Two sessions ago, the party returned to the cleric's temple (to Irori). While out doing some chores, the high priest/monk was stabbed in the back with a poisoned dagger. While the characters were playing detective and arguing amongst themselves, a band of 20 goblins attacked. The goblins succeeded in burning the temple to the ground.
During the battle, the cleric searched every goblin (even as the building was ablaze and threatening to collapse) for a sign of anti-venom. The last goblin had a vial containing a liquid! One of the players pointed out the lack of an alchemy lab would make it difficult to positively identify the liquid. The temple leader was looking pretty bad. The cleric asked another monk from the temple for advice. The monk (Alagappan) responded, "Well, we don't have anything to lose." So the cleric helped her near-unconscious temple leader drink the anti-venom.
The next morning the temple leader was conscious and able to speak again. Hooray! The anti-venom worked! The party decided to have the captive goblin lead them back to the goblin camp, so they could repay the favor.
The party's rogue scouted the goblin camp, and ...
It seems the temple leader recovered all on his own, and the "anti-venom" wasn't really anti-venom after all...
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About twenty-five years ago, I met my best friend and the woman who later became his wife while gaming in college. We were playing Villains & Vigilantes and statting up ourselves, and he had assigned himself a 16 Agility. We bickered about whether he really qualified for that, and for years after, when he would drop something or fumble in some way, one of us would say 'thirteen' or 'twelve,' continuing this age old commentary.
Just last year, he spilled a drink and she said 'eleven' and the three of us burst out laughing.
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I used to game with a DM who always showed the holes in his vocabulary by reading blocks of flavor text. We used to derive great amusement at his expense. Some of my favorites:
A great pair of iron doors, flanked by burning brassieres... (braziers)
Oh, we had one of these DMs as well.
There were indeed flaming brassieres in one of the rooms, and in a later game, a different person was DMing and mentioned when he searched a body for 'gold pieces' that the only thing he had was a cod piece.
Not knowing what a cod piece was, he took it (perhaps thinking it was a type of coin) and we started advising him to bite it and see if it was real...
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I am "sad" to say I can't actually claim RPing doesn't lead people to the occult. Happened twice in a year-long Mage: The Ascension/Hunter: The Reckoning chronicle recently.
The Storyteller for that game, a hardcore character actor, studied several of the traditions so hard to make her NPCs believeable that she got interested in the real world parallel of one of the traditions and eventually converted after doing a bunch of RL research on them.
...and the tradition wasn't The Verbena/Wicca.
Then, later in the same game, ANOTHER player who was playing a Hunter who decided that not all Mages were bad got into his mage mentor's trad as a non-awakened acolyte...and the player converted soon after.
Also not Verbena/Wicca.
(Got nothin' against it, just pointing out the additional strangeness of neither of these examples being among the more common gamer religious conversions)
I and all of my friends also do the "describe RL things in game terms" speak all of the time. If someone who is usually good at something has a moment of uncharacteristic stupidity, clumsiness, or plain bad luck, someone will chime in "Don't worry, everyone rolls a one on occasion."
And one of the people in our group is extraordinarily lacking in common sense and willpower (specifically to resist pretty faces or buying shiny things he doesn't need) and so the rest of us prudent prudes refer to him as "having 8 wisdom" whenever we need to warn him that he's about to do something a bit dumb (or in some unfortunate cases, when he already has and we need to warn him about the impending fallout).
...and finally, we've got one buddy who has slight survivalist leanings, so when we have humored his apocalyptic scenarios, we have statted ourselves out and assigned party roles for when disaster strikes and we have to brave the elements.
Unfortunately, we've got two high Str/Con/Cha Fighter-type dudes with abysmal dex, and two high Dex/Int/Wis "casters" (read: Computer Science Major and Lit Major with a non-degreed Computer background), both of whom have awful cha and one of whom (me...) has what I consider to be a six strength.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I am "sad" to say I can't actually claim RPing doesn't lead people to the occult. Happened twice in a year-long Mage: The Ascension/Hunter: The Reckoning chronicle recently.
The Storyteller for that game, a hardcore character actor, studied several of the traditions so hard to make her NPCs believeable that she got interested in the real world parallel of one of the traditions and eventually converted after doing a bunch of RL research on them.
...and the tradition wasn't The Verbena/Wicca.
Then, later in the same game, ANOTHER player who was playing a Hunter who decided that not all Mages were bad got into his mage mentor's trad as a non-awakened acolyte...and the player converted soon after.
