[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? :)

[Balanor]

I got a really good chuckle out of some of these. Good stuff. Wish I had not lived on a farm outside a town of 300 people growing up so I could have experienced tabletop D&D. My brother and I tried it (and the 2nd edition Star Wars game too)....but it didn't last long.

And poor Lenny/Logan.

Although his plight did get me thinking that maybe Portal Stones in Thay are a little *too* reliable....

Or maybe they're fine as-is.... ;)

[Animayhem]

I have never played tabletop. Some posted this video elsewhere. Language warning

youtube.com/watch?v=aP5uWXNBYgY&app=desktop

[Bela]

I have not played table top games but your thread has given me a chuckle. Thank you Wids. :D

[WillowWhite]

Awww... three for three. -I- have played tabletop, prefer it most times, though I'm not much for remembering or storytelling.

My favorites have been the adventure seeking halfling Milo that made my goody goody druid grey with his antics; While exploring underground tunnels, trapped by a cave in, the ground becomes damp, slippery, and begins to slope downward. He slips, fails to catch his balance and decides to go with it. He uses his cloak as makeshift sled and the hin vanishes in a mad downhill slide. Luckily the tunnel was not a dead end and the ring he had pilferd, but not identified, was one of water-walking. The party arrived at the botom just in time to watch the hin become a bobber and walk safely to the other side of the underground lake......

Or the lizard-kin (some odd race from the dragon mag) barbarian who's favorite method for ending the baddies was to toss them into the bonfire. "Grabs the burning orc and tosses him back into the fire" "We don't have a fire" "So, I make the wizard throw a fireball at the trees and throw him in"

Or.. possilby... the giants that ran out of boulders for tossing and began throwing their orc peons instead. Orcs make a nasty mess when they splat.

My most fondly recalled "oops" moment would be my daughters first mage. A tiny hin that had a habit of hiding in the massive fighter's backpack. Imagine, if you will, the party in a dungeon... we enter a small chamber, maybe 10'x10'. We are faced with a rather large band of undead; a couple of vamps along with their ghouls and other piddly walking corpses. The halfling's solution to the problem? Fireball. We managed to survive (lucky rolls), though not one of us was left with hair.

[DarkRanger]

[Gatalis]

kek, I can't say I've had experiences like that, but tabletop definitely seems to bring out the interesting side of folks lol

Friend GMing: "Alright, you're traveling through the forest and you run into these weird spheres..."
Me: "Can you draw us a picture?"
*Friend draws a picture*
Other Friend: "Oh shit, it's a avocado guys!"
Gm: "No, it's a water elemental-"
Friend: "Lets go kill us some water avocados!"

...

Later after several instances of fighting the water avocados
Me: "Alright guys, keep on the lookout for water avocado-"
Gm rolls a d20, nat 20
Gm: "The gods have decided to permanently ban the term avocado from the dictionary. Use of it will cause bad things to happen."
Friend: "Alright guys, keep on the lookout for water things that happen to look like a certain plant I can't remember."
Other Friend: "You mean water testicle plants?"



Me: "Well shit, there's about thirty kobolds and only four of us in a crowded hallway."
Gm: "Yes, you should probably be running off here."
Friend: "Alright lets get out-"
Me: "How flammable is my barrel of alcohol on my dwarf's back?" (yes, they legit bought a barrel of alcohol)
Gm rolls a set of dice, natural 20
Gm: "It's pretty much straight ethanol. You could probably-"
Me: "I light the barrel on fire and kick it towards the kobolds"
Friend: "Dude, this better not be like that time you summong a porpoise on top of the enemy-"
Me: "Relax, relax, it'll be fine!"
Gm: "I need a wisdom check"
*rolls a 15*
Gm: "This is a really bad idea. You should probably just run."
Me: "I do it anyways!"
Gm: "Oh for god's sake..."
Proceed to roll a natural 1
Gm: "You proceed to light it on fire and kick the barrel at the kobolds. It begins to leak a flaming trail as it goes, but you kicked it in the wrong direction and it hits a wall, exploding. Everyone in the party takes..."
Rolls really high numbers and we're all really low level
Gm: "Everyone in the party is dying and on fire except for you two. There. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW!?"
Me: "I regret nothing!"



