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I recounted this story in the old terrible experiences thread, but I suppose it bears repeating. My friends and I were introduced to D&D when we were 13-14, and for a while things were pretty good. My friend Tom's older brother would run modules for us, and our adventures were pretty nondescript. However, he went off to college right as we were entering high school, and Jerry stepped up to take the DM's mantle. Jerry was a pretty nice guy on his own, but as a DM, he was an rear end in a top hat. He was the sort of guy who always played the Lawful Stupid paladin, and his game world reflected this. While he recognized that other alignments existed, we were penalized for playing true to the role. Minor infractions of the law got the party thrown into jail, and more than once we found ourselves trying to escape the executioners block just for trying to accomplish the goals he set for us. Jerry would complain that we weren't playing right and scrap the campaign, and the next week we would roll new characters for a new adventure. After about two and a half years of putting up with his bullshit, things finally came to a head. Jerry told us that this campaign would be a little different; we would be able to roll any sort of character we wanted, even monstrous races, which he never allowed in the past. All told, we had a couple drow, a kender, a minotaur, a mind flayer, and I played a fire elemental. For a while, the game went well. We were monsters, and by god, we played it like we were. Villages were razed, heroes were vanquished, and we became unholy terrors to put fear in the hearts of men. But then, Jerry began killing us off by DM fiat. The drow were bound spreadeagle in and systematically tortured in full sunlight. The minotaur was slain by what was essentially a Spanish bullfighter, and his head was put on a pike. Jerry then buried the kender and me (the fire elemental) alive in a small chamber, where my flames began to consume all the oxygen in the room, suffocating the kender, and extinguishing me when all the fuel was consumed. I don't remember what the mind flayer's fate was, but without a doubt, it was a load of poo poo. After Jerry was done narrating our extremely detailed and hosed up demises, he told us to throw out our character sheets and "be ready to make some real loving characters" for the next week. We were stunned by the sudden turn toward torture porn, and after we left, we agreed that there was not going to be a next week. We continued to game with Jerry, but thankfully, we had learned that no gaming was better than bad gaming, and we made sure that someone else was running a game if Jerry was involved.
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Mar 9, 2012 20:15
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Yawgmoth posted:so out of 10 words, 8 were misspelled and one wasn't that she thought was.  ...pleese don't tell me you ever actaually played with that ST eagain
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Mar 9, 2012 20:23
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One Tall Fellow posted:Minor infractions of the law got the party thrown into jail, and more than once we found ourselves trying to escape the executioners block just for trying to accomplish the goals he set for us. Jerry would complain that we weren't playing right and scrap the campaign, and the next week we would roll new characters for a new adventure. After about two and a half years of putting up with his bullshit... So, uh, these games, your sessions were like every six months, right?
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Mar 9, 2012 20:30
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:So, uh, these games, your sessions were like every six months, right? We played just about every Saturday night, give or take a few. 
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Mar 9, 2012 20:40
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One Tall Fellow posted:We played just about every Saturday night, give or take a few. You put up with that poo poo for over A HUNDRED weeks? I would've been  after a month of having to reroll a new character every week.
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Mar 9, 2012 21:12
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Colon V posted:
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Mar 9, 2012 21:18
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Ashdesert posted:You put up with that poo poo for over A HUNDRED weeks? I would've been Ah, I didn't mean to make it sound that bad. Campaigns would make it three, sometimes four weeks before being scrapped. Even the last one lasted two weeks, so it was only somewhere between 24-30 characters. We were slow learners.
