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It is a good story, and there's no need to apologise for being long, but goddamn.quote:I just keep repeating to him it wasn’t out of character and I’m simply RPing. poo poo, I almost Godwinned myself right here. Nuremberged? Whatever. Yeah. Not to get on anyone's case, specifically, I've just seen this sort of claim over and over again. It's easy to make, and certainly has its uses for building conflict, but loses its value when it becomes basis for an excuse to piss in another player's Cheerios. I've pulled the latter more than once in the past and I'm not proud of it, even if the others involved were even bigger prats. Admittedly, I prefer kinder, gentler games where PCs are actually friends and, while there may be an in-character possibility of a heel-turn, we know on a player level that the could-be betrayer will unfuck himself at a suitably dramatic moment. I've seen too many games go up like a cherry bomb in a septic tank without that level of mutual trust. Player inflexibility and refusal to communicate as people didn't help either. OneThousandMonkeys posted:Anyway, no one was sore about anything after these endings. We're not an extremely serious group. If everyone's on board though, then that's a completely different animal. Just kinda helps if you know everyone's cool with it.
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Aug 31, 2014 20:08
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Bieeardo posted:It is a good story, and there's no need to apologise for being long, but goddamn. The issue there, as I see it, is that if you're having to use that as a justification then you've already hosed up. When you have to say that to justify yourself, it means that you're having fun yourself at the expense of somebody/everybody else's fun. In the groups where it works there's never a need to say that because everyone is too busy laughing to care. Severity is also an important consideration: it's one thing if you just dick over somebody else for a character's personal gain, because that you can actually carry forward and parley into some interesting roleplay in a really serious group. But if you've got a bunch of people who really wanted their characters to be big drat heroes and take down the evil overlord, only for you to betray them at the last minute and get them all killed? None of them are going to enjoy that, not even in a "we'll laugh about this later" kind of way.
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Aug 31, 2014 20:48
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"I'm just playing my *character*" is, indeed, usually a poo poo excuse for whatever behavior is going on. In this case I don't think it's anything too bad because it was the final session of the campaign (usually final sessions have some limiters taken off, in my experience), and it's not like it came out of nowhere - the player was specifically following the DM's guidance, there. At worst, the DM owns half responsibility for pissing off Matt. Story time! This one is from the earlier days of my 4+ year 3rd Ed. D&D campaign, which was never finished, and was in truth an extension of my long-running 2nd Ed. D&D campaign with different players (also not finished). There were a number of characters involved, but the only important ones were the following: -Jeremiah "Sarge" Tansden, a human Ranger. -Malverick Antara, an elven Rogue/Wizard and unrepentant alcoholic -Jane Meridian, a human Bard/Paladin who by this point had gotten a Pegasus mount. All three PCs were part of a mercenary company that had been wiped out and as a result they were stranded in an unfamiliar area that without much guidance. They also found themselves hounded by a fell organization for reasons that they couldn't understand, but that's not important save as a reason for them to keep travelling until they could reach a place of relative safety. They were passing a village called Haven, which was only accessible through two means: by boat, if you take a skiff through the cove (larger ships couldn't make it through the rocks), or through a forested mountain pass. They decided to try to reach the mainland through Haven, bought a skiff from the captain, and headed toward shore. Jane flew ahead, intending to make a good impression on the locals, while the rest of the party took the skiff. For some reason, the skiff-group got it into their heads they weren't going fast enough despite there not being a rush, so Malverick whipped out his Decanter of Endless Wine (a variant of the standard Endless Water version) and handed it to Sarge, telling him to use it to get the skiff moving faster. Sarge ended up chaining it to the back of the skiff and then pulling the stopper. According to the rules, when you open the decanter you make a strength check to determine how strong the resulting stream of liquid is. Sarge was the beefiest party member, and he ended up rolling a natural 20, giving him well above the maximum result of a massive geyser. I then had him roll his dex to steer the skiff properly, and he rolled a natural 1. So the paladin is trying to make a good impression to the village elders by talking about all the great things her party has accomplished. Mid-sentence, suddenly the skiff goes skidding across the village's single dock, through the streets, and smashes into the statue of the village's founder - destroying both. All involved, of course, smell strongly of cheap wine. It was something of a face-palming moment for the paladin - one of many to come. ~*~ So, it turns out that the village has a problem with a nearby Cyclops, which had been raiding their farms of late, and the party was eager to make up for their extremely poor impression by dealing with this problem. They're warned that they're not the first group to make the attempt - a few weeks ago, three of the village's strongest youths attempted to bring the fight to the cyclops, but none returned. The party journeys through the forest (haunted in earlier days), reaches the cyclops' dungeon, and fights their way through the cyclops' gnoll minions and their traps. Pretty standard dungeon-faring stuff, really. They come into a dimly-lit room, what was once a giant-sized dining hall filled with what looked like gold plates, utensils, etc. This is all covered in thick dust and the room smells of mold, so it's obvious it hasn't been used in a long time. In truth, the plates and such are actually covered in yellow mold, which releases a choking gas when touched - an old basic D&D trick that I've used at least once a campaign since my earliest days DMing. It's only the poor lighting that makes them look like gold, and a bit of caution negates the trap entirely. Malverick, it's worth noting, was an intentionally weak build. His dump stat was his Constitution, which resulted in him having 9 hp at level 6 or something absurd like that. He was very helpful to the party, but was more fragile than crystal china. So, I describe the room, and before I even get to the end of the description, Malverick's player pipes up, "I run up to the closest plate and lick it!" I blink, stumble over my words, and then ask, "You what?" "I lick it! Mal's just so happy to finally strike it rich, he's gonna lick every plate he sees!" I pause. "Uh... Are you sure you wanna do that?" "...yes? Why wouldn't I be?" So I tell him what happens, and apply a penalty to his saving throw since he's, y'know, actually *licking* the drat things. He fails, and manages to roll low enough Con damage that he's left with 2 points of Con. Next the party finds the remains of one of the previous party, an archer who ended up dying from a fall in a remote corner of the dungeon, and thus wasn't looted by the gnolls - the party found a bow and some magic arrows on his person. Two of the arrows were minor magic, but the last seemed very powerful. The party didn't have any way to identify the arrows, so they just threw them into party inventory and moved on. Finally, they reached the Cyclops, pleasantly slumbering in his bed. By this point Mal's feeling kind of fatalistic, figuring there's no way he's going to survive the ensuing fight. He convinces the rest of the party to let him have the powerful magic arrow, so that he can sneak into the Cyclops' bedroom and attempt a coup de grace - if the arrow is cursed or whatever, no great loss and no other party members will be nearby to suffer the fallout effects of it. They agree. Mal sneaks up onto the Cyclops' bed, draws back his bow, and lets fly. Me: "Well, that was an arrow of harm. The Cyclops is reduced to 3 hp. *rolls* Makes his Fort save to survive the coup de grace, though." Mal: "Wait, so if there were someone else here to attack, he'd be dead before he could even act?" Me: "Yeah, pretty much. But it's just you and him, and he's waking up now. Roll initiative." Mal: "*rolls* Uh, I got a 6." Me: "Too bad. The Cyclops gets an 11, so I guess he goes first. *rolls attack* He doesn't bother picking up his club, just smashes you with a fist. Want me to roll for damage?" Mal: "*crumpling up his character* No, no point. Don't cry for me lads, 'twas a good run." Me: "At least you survived licking the yellow mold. That's more than I would have expected." In the next round, the rest of the party entered the room. Sarge finished off the Cyclops in a single attack, ending the adventure. Mal's player never quite forgave himself for his kamikaze attack, and said in retrospect he should have just taken the time to think through the situation more.