Gm: "You know you have to fight these, right?"
Friend: "NO! I'm a druid! I can't fight spiders or I lose my spells for the day!"
Gm: "Spiders are pests, not animals. And you're out of spells"
Friend: "That's a horrible thing to say about our eight legged friends! I demand animal empathy checks!"
Gm: "Fine... Whatever."
Other friend: "Dude! You're getting rid of XP!"
Friend: "Alright, animal empathy check... Oh come on you cutsey whittle spiders, please run off now so my friends don't have to kill you!"
Gm: "They're giant spiders. One of them bites you."
Friend: "Oh fuck you, where's my canister of raid?"


*Playing Starwars tabletop, just pissed off a hutt, we're all Jedi padawans*
Gm: "The Hutt begins to approach you as you barricade the hangar"
Friend: "Shit guys, search the crates, there's got to be something!"
Gm: "The crates are full of carrots. You've trapped yourself in the room with crates full of carrots. The Hutt will reach you in about three rounds."
Me: "Guys, remember what our master told us about eating carrots? Start throwing carrots at the Hutt's big fat mouth!"
Gm: "You... Begin to throw carrots at the hutt to no avail."
Me: "I demand a roll"
Gm: "If you want a roll, you'll need to use your force p-"
Me: "I use my force powers."
Gm: "Alright, fine. Go for it... Ranged attack roll."
*Proceed to roll a 20*
Gm being snarky: "You hit the hutt. I need you to roll to confirm."
*Proceed to roll a second 20*
Gm: "That's bullshit, rer-"
*Proceed to roll a 19*
Gm: "Oh for fuck's sake... You manage to chuck a carrot at just the right angle down the Hutt's throat that he chokes on it and dies. I can't believe this."
Me: "Better watch your Peas and Carrots, son! Hey, isn't a Hutt worth a lot of XP?"



Me GMing: "You proceed down into the dark abyss when you see something red glowing in the distance..."
Friends: "We proceed along"
Me: "You exit the small tunnel to find yourself in a giant underground cave, a tower rests in the distance with small lava tunnels travelling down the walls."
Artist Friend: "I want a picture."
*Proceed to pull out graph paper and try to draw a picture rather poorly*
Friend: "Oh my god guys, it's a penis tower!"
Other Friend: "Oh, looks like it's excited with all that lava around it, though I think it might have something with all those bumps (windows) along it!"
Friend: "We push through into the Penis tower! Ramming our way past the entrance!"


Me GMing: "You kill the peasant inside the inn, citing 'dat sweet XP' as an excuse. The guards don't buy it and come after you."
Friend: "I cast create water on the guard."
Me: "What? Why? It's not even a combat spell."
Friend: "You said the guard was a chick earlier, right?"
Me: "Yeah, but they're in half plate armor-"
Friend: "God damn it, I'm a level two Cleric. I cast create water on the guard!"
Me: "Alright, fine. You drench the guard in four gallons of water and get the floor wet. She looks pissed as all hell."
Friend: "Alright, now I want our bard to cast charm person and our thief to use diplomacy to convince her to take off her armor."
Me: "What?"
Friend: "I'm getting myself some half plate and a pair of tits before the end of this session!"


GM: "You're all saved by the elves, but you note that your equipment has been taken. They likely think you're intr-"
Friend: "Am I bound?"
Gm: "No, but-"
Friend: "I immediately walk outside of the tent and begin furiously gyrating my hips at anyone nearby!"

[Wids]

@Thayan: No no no no no! Uhh...what are you talking about? Wyren just teleported into the ground last week! Portal Stones are working just fine! Really.


@Animayhem: That Hitler Rant parody was actually pretty funny. Have you ever watched The Gamers, by chance? :)


@Belandra Marias: Any time. :D


@WillowWhite: So Milo the Halfling tried on magic items without identifying them first? O_O

...

