Bassetking posted:

It was a 1-clone-per-person game... ...running the game exactly as the rules were written.

Bassetking posted:

It also attracted the local chapter of The Cam. Or, at least, The Prince, and a whole bunch of his cotire.

Bassetking posted:

Yup. Dude wasn't looking to run a game. Dude was looking to get to spend a whole weekend at a gaming convention, and not pay for his ticket.

Dude was an rear end in a top hat.

Anyway!

This next one took place about twelve years ago. Specific Mechanical Details may be fuzzy, and for that, I apologize. It is, however, a WoD LARP story, and one I've been meaning to post to a Cat Piss thread since I joined SA.

I am not the same person I was back then, and, were I then, who I am now, I would have likely handled the situation in a different manner.

So, I was at Ohio State University back in 2003. Now, because, back then, I was a twenty year old college kid, I lived a nearly totally nocturnal day-cycle, due to some bad, bad insomnia.

This has anything at all to do with the story because of Burritos Noches.

Ahh. Burritos Noches. One Swipe of a Meal Card, and you could get a Burrito The Size Of Your Head. It was open from 12AM to 4AM, and was a godsend to those students who were, like me, up very late.

It also attracted the local chapter of The Cam. Or, at least, The Prince, and a whole bunch of his cotire.

Each and every night, this group of Goth-dressed Kine-Sneerers would cluster the area right around the doorway to this delightful land of tasty late-night burritos.

And they would LARP. In the worst, Cammy, Mundane-Freaking, Feed-By-Touching, Greasy Goth manner.

It got so harassing that the University considered shutting down the food venue, due to the complaints of female students about thirty-five-year-old grease-beards lounging around in black, and makeup, and touching them. I get the whole "Touch to Feed" thing, but seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeriously. The kind of folks who show up to do this form of LARP are exactly the kind of folks who will take that as an invitation to get all Creepy-Touchy on the college kids they're trying to freak.

Now, to myself, and my friends, all of whom were TTRPG players, the loss of Burritos Noches was unacceptable. Upon hearing that the University was considering canceling the program, we decided to take action. We knew enough about these V:tM players that most of them were former university students, but didn't currently attend, and didn't give a gently caress about what happened to the students there, they'd move their characters to a new location on campus, and keep harassing students.

So long as they had those characters.

Which is where my friends and myself hatched our plan.

We contacted Campus Facilities, and, using available forms, made rental of five sections of mobile, generator-powered stadium-lighting. We positioned these around the little courtyard that these LARPers lurked.

We went out, and bought Super-Soakers.

And we bought a copy of Hunter: The Reckoning, and contacted the Cam to start a sanctioned Hunter Group.

The night all of this went down; when the lighting was in place, one on a pole above the center of the courtyard, the other four positioned on the ground to encompass the entire courtyard. We then used a sharpie to write "Flamethrower" down the side of each Super-Soaker, and "HIGH INTENSITY UV" on paper signs that we taped to each of the lights.

We waited. And waited. And once the whole LARP had shown up to do their freaking and feeding...

We turned on the Generator, and jumped from the hedges with the Super-soakers.

Between the "Sunlight", and the Agg-Damage from the Flamethrowers, we ashed nearly "five thousand years" of V:tM characters in one evening's actions. And as frustrated as the Storyteller was, when we presented our Avenger and Defender Hunter Sheets, he actually adjudicated that we had succeeded, to the angry protestations of his group. "They perfectly played the Role of Hunters. You all got too complacent, didn't check out the area you'd be gathering, didn't spend resources to secure the area, fed in the location too many times, and drew the attention of Hunters. Exactly like it's supposed to happen, when you do that."

So yeah.

I am not proud of super-soaking a bunch of LARPers in order to save a burrito location.

I am willing to admit there's some Cat-Piss on each and every side of this story.

But seeing a dude fifteen years older than you actually break down in tears, because the character he'd been playing for seven years, since he was in Grad School, had been Ashed, and there was nothing he could do about it? And knowing that what we'd done would cause a massive shake-up in the area's Cam; likely bringing in a group of leadership who would be more likely to tell guys like that to quit loving "Freaking The Kine"?

I can feel a little bit good about that.

So yeah. That's the story of how I did a One-Shot Hunter: The Reckoning LARP, ashed thirty people's characters, and saved some tasty burritos.

Mature? Oh, hell no.

