[Wids]

So after throwing together this thread about tabletop gaming (aka. pencil-and-paper gaming, or PnP), I started tripping down Memory Lane again and revisiting the various adventures (and misadventures) I've experienced. Maybe you've had your share of memorable game sessions too, from one side of the Game Master's screen or the other.

(The generic term "Game Master" applies to any roleplaying game, whether the Game Master is called a Dungeon Master, a Storyteller, a Judge...whatever. Also, though I prefer to refrain from cussin' in public forums, apologies for my Francais in advance. I'm a stickler for accuracy, or at least as much accuracy as I can dredge up with stuff that happened ten or twenty years ago....)


Me: "Okay, so what's your Magic-User's name?"
Ron: "Zuul." *shows me his character sheet*
Me: "Really? Why 'Zuul'?"
Ron: "Because it's a cool name!"
Me: "...and it's a monster from Ghostbusters."
Ron: "...who has a cool name!"
--One of my first misadventures as a teenaged Dungeon Master with Red Box D&D. Things got worse with my next troupe....


Me: "Justin! Now that we got your stats rolled up, have you picked a Class yet?"
Justin: "Yeah! I'm playing an Elf."
Me: "All right." *jot jot jot* "What's his name?"
Justin: "Aleister Crowley!"
Me: "No, seriously."
Justin: "Aleister Crowley, the Stormtrooper of Death!"
Me: "...oookay." *jot jot jot*
--He was dead serious, too. And his girlfriend Susan rolled up a Cleric named Chastée Fuckblood (again, pardon the French). Every Game Master should run a campaign for a couple of teenaged metalheads at least once in his or her life. You know that munchkin in every game shop, the one who acts like you owe it to him to let him play a Planetouched half-troll/half-drow with exploding shuriken and mastery in all ninja weapons? After running D&D for some metalheads, you'll start to realize that that munchkin's really not such a bad guy.


Me: "So after three days of sailing over a calm sea, the Golden Albatross finally arrives in the harbor of Whaleport. The captain personally thanks Aleister and Chastée for their generous payment for passage as his sailors drop anchor and lay the gangplank across to the dock. The scarlet sun hangs low under a rainbow sky in the early hours of morning. What now?"
Justin: "We fuck on the beach!"
Susan: "Yeah, let's do that! We fuck on the beach."
Me: "...all right. So...the minutes pass into an hour, and...Chastée looks like she's really enjoying herself...and as Aleister slips his manhood back out of her and wipes the sand off his thighs, he suddenly remembers that they have pressing business in Whaleport." [sarcastically] "Would you like to see the baron about this whole black dragon business now, or would you rather switch to the Reverse Cowgirl position?"
--Yeah. That campaign lasted for three or four years, too. Imagine it, if you dare. :s


Then along came my glorious Air Force years...


Me: "...wow. Okay, so you guys came out of that adventure with enough XP to gain a Level, and you're all 1 Experience Point shy of your next Level too!"
Dobie: "We kill the mule."
--Dobie, trying to get around Old School D&D's "You can't gain more than one Level in any single adventure" rule.


Screech: "Well, we got Crislen back. Now let's hunt down Rigor Mortis and kill him!"
Me: "Verdemortak."
Screech: "Yeah...like I said, Rigor Mortis."
--Screech, hassling me about the name of my archvillain.


Dobie: "Oh, sure! Dillion and I came up this perfect plan to get around all those traps and guards, dispel the demons, grab the armor and get the hell out of there, then Wonder Boy just comes in and wins it!"
--Willard (Dobie's Thief) and Dillion (Robert's Magic-User) were plotting to steal Duke Eowuld's grandfather's suit of full plate armor, which Duke Eowuld was offering as the Grand Prize to the victor of the jousting tournament. While they were cooking up their plan, Sir Wolflen (Screech's Fighter) joined the tournament, beat all challengers and, even though Duke Eowuld had ten Levels over him, rolled some hot dice, unhorsed the duke three times in a row and won the armor legitimately. Dobie and Robert were a bit miffed over that.


Dobie (as Willard): "It's a beholder golem."
--Their freshly slain enemy was actually a floating, spherical, time-travelling robot with four laser-firing robotic tentacles on top. "Beholder golem" was a pretty good way for a quasi-medieval character to identify something like that.


