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I got started in 1985, right at the height of the Satanic Panic. While gaming in a friend's dorm room someone slid a copy of Jack Chick's "Dark Dungeons" under the door and ran off down the hallway. We never did find out who did it.
In case you weren't aware of it, this is a thing.
http://www.darkdungeonsthemovie.com/It was produced by an acquaintance of mine, someone I have actually played D&D with a couple of times. =)
I've seen it and it's great. And it's really cool you know the producer!
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Thanks for the hugs guys.
I try not to get too emotional, but when it was implied I killed my friend however indirectly... It shattered every emotional control I had. The worst part is probably the people at work probably think I was crying over my argument with my boss. So my authority is probably at an all time low. This will take a long time to repair, but I think I needed to cry so...
More hugs for you. Your emotions are valid, whenever and wherever you feel them, and you did right by your friend, doing what he asked. You couldn't have known, he couldn't have known. You were a good friend to him and you still are.
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Are we still giving out hugs to Aranna?
I want in on that action
*Yet another hug*
It's not your fault.
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I found that hugs, even if they don't solve things, make them easier.
Well... Unless you're fighting a bear. XD
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I found that hugs, even if they don't solve things, make them easier.Well... Unless you're fighting a bear. XD
YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY HUGS
::stoic orc hug for Aranna:: Gotta get those emotions out on occasion, healthier that way.
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*awkward pat on the shoulder at arm's length for Aranna.*
I'm not a hugger.
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*superpowered kitten hugs for Aranna!*
(In fact, this is Allegheny College, and I had just bought the module "Allegheny Uprising"-- how cool is that!?)
O, Alma Mater, Beatissima!
Seriously, loved my profs at Allegheny, excellent teachers and excellent people.
Had some serious issues with the admin side of things though...
*Hugs Aranna, as well*
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(In fact, this is Allegheny College, and I had just bought the module "Allegheny Uprising"-- how cool is that!?)O, Alma Mater, Beatissima!
Seriously, loved my profs at Allegheny, excellent teachers and excellent people.
Had some serious issues with the admin side of things though...
If there is ANY college where the admin side does more good than harm, I'd love to hear about it.
Wow I feel like dirt now. But this was his standing advice for us for when he had a seizure. "Just put me somewhere I can't hurt myself"...Heck I had been rock climbing with the guy for weeks and he never told me about his epilepsy. That was crazy dangerous. I only found out when it happened while we were alone playing chess and he went into a seizure... I was SO freaked out, since before then I never heard of epilepsy. I don't think he liked to even acknowledge that he had the condition.Ummm... someone had a grand mal seizure and he was left alone to have it? Yeah, that's not a good idea. Usually, seizures aren't dangerous, but you can't leave them alone. Get an ambulance, stay with them, check how long the seizure has been going on. =/
I suppose it's old news, but on the off chance that someone else needs this advice...
I had a buddy who felt like this. He didn't want to make a big deal. He also had no health insurance so he didn't want to call 911 because it was a big bill. Then one day he has a seizure and his roommate had been re-framing a picture. Seizures and loose panes of glass do not go well together. He sliced open his arm pretty bad. Normally they tell you not to restrain an epileptic, but we needed to get him away from the glass and put pressure on the cut. He was a big guy. 275 pounds and pretty strong. (He used to joke about his grand mal exercise program. It works every muscle group in two minutes.)
We got the biggest pieces of glass away from him and managed to keep him form tearing his wound any worse. Naturally this was an exception to the "no 911 rule". He ended up with about 15 stitches and barely missed an artery.
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Thanks again everyone and ~hugs~
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*returned hug*
As far as the seizure situation, I've fallen out of touch with a friend who would have petit/fugue seizures, and you'd be talking with them and then suddenly they'd just *stop*.
As soon as you figured out they *stopped* it became a race to remove *everything* nearby that could potentially damage a person if it was hit by flailing when *go* began.
*go* was when the signals started kicking in, usually in about 10-15 minutes in a good situation. So aside from scrambling to clear the area, there was also reassurances that needed to be made to the friend to let them know they were going to be okay, that someone was there, etc.