Would I do it today? God, no.

It is something I'll still point to as a citation of "In-Game Actions have In-Game Consequences."?
Absolutely.

Falstaff posted:

I really don't get this. Most of the poo poo you posted has always been against the rules of the Cam. "Touch to feed?" Officially, just touching another player required you to go out-of-character and ask them, point-blank, "Permission to touch?" Unless they said yes, then physical contact was in breach of the rules.

And a cross-venue attack like that, with super-soakers no less... I honestly can't see how that would have even been possible.

Either you'd encountered a very odd chapter whose Coordinator was asleep at the wheel and/or used the code of conduct as toilet paper, or my local chapter of the Cam (which were hardly sunshine and rainbows) was an exceptionally rare example of a group that enforced the organization's rules with a comparatively zealous fervor.

Turtlicious posted:

There is no way this would happen, because larpers are obstinate spergs most of the time, and none of the Camarilla (world of darkness RP administrators who stop Larpers from going on rape / bad touch sprees) would actually let that happen.

the_steve posted:

I want to believe the story, but I've read too many other contradicting stories where the ST would have simply said "No, that didn't happen."

I think it was in one of the old threads, back when we had separate Good Experience/Catpiss threads, someone linked a video of someone talking about their VtR larp experience.

To try and sum it up, guy went to one, spent the whole night getting godmodded by players who had been there longer, so he uses his character's chemistry skill to make a huge bathtub full of plastic explosives, leaves a huge stack of note cards that said "C4" in a bathroom of the Elysium, then walked outside and asked the ST to countdown from 10 before declaring that the C4 exploded and everyone died. The ST tells him that it didn't happen, of course.

Red Metal posted:

I'm pretty sure this is the video you're talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3AEBnH1kAM

quote:

Morgan Fairchild watches Nola playing with pencils and laughs derisively. "loving freak," she says, loudly enough for Nola to hear.

quote:

Red: "WATCH HIS HALL BLOWUP! NERD QUEEN CAN'T FLIRT?"

quote:

Nola: To Tucker, "I love working with bunsens. It's interesting to see everything, what's the word? Burn."

quote:

Red: "Just burning food, because that's what White People do." #GreatWhiteScienceTeacher
ATTACHED: Labcoat Selfie

quote:

Haley: You are really, really smart, Mikasi Redfeather.
Red: Thank you!
Haley: But not smarter than me.
Red: Ooh, Bitch.

Samizdata posted:

You guys might try submitting some stuff over here - http://yourdndstories.tumblr.com/

Railing Kill posted:

the DM didn't know the supplement.

While this is a story about guilt gone awry, it is also a story about this... thing:



Sorry. Should have added a trigger warning up ahead of that. This is the worst loving supplement I have ever actually seen used in a game. I've seen worse, but they're either never really used and just joked about, or they're just conceptually terrible like "Uncle Touchy's Bondage Dragon-Ponies" or whatever. This book isn't the goofiest thing ever published in D&D's regrettable open license, but it is mechanically the most broken-rear end thing I have ever read. I GIS'd the book cover for this post and I actually had a reaction of visceral anger when I saw it for the first time in seven years. gently caress this book right in it's gatdamn ear.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, though. There may be sane ways to use this supplement. I have never known any, though, because the only person I've known to use it is Munchkin.

He followed through on his agreement not to make an Evil character. So, naturally, he made a CN Chaos Mage using this supplement. He poured all of his hate power-maxing skill into this character, and made her the min-maxiest glass cannon I have ever seen as a player or as a GM. The character was a "Shadow Elf," if I remember the term correctly. This is not to be confused with a Drow. Shadow Elves are some kind of CN dumb rear end cousin of the Drow. I guess. I dunno. I tried not to think too much about it. Suffice it to say, they also came form this supplement.

Between the racial bonuses and the class abilities, this character got up to 30+ CHA, which was the operative stat for chaos magic. The supplement made a token effort to "balance" these stat bumps by making other stats go down as CHA went up every couple of levels. So, by the time this character was tenth level, she had 30 CHA and 3 STR and 5 CON. The player also min-maxed the poo poo out of her INT and WIS so that she was functionally retarded but had 18 WIS. This character was a tiny, sickly sociopath with a serial killer's charisma and Rain Man-type of intellect.

