The Garry's Mod Lambda Co-Op Adventure

## Overview

This event began as an attempt to, as opposed to reaching 32 players in a Portal multiplayer server, instead reach 32 players playing Half-Life 2 in one server through the Garry's Mod Lambda Co-Op addon (despite there being footage existing of over 50 players playing Half-Life 2 at one time, shattering these hopeless dreams). With this goal in mind the Discord Server was made available and advertised to papercliphoarder66's meager amount of fans among the corners of the internet. With this influx of a dozen or so new members, the adventure/event/playthrough began on/around March 3rd, 2023 and spanned 3-4 gatherings in the general voice channel.

The adventure followed a usual Half-Life 2 playthrough, with a whole lot of fucking about, shenanigans, and miscreantry. The adventure included a colorful and vibrant cast of characters portrayed by the players, and also had friendly fire permanently enabled on important NPCs, requiring a restart every time they died (which certain individuals took full advantage of).

## Characters

That Damn Elephant

Charple

## Timeline

### First Session

#### Trainstation-Canals

The beginning of the adventure mostly consisted of everyone choosing their playermodels and shitting around. The introduction of Half-Life 2 was rife with players blocking doorways, since player collision was always turned on and no one had any weapons to kill whoever blocked the doorway. In the Canals, the adventure's peak player count was reached at 8 players. During the Canals players would race each other to the end of each level in their provided airboats. Once the airboat gun was received, the number of friendly fire incidents reached levels previously thought unfathomable.

#### The Mesa East Massacre

The group had been dreading the arrival to Black Mesa East: a level which was essentially just a long unskippable cutscene where everyone had to control their urges to kill the Black Mesa East personnel, since doing so would restart the level from the beginning no matter how close they were to ending it. As expected, everyone had their turn slaughtering Eli Vance and Judith Mossman for fun. Eventually, everyone had their fill and agreed to let the level progress normally and continue the adventure; everyone except That Damn Elephant. The Elephant went on to prolong the Mesa East Massacre for a good while, despite the efforts of everyone else to protect the Black Mesa East personnel from dying at the hands of the Elephant, who had now become the villain of the adventure. After a while, however, that strange freak Charple appeared, intimidating everyone including the Elephant with it's freakish noises and feral murderous urges. It went around killing the other players and the important NPCs, until they banded together to stop it's reign of terror and continue to the next level, ending the Mesa East Massacre.

#### Ravenholm Pt. 1

Once the Mesa East Massacre was over and Charple vanished, the players proceeded to acquire the Gravity Gun. Hilarity ensued as everyone now had the ability to lob heavy objects at each other's heads (which often resulted in players being blown to pieces). Ravenholm went as expected, with the Gravity Gun, explosive barrels, and makeshift traps resulting in lots of friendly fire and general chumpfuckery. The first session of the adventure ended on the rooftop where Father Grigori gives you the Shotgun.

### Second Session

#### Ravenholm Pt. 2

After some time, and with newfound resolve, our heroes continue their journey where they left off, on the rooftop where Father Grigori gives you the Shotgun. The rest of Ravenholm proceeded relatively normally, with players usually lobbing explosive barrels at each other with the Gravity Gun whenever possible. Father Grigori had messianic status among the players, so when they had to escort him through the graveyard at the end of Ravenholm, not a single person tried to murder him. Some even managed to stay behind with him when he attempted to sacrifice himself, and mourned him when the adventure had to continue. The trainyard after Ravenholm wasn't very notable. Once the group fought through the Combine and reached the rebel base at the coast, another small massacre took place and most of the rebels there were killed because it was funny.

#### Highway 17

In the most anticipated chapter yet, Highway 17 brings our brave adventurers to the Coast, pitting them against each other in races to the end of each level. A buggy was provided for every player to drive around in, as well as a 2nd seat coming with each buggy so that players could shoot enemies while riding. This chapter of the adventure was likened to Mario Kart as the players focused on reaching the end of each level while taking each other out with the Tau Cannon, kind of like that video game by Nintendo. Upon reaching Odessa's hideout, every rebel was murdered except Odessa since he also had respect among our heroes. In the next level, everyone in the group had a turn in the Crane where they tossed giant shipping crates at Combine Soldiers as well as each other. The adventure proceeded somewhat normally after this, up until Little Odessa. At Little Odessa, where you would normally park your car and then defend the town against gunships, The Elephant and his cohort Doc Stinker let their villainy take over, halting the adventure by repeatedly targeting an essential rebel NPC and ramming him with their buggy, forcing a level restart each time. The others let this happen and even did it themselves for a bit since driving into this rebel at full speed was quite comical; eventually, though, they wanted to continue the level, and banded together to attempt to stop the Elephant and Doc Stinkers' nefarious misdeeds. They failed most times, but eventually the group did manage to get through the level. Once the essential NPC disappeared, Mitchell Shephard (papercliphoarder66) would go on a rampant killing spree of the infinitely spawning rebels which appeared once the town defense began, due to his immense hatred of anyone associated with Gordon Freeman. Continuing, the sandtraps level went as expected, with no one being careful not to step on the sand and instead trying to outrun the Antlions. Lamar was mourned briefly. The Antlion Guardian at the end was dispatched with ease, and then the Bugbait, an item of some notoriety, was acquired. The Bugbait is well-known for it's pungent stench, foul brown cloud, the ability to squelch and squeeze it with the right mouse button, and it's ability to stun Combine Soldiers who are unfortunate enough to be hit with it. Another mass purge was conducted at the rebel outpost following the sandtraps, as expected. With the Antlions on their side, our heroes proceeded to infiltrating Nova Prospekt and destroying everything in their way. The Bugbait saw extensive use during this period not because it was particularly effective but because, once again, it was funny. The adventure once again halted once the group defeated the Combine's forces and broke into Nova Prospekt.