In another situation at the workplace, out of the blue someone who had never had a seizure before in their *life* suddenly had one in our greeting card aisle and we were able to call 911, and get them in help, partly educated by the experience I had with my friend. Even got some cushioning material so they wouldn't bang themselves on the floor if *go* came earlier than my friend.
In yet *another* situation at the workplace, I was on a register and managed to catch someone before they face-planted into the laser-scanner and *just barely hold them there as their body attempted to head-slam the counter a half dozen times. Again, 911 and thank goodness the paramedics were in the store shopping.
*peers at above* Wow, um... So... yeah, *hugs* and... hmmm. Something to get this back on track...
Pre-gaming setting up someone's house to play BattleTech I placed a lamp on a sofa at the insistence of the home owner. One does not have to imagine our shock and awe when it began to smoulder and then flame a bit.
Queue the frantic scrambling of four twenty-something folks grabbing the non-burning parts of the couch and rapidly throwing it out into the foot-deep snow in the front yard, and then tossing armloads of snow onto the afflicted section...
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Nostalgia moment:
My friend who may be going to prison (it's not definite yet) has decided just in case to move out of his apartment and get rid of all his stuff. As a result, my husband and I received a bin full of items we'd given him or been storing at his place for gaming purposes.
That bin included several trays full of 'minis' I had made for a long-defunct Star Trek campaign. Since there weren't any minis available for Star Trek, I drew an illustration of each player-character, traced them onto Shrink Plastic, colored them and shrank them in the oven, and then glued them to plastic slot bases. I had completely forgotten about them, but he'd kept them all.
We'll never play that campaign again, even if my friend doesn't end up in jail (he was the GM). The guy who was the murder victim in the OP played the First Officer of our starship. :(
Wait, was this at Paizocon 2015? Was Steve Helt GMing?
Because I was at that table.
Yes it was. Who were you playing?
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Yikes, sorry about the wall of text... I guess I had more to say than I thought.
Well, I read through all of this and thought, "Wow, some people had some weird experiences!", and then I got to thinking and realized they weren't so far off my own.
In and Out of Game - The Early Years OK, seriously this is covering a period of time from when I was 11 and got my first D&D Red Box, and on through most of High School (roughly 1983-1989). Honestly most of it was the typical roleplay experiences of a group of suburban boys in the 80's... more goofy and over the top ideas that I am sure we thought were awesome back then, mixed with juvenile forays into alcohol and recreational pharmaceuticals. Mostly cringe worthy, I am sure. One important point of note; while there were the urban legends, there was no real anti gaming crusade. Of course this was the Suburbs of NYC, so not exactly the bible belt.
That Living Stereotype DM OK, my senior year of high school found me playing in an AD&D game at the local Comic Book store.
The DM was seriously a living embodiment of most every negative gamer stereotype... he was morbidly obese and did nothing for his health, gorging on pizza and fried chicken constantly, and as a result sounded like he was both gasping and snoring if he walked more than 5 feet. He also had the trifecta of gamer funk... rank body odor, swamp ass, and death breath, because he couldn't be bothered with his personal hygiene either. He did indeed still reside with his mother in his late 30s as well. Now, none of this was for lack of finances or getting out of the house... he was the co-owner of the comic store. Yes, he was "Comic Book Guy", in all the worst ways. Fortunately, for all of his physical drawbacks, he was actually a pretty miserable person otherwise. He communicated in a nasally condescending tone that only barely expressed his general superiority complex in any situation he felt he had some authority... such as his store or games he DMed... On the plus side, he was at least an absolutely horrid DM too! At least he strove to be the complete package!
The "final straw" example of his GM style that made me walk away? I was playing a fiery red headed female cavalier (what can I say, it was the 80s and I had a thing for Red Sonja!) Anyway, I missed a session and the next week I come back and he writes my character back into the group with a far too descriptive, self satisfaction story about how she was sharing quality time with his GMPC, Sir NoPersonality The Paladin. When I interrupted his lascivious tale to inform him that, no, my character would not have done that, especially on account of her backstory involving her promise of purity, he insisted by saying how charismatic Sir StickintheMud was, and how my character couldn't resist his charms. To wit I asked, "So, your Paladin forced himself on my character, despite her beliefs, seducing her against her will?". That produced a round of yelling, gasping, wheezing and snorting... it really sounded like an angry 4H feeding time intermixed with some know-it-all "mmkay?"s... and I decided that I could use a break from gaming for a couple of months until I got to college...