Oh, and this character could remake reality to her deranged whim. Chaos magic itself was also "balanced." There was a check to use it, and if you failed it you took damage. But if you didn't you were all set. I guess the character could, in theory, get knocked out almost instantly due to the extremely low CON, but she almost never failed because of the min-maxed CHA. Regardless of that, what the character could do with the magic was just horrendous. Who needs STR or skill ranks when you can do literally anything you can imagine, at will?

I still regret not PKing that chaos mage on day one. I'll never hesitate like that again.

Dr. MonkeyThunder posted:

I had to find and skim that splat because of just how broken it sounds, and either you don't remember it right or that little douche lied his rear end off and got away with it. Neither the class, a prestige class or anything else I could find in that book give any CHA bonuses. Shadow Elves aren't in the book but if he made one old enough it could have +8 CHA for -6 physical traits, and a +4 level adjustment. There's also a hard rule about transformation of only 20lbs per level, and spell duration of a minute per level, so only 320lbs of water to beer for 16min at lvl 20. Even without those restrictions if you misread the rules to scale it up to what he did the roll would still be at least 45.

Don't get me wrong it's still pretty unbalanced, and I'd never run it because it's a pain in the rear end to figure out the rolls, but he never should have been able to do any of that.

TyrsHTML posted:

Never met that kind of munchkin that didnt lie at every moment to make their character even more broken.

Railing Kill posted:

Holy poo poo. Welp.

The Crazy Cat Lady

Foolster41 posted:

So basically he was role playing as Magic Man from adventure time?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z3ZAIIgAaA (Warning: This is a little disturbing for a kid's show).

I feel bad, but as an outsider who didn't have to go through this, I chuckled at this story, just from the absurdity of it.

Railing Kill posted:

Exactly. Both Smaug and I were onto him. I usually run D&D rather than play as a character, so I can usually smell that kind of bullshit. Smaug is a min/maxer himself, but he doesn't cheat or use it to gently caress with other players. He's not a munchkin. He's just a rules nerd that likes making broken characters. But this is why GMs need to be assertive and shouldn't be afraid to be the bad guy sometimes. My figuring is: most players will get over it if you tell them "no" or call them on something, and the ones that don't get over it probably aren't worth playing with.

My wife ("J") and I were talking about this after I posted the story and she remembers Munchkin transforming the town's well water into ale, not necessarily all the town's water. That makes more sense, and puts it closer to the parameters of chaos magic, but it's dumb and probably still outside of the parameters of chaos magic. I have no doubt he cheated, but he probably did so in a way that stretched rather than broke rules. That way, if the DM ever did call him on something, he could just say, "I misread it " or whatever.

Munchkins are assholes.

Railing Kill posted:

The shadow elves might not have been from the Chaos Magic supplement. I just paired them together in my mind because that character was the only time I had seen either of them used. He did min/max the poo poo out of the Shadow Elf, though. The DM gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, so he made her super old to get the CHA bump, and probably utilized other goofy crap from some other supplement. And I have no doubt he was lying about Chaos Magic, just based on the kind of player he was. He was protective of the book and tried to hide the fact that he didn't want anyone else to read it, even out of innocent interest. Smaug, our group's other min/maxer but who wasn't a sociopath, was genuinely interested but could barely get a couple minutes to peruse it because Munchkin was so weird about it. The DM wasn't confident enough in the supplement to call him on its misuse, and he wasn't confrontational enough to ask to read it after he was brow-beaten into allowing it, and after he felt bad about us PKing his other character. It wasn't my game to run, and therefore it wasn't my responsibility to reign in a player (beyond what I had already done to kill his other dumb character). Basically, Munchkin was a manipulative sociopath, and if I had it to do all over again, I would have found the supplement myself and rules lawyered the poo poo out of him until he stopped cheating, quit using that dumb character, or quit the group altogether.

Edit: But I am genuinely thankful to have my suspicions confirmed. I never bothered to look it up myself because I wanted to purge it from my memory as soon after the game as possible.

goatface posted:

The only shadow elf I can dig up is from Mystara, and never got a 3.5 version. He was bullshitting hard.

Foolster41 posted:

So basically he was role playing as Magic Man from adventure time?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z3ZAIIgAaA (Warning: This is a little disturbing for a kid's show).

Toes posted:

How long did Munchkin play this character for? Why didn't the DM just ask to borrow the splat? Seriously, if he refused, then the DM should have told him to re-roll.

