Every group has or has had one... That weird player that just doesn't belong. That weird player that thinks that he's playing better than everyone else. The player who seems to take the game WAY too seriously (even by our standards). Have you ever had one? What did he (or she) do to make you wish you had a wish?
Here's my story... About ten years ago, I started with a completely new group of six players (three guys and three girls). They were all about 8 years younger than me and some of them had never played before. This one guy from the group (we'll call him Mongrelman) was one of those weird players. He was playing a theif and actually always showed up at games dressed in black, wearing ONE black glove. He would always bring an Ace and Jack of Spades and to the table, wich he would kiss before every roll. He would constantly flick his lighter, making everyone angry. He knew the 2nd Edition books by heart and actually call out the page number when someone was looking for a rule or table (he got it right only about 10% of the time wich made it very annoying!). Still, as long as he played and was present for the games I didn't mind.
Then Mongrelman started to actually worship me. He would show up at my front door every morning and walked me to work discussing game rules and possible story twists for his character. Now this happened in the middle of winter (in Quebec) at a chilling -30c. He would show up at my sister's work place and walk her home... Of course, she'd drop him off by my place before continuing to her house.
Then one day, he got tired of having everyone one his case and decided to leave the group, saying that the game wasn't good enough for him.
I still have two of those six players in my group today. And sometimes we still talk of the days of the Mongrelman, and laugh ourselves silly.
Ultradan
Dude...that guy is waiting for his excuse to get jailed...I'm glad you escaped out of that without injuries or death.
Back in '02, I started up a new game in Tampa, FL after moving there from Miami; I did something I had never done before - posted a 'gamers wanted' ad in a game/comic/book store. I got three serious replies; two actually became very good friends that I keep in touch with to this day - the third...
...Was an ex-Army footsoldier who was fixated on everything paramilitary; he wasn't overly wierd, violent or anti-civilization, but we could tell he was "wound waay too tightly" to be healthy.
He had actually created, from scratch, a rather intricate modern military/espionage Role-Playing system, all handwritten in spiral notebooks (of which there were several "books"); he talked me into playtesting it (which went surprisingly well...), which only convinced me of his 'Rain Man' magnitude knowledge of military acronyms and numbers for every piece of weaponry ever designed.
- Which is, in itself, not necessarily bad for society itself...
When he started distributing Christian (read: fundamentalist) pamphlets during game nights - that was the line crossed. After politely declining invitations to do prayer and bible-study groups with him ("we're already practicing Catholics, thank you very much anyways"), we dissolved the game for reasons of financial hardship and unemployment at the time and simply "forgot" to notify him when the game group reconvened a few months later.
We still heard from him from time to time, asking if the game had restarted; I always said "no" with just a little guilt (but not much). We were saved in the long term after we moved to Tallahassee in 2003.
M
I had a kid named John in my group he always took everything seriously, way too seriously. My group has great bouts of immaturity, which isn't a bad thing because everybody was having fun. Except for John who at one point threw a d4 and a d20 at another player for making a dirty joke about a torture rack. He also used my miniatures like action figures, that weirded me out a lot. So I politely asked him to leave my group and he did without confrontation.
Most of my players are too busy trying to keep up with the rules (they're all pretty new) to think about being too wierd. But I did have a strange DM once...
I was in 6th grade and my friend, let's call him Drugs, was starting up a Cyperpunk 2020 game. I had always been into
Sci-Fi, so I agreed. Two of my other friends, John and Ben, came along, and Drugs brought us down to his mom's basement where he had the gaming table set up. He wasn't a bad DM but everytime we did something that he didn't want us to do, like kill an NPC that we weren't supposed to or dodge bullets that we weren't supposed to (John went kind of crazy with these cybernetic dexterity boosters) he would throw his dice against a wall, yank at his hair, scream obscenities, and light up a joint. He would pace the room with his joint and mumble to himself, "I knew this would happen, I just knew it!"
Later, when he asked us to play the Star Wars RPG, we all declined.
I once put a "Gamers Wanted" add in a base paper and got several responses. One of these was from a 13 year old kid. Who's name I could never remember, so we just called him "Kid 13". Anyway, I figured that I'd give the kid a chance and let him play. The next youngest players in the group at the time were a couple of 18 year old High school girls who were getting ready for college where they were going to major in Drama. They were playing Necromancers, one a Wizard, the other a Cleric...but that is another story...
Anyway. Kid 13's dad drops him off for the first game, and he comes in with a wizard character named Tarl Longshanks, Who's name he won't tell to any other of the characters because he thinks that if they know his name, they will be able to steal his power...I told him that wasn't really how D&D worked, but if he wanted to use that as something his character thought then that would be fine. So I take a look at his character sheet and all his stats are 18...So we fix that. Then, in the first encounter, when the party is setting up camp for the night the party is attacked by a band of goblins. They chase the Goblins off. Kid 13 then decides to have his character chase after the goblins in the dark and promptly gets turned into a pin cushion by the fleeing goblins...So he spends the rest of the session rolling up a new character, which I work into the next session.