The College Years AKA those OTHER stereotypes A few weeks after starting my first semester in college, I met up with the campus gaming organization. Lots of different people, lots of different games, some good, some pretty atrocious. This was also when I got my first in depth experience with "How some male DMs become morons because of bewbs".
So there was a DM we'll call "J"... nice enough guy, goofy but who isn't in the gaming world? He was not only a DM, but the group president. He would run a lot of games, but only if, we'll call her "JD", was able to play. "JD" was my first experience with a "Queen Bee"... as in she had to be at the center of everything, and in charge of everything. That in and of it's self wasn't too terrible, I was always good at shrugging off people who bothered me. But coupled with that she apparently had a magical talent to conceal any and all redeeming virtues she was in possession of. She was a bitter, whiny, manipulative, foul troll of a woman. And I say that with all apologies towards trolls. She was also the master of the Mary Sue character, especially when "J" was DMing, because he would give her anything she wanted.
This eventually culminated in a AD&D campaign he was running set in her favorite world, Katherine Kurtz' The Chronicles of Deryni. Now, everyone in the campaign had restricted races and classes to fit in to this pseudo-medieval British Isles analogy, with limited magic and only the rarest of the rare having psionic powers... so the female players at the table consisted of a Drow?! a Faerie Dragon?!?!?! and then "JD's" character, a High Deryni Archer-Ranger with full Psionics... and no stat below 18, especially not comliness! So, this went about as one can imagine... "JD" and the other female players pretty much directed the show, and the GM basically treating the rest of us as glorified NPCs. Since "JD" was making all the decisions, and that was leading to some spectacular failures (including a few character deaths... not hers, of course, she was miraculously never hit.), some of use decided to conspire against her and see what happened. We sent messages to the DM telling him of our plans to take "D" down a peg or two through an embarrassing series of pranks... we prep, we plan, we pick the time and the site... and then DM "J" tells "D" every single detail, "because she can totally read everyone's mind... no, I am not giving you saves", and in a temper tantrum at people daring to work against her, she launches a preemptive psychic ATTACK against everyone not in her clique and actually kills some players (again, saves? No no, she is a special psionicist!), which then strips away the last f*ck the player of the Assassin had, and he assassinated her. And he rolled a 1% on the dice. Dead. Finito.
That is when the explosion happened. It was a twofold explosion, actually. First, "JD" became a red faced quivering fountain of rage, cursing and sputtering and throwing accusations and personal attacks around. And then stormed off. Then the DM "J" flipped his lid, screeching and shouting, "That's it! This campaign is over!" as he angrily stuffed all of his books into a backpack and stormed off after her, trailing loose leaf sheets in his wake. At which point the player of the Assassin stroked his chin and mused, "Hmm, an entire campaign world killed... that has to be enough XP for demigod status at least!"
There were more of those type of situations over the years, where the DM was mooning over a particular player to the detriment of the game, but I became far more cognizant of the signs and extricated myself from the danger zone post haste. Some days my wife gets mad at me and says she thinks I am extra hard on her characters in games I run... I make sure to recount this story and my promise to NEVER be that GM.
Another say what? Game that occurred in college was a DM who had a chart. For everything. No exaggeration, he had charts for virtually every mundane detail in the game. But the kicker came when we were camping for the night and my Fighter was on watch and he asked what I was doing. So for a bit of descriptive flavor, I said my character was sitting with his back to the fire to maintain his night vision as he sharpened and oiled his sword... His response? "You can't do that, you don't have Weaponsmithing". Thankfully that happened early in the first session...
The Army Years - Organized Chaos
My time in the Army proved to be an exceptional time for gaming. Being stationed in a few isolated areas with like minded soldiers certainly helped a lot, but even when I was stationed at Ft Benning or Ft Bragg, there was always a healthy gaming community. Of course, when most of your gaming group is made up of Infantry, Cavalry, Armor or Intelligence field soldiers, the way they approach games can be very different. While min maxing and even optimization weren't really buzzwords or issues, team organization and tactics sure as hell were! When you have a group of people who are trained to deal with certain types of situations in certain ways, much of that transfers over into the game sessions... which can make for some very frazzled DMs!
