OK so I had the chance to play Escape from Tentacle City with Brian, Josh, and Liz and boy did we have fun! I couldn't have asked for a better group of players. I don't have time to write up everything that happened (everyone else feel free to fill in), but here are a couple of highlights:

- a group of starving artists get caught in the elevator shaft of the Space Needle, and have to climb out with tentacles coming after them; the pot-smoking sculptor finally convinces his friends that "it's not the herb, man!"

- the group of janitors, outraged at the management cutting their pay and health care, march to the CEO's office to occupy it. Once there, in one of my favorite scenes in an rpg ever, they actually break in and take the CEO and his secretary captive (they "loot" them, in game mechanical terms). The outraged CEO is gagged with duct tape and used as a shield when the tentacles attack :)

- One of the janitors, paranoid and waiting for an alien attack his whole life, has his practice of carrying a special acid-based water gun entirely vindicated. His purpose in life fulfilled, he makes a heroic sacrifice, enabling the last janitor to flee;

- the photographer who always wanted to make the perfect film gets his wish as he's eaten by tentacles, thereby saving the pothead sculptor to make a final attempt to escape;

- Queen Voldemort the witch has a total meltdown after consuming and then communing with the tentacles, transforming into one herself;

- defiant Japanese foreign exchange students, outraged that their education is being disrupted, enter a building on campus to confront the evildoers. They promptly get stuck, one of them gets eaten, and the other one is only able to leave when the brave Yukio makes a heroic sacrifice.

Three characters successfully escaped to the helicopter, one janitor, the pot-smoking sculptor, and one Japanese exchange student. The sculptor promptly shared his MJ with the rest of the refugees, asking "I guess it's too late to go back for my sculpture now, huh?"

Observations:

We ran into trouble with the group of witches, who consistently rolled well while the tentacles kept rolling poorly, so that they stayed in the same area looting it again and again for useful items, which further increased their ability to succeed in rolls. Perhaps there should be a rule that you can't loot the same location more than twice in a row?

The game took much longer than anticipated - not in a bad way, because it was enjoyable the whole time, but it was a bit longer than we bargained for (Brian had to leave before the final escape, sorry Brian!). To speed things up, perhaps start with the global threat already at 3 or 4, and have only 2 boxes of stress per character?

Overall it was a great session and a very enjoyable game that I hope I'll get the opportunity to play again sometime!

As always I'd love to hear observations from the other players...

Best Wishes, Manu