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PnP tales
rictras
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 239 Bounty Hunter
Being gamers, we all have interesting and/or quirky things happen in our games. Here are a few of mine.
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About eight years ago, a friend started up a game of Second Edition, using the Skills & Powers book. I made up a ranger with a severe phobia of undead. It quickly became apparent that the rest of the players were only interested in personal glory for their characters.
Several games in, we encountered a group of either zombies or ghouls, I can't remember which. Before the combat began, I passed a note to the DM stating that my ranger was quietly retreating. Everybody else rolled for initiative, and none of them noticed I didn't roll. The fight began. Round after round passed, and in each of their attempts to make sure their character outdid all the others, nobody noticed that I wasn't doing anything.
Finally, the melee ended, and I signalled to the DM that I returned to the party. We looked at each other, trying not to laugh. They never realized what happened until years later when I finally told them. If only I had played a thief in that game!
--
In the first game of that same campaign, the entire party fell into a pit. We asked each other if anybody had a grappling hook. One player said that he did, and the following exchange took place.
"Okay, tie a rope to it and we'll toss it up."
"Rope?"
Yep, he had a grappling hook with no rope.
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Around twenty years ago, that same DM and I were having a game with a bunch of new players. One of them, a rather eccentric fellow, decided he wanted a pet chicken for his character. Then, he declared he was buying a girdle for it. The rest of us exchanged confused looks, but we didn't want to risk insulting him or hurting his feelings, so nobody asked for his reasoning.
For numerous games, whenever there was a fight he would make sure the DM knew his chicken was wearing a girdle. Finally, I could take it no more, and I asked him why in blazes was it so important that his chicken was wearing a girdle.
Turns out he thought a girdle was chicken armour.
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I anticipate hearing whatever tales you have to tell.
--
About eight years ago, a friend started up a game of Second Edition, using the Skills & Powers book. I made up a ranger with a severe phobia of undead. It quickly became apparent that the rest of the players were only interested in personal glory for their characters.
Several games in, we encountered a group of either zombies or ghouls, I can't remember which. Before the combat began, I passed a note to the DM stating that my ranger was quietly retreating. Everybody else rolled for initiative, and none of them noticed I didn't roll. The fight began. Round after round passed, and in each of their attempts to make sure their character outdid all the others, nobody noticed that I wasn't doing anything.
Finally, the melee ended, and I signalled to the DM that I returned to the party. We looked at each other, trying not to laugh. They never realized what happened until years later when I finally told them. If only I had played a thief in that game!
--
In the first game of that same campaign, the entire party fell into a pit. We asked each other if anybody had a grappling hook. One player said that he did, and the following exchange took place.
"Okay, tie a rope to it and we'll toss it up."
"Rope?"
Yep, he had a grappling hook with no rope.
--
Around twenty years ago, that same DM and I were having a game with a bunch of new players. One of them, a rather eccentric fellow, decided he wanted a pet chicken for his character. Then, he declared he was buying a girdle for it. The rest of us exchanged confused looks, but we didn't want to risk insulting him or hurting his feelings, so nobody asked for his reasoning.
For numerous games, whenever there was a fight he would make sure the DM knew his chicken was wearing a girdle. Finally, I could take it no more, and I asked him why in blazes was it so important that his chicken was wearing a girdle.
Turns out he thought a girdle was chicken armour.
--
I anticipate hearing whatever tales you have to tell.
The meaning of life, is to give life meaning.
Post edited by rictras on
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It got worse and worse as time went on, now we mess with characters while the players are there. There are also constant sexist and racist jokes and its all a lot of fun (dont let people drink at your sessions...)
One very interesting story I have involves when we had just moved to 4th ed I as usual rolled a very roleplay intensive character not realising how "simplified" it had become. Changeling warlock with linguist feats (later changed to combat feats and took the Scholar background) so that I could impersonate whatever needed impersonating. I also left all my vitals (sex, height, weight, age etc) unknown.
