Family Feud
                       A Live-Action Roleplaying Event 
                                      by
                                 Alan Schwartz


INTRODUCTION

In the beginning, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. And the Adversary moved across the face of
the water, and said "Let there be light" and there was light.

You preferred it dark.

FOUR THOUSAND YEARS LATER...

Well, John wasn't the perfect narrator, but he got most of it right.
There's a book sealed with seven seals, and when the last one is broken,
the four Horsemen will ride forth to scourge mankind, and the Beast will
arise. The four archangels will blow seven trumpets, and come together
as a mighty force under the Bright Lady, and make war on you and your
cousins. And, according to John, they will triumph in the dawn of a
new world.

Right.

Of course, there were a couple of things that you know and John didn't.
The Adversary endowed humanity with free will, and so the triumph foretold
can not be absolutely assured. Indeed, the true victory, your victory,
requires only that the minions of the Adversary be prevented from
fulfilling the prophecy and assembling their forces. But failing that,
the final outcome depends on the decisions of chosen mortals present at
the time, decision which must be made without knowledge of the battle
being raged around them. And mortals are susceptible to persuasion.

AND ONE NIGHT, TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER THAT..

One advantage of being a Principality is access to good hardware. Although
the King prefers to use prophets and televangelists to communicate with
humanity, when it comes to intrainfernal memos, email is more usual:

   From: EternalKing@gehennom.com
   To: <recipient list suppressed>
   Subject: The time is at hand

   > Very well, let it commence

   And behold, let the Word go out to all the Powers and Principalities of
   darkness. The Sixth Seal has been broken and the time of the final
   battle is nigh at hand.

   The place determined where the Adversary must be met and defeated
   is no Earthly city, but at the juncture of Earth and mind, electrons
   and data.

   mush.pennmush.org 4201

The message came as quite a shock, but its import was clear. Armaggeddon
is at hand, and for some reason, the final battle is to be fought on
M*U*S*H, a mud that you've been a regular player on!  Unfortunately,
this means that your usual maleific perceptions of goodness and evil,
mortal and immortal, and even male and female won't work. After all, on
the internet, nobody knows that you're a god.  (Well, you deserve to be).

Accordingly, you're going to have to be very careful. Supposedly, both you
and your angelic foes are forbidden to reveal yourself to mortals, lest
you give one of the chosen knowledge of the apocalypse, but you figure
that any such revelation would do them more harm than you. After all,
no one believes in angels any more, and wouldn't know one, so there's no
reason you couldn't pass yourself off as an angel if you thought it would
be to your advantage. On the other hand, if you reveal yourself to one
of the Adversary's lieutenants, you could seriously endanger the final
battle, and your King doesn't forgive or forget.  But somehow you'll
have to identify your compatriots in order to prepare for the conflict...

A WORD ABOUT MIRACLES

Although your powers are severely limited by being funneled through
a MUSH player, you may still have certain abilities that you can call
upon. In general, the strength of these abilities depends crucially on the
number of sympathetic witnesses and followers present when you use them.
That is, your powers are more effective in the presence of other immortals
on your side. They are also more effective in the presence of mortal MUSH
followers who believe in your cause or your opinions (but remember that
if the chosen mortals learn of the final battle, the ramifications are
likely to be serious...)  A follower, on M*U*S*H, is literally that --
someone who has typed 'follow <yourname>' and thus appears on your list
of followers.