I also like to live dangerously. :P

And I wish that Dragon Magazine was still around. I've bought so many Dragon issues and used them as campaign resources. Among them, I have three or four articles about goofy or offbeat magic items (such as alternate Boots of Spider Climbing which attract spiders and make them climb all over you), which I've used to no end. :)


@DarkRanger: I'm sure you do. :D


@Gatalis: Two questions:
1) Are you anywhere near East Texas?
2) If so, when can I join your gaming group? Because using the Force to choke a Hutt with a carrot sounds pretty wild. :D


I wish that I could remember everything from my tabletop games, but gaming has been a big part of my life, so I'm glad that I still remember plenty of it (even if I now have such faint memories of Zuul the Magic-User and his adventure in the hovering castle over the Pit of Infinity). Some of those moments can't be put into a narrative, but they're fun to remember all the same, like Rod's Barbarian who had a 5 in Intelligence, so every direction was "North" to him...South, East, West-by-Southwest, whatever. "Which way do we go now?" *points in a random direction* "We go North." :D

Or the time when Willard and Dillion broke into a cathedral to rob the "Fat Bishop" (a corrupt bishop whose name I can't even remember now, even though I created the bastard...probably because everyone kept calling him "the Fat Bishop," so the nickname stuck), but they ran into the bishop's treasure's guardians: four homebrewed golems made from shards of stained glass, like that stained glass monster in Young Sherlock Holmes. And the golems started coming upstairs at them, so Dobie got the idea to use Willard's Ring of Telekinesis, pick up the lead golem and drop him down the stairs (and into the other golems) repeatedly, over and over and frickin' over, until the golems were all dead and shattered. I still throw out a stained glass golem now and then, but now I only do it when there's not a single staircase in sight.

And I'm so glad that we have laptops nowadays (and that I have one), because they make the art of supplying background music for tabletop games such a piece of cake! In the 80's and early 90's, I usually went without music because all I had was a cassette recorder, and cassettes are crap when it comes to supplying flawless music on demand. Back in the Air Force and afterwards, I was using my Sega Genesis. When Willard and the gang went through the Elemental Plane of Water, I had my Genesis hooked up to the dayroom's TV (which, happily, no one else was watching because the TV in the First Floor dayroom was bigger and better), so I played this song for trekking around the Water Plane's wilderness, this one for the Palace of Waterfalls and this one for fighting King Myrlyrlancer (or whatever the elder water elemental leader's name was...again, even though I created him, damn if I remember what his name was). And for that Wraith campaign's fight with the three spectres back there, I played this tune. Chakan the Forever Man didn't have a sound test option, alas, so I had to leave the pool table, mute the TV, start the game, walk Chakan into the Plane of Air, leave him there (where nothing could attack him), unmute the TV and return to the pool table. It was kind of a pain.

Anyway, I'd better get ready for work now. But I should be back on tonight, dredging up more fond memories. Stay tuned. :)

[Animayhem]

@Animayhem: That Hitler Rant parody was actually pretty funny. Have you ever watched The Gamers, by chance? :)

No. I have heard rants like that in game from peeps over the years. :)

[Wids]

Well, that's character death for you. Character permadeath is even worse. At one point, Lenny looked like he was almost in tears after Logan teleported into the bedrock and I had to explain why my hands were tied. Everyone there saw the dice, you know?

But I also remember that, towards the end of my tour in the Air Force, I had gotten my old Marvel Superheroes RPG from Missouri and was set on running a campaign. By then, Lenny was out of the Air Force (under very mysterious circumstances, and considering that he worked in Computer Cryptography, that was a bit unsettling) and so was Kevin, but Rod had decided to start hanging out with us. I tried running an X-Men MSH campaign with each player picking and playing one of the X-Men; Screech picked Wolverine, Dobie picked Nightcrawler, Robert picked Bishop and I think Rod picked Colossus. But that campaign got boring in a hurry, so I switched to a different tack: a Marvel Supervillains campaign, with player-rolled supervillains. Dobie played Whodunit? (an altered human with Mystique-like chameleon powers), Screech played Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy (a mutant and an idiot savant sort of inventor with four arms), Robert played Blockhead (an altered human with Monstrous Strength, Amazing Endurance and Excellent body armor, but Feeble Reason) and Rod played the Infamous Imp (a little Magic-origin devil with flight and bad luck powers). So for their very first misadventure, they decided to rob a McDonald's (and even if I can't remember every last word verbatim, it all went something like this)....