After a few weeks of encounters the DM saw I was getting rather fustrated at the constant combat and lack of roleplay options available and to reward me he gave me an "Amulet of seduction", this just happened to be right before we went to a large encounter with an orc mercenary leader and a whole cave full of minions (not the one shot kind, the i work for you kind) The orc leader had a giant worg though. I then decided to shapeshift into a perfect representation of the orc leader and use my armour's ability to modify its appearance to look like the orcs armour (as I said I was building a roleplay char). I then proceeded to walk into the room and announce that the heroes were coming and that everyone had to get in defensive positions facing the (wrong) door (our wizard used ghost sound to help sell it). I rolled a 20 and then he looked at my stats and realised i had maxed out bluff to the point that with a 20 i could have told them I was Gruumsh and they would have believed me. He however had a trick up his sleeve, the giant worg could smell me as not being his master and attacked me. I then called to the minions to help the worg was being controlled by the heroes. Another 20, massive NPC fight. The worg slew all the orcs just as the leader came in.
I used my amulet to control the worg and once again rolled a 20. The dog fell in love with me killed its former owner and then I obliterated it with a daily. It howled my name as it passed on. I did, however, drag the corpse to a tanners and have them turn it into a magical tent. This is now where I sleep.
End result was a screaming rogue tumbling down a hill (failing two acrobatic/diving rolls...) breaking a couple of ribs, scattering his gear and losing 70% of his hits. However I did arrive at the Thieves Guild building first...which was nice : )
Got them sneaking into some high level wizards mansion to retrieve an item for a quest. Described the large and formidable looking guards at the front entrance.
They decided to go around back and sneak in through the garden.
So, after doing the usual evil DM thing of rolling dice for absolutely no reason from behind the screen, they were all hidden in the bushes at the far end of the very nicely laid out country estate type garden.
I described the magnificient arbor, the fish ponds, the immaculate lawn and the large gazebo.
One player asked "How large is it?"
"About fifteen foot tall at the top, some thirty foot in diameter" I replied.
"Is it looking at us?" someone else asked.
At this point I realized that they had no idea what a gazebo was, so I decided to have a little fun.
"Doesn't seem to be looking at anything in particular" I replied (rolling some dice behind the screen).
After a hasty conflab, the ranger let loose with a flaming arrow, the wizard cast a fireball and the rogue attempted to sneak up on it.
Of course, being a large wooden structure, the gazebo exploded into flame, alerting the wizard and his guards AND calling out the watch and half the town to deal with the fire. The players had to beat a hasty retreat before the watch arrived otherwise they would have ended up paying a huge fine for arson.
I was playing in an evilish campaign that had a Djinn in it. The player started to abuse the wishing powers by randomly granting the players' wishes and asked my character (a drow wererat that would sell his own mother out if the price was right) to make a wish for him since he couldn't use his power for his own gain. I negioated a deal whereby I would get a wish I wanted from him (that wasn't messed up in any way) if I would do his wish and the convo went something like this...
Me: Ok, what do you want me to wish for?
Djinn: I want a bunch of b-astard swords that I can use as throwing daggers.
Me: Ok...can you be more specific? *and I explain does he want any magical properties on them or anything when he looks at me funny*
Djinn: Yeah I want blah, blah, blah on them.
Me: Ok. Anything else?
Djinn: *he was getting slightly exasperated by my trying to get him to say exactly what he wanted because we all know how the wish spell works* I just want a bandolier of ****ing b-astard swords.
Me: *holds hands up* Ok, ok, I wish for a bandolier of ****ing b-astard swords.
DM: A bandolier of b-astard swords appears at your feet. The hilts are in the shape of *****es. As you pick the bandolier up you hear soft moaning and the swords seem to get harder the longer you hold them.
Djinn: *looks at me with a look of "really?!"*
Me: What?! You said you wanted a bandolier of ****ing b-astard swords.... *grins*
My same character weaseled his way into getting half of the loot for a different adventure by playing both the quest giver and the djinn for cuts. We'd gotten separated and when he found me he told me about the quest and that he'd be getting half of the caravan that hadn't shown up and asked me if I wanted half of that to help him out. I told him I wasn't sure but to let me think on it and I'd find him at the inn later. I went to the mayor and asked about the same quest to get 1/2 of the half he was getting from the Djinn. I then went to find the local thieves guild as I wanted entrance and made it possible for him to get the reward for finding out what happened to a local guard that disappeared from his wife while also getting into the local thieves guild for taking care of the same guard that had been giving them trouble.