Also not Verbena/Wicca.
Curse those pesky Cult of Ecstacy characters!
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As I said, nothin' against Verbena/Wicca, I was just pointing out the middle America stereotype of gamers turning into "witches" or similar occultists and the additional strangeness factor of neither of my odd stories following that pattern. Too many of my friends are into shamanism and occultism for me to be very judgmental at this point. I'm more interested in ethics than the particulars of specific faiths.
I'll pony up to the forum with another strange gamer confession/story:
One of my only PC deaths in RPGs, to this day, is the assassin who was killed by a blowgun dart to the bicep.
A few friends and I got together a few years back for a one-shot game to take a break from a D&D 3.5 campaign in which in-character and out-of-character tensions had been running high and the DM (me) was experiencing significant DMing burnout, so I passed the screen over to one of the PCs and let him cook up a tongue-in-cheek game of Hackmaster for the evening. I sat down to the table with a can of energy drink and a first level elf battlemage, one of the other players decided to play the most belligerent Gnome fighter the world of fantasy had ever seen, and the final player bellied up to the battlemat with a boozed-up half-elf priest of the game world's air-elemental deity, who's only permitted weapon was a blowgun. Snickering the whole way, we decided to trek into the woods after the adventure hook, which, being a not-so-serious game of Hackmaster, involved wiping the floor with a fort full of orcs.
We managed to do pretty well for ourselves until we hit the room with a high-level, knife-throwing orc with some sort of character class, who shaved us down to minimal HPs and we decided a strategic retreat was in order. I had rolled poorly on init, and so at the end of the round the squishy wizard was at the back of the group and the orc shaved me down to my last couple of hps. The player of the drunk, chaotic-neutral cleric, feeling that my character was already far too gone and fearing he might suffer as the orcs' prisoner, just decided to put him out of his misery...and pulled the blowgun out to let me have it. He rolled a critical hit...and killed my mage with the blowgun. The party ran back to town to recruit my next PC.
This being a not-so-serious game, I decided to roll up a grudge-PC to get the cleric's player back, and so I made an Assassin, a character class that in Hackmaster actually gives you the lisence to lie to the other players about your class to prevent suspicion. So I just said I was a plain ole fighter, picked up a longsword and shield (justifying my leather armor by saying I rolled poorly on the starting money table) and we went back in after that Orc. We got him, and his dog, looted his room, and I blew a trap searcing roll and we all got a facefull of poison gas. The cleric, who stuck at the back of the party to use his blowgun, was the only one not on his last few hps after that, and while we were leaving to rest and recover, we found more orcs. We beat a hasty retreat yet again, and the cleric's player, deciding to try for a few more cheap laughs (especially since we were running out of game time for the night) tried to put my second PC to a restful "sleep"...and rolled his second critical hit of the night. We rolled on hackmaster's hit location tables...and I was sporting a blowgun wound in the upper arm. However, that dealt me enough damage to kill my assassin. I threw my d20 at the guy and five minutes later we were laughing about the whole thing over a few episodes of his favorite anime.
We still joke about it every time we see each other. I never got my d20 back...it rolled into the floorboards. : P
I never got my d20 back...it rolled into the floorboards. : P
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
About twenty-five years ago, I met my best friend and the woman who later became his wife while gaming in college. We were playing Villains & Vigilantes and statting up ourselves, and he had assigned himself a 16 Agility. We bickered about whether he really qualified for that, and for years after, when he would drop something or fumble in some way, one of us would say 'thirteen' or 'twelve,' continuing this age old commentary.
Just last year, he spilled a drink and she said 'eleven' and the three of us burst out laughing.
Ha. Used to do this all the time with my numero uno amigo.
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I never got my d20 back...it rolled into the floorboards. : PNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
That's nothing.
Once I was in a group, and a friend of mine was just learning the game. He didn't have dice, so I lent him an old set of mine. Well at one point, he's looking everywhere and can't find the d20. We couldn't figure out what happened it.
About 20 minutes later, he goes to the bathroom, and, no kidding, the dice rolls out of his sleeve and falls into the toilet.
I told him he could keep that dice set as a gift.
I remember working demolitions one summer. I was hitting a wall with a sledgehammer to make a door and a chunk of the roof fell off. I lept back out of the way and the roof smacked me in the shoulder. Everyone was like "Are you okay?" and I'm like "Reflex save for half damage!"
