kengr

The Saturday before Thanksgiving was supposed to feature relaxing fun and games at a small party. That did happen; it was fun, great people, great food, and the attendees got to see something very, very unusual: me in a skirt. And thereby hangs this tale: You see, I left the skirt I intended to wear at home, two states away. Not a huge deal – there's an Earthbound Trading Company store at a nearby mall, and that's exactly my style. We got there, I'm trying on skirts – and a shot rang out. There was a lot of screaming elsewhere in the mall. Additional shots. The staff quickly closed the gates and hustled the customers into the back rooms. Here's a local news report with the details, but the short version is "Idiots gonna id."

 

But sitting around back there for an hour started giving me ideas. Game ideas. In an active shooter situation, the standard procedure is "Escape, Evade, Engage" – run, hide, and fight back only as a last resort. But that's real life; since when have "run" or "hide" been options for RPG characters? If the guy broke into the store, GURPS (or other RPG of your choice) characters sure wouldn't passively wait for the gunman to kill them. "Engage" would be operative then if it hadn't been before. I started evaluating the stuff around me for use as a possible last-ditch weapon. And there's actually an amazing assortment of useful items. What would our characters from a modern game find?

 

The most promising item in that back room was a batch of 5-foot-long steel poles from a disassembled display; quarterstaff skill would be handy. There were sign holders bereft of their signs; getting whacked in the face by the base part would definitely cramp some gunman's aim. There were the usual office fixtures like chairs; a metal chair can do some serious damage. There was a coat rack that I would not want to be hit upside the head with. There was a rack of bedspread-sized cloth things (they may, in fact, have been bedspreads) that could be flung to engulf and disorient someone; one of the stops at a Halloween Haunted Rally I volunteered for long ago demonstrated how effective that is. Think store fixtures (even a store that sells plush bunnies is going to need racks to display them and signs to advertise them), office items, and all kinds of things that could be used to put a crimp in some random shooter's plans. And that's not to mention merchandise – imagine what's in the back room of Williams-Sonoma! 

 

Also, something many people don't know is that malls, especially two-level malls, frequently have a positively labyrinthine network of back passages. These would be useful for scenarios that involve evacuating trapped civilians or for some tactical maneuvering. Characters with wall-walking or similar superpowers could get to some very advantageous places. Malls frequently have holiday decorations that could be used offensively.

 

The next time you walk through a mall, look around you and speculate. What you see will make you grateful that most people are not homicidal.