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Aug 31, 2014 20:56
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In my new game I tried something new. I rolled the dice 3d6 in order to determine what I was playing. Then I rolled background. Even rolled for alignment. Everything turned out alright except for the alignment, where I got chaotic neutral, coupled with a wisdom score of 7, oh well. So the dice told me I would work best as a Cavalier. And they told me I was a debaucherous black sheep noble and heir to the barony of a village. That my parents were both nobles and innkeepers. And once I failed a scoundrel due to pleasure. I interpreted this to mean I am the Breakfast Knight, Sir Larry Goldstien of the Village Inn. My noble crest is a plate of ham and eggs and I have the personality of a former child actor. Enter into our game. We are at work, on the clock, as couriers. Our mission is to travel to a city and bring the king a message. The moment we walked into town the surly halfling gunslinger at my side happened to be playing his kazoo. A gnome in a black cloak approached us, asking if we had the goods. Wait, what? We told him he had mistaken us with someone else. The gnome got mad that we weren't his contact and we needed to scram. He argued with the gunslinger and it escalated to the gnome trying to take my friend's kazoo, so I galloped over there and beaned him with the staff of my banner. We dragged the unconscious gnome into an alley and looted him, the gnome was carrying little pouches filled with cocaine. I put two and two together. We dressed the other halfling in our group, a stammering bard who is essentially Butters Stoch, in the gnome's black cloak and we ordered him to cover his face with the cloak and meet the contact. He did. He rolled a six on his bluff check. On the opposing sense motive check the DM rolled a one. The contact gave him a large box, and thanked him for moving the product in this city. We opened the box in the alleyway. Our party is the proud owner of a massive shipment of cocaine. We immediately went to the brothel. What else do you do with a Tony Montana sized box of blow? I hired whores to become our pages and banner-girls, because I can't carry my flag and my lance at the same time, obviously... At the brothel we learned there was a rodeo in town that will be taking place tomorrow at the arena. So I put two and two together again. The plan as it stands now is I will enter as a contestant in the rodeo, since you know, I'm cavalry. The gunslinger will sneak into the stables and feed or inject every bull with cocaine, save the one I am riding. The banner-girls will support the gunslinger, providing him a distraction if necessary. Then Butters will bet all of our gold on me winning the rigged rodeo. Hopefully they won't gently caress it up, but if these little bastards and our banner-girls keep snorting up all of our cocaine I don't like our chances. Then there's the issue of what our bosses will do if they realize that we are lollygagging around hatching insane money making schemes while we're supposed to be doing our job as couriers. The game is turning into a Rich Dicks sketch from the Kroll show, and it's a glorious amount of fun. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Sep 1, 2014 |
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Sep 1, 2014 12:38
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Funny thing, several of my memorable gaming experiences have involved stumbling upon a large quantity of cocaine. For example: There was one time we were interplanetary mercenaries who had inadvertently discovered the existence of an alien spaceship (first contact) in the atmosphere of Saturn and were on the run from basically everyone who mattered in the system, and we ended up escorting this foppish heir of a large megacorp who happened to be carrying around a huge briefcase full of coke. When we discovered the coke we dumped him and grabbed the coke instead. Do you realize how much blow an asteroid miner goes through in a single tour? Sadly we got burned by a customs check in orbit of Mars. Then there was that other time we were playing Shadowrun and managed to con a drug dealer into giving us an entire shipment of novacoke because it was "defective", and we'd be back with the right stuff in just a minute. The Yakuza were not pleased.
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Sep 1, 2014 13:15
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My Call of Cthulhu group found a Pokeball and used it to catch Glaaki. I was tasked with making Pokemon stats for him.
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Sep 1, 2014 22:55
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alcharagia posted:My Call of Cthulhu group found a Pokeball and used it to catch Glaaki. I was tasked with making Pokemon stats for him. I wish I was in your Call of Cthulhu group.
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Sep 2, 2014 00:40
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Tonight, on the 13th Age of Cthulhu: A Disney Princess mocked an old man to death, then nearly killed every enemy with a soul-crushing rendition of Let It Go Sherlock Holmes unleashed a fighting-game combo on an aspect of Nyarlethotep And a Changeling Occultist unsummoned the Crawling Chaos.
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Sep 2, 2014 04:31
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Old Dirty Cumburgs posted:And a Changeling Occultist unsummoned the Crawling Chaos. White Wolf Changeling or Star Trek Changeling?
