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Tropes

Quote

"I have to go into work. The Protestants are trying to kill my detectives."

Andre (as Big Bill), summing up the premise on his way out of bed (Summer Service 06)

PITF is an early-1990s network drama about the Paranatural Incident Task Force, a tiny FBI unit staffed by four people nobody else wanted: a true believer raised in a UFO church, a divorcing skeptic, a constipated con artist with a badge, and a Vietnam-era spook with drugs in his teeth. It is also, depending on which side of the screen you sit on, a Monster of the Week campaign run by Andre for Rita, Zack, Ezra and Dante, with a rotating bench of guest players. See The show for how seriously the table takes the framing (answer: there are credits).

Across six arcs the team investigates a moth in Virginia, worms in Massachusetts, ape-men under a potato company in Georgia, body snatchers in Utah, a "Grey" in a Rhode Island attic, and then the moth again, because nothing in Radford ever stays dealt with. Along the way they fire one tactical nuclear weapon, lose rental cars at an alarming rate, and live through a 1992 election that Ross Perot wins.

Somewhere in the middle there is also an anime. It has its own section.

Examples below are sorted alphabetically and cited by episode. Beware of unmarked spoilers: this page gives away every twist the campaign has, including the one the players did not know about.

A–C

D–F

G–L

  • Gallows Humor: Constant. Arm-in-a-cooler jokes, jokes about eating the corpse, Vietnam banter about getting shot in the ass. (Radford Horror 06, Summer Service 01, Walkers 03)
  • Ghost Town: Ballard empties out a few residents at a time, leaving dust and an unattended City Hall. Then Roosevelt goes dark. (Walkers 06, Walkers 08)
  • Gilded Cage: The Biz at the Hotel Metropol: pampered, guarded, not allowed to leave. (Radford Horrors 01)
  • Gold Fever: Everyone pockets gold bars as "civil forfeiture" while Clive looks on. Huell and the Biz take enough to slow themselves down. (Appalachia 09)
  • Gone Horribly Right: The Biz's awkward Letterman interview leaves him less hated and considerably more famous, which is not what a man with a KGB contact wants. (Walkers 01)
  • Government Conspiracy: A presidential task force, a rooftop watcher, SKYHOOK classifications, a mystery group with an unnamed commanding officer, and whoever keeps sending the men in volcanologist suits. (Radford Horror 01, Summer Service 03, Summer Service 06)
  • The Greys: The Greys of Rhode Island, including a naked one on the roof with a VSS rifle. See "Scooby-Doo" Hoax. (Roulet Estate 01)
  • Haunted House: An isolated Victorian in the snow, with secret chimney passages. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Healing Hands: Andrew's Lay On Hands, which works by transferring the harm to Andrew. (Radford Horror 03, Appalachia 03)
  • Hell Hotel: The Pay n' Stay. Bedbugs on the first visit. On the second, Kurt hoses both rooms with pesticide before anyone unpacks, and a rabid mouse bites a guest anyway. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 05, Radford Horrors 02)
  • Heroic BSoD: Huell is genuinely sad to learn cryptids are real. (Radford Horror 08)
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Huell fills all seven harm boxes going back into a burning church to free the Biz from under the moth. He lives. (Radford Horror 07)
    • Coyote's APC run on the substation looks like one, until the team rights the overturned vehicle and finds him alive inside. (Walkers 09)
  • Hillbilly Horrors: Invoked by the table on arrival in Georgia, mostly through Deliverance jokes. (Appalachia 01)
  • Historical Domain Character: Perot, Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Giuliani, Letterman and Bigelow all appear or loom. Andre looked up Perot's voice; Dante says it came out as a D&D goblin. (Walkers 02, Roulet Estate 03)
  • Horror Hunger: Andrew's blood craving. Faced with a pool of a hostage's blood he takes a penalty for the whole fight rather than drink, then licks his hands clean afterwards while the Biz watches. (Roulet Estate 03)
  • Hostage Situation: A naked "alien" in a Brooks Pharmacy demands a Range Rover and that all police come inside nude. (Roulet Estate 03)
  • I Want to Believe: Andrew hopes it is aliens every time. After the moth, the Biz would rather it were not. (Walkers 03)
  • Improvised Weapon: A toilet tank lid. (Summer Service 05)
  • In Medias Res: The agents wake hungover with no memory of the night. (Roulet Estate 01)

  • Insistent Terminology: The party did not carjack that couple. "Commandeer" is the preferred nomenclature. (Radford Horror 06)

    • It is not a spear gun.

