Rogue Crabs and Mechacrabs

When AssHoTech management banned crabfighting, they neglected to think about one important ramification of busting up crabfights. Crabs don’t neccessarily like leading lives of gladiatorial combat, so there is always the risk they will run away. When workers are scrambling to hide an ongoing match, crabs often take the opportunity to make a run for it. Sometimes workers intentionally let their crabs go during a bust, so there will be less evidence of wrongdoing. And finally, fired employees often maliciously release their crabs to get revenge on the company. As a result, AssHoTech’s campus is crawling with “rogue” crabs.

No one has done a definitive, peer-reviewed study on the intelligence of fighting crabs, but according to AssHoTech’s biotech guys, the average fighting crab’s brain-to-body-mass ratio should give it the intelligence of about a seven-year-old kid -- a cold-blooded, khat-chewing, video-game-addled seven-year-old kid. So it should not be too surprising that AssHoTech’s rogue crabs have exterminated every competing vermin in the building -- rats, mice, roaches and all. They manage to feed themselves quite well by raiding the cafeteria and even conducting daring, daylight raids on workers’ bag lunches. They’re also managed to keep themselves fairly well-armed by plundering the office armories of workers in crabfighting rings.

There is some evidence that the crabs are even building their own fortifications in the unseen spaces of the AssHoTech campus. The discovery of a large dirt-dauber-like nest in the sub-basement of Building D caused quite a stir in the company. No one knows where the crabs got their building material (contrary to popular opinion, the nest was not made out of Liquid Paper), but given the weapons caches inside, it was clear that crabs once lived here. Contractors later found 25 well-cultivated heads of Chia Pot growing in a little-noticed roof gutter, but it is still not clear whether this was grown by crabs or humans.

After studying the problem and attempting various traditional solutions (fumigation, traps, fly paper etc.) AssHoTech decided to approach the problem in true biotech fashion. Rather than wage an asymmetric war against rogue crabs, AssHoTech engineered and mass produced a tiny robot -- a MechaCrab -- that could fight and eliminate the crab on its own level. Unfortunately, the company did not tap into the wisdom of actual crabfighters in launching the project, and as a result, the MechaCrab is only a fair-to-middling fighter.

Both rogue crabs and MechaCrabs present a danger to crabfighters. Chance encounters with either kind of enemy crab will lead to a sudden, unexpected and potentially deadly combat situation.

Simulating Rogues and MechaCrabs-- Once you get a good crabfighting ring going (say, four to six people) you may want to appoint a RogueMaster.

The RogueMaster’s job is fairly simple. Whenever someone loses their crab due to being “caught” in a crabfight, the RogueMaster takes over that player’s crab (it might be a good idea to keep a file folder for all the character sheets you collect). That crab can later return for a surprise attack on any player.

How does a RougeMaster launch a surprise attack? Just fold the rogue crab’s character sheet in half (or, if you want to be fancy, fold it into an origami crab) and write “ROGUE” on it in bold letters. Leave it in a common area (say, on top of a copier). The first player who encounters the crab must fight it, right where it was found. The RogueMaster gets to control the rogue crab throughout the combat.

If you do not have any rogue crabs (or want to give your players an easy challenge) you can surprise them with a MechaCrab. The MechaCrab has very simple characteristics, listed below:

MechaCrab

Strength: 5 Dexterity: 5 Endurance: 5

Armor: 10 Movement: 5 Hit Points: 5

Weapons: Pointer, 2 firecrackers

Playing Fair -- The RogueMaster should be a fair-minded (but mischeivous) person, and should not manage any crab except rogues and MechaCrabs. To avoid accusations of meanness or bias, Rogues should never place crabs on another person’s desk or in any area that seems to target a specific individual. Common areas like stairwells are a good place to leave a crab. Little-used closets and storage rooms are even better. A rogue might lie in wait for months before someone chances across it.

Tactics -- A rogue will fight until the RogueMaster determines it is seriously damaged, and then it will try to retreat. A MechaCrab will battle to the death.

Experience Points and Prizes -- There is no monetary prize for fighting outside the crabfighting ring. However, any time a crab survives rogue or MechaCrab combat, it acquires an Experience Point. Rogues also acquire one Experience Point for each combat they survive. Mechacrabs do not learn from past experience: they do not have either the software or the hardware for acquiring Experience Points.