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Sep 2, 2014 04:37
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Jesus Christ, I finished the thread. It was at 118 pages when I started. Now what will I read? Books?  Once I'm on a computer instead of a cellphone I guess I'll have to post some of my poo poo. I've got plenty of bad and catpiss, and even one our two good stories.
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Sep 6, 2014 02:32
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I think I like the cat piss stories more. Good stories tend to be really similar, like "And then he rode on the dragon and jumped to the next dragon and then threw a bomb at the castle and rolled three natural 20s in a row so he destroyed the whole building even though he was just a bard who usually spent the game just standing in the background screaming a lot." And then people argue about whether or not the player making a non-combat character was ruining everyone else's hack n' slash fun. Cat piss stories, on the other hand, tumble to the absolute depths of depravity and horror.
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Sep 6, 2014 02:37
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Yeah, but we need the occasional "A cool thing happened" story. Or it just becomes an oppressively negative thread.
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Sep 6, 2014 03:16
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The Mighty Biscuit posted:Yeah, but we need the occasional "A cool thing happened" story. Or it just becomes Fixed that, for you.
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Sep 6, 2014 03:21
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In today's Call of Cthulhu session we entered the creepypasta dimension where the DM sent us on a rollicking romp through a bunch of creepypastas because why not. One guy found himself in Minecraft and fought Herobrine. Also, I managed to derail one of the stories by suplexing the boss monster of one of them for more than half of its HP and caused it to fall unconscious and spent the rest of that segment sitting my character on his rear end and playing Call of Duty on an XBox he found in the woods somewhere.
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Sep 6, 2014 04:06
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I've got one for the thread. It's one of those 'how could you be so stupid' moments from my players. I'm running a modified version of the scenario from the 'Rogue Trader' core rulebook. I didn't want to get into the nuts and bolts of combat this session, so I had the players roleplay through a failed recon attempt by a potential rival seeking to beat them to a prize in the Koronus Expanse: the location of a lost ship full of treasure. They saw the ambush coming and launched a counter ambush of their own, which I thought was pretty smart, and learned that the treasure ship was more than just a myth when they were warned not to go after it. Their rival was less than pleased to realize they had needlessly shown their hand, and excused themselves as the station's head astropath (the 40k version of a long distance communicator) came to them with a message from the Inquisition telling the party in no uncertain terms to go after the treasure ship and where to look for the only known survivor's descendants. This information came in the form of an astropathic data cube. The party astropath modified the cube to remove some data warning the party about a rogue psyker matching her description, and then shared the message with the rest of the party. Here's where things get stupid. The player who's character is the actual rogue trader decided the best way to confuse their rivals was to hand them the data cube as-is without trying to modify it any more, and so arranged a hand off. I emphasized how incredulous their rivals were at this turn of events in an attempt to get them to reconsider this plan. They decided to ignore my hints that just handing over the information like that would be a bad idea. Luckily for them, the Astropath had already modified the data and their rivals could tell that it had been tampered with, and so are likely to ignore it. When the session was over I had to diagram how stupid just giving their rivals info for free was because the player who came up with the plan thought it was a great idea all around. Have you ever had to explain to your players that they made the dumbest possible choice?
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Sep 6, 2014 05:03
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When I first tried DMing Dungeon World, I had one guy asking to be an evil Cursed Knight, a knight tainted by evil power. I usually don't like restricting my players' character concepts but I always hate playing with evil party members myself and most people in the party weren't looking forward to it either. This guy also was already a guy who loved playing morally ambiguous characters even when he played "good" and "lawful" characters. His first character was a lawful good monk who tore out a prisoner's tongue and forced him to swallow it just for fun. I figured he was going to go on a GTA killing spree like most evil characters I've seen, but this guy assured me that he would play it super subtle and nuanced. I decided to give in and let him play it if he went about it the way he claimed he was going to. So the campaign was about this country that was essentially one giant city. It was recovering from a massive war and was overrun with shady/desperate people. I wanted to illustrate the level of corruption present so I had the guards at the front gates demand a bribe from each member of the party. They basically start arguing and causing a commotion, so the guards start threatening to haul their asses in if they don't pay the "toll". This upset the Cursed Knight and he proceeded to start murdering each of the guards. He kept applying the forceful and messy tags while getting amazing rolls, so I basically described the scenario out of something like Riki-Oh with him exploding all the guards and sending their disembodied limbs flying by punching them with his spiked gauntlet. The rest of the party basically just sat there in horror, unsure of what to do. Eventually the Mage decided to create a fog cloud to allow them a chance to escape. The Cursed Knight instead just took this as an opportunity to kill the guards more easily. Not only did the guards lose any ranged support, but as a Cursed Knight he could smell the fear of his enemies and locate them in the vision-obscuring fog. He then proceeded to pick off the guards one by one as the rest of the party tried to run and hide. Eventually the army rolled in, thinking this was some massive assault. They apprehended the Cursed Knight and any party members still hanging around. The army had a hard time believing one man could have killed so many guys by himself and assumed the party had worked in unison. After they were apprehended, I figured some guards would be mad about this guy killing all their friends. So a handful of guards started trash talking the Cursed Knight as they escorted him. The Cursed Knight, not willing to take any of it, proceeded to headbutt one guy so hard he exploded his head. The rest of the army was too scared to even go near him at that point, so they just executed him on the spot with a makeshift firing squad. It was probably wrong to kill off his character, but pretty much everyone at the table were asking for this guy just to die already. I also figured that things were probably only going to continue downhill if I allowed this character to stick around considering this was only the first session. It did leave everyone a very memorable impression of Dungeon World though. Also the guy's second character swung super hard in the other direction. He was a goody two shoes despite also being a Cursed Knight, having almost exactly the same name, and being the first guy's twin brother.
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Sep 6, 2014 05:32
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I wrote that playbook! I was really excited until I realized it was a cat-piss story. Oh, well.