Oh, we had one of these DMs as well.There were indeed flaming brassieres in one of the rooms, and in a later game, a different person was DMing and mentioned when he searched a body for 'gold pieces' that the only thing he had was a cod piece.
Not knowing what a cod piece was, he took it (perhaps thinking it was a type of coin) and we started advising him to bite it and see if it was real...
Hahaha! Classic!
Most of the gamers I've met are very familiar with what codpieces are, and some of them are downright fascinated by them. I've seen a few characters whose descriptions of their cod pieces bordered on the obscene...
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I was in a story arc which started with a prophecy about the fall of civilation after the moon turns completely red. Throughout the story the GM kept telling us how red the moon was becoming. The party gets to end of the story and finds a tablet which allows the holder to get a wish from an elder god. The player that found the tablet said "make the moon as it was before." The god appeared and then the almost completely red moon exploded returning it to the dust it was before the start of all time.
The player then looks at the rest of the table and starts talking about the importance of not playing the blame game and accepting that these sorts of SNAFUs happen when dealing with elder gods.
From then on every screw up was measured against blowing up the moon.
Wow, now that's the sort of wish twisting that I love. If the prophecy had involved the moon blowing up, that would have been awesome!
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From then on every screw up was measured against blowing up the moon.
"Sir, you can't seriously be suggesting that we blow up the moon?"
"Would you miss it? Would you?"I never got my d20 back...it rolled into the floorboards. : PNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
One time while out shopping I had a d20 in my pocket. When we got out of the car and went into the store, I realized it wasn't there anymore. I looked around and couldn't find it. Now, I must admit to having a big problem with materialism sometimes; I get really attached to material things that I deem to have sentimental value, so I end up being a pack rat. And this was my first d20 ever. Sure, I had many more at home, but this was the one that I started gaming with over ten years ago. However, I made a conscious effort not to get upset, as I'd been trying to break myself of the hoarding habit anyhow.
So, we get done shopping, and we get in the car and start driving towards the exit of the parking lot. All of a sudden I say "Stop the car!"
I had spotted my d20 underneath a car two rows over. There was maybe half a dozen cars and at least 60 feet between it and me, and I was in a moving vehicle...there was no way I should've been able to spot it from so far away. I just figured it used its empathic link to reach out to me. The poor little guy didn't want to be left behind :D
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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Three pages of posts and no mention of Blackleaf? I'm shocked and saddened.
We once had a guy running a GURPS game set in modern times that featured our characters discovering the remains of Atlantis. So, time comes around when we're face to face with a merman and he begins the description with, "It's like nothing you've ever seen before." and stops. So after we stare at him for a moment, we say, "So, what does it look like?" "It's like nothing you've ever seen before."
After we explained to him that description requires you to actually describe the items in question, "It's Like Nothing I've Ever Seen Before!" became our new buzz phrase. That and "Evil, Wyrm-ridden Teddy Bears!"
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I had spotted my d20 underneath a car two rows over. There was maybe half a dozen cars and at least 60 feet between it and me, and I was in a moving vehicle...there was no way I should've been able to spot it from so far away. I just figured it used its empathic link to reach out to me. The poor little guy didn't want to be left behind :D
Someone natural-20'd their spot check, if you ask me!
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Xabulba, Mikhaila, thanks :)
Seriously though, I was pretty much done with gaming before I was locked up. Hate, hate, HATE White Wolf games and couldn't stand the direction 2e was going, and my 1e/Shadowrun group had scattered into the career winds. I hadn't had a game since '94 or so before I went down. Got there and saw someone with a 3.0 PHB, took a look and agreed to jump in. I was running the table within a month, and we played almost every day, at least three hours a day. Got in trouble once or twice for using the UNICOR computers to make character sheets and the copiers for making battlemats (we had scanners and CAD printers I could blow up Dungeon adventure maps on to make battlemats with).
And, if it weren't for going to prison, my mom would have never bought me a subscription to Dungeon and I wouldn't have known about Paizo. Which led me to the group I play with now.