The party is hold up in a ruined tower and have bolted the door closed and pushed spear points, and sword blades through the cracks making it a bladed door should anyone try to rush it. Kid 13's new character, a paladin rides up and has a chance to chase away the goblins that have the party trapped in the tower. Instead, he decides to ride his horse full speed into the tower door, which I repeatedly tell him is full of spear points and sword blades...Hitting the door, he manages to kill himself and the horse within 5 minutes of introducing a new character...He spent the rest of the session rolling up a new character...and oddly moving around the table...to get a clear view down the loose shirts of the nicely endowed 18 year old female players whenever they leaned over the table to move their miniatures.
So, I introduce his third character in as many sessions as a prisoner the other PCs find in a lair of the mad alchemist which they had defeated in the previous session. They cut his character free and he immediately runs over to one of the tables and starts grabbing flasks. “What is in them?” “Are they labeled?”…
I tell him that some of them are labeled. “Healing”, “Gaseous Form”, “Dragon Blood”, “Green Slime”…
“Green Slime? I open that one and drink it”
Collectively from everyone around the table “WHAT?”
“I drink it”
“Dude it is green slime, do you know what green slime is?”
“Yeah, but I bet this is not really Green Slime, It must be a Potion of Super Glory”
“Look. The stuff in the vial is green and slimly…It is Green Slime…Besides there is no such thing as a potion of Super Glory. I’m telling you this, and I’m the DM”
So he drinks it and dies…and spends the rest of the session rolling up a new character…The girls, having decided that having Kid 13 obviously looking down their shirts the week before, wore nice tight fitting shirts for this session.
So I have a talk with Kid 13 following the session and give him the “Look, You are not really working out with this group. I gave you a try, but you just don’t seem to be compatible with our playing style” talk.
And he shows up the next week, and since his father dropped him off and left, he is stuck unless one of wants to take time away from playing to take him home…So I give him another chance…And his character jumps into a pool of boiling mud and dies within 10 minutes of playing. Well since they thought the kid would not be their, the girls had gone back to wearing their low cut loose shirts so Kid 13 does this strange roving around the table, sitting in other people's chairs and actually climbing up on the table at one point.
So after the session, I ask him “If he is really here to play D&D or just look down the girls shirts.” He says to play D&D, and to be fair in the few minutes that his character has survived each session he tends to be focused on the game. So I give him one more chance.
And his new character runs to a trapped chest and throws it open and gets blown to bits…and he rolls up a new character and actually avoids looking down the girls shirts. So I work his new character in as soon as he finishes it, and he manages to critical fumble and kill himself…Ok, that could have happened to anyone, so I let him roll up a new character and work that one in…and he lights a torch in a room that smells like gas…
Then it hits me. “Dude, I think you’ve been cursed since you joined this group. I’d suggest that you find another group to play with to break the curse. I’m sure you will have better luck then.”
“I think you are right” he says “Maybe I’ll start my own game with my friends at school”
“That is probably for the best” I say and his dad picked him up and we never crossed paths again.
Still if a player loses a character in two consecutive sessions, the comments about pulling a Kid 13 come up… He went like 9 PCs in 5 sessions. I have been a lot more selective about who joins my games since then.
ASEO out
The core of the group I currently play with started with 3rd edition 5 years ago this October. We've been playing wekly pretty regularly for the 5 years and many of us have become close friends, all from responding to a "players wanted" message on a bulletin board.
We've also had a few people join and then move away or graduate so the group has changed slightly but three of us have been playing for five years and three more have been playing for almost 4 years.
We did have one person join for two years or so and he used to roleplay different than us. None of us spoke in character or funny voices. We would e-play between sessions and some people would write in character, accents and all. But he was different. He was loud, spoke in character, and while a bit unnerving he was a pretty good roleplayer. But his characters would become stubborn - and he would become stubborn. He would begin yelling and screaming at the table and it was hard to distinguish if HE was mad or his character. Usually it was both. Things became personal and he would throw a fit at someone he didn't agree with. He started hosting sessions and once he got so wound up he stormed from the table in his basement and told us to turn the lights off when we were done.
But to his credit he would calm down, return and apologize. He was a good guy who just took his roleplaying a bit too seriously at times.
HOLY CRAP these are funny stories!!! I thought I had a few bad apples in my game over the years, but no Kid 13 or One-Black-Leather-Glove guy.
I've had guys that were wound too tight that either quit or I had to ask to leave (one wanted to meet me in the park and "settle our differences") and one guy that smelled like crap ALL THE TIME, even after showering right before games. Heh! I had one guy that carried a belt knife at his hip that treatened to cut the neck of another player for starting to open his package of cookies. To this day, I'm convinced he would have tried, too.
And I've had a couple players that disrespected my wife in my home that got the boot. Other than that I guess I've been lucky. Geez!
So after the session, I ask him “If he is really here to play D&D or just look down the girls shirts.”
I struggle with that question to this day.
Kid GGG
Steve, in my time as a gamer, it seems that the "smells-like-crap-24-hours-a-day-guy" is ubiquitious to this social scene. It would be funny if it wasn't encountered so often.
Get this, I was at a gaming convention a little while back and on the program, in tiny letters down at the bottom, there was a sentence that read:
"And all attendees, as a reminder, please bath or shower at least once a day during the five day convention. Please keep other's comfort in mind."
Why did they even have to write this?
Is there any other industry convention where you have to tell your attendees to bath regularly? I mean, I doubt at RV shows there is fine print on the program that reads, "Oh yeah, and please wash your ass." It just doesn't happen.
