The Damage Patrol Returns

February 8, 2010 1 comment

The Damage Patrol was born from a Villains & Vigilantes game I ran for some friends in the early 1990s. If you’re not familiar with V&V, it’s a first-generation roleplaying game where not only stats, but origins and superpowers, are rolled randomly. You can end up with some ridiculous and downright silly characters. I don’t remember any of the characters, and we never played again after that one session, but someone decided that the name of the team should be The Damage Patrol. The name stuck; it became the name of our circle of friends.

One of the things the non-game, real world Damage Patrol did on a regular basis was watch movies. Mystery Science Theater 3000 was still on the air and still in the Joel years, and we’d get together on Saturday nights to watch new episodes. We’d go to movies in theaters and heckle them, out loud, and rather than get chucked out we’d get kudos from other people in the audience who laughed out loud at our antics. We were convinced we were funny, and that other people would find us funny, too.

We started putting together ideas for our own sketch comedy show. For a token fee, anyone could use the resources of the local public access stations, and we’d actually get on the air for people to see — at least, people in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Before we got it completely off the ground, we hit the perfect storm of group dissolution. Some of us got married. Some of us moved away because of our careers. Some of us got hit with personal problems. Some of us just lost momentum, or interest.

Twelve years later, I find myself back in Albuquerque, reconnecting with old friends, and the idea hit me: let’s put the band back together. Let’s do what we talked about all those years ago. Instead of doing it on public access, let’s do a web-based show. Albuquerque has become a huge film town in the intervening years, with television shows and movies being shot here every day of the year. At least one of us has actually produced a feature film. Others have done some acting, or done other jobs on set. Everyone seems to know someone who has some useful production-related skill.

After kicking around ideas we decided that just doing the old show wouldn’t work, so we’re going “meta”. It’s going to be a show about a bunch of middle-aged guys who wanted to do a public access show, who reunite years later to make a web show. It’s about being an aging geek. It’s about how lives change. It’s about why, at this point in our lives, we all have reasons we need to do this.

To bring things full circle, we’re using Primetime Adventures to help develop the script. It’s a game where you develop a fictional television show, except ours isn’t going to be fictional. We’re playing versions of ourselves, in the show and the game. We’re figuring out the overall story arc for the season, including character arcs. The game gives us the structure we need not only to get a script together, but to reconnect with each other and strengthen the bond we still share even though we haven’t been together in a dozen years.

It will be a while before you get to see an episode of the show, dear reader, but I’m going to be blogging about both the PTA game sessions and the production of the show itself. We’re all really excited about this, and I’m excited to be able to bring you along for the ride.

Illegitimi non carborundum,

Berin