So, really, had I not gone to prison for smuggling, I'd probably not be gaming and I would have never met some seriously cool people through this site :)
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Xabulba, Mikhaila, thanks :)
Seriously though, I was pretty much done with gaming before I was locked up. Hate, hate, HATE White Wolf games and couldn't stand the direction 2e was going, and my 1e/Shadowrun group had scattered into the career winds. I hadn't had a game since '94 or so before I went down. Got there and saw someone with a 3.0 PHB, took a look and agreed to jump in. I was running the table within a month, and we played almost every day, at least three hours a day. Got in trouble once or twice for using the UNICOR computers to make character sheets and the copiers for making battlemats (we had scanners and CAD printers I could blow up Dungeon adventure maps on to make battlemats with).
And, if it weren't for going to prison, my mom would have never bought me a subscription to Dungeon and I wouldn't have known about Paizo. Which led me to the group I play with now.
So, really, had I not gone to prison for smuggling, I'd probably not be gaming and I would have never met some seriously cool people through this site :)
And they say our prison system is broken :D
The Storyteller for that game, a hardcore character actor, studied several of the traditions so hard to make her NPCs believeable that she got interested in the real world parallel of one of the traditions and eventually converted after doing a bunch of RL research on them.
...and the tradition wasn't The Verbena/Wicca.
Then, later in the same game, ANOTHER player who was playing a Hunter who decided that not all Mages were bad got into his mage mentor's trad as a non-awakened acolyte...and the player converted soon after.
Also not Verbena/Wicca.
What traditions did they pursue IRL?
Dreamspeakers? Akashics?
A few years back, I had a friend who went back to school to 'improve his non-weapon proficiencies'. I had to laugh...
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The Storyteller for that game, a hardcore character actor, studied several of the traditions so hard to make her NPCs believeable that she got interested in the real world parallel of one of the traditions and eventually converted after doing a bunch of RL research on them.
...and the tradition wasn't The Verbena/Wicca.
Then, later in the same game, ANOTHER player who was playing a Hunter who decided that not all Mages were bad got into his mage mentor's trad as a non-awakened acolyte...and the player converted soon after.
Also not Verbena/Wicca.
What traditions did they pursue IRL?
Dreamspeakers? Akashics?
The Storyteller got into Hermetic Occultism before the game was even over.
The other player had a Dreamspeaker NPC mentor, and started following RL Shamanism shortly after his character became an acolyte of the Dreamspeaker NPC.
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A strange story then...
Background: Having played D&D from the age of 13, and being a Chicago native, I was well-informed/familiar about/with some of the "varied, unique" (or so we'll say) individuals you were likely to meet at your local gamestore/comic book shop, or even on the way there; it was no biggie, just a facet of everyday life, eventually, about the time I turned 17, my family moved to Central Illinois, effectively shattering my world, of course (I was 17, so sue me).
Anywho, once the move was done & I was relatively settled into the newer, bigger single-family home and my new school, one of my top priorities was to find a game store and make it my own home away from home. A bit of inquiry led to a game invite, and about one week later, I, along with a friend, showed up with a Cleric and Paladin dynamic duo and began a three-month adventure in weird. I thought I'd known some nutters in my (at that point, admittedly limited, not that its expanded too much six years since) time on this earth, but the GM, who while at the shop seemed a level enough guy, pulled a complete Dr J-to-Mr H in his own home.
The first red flag came up before gameplay even began, he decided that an appropriate conversation starter would be to describe his sexual conquests in no small amount of detail, and after we skirted the subject (its one thing to joke around with friends, but if I don't know you all that well, please, spare me) the game began.
Now, bear with me, this is about to get heavy. So, five sessions in, after the continuous misadventures of our characters by way of:
- An enormous meta-plot concerning a shadow-group plotting to assassinate the king of whatever, we knew all the details and were charged with stopping the scheme, not given any information beyond that, and then thrown into the world, nobody believed us, and our overall mission blew away with the wind by session number three, as if it never was.
- No less than three different buxom red-headed half-elf half-succubi with green eyes riding a nightmare. All of them were in fact different, "entirely unrelated" NPCs.
- The implied impregnation of one of said succubi by another PC.
- That PC disappears, replaced with new PC, same player, player seems unhappy, but won't say why.
- The implied date rape of my friend's PC by a dwarf barmaid (complete with banter after the fact).
- Two level gained each session, with no apparent reason as to why.
- 25k GP granted to each character after the rescue of a gem mine (more on the mine, below) and access to a mystical shop of magic and wondrous items, in a broom closet no less, that was the equivalent of Aroden's First Vault, and sold everything at a 15% discount.