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Mar 9, 2012 22:13
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One Tall Fellow posted:Ah, I didn't mean to make it sound that bad. Campaigns would make it three, sometimes four weeks before being scrapped. Even the last one lasted two weeks, so it was only somewhere between 24-30 characters. We were slow learners. It makes a lot of sense that you were 13-14 at the time, too. I think every gamer sticks with bad games at that age, either in the hope that they will improve or because hey, socialising. For me it was a bit of both of those things - I socialised in sport clubs and other areas but my close friends were all gamers, so if they wanted to game I would go along. It took until our late teens to actually understand "no gaming is better than bad gaming". The evil game sounds awesome, being a cartoon villain every once in a while is very appealing. Jerry sounds like a dick. Edit: I've sometimes run terrible games, where something that sounded fun turns out not to be that great. Or worse, where I wasn't on the same page as the players as to what they wanted. I know about this because everyone lets me know, often at length. It wasn't like that when we were 14. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 00:05
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Never let aspies run a campaign. I swear to God a strict adherence to rules is the quickest way to drain a game of fun. I try to let my players get away with doing creative and goofy things. I want their exploits to be ridiculous. But I got in a bit of a bind. A character meant to be a recurring villain got defeated, but luckily they didn't kill her, they just put her in this trance to ship her off to their superiors. I managed to free her, and in a way that wasn't complete bullshit (and the characters were rewarded for their... unexpected victory). The problem is that it probably appears like I pulled off some DM fiat, and just magicked a solution, but I actually used one of the players (who had been flopping sporadically between being good and evil) to betray the others. He sabotaged their ship while everyone was asleep, allowing the villain's massive fleet to catch up. He surprised me though, when he notified his superiors (the good guys) about it too - leading to a massive stand-off between the two sides. I got my villain free, and they managed to escape alive (and with some rewards, too), but the problem is the players probably think I pulled the whole thing out of my rear end because they knew I didn't want that character taken out of the story yet. I tried to give subtle hints that they had been sabotaged, but I couldn't be too obvious or they'd throw their team mate out. Bah. (And yes they would have succeeded in taking out that villain at that point in the story had he not interfered. He was pretty much my last resort.) Starmaker fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 07:33
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Starmaker posted:(And yes they would have succeeded in taking out that villain at that point in the story had he not interfered. He was pretty much my last resort.) The main problem with "ohp, he lived" is that players end up feeling like they have no effect on the world. If the villain's quite angry with (and more than a bit afraid of) them, then that might work to solve (or at least mitigate) the issue. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 08:00
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Oh, they'll definitely get her eventually. And she didn't actually get away, not exactly. She's a shapeshifter, and is strong enough to take the form of inanimate objects. The player who sabotaged them actually snuck her into the good guy's temple disguised as an artifact (which he wanted, so by betraying his people he got to keep it for himself, but it will have to be in secret because his team mates think he traded it in). The fact the villain is there is going to give their enemies a huge upper-hand, so, yeah, it had consequences. And, again, this was all by player action. The majority of the team doesn't even know this is going on, but they will. I'm pretty sure they're going to kill that one team mate eventually, but I want him to stick around long enough for it to at least be dramatic. e: I understand the need to not let the players feel powerless or unable to make changes in the world. I'm trying not to do that, and I rewarded them through a variety of ways for capturing that villain. For one, the main villain was revealed to them because of it, they struck up an alliance with a former enemy (to get out of the battle alive), and the one working for the temple (not the betrayer one) got rewarded for his completing his mission so well. The biggest reason I wanted that one villain to survive, though, is because I have a scenario planned out later where they'll finally get to defeat her. The way it went down at the time wasn't very satisfying or dramatic at all, so I was trying to get her out to allow for something better, for the players, later on. VVVVV Oh wait, you're doing Star Wars too? I was being purposely vague because, I don't know, nerd bigotry or whatever. I'm dumb  This is a SW campaign, so replace temple and good guys with Jedi, and villains with Sith, and ship with space ship, artifact with holocron. And so on.
Starmaker fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 08:18
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Dammit. My Star Wars group is still mid-Battle For Coruscant (we had to miss a few sessions for various reasons) and I don't want to start telling that story when it could be a month before I know the ending. (I did tell our GM about the kudos he received in this thread, about which he seemed both thankful and a little bit terrified) So I was all set to kill time by telling Pendragon stories but it turns out I already did. Well, may as well stick links here for folks that didn't get a chance to see 'em before. Still, I want to share more awesome stories, so let me go back to the well that is AD&D. Way, way back in the day I was in a 2nd Edition campaign that was... um... well, a little bit odd, in that it was theoretically a Spelljammer game but ended up mostly being "let's see what weird poo poo you guys can get up to. In space." We're in a floating asteroid base that's being used by a wizard that we want to kill for some reason that I was never a hundred percent clear on, and the wizard's basically turned his asteroid into a 3D dungeon; he lives in the heart of this rock that's honeycombed with tunnels. We're heading through a tunnel to go after him, and for some reason we'd gotten split up. Me and another guy were creeping down a tunnel when what do we see? A loving elephant. It's charging at us. My thought process goes something like this: "Dude can't have an elephant here. How would he feed it? It can barely fit in the tunnel! poo poo, it suddenly appeared at a dead-end! No. It's got to be an illusion." So I roll to disbelieve the illusion. I succeed. DM: "...okay! You stand your ground and shake your head, announcing, 'Naw. Naw, that's not happening.' And then you get flattened." DM actually takes me aside and says in a quiet voice, "I'm not trying to gently caress you, here, man, your reaction made perfect sense and you're gonna get Raised, I promise, but it was a Figurine of Wondrous Power." Which I actually thought was kind of cool, that he'd make a point of explaining what looked like an enormous dick move to let me know he wasn't trying to be a jackass. I wasn't bothered or anything, but the fact that he took the time to say something was cool of him. Let's see, something else... I should get some of my old players to reminisce about our Exalted game. Fuckin' game lasted three years, played weekly; it's hard for me to settle on the awesome stories. One bit I remember was... well, whether or not it's awesome really depends on the reader's opinions, I would say, but it was a fun game. PCs are hunting for reagents and ingredients for the resident Twilight Caste (read: wizard) to use to make Artifacts. One item I put on their shopping list was the teeth of a Tyrant Lizard, which is Exalted-speak for "Tyrannosaurus Rex." So half the PCs collect ten mortal retainers and head out into the jungles, and I tell them, "Look, I could sit here and spend hours describing your trek through the jungle and how hot it is and how miserable your dudes are and all that stuff, but let's be completely honest. You're not here for that. You're here to fight a dinosaur. Stomp, stomp, stomp, RAWR! Look, it's a Tyrant Lizard!" So the PCs fight the Tyrant Lizard and they kill it pretty handily (they had beaucoup XP by this point, we were like eighteen months into the game) and they're harvesting its teeth, and I notice one guy is looking a little bored so I say, "Remember how that guide you spoke to told you Tyrant Lizards are solitary creatures? Looks like he was full of poo poo, because Stomp, stomp, stomp, RAWR! It's another Tyrant Lizard." They decide to take off rather than fight the second lizard, because they know they got kinda lucky the first time, so they get in their flying vehicle artifact thingy and take off. So I turn to the guy playing the group's quasi-leader, a religious type who fancied himself a Leader of Men, and I ask him, "Um, dude? Remind me again - your exact words were 'as soon as the three of us are in the craft we take off,' right? Yeah? Okay... remember those ten lackeys you brought with you?" His face just fell as he had an "Aw, poo poo" moment, so they turned around fought the other tyrant lizard, collected the bodies of the half of their retainers who had been killed, apologized profusely to the other half who weren't, and when they got back they resolved to make the Twilight Caste find his own fuckin' ingredients from now on.