    Quote

    "I had a piece of sporting goods equipment on me. Not a weapon: sporting goods equipment, purchased from a sporting goods store."

    Dante (as Kurt) (Radford Horrors 03)

  • Jump Scare: The Biz shrieks at an arm, four floors underground. (Appalachia 08)

  • Jurisdiction Friction: Sheriff Roosevelt is wary of feds and has his own theory.

    Quote

    "It's not fishing. It's perverts. You don't go fishing for perverts."

    Andre (as Sheriff Roosevelt) (Radford Horror 02)

    • Inverted in Rhode Island, where Officer Todd "officially surrenders operational command" to Andrew, who would rather he had not. (Roulet Estate 03)
    • Kill and Replace: The skinwalkers grow copies from tissue; Andrew's is wearing his outfit. Half a high school is missing. See Replication. (Walkers 07, Walkers 08)
    • Kill It with Fire: The moth hates it; a thrown bottle of Everclear turns the fight, and the church burns with the creature padlocked inside. (Radford Horror 07)
    • Dante's verdict by Rhode Island: "Always with the flamethrowers." (Roulet Estate 01)
    • Lampshade Hanging: The table notes that Spud Hut stocks every ingredient known to man and serves only potato. (Appalachia 02)
    • Ezra, taking stock of the cases so far: "I feel like it's been two things every time, actually." (Roulet Estate 02)
    • Language Barrier: The Finnish Hare Krishna monk, whom the party keeps taking with them. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02)
    • Laser-Guided Amnesia: The white powder that falls on Utah, and the gap it leaves. (Walkers 09, Roulet Estate 01)
    • Let's Split Up, Gang!: "I like how we split the party, like, immediately in this campaign," says Ezra, in a session that splits it three times. Andre's opinion of the practice is that it kills all your players. (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 06, Summer Service 03)
    • Locked Room Mystery: Amanda's bedroom is locked from the inside and the way out was up. (Radford Horror 01)
    • A comatose boy vanishes after being checked on. (Radford Horror 06)
    • Lovecraft Country: A New England fishing town with a strange church and something in the water. Dante is calling it Innsmouth by the first episode. (Summer Service 01)

M–P

Q–S

T–Z

  • Tampering with Food and Drink: Communion wine, peach preserves, tap water. Do not consume anything in this show that did not come from a McDonald's. (Summer Service 01, Appalachia 01, Roulet Estate 02)
  • Tempting Fate: Kurt tells the major to bail out if a vehicle starts rising into the sky. (Walkers 09)
  • Time Skip: The Rhode Island epilogue jumps months ahead. (Roulet Estate 03)
  • Toilet Humor: The Biz's digestive saga runs from the first episode's gas-station corn dogs onward and has its own medical subplot about fiber. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 08, Appalachia 06)
  • Tomato in the Mirror: The moth calls Andrew "changeling", and Wilbur tells him that he of all people should understand. By Rhode Island he is wondering whether he died and whether he is a hybrid. (Radford Horror 07, Roulet Estate 03)
  • Too Dumb to Live: Huell throws a brick through the police station's glass door while Kurt is still picking the lock. (Walkers 08)
  • Total Party Kill: Narrowly missed in the church: every PC reaches critical harm, and the table calls it a "half-TPK". (Radford Horror 07)
  • Town with a Dark Secret: Radford (disappearances, a curfew, a curse rumor), Marblehead (the church runs the council) and Ballard (the town leadership is not the town leadership). (Radford Horror 01, Summer Service 04, Walkers 02)
  • Uncanny Valley: Upright horses and coyotes that stand too still. (Walkers 07)
  • Unreliable Narrator: The replica Andrew gives the team a cleaned-up account of what happened in the gym. (Walkers 07)
  • Weirdness Magnet: The team. By the last arc even the motel has rabies. (Radford Horrors 02)
  • Wham Episode: The original Andrew turns up naked and sprinting at 35 mph, the replica is unmasked, a farmhouse is launched into the sky, and the community center goes into a sinkhole. (Walkers 09)

  • Wham Line: The moth, burning, cut off mid-sentence about the ones who made it. (Radford Horror 07)

    Quote

    "Tell me everything you know about the humanists."