- The realization that granting level 4 PCs access to an unrestricted item selection quickly turns your Ogre boss encounter into a one round endeavor wherein the Paladin quick-draws, charges, smites evil and crits with his +2 Flaming Keen Adamantine Greatsword. Whoops.
- "Stealing" the sword, not bothering to mention the sword is missing (despite the fact that the owner specifically had it's pommel attached to his gauntlet via a 5 foot chain) until after initiative is rolled for the impending fight with a black dragon, and afterwords claiming a Blackguard has it because he likes to steal Paladins weapons, and promising certain death if it is sought out.
- The initial encounter of, and continuous run-ins with a wagon full of exotic dancers who counted among their number a level 2 NPC Human commoner with a Belt of (I believe) Frost Giant Strength & a mystical pitchfork of "I Win" as well as a level 16 (minimum) Halfling Bard/Assassin/Shadowdancr who would always work against us for no discernible reason other than it was "fun." I am also fairly sure the Halfling was a sexual predator.
- The endless stream of typified, sex-crazed women (and men) apparently head-over heels for my Aasimar Cleric, because for some reason a 16 Charisma apparently equates to "EFFIN' GORGEOUS" in terms of the guy who very well may have written the Drow up as the nerd fantasy they've become (you know, universally powerful, domineering, impossible to touch smoking hotties clad in leather wielding whips).
- Did I mention Drow yet? It should be noted, once every 5 sessions we were often assailed by a Drow matron mother who was hoping to create a half-drow half-aasimar half-human half-cocked mixed breed of leaders for her new world order. We knew that because she told us so the first time we encountered her, burglarizing a gem mine and committing gnomicide (we're talking terrible acts against gnomes, I hate gnomes, and this was a bit much for me) for some reason or another. We could never put her down for good, she always had some ridiculous deus ex machina escape plan.
- The love-child of that one PC and that half-frwak nightmare riding hussie attacks us. For no reason. A LE devil just sort of comes raring out of a portal, paladin (with new, slightly less powerful sword) Achieves another critical smite evil. GM seems very upset and calls the game. We later find out the fight was supposed to take us to some level of hell where people who commit crimes of lust and greed go, of course it would also involve working for some incestuous nipple-ring devil/demon from the Book of Vile Darkness in order to escape. Whoops.
- The ultimate fall of both the paladin and cleric, by way of being intentionally misinformed on the nature of an assignment by a superior clergyman, leading to the destruction of a support beam maintaining the structural soundness of what amounted to the world's biggest orphanage, and a trip to the deserts of doom in order to reclaim our lost powers.
The game got progressively weirder from that point on, and got into things that went from "kind of odd" to completely out of line. I've not ever been one to shy away from mature subject matter, so long as its handled maturely, in retrospect, it felt like I was playing a game of F.A.T.A.L.
Eventually, maybe by 12th level or so (the sixth session), we had quit the game without bothering to tell anyone, and found another group of guys (who were more in line with our views) to play with. The GM was beyond wrong. To call him creepy would be a disservice to creepy people everywhere, he went beyond Rocky Horror Picture Show-weird in his depravity, and no matter how graphic what I described above may seem, it was much worse in person, and believe you me, to get me to think of something as over-the-top at age 17 you had to be pretty tactless.
I think the worst part about the whole experience was that it was so surreal, you almost walked out of the game trying to convince yourself you had fun, that it would be better next week, but it was just another messed up scenario crafted by a near-sociopath with a strange outlook on sexuality. In all honesty, I don't know why we didn't quit the game after day one. All in all, as a gamer, it was one of the weirdest months of my life.
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Two words that may assuage your wounds, Sheboygen.
Lamborghini. Elves.
Once my DM in secondary school got the book for 2e that allows you to build your own races, he made a race he actually called "Lamborghini Elves"
I am so not joking. They had ... everything.
Apart from that, I think I've played through most of your entire tale at one time or another. Were it not for the geography in your tale, I'd think you were playing with my DM.
My DM brought additional fun and games to the table.
*A fourth level party vs a Great Wyrm Green Dragon. (They won, btw... massive load of magical equipment)
*A first level magic user vs 20 goblins. (They took him captive, bound and gagged him and eventually used him for target practice... he never even got to cast Magic Missile
*My own crimes against gaming include a string of characters named either Tovar or Tovara Moondragon. I think I was up to Tovar Moondragon the 27th before I moved.