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Mar 10, 2012 08:27
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I had a session with my longtime group recently that more or less reminded me why I love them so much. This probably would have ended very poorly with most groups. First, we had a new DM. He's played with us for years, but this was his first attempt at running a game. He had an idea about where we'd start and how the first session would go, but didn't tell us what it was. He's a really creative guy, so we weren't too worried. Second, we each created characters we were personally really interested in playing, without talking to each other during the process. The DM approved each of them individually, but I suspect he didn't really think about how the whole group would interact together. So the game started, with each of us waking up in a dungeon/prison. It's pretty obvious to all of us, based on the decor of this particular dungeon, that this is not a "lock them up and let them rot" sort of dungeon. It's more of a "chop them into little bits" dungeon. In the room with us are two butcher-surgeons, and outside that room are two armed guards. It quickly became apparent that we were supposed to fight our way out. I should probably describe our characters: a librarian (wizard with only word- or writing-related spells), an inventor (wizard with crafting and engineering spells), a Priest of Love (can't heal; can't use weapons that inflict damage), an airheaded bard and an archer/rogue. This is easily the least combat-ready party I've ever seen; none of us had a Strength stat higher than 12. So we had to get creative. The bard distracted the surgeons with some juggling (of discarded body parts from previous victims), while the inventor and the rogue stole a bonesaw and scalpel, respectively. With the surgeons dispatched, the Librarian took a torch off the wall and badly singed one guard, while the love priest lassoed the other and talked him into surrendering and telling us the way out. The whole thing would've gone much smoother if we all had big strong fighters to deal with the combat, but knowing that we didn't stand a chance in direct melee made even the players who usually don't put too much thought into things come up with alternate means. And because it's a good group, no one got frustrated about it. Besides the collective "What were we thinking?!" once we all figured out what the other PCs were.
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Mar 11, 2012 07:58
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I haven't played in ages (since AD&D 2e to be exact), but reading this thread has given me the itch to dive into the red box to get started on the new rules. To contribute, my first ever session was in high school during lunch in the gym bleachers. I don't remember much about the group comp or what we did, but I remember a particular encounter during a dungeon crawl that always makes me chuckle. We happened upon a kobold child, and the wizard of the group (who was neutral evil I believe) announced that he was going to take the child as his slave. The child cried out as he grabbed it, and the mother came running and promptly attacked him. Since she was defending her child, the DM gave her a healthy combat boost so she was kicking the wizard's rear end. He demanded we help him, but we decided that it wasn't OUR idea that he take the kobold as slave to begin with (and his alignment didn't really go well with ours anyway), so we just laughed at him. The best sessions I ever played were GM'd by a guy in college that would get drunk during play, and lead us on all sorts of adventures during this. One favorite had us mysteriously get teleported to, of all places, Bawcomeville, Louisiana (it's a real town, spelled just like that). We were pretty drat confused by our surroundings, and the rednecks didn't take too kindly to our presence. We ended up "accidentally" burning down a honky-tonk bar and barely escaping before being whisked off to Ravenloft. This is when things got really good. One of the other players was either a half-orc or orc warrior of very low intelligence. During one of our exploits he ended up with a magical sword that was intelligent... more so than him. It was also evil. Some how we missed this, but I don't remember how or why. The sword started talking to him and slowly corrupted him. We would hear him whispering seemingly to himself and giggling, but then he would act like everything was OK if we questioned him on it. He managed to hold on until we went to Ravenloft. We were taking shelter with some NPCs and were woken up by screams. When we got to the scene there was a pile of disemboweled bodies with their entrails arranged in a heart shape around them. Our warrior was also there, and he was noticeably different. That is to say his eyes had melted out and were replaced by flames. We stupidly attacked him and died, but it was pretty awesome to have it end that way. One of the worst experiences was gaming with a friend who was very knowledgable about D&D, but was also a bit of a dick. I rolled a beastmaster with a direwolf, and the guy hated it. He never said why other than, "Your character is stupid." The first fight we got in he made sure to have my wolf die in front of me which messed me up pretty bad, and then he killed me. All because he thought my character was dumb.