Me (as the Judge): "So the four of you walk into McDonald's and right up to the cash register. Right away, the cashier starts looking pretty nervous, but she manages to swallow her apprehension and stick to the script. 'Thank you for choosing McDonald's! May I take your order?'"
Dobie (as Whodunit?): "Yeah. This is a robbery! Give me all your ketchup packets!"
Me (as the McDonald's cashier): "...excuse me?"
Dobie (as Whodunit?): "Give me all your ketchup packets!"
Me (as the McDonald's cashier): "Is this a joke?"
Screech (as Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy): "We're not sure either. But I think you'd better do as we say."
Me (as the McDonald's cashier): "Well...for a moment there, I thought you were gonna take all the cash in the drawer."
Dobie (as Whodunit?): "If we wanted cash, we would have demanded cash! Now give me all your ketchup packets!"
Me: "Okay, so after about five or ten minutes, you guys have taken every ketchup packet in the place: all the packets in the cash register line, the drive-thru window, the lobby, the prep line...not to mention all seven boxes of ketchup packets in the stockroom. The shift manager and all the worker bees are clearly torn between fear and stark, raving confusion as the four of you race for the door and make your escape."
Dobie: "And as soon as I'm at the door, I shout back, 'And don't call the police or we'll be back for the mustard!"

Then they took one of the ketchup packet boxes, emptied all the packets into a pile in the middle of the street, stomped on them furiously and made the mother of all ketchup packet splatters. That was the first time they left the "calling card" for their new supergroup: The Ooey Gooey Screwey Kablooey Bandits. The rest of the ketchup went back to the Splatcave (their secret supervillain headquarters), to be used in a nefarious plot later....

More stuff happened in the meantime, of course.


Screech: "So, let's see what we have here: A bathtub, a washing machine, a toolshed, four traffic cones, three boomboxes, a sawhorse, two sledgehammers, a TI-82 calculator and a dozen rolls of duct tape. One luxury yacht, coming right up! Give me a paint bucket and a popcorn popper and I'll throw in a jacuzzi too!"
--Screech explains how Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy's main superpower works.


Dobie (teasing Robert about Blockhead): "His idea of subtlety is kicking in the back door!"


Later, the police have surrounded a laundromat, where Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy and Blockhead are inside, emptying all the money out of the pay phones, coin changers and laundry machines...so that they can buy all the snacks and cola out of the vending machines. The Bandits were just like that, okay?

Me (as a Police Sergeant): "We can see you in there, and we have you surrounded! Come outside slowly with your hands up...and I do mean all of your hands, Four-Armed Bad Guy!"
Screech (in-character): "Hey! That's Mister Four-Armed Bad Guy to you!"

...then...

Me: "Okay, Robert. Roll to hit."
Robert: *rolls while I check the result*
Me (as the Police Sergeant again): "This is your last warning! The SWAT teams are in position! If you don't come out in ten seconds, we're coming in and we won't be nice! Ten! Nine! Holy God! Incoming!"
*a jumbo-load washing machine, thrown through the front window, takes out the sergeant's squad car*
Screech (as Bad Guy): "Now back off, or Blockhead throws the dryer too!"
[Bad Guy and Blockhead proceed to fight their way out from there.]


Me (as the Ultimate Ninja, a rival supervillain who has invaded the Splatcave with his ninja clan): "So we meet at last, Gooey Kablooey...Gooey...Something...Bandits!"
Dobie (as Whodunit?): "Hey, it's Shredder and the Foot Clan! You guys came all this way for nothing, I'm afraid; there aren't any ninja turtles here."
Me (as the Ultimate Ninja): "Fools! I am not that charlatan! I am the Ultimate Ninja, the greatest ninja in the Western Hemisphere! And I have come to claim your Splatcave for the glory of the Ninjatoga Clan!"
Robert (as Blockhead): "Uhhh...ninjas in togas? Where?"
Me (as the Ultimate Ninja): "Do not mock the Ninjatoga Clan, oaf! Now hand over the keys to your base, or there will be trouble!"
Dobie (as Whodunit?): "It's a little too late for that. Hey, if you're not Shredder, can I be Shredder instead?" *morphs into Shredder, then points at the Ultimate Ninja and his ninjas* "Now, my minions! Crush the turtles!"
[The Bandits and a platoon's worth of Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy's coin-operated robots attack the ninjas. They win after a lengthy battle, but the Ultimate Ninja gets away, yelling about revenge like fleeing villains always do.]


