Pico is essentially A Bug's Life: the RPG, so if you get that esthetic, you already understand this game and there were lots of cute moments as we described bugs using the leftovers of human society to furnish their homes and adorn themselves. I pitched this taster session as a traveling troupe of professional wrestlers arriving at the town of Covered Hollow (meta: it was a tire track left in the mud by a motorbike, which was like an entire enchanted valley to the bugs.) We got off to a good start as the manager/promotor of the troupe tried to hype them upon arrival and immediately failed their roll, so the welcoming party looked behind them at the huge, flashy carnival that was just arriving and explained that the welcoming committee was for the carnival, not the troupe!
The troupe itself consisted of Bagulus the manager; Legs, the long, crawly bug; Splag, the transparent
protoplasm; Calasnap, a big dependable beetle; and The Mimis, a swarm of glowflies who acted as one individual. They immediately set about sabotaging the carnival, so as not to lose their place in the spotlight. but this exposed a heist caper, with the Ringmaster of the carnival working in conjunction with the Mayor of town to steal the precious gems from the vault!
The sabotage of the carnival was completed by an unwelcome magpie who flew in to complicate matters as a result of a twist on a dice roll and became the next major threat faced; the troupe managed to kill two birds with one stone though and got the magpie to choke on the Ringmaster, neatly neutralising both threats, for the time being at least. The Ringmaster and the magpie would both return to challenge the troupe later!
With the dust settling, the troupe took over the Mayor's home, an old waxed-cardboard Happy Meal box: they were living in a literal McMansion! From here, Bagulus challenged the Mayor for their position, opening up a race to be elected, while Splag trailed the Mayor to a secret tunnel in the industrial part of town that lead to the vault! Meanwhile, the Ringmaster threw their name into the rin to be elected mayor and started a smear campaign, ably fought by The Mimis who could act as a flying, glowing billboard!
Legs used their superior speed and appendages to pass out lots of fliers very quickly, encouraging citizens to vote for Bagulus for Mayor, but as these were hastily drawn on the back of a 10% discount coupon for the local store, a crowd soon formed downtown demanding their bargains. At about this time, Splag returned with a now captive Mayor, at the same time as the dam broke and a flood threatened to drown all the bugs in Covered Hollow!
The last act saw the troupe co-ordinating efforts to save the town, with Calasnap serving as the foundation for a new dam, Bagulus cutting a drainage trench out of the hollow and Legs ferrying stranded children to safety, while Splag and The Mimis faced off against the Ringmaster in a final showdown using a pike (the fish, not the weapon.) Once the town was saved and the mayoral race was decided, with the help of some newly-unionised termites, we skipped forward a few days to the opening of the Covered Hollow Water Park (the residents having decided they liked the new look of the downtown area) and most of the troupe decided to settle down here, with only The Mimis deciding to continue to travel and increase until they were truly omniscient and omnipresent!
This was a great fun game, but a lot of the bulk of the character sheets, focusing on special abilities & powers, barely came into it: each of these was so niche and tangential that even trying to tailor the situations to provide opportunities to use them didn't really work. The basic mechanics were a lot of fun though and the aspects still served to provide narrative bonus dice and health tracks, so they weren't a complete loss. It's definitely a scenario I would offer again and a game I would look into running as more than a one shot, it was just pure enjoyment from start to finish!
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