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Mar 11, 2012 20:00
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:DM actually takes me aside and says in a quiet voice, "I'm not trying to gently caress you, here, man, your reaction made perfect sense and you're gonna get Raised, I promise, but it was a Figurine of Wondrous Power." Which I actually thought was kind of cool, that he'd make a point of explaining what looked like an enormous dick move to let me know he wasn't trying to be a jackass. I wasn't bothered or anything, but the fact that he took the time to say something was cool of him. I've done that before a couple times. Once was when the enemy focused on the combat monster who'd just taken half their dudes out, and I'd recently been in an argument with said combat monster's player, so there was the potential to see it as retaliation. Another was just a dude who kept rolling abysmally whenever he tried to do anything. He hit maybe once in five rounds of combat before getting horribly stuck in a wizard's spell (save ends) for the other five. Although now I want to design something around Summon Monster and SNA in incredibly unlikely places. Like Hibbert the Ineluctable is an rear end in a top hat wizard that traps his dungeon with summons in the weirdest places. Rogue opens a chest, 1d4+1 fiendish centipedes. Fighter steps into a room, sudden owlbear. Wizard falls into a pit trap, so does a celestial badger.
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Mar 12, 2012 03:26
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Dareon posted:Like Hibbert the Ineluctable is an rear end in a top hat wizard that traps his dungeon with summons in the weirdest places. Rogue opens a chest, 1d4+1 fiendish centipedes. Fighter steps into a room, sudden owlbear. Wizard falls into a pit trap, so does a celestial badger.
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Mar 12, 2012 04:00
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Dareon posted:Another was just a dude who kept rolling abysmally whenever he tried to do anything. He hit maybe once in five rounds of combat before getting horribly stuck in a wizard's spell (save ends) for the other five. Reminds me of the first AD&D game I ran. I'd DMed a fair bit of red/blue OD&D, but for some reason (I would have been 13 or 14 at the time...) I decided to wing it less and try to stick to the rules. Except I gave everyone max HP at 1st level, because it's bad if you don't even in OD&D. 4 sessions (4-8 hours each), and one poor guy has had his character killed 5 loving times. I actually had the balance about right (well, for AD&D anyway), Ben was just really unlucky. He got hosed up in combat twice, one of which was a one-shot, he got poisoned twice, and once a ghoul paralysed him and the party ran away. He was playing fighters and clerics, too, so that shouldn't have happened. He'd just roll terribly and die. I learned from that. Ben thought I was pissed off at him, but I was just trying to run the game as written. Turns out doing that sucked back then and still sucks now. We talked about it and were cool, but he had a terrible time for those few sessions.
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Mar 12, 2012 06:42
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Ashdesert posted:Oh my God I hate when DM's come up with puzzles/riddles with only one "obvious" solution and won't give you any leeway or let you win with a clever answer they didn't think of. Of course it's obvious to you, you came up with it, but we're not telepathic. People can think of exceedingly clever solutions to problems given sufficient resources. In one game I played in, the players were all various Gods dropped onto a half-finished planet to muck about as they will. We had a variety of deity ideas: totalitarian deathgod, weather goddess, merchant god, spidergoddess of assassins, god of rats and secrets, and my own "god", a former alien nano/biocolony that used to be a planetary hivemind of sufficient size/strength to merit apotheosis upon being blown up. It specialized in atomic/genetic manipulation, being able to mess with matter, biological life, and influence energy fields. After some initial worldbuilding (Formation of pantheons and personal heavens, completion of a consulatble DMNPC limited information guide, and a quick finishing-up of the world), the other Gods started creating worshippers and marking out territory from the heavens, while my character descended into the planet itself, where it felt more comfortable. Deciding to extend its planet-sences to check out the world, I discovered a large barrier of unknown force warding off the core of the planet. After being unable to dispell the shield, I casually blew roughly half my Divine Energy (we got a certain amount each Age of the game, needing varying amounts to make different changes to the world) on a Global Reality Change action, the biggest possible, that simply stated "I've attuned to the frequency of this obstructing energy field, and it no longer hinders me". I got a near perfect roll on my action (With a bonus for being insane enough to simply wave reality aside. Apparently the barrier was meant to be found a little later and broken through by 2-3 gods working in concert) and found a soulforge, a worldbuilding tool left behind by the Overgods that worked on the planet. As a bonus, my finding of said soulforge independant of the other pantheons kicked off a madcap search for other tools that resulted in spy satellites, blowing up several of the planet's major population centers, successfully time paradoxing myself to stop a global omnicide, grand theft souls, the summoning of a world-destroying Titan, a zombie plague, and culminated in half the gods taking what was left of their followers and fleeing in a spaceship, the other half fighting the Titan, and me turning the now-barren planet into an antimatter bomb for the Titan to punch and buggering off with some NPC gods.
