Maybe this has been done before, but I'd like to know where the most unusual place has been where you've run a game, such as ASEO running a game in a war zone in Iraq, etc.
I'll start:
Feb 92--a buddy of mine ran me through a solo Spacemaster adventure while we were driving to meet friends in Dallas to see Rush/Primus in concert on the "Roll The Bones" tour.
Oct 85--I ran a Top Secret game while on fire guard duty in my barracks at Ft. Sam Houston, TX while in the Army.
July 88--Ran an AD&D game while on our 2 weeks field training exercise at Ft. Hood, TX....game went from midnight to 3am every night, 'cuz we rotated off duty at midnight and it was too hot the rest of the time. We used red lensed Army issue crook-neck flashlights and played in the medical supply tent in the dark...kind of weird, now that I think about it.
Weirdest place I ran a game was in a phone booth ( In NZ we have closed pillbox style phone booths) .
A friend and I were hitch hiking to another town and it started pouring rain ( Being NZ )
so I ran a game off the top of my head flipping to random pages in the phonebook to generate rolls and using a pencil stub to write notes in the margins of the phone book with. It rained for almost four solid hours so we got a good game in.
Weirdest place I ran a game was in a phone booth ( In NZ we have closed pillbox style phone booths) .
A friend and I were hitch hiking to another town and it started pouring rain ( Being NZ )
so I ran a game off the top of my head flipping to random pages in the phonebook to generate rolls and using a pencil stub to write notes in the margins of the phone book with. It rained for almost four solid hours so we got a good game in.
An example of how innovative gamers are sometimes...that's pretty good!!
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This one was pretty unusual, but also very cool. I have a friend who owns almost four hundred acres of land. In the middle of this is a small, abandoned community. Six houses and a general store. All empty. When I was younger, we would get the entire group to hike up to the place and find a random house to play in. It was pretty cool. I would recommend it to anyone. The basement of the store was exceptionally creepy.
Since I don't have a car, I transformed my double garage into a full-fledged D&D room. I painted it like a real dungeon, to mimic large stone blocks, with swords and chains on the walls. There's my desk with an old PC on it, wich stands in front of an immense library/bookshelf with everything I ever bought for role-playing games (I have an extensive collection of old D&D stuff). My players sit in front of me at a large table with six chairs. We have a chalkboard, and two white magnetic marker boards (one having permanent 1-inch squares on it). The room/garage has many props like big candles in large silver candlestick holders, swords, daggers, shields, posters of dragons and wizards, etc... Although it always was my dream to have a place like this in my house, it isn't all that unusual.
I guess the most unusual place I've ever played D&D was on a picnic table in a neaby parc.
Ultradan
The group I play with, went to the Reaisance Festival, outside of the Twin Cities, and played there. Was fun seeing the various people that work it come on by and comment that they were wondering how long it would take for a group to play there. All we did, was set up at one of the outdoor pubs and played.
It's too bad they don't have like a "Gaming Hall" where that could be done there.. hehe
Back in '85 we got kicked out of my friend's house, so we drove around town looking for a place to play. We ended up playing on a tennis court until 2 a.m. when the lights turned off.
I play at my house, but once we played on the bus.
I once ran into a group of gamers late at night, playing FASA Star Trek the RPG in a storage building. Their parents wouldn't let them play at anyone's house, so they all pooled their money and rented a 10'x 10' storage room for the summer. They played late at night when it was cooler, using propane lanterns. They had an old couch and card table with folding chairs.
"You can't play role-playing games here, but we don't care where you are at four in the morning."
The group I play with, went to the Reaisance Festival, outside of the Twin Cities, and played there. Was fun seeing the various people that work it come on by and comment that they were wondering how long it would take for a group to play there. All we did, was set up at one of the outdoor pubs and played.
It's too bad they don't have like a "Gaming Hall" where that could be done there.. hehe
hehehe. Yeah, the renaisance festival is pretty fun. You should come on irish weekend sometime and see the St.Paul Irish Dancers. They rock.
the weirdest place i ever played was at the built-in coffee shop at Barnes and Nobles in St.Cloud. It was a hectic, haphazard scheduling because one of the group members was being severely punished and couldn;t hold it, so we had to find a new place, and it turned out to be the book store.