The roleplay was surprisingly good and varied in my time in the service. Surprisingly, most soldiers I gamed with were not afraid to take on risks and embrace character options without balking. This was especially true when the group was entirely military... I guess the barriers went down then. Also, a lot of alcohol was consumed.
In fact, while a lot of exceptionally good... and even some atrociously bad RP took place, when you have a lot of for lack of a better phrase, "tough guys", all amped up and in close confines, some heated arguing and even friendly fisticuffs were not unheard of. But, considering some folks tales of woe... I think that is rather tame! Well, that and the occasional joker deciding to set off some unexpended pyro from the last trip to the field, mid game... a CS canister is a pretty good real world stand in for a Stinking Cloud spell...
The here and now Since I left the Army, the gaming has been varied. Some good, some bad, some that makes you scratch your head... I have seen the table flippers and the rage quitters. I have sat at tables with the gamer funk champions and Special Snowflakes. But by and large my experiences have been positive. Not always the best RP, but mostly folks just getting together and having a good time, and nothing that really squicked me out.
Except for one.
I was running a homebrew Pathfinder campaign with a primitive, tribal setting. One of the players was playing an Oracle with the Wolfscarred Maw curse that I allowed to be a Panther maw instead on account of the tribal totem. OK, no big deal I think...
Did I mention that this character is played by a middle aged man who spends his time at the table watching cat girl anime and always plays furries?
Sooo, when the group gets into combat and the Ranger needs healing, the Oracle proceeds to start licking him. Because that is how he casts his cure spells. Because cats lick wounds. And the player is miming this out.
So, that happened.
So, all in all I think my gaming experiences over the past 33 years have been fairly, you know, normal.
Damn, that which I think I tried to block out...
Well, reading some of the true tragedies in this thread, I thought to myself, "Wow, thank the gods I have never found myself in such a horrible situation... oh sh!t, how did I forget that?".
In the early autumn of 1993 while assigned to unit on Ft Benning, a group of us were were in the barracks playing a game of AD&D 2E, in effort to pass the time while a portion of our unit had been deployed to a hostile location in east Africa. We were probably drinking a little too much, laughing a little too loud... you know, coping mechanisms. But these were old school concrete block buildings, so unless you pounded on the wall, your neighbor wouldn't even hear you. So it came as quite a shock when the CQ knocked on the door and informed us that one of our comrades had just shot another in the head, then turned his pistol on himself, in their room maybe 100 feet away.
Just two days earlier I was hanging out in front of our barracks, knocking back 40s of that nasty a$$ Olde English 800 that my friend (the murder victim)loved to drink, with him. He had just been demoted after a series of issues... all involving his roommate and eventual murderer... but he had been given fresh orders to go to Ft Bragg and a chance to get himself straitened up. He was telling me how he was looking forward to getting squared away, having a new start and being able to prove himself as a soldier. He had just turned 22 a week before his death. Turns out his friend and roommate didn't have the same positive outlook and he couldn't accept them going separate ways.
Every now and again I would gut down half a 40 of OE"800" and pour the rest out in memory of my friend Alvis. Funny, it had been years since I thought about it, or the fact that it happened literally a few doors down while we were playing D&D. But I always remember the scene, the blood, one of our medics... fresh from the shower wand walking back to his room when it happened... wearing nothing but blood as he kneeled there fighting to keep him alive, watching them load him onto the ambulance. And finally... the smell. How the investigators kept that room off limits for 3 days in the mid September, Georgia heat before they let us clean it...
Wow. Sorry about that...
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I generally don't read posts that long, but yours was intriguing. Near the end there I felt like I was watching Stand By Me with the narrator voice. Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you for sharing and for your service Fomsie.
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At this point I would like to thank all the powers that be that my gaming experience has been far less interesting than most of the people above. I doubt I would have handled any of the stuff listed above half as well as any of you that have endured it. I'll take getting tapped accidentally with a bullwhip by an idiot to anything involving gunfire any day.