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Sep 6, 2014 06:01
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VanSandman posted:Have you ever had to explain to your players that they made the dumbest possible choice? Mostly argue, mostly one guy, mostly with backup from the rest of the table. His thought processes weren't so much orthogonal to the average person's as they were apparently non-Euclidean, made worse by frustration issues and a marked difficulty in explaining all the steps of his reasoning without decomposing into nested arguments from there. Good guy. Creative GM, when he doesn't convince himself that the PCs are beyond challenging. Still glad he moved out of town and doesn't come back to play. Sly Deaths Head posted:Cursed Knight Good god. What a douchebag.
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Sep 6, 2014 07:03
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Sly Deaths Head posted:It was probably wrong to kill off his character, but pretty much everyone at the table were asking for this guy just to die already. Nope ! And it looks like you, and the rest of the group, sent the right message. You'd obviously have lost the other players if there weren't consequences for what the douchebag was doing. C'mon folks, if you're going to play an evil character, commit to being evil in a way that will increase the amount of fun the other players have, not decrease it.
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Sep 6, 2014 07:07
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VanSandman posted:
There's one in every group. The one in one of my current groups is kind of hilarious in that it doesn't come out of him being dumb so much as monumentally uncreative. He's a good guy, an old friend, and he isn't disruptive or anything, just very prone to latching onto the first thing he sees and staying stuck on it like an angry pitbull. For instance, we're playing an old school Warhammer Fantasy RP 2nd Ed game where the PCs are all Wizards of different flavors. He's a Death wizard, the mages who are best at dealing with undead and who deal in entropy and time magic. He also rolled a high Weapon Skill for a starting character and decided, thus, that the best use of his (unarmored, lightly armed) PC is to rush into melee. We're trying to hold a gate against skeletons and the necromancer animating them, he has a very powerful 'Undead Shall Not Pass' spell, and he ignores it to spend the entire fight trying to put down a single skeleton with his melee weapon while the gates nearly fall and the rest of us have to take insane risks to get the necromancer in range and take him out. The GM had thought the encounter would be pretty easy, since we had a wizard whose magic was all specialized against our enemy and the rest of us could deal with whatever he couldn't stop, and instead it nearly killed us all.
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Sep 6, 2014 07:14
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alcharagia posted:an XBox he found in the woods somewhere. Yep, sounds like a creepypasta.
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Sep 6, 2014 07:55
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alcharagia posted:an XBox he found in the woods somewhere. Should've been a SNES with photorealistic skeletons and BLAST PROCESSING.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:25
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Sly Deaths Head posted:Also the guy's second character swung super hard in the other direction. He was a goody two shoes despite also being a Cursed Knight, having almost exactly the same name, and being the first guy's twin brother. That part would actually be pretty amusing if it didn't also come off as super passive aggressive.
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Sep 6, 2014 12:04
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Remembered a Dark Heresy story about an incident that wasn't meant to be the end of the campaign it was in, but we decided it should be because the PCs were never going to top it. The PCs were a Fenrisian Space Wolf Fangirl (who was also a giant Feral Guardsman), a quiet, efficient, half-insane-due-to-failing-Insanity/Corruption-tests techpriest, and a very angry Imperial Commissar whose mentor had turned to Chaos and made Daemon Prince. They go to the Commissar's feudal-world home to investigate some bad poo poo going down with one of the local kings, and lo and behold, they suddenly find palaces of bone erupting from the ground and unholy, chittering things pouring from the sky as a full on Warp Incursion starts. Instead of fleeing to report it, they requisition a battle tank from the local Guard forces, drive it into the middle of the Incursion, fighting off daemons and an attempt by the ground to eat their tank, until they're finally immobilized in the castle courtyard. They tell the crew to keep shooting and survive as long as they can, hopefully they can end the incursion before they run out of ammo, and run into the castle. They get split up when the Commissar's Mentor appears as part of a small cabal of minor Daemon Princes who had offered the king a place among them in return for damning his planet, and the Commissar tells the other two to keep going and stop the ritual, he'll hold this guy off. He's fully expecting to die. He fights his mentor for a couple rounds, but the guy's impossibly skilled and slices his arm clean off, taking him to the point where one more solid hit will kill him. The mentor's Slaaneshi, and is taking the time to savor watching the Commissar bleed out while Khorne whispers in his ear 'I can help you, you just gotta give in, angry dude.' He spends Fate points to undo his Blood Loss and Stun, gets to his feet, and charges the Slaaneshi with a shriek of defiance and crits the ever-loving gently caress out of him, cutting him down and Banishing him back to the Warp. He then looks down at his severed arm, ties it to his back, and runs to join the rest of the party where they're pinned down by daemons and trying to kill the King before he Ascends to daemonhood and turns the planet into a Daemon World. Keep in mind the Commissar is still at 'any more damage will kill you', but he throws himself into the fight with his one remaining arm and his blood-soaked chainsword and gives the Techpriest and Guardsman one clean shot at the King as he surprises the daemons, which they nail, blowing the guy apart and banishing the Incursion entirely, sending the monsters screaming back into the Warp and saving the world. He then collapses and they drag him back to their barely surviving tank, fix the treads, and drive back out to meet their Inquisitor, who is basically doing an astonished slow clap that they not only survived, but succeeded. I had more campaign planned, but...we all decided that was the right note for those PCs to go out on.
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Sep 6, 2014 15:08
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Back when D&D 3E had just come out, I made a Sorcerer with a Raven familiar. I misinterpreted the raven's special ability ("Speaks one language"), thinking that it gave my character an extra language. So my raven spoke a language that my character did not. I was mocked mercilessly when this was sorted out at the table. Raven: <something in elvish> Other PC: What did your familiar just say? My PC: gently caress if I know.