Gamers are strange...
ASEO, I swear...you're the Jack Nicholson of the Paizo boards - always the one with the funniest story and the right attitude.
On a related tangent - weird DMs!
Before my weird player (see above) in Tampa, I had answered an ad before placing my own; I was happy to discover that the DM lived in an Apt. complex a single block from my own... He was playing the "brand new d20 3.0 Edition" and it was my chance to learn the new rules; I jumped right in with a group of four other experienced players.
Red flag #1: The DM had some odd house rules, like, "We can't make too much noise, or my wife will get mad."...and,"If you miss more than two sessions without my approval, you'll be kicked out of the group."...and, "If you don't show up for a session without prior approval, you're kicked out."
Red flag #2: The DM was running a homebrew world that, despite not impressing me a whole lot, he seemed paranoid to protect...
"This is my own Campaign Setting that I'm working on getting copyrighted so I can sell it to WoTC, so you can't take any hard copies of the map home."
"These are my own original spells, so you can use them in game, but you can't reproduce them anywhere or tell them to anyone, OK? I intend to publish them as part of the game setting."
Red flag #3: The DM was WAY too full of himself...
"I'm a playtester for WoTC, so my interpretation of the rules will always take precedence. I don't care what you think that book means - my idea for the spell is better."
"I'm a playtester for WoTC, so I'm going to be playtesting some changes to the rules that I'm going to have published by them."
"I'm a playtester for WoTC, so I'm going to rewrite the racial traits for Elves so it fits my campaign setting that I'm going to have published."
"I'm a playtester for WoTC, so I'm going to rewrite some of the character classes so it fits my campaign setting that I'm going to have published."
etc. etc. etc......
The straw that broke the camel's back: I had a character die in his dungeon.
That isn't unusual in itself, except that in 18 years of playing D&D, it had never happened to me, yet. What really got me going after that, was the fact that the second character I brought in died within sight of the first dead character, in the following session!
Between that and his casual indifference towards the party's fate (he seemed to enjoy killing characters off, not actually building a story or "gamey" stuff), I found an excuse to miss the following session and allowed myself to violate his attendence policy, resulting in my "ejection" from the game.
I've yet to see his name on any WoTC material.
M
I have been a player for a few years but I moved and couldn't find a game so I decided to start my own and become a DM. I put an ad at the comic book store and got three responses.
One was a long time gamer fanatic, and I went to his house at first to meet him, discuss the campain, and roll up a character, and his whole house was full on minis!!!! He has, hands down, the largest collection of minis I have ever seen. He has several thousand and he built a boat, to scale, from scratch for his own pirate campain. He also plays several times a week. Then out of nowhere he showed me his guns!!! He had a large collection of rifles and some handguns. I stated to get nervous until his cat came out of the other room. He stated talking goo goo talk to it and telling me that his cat was so spoiled etc.... Well, I figure anyone who is that nice to animals must be harmless and I still play with him. By the way he is a great player to have because he alway brings tons of minis, and has tons of fun, and didn't even complain when his player died. He knows way more about the game then me but has never said anyhting. So even though he is a little freaky, he is a great player to have.
But I had another player that had also been playing for years. He talked a lot about the RPGA and how they played. When we talked on the phone at first I thought he was just really curious asking me question after question, but it turns out that he was just really uptight. He came to meet me a roll up a character and he wanted to know every detail of the campain. He kept saying "I just want to know what I am agreeing to."
This player seemed to delight in telling people when they were wrong and used smarm and condesention liberally. He was also the greediest monk in the history of monks!!
I recently saw the movie 40 year old virgin, and I would say that my player was like that except with a much worse personality.
It turned out that he was not happy with his monk and wanted to change. He wanted to be a wizard, but we already had a newbie playing a wizard and I did not want this guys technical knowlage to make the gameplay imbalanced and intimidate the new guy. So as we were discussing my concerns he interupts me and says "Are you being straight with me?"
I asked him if he thought I was lying to him.
"Are you?"
Well, I don't like being called a liar in my own house. I started getting really pissed, wondering what was going on in this guys mind, and how paranoind he had to be to ask me if I was lying to him.
I had to keep from hitting him over the head with a frying pan. I really don't get mad that often but someting about his was just not right...
Steve, in my time as a gamer, it seems that the "smells-like-crap-24-hours-a-day-guy" is ubiquitious to this social scene. It would be funny if it wasn't encountered so often.
Get this, I was at a gaming convention a little while back and on the program, in tiny letters down at the bottom, there was a sentence that read:
"And all attendees, as a reminder, please bath or shower at least once a day during the five day convention. Please keep other's comfort in mind."
Why did they even have to write this?
Is there any other industry convention where you have to tell your attendees to bath regularly? I mean, I doubt at RV shows there is fine print on the program that reads, "Oh yeah, and please wash your ass." It just doesn't happen.
Gamers are strange...
There is a medical condition which results in uncontrollable B.O. - I don't recall the medical terminology.
A former employee of mine suffered from this and there were times that her coworkers were absolutely brutal on her (working in a small building, in fast food, can be tough on someone with this malady).
Not sure how this relates to the gaming community, but I'm sure that the reminders to the socially-underdeveloped uber-geeks out there are not wasted effort, that much I'm sure of.