Dobie (as Whodunit?): "Really? Your secret ninja clan headquarters is in the back of a Chinese restaurant?"
Me (as the Ultimate Ninja): "Japanese! Japanese! There are differences, you ignorant gaijin! We sell sushi here!"
--The Ooey Gooey Screwey Kablooey Bandits have cornered their nemesis at last.


Then, with all the junk they plundered from the Japanese restaurant/ninja headquarters, Screech tried building a new super glue rifle with Bad Guy's superpower and rolled a little too well....
Me: "Okay, your glue gun's damage. Roll it."
[Screech rolls d% and gets an Amazing result.]
Me: "That's pretty damned good! I think you just built a hand cannon there. Now roll again for range; you're using exceptional materials in a well-stocked lab, so add a +2 column shift bonus."
[Screech rolls d% and, after the adjustment, gets a Shift X result.]
Me: "Whoa. That glue gun can shoot something in orbit around the moon."
Dobie: "That's going on top of the Splatcave!"


[After committing yet another bizarre crime, the Bandits come home and find four superheroes from the Main Street Minutemen (a minor local superhero group) lying in a heap--in various degrees of injury, immobility and consciousness--about ten feet from the Splatcave's back door.]
Dobie (as Whodunit?): "Huh. I wonder what happened here."
Me: "Just then, you hear a stacatto series of screeches pealing from the second floor as the Splatcave's automated laser gun gauntlet goes off. ZOW ZOW ZOW ZOW! Then a fleshy mass comes bouncing down one of the chutes inside, right before your automated back door opens inward, waits for the chute to deliver its cargo and slams shut with a WHACK!, smacking the Red Hummingbird on top of the heap with her comrades, with tufts of smoke still wafting from the laser burns on her ass."
Dobie (as Whodunit?, to Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy): "Think we should tell them that we left the front door unlocked?"

True story. Screech had Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy roll to improve every wall, every door, every window and every security system in the place, and he did a pretty good job of it...for the most part. When he got to the front door, he rolled either an 01 or an 02 (a Feeble result, either way), so it was an ordinary wooden door and it only had a single security camera behind it; the camera was black-and-white and it broke down half the time, so it sucked. Anyone could have kicked in the front door and walked right into the Splatcave with no resistance. Fortunately, everyone assumes that the front door is the most heavily defended part of a base, so no one ever tries breaking in through the front door, right? If they only knew about the Splatcave's one design flaw....


Then along came the Independence Day Parade in New York City, and Captain America was standing on the main float, waving to the crowd. Little did he and the nearby Avengers (who were handling security) suspect that the Bandits were about to initiate their master plan: Operation Humiliate Captain Tight-Pants.