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Sep 6, 2014 16:09
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Never let it be said that my GM does not know how to set a.. em, setting. Custom setting of his own creation, quoted nearly verbatim from a skype chat from where we play.quote:The sun rises high over the tall, regal mountains in the east, its light shining down upon a long swathe of rolling hills, ravines, and brooks. The land around you is scorched earth.. green grass and healthy farmland turned to bleak, baked, badland soil in the course of just a year. The battlefield is unnaturally dry, leaving blood to spill and flow freely instead of easily mixing into the ground. The stomping of so many boots on the corpses of the fallen, however, has turned the pale sand into red mud this day. *Minotaur, if it wasn't obvious. **I swear to god, it makes sense in context. (It's a mace) ***Last session, said minotaur did literally headbutt this giant clockwork leviathan nearly to death. It was indeed loving metal. This is the opening to session two. VVV Actually, all of the named characters are the players. He's mentioned several times that our characters are very powerful characters, practically legendary. It's pathfinder, and we're using the mythic adventures book. Rorac fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Sep 7, 2014 |
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Sep 7, 2014 01:02
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Rorac posted:Never let it be said that my GM does not know how to set a.. em, setting. Custom setting of his own creation, quoted nearly verbatim from a skype chat from where we play. Let's hope you lot at least have bit parts in your GM's collaborative novel. Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDPqB9i1ScY
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Sep 7, 2014 01:28
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Beef Hardcheese posted:Back when D&D 3E had just come out, I made a Sorcerer with a Raven familiar. I misinterpreted the raven's special ability ("Speaks one language"), thinking that it gave my character an extra language. So my raven spoke a language that my character did not. I was mocked mercilessly when this was sorted out at the table. I would have run with your original misunderstanding, because that's funny as Hell.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:22
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Absurd Alhazred posted:
From the way I read it, the named characters were the PCs and that was the GM's recap of the previous session. Am I wrong? e: oh yeah no that was it. That's pretty loving rad.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:48
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The Good Professor posted:From the way I read it, the named characters were the PCs and that was the GM's recap of the previous session. Am I wrong? Thousands of pages of these threads have made my cynical and jaded.  Godspeed, Rorac, and my apologies for assuming the worst. 
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Sep 7, 2014 03:04
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No problem, I should've been more clear from the start.
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Sep 7, 2014 04:19
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Beef Hardcheese posted:Back when D&D 3E had just come out, I made a Sorcerer with a Raven familiar. I misinterpreted the raven's special ability ("Speaks one language"), thinking that it gave my character an extra language. So my raven spoke a language that my character did not. I was mocked mercilessly when this was sorted out at the table. Echoing others sentiments that this is funny as hell and I really want to use this sometime. "Yeah you have an awesome familiar but you can't communicate with it until you skill up in its language." "What language is that?" "You don't know." So these pages are full of cat piss with players playing evil characters that aren't so much evil as psychopathic psychopaths. I'm hoping that there are those of us who have played quality evil characters but are silent simply because they aren't cat piss. I'd like to hear about them. Let's hear about some memorable evil characters in your campaigns that actually ended up working well. I'll start: My group had recently graduated from AD&D to a Rolemaster campaign set in the Hârn world. For those of you who don't know, Rolemaster was one of the original skill points-based systems that gave an incredible flexibility in character development where your skill selection really helps define the character, whereas in AD&D at the time, the only real skills were "proficiencies" that you gained every three or four levels- so at level 1 you could either swim or ride a horse, and by eight level you could swim, ride a horse and maybe learn how to tie a knot with rope use. At any rate, this new skill system really encouraged us to split from the "walking pluses to the font, followed by the walking first-aid kits, followed by the mages" groups of AD&D characters we were accustomed to playing. One of the tenets of Rolemaster is that you start out at first level with 10,000 experience points indicating the stuff you'd picked up through life until that point, and our GM decided to actually kinda speed-game the growing up process and in one case it turned out really, really cool. My friend Will wanted to play a cleric of some kind of war god, and decided that he'd make a disciple of of Larani, who is basically a lady of Paladins and goddess of chivalry. So our GM had him play some of his childhood culminating with his "tryouts" for worthiness to one of Larani's battle granges. I sat in on this session, which was basically solo gaming (just him and the GM) and the tryouts went horribly wrong for the would-be priest: he got stabbed early by the town bully in the skirmishes that were supposed to be clubs only, got beaten in a footrace that was a test of endurance and then almost drowned in a swim test in a lake. The final result was a very pissed off Will who was upset that his character concept wasn't going to pan out. But then the GM suggested he turn that anger into a character's bitterness and suggested Will send the character out in the world looking for a belief system that he ultimately found in the church of Agrikk, a god of fire, demons and war. So Will got his priest of a war god, but a bitter and angry one who turned his back on the "good" god and instead played a character who still had a sense of loyalty, honor and dedication but also carried bitterness and fury against the so-called goddess of righteousness who spurned him. Brodan the Brandisher was (and is still) one of our groups most memorable characters, who developed a novel use for a ring of fire resistance when he grappled an unfortunate soul who had crossed him into submission, poured out a flask of oil, lit it, and then carried his victim into the pyre while holding him helpless. The man literally burned to death in the embrace of Brodan as he stood protected in a pool of flaming oil. Brodan eventually caused a jihad that swept across half of the island of Hârn. Don't gently caress with Brodan. Don't ever gently caress with Brodan.
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Sep 7, 2014 05:45
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Agrikk posted:I sat in on this session, which was basically solo gaming (just him and the GM) and the tryouts went horribly wrong for the would-be priest: he got stabbed early by the town bully in the skirmishes that were supposed to be clubs only, got beaten in a footrace that was a test of endurance and then almost drowned in a swim test in a lake. I was assuming this was going to end with "the REAL test is whether you carried on despite your defeats", but the way the story went after this was so much better.
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Sep 7, 2014 06:17
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Agrikk posted:
Jesus Christ yes. 