M
|
ASEO, I swear...you're the Jack Nicholson of the Paizo boards - always the one with the funniest story and the right attitude.
On a related tangent - weird DMs!
How utterly perfect, Marc. Between Downer's face, ASEO's tone, and Jack's delivery, I now have a fully developed picture of him! Every post will be that much better.
On the wierd DM line,
I had one DM in college who was running a Robotech game. He was a nice guy, but a little self-confident as a DM and it came out in odd ways...primarily the way he cheated to hurt then help the party. He would do the most ridiculous pop-eyed reactions to the crits he would roll (sometimes as many as three crits in a round!! Can you belive it!!! No, we couldn't either.) Then, worried we would get pissed off at him (a valid concern as his attendence numbers started drooping, he would have an ASTOUNDING run of critical failures!!! Each one punctuated by a head-lolling, google-eyed reaction of PURE AMAZEMENT!!! A couple of times where were even spit-takes.
Have you ever seen the episode of Futurama where Bender takes everyone out to eat at Elzar's thinking the meal is comped, then, getting a huge bill does like a 10 second-long spit take. Yeah, it was pretty much like that.
It would have been a lot easier to deal with if he were an honest ass either at the table or away from it, but he was a genuinely nice guy...living in the same dorm...and this was his only major fault.
Well, of the group i play with now, one of the gamers is a manicly depressed psycho that constantly carries at least five knives with him, all of which have names. And he wears a glove that has a device in it that he can use to project nails from his fist. And his fingernails are sharpened into claws. And he has been known to bring a scourge whip to meetings. And he always wears his black leather jacket. Another is one of those smeels-like-crap-24/7 types. Those constitute the main wierdnesses in the group.
Wow...
Blackhawke...I might never have believed that such a person could exist if I hadn't met numerous versions of this person at gaming stores and comic shops.
One has to wonder, do these people ever actually find themselves in situations where they absolutely, positively need five knives and nails to shoot out of their gloves. I mean, hell, I would wear that stuff if I was constantly attacked by ninjas, but let me check again.........nope, no ninjas.
Sorry, Bloodhawke, not Blackhawke.
My awkward player is exactly the opposite of Ultradan's; he is wayy to "goofy". Usually, everyone either gets mad at him, or the majority of people join in and KABOOM!!! No more fun session.
WaterdhavianFlapjack
Well, of the group i play with now, one of the gamers is a manicly depressed psycho that constantly carries at least five knives with him
Sorry....if I felt like I had to carry a gun (or a perfumed handkerchief ;-o ) to the game, that would the end of that.
Most of the people I've played D&D with are pretty mainstream. We encountered one social outcast that tried to join our game about 10 years ago, but he quickly left after he realized that our gaming group was more concerned about fun and socializing, having some beers and a cookout with the game, than "serious" role-playing. We play D&D, the game doesn't play us, you know?
Our main problem right now is sobriety. After all of the kids go to bed, we keep playing for another 4-5 hours and get kind of wild (as wild as paunchy late 30 to 40 somethings get). Often, some people don't leave until the wee hours because they had to crash on the couch and sober up before going home.
In High School, when we gamed, it was usually because nobody had any money for beer and we couldn't go party at the Canyon or the Quarry. Nobody ever drank at the D&D games until we were grown-ups because if we HAD alcohol the last thing we wanted to do was play D&D.
Wow...
Blackhawke...I might never have believed that such a person could exist if I hadn't met numerous versions of this person at gaming stores and comic shops.
One has to wonder, do these people ever actually find themselves in situations where they absolutely, positively need five knives and nails to shoot out of their gloves. I mean, hell, I would wear that stuff if I was constantly attacked by ninjas, but let me check again.........nope, no ninjas.
Well, I've been a police officer for 17 years and we've managed to keep the ninja population down for the public safety purposes. The Dept of Homeland Security puts ninja repellent in Jolt Cola, that's why gamers never get attacked by them.
Wait? Did I just reveal that I've been a cop for 17 years and that I got drunk in high school? Ooops....
And thank God for that Farewell2Kings, if it wasn't for cops like you, Ninjas would fill this country up like roaches! Carry on Captain, carry on.
And thank God for that Farewell2Kings, if it wasn't for cops like you, Ninjas would fill this country up like roaches! Carry on Captain, carry on.
LOL!!
Back on topic, one of my friends, who is an excellent D&D player and is now 40 + years old, was a DM for a while until our whole gaming group basically fired him. (It was after this incident that I picked up 3.5 and started DMing again after a 5 year hiatus).
This guy creates wonderful worlds, does great voices, his NPC's are colorful and memorable, but he is the classic metagame monty haul deux ex machina player + he's obsessed by magical items that focus on sexual enhancements or stimulation.
He once gave my wife's PC a rather unique item particularly designed to stimulate.....well...you know. She said "I'm throwing it away" "You can't, it's cursed, you're now magically bound to use the item" "I quit the game, you stupid a**hole!" was my wife's response.
"Oh okay, it doesn't really do that, I was only kidding." We all rolled our eyes.
It just got progressively worse and his personal idiosyncracies began to rule the game. We played the DM, never the game. We knew that if he did something to us, we could just piss and moan enough and he'd bring about the big good guy and make it all better for all of us. He always ran his games off the top of his head, never had anything prepared beforehand. However, he was the absolute king at stimulating yoru imagination with his places, people and settings and if he just paid attention to game mechanics and balance, he would be the best DM ever.