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Mar 12, 2012 07:46
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Holy poo poo, I remember having a blast reading that godgame. Great fun to watch.
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Mar 12, 2012 08:29
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Anticheese posted:Holy poo poo, I remember having a blast reading that godgame. Great fun to watch. Sounds like something in my PDF library, Dawn of Worlds or something. Link? Please? Also, now I want to run a PbP of it...
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Mar 12, 2012 09:08
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Players will always come up with poo poo the GM doesn't expect. A good GM will accept and even encourage this. It's more fun for a GM - at least it is when I'm GMing - if the GM gets to be surprised every so often, too! In our Star Wars group (see, I told you I'd talk more about this game) I seem to have been designated the "batshit crazy ideas guy." Part of that is the character - when you've got a techie with assloads of skills you start coming up with ways to use 'em - and part of it is just me being a little crazy, I guess. I've mentioned, here and in other threads, some of the tricks I've pulled in-game (make yourself sound like Darth Vader to win an unskilled Bluff test, the Floating Chrysanthemum Fleet, stealing a Trade Federation droid fleet), but there's only so much time in a day, and I've got notebooks full of poo poo I've never had the time or opportunity to implement, like: *Miles 3.0 - Miles is my character. Miles 2.0 was a protocol droid that we had laying around being useless, so Miles reprogrammed it to essentially act as his personal assistant slash doorman; its job was to keep the other Rebels from bothering him with stuff that wasn't important so that he could get work done. It had a Polaroid of Miles' face taped to its face, that's how you could tell it was Miles 2.0. It got blown up when another PC and I differed on the meaning of 'stuff that wasn't important,' so Miles has designed - though not yet built - Miles 3.0, which is pretty much the same thing only this time using a P-series droideka as the base unit. Because gently caress you, tough guy, shoot that in the face. *Targeted agitprop/psyops - Miles is a less-than-ethical sort sometimes, and designed several small transmitters and repeaters designed to broadcast anti-Imperial propaganda. That's not the big deal; the big deal is the way he wanted to deploy them, namely in regions typically thought to view the Empire favorably. See, he knows the whole "if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" adage, and extrapolates this to "if the only tool you have is a legion of jackbooted thugs, every problem starts to look like Poland circa 1939." The reasoning was that while the propaganda wasn't going to change anyone's view on the Empire, the inevitable Imperial interrogations and crackdowns and disappeared innocents who were suspected of Rebel sympathies certainly would. (GM, on reading the notes for this plan: "You Neutral Evil motherfucker!" And then he laughed.) *The Wild Weasel Fleet - actually this one's getting used soon, but I don't think I talked about it; the group no longer has enough proton torpedoes to run the Floating Chrysanthemum Fleet, so I refit about half the ships with sensor-spoofing platforms designed to make them appear to Imperial sensors as Victory-class Star Destroyers (a lot smaller than the ones we see in the movies but widespread enough that the Rebels have captured a bunch). When activating the sensor-spoofing the 'startup' emission looks a lot like a ship dropping out of hyperspace; they can't actually do anything other than sit there and look threatening, but when you're in the middle of a pitched battle and fifty ships seem to have appeared right behind you, well, it tends to throw you off your game for a bit (before you realize they're fake). It may only get one or two rounds of confusion but hell, that can be more than enough. *Gonk Guns - Remember these dudes? They're called Power Droids, or affectionately, "Gonks" ('cause that's the noise they make). In-universe they're basically walking fuel pumps for power-intensive systems; basically they're a big ol' capacitor with legs. There's a type of blaster in Star Wars called an E-Web; it's basically a machine gun. It must be mounted or braced on a tripod to be fired effectively, and it has heavy power requirements. It didn't take long to realize that these were two great tastes that taste great together; I turned a bunch of Gonks into effectively walking pintle mounts for E-Webs. This let us cart weaponry that is normally used for defensive purposes only into decidedly undefensive situations, like boarding enemy starships. *The Lightsaber Launcher - we found a bunch of dead Jedi corpses with lightsabers. We took the lightsabers. No one will let me build a crossbow that fires them. Boo. Those're what I'm thinking of off the top of my head. Above and beyond the whole 'look how awesome my game is you guys seriously' ego-stroking, the point is that players will always surprise you. Always.'Cause dammit, that's half the fun of it.
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Mar 12, 2012 09:31
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:*The Lightsaber Launcher - we found a bunch of dead Jedi corpses with lightsabers. We took the lightsabers. No one will let me build a crossbow that fires them. Boo. Have you considered a lightsaber bayonet?