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Sep 7, 2014 06:56
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Zombies' Downfall posted:So I'm here with a request, inspired by a story in the D&D Next thread of a DM rolling 200 Perception checks for a crowd of peasants. Recently, my game had a fight that we weren't prepared for, in a dungeon we weren't strong enough to take on, with low supplies and a wizard with no spells. We're all nearly dead, I'm the only healer and I'm grappling a tentacle monster that won't let go, the ranger is running in circles around a pillar to keep another tentacle monster from killing him, the rogue is hiding on the ceiling from the enemy cleric who is loaded with anti-chaotic spells, and the wizard has tried 3 times to throw a 2 pound mace we found earlier 10 feet away so I can have something to hit that drat tentacle monster. Finally, the wizard rolls something other than a 2 on his throw. He rolls a 1. Our DM has a deck of crit cards, both success and fail. He draws his failure card: your weapon flies out of your hands and lands 10 feet away. Hey, that might be good! I'm 10 feet away! DM has him roll to see where it lands. My square! I've got both hands free since the tentacle monster has my legs and torso wrapped up, so he lets me roll to catch it. I roll a 1. The mace hits me right in the face. That's when we learned it was a mace of cleric's bane. As I'm laying there, unconscious, the rogue decides he's going to risk taking a shot at the cleric from the ceiling. He manages to get into sneak attack positioning. Rolls 20 and confirms. Pulls his card, and it says his attack goes through the throat and does triple damage instead of double. Rolls all the dice for his ludicrous damage, and comes up with something like 65 damage at level 4 with a non-magic light crossbow. The next 3 minutes are the DM and him arguing over whether the total was right and if he'd taken the correct bonuses (they're brothers IRL). After the DM agrees that he did this incredible damage, we ask if the cleric is dead. "Oh, yeah, he only had 3 hit points left anyways."
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Sep 7, 2014 09:39
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Agrikk posted:So these pages are full of cat piss with players playing evil characters that aren't so much evil as psychopathic psychopaths. I'm hoping that there are those of us who have played quality evil characters but are silent simply because they aren't cat piss. My favorite character I’ve ever played was evil. I wrote a little bit about her many, many pages ago. We were playing Serenity, and the backstory of my character, Samira, was that she’d left Companion training because she was under investigation for being a serial killer, which she was. She kept this detail secret, of course - she just told people she’d left because she thought it was boring. (This was also true.) This is a story of one of Samira’s murders. We were on some generic layover space station whose security was run as a business enterprise of a minor and unprofessional criminal syndicate. More like a gang, really. And Samira was on her way to eliminate the head of station security so that his ambitious second-in-command could take over. The second-in-command would then owe Samira a favor and be able to shield her from any fallout from the murder. As a bonus, the second-in-command didn’t think that Samira would succeed, so when she did, the second-in-command would be intimidated, which is the way you want people who owe you favors. So Samira just shows up at this guy’s residence when he’s off work, knocking on the door and wanting to be let in. She doesn’t really have a good explanation for why she’s here, other than some vague intimation of “partying” and that she’s maybe a prostitute. This is a Real Bad Reason for a bodyguard to let a stranger in to see his crime boss employer, but Samira can talk anybody into anything, especially when that anybody is, let’s say, “materially” interested in outrageously attractive women who are giving every indication of having archetypal Loose Morals. So she gets in the door and in short order gets some time alone with the big boss, who really ought to know better, but is seduced by Samira’s smooth tongue and smooth everything else. On her way into the bedroom she gives the two bodyguards some drugs and tells them to go have fun without her. She does not tell them that while the drugs are debilitating, it’s not in the good way. As it turns out, the big boss is a sick gently caress in his own right, and is apparently all about kinky sex that is most likely rarely safe, sane, or consensual, as evidenced by the expansive collection of gear (and what look like bloodstains) that’s just lying out in the open in his bedroom. (My GM likes to throw his players this kind of bone.) This is exciting but an immediate problem, because this huge sadist is clearly angling to run the show, and Samira knows that if she gets tied down she probably won’t get back up again. Fortunately, Samira’s trustiest possession is her shock gloves that she always wears. These are a Serenity item that look just like a nice pair of gloves but actually have the ability to conduct a debilitating zap to whatever the wearer is touching whenever she triggers them. The effect is significantly enhanced when you’ve got your hands wrapped around a local crime boss’s testicles, which is a situation that Samira doesn’t really have much difficulty getting herself into, now that she’s put her mind to it. And that’s how a compulsive, incredibly sadistic serial killer who has just spent literally months cooped up in a tiny spaceship ends up behind a locked door in the personal torture chamber of an incapacitated, but still conscious, guy she intends to slowly and painfully murder just because it’s fun. Obviously we fade to black here, because we’re not psychopaths ourselves, and when we fade back Samira is standing over the bloody corpse of someone clearly brutally tortured to death, trying to figure out how to get out of the residence without getting riddled with holes by the one bodyguard who, she’s determined via a security monitor, was smart enough to not take her drugs and has been suspicious of her ever since she showed up. Just running might work, but it has no elegance, you know? Plus, the second bodyguard looks like he’s waking up now anyway. So instead, she turns on the intercom and, in her absolute iciest voice, requests the presence of the bodyguards in the bedroom. And they walk down the hall, guns drawn because something is clearly Not Right, and open the door to be greeted by the sight of a stone-faced, stark-naked, absolutely gorgeous woman standing in the middle of a gore-filled room and staring directly at them as she slowly cleans blood off of a knife with a dirty rag. “I’ll be leaving now. Consider the drugs payment.” And she throws on her dress (safely stored away so it wouldn’t get blood on it), grabs her purse, and strolls past the one puking bodyguard and the other petrified one right out the door. Later, as a ship is pulling away from the station, its extremely morally upright captain catches on the news that the bodyguards of the local head of security apparently got their hands on some nasty drugs, went nuts, and brutally murdered their boss in his own home, only to be killed themselves by security forces responding to an alarm he managed to get out before he died. He idly asks the nearest shipmate - a beautiful woman who works jobs with the crew but refuses to identify as a member of it, and who has always given him the creepy-crawlies in a way he can’t explain - if she’s heard anything about it. She has not.