Me: "So at just the right moment, Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy presses a certain button on his wristwatch. The Burger Mutt float explodes into a shower of confetti and cream cheese, revealing the heavily armed Splatmobile underneath. The triplet sixteen-inch cannons erupt from the Splatmobile's hood and wheel clockwise on their pintel, aiming directly across Times Square. The scattering crowd screams with panic, confusion and dismay as Bad Guy and his triple cannon acquire their target: Captain America!"
Screech: "Fire!"
Me: "Roll it!"
Screech: *rolls something unspeakably high. I think it was a 92 or thereabouts.*
Me: *rolls for Captain America's Block maneuver. Not even close!* "Though he instinctively swings his famous Stars and Stripes shield into position on hearing the report, it avails nothing as a keg's worth of ketchup rings off the topmost edge of Captain America's shield, exploding on impact and absolutely drenching him with a thick, dribbling morass of scarlet ketchup! Everyone and everything within twenty feet of Captain America and his float are also slathered with the ketchup bomb, futilely trying to shake themselves off as the Splatmobile's cannon rotates its second barrel--and its loaded glue bomb--into position. Roll to fire!"
Screech: *rolls and hits again*
Me: "The Super Glue bomb follows the ketchup bomb to its intended target, striking the First Avenger square in his belly and bursting, mingling its contents with the ketchup and covering him with thick, pink super glue." *rolls Cap's Endurance* "But Captain America is still standing, and before the glue can dry, he leaps from the float, shouting "Freedom prevails!", and comes charging at the Splatmobile, cutting a zig-zagging path through the street. The third barrel swivels into position. Roll to fire the feather bomb."
Screech: *rolls and hits again*
Me: "This time, Captain America reels backward as the third shell strikes him square in the forehead, releasing a shower of chicken feathers. As Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy calculated, the feathers contain the chemical component needed to instantly solidify the super glue, reducing Captain America to an inert mass of ketchup, glue, chicken feathers and super-soldier-serum-powered beef standing in the middle of Times Square. Just then, Bad Guy hears thrusters creasing the heavens over the skyline, and the Splatmobile's alarm starts screaming. 'Warning! Iron Man sighted: 1,200 yards and closing!'"
Screech (as Bad Guy, to Whodunit?): "Quick! Load three more glue bombs!"
Dobie: "I load more glue bombs."
Me: "Whodunit? breaches the cannon and swivels all three barrels around, loading fresh glue bombs as the onboard computer screams, 'Warning! Iron Man, 700 yards and closing!' Sure enough, right as Whodunit? claps the last glue bomb into its chamber, he looks up and sees a gleaming figure of red and gold descending on them from 1 o'clock high."
Dobie: "I slam the cannon closed and get the hell off the hood!"
Screech: "The moment he's clear, I link-fire all three barrels at Iron Man!"
Me: "Roll to hit, but add a +1 column shift."
Screech: *rolls a 50-something, if I recall...good enough*
Me: *rolls Iron Man's Evade and pooches it. I think it was in the teens.* "BOO-BOO-BOOOOOM!!! Moments later, a heavy mass of glue, with a wildly flailing Iron Man trapped in the middle of it, comes zipping low overhead and crashes through the front of the Paramount Theater, much to the horror of many."
Dobie (to Screech): "Holy shit! Did you just take down half the original Avengers?"
Me: *rolling a bunch of ten-siders* "Yes, he did. But he might not be taking down the other half. While the Bandits are cheering themselves on, the back tires leap from the ground as an unstoppable mass thunders down onto the Splatmobile's hood, crumpling the car's front end in the blink of an eye. The people's wails of fear are drowned beneath the clamor of fabled Mjolnir ripping a return path through the chassis and a newly come, bellowing voice from above: 'I say thee NAY, base villains!'"
Screech: "Well...shit. It was fun while it lasted. Who wants to stick around and fight Thor with me?"
Dobie: "Fuck that! I'm already morphing into Joe Schmoe and getting lost in the crowd."
Rod (as Imp): "Me too! You're on your own, white boy!"
Dobie (as Whodunit?): "You can't follow me! I'm Whodunit?!!"
Screech (as Bad Guy): "How about you, Blockhead?"
Robert (as Blockhead) : "Oh, all right. If I have to."
[Thor singlehandedly whooped ass on Blockhead and Mr. Four-Armed Bad Guy, of course. Whodunit? completely got away, and Spider-Man went after Imp, but Imp could fly fast and Spider-Man can't, so screw Spider-Man. Captain America got cleaned up and got back on TV to deliver a rousing speech about never giving up and never backing down from the face of evil, equating the Ooey Gooey Screwey Kablooey Bandits to the likes of AIM and Hydra in the doing, which earned the Bandits a steaming buttload of individual Karma and Supergroup Karma. Bad Guy eventually turned his nasty prison food into another bomb and sprung himself and Blockhead out of jail; unfortunately, their glorious day of triumph was still forever stained with the humiliation of catching an Asgardian beatdown on live TV. Such is the life of a supervillain, I suppose.]