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A did a little theatre (acting/stage crew/lights) ten years ago and had the gaming group meet me after a show. Being both in the show (Frankenstein) and the stage manager, I was set up with the keys to the building. I was running Ravenloft at the time and thought that the stage would be a great place to play with the current set theme. So we pulled out a table from the green room and played with the red lights turned up and Jacob's ladder cracking. It didn't hurt that the theatre was well known to be haunted (being in Old Hangtown, California, aka Placerville). I had the game so creepy and gripping that my buddy's girlfriend vomited. It was kinda freaky as she was fine and participating one moment, then suddenly pale and running to a trash can the next moment. She related that it felt as if something had touched her as I described the scene. The rest of us decided to call it a night right then and there. That was the last time I played at the theatre. ::smirk::
I've played a lot of places over the years. Mostly games take place indoors, at a friends house. That's not always an option though, so there have been a few excursions.
Front porch of a locked apartment, by a flickering lightbulb and with no books or dice. Fun game, though.
Playground at apartment complex, when nobody could host the game in my younger days.
Krystals (Southeastern version of White Castle without the onions, cheap, crappy 24/7 burger joint) at like 3am.
In a row of cubicles in a call center, everyone with their headsets on for taking calls.
Camped out on the beach in South Carolina for a couple weeks.
Back in 2001, four friends and me toured through scotland for a week, in a rented car. Every time we were driving, we played. The middle arm rest between the front seats was the die-rolling area. It was quite fun, but we did´t get very far on the story.
Stefan
In 1994 i was returning from hiking in New Mexico and had only been playing D&D for a month or so.
While in the Denver train station i saw the PHB and some dice for sail in a news-stand. I snatched them up with the money I had left and started a story in my mind.
When i got on the train, I convinced a few others that traveled with me to role up characters. I also roled up a character and used him as an NPC. Gnome named Witchet.
We played for like 4 hours on an AmTrak Train back to Chicago. It was the beginning of my DM career and Witchet still sets on my shelf of painted minis. He was the first.... I guess you always remember the first. ;)
Well besides running an on/off game here in Iraq (like ASEO), I have played on the flight to Iraq. We stopped in several places for refueling: Maine, Iceland, and Romania. Other than that, the only other place I can think of is the hayloft of my grandfather's barn. I had just introduced my cousin's to D&D and I didn't want to disturb them.
I once played a game by candle and lamp light under a tarp in a rain forest in Puna on the Big Island in Hawaii. It was a creepy tropical savage campaign where ressurected bodies are pulled out of a pyle of dead corpses. The lighting of are gaming enviroment with shadows moving through the forest and the wind rain and other strange things in the night made the whole game creepy.
Wow, some really cool responses. Ravenloft in a haunted real-life theater? Rainforests? Really interesting.
I just remembered another weird place. My mom used to own a flower shop that was once a Dairy Queen. She had this huge table in the backroom that was waist high where she put together flower arrangements and such.
It was a great gaming table as we all could pull up bar chairs and we had a huge playing surface. No one had to yell "keep your notes off the battlemat!"
I "borrowed" some of my mom's floral foam to shape out dungeon walls. Floral Foam is easily cut and shaped and it was the premiere of the flower shop monster maze!
...then I found out how much floral foam was costing my mom and I ended up having to deliver flowers for her for free for a week to work off the damage.
I guess the two weirdest places I've gamed was in an abandoned bomb shelter near a local park. The thing was grown over with trees and weeds so high you thought it was a regular hill, until you went around the side and found a large metal door that was barred on all but two of its for sides. We were investigating it ( this being my freshman year of high school) and it was just up the street from my friends house. We played a game of Vampire: the Masquerade there in one of the few rooms that was still furnished. The whole place was pitch black once you got passed the entrance and they used the surrounding property to dump mulch from the county. We played there a couple of times, once we had to suspend the game until a bunch of leering homeless guys left, we later found remnants of their camp, including a usable zippo that one of my friends snatched up. The whole place had this creepy post-apocalyptic feel, and to this day the smell of mulch reminds me of vampires. Weird.
Also, I currently have a game running at the local Episcapal (sp?) church on wednesday nights. I don't know if that counts as weird, but the whole group finds it difficult to curse there.