Now, he's a player...a really good player. He drinks his beer, eats his pizza and makes his sexual references to an audience he has no control over. My wife doesn't call him an a**hole any more, but she still rolls her eyes a lot.
...but he is the classic metagame monty haul deux ex machina player + he's obsessed by magical items that focus on sexual enhancements or stimulation.
That's the same as my "goofy" player! Creepy.
WaterdhavianFlapjack
The last game with the Mongrelman...
It was the worst game I DMed... It was a disaster. It happened about ten years ago. Imagine this: At the table, I had the Mongrelman, there was also two guys (the two players I still have in my group today) verbally destroying The Mongrelman, another guy (we'll call him Revenant)who showed up for the game totaly whacked on drugs (he was there, but he wasn't there), this other guy (who we'll call Gibbering Mouther), who kept talking about what happened to him at work that day, and a girl (we'll just call her Tarrasque) who just didn't care. Here's a brief moment...
During a street fight, the barn next to the inn where the players were staying caught on fire after one of the players cast a fireball too close to it. After the battle, as the players watched the barn burn, Revenant sadly said: "Poor mule."
(The players had a mule in the barn). Then one of my friends said : "What about our greek fire bottles?". Then the barn blew up in a giant ball of light.
Meanwhile, Mouther was wandering why there were little chunks in his glass of pepsi. I exclaimed : Mongrelman is eating chips!! Then my friend exclaimed : HE DRANK FROM THE BOTTLE!! And we all screamed : EEEwwwwwwhh!!!
I must of drank the equivalent of 19 beers before the night ended. And, incredibly, showed up for work the next morning!
Ultradan
I think if I ever had to go out and recruit new players I would run the first few gaming sessions at the FLGS before I would ever allow anyone to know where I lived, just to weed out the whack jobs.
If you're a friend and you're at my house I need to be able to trust that you can follow certain basic social functions, like bathing, not double dipping the chips and salsa, not drinking directly from the soda bottle, not staring at the girls like a drooling idiot (only the DM gets to do that).
Wow...
Blackhawke...I might never have believed that such a person could exist if I hadn't met numerous versions of this person at gaming stores and comic shops.
One has to wonder, do these people ever actually find themselves in situations where they absolutely, positively need five knives and nails to shoot out of their gloves. I mean, hell, I would wear that stuff if I was constantly attacked by ninjas, but let me check again.........nope, no ninjas.
Heh - nope...no ninjas around here, either...
Whenever I see people like that - armed to the teeth and dressed in black (all on top of their pot-bellied, pale, sedentary bodies from having absolutely NO exercise, much less actual training in how to fight) - all I can think of is how fast would it take to disarm them and kill them with their own weapons..?
Being a reformed geek, I can posit that a majority of them would never make it to the actual confrontation - since most would back down or flee before any direct blows landed.
...I would at least respect one who fought and lost - weapons or no.
(Has anyone ever pointed out that all of those 'weapony-type stuff' that you can buy is decorative and has little to no functionality at all?)
M
(has actually hit people with weapons before; it's not like the movies)
...not staring at the girls like a drooling idiot (only the DM gets to do that).
That's the only reason we DM in the first place.
...not staring at the girls like a drooling idiot (only the DM gets to do that).
That's the only reason we DM in the first place.
Yep - I make it no secret that sexual favors will gain you magic items.
One player who is gay likes to make me nervous by teasing me about that... *shudder*
That's also why the Mrs. is three levels above everyone else.
M
(That last part was a joke, Ms. Steinhem.)
It didn't happen to me, but one of my friends who DMs had a player who would show up with fantasticly painted miniatures that were on the scale of anything he had ever seen done professionally...except that they were all missing their weapons. The DM asked the player why all the figures were missing their weapons, and the player replied that he cut the weapons off all the characters...
DM:"Why?"
Player: "Well, I keep them all on shelves in my bedroom, and if they ever come alive at night they won't have weapons to kill me with."
DM: (probably without thiking the comment through first) "What about the spellcasters?"
Player: "Uuumm... Oh NO!"
So the Player sprints to the front door and hops in his truck peels out in the driveway and is gone...he does not return for the game.
The next session he shows up without any of his figures, and the DM is afraid to ask him "why?".
ASEO out
Game over, ASEO. You win (even by proxy).
Maybe now would be a good time to shill for my ASEO's Campaign 2002-present Campaign Journal ;-)
Check it out if you are interested.
I also have finished posting my complete "The Other Side Campaign" in the Campaugn Journal section.
ASEO out
Game over, ASEO. You win (even by proxy).
No kidding....wow!
These are truly entertaining storys, all the more entertaining because we can all relate the the truth of the matter. Its why I like these messageboards so much...
Now, I've been gaming in Las Vegas since the 6th grade, and Im 32 so do the math...I'm too lazy to do it myself. I'm surprised that Steve (also a Vegasite) hasn't had more interesting encounters with strange players/DMs (unless he's holding out) based on MY experiences.
For the sake of personal security, however, I don't think I will get into details or the names of these strange individuals, but I will give these warnings:
1) Be wary of the player that wears all black. I have seen exceptions, but the general rule is that they are not normal.
