My normal group had to take a break from our usual game as two of our players were having their baby (James and Mary West welcomed Samuel West into our lives at 10:40, August 30). I volunteered to run a one-off game of In Nomine, a game NONE of us had ever actually played but some of us owned.The players are instructed to make demons who owe allegiance to either Kobal (Prince of Dark Humor), Nybbus (Prince of Media) or Malphas (Prince of Factions). Not surprising for my friends, 3 chose Kobal and one chose Nybbus.The cast:Brogak, "Jacqueline Diamond," a Balseraph of Media, described by the player as "Connie Chung from hell." The demon vessel has the Role of professional media producer.Ftaghu, "Lenny Stone," a Habbalah of Dark Humor, described by the player as "Don Rickles from hell." The demon vessel has the Role of terrible stand-up comedian.Hateriel, "Ang Ri," a Djinn of Dark Humor, described by the player as "Janeane Garafolo from hell." The demon vessel has the Role of Starbucks barrista. She is so full of vitriol and bile that she can literally spit acid at people.Obfuscatator, a Shedim of Dark Humor. No description, since the demon has no vessel (body) and jumps from one body to the next.Intro:In the briefing room in hell, where the water cooler is empty and the coffee is burned to a thick crust at the bottom of the pot, an agent of both Nybbus and Kobal presents the task that the group must complete on earth. A human destined to further the goals of the diabolicals has pissed off the wrong people (again). While the Symphony won't remove him from creation on its own, some of the Princes worry about divine or demonic intervention. See, part of the problem is that this guy in question alternately serves both Powers. He acts as a unifier for God's faithful but at the same time he spreads hate, intolerance and says the dumbest shit imaginable.That's right, the task is to defend Pat Robertson.(I hand out a small dossier I worked up. It includes a picture of Pat Robertson squinting his eyes as he prays for the death of a Supreme Court Justice and has the address of Regent University and the Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach.)The group arrives on earth in the green room of a black metal club in Springfield (roughly 3 hours away from Virginia Beach). Obfuscatator immediately has to find a body. He chooses to take control of Mezzadurus, the lead singer of the black metal band Blood Storm.Lenny immediately jumps in with "Hey Blood Storm, Kiss called. They want their act back!"Obfuscatator doesn't know the songs or how to play guitar, so he walks off stage, sparking a riot among the crowd (since Blood Storm had only played a few songs prior to their arrival). As the place as torn apart by angry metal-heads, he walks out of the club saying "My work here is done."Unsure of how to get to Viginia Beach, the demons hail a cab. The Shedim possesses him and they drive off. It suddenly becomes apparent that Obfuscatator is a "broken" character. [The player assumed that since he'd be jumping around bodies, he didn't need to take much in the way of Corporeal traits. According to my reading of the rules, he can take 2 body hits before getting knocked out. To make matters worse, he took the "Twitchy" Discord at 3, so he subtracts 3 from all his Agility and Precision rolls, meaning he has to get under 1 on 2D6 to do just about anything.] Obfuscatator the spastic demon promptly gets everyone involved in a car accident entering the freeway.At this point, the Habbalah and the Balseraph decide to try things their way. They convince the driver of the beemer they hit that Ang is in labor and they need to get to the hospital. It works pretty well, until mid-way along the way they tell him that the one hospital they can go to is 3 hours away. He pulls over at a closer hospital and gets acid spat in his face before his is pushed into an oncoming ambulance. The servitors of Kobal have done their daily allowance of perverse humor in the form of irony.Back on the road, Lenny tries to stir up some road rage in the other drivers around him. He targets a nice old lady and attempts to inflict an insane rage on her. He fails and the fury doubles back on him. He rolls down the window and yells obsenities at the old woman, unsuccessfully tries to jerk the steering wheel out of Ang's hands and kicks the dashboard repeatedly with impotent rage. The glove compartment has a handgun. A highway shooting spree ensues. He tried unsuccessfully to make the driver of a fuel tanker full of rage as well, so the scene ends with a 30 car pile-up and billowing smoke from the crashed tanker. Jacqueline uses her Song of Shields to make the smoke temporarily cover up the disturbance to the symphony so that everyone can get out of the area before angels show up.In Virginia Beach, the CBN building is protested by various "liberal nutjobs." To get past them into the building, Lenny creates a fleeting illusion of Dick Cheney kicking a puppy and running down the street. With the majority of the protestors chasing after an illusionary VP, they approach the building. The Shedim takes over the body of the security guard inside, who lets them in.Exploring the building prior to the taping of an episode of the 700 Club, they suspect that an assassin has already entered the building. Long story short, they are waiting in Pat Robertson's dressing room (one in the body of a make-up artist and the rest hiding in his closet). They have decided that the best way to protect Pat from bodily harm or being discredited is to kidnap him...It turns out that the Archangel Michael, who is from the "burning bush school" of divine retribution, has also decided that Pat needs to be protected. His Cherubim bodyguards assume that the demons who "come out of the closet" in the dressing room are here to assassinate the minister. While one rushes him to safety, the other one engages the group in celestial combat. They basically end up standing around this poor angel and kick him until he's "dead."When they catch up with Pat, he's getting prepped for the taping and is in the studio. There are a pair of other angels there who, it is revealed, want to discredit Robertson (killing him is against the symphony and would make him a martyr to a misguided cause). This doesn't fly very well with the demons, so they end up using a possessed security guard to rough up the caterer, a boom operator, a camera man and to tazer a make-up artist.Lenny is still invisible and in celestial form, and spots a sniper on a catwalk. He appears and causes the would-be assassin to feel debilitating depression and become useless. Using the sniper rifle to look at the audience members filing in to see if there are other assassins, Lenny's player scores a 666 on his role (demonic intervention) and notices that one of the people entering the studio has neglected to take off his pink triangle pin on his jacket, marking him as not of Pat's Flock. He's also clutching something in his pocket, so Lenny takes the shot.Demonic powers are used to cover up the shooting and Ang uses her acid to melt the body and rolls the studio coffee cart over the residual human goo on the floor. Jacqueline, meanwhile, has removed the actual producer of the show and taken over production. She re-arranges the shooting schedule so that the anti-D&D rant is moved up to the beginning of the program. Obfuscatator possesses Pat Robertson himself, right under the nose of his angelic bodyguard.Their mission basically accomplished, they get in a little bit of personal satisfaction by reversing Pat Robertson's view on role-playing games in front of the studio audience. It never airs, but confuses a lot of the faithful.[Conclusion: a very successful one-shot. Everyone was laughing constantly, which was what I was going for. I know that In Nomine can be played "straight" but with my group, that's a challenge anyway. Darkly humorous seemed to be a good fit. The funniest thing was watching character try to achieve goals that were totally different from the players (namely, "protect Pat Robertson"). They told me afterwards that it was very challenging, actually.]