    Andre (as Yeltsin) (Roulet Estate 03)

  • "Where Are They Now" Epilogue: One vignette per PC after the task force is dissolved: workers' comp, Quantico, a labor camp, and a desk. (Roulet Estate 03)

  • Zerg Rush: The worm convoy rams the plant fence and is cut down by pop-up guns. (Summer Service 06)

Tropes by character

Andrew Howard

Played by Rita. See Andrew Howard.

  • Agent Mulder: The believer of the unit, raised in the Aetherius Society.
  • Bishōnen: The table, Primenthol Greengrass and assorted NPCs will not let his looks go. (Appalachia 02)
  • Can't Hold His Liquor: His first hangover is a plot point. (Roulet Estate 01)
  • Friend to All Living Things: Harvey loves him and Nancy follows his trail into a war zone. (Appalachia 02, Walkers 09)
  • Naïve Newcomer: A desk agent on his first field job. (Radford Horror 05, Appalachia 06)
  • Tomato in the Mirror: Changeling, "special horse", possible hybrid. He begins to sense that his church does not know what it is talking about. (Roulet Estate 03)
  • Trauma Conga Line: Shot by a teammate, airsick, sleepwalked, bitten, killed, replaced, resurrected. (Radford Horror 07, Appalachia 03, Walkers 08)
  • Unwitting Test Subject: He was X-rayed and never shown the films. He concludes that he is the test case. (Roulet Estate 03)

Huell Kendrick

Played by Zack. See Huell Kendrick.

Dick "the Biz" Baxter

Played by Ezra. See Dick "The Biz" Baxter.

Kurt Larson

Played by Dante. See Kurt Larson.

Daniel Webster

Played by Ezra. See Daniel Webster.

  • Agent Scully: The skeptical minder. (Radford Horrors 02)
  • By-the-Book Cop: Shiny shoes, a notebook, and a recording habit. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)
  • Conspiracy Theorist: The mundane kind, which in this setting makes him the one who is wrong. (Radford Horrors 02)
  • Naïve Newcomer: The new boss of a team that has already seen a moth, a nuke and a portal. He insists on sharing a room with Kurt. (Radford Horrors 02)
  • Straight Man: Named on the spot, to Ezra's audible panic, and assigned to a team of weirdos. (Radford Horrors 01)

Tropes for Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable

Non-canon

Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable is a one-shot in a different rules system, framed as a 1992 OVA airing on television inside the PITF fiction. Nothing in this section happened to the task force. All examples are from the one-shot.

  • Big Eater: Derk hands a vendor $100 by mistake and receives 98 hot dog tacos and $2 change.
  • Cliffhanger: Derk comes down in the ocean and is last seen outside a McDonald's in Wisukonshin, spending his last two dollars on a call home.
  • Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Mirabeth, in theory.
  • Con Man: Mirabeth invents an essential-oil MLM, the oil pyramid, and takes a $400 down payment from a mother with a sobbing son.
  • Cool Old Lady: A glamorous senior martial artist who speed-walks an interstate in pumps behind a parasol.
  • Daddy Issues: Ovain and Derk both have them. Derk's attempt to bond over it is a miss.

  • Destructive Savior: Derk saves the president and causes $125,000 in property damage, a ruptured gas line and four evacuated blocks.

    Quote

    "A natural disaster with legs and a mouth."

    Andre (as Colonel Sparago), on Derk

  • Dumb Muscle: Derk. Andre: "it's amazing how Derk being fucking stupid has dominated the tone of this one-shot."