As a student I can't always be at home for every special occation, or partake in family rituals. As Catholics, we have a pancake dinner every Shrove Tuesday. I've found that the local Denny's makes an adequete substitute. My first year doing this, I hadn't returned to D&D yet. So when I saw a group of people huddled around a table in the back of the resturant, it seemed lame. But now that I'm back, I can see the appeal; warm, dry, ample supply of food, and open all-night. I wonder if that group still plays there....?
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Definitely some cool responses. I particularly like Scoti Garbidis' train tale. That's pretty cool.
Playing in the car...yep, did that extensively on the road trip to Gen Con in '92. California to Wisconsin in three days. We learned quickly that die rolls in the cramped '89 Nissan Pulsar weren't possible; we created the Pick a Number method of rolling. DM picks a number, player picks a number. If total is less than die's faces, that's the roll. If in excess, subtract die faces. This prevented the d20's from flying out the windows at least...
Flickering light on a porch...just the memory of that induces the headache. Unfortunately that game was in a densely populated part of midtown Sacramento at 2AM in the summer. A neighbor finally pops his head out to say he'll have nightmares all night and to kindly STFU so he could sleep. Ooops...I guess we will just bother the roommates sleeping afterall...
The green foam base material for floral arrangements would make great dungeon walls. I remember that stuff having a weird odour though... So thanks for the flashbacks of my first job, Farewell2Kings: flower delivery boy driving a '69 Econoline Ford van that burned as much oil as it did gas...hell, even gamed once while delivering in that thing when my buddy helped me for VD...
Camping-wise, that game story involved half-rotten deer skulls and vengeful deer ghosts and being huddled in my sleeping bag with my rifle. But that's a story for another time...
I guess I'm just too [ITALIC]normal[/ITALIC], but my group alternates between our houses. In my house, we play in the basement. Actually, it's pretty nice, because we have carpeting in there. Not your traditional expectation of a basement.
WaterdhavianFlapjack
Yes, Rexx, VD has an entirely different meaning for florists. My mom used to hire off-duty firemen to help deliver that day.
Playing in the car...yep, did that extensively on the road trip to Gen Con in '92. California to Wisconsin in three days. We learned quickly that die rolls in the cramped '89 Nissan Pulsar weren't possible; we created the Pick a Number method of rolling. DM picks a number, player picks a number. If total is less than die's faces, that's the roll. If in excess, subtract die faces. This prevented the d20's from flying out the windows at least...
Flickering light on a porch...just the memory of that induces the headache. Unfortunately that game was in a densely populated part of midtown Sacramento at 2AM in the summer. A neighbor finally pops his head out to say he'll have nightmares all night and to kindly STFU so he could sleep. Ooops...I guess we will just bother the roommates sleeping afterall...
Camping-wise, that game story involved half-rotten deer skulls and vengeful deer ghosts and being huddled in my sleeping bag with my rifle. But that's a story for another time...
We also played a offshoot of an offshoot of a fantasy LARP loosely based off of NERO. One of my friends who ran the game mostly, used a pick a number system that worked fairly well when such things were needed. (Mainly for percentile charts, the rest didn't need dice in that game) He would pick a number, then have you pick one. He would add his number to yours... IE: you pick 50, he picks 90... Add them together and roll it over if it goes over the total... so that would add up to a 40, check the chart and see what the end result is.
Now, the flickering porch light game didn't really induce headaches. We were outside, the door was locked... the person who lived there was not home and our gaming stuff was inside. So it was a game off the top of the head, no books, no paper, no dice.... we just 'winged it' as they say.... quite fun, actually.
We used to game in the conference room of the office where I worked - on the 34th floor of a 36-floor building, overlooking center city, Philadelphia. We played on Friday nights, from around 9 PM to dawn. There were huge, cushioned chairs and a 20-foot boardroom table. We'd bring a case of beer and 4 or 5 pizzas, and the world outside the "War Room" ceased to exist for those hours, despite the fact that it surrounded us in its full glory.
I remember when I was around 14, fairly new to the game, playing in a tree. The DM sat on one branch, I sat on another, the module (Magic Mirror) sat in a crook, along with books we used for a flat surface. Thankfully the module sucked and we quit before any serious damage was done.