Screech: "So ever since we found this crashed spaceship..."
Dobie: "A flying castle which got Dispelled."
Screech: "...we've killed four of those orb robots..."
Dobie: "Beholder golems."
Screech: "...six of those red anime-looking robots..."
Dobie: "Demon knights."
Screech: "...about a dozen of those plasma turrets..."
Dobie: "Sceptres of Magic Missiles."
Screech: "...about twenty guards with laser rifles..."
Dobie: "Crossbows of Fire."
Screech: "...three robots with the Predator's cloaking device..."
Dobie: "Iron ghosts."
Screech: "...and two of those big Robotech robots."
Dobie: "Ogre golems."
Screech: "And now Borak's trying to break into a snack machine and steal a bag of Creamy Boffos."
Dobie: "A Cabinet of Endless Iron Rations, and...iron rations. Of the Creamy Boffo kind."
--Dobie, enforcing the paradigm.


Kevin: "I can't believe that Borak has a 17 Strength, and he can't even open a bag of Creamy Boffos."
Me: "Sucky Strength checks are like that."
--Borak the Fighter fails at opening bags of junk food.


Me: "I spent a damn hour coming up with the stats for Captain Stane and his mech! I meant for your final battle with him to be a lengthy, exhausting, climactic battle worthy of the epics! And Dillion just completely ruined him with only two freakin' goddamned spells!"
Robert: "What can I say? I'm just that good."
--Their archenemy from the distant future comes to defeat, and it only took one Disintegrate spell (to destroy Stane's mech) and one Polymorph Other spell (to stop Stane and his Gauss chaingun by turning him into a frog). Naturally, I was a bit ticked off.


Me (as a hired prostitute coitally mounting Lenny's Elf, Logan): "Oooh...that feels good. Hey, weren't you and your friends those brave adventurers who came back from the Land of Eternal Winter last month?"
Lenny (as Logan): "Yeah!"
Me (as the hooker, still pumping away on top of him): "Did you enter the Palace of the Ice Tyrant while you were there?"
Lenny (as Logan): "Yeah!"
Me: "While you were there, do you remember fighting a pack of vampires in the ballroom?"
Lenny: [now growing nervous] "...yeah."
Me: "While you, with your flaming arrows, aided your friends in putting her master and her sisters to death, did one of the vampires escape?"
Lenny: [even more nervous] "...yeah..."
Me: "Did she look like me?"
Lenny: [as nervous as it gets] "...y-y-yeah..."
Me [still playing the whore, who's still on top of Logan's naked, unarmed and unarmored butt, holding him down]: *bares her vampire fangs* "HRRRRSSSS!!!"
Lenny: "AHHHHH!!!"
--Fortunately, Pandel (Alan's Cleric) and Sir Wolflen were staying in the inn room next door, came busting into Logan's room, Turned the vampire and cut her down, then found her coffin in the stable loft and finished her off. Then Logan got dressed and Pandel restored his lost Levels. Logan didn't stop being such a whoremonger, however, and he got to be the butt of everyone's jokes after that.


Dobie: "Hey, Lenny! While we were at the marketplace, the rest of us chipped in and got something for Logan!"
Lenny: "Yeah? What is it?"
Dobie: "It's a Hot Date Kit! It has a bottle of wine, some cologne and hand mirror."
Lenny: "Logan doesn't need a mirror! His Charisma's 14. He always looks good."
Robert: "It's so he can make sure his next date's not a vampire before he takes her upstairs and bangs her."
Lenny: "You guys are dicks."
Screech: "And the cologne's made from garlic juice. Have fun!"
--See?