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Mar 12, 2012 14:05
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:*The Lightsaber Launcher - we found a bunch of dead Jedi corpses with lightsabers. We took the lightsabers. No one will let me build a crossbow that fires them. Boo. Step 2) Slave your lightsabers to a single remote control device. Step 3) Weld your lightsabers base-down to that flying target thing from ROTJ, or a droid, or just weld the bases together whatever. Step 4) Direct/throw whirling arm-severing terror death device at nearest bad guys, activate lightsabers. Laugh and laugh and laugh.
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Mar 12, 2012 14:17
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A metal plate with a handle and with 20 lightsabers welded so they're sticking out of the front.
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Mar 12, 2012 14:30
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Great stories guys, a couple of these had me on the verge of tears. Here's a contribution: About 3 years ago, one of my friends managed to get our entire group interested in the idea of playing D&D. Out of our group of around 6, only 2 had any experience whatsoever so our DM decided to be pretty lenient about the rules. In this case, one of my friends decided he wanted to be a 7-foot-tall intelligent anthropomorphic bear-man. Since this was obviously not a playable race (not in the 4e core books at any rate), our DM had him basically just make a Goliath (since that was the closest thing we could think of) in terms of stats and whatnot, but have him be a bear-man just for flavor reasons. On our second encounter or so (part of level 1 chars), we were fighting a small band of kobolds. As well we get down to the last kobold, our party, who are investigating the source of some recent kobold and orc incursions, decide to take this one alive. Naturally we need to deal some non-lethal damage and starting thinking about the best way to go about it. However, before we manage to decide on a course of action, our bear friend decides he has a brilliant idea: "I whip out my dick and slap the kobold with it!" There was a moment of table-wide laughing as our DM tried to figure out if he should allow it or not. You could practically see the internal conflict in his face the opposing forces of "this is too funny and stupid" and feeble attempts at keeping this a respectable campaign. In the end he relented, and made him make an attack roll with no modifier, just to make it a bit harder (I was later told that he had a fairly steep DC in mind since this was a pretty stupid move on the bear's part), and so my friend rolled the dice. He rolled a 20. We pretty much lost it at this point as his Critical Dick rendered the poor kobold unconscious. He ended up using it 2 more times in the course of our campaign (2 times out of at least 2 dozen encounters so it was pretty sparingly), at least one time while combat was in full swing. The most remarkable thing was that every time he decided to use his mighty bear dick, he would roll a 20. Yeah, that guy is a lot of fun to game with.
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Mar 12, 2012 15:38
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AlphaDog posted:A metal plate with a handle and with 20 lightsabers welded so they're sticking out of the front. This, but arranged in a circle and attached to a rotary device. Place against wall, activate, and voiila! Instant doorway!
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Mar 12, 2012 15:39
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AlphaDog posted:A metal plate with a handle and with 20 lightsabers welded so they're sticking out of the front. Tollymain posted:This, but arranged in a circle and attached to a rotary device. Place against wall, activate, and voiila! Instant doorway!
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Mar 12, 2012 17:59
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so having looked through the forum, this seems like the best place to ask some things. I'm looking at throwing together a group this summer, but I have never dm'd before. For that matter, I havent played in a rpg for years and years. None of my group will have likely played rpg's before and I dont want to bog them down in rules and formality. Mainly, I'm wondering if you guys have any recommendations on a rpg to introduce these guys on. I just grabbed the pdf for dread, and would like to eventually get a night or 2 of that going, but was wondering what would be a nice lighthearted/comical game I can stretch out over a few months. I've taken a look at paranoia (local store was out of stock), and have played a stack of 3.5 back in the day. What should I pick, so that I dont alienate my group, and furthermore not make a dick out of myself through a lack of experience? PS. Just threw my money at this project and it seems like something that could create some notable experiences. --> Everything Is Dolphins
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Mar 12, 2012 21:18
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w00tmonger posted:so having looked through the forum, this seems like the best place to ask some things. I'm looking at throwing together a group this summer, but I have never dm'd before. For that matter, I havent played in a rpg for years and years. None of my group will have likely played rpg's before and I dont want to bog them down in rules and formality.
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Mar 12, 2012 21:21
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Splicer posted:These are both far too safe. You need the lightsabers sticking out in all directions s evry vector of appraoch is equally limb-choppy! Making a lightsaber pinwheel could also an option... and it would be so pretty! mount them to a droid like a porcupine 
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Mar 12, 2012 21:25
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Yawgmoth posted:What kind of game do you want to play? What kind of game do they want to play? There's a lot of systems out there that are fantastic for one style/genre and abysmal for others. Generic high fantasy is pretty bleh for me as far as a setting goes. Im open to interparty conflict if I can find a way to manage it, hence paranoia sounding hilarious. otherwise just something some friends can dick around in and open them up to the idea of something more dark like Coc. My friends are huge goons, so I dont see them being up for a really heavy political campaign. In my head, I see them wanting to dick around, fight the moon, and amass wealth. Also, at least a couple of them are into the whole spaceship armadas duking it out thing (though really thats not a necessity). Ideally, something not too rules heavy, and if I cant work enough of a plot into it to keep it going for a few months then that would be perfect. Mainly I'm just a beginner here, I shouldn't be too much of an idiot if I have to learn a system, and I'll likely have to buy at least a couple core books to get started, whatever the system.