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Actually, I just finished a 15 page argument paper on this for my rhetoric class final. Between Patricia Pulling and William Schnoebelen, the early eighties were hell for gamers. I just missed the time period, (Was born in 83) but reading through all of my research seriously brought to mind the book Fahrenheit 451. It was common practice for the cops to actively seek out gamers, and if they stopped a young male, that was one of the first questions they asked.Holy bananas - I never knew it got to the point of actual law enforcement taking it seriously! Where did you live?
Stopped by police for 'gaming material' -- Back in the Dark Ages of Gaming (after a troubled person shot two of his friends and then blamed gaming for the cause) our area went from a 'modest' gaming presence to worse than dancing in 'Footloose'.
Still remember to this day being stopped by a police officer from a nearby community and the question "Do you have any dice or gaming materials on you?" came up as one of the questions. Thankfully, I didn't *at that time*, so it wasn't lying when I said 'no'.
When he requested to search my bag to verify it, and found a model kit for a P-51 Mustang he let me go without any further questioning. Still sticks in my head, though.
I will never forgive Mazes and Monsters for further convincing my ultra conservative Christian parents that my playing D&D at the time was going to force me to lose my soul.
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I'm thankful to have a simple story.
Due to attrition my Pathfinder group lost two members, which left us with only two players. By luck I noticed an acquaintance (I knew from volunteering) posted in the local Pathfinder Society: Facebook group. I sent him through a few messages to ascertain his knowledge, as our game wasn't suitable for beginner players.
The guy seemed pretty knowledgeable so I invited him to join our game. Now we were able to find two new people to fill our gaps, but this guy made us all think we were better off as a team of 3.
Firstly while he seemed to be knowledgeable, there was a complete disconnect between what he knew and his application. His builds were reasonably good, until he started to play them... Firstly he loved investing in obscure feats and abilities he had no idea how to use OR did not use.
For example he would build archers, with archer feats then swing a masterwork sword with OR build a melee fighter and start using a non magical normal bow.
Generally the party would be swinging damage in the 20 to 60 region per turn, while his builds would be doing 1d8+1.
Secondly he was perplexing in his battle tactics, he never helped us focus fire down dangerous enemies and instead chased down full health minions (and in one game spent his turns shooting civilians/bystanders). One session had him spamming a wand of sleep vs undead, which the GM did flat out tell him that they were immune to. One character was a ranger that had access to cantrips and he spent the session spamming a DC11 flare. Furthermore he also spent half his wealth on weapons he would never use. So his ranger would have a 12k bow but would only ever swing a masterwork longsword...
The gm being incredibly patient allowed him to reroll his characters to fix them but instead this guy decided to rebuild his characters every single session (including changing names/sex). Every character was suffering from feats, skills and weapons he would never use. I would even spend hours to help him build characters but every time we finished building something playable, he next session he would rock up with a completely different character.
He never paid attention during other player's turns or when the gm was talking, always asking questions that had been already been answered. He was ALWAYS unprepared for his turn, after asking for options he would always ignore any advice and attack something random.
Finally, he had the most annoying way of rolling dice. Take into account we're level 7, multiple attacks and multiple damage dice. He would always pick up one dice in one hand, hold it for a second, pass it to the next hand, hold it for another second, then roll it. He also did this strange body body bobbing thing depending which hand the dice was in. Then he would stare at the dice for an excessive amount of time calculating. He would roll every single dice individually, making his turn alone take longer than the whole table combined.
You know it could have worked had he role played at all, had story reasons to back up his odd decisions but in the end we had enough and I was asked to get rid of him. I told him quite politely online that his gaming style wasn't a fit and he blew up in the most amazing rant. At first I was taken back by how rude it was but then re-reading it a few days later, it genuinely blew my mind how deluded he was. It was almost like he had been in another world playing Pathfinder with a different group and somehow was the hero of the story.
So he returned to the Pathfinder Society and I really felt sorry for all those poor people that had to deal with him.
I did a quick search of the PFS group and it seems like he has been banned. Sorry but that brings a smile to my face.
I told him quite politely online that his gaming style wasn't a fit and he blew up in the most amazing rant. At first I was taken back by how rude it was but then re-reading it a few days later, it genuinely blew my mind how deluded he was. It was almost like he had been in another world playing Pathfinder with a different group and somehow was the hero of the story.