Me: "Well...damn. I don't know what to tell you, Lenny. I mean, Logan didn't tell anyone that he was teleporting back to Tasselton, so no one's going to know what happened or where to look...."
Lenny: "Come on, man! Don't do this to me. Help me out here!"
Me: "I mean, it's not like a bunch of orcs killed him and left his body somewhere for someone to find. It's a botched Teleport spell. There's only so much I can do to save him from that."
Lenny: "Aw, shit. Come on, [Me]! Logan can't be dead!"
Me: "Well, you see...Tasselton's near the coast, so there's no Underdark here. But it's still a few miles upriver from the sea, so there can't be any sea caves here either. Now, if Logan had only teleported ten or twenty feet underground, I could just say, 'Okay, Logan teleported into a sewer by mistake. Now he has to find his way out.' But eighty feet underground? Sorry, Lenny, I can't work with that. Logan just teleported into solid bedrock. His death is instantaneous as his body's atoms and molecules instantly disperse on arrival and fuse with that bedrock. And the only sign of his passage is an elf-sized lump in the middle of Tasselton's main street, the intended destination to which he shall never arrive."
Dobie: "He has become one with dirt!"
--Logan the Elf eventually came to a most inglorious end, alas.


Me: "The townsfolk greet your heroic band with cheers, clearly remember you on your return to Tasselton...most of you, anyway, as Micron the Elf is not yet known to them. While your merry band is heading to the marketplace to peddle their plunder, Wolflen stumbles over a bump in the middle of the street...a bump that he's pretty sure wasn't there on his last visit."
Screech: "I stomp it flat."
Me: "Easier said than done. The bump's about the size of a small man, or a woman, or maybe an elf. It's a pretty tough little mound, too; its roots must run at least eighty feet deep."
Screech: "I stomp harder!"
Lenny: "I hate you guys."
--Even in death, Logan can't catch a break.


Me: "As Willard tiptoes silently through Duke Eowuld's dungeon, ever fearful of being found and recaptured, he hears a man bitterly sobbing behind the iron door of the next cell."
Dobie: "Willard goes up to the door and says, 'Who's in there? Why did the duke jail you?'"
Me: "The despondent man chokes down his weeping and answers. 'The guards...they catched me stealin' bread from the marketplace. I tells them that me wife an' kids are hungry, and I've not found work for o'er a season! But they didn' care a whit. They flogged me, locked me away down 'ere an' left me to die. Who'll look after me wife an' children now?'"
Dobie: "'From what I know of Duke Eowuld, your story rings all too true.' Then Willard picks the lock and sets Bread Man free."
Me: "Roll 'em."
Dobie: *rolls d% and gets an 80-something* "Got it."
Me: "With a ferrous clack, the cell door groans ajar, revealing a wretched soul dressed in little more than filthy rags, reeling excitedly with newfound hope. 'Aw, thank yeh, good sir, thank yeh! But I fear that I canna pay yeh for your kindness.'"
Dobie (as Willard): "Think nothing of it. Now follow me out of here. Duke Eowuld shall not have us another day."
Me: "Bread Man nods fervently and falls in line, creeping fearfully through the dank and moldy dungeon corridor. They round the next corner and happen across another stout cell door. A voice, babbling madly, cackles from within: 'They laugh at me, Mother. They laugh at me. I'll kill them, Mother. I shall kill them all, and I shall drink their heart's blood. I love you, Mother. I'll kill you. I killed you out of love. I love everyone....' Wanna let him out too?"
Dobie: "Hell no! Mama's Boy can sit in there and rot!"
--Willard, having finally run afoul of Duke Eowuld, makes a jailbreak.


Then Screech ran a Rifts mini-campaign for us....


Dobie: "Why don't you just buy a nuke? You'll do less damage!"
--Dobie, criticizing Lenny's ridiculously overpowered custom laser-guided full-auto railgun/rocket launcher thing. Palladium games are extremely munchkin-friendly.


Then Screech tried running a Champions campaign. I played Xeros the Visitor, a reptilian sorcerer from another star system. Dobie played Doctor Vanguard, a surgeon with a Black Belt (or equivalent) in pretty much every martial art known to man. And Lenny, as usual, played a munchkinized Punisher wannabe whose name I can't remember because all of Lenny's characters acted the same way.


Dobie: (as Doctor Vanguard) "Here's another one for you: Gang member, black male, early 20's. He has a punctured lung, and the fourth and fifth ribs on his left side are completely shattered." (as an Emergency Room medic) "How do you know his ribs are broken?" (as Doctor Vanguard) "Because I'm the one who kicked them in!"
--Dobie explains his character to us.