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Mar 12, 2012 21:32
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Miles 3.0, which is pretty much the same thing only this time using a P-series droideka as the base unit. Because gently caress you, tough guy, shoot that in the face. w00tmonger posted:mount them to a droid like a porcupine Miles 4.0, a.k.a. sonic the hedgehog, conjure up some electronics of "oh they only trigger when they're on the top" and you have a rolling semisphere of lightsaber fun, or take that out for an instant drill
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Mar 12, 2012 21:42
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Well, I happen to like the New World of Darkness system. The core is basically "normal people in a world like ours but the campfire stories are real" and is pretty simple to make characters and play in. The system is basically "add attribute to skill, roll that many d10s, 8+ is a success, more successes = more better." It can get more complex if you want and you can move into stuff like Hunter, Vampire, Mage, etc. if your players are interested. There's a lot of good material for it, and also a lot of... well, just check out the World of Darkness megathread and see the worst of the worst of it. We'll help you and your group to dodge the awful bits and direct you to the good parts.
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Mar 12, 2012 21:47
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Forer posted:Miles 4.0, a.k.a. sonic the hedgehog, conjure up some electronics of "oh they only trigger when they're on the top" and you have a rolling semisphere of lightsaber fun, or take that out for an instant drill  about it, you have to be a part of the living Force to use a lightsaber (which is why Greivous still had a heart, IIRC). That, and any sensible GM would immediately point out that the power draw on that thing would be absolutely mindboggling.
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Mar 12, 2012 21:48
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Yawgmoth posted:Well, I happen to like the New World of Darkness system. The core is basically "normal people in a world like ours but the campfire stories are real" and is pretty simple to make characters and play in. The system is basically "add attribute to skill, roll that many d10s, 8+ is a success, more successes = more better." It can get more complex if you want and you can move into stuff like Hunter, Vampire, Mage, etc. if your players are interested. There's a lot of good material for it, and also a lot of... well, just check out the World of Darkness megathread and see the worst of the worst of it. We'll help you and your group to dodge the awful bits and direct you to the good parts. I love nWoD because it is fairly simple and easy to mod to suit a variety of settings. Unfortunately, the local LARP group has turned off most of the players in my area.
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Mar 12, 2012 21:52
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Yeah LARPers are pretty much the bane of existence, but I've brought a few people into nWoD by saying "you didn't stop playing D&D because of the 400 lbs. neckbeard at the game shop playing an 18 charisma elf, don't let LARPers stop you from playing this game."
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Mar 12, 2012 22:00
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Yeah, I've been talking up a '60s era espionage game a friend ran and would like to run again and a couple people have been interested in playing one of the Blank:the Blankening games but it is frustrating to see this thousand yard stare from people who got a sour taste from the local Larp creeps. It doesn't help that they keep trying to pick up new members from our hobby club and then turning around and alienating them with their mega powerful legacy characters.
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Mar 12, 2012 22:07
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Chance II posted:It doesn't help that they keep trying to pick up new members from our hobby club and then turning around and alienating them with their mega powerful legacy characters.
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Mar 12, 2012 22:31
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I had a best experience a couple of months ago, in a pbp game on these forums. Unfortunately I totally flaked out in the game right at the end of this, which kind of puts a damper on how great this story was, but it's still pretty awesome. So I'm running a game of Dark Heresy, but instead of being the acolytes of an Inquisitor, my players are Deathwatch serfs. for those of you who aren't warhams, the Deatwatch are an order of space marines made up of especially gifted individuals from almost all the various space marine chapters, devoted to fighting aliens. they work for the Ordo Xenos, one of the major inquisitorial bunches. The Deathwatch is spread pretty thin, and they are usually the first to encounter some weird rear end alien race. they also have to keep a watch over various hotspots: deathworlds, ruined alien planets where the aliens might come back, poo poo like that. Obviously they can't guard all of these places in force, but they generally have a stronghold around the ones they know about, keeping an eye on stuff. The players are normal human serfs who live on one of those strongholds, people whose ancestors got caught up in Space Marine business for a variety of reasons and ended up yanked out of their lives and turned into hereditary servants. in this case, it's a space station orbiting a planet whose inhabitants were destroyed over 1000 years ago. There aren't any indications that this xeno race is coming back, but it was seriously bad news and the deathwatch are nothing if not thorough, so generations of serfs have lived and died on the station, keeping an eye out and staying ready to call for help at any time. Unfortunately, their station's cogitator goes down right when poo poo jumps off on the planet and the aliens make a comeback. One of the ways this game was different from normal Dark heresy is that all the players had beefed up weapons from Rogue Trader. Another is that they all got little gifts from me. Sledra, playing a Guardswoman, had