It really annoys me when reading this thread the amount of bullshit DM's seem to put up with not to ruin one person's fun whilst at the same time ruining everyone else's. And when I read some of these games run for years at a time, it makes me want to puke.

Dr. MonkeyThunder posted:

I just used the DnD wiki, and it has a warning that it might be unbalanced due to inappropriate LA. While I was double checking I noticed something else, shadow elves start with -4 Str. With another -6 Str for venerable age, if he didn't put more than 10 into Str he wouldn't be able to move.

goatface posted:

This: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Elves,_Shadow_%283.5e_Race%29 ? I'm pretty drat sure that's someone's homebrew marysue bullshit.

goatface posted:

This: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Elves,_Shadow_%283.5e_Race%29 ? I'm pretty drat sure that's someone's homebrew marysue bullshit.

NGDBSS posted:

What's particularly funny is that the author of that seems to not quite understand how feet and inches relate. Thus male shadow elves are 5' + 2d6 inches tall, while female shadow elves are 4'50" 8'2" + 2d6 inches tall. Talk about your sexual dimorphism.

Serf posted:

But I really don't expect that was the intent here.

Yawgmoth posted:

the dandy is pretty close to 100% terrible marysue homebrew bullshit. If you really want to laugh/suffer, go read the flaws and traits sections. It's almost impressive how bad some of that poo poo is.

quote:

A Shadow Elf is very timid and shy towards outsiders in general, often seeking refuge in any form of shadow to avoid talking to outsiders.

quote:

Favored Class: Bard

GrumpyDoctor posted:

Railing Kill posted:

Munchkin played his shadow elf for, I dunno, seven or eight sessions. Two of those were productive, and by that I mean we got more than ten minutes of plot resolved. The rest were complete wastes of time. The DM never checked his work, and wasn't aggressive enough about it. The times that Smaug asked to read the chaos magic book out of genuine interest, Munchkin just contrived some excuse why he needed the book in front of him at that moment. It was pretty obvious to me that he was full of poo poo, but I didn't want to be both the new guy in the group who didn't know anyone else as much and also the narc. I kept my mouth poo poo, and that was a mistake.

But I agree: the DM in this game, and DMs in general, ought to be more active in dealing with troublesome players. At the risk of sounding , I have ways to deal with obnoxious, disruptive, or antisocial players. But I don't have any special talent that the DM of this game didn't. I've just been running games for over fifteen years. The DM of our game had run only one game before that one, and it shows. He was a great storyteller (literally, not in the goofy White Wolf use of the term), but he just wasn't as skilled at the management part of being a DM. These days, the most I have to do to manage my current group is keep people on task occasionally, because I've been playing long enough that I have developed a strong, cooperative group of regular players. The easiest way to manage lovely players and munchkins is to not have them at the table in the first place. But I'm in my 30's. When I was nineteen like the DM in my stories, I probably didn't have the luxury of having such a good group as I do now, and I would have taken whatever players I could get too. So maybe games like this are a rite of passage for DMs.

GrumpyDoctor posted:

"A Shadow Elf is very timid and shy towards outsiders in general, often seeking refuge in any form of shadow to avoid talking to outsiders."

...

"Favored Class: Bard"

Toes posted:

Oh, right. I was under the impression your DM was a bit older and wasn't so new. That's understandable then. No handbook ever tells you how you shouldn't have to put up with assholes, whether they're players or DMs.

Railing Kill posted:

Or you could "use Frontline on one of your animals" by designating one of the players to kill the rear end in a top hat's characters over and over until they leave IRL.

Samizdata posted:

But they never say anything about how to deal with a DM who finds killing PCs wholesale an entertainment, but is one of the only around, so you are stuck with him.

Railing Kill posted:

What I haven't seen in a game sourcebook is the most important rule to managing player conflicts: don't let them start in the first place. Be diplomatic and discreet when you put your group together, and use good judgment. It's way easier to make up some excuse to not let a lovely player into the game in the first place then to kick them out once they're in. Munchkins are like, I dunno, fleas that way. Once they're in your house, you have to either put up with them or set off a big bomb that will make everyone cry.

Samizdata posted:

But they never say anything about how to deal with a DM who finds killing PCs wholesale an entertainment, but is one of the only around, so you are stuck with him.

bathroomrage posted:

_{play online with goons}