2) Be wary of anyone that has an adoptive or self-administered nickname that describes any kind of texture such as "Bumpy".
3) Be wary of the player that refuses to play anything but a Catilian Rouge/Sorcerer or Tiefling.
4) Be wary of anyone who has full-on conversations with themselves in front of everyone at the gaming table.
5) Be wary of anyone who exhibits all of the above traits!
We didn't have a Kid 13 -- he was more like Kid 32.
The peculiarities were legion; among them he would periodically raise his hand (actually stretch it upward as far as he could) "Ooh, ooh, ooh. Can I roll for something?"
Sometimes he had an actual skill check he wanted to make, like searching for secret doors in the middle of a grassy plain (or somesuch silliness). Other times he was asking me (the DM) to think of something he might roll for and succeed.
Eventually we just went along: "Ooh, ooh, ooh. Can I roll for something?" "Sure." <rolls> "What happened?" "Well, what were you rolling for?" Silence...
He never got better.
Jack
It didn't happen to me, but one of my friends who DMs had a player who would show up with fantasticly painted miniatures that were on the scale of anything he had ever seen done professionally...except that they were all missing their weapons. The DM asked the player why all the figures were missing their weapons, and the player replied that he cut the weapons off all the characters...
DM:"Why?"
Player: "Well, I keep them all on shelves in my bedroom, and if they ever come alive at night they won't have weapons to kill me with."
DM: (probably without thiking the comment through first) "What about the spellcasters?"
Player: "Uuumm... Oh NO!"
So the Player sprints to the front door and hops in his truck peels out in the driveway and is gone...he does not return for the game.
The next session he shows up without any of his figures, and the DM is afraid to ask him "why?".
ASEO out
ASEO, there you go again - blowing another thread out of the water...how many is that, now?
I swear, they could make a sitcom on Sci-Fi channel about your gaming life... It would be the "Seinfeld" of the gaming world!
Each episode is a single session...
M
Let's see... Here's some other things I've seen in my years of playing this wonderful game:
Dice throwing (players and DMs),
Dice EATING (I've seen a player do it... He went to the bathroom later that night and rolled a 20!),
Dice Cursing/Blessing,
Character Sheet Ripping (Players only),
Character Sheet Eating (Incredibly, not the same player as above!!),
Binder Throwing (inculdes dice and sheets),
Self Mutilation (burning, cutting, hitting ones head against the table),
Talking to God (not sure wich one),
And my personnal favorite... all out brawl.
(No, I don't play in the jungle)
Ultra
Let's see... Here's some other things I've seen in my years of playing this wonderful game:
Dice throwing (players and DMs),
Dice EATING (I've seen a player do it... He went to the bathroom later that night and rolled a 20!),
Dice Cursing/Blessing,
Character Sheet Ripping (Players only),
Character Sheet Eating (Incredibly, not the same player as above!!),
Binder Throwing (inculdes dice and sheets),
Self Mutilation (burning, cutting, hitting ones head against the table),
Talking to God (not sure wich one),
And my personnal favorite... all out brawl.(No, I don't play in the jungle)
Ultra
Let's see:
Dice throwing (Players and DMs) - check.
Dice EATING - Thank God, no.
Dice Cursing/Blessing - Hey, everyone does this....right?
Character Sheet Ripping - Players and DMs both.
Character Sheet Eating - Again, thankfully no.
Binder Throwing - Nope.
Self Mutilation - Geez, I almost feel normal now...
Talking to God - I think 'summoning the Gods of Dice Karma' falls into this category.
M
Dice Eating...hmmm no, but I played in a Darksun game just after college with a guy who must have weighed 800lbs. This guy had to make 4 trips back to the car just to bring in his snacks for the game. He would go through a couple gallons of soda and I don't even want to think of the amount he ate while playing. I mean he was an eating machine...lets just say I went out and bought Stock in Little Debby's...I bet he regularly put All you can eat restraunts out of business. Any we always played on campus in an common area with a large table. This guy would take up half the table with his food and drinks, and always just tossed his trash on the floor around him. Well this new player joins us and offers to host a session at his apartment. This heavy guy pats his belly and then says "not unless you have double doors and a handicapted bathroom. Then it hits me...These guys play where they do because this guy can't actually fit into any of their homes, or any of the unlocked Classrooms. The other thing about this guy is that he always was just dripping sweat (perhapse from the weight, and the effort of eating nonstop), anyway, this tendes to make his hands slippery, and when he rolled his dice, it was like he was having some sort of sesiure as his body went through what I can only describe as undulating waves. Then his dice would fly out of his hand in a random direction, usually missing the table completely. This was followed by "Can sombody get my die and tell me what I rolled" One of the other players would crawl under the table, or go ober to the fake plant in the corner, collect his die and tell him what it came up as. After one session, feeling bad for the mess he left, I stayed to clean up the room some. As I went to push the two chairs he had been sitting on back under the table (they had been left tipped over on the floor having fallen when he got up after the game. I touched one of the padded seats of one of the chairs, and it was totally sodden with sweat. Probably reason two why the game was not held at anyone's house. The guy was nice and all, and played well. But I just wanted to yell "Quit eating!" After about 6 sessions I just couldn't take it any more, and gave up on that game.