So this one time, our party was trying to sneak up on a goblin camp in the middle of the night. Our party was in general disarray, having scattered to a fro without really coming up with a plan. Our Half-Orc fighter climbed a tree, our thief was drunk (not the character, the player), and the rest of us were waiting on them to do pretty much anything. Things were obviously going wrong when our drunk thief kept rolling single digits, and our Half-Orc was trying to light his arrows by using wine as a catalyst. No one had the heart (and it was hilarious) to tell him that wine wasn't gonna' cut it, so our DM just kept telling him he failed his rolls. After about 10 or so minutes of this, my bard (and myself) became quite impatient. He ran straight into the goblin camp, screaming like a madman, and tossed a pint of oil into their campfire. The resulting explosion didn't harm any goblins, but it got the fight rolling. Needless to say, for just a glorious moment, my bard got to feel like The Doctor.
Speaking of said bard, he ended up dying within the same campaign. A Drider ended up feasting on him, he took an arrow straight in the family jewels (our thief rolled a 1), and then the Drider's corpse landed on him. It was a glorious.
Did you have 1000 copies of the same bard so you could just whip out the next character sheet ala the Gamers movie?
No, sadly. I did replace him with a very feisty halfling fighter who specialized in two-handed fighting, however. He had a bit of a compensation issue, so he kept adding titles to the end of his name for every enemy he killed, a couple of which were "Crocodile-Crusher" and "Drider-Smasher".
... are you saying that YOU are the source of the legendary gazebo story? I've heard about this years ago, on the WotC forums...
I'm the source of one of them yes. That was from a campaign game I ran way way back in the mid 1980's. I know I've posted it in a number of places including some Fidonet areas and MUD forums way back even before the internet existed. Probably on some off topic UO forums too.
One of the players had a dwarf that absolutely detested elves and would take any and all opportunities to kill or allow any elf in the party to get killed.
We were all pretty low level, my character had been given a wand of polymorph by the DM in secret, it only had one charge on it. As a half-elf I figured the dwarf would eventually turn his attention on me so I too, awaited my opportunity.
We found ourselves on a ship and a few minor scuffles broke out between the players and some of the NPC's, so I slipped the DM a note saying "If I see the dwarf doing anything to try and kill our elven cleric, I'll zap him with the wand of polymorph".
Sure enough, the dwarf gets spotted throwing a dagger at the back of our cleric. Our DM tells the dwarf to roll 'save vs magic'.
Dwarf fails his roll, DM slips me a note asking "What are you going to polymorph him into?", my note back was 'Pick something at random". DM turns to the DM on the other table and asks for a random creature. That DM rolls and then says out loud 'DUck billed platypus".
So, our rambunctious dwarf is now a duck billed platypus. He starts ranting and raving.
DM points out that none of the party can actually speak duck billed platypus, and with no druid or ranger available, everything sounded like whatever sound one of those makes.
Moments after all the shock and surprise wore off, our elven cleric starts chasing the platypus around the deck. Platypus eventually jumped overboard and started swimming behind the ship, just out of arrow range.
The rest of us sat at the back of the ship, discussing whether dwarves could swim even when not in full armor and just what would happen when the polymorph wore off...
I am mute. Meaning I cannot speak. Normally, I use a text to speech program to communicate with others who do not know sign language. However, for the game, the DM thought this would be disruptive, so he had me write notes and get those sitting next to me to read them, or pass them to him
I was the rogue. So of course, I'm the one who has to find secret doors and traps.
In this case, I found a secret door that was a trap. But all the others read from the note was "Secret door" before they decided to go charging through it.
Long story short, everyone but me fell into a pit of acid, and so I was left sneaking into the kobold stronghold by myself... And ended up almost winning. In the end though, I died heroically fleeing from the Kobold's shaman wizard thing and his 13 elite almost dead guards. Curse you magic missile!!!!