Me (as Xeros the Visitor): "We have...chk-chk...little time before They-Who-Kill-Their-Own complete their trade. Chk-chk-chk. I shall teleport us to...chk-chk...Granite Park immediately."
Dobie (OOC): "Just don't teleport us eighty feet underground and we'll be cool."
--We loved Lenny. Really. ;)


Screech: "Xeros teleports all of you into the park right as the two crime families are finishing up their business, swapping briefcases full of cash for various military assault weapons."
Lenny: "I shoot all the Mafia guys before they have a chance to react!"
Dobie: "You're armed with a 50-caliber machinegun."
Lenny: "Yeah, so?"
Dobie: "We're in the middle of a crowded metropolitan area." *grunts and mimics Lenny's character lifting and aiming a really massive gun* "'What's behind them? The local school district? Fuck it!'"
--Dobie explaining to Lenny why discharging heavy weapons in the middle of a densely populated city is a Very Bad Idea.


Then I got my discharge and the Air Force sent me home. I still miss our pool table in my barracks' second floor day room. Pool tables are perfect for stopping stray dice. But I couldn't find a good job right after leaving the Air Force, so I had to settle for working at McDonald's, and there I picked up another gaming troupe and began running a pan-World of Darkness campaign where my players switched between two parties of Player Characters every week or two: a party of paranormal fugitives on the run from the Technocracy, and the Technocracy crack team tasked with hunting them down....


Ben: "Is there any Indian Reservation in Illinois?"
Me: "There is now!"
--Me, exercising Game Master's Fiat to help Ben with his Wendigo's backstory.


Me (weaving the exposition for O'olish the denim-wearing, pureblooded Native American Wendigo Ahroun and his backstory): "...but the serial killer, leaving a blood-flecked trail of terror and agony, could not escape O'olish's keen lupine tracking senses. And as O'olish feared, the serial killer did indeed turn out to be no less than another Garou: Ferren Kisses-the-Girls, a Ragabash who had gone missing from his Get of Fenris pack, now fallen into the ranks of the Black Spiral Dancers. But O'olish was not alone in hunting this deranged murderer: The New World Order, a Convention of the Technocracy who sought nothing less than a world of perfect function, perfect order, perfect safety and perfect obedience. A world in which no place existed for paranormals like O'olish and his quarry. With hyperadvanced technology many decades--if not centuries--ahead of what most of mankind has at hand, the New World Order learned of the serial killer's supernatural origins. And they set out to find him. And they did find him...or, rather, some of him. When the Men in Black arrived at Ferren's cabin, they were greeted with the ghastly spectacle of fresh blood splattered about the interior, still dripping in gory sheets from the ceiling. In the fireplace they found Ferren's head, brutally torn away by savage claws no smaller than those of a grizzly bear. And still clenched in Ferren's rigored jaw and jagged teeth was a swatch of torn blue denim, its fabric still pierced with tufts of coarse, black fur...."
Ben: "Dude! My backstory kicks ass!"
--Ben approves of O'olish's pre-campaign history. :)


Me: "The limestone cavern walls peal with whoops and hollers as the Black Spiral Dancers, with their woefully inbred and malformed kinfolk, hound Tori down the winding passages of their remote desert home...and, unfortunately, into a dead end."
Cat (as Tori Dyson, her Daughter of Ether): "'Now, wait a minute, guys! I'm sure we can talk things out....' And then I act all sweet and innocent and pretty, and I use Seduction to maybe talk them out of killing me."
Me: "Seduction? You're sure?"
Cat: "Tori has a pretty good Seduction score, so yeah."
Me: "Okay. Charisma plus Seduction, Difficulty 6. Roll 'em."
Cat: *rolls* "Four successes."
Me: "Good news! The Black Spiral Dancers no longer want to kill Tori!"
Cat: "YAY!"
Me: "Bad news! Now they want to chain her up and use her for breeding stock!"
Cat: "NO!!!"
--Cat reminds us that we should always use our characters' social skills judiciously.


Me: "Shortly after noon, the Magical Go-Go Metro arrives in Stuttgart, Germany. O'olish, being freakishly huge and muscular even in his human form, has no problem grabbing his duffel and everyone else's bags out of the trunk as Tori and Mister Chalk stretch their legs and take in their surroundings. Today is September 30th, and Oktoberfest is in full swing, as conveyed by the lively, milling throngs of German townsfolk and the oom-pah-pah music thundering from the city square...."
Ben: "If I see lederhosen, I'm shifting to Crinos!"
--It so happens that Ben took two years of German class in high school. He was not a fan of traditional German dress.