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Sep 7, 2014 18:22
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We had a similar Evil character in an Evil campaign. Elaith, an Asamir Favored Soul/Soul Eater. Someone the Devils had held down and forced the thirst for souls on, to corrupt him and turn him from a servant of Good to a servant of Darkness, and it had loving worked. He still looked like a holy warrior, and had all kinds of gear on him like a Merciful sword and skill at grappling because he'd been loath to take lives before his change; now he used it to capture people in order to do his soul cocaine until it was shooting out of his eyes like evil laser beams and he was strong enough to punch through marble columns (Soul Eater is goddamn hilarious). The thing is, he was effective, useful to the party, and discrete about his actions until it came to be time to throw down. He happily walked around convincing people he was a holy knight, and they could trust him with the plans of the forces of Good, and couldn't you just join him someplace private, he has dire news the Prelate alone needs to hear and *Nom*. Creepy and unsettling, but effective and subtle. He worked with the rest of us mostly because we always made sure he got his fix and that was all he really, truly cared about anymore.
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Sep 7, 2014 18:32
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I once played an evil character in a Burning Wheel game that wrapped up about a year ago. His name was Dedric Cord, he looked like Rowan Atkinson playing Aragorn, and he was just like Robin Hood... Except where Robin Hood would steal from the rich and give to the poor, Dedric would steal from everybody and keep it. He was also ridiculously racist toward non-humans, stemming from being wronged by a group of elves in his youth (and for which he'd exact entirely disproportionate revenge. He'd eventually end up in a political marriage with an elven princess, but that's a different story.) Thing is, Dedric had limits. He'd steal the last piece of bread from a hungry child, but he wouldn't engage in torture. Killing on the battlefield is all fine, but he drew the line at outright murder. Still, he was the most ruthless member of the party by far, and always had a sort of sympathy-for-the-devil type of outlook - in one case quite literally. The campaign setting had a very powerful church and a weaker-but-still-powerful nobility, and one of the PCs was a half-elf nun (well, Abbess, anyway) who was capable of honest-to-god miracles. During one story arc where we all sought out a holy relic we could use to boost the nun's political career, we ended up coming across the satan-figure of the dominant religion, who we discovered happened to be god's daughter, punished for her horrible crimes to sit in a summoning circle for the past 2000 or so years. After much deliberating, we ended up releasing her (Dedric argued that whatever her crimes, two millennia is probably enough time served). She emerged as a 13-year-old girl with no memories of her past but destined for great things, and it was decided by the party that we were more or less responsible for her. She was given into the care of the PC Abbess, who was told to keep her from doing anything that might lead her to ending the world or whatever. We also agreed no good could come from anyone, herself included, learning her true nature. Try as we might, we couldn't quite keep her nature a secret for long. The local evil archbishop (with whom we had been locking horns off and on for a while now) slowly discovered her true nature and, using an archaic church law, took her from the care of the Abbess and into his own home in an effort to further his political career. Basically, he needed something he could use to counter the influence the Abbess' public miracles were giving her. None of us quite knew what to do about this. The law was pretty iron-clad, and while we could try to kidnap her back, it would only be a matter of time before she'd be discovered again through her rebellious teenage antics. To make matters even worse, the brat seemed to actually prefer living with the evil archbishop, who basically catered to her every whim, compared to the Abbess who gave her a structured and somewhat Spartan life. The party necromancer (well, former necromancer, now kinda-sorta reformed by the Abbess) did some research in a Temple library in an attempt to find some sort of loophole in the law the Archbishop invoked. A loophole didn't exist, but he did learn that there was nothing in the lawbooks saying that a woman (even a half-breed) couldn't become an Archbishop. If anything unfortunate were to happen to the Archbishop, given the influence and popularity the Abbess had accumulated, she actually had a very good shot at becoming the next Archbishop if she were to throw her habit into the ring. The necromancer was very concerned for his soul, though - he had an emotional stat called Corruption that would basically mutate him if he performed evil deeds or cast Necromantic spells. (I think he cast all of three spells during the entire two-year campaign because of this). So, for him, murder was right out. But there was Dedric. He's evil, right? Already damned from some admittedly monstrous deeds, so what's a little murder between friends? The necromancer invited Dedric out for drinks and then explained what he'd discovered. He then lamented that it probably didn't matter, since the chances of the Archbishop just croaking on his own were pretty slim. The whole scene was a very "Won't someone rid me of this troublesome priest" type deal. Banditry was one thing, but murder? Dedric hated the idea of becoming a murderer... But this bit, having a chance at reforming the devil? It was bigger than him or any moral qualms he might have. He realized that murdering the archbishop and replacing him with the Abbess would solve a LOT of problems that the group was facing, not just the one with the divine daughter. Of course, no one could know - the Necromancer was clearly washing his hands of the issue, the Abbess would turn on Dedric if she caught wind of the matter, and other party members were either too crazy, too treacherous, or both. He'd have to pull this one off alone. So he resolved himself to murder. Late one night, he climbed the walls of the Archbishop's estate, snuck past the guards, and some artha expenditure and some great rolls later, slipped into the Archbishop's bedroom. The Archbishop saw Dedric at the last minute, too late to call for help, and begged for his life - but it was too late. There was no backing out. Dedric stabbed him, left some evidence incriminating a local group of elven militants, and then left. Things went exactly as planned - scapegoats were found, and no one was any the wiser (at least, not for many more sessions). Dedric drank heavily for the next few weeks, horrified at what he'd done but knowing he would have done it all over again. Later in the campaign, the necromancer tried to call Dedric out for some terrible thing he was doing, at which point Dedric pointed out that the only reason the necromancer didn't have as much blood on his hands is because he pawned off his dirty work to Dedric. Then Dedric kicked him in the balls and left him sucking dirt. Dedric was a really fun character, definitely my favorite of the few evil characters I've ever played.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:13