A few years ago my regular gaming group and I were running a 3.0 or 3.5 campaign, and we were standing on a hill that turned out to be a dracolich's head. As the dracolich reared up, I stubbornly tried to hold onto a tree branch, arguing with the DM that I should be able to make a roll to keep grasp of it. He grudgingly agreed, and said that I would do so only in the event of rolling a natural 20.
So I rolled a natural 20, and the room erupted.
Unperturbed, the DM congratulated me for successfully holding onto the branch! And explained that the branch had then broken off of the tree it had been attached to, leaving my character to tumble along with the rest of the party...
Then we had to deal with the dracolich. o.O
Haha, nice! One of my favorite characters was my gnome rogue. Gnomes' affinity for taking names is so much fun! Every town I'd introduce him by a different name. Great for staying below the radar.
This same campaign one of my cameo characters, a catfolk Sharess worshipper, helped induct one of the other members into the religion by showing him what the Goddess of sex and cats could offer. This same character (in a different campagin one she was a main character of) decided she needed to worship her Goddess for a bit at the local inn. The DM rolled for how many men she took to bed with her and whether or not she was satisfied with their performance. The rolls were five and no, she wasn't. So...the halfling of the group decided to volunteer to help her find relief and rolled a critical success. Five big, burly men couldn't do anything for her but a short little halfling came to her rescue. LOL!
The same halfling also critted one of the above dragons by using his jump +10 ring to taking a flying leap into the air dragoon style and land on the dragon's head, slamming his dagger into its skull.
My friend K was going to be the DM, so the rest us started rolling up our characters. I ended up making a halfling fighter (basically a guy with a chip on his shoulder about his height).
We all have our new characters and we start our adventure by meeting on the road in the middle of this enormous forest. As we are traveling, it quickly becomes night time, so we decide to make camp for the night. During the night we were awoken by this howling\growling. Our ranger tracks the sound to a cave. [mind you we've only been physically playing for 15 minutes]
As we approach the cave, no one wants to get closer the ferocious noise, so we stand there and argue about what to do.
I tell the group "Hey I have about 50ft of cord, why don't I tie one end of it to my short sword and then throw it in the entrance of the cave to see if I can draw the creature out?"
They all agreed...and so I tell the DM my intention and he asks, "Are you trying to hit the creature?"
I look at my group, and they all shrug, "Sure!", I said. The DM says, "If you roll a 20, you'll hit".
I throw the short sword and roll.......a 20! "Yeah!", so I then roll for damage....a....6.
The DM looks at me, blinks slowly, and then tells the group..."ok the sounds have stopped, Samuel hit and killed the creature"
We collectively pull on the rope and drag the rope out to find.......a gnome dressed in the robes of a magic user.
The DM says..."Well....that gnome was to be your guide for your quest, but since you have killed him, there is no way to find the magical tower"
So with no fallback plan as to how to find the tower...we decided to go swimming the rest of the day.
From that point on, we were always trying to screw up our DM's plans by doing outrageous things..lots of good times.
The only job I managed to find for her was for a deranged wizard who demanded she catch him some frogs for magic purposes, which she did. A lucky nat 20 spot check noticed that the back room the wizard took his frogs into was completely empty, and when I went in it turned out to contain a portal of sorts I could not see or use. From this portal emerged a tiny flying phase dragon, who promptly set the mage tower on fire and whom I rolled to tame as my new familiar, as I had not chosen one yet.
I rolled a natural one, and became the familiar of the teleporting little dragon instead. This meant my character was functionally invincible as long as my dragon (whom I named Tiger, spelled Taigyrr to HAMSTER off the DM) didn't mind losing a point of constitution. Taigyrr was very friendly and allowed me to teleport whenever I pleased. As soon as the DM realized his error in accidentally making me the most powerful in the party, he decided that an after effect of getting Taigyrr was that my character would glow.
This provided the most terrible penalty to stealth roguekind had ever seen, and I was forced to abandon all hopes of classing into rogue, going full warmage instead.
The other problem was that Taigyrr and my character shared a psychic link, which only became apparent after he drank a shot of whiskey and both of them passed out in a bar.
That campaign was exciting.