Kenneth (as Mr. Chalk, his albino Corax): "If that's who I think it is, I want his autograph!"
--Mr. Chalk believes Baron Eisenhelm (their long-lived Tzimisce host) to be none other than Dracula himself.


Kenneth (as Mr. Chalk): "We can't let you prey on the people anymore, Eisenhelm! But before we kill you, is there any chance that you could get me Dracula's autograph?"
--Mr. Chalk soon found out that Eisenhelm was just an Austrian mercenary who served under Dracula in the Ottoman Wars, eventually earning a place as one of Dracula's lieutenants. Though disappointed with the find, Mr. Chalk was never one to pass up an opportunity.


Me: "And even as his head rolls to a stop, Eisenhelm looks up from the stony floor, beholding Tori--the spitting image of his long-dead wife--one last time, her golden hair and bright, innocent eyes being the last things he ever sees in this world. And in seeing her one last time, he smiles, even as his head crumbles to ash and drifts away in a breeze which is neither felt nor heard. After so many centuries of undeath, Eisenhelm is no more. His mighty vozhd lies in rapidly cooling tatters, ripped to pieces and scattered by O'olish's savage claws. His servants are fled, his ghouls lie broken and for one fleeting...."
Kenneth: "Let's search his castle! What kind of stuff does Eisenhelm have?"
Me (crestfallen): "...all right. Eisenhelm's longsword is of a very old Hungarian design yet still holds an edge and looks as good as it did the day it came from the forge; either its a very convincing modern-day replica or Eisenhelm was very good at cleaning and maintaining his weapons. Among the many paintings and framed messages in his study, one badly yellowed message is framed in gold and mounted higher than all the others."
Kenneth: "I read it."
Me: "It's written in Old Romanian. How's your Linguistics?"
Kenneth: "...nonexistent."
Cat: "Ooh! Tori doesn't speak Romanian, but she has Linguistics 3. Can she try to read it?"
Me: "Intelligence and Linguistics, Diff 8."
Cat: *rolls* "Cool! I got three."
Me: "Even though Tori can't make out every word, she discerns enough to realize that the letter is one written to Eisenhelm from a Hungarian prison, apparently asking Eisenhelm how the war against the Turks is going. The letter was written in the April of 1464, and it is signed, 'Wallachia Forever, Vlad III Dracula'."
Kenneth: "Yes! I finally got Dracula's autograph!"
--Mr. Chalk's noble quest comes to a triumphant end.


Then we tried Wraith: The Oblivion for a while, though I had my players roll up characters who were ordinary mortals, under the false pretense that it was going to be a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign...


Ben: "Okay, hold on a minute. We're still in the prologue, right? Cat just got shot dead by a douchebag who blamed her for getting him fired, so he came back to the office and went postal. Zack got drained to a husk by vampires, Kenneth got sliced in half by a guywire that got wrapped around a cement mixer, and now my Challenger's speeding towards the edge of a cliff, with no brakes, my seatbelt's stuck and I'm buckled in for the ride."
Me: "Yeah, pretty much."
Ben: "What is this? Final Destination: The Game?"
--Ben hasn't grasped the premise yet. ;)


Me: [lowering my head, pausing, sighing a heavy sigh and trying to act all mournful] "By the cruel whims of fate and tragedy, all of you..." [pause for gravitas] "...have died."
(I pause, still hanging my head low, while my trusting players fidget, sigh or remain silent. When I figure that the pregnant pause has been long enough, I take the binder clips off my Storyteller Screen, toss them aside and, for my masterstroke, lift the Vampire: The Masquerade screen away, revealing my Wraith: The Oblivion screen right behind it...much to their alarm.)
Me: "...and that's only the beginning."
Ben: "Oh, shit on a pogo stick."
--The curtain finally drops.


