, actually several somethings. They disturbed a colony of bats, and Walsh got bitten as they swirled past them. There was a stream flowing into the passage from a cavern on the right. Bursting from the cavern came a man-sized bipedal bat, which attacked the rear of the party. O’Malley got ripped up by the creature who then turned on to Alviles. Little Pedro Fernandez screamed like a little girl while nevertheless bravely advancing and thrusting a flaming torch into the monster. This gave enough time for Aviles and the others to pump it full of lead.
 
The passage was now ankle deep in water from the stream. Something was drinking the water up ahead. It stood up to show in the torchlight it was a 7 foot tall giant centipede. That accounted for Solana, and it also took another nibble at O’Malley before it was put down. Soon after, an already weakened O’Malley died from the poison of the centipede.
 
Dexter turned to Jack. “I’m sorry I got you into this Jack. I only got involved in this myself as I needed the money. I owe people back home big time. I was paid to throw some polo matches, but it all went wrong.”
 
“WHAT! Cheating at polo is a thing now!!?”
 
They pressed on, the water now reaching their thighs. Then the huge water snake reared up out of the water and  attempted to swallow Walsh whole. The bullets thudding into its body caused a death spasm that saw it crush Walsh’s neck.
 
Pressing on they came to a massive cavern with a stone bridge over a bottomless gorge. Here they were confronted by mesoamerican warriors with big bulging eyes (an adaptation to their underground lifestyle). They had found the mythical Xalpe. After some angry shouting the Xalpe charged. The party shot them to pieces. Crossing the bridge the ran across a natural cavern while Xalpe shot at them with bows from cave openings high up in the cavern walls. Alives took an arrow but kept up with the others.
 
At the end of the cavern was a worked stone archway and they rushed through it into the shelter of a short passage with wall paintings depicting Xalpe worshiping a giant spider. They passed through the passage into another smaller cavern. Here they found some six Xalpe carrying a deer, exiting from a tunnel into the cavern. “That’s our way out”, said Zé Zé. The Xalpe hunting party were freaked out and threw spears, which is when Alives bought the farm. Pedro Fernandez tried to stabilize him but to no avail. So Pedro took his pistol and ammo, as well as his wallet. The hunting party fled at the first gunshot, leaving behind the deer.
 
Pedro handed Zé Zé the wallet. “We’ll need travelling expenses. You keep it.” He trusted her to survive.
 
Across from the tunnel was a stone wall with a huge painted wall. And Dr Dudley Chalk stood infront of it, chanting. Zé Zé was really starting to hate this man.
 
The wall suddenly rolled down into the floor revealing a chamber with lit torches and some Xalpe women looking startled. Dominating the chamber was a huge stone statute of a spider some 15 foot high. All its eyes were emeralds, and the spider was posed as if laying an egg, and on the floor was a huge emerald egg – the biggest emerald Zé Zé had ever seen. The women wailed and something large, in the darker rear of the chamber moved. It moved into the light. It was a gigantic spider.
 
As the spider attacked a surprised Dudley Chalk, Pedro once again fought down his fear – greed will out – and rushed passed the spider and grabbed the egg. And rushed back to the side of Zé Zé and Jack, as Chalk was bitten and encased in silk. The four remaining members of the party fled up the tunnel the hunters had left by, chased by the spider. They ran up the passage, and eventually found themselves back above ground.
 
 Zé Zé looked in the wallet Pedro had taken from Aviles corpse. There was a letter in there, a letter Aviles had written. She quickly realised that with a sample of his handwriting you could get a forger to write another letter, giving Zé Zé, Jack and Pedro permission to take selected artifacts from Aviles secret collection in Mexico City.
 
And that was the next game.