  • Fish out of Water: A feral alien prince in a world of libraries and Motel 6s.
  • Gentle Giant: He gives piggyback rides and wants the stone to resurrect his friend Fatty Gibbs.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: Ovain's white fire and ki jets.
  • Literal-Minded: Told to use his inside voice, Derk speaks with a hand over his mouth for the rest of the scene.
  • Malaproper: "Asteroid" for "steroid", every time.
  • Mentor Archetype: Mirabeth. Rita picked the option where she "was supposed to have mentored somebody and now it's embarrassing."
  • Nigh-Invulnerability: A groin punch lands on Derk with a metallic clang.
  • Our Presidents Are Different: The Werewolf President, a genial man who agrees privately that turning into a dog is cool.
  • Power Incontinence: Derk cannot aim a jump. One ends in space.
  • Rule of Funny: The governing law of the planet.
  • Show Within a Show: See the note above.
  • Super-Speed: Mirabeth's legendary pace.
  • Sympathetic Villain: Ovain is a shaky former conqueror in therapy whose online dating went badly. He leaves the planet "and its Tinder".
  • Tournament Arc: Promised by the World Martial Arts Tournament and then subverted when the whole thing is suspended over a judge on steroids before a single bout.
  • Training from Hell: Fourteen years alone on a high-gravity planet, eating scorpions.

Trivia

  • Actor Allusion: Dante's accent for Kurt gets compared to his earlier characters, and Ezra cracks that Dante collects skulls in every game. (Radford Horror 05, Summer Service 04)
  • Ascended Extra: Douglas Douglas was named as a joke at a gate. He returns in the last arc, and so does the pinball collection, now the Douglas Pinball Emporium. (Radford Horror 07, Radford Horrors 02)
  • Missing Episode: Summer Service 02 and "05.5", Appalachia 05 and 10, and Walkers "08.5" were played but never recorded. Their events are known only from later recaps. See Lost episodes.
  • The Other Darrin: In-universe and at the table at once: Rita secretly played the duplicate Andrew, and at the moment of the swap Andre took over the copy while Rita took back the real one. (Walkers 07, Walkers 09)
  • Throw It In: Douglas Douglas, Betsy's Cats costumes and Kurt's stack of women's shelter cards all started as table riffs and stayed canon. Rita picked Andrew's Spud Hut order by rolling a d100 against the menu, which Andre says was AI-generated with human tuning. (Radford Horror 07, Appalachia 02, Appalachia 04, Walkers 08)
  • Troubled Production: Krisp noise suppression eats yells, a creature's cry and Zack's Geiger-counter impression. Discord breaks the credit music, the dice bot breaks too, and Andre rolls for the players. (Radford Horror 07, Summer Service 06, Radford Horrors 03)
  • Shown Their Work: Rita reads real UFO sightings aloud in character, and Andrew can cite the 1957 Levelland case from memory. Andre supplies the Davy Crockett's real code name. (Summer Service 04, Walkers 04, Walkers 09)
  • Several names are spelled variously: Roulet and Roulette, Lori and Laurie, Jan and Yan. This wiki uses the first of each.

YMMV

  • Arc Fatigue: The table groans at each new dinner at Spud Hut, and Huell arrives in Utah dreading another potato-centered case. (Appalachia 04, Walkers 02)
  • Broken Base: Arby's. Andre maintains it is the worst chain in America, and the team keeps eating there anyway. (Radford Horror 03)
  • Crosses the Line Twice: The Biz's toilet saga, the arm in the cooler, and Dante's ruling that "there's no way worm people have rights." (Radford Horror 01, Summer Service 01, Summer Service 06)
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Nancy the goose, a hostile bird who outlasts most of Ballard. The counter savant and Douglas Douglas are close behind.
  • Fridge Horror: The Covenant's fermented peach preserves, served at breakfast. (Appalachia 01)
  • Memetic Mutation: In-universe, Andrew's sweaty "Thank you for your time again" to a Fox 5 microphone is replayed on the news every ten minutes for the rest of the day. Dante predicts the trip-hop remix. (Appalachia 08)
  • Nightmare Fuel: The plastic-wrapped figure that moves; corpses falling from a gym ceiling; a farmer vomiting his brain into a tank. (Walkers 03, Walkers 07, Walkers 09)
  • Nightmare Retardant: The terrifying Grey of Rhode Island turns out to be a skinny man with matted hair who needs his beta blockers. Andrew kicks over a card display in disappointment. (Roulet Estate 03)
  • Signature Scene: Huell firing a nuclear recoilless rifle after winning rock-paper-scissors. (Summer Service 06)
  • The Woobie: Douglas Douglas, who begs visiting federal agents for toilet paper. (Radford Horror 07)