Me (as Walter the Ferryman, bringing the PCs to the Shadowlands on an old bass-fishing boat): "Now, your Deathmarks are the remnants of the way you left the world, the scars of death on your Corpus. You'll see many of them down here, and it'll be pretty unsettling at first. But after the first couple of decades, Deathmarks'll be just another way of telling people apart. Blond, brunet, redhead, grayhaired, bald. Black, white, Hispanic, Oriental. Brown eyes, blue eyes, hazel eyes, gray eyes. Young, middle-aged, old." [long gasp] "Shot, stabbed, burned, hanged, crushed, drowned, frozen, electrocuted." [focuses on Ben...or, rather, Ben's character Damian, pointing at the steering wheel embedded in his chest] "Let me guess: Bad car wreck."
Ben (as Damian): "Really bad car wreck. Went off a cliff."
Me (as Walter): "Guess you should have slowed down."
Ben (as Damian): "I had no fucking brakes!"
--Walter gives us the skinny about Deathmarks.


Kenneth (playing Damian's Shadow): "You're a failure. Your mother never loved you. And by the way, you were adopted."
Ben (as Damian): "Shut up. You're a dick."
Kenneth (as Damian's Shadow): "Also, you always got picked last for Tee Ball teams. Know why? Because you suck at everything!"
Ben (as Damian): "I bet I don't suck at kicking your ass!"
Kenneth (as his Shadow): "Good luck with that. I'm inside your head! I'm inside your little pointy head! Now do as I say!"
Ben (as Damian): "Nope. Not gonna listen to you."
Kenneth (as his Shadow): "...I'm inside your head!"
--Kenneth made a lousy Shadow.


Ben (as Damian): "Eww! That thing's been inside your uterus! Stop hitting me with it!"
--Damian being attacked by the spectre of a teenager who died from a botched back-alley abortion. Her Dark Relic (and weapon of choice) was not pretty.


Cat (as Serena): "'We should get out of here. Didn't Walter say something about spectres having some kind of hive-mind?'"
Kenneth (as Hoagie): "'I'm sure we have time to grab a few things first.' Okay, [Me], what did those spectres have?"
Me: "You pick through the sifting piles of black ashes and dust. Damian finds two Oboli where the hitchhiker-looking spectre fell, and Wade finds another Obolus nearby, between the ex-burning arsonist and the ex-pregnant girl. And, of course, there are the spectres' Relics: The broken pocketwatch, the gasoline can and the monstrous coat hanger, which no longer looks like it's made out of barbed wire. It's just an ordinary unwound wire coat hanger now...still dripping blood, though."
Ben: "Eh. I'll take the gas can. Maybe it'll come in handy."
Kenneth (as Hoagie): "Hey, Damian! That coat hanger did a pretty good job kicking your ass! You want that too?"
Ben (as Damian): "Only if I get to hit you with it."
--Divvying the spoils, Wraith style.


Cat: "So if our Shadows take over temporarily, it's Catharsis. But if we ever give in to our Shadows and let them take over completely, we become spectres. Right?"
Me: "Right. Shadows can help you every now and then, like feeding you information or making you Hulk out in times of need. But they're still your dark side given sentience, and they can cause you serious problems and ultimately drag you screaming into Oblivion."
Zack: "So spectres are like us, only it's like surrendering to the Dark Side of the Force and becoming Darth Vader."
Me: "...if Darth Vader is constantly raging on PCP, yes."
--Me explaining the differences between wraiths and spectres.


Me: "Cat? Okay, Cat. Calm down. We're stopping now. No more Wraith, all right? We'll play something else."
Ben: "Well, it was cool, but Wraith is pretty hardcore for some people."
Kenneth: "Yeah. Like Call of Cthulhu."
Me: "Bitch, please. Call of Cthulhu is what gamers play when they take a break from Wraith: The Oblivion."
[pause a beat while Cat dries her eyes]
Me: "Hey, Cat. Wanna play Call of Cthulhu?"
Cat, Kenneth and Zack: "No!"
--Yeah, Wraith can get pretty heavy...not an RPG for the faint of heart. Even I got a bit teary-eyed when I was killing off their PCs in the first place, because that was pretty hard for me to do. Like "George R. R. Martin writing the scene for the Red Wedding" hard on me. I still enjoyed Wraith, and so did Ben and Kenneth, but we went back to the Supernaturals-versus-Technocracy campaign the week after that.


To be continued, because I have to get to bed. So what memorable times have you had at the game table? :)