a set of master crafted, holy brass knuckles. they were basically worthless melee weapons doing measly damage, but double damage against daemons, the joke being there weren't any daemons in this game. So some stuff happens, divers adventures etc, and my players end up fighting their way to the station's astropath, who is going NUTS ever since the aliens started getting active. The guy's eyes are glowing, the hexagrammatic wards on his walls are smoking, he's written prayers in praise of the God-Emperor in his own blood (also glowing) and now he is chanting about how the emperor is here, he's on the station. At this point I should mention that one of my players is an assassin who has been reskinned completely. his backstory is that he's been mindwiped, and every day he has all his memories stripped from him again. Somehow the alien thing has stopped this process, although we didn't get far enough into the game for him to actually realize he was accruing memories. Anyway, all he's good for now is to be a janitor, which he has basically been programmed to do. So, what does this guy do but look at the glowing bloodprayers and see a mess. A mess which he proceeds to clean up. Im pretty shocked at this point, this is the last thing I expected to happen. I put the bloodprayers there as flavor, so I'm at a loss. At this point the Astropath has been pouring huge amounts of psychic energy into these prayers for hours, so something ahs to give. Fortunately, this is PbP. I take a day, roll up a Daemon. So a Daemon appears to gently caress my players up. At first they are doing gently caress all for damage, but then the janitor dude goes berserk with his eviscerator. An eviscerator, by the way, is an insanely beefed up chainsword that is a danger to its wielder as well as his enemies. If he had hit himself with it, the janitor would have died from even minimal damage. But he hits the Daemon instead. Then he licks the blood of the chainsword. This is also unexpected but gently caress it. So he immediately regrets this, but a voice in his head tells him "I'm probably in the clear on this one, right? I mean, if there's no obvious problem then it's not a big deal. That's what I heard anyway. Yeah, probably best just to forget about this whole totally inconsequential series of corrupting mistakes that won't come back to haunt me in any way. by the way this is totally your, Agemman Marbray's, internal monologue talking and not a daemon tempter." So that's a bullet dodged. So the Daemon tries to take off, but can't escape because the room is heavily warded and the party psyker has managed to beef up the wards even more during the fight. So since it can't escape it pops off Fear (3) which is pretty scary, all things considered. Half the party goes catatonic. The Janitor goes berserk, starts waving around a bar of soap thinking it's a rosette, swinging his crazy chainsword around like there's no tomorrow. Eventually the party techpriest makes a SICK called shot to his chainsword, knocking it out of his hands to everyone's relief. Then the guardswoman takes out my gag gift, the blessed knuckledusters, and punches the daemon to death.
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Mar 13, 2012 00:02
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Alright so a little bit of background on this. I am DM a game of Shadowrun with two people I have been gaming with for years now. Player A is playing Vash (a name that strangely has no relation to Trigun) a sociopathic elf that amounts to a walking weapons platform. Basically he would open his trenchcoat and it would look like that scene from the Matrix. The good thing about the character (and most interesting) was that he did not think things through at all. Basically the first thing the player thought of is what he told me he was doing. (This character had other exploits such as: jumping out of a building and landing on the scientist that he was supposed to be escorting out, and sniping one of his own team mates because he thought that he was a clone.) Player B was playing a biomodified clone of Taylor Swift (strangely Player A wrote up a long enough backstory that it ended up making sense). She was basically an unstoppable juggernaut. In the first session with these two she punched through a security gate. She ended up having a dicepool of about 16 for every hit. So the two of them had just done a couple of jobs and then were stabbed in the back by the man that hired them. The two of them decided that they were going to get revenge on this man, and planned on starting an all out war on the places that he controlled. They a used a hacker friend of theirs to find out the locations that were affiliated with this man. So they arrive at the first location that they were going to scout. The front of the building just looked like it was a standard convenience type store. They sold things like soy-snacks and batteries and the like. It was clearly front, so they decide to go around the back. At the back of the store they come across a metal door with a slot in it. As I am describing this Vash just knocks on the door. A troll answers, basically tells them to bugger off, and closes the slot again. Then Teeswift (the clone from above) pipes up:  I punch the door open. *rolls* poo poo, five successes. You dent the door slightly, but it does not move. I TRY AGAIN! *rolls* three successes Still nothing. And the slot opens again "Stop that." the slot closes again I PUNCH THE DOOR AGAIN! *rolls* Ten! Ha! The door cracks noticably, but is not opening. Also an area above the door slides up and a small machine gun pops out. I throw a grenade into the slot. What? You heard me. I throw an incendiary grenade into it.So the grenade goes off in the small two foot by two foot alcove that has the gun in it. Now the rules say that grenades reflect. So instead of killing the troll like they wanted, the two of them end up covered in molten slag and white phosphorous. Two botched body rolls later and the two of them are both unconscious. I sigh and close my laptop, which had the stats of the person they were supposed to fight and say "Well, we have to stop there, because I need to figure out where you guys are escaping from..."
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Mar 13, 2012 03:53
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