Come to think about it, I think I did leave that game missing a few dice.
ASEO out
Dice blessing...Remember the two well endowed 18 year-old female Drama majors who constantly wore loose/low-cut shirts. Well, apparently Truly Lucky Dice are always held in cleavage between rolls.
Who would have thought?
Ah, that was a fun group...
ASEO out
Gee, he didn't go to "all you can eat" places... He went to "all they can cook" places. IMy players tend to bring exessive amounts of food to the game too. But their the "skinny-always moving" kinda guys. It's a sort of competition every session to see who'll go the most overboard with soda, chips, candy, cookies, pastries, chicken, pizzas, six-foot subs, etc... Luckily, we don't eat all of it. Lot's of leftovers though.
Ultradan
Dice blessing...Remember the two well endowed 18 year-old female Drama majors who constantly wore loose/low-cut shirts. Well, apparently Truly Lucky Dice are always held in cleavage between rolls.
Who would have thought?
Ah, that was a fun group...
ASEO out
Ok ASEO... now I'm starting to think that you're actually a comedy writer who's making all of this up...
M
Gee, he didn't go to "all you can eat" places... He went to "all they can cook" places. IMy players tend to bring exessive amounts of food to the game too. But their the "skinny-always moving" kinda guys. It's a sort of competition every session to see who'll go the most overboard with soda, chips, candy, cookies, pastries, chicken, pizzas, six-foot subs, etc... Luckily, we don't eat all of it. Lot's of leftovers though.
Ultradan
Back in the mid-to-late 1990's, my group in Miami ate very well; through some work connections, I would occassionally get my hands on some real nice food items...
One week, I made everyone baby back ribs after acquiring a case of them...
One week I made about 10 rolls worth of sushi, after learning how to roll them and acquiring all of the ingredients...
One week I served up ribeye steaks after acquiring two or three whole cuts - I sliced the steaks about 2 inches thick... *drool*
Ahhh...those were the days.
M
Ok ASEO... now I'm starting to think that you're actually a comedy writer who's making all of this up...
M
I wish I could make this stuff up.
Of cource I am burning through all my gaming stories at an alarming rate.
Why when I started gaming sonny...we didn't have any of these fancy dancy plastic dice. No sir. Wh had chits we picked out of a paper cup! And we liked it. Then we got those cardboard dice you had to cur out and tape together. And we had to roll them uphill... in the snow...
ASEO out
Back in the mid-to-late 1990's, my group in Miami ate very well; through some work connections, I would occassionally get my hands on some real nice food items...
One week, I made everyone baby back ribs after acquiring a case of them...
One week I made about 10 rolls worth of sushi, after learning how to roll them and acquiring all of the ingredients...
One week I served up ribeye steaks after acquiring two or three whole cuts - I sliced the steaks about 2 inches thick... *drool*
Ahhh...those were the days.
M
I've actually used food to add to the mood of a session. Usually we eat the usual chips/beer but when I DM I try to add a little more depth and flavor to the table.
Food first and foremeost lends a sense of community to the table. If people are being welcomed into a home to share a meal and they all bring something to the meal, it really does strengthen the bonds of the community. This also got the spouses involved a bit in either hosting, cooking, and just plain talking and sharing. It was much more social when we did that.
I've also tried to cook ethnic food to match a particular in-game culture. Once it was venison steaks, steamed vegetables, baked potatoes, and sauteed shallots. Many times it's soups, stews, breads, and cheeses while they're in a simple village. Jerky and trail mix/GORP when eating trail rations is another simple way to bring the game to life.
Fruitcake.
One guy I decided to take into my game ( to the horror of my players ) was called Fruitcake by the others at school.
We were your regular small town New Zealand 15 year olds secretly playing a 1st and 2nd ed Forgotten Realms home made mish mash back in the year of 91.
We had a good thing going - 10 am to 7 pm Saturdays and Sundays and every moment of every holiday. Some of the kids rode for 2 hours on their rusty bikes through horizontal sleet along a gravel road to get to my house in the full blown wilderness. We had a good thing going...
Why did I invite Fruitcake?
Well many reasons... One, because he was a new kid and a weirdo and thus a potential friend and as a weirdo he was one of my own. He had heard us whispering about D and D and he was all up on it. He used to play a strange Fantasy RPG called “Role Master” which had amazing critical hit and miss charts. And had expressed his great interest in playing.
Two, because he would wear a leather tank top to school and had a blond mullet and muscles.
Three, because he was intelligent and creative.
Four, his nick name had permeated the school to such a degree that very few people could honestly recall his real name.
One kid made a speech as a class project about making fruit cakes with the sole purpose of embarrassing and humiliating the guy.
At the end of the speech after the teacher had left the room Fruitcake calmly walked over to the guy and unleashed a sudden flurry of face and head punches upon him ( the dude had be a 5th level monk AT LEAST ). Then he dragged the guy by the throat over to the open window and forced him out of it, calmly ignoring the guys struggles and giving him a whack or two to get him out.
They half unconscious guy fell from the second story window and landed on his back in the playground.
I immediately ran to the principals office to tell him a story of a really intelligent caring guy pushed to the edge buy one clowns callousness.
I was the head of the debating team and I should have got a cup for my efforts that day.
The principal took Fruitcake into his office and told him off and then sent him home for the day. But I think he was secretly proud.