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This is a story on how I can sneak things into a game without even myself knowing it. It's about my favorite V:tM character, Jacob Schmidt the fifth. He was a lawyer Brujah that was just designed for getting people's problems that they cause swept under the rug...for a price. He ran his family business with his twin brother John Schmidt the fifth who was his ghoul. Now what I mean by family business I mean it's been run by a vampire Schmidt since the first brothers. One was a vampire (Jacob the first), the other became his ghoul (John the first) and that was the way they decided to keep things in the family. In order to become the "top" brother, you must first have 2 male offspring and have successfully won your first case by yourself. Since the first male offspring was named Jacob, it usually became the norm for the vampire in the family to be named Jacob, except for my character's father, John Schmidt the fourth. Jacob the fourth really didn't want to follow in the family business and never really became a lawyer. His younger brother quickly fathered twins (which hasn't happened since the beginning of this family tree) and won his first case at 23. Now since my brother and I both understand how this is going to work, we actually worked together and, to be honest, I roleplayed Jacob the fifth as a really bad lawyer (not on purpose), so I made it up that John was the more competent brother and posed as his brother so that the "true" family member can succeed the throne. So I enter the town the game is playing in with my own sons, Jacob and John the sixth, and my brother and set up a branch on the east coast. The thing is this family tree is going to have to end eventually since I was a 13th gen. And right after the first night of introducing myself to the prince, he puts out a hit on all thin bloods. So now I'm stuck whether to follow my family and sire my son when he's done with his first case, which I've been taught to do since birth, or don't and save him from being hunted down by everyone in the city. Luckily, this problem was solved by helping out kick the rear end out of an Antediluvian (I forget which), which the GM bumped the generation of everyone by 2. During this time, he gave us all special items that supposed to help each character's own personal problem. One was a blank sheet that if you asked it where someone was, it would find them, and mine was an elixir that would have temporary increased my generation so I can sire my son. The thing with these items is they were all kinds of monkey paws. I was hesitant to use it since I honestly forgot about it until we got our actual generation increase. I then asked the GM about it, and he said "Oh, it was just water" and I thanked myself for not using it. The games I don't really remember much except we fought Magi, an army of literal zombies, demons, and finally Hunters. One of the hunters managed to capture my son and his family (by this time, Jacob the sixth was a Brujah) and they held them hostage for the location of Elysium so they can go in and kill the prince. I was honestly stuck as to what my character would do until the hunter used a power that called upon a human memory that meant something to me. This solved my problem, I told them where Elysium was, and I called the prince warning him about the attack, and quickly hid in a secret area until this all passed over. During this time I played as my brother John the fifth pretending to be me. The prince survived the bombing by the hunters and was going to order everyone to kill me when suddenly he was killed by someone (Note: The prince was played by a PC and the person killing him was the intro of his new character) thus saving me from the prince. However, now there's no prince and all the primogens want to run. I was honestly going to make it so John would apply as Jacob, then if I somehow win, be my usual self and not know a drat thing what's going on. The Nosferatu primogen ordered some of the other main power players (aka, the PCs) dead and got the police to arrest Jacob the fifth. John was helping get a Gargoyle his 6 gargoyle brothers and sisters out of a hard maze (I actually ran the maze part that was a Tremere puzzle. I basically took 3 different favorite puzzles of mine and let the group go hog wild) along with some other vampires. We freed the gargoyles right as the cops arrive to arrest me. The gargoyles turn to stone, everyone else vanishes and all that's left is literally me. The police arrest me saying "We got a nice cell for you, looking over the morning sun." I go, okay sure since I'm not actually a vampire. However, the rest of the party decide to go and save me. 2 vampires were on top of the cop car and tried to pull me out (while it's still driving) with me actually resisting them saying "I'll be fine, stop it". The Nosferatu pulled me out and threw me over a bridge into some water and dives in after me. He then holds me underwater until we get to a nearby sewer line and notices that I'm having trouble breathing. I actually had to tell the group who I was actually playing as since only the GM knew at the time and everyone was shocked. We then enter the sewers and go fight some Nosferatu that was helping the primogen accomplish the attacks. During the attack, John the fifth dies but the party as a whole wins. So I wake up as Jacob under some rubble since my home was blown up by the Nosferatu wondering what's going on. I get to Elysium right as the trial of the Nosferatu primogen starts. I find out during the trial that my brother was killed and form a plan. She was found guilty and sentenced to death. I finally go insane with rage, shove a live grenade right down her stomache and run. Everyone's shocked, someone busts open a nearby window and throw the body out the window right before she explodes onto everyone. I then call up the first telling him about what just happened, he gets livid and tells me he's going to show up and bring me back home to keep me under control. Unfortunately, we haven't played V:tM since. Now comes the hilarious part: I played this character for like a year as serious as I could be and someone asked me something trivial about my character and I go "Yeah, we were John and Jacob...." and I froze mid sentence. They asked me what's wrong and I go "Oh my god, I can't believe I did it without knowing. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, his name is my name too..."
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Sep 7, 2014 22:31
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Agrikk posted:So these pages are full of cat piss with players playing evil characters that aren't so much evil as psychopathic psychopaths. I'm hoping that there are those of us who have played quality evil characters but are silent simply because they aren't cat piss. It's not a great story, but I have had a fairly successful Evil game, back in D&D 2nd days. The reason I think it was successful was two principles, one of which I've used in non-Evil games to pretty good effect. The first was the agreement of all players that we would be Lawful Evil, and had no real interest in backstabbing each other. The second was the great idea of getting us to play a cabal that ran a city. This gave us an investment that we needed to protect, and reasons to remain on the same side as one single person couldn't control everything. I was playing the Mage/Cleric of a God of Fear whose Church was ascendent in the city, ruled that Church Law was thus the only Law, and ran a lot of the administration. Our Fighter, a haughty ex-gladiator convinced of his own honour but too scared not to cheat to maintain his record, was in charge of the guards, militia, and brute squads. Our Thief controlled the secret police force, our external spy network, and the protection rackets that passed for our merchant economy, almost all via the same drug that he himself was addicted to. The game was mostly made up of meetings on how to screw people over as badly as possible to maintain our grip on the city, trying to nobble our rival down the river, and very memorably getting into a massive shitfight with a local Druid who pissed us off so much that we desecrated his sacred grove and then reanimated his corpse to go and terrorise the small halfling farming village he'd sworn to protect. That was about as psychopathically evil as it got, it was mostly amounted to playing incredibly ruthless businessmen (admittedly with swords and magic).
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Sep 8, 2014 00:40
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