Aw, man, I want to read that rant. If you don't want to post it entirely, could we get a synopsis with highlights? Commentary discussing the disconnect between what he said and what happened would not be remiss, as well.
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I told him quite politely online that his gaming style wasn't a fit and he blew up in the most amazing rant. At first I was taken back by how rude it was but then re-reading it a few days later, it genuinely blew my mind how deluded he was. It was almost like he had been in another world playing Pathfinder with a different group and somehow was the hero of the story.Aw, man, I want to read that rant. If you don't want to post it entirely, could we get a synopsis with highlights? Commentary discussing the disconnect between what he said and what happened would not be remiss, as well.
This was quite a few years ago on my phone and I've definitely lost it since then.
Long story short, his recollection of fights was quite imaginative. He went on at length to describe being pivotal in fights and how we wouldn't survive without him, claiming we didn't understand damage reduction and forgetting how the rest of us had to save him multiple times, from his own recklessness.
Longer story
One of the things that our GM did was target the damage dealers, which played out as enemies targeting the biggest "threat". Funnily enough because his character never did enough damage to warrant a threat, it was rare that his character got attacked, so he saw this as some sort of immunity/testament to his builds. So while we were dropping into unconscious, he was occasionally doing 1d8+0, wonderfully he never took precise shot as a feat either.
Another fight had us against something almost immune piercing but he managed to score a critical hit with his bow. The gm bluntly told him that after DR he did 2 damage but he remembered that fight for his "amazing crit build".
One battle had us fighting a Dhamphir thieves guild which went very badly for us. Everyone was dropped into unconscious except for my character. Trying to avoid a narrow TPK, my character had to tank all the damage while healing everyone back into the fight (including his). My character later took the aggro of three intimidate checks with a natural 20 on one, with a ridiculous +20(?) skill modifier and mandatory fear effect. My character was forced to flee for many rounds.
He went from using his wand of Flareburst (DC12) but after the near TPK he thought the best course of action was to shoot his bow at the dominated civilians forced into the fight. So according to him he saved the party by killing the most enemies while my character ran in fear. Glossing over the fact he was killing unarmed, unarmoured civilians (who even suffered attacks of opportunity for their +1 attacks). Even after the fight ended with us killing off all the Dhampires and the civilians breaking free of their domination, he asked if he could keep attacking them.
Man there was so much WTF, but those were some of the highlights.
Hmm. I wish I could say I've never run into gamers like that...
"I ignore all reality and exist in my own" alas is a thing that sometimes happens with gamers of the type discussed above.
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"BWAHAHAHAAA I CRIT YOU FOR TWO POINTS FEAR ME NOOB!!!"
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Make it so!"BWAHAHAHAAA I CRIT YOU FOR TWO POINTS FEAR ME NOOB!!!"Actually I would consider only getting 2 points of damage from a crit an achievement XD
Shoot for 1 next time!
Ha!
Been there, seen that, burnt the t-shirt, scattered the ashes on a distant tropical island.
Not nearly at the gravity of all the serious stuff on the thread, though, played a scenario this past weekend where we ended up missing the primary victory condition for a scenario because we were worried about the buffs provided running out, but got the secondary condition because we were rushing through -- didn't help we were rushing through trying to squeeze a large five-hour scenario into a four-hour slot with a late start, either...
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Ha!Make it so!"BWAHAHAHAAA I CRIT YOU FOR TWO POINTS FEAR ME NOOB!!!"Actually I would consider only getting 2 points of damage from a crit an achievement XD
Shoot for 1 next time!
Actually, I believe one (of my 4 crits* in 8 years of weekly gaming) was for 2 points of damage & a 1 round stun - as my duellist head-butted a dwarf.
*a second crit was when I was dominated & nearly beheaded our healer - if he wasn't wearing a helmet.
That sounds like it takes effort *pictures a Tian martial artist who defeats his enemies even as he bows deeply to them*....Actually, I believe one (of my 4 crits* in 8 years of weekly gaming) was for 2 points of damage & a 1 round stun - as my duellist head-butted a dwarf.
Isn't that a Steven Segal move?