I know I was.
Fruitcake had actually done what I had only dreamed of doing
On the merit of the eradication of one of our enemies my players agreed to let him in on the game.
He made a lawful neutral ( a first ) Priest of Torm - the god of Loyalty Duty and Obedience ( a first ) . And the character was female. This was so novel and unusual that my players were having second thoughts and they seriously doubted his sanity. I had to let on that he had a crossbow to bring them around.
We played at his house which was a medium sized tin shed down town.
We all arrived and the first thing he did was angrily smack his dad around a bit which was just crazy. Then he went and got a bottle of Black heart rum from his side of the room - poured him self a cup of it, added blue food colouring and downed it in one gulp. Then he put on a plastic Viking helmet. He was ready.
I got the game ready. The players were assaulting The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun . And playing in this creepy kids tin shed just added to the terror. He had a crossbow on the wall and a pretty cool looking homemade sword... which he was now waving about to punctuate his excitement.
The guys roleplaying was flawless. He cooperated fully, had most of the great ideas, was valorous in battle and generous with treasure. He saved each player at least once and the game was one of the best I have EVER played.
At the end of the game as we were heading off he took his crossbow outside and within 30 seconds had shot a feral cat through the neck at 30 paces.
( Feral cats are the scourge of New Zealand. They eat all the nice and pretty endangered flightless birds - not killing a feral cat when you can is an actionable offense in some particularly heavy hit areas ) .
So he was a LEGEND in my mind.
So cool.
SOOOO COOL.
My players thought differently though.
They just could not get over the fact that he was playing a female character. So they voted him out. His other behavior did not worry them much - I was their Dungeon Master, they had seen worse.
He and I remained good friends though and continued to share adventures and tales.
Now on to the next story ... weird Dungeon Masters.
Yours
Grunnipalg.
The only difference between me and Dungeon Masters is that I am a Dungeon Master.
The weirdest gamer I've ever played with is my Dad. Obviously, this is not a negative experience but a positive one. My Dad was a county judge and high school math teacher - an incredibly logical, serious, conservative person. When we first introduced him to D&D in 1982 we kinda didn't want him to play (what teenager wants to role-play with their father?). He totally surprised everyone with the transformation he underwent when playing this game.
Boy, was my Dad hysterical! At one point his character lost his weapon and in desperation grabbed ... his "leather mapcase" as described on his character sheet. He began beating at the giant ants that were attacking him with his leather mapcase and the DM had to come up with some practical mechanics for such an attack. The rest of us were practically rolling on the floor. Over ten years later, my Dad was playing a barbarian with stereotypical low intelligence. His role-playing was so funny I had difficulty making it through our sessions together. The barbarian truncated most words to be as monosyllabic as possible. When he was killed disgracefully after some unfortunate dice rolls and later resurrected, the character would constantly refer to the incident as "death by gob" (a small band of goblins had overwhelmed him). He would also refer to "pot of heal" (potions of healing), and other similar phrases. I guess you kinda had to be there but the whole thing was too funny.
My Dad was a "weird gamer" because you never knew what to expect from him or his characters. He was hard to DM because he never reacted to anything in the prescribed manner. Sometimes, though, weirdness can be fun.
My Dad was a "weird gamer" because you never knew what to expect from him or his characters. He was hard to DM because he never reacted to anything in the prescribed manner. Sometimes, though, weirdness can be fun.
That's funny.
My gaming group in high school did a Dad's game once. Mine didn't play that day, but we had a doctor and a banker playing. I Dmed, and it was perpahs the most embarrassing session I ever had.
Doc Morrical was a Paladin, and droned on about the battles he had fought trying to reconcile the bloody difference between the Catholics and Protestants in Germany. Meanwhile Dick Cassidy, the CEO and spoksman for the local bank, rode into battle with a bare chested Halfing who weilds a SCimitar and rides a goat.
It didn't help that my current adventure was about Giant Space Hamsters. The idea was kind of like Jurassic Park, where the characters were at an experiemental installation for creating new varieties of GSH. Suddenly, the magical protections fail. . .
Mr. Cassidy DID some cool Calligraphy during the game, which I still have in my old D&D box.
The weirdest gamer I've ever played with is my Dad...
That's a freakin' awesome story - may everyone get an opportunity to play D&D with their parents. (My mom had a cool half-giant gladiator named Bubba Grunt.)
|
|
I never played with my parents, but I did play one game with my grandmother! She (to this day, one of the coolest ladies I know) use to watch me, my brother and cousins over the summers when school was off. I was in high school at the time and my bro and cousins ranged down a couple years from there. We would game at her house all day long (eating Butterfingers and Flav-o-ice slush).
My grandmother is a wiley gal...she a longtime member of the my hometowns library board, and there hasn't been a murder mystery or horror that has gone in that she hasn't read. Listening to us play one day, she decided she would like to join in... My dear sweet grandma rolled up a character.
Enter Evil-lynn the Assassin (what can I say, she watched He-Man with us). My dear, sweet, coniving, brutal, blood-thirsty, mindful of a gold piece granny. She ended up slicing my brother's fighter's throat in his sleep because she thought he didn't deal square with her.
*sniff* I learned so much from her.
Thanks for reminding me that weird gamers aren't all just bad gamers.