*With a different DM, we started characters at level 20 and ran a deathmatch game. His Orc Fighter vs my ... Drow Assassin. With two magical swords. *hangs head in shame*
In my current campaign,I've got/had some players name their PCs: Mydol, Pam Prin, Yazz-a and Reilly. Mydol the barbarian. Pam Prin the fighter. Yazz-a the cleric. Reilly the healer cohort.
So 3 drugs for PMS/PMDD symptoms and 1 that when pronounced just always comes out as 'oh reeeaalllly...'.
When I played a bow monkey fighter with a tricked out bow, I was told I was just firing a howitzer, I said it was more like a 50 cal. Then I started to think about increasing the size to large and then maybe I'd be firing a howitzer...
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A strange story then...
Back when I first started playing (around eight or nine years ago), our main DM was the stepfather of my best friend and his sister. As the games progressed, they became weirder and weirder, eventually reaching the point where we could no longer game with him. Years later, we found out that he was a dangerous psychopath that beat his wife's kids and had numerous sexual perversions. I haven't seen him in over a year, and I hope it stays that way.
Definitely feel for you, man.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Thus and so, I punch up youtube and find Dennis Leary's "A**hole song"...And I STILL have that song stuck in my head.
And now, so do I.
At least it replaced that &*@$ Lady Gaga tune. I just hope I don't get caught singing it at work.
Well I don't think either would help at work.
Of course I came in once after listening to the Terminator soundtrack on the satalite Radio and went on a tear, finding errors everywhere.
Right now listening to Torchwood. nice soothing music to audit to.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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In my current campaign,I've got/had some players name their PCs: Mydol, Pam Prin, Yazz-a and Reilly. Mydol the barbarian. Pam Prin the fighter. Yazz-a the cleric. Reilly the healer cohort.
So 3 drugs for PMS/PMDD symptoms and 1 that when pronounced just always comes out as 'oh reeeaalllly...'.
When I played a bow monkey fighter with a tricked out bow, I was told I was just firing a howitzer, I said it was more like a 50 cal. Then I started to think about increasing the size to large and then maybe I'd be firing a howitzer...
Back when Dinosaurs roamed the earth and we coloured in our dice with crayons, my sister went on an alcohol named theme. Her Elven Ranger named Bacardi, the Elven cleric Zinfaedel, the human fighter named Bartles...
My (now ex-)wife had a half orc barbarian named Ergo.
Recently, I've had a morph rogue in my head named Tis'neva, it's an anagram of a generic drug company.
Oh, and lets not forget Marcus Aurelious Borden and his hatchetman Lizzy, or David Waters and his club weilding Archer varient, the Ummaguma
Some names are clever, some not so much.
Back when Dinosaurs roamed the earth and we coloured in our dice with crayons, my sister went on an alcohol named theme. Her Elven Ranger named Bacardi, the Elven cleric Zinfaedel, the human fighter named Bartles...
We had a Star Wars character called Goltin, named after a bag of Eagle Thin pretzels... A failed Jedi, no wonder.
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This conversation happened moments ago...
Upon my wife's encounter with My Side Of The Bed, and her subsequent sighing and muttering over the mess there..
Me: "Um, sweetie, you're in my cosm now."
Her: "Your axioms are going to change. Fear my High Lordness."
Me: "Aw crap, she's got a Darkness Device..."
I love my wife.
This started back in 1983 and happened ever since....
>> Whenever the name of a major devil such as Asmodeus is spoken I ask the PC to drop whatever she is doing and roll the percentile dice. 01% means Asmodeus actually hears his name spoken and arrives to slay the PC. It does not matter whether it is spoken above board, or in-game...the roll is still made and I cannot help myself.
This started back when true names mattered and were ineffable or dangerous to say aloud. It is serious business to speak their names.
Awwesome. I'd laugh if someone was playing around and mentioned the Star of Astaroth from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and the Astaroth showed up (depending on if he was included in your list, in a disney movie, but the name of a reputed powerful devil/demon no less). I think it's be great if someone released a list of these powerful entities and made it known to the players for roleplaying sake (tie Knowledge checks to who and what would happen). Just an idea, but I too will use this as a great house rule... thanks!
I think it f'ing cool people in prison play D&D too. From all the reality TV and film about prison life you wouldn't think that people would open up and play an RPG.
It depends on the state, and the prison. In Wisconsin, you can't send anyone anything that has a map, involves dice, or has pictures of demons, devils, or guns in it.
One gamer confession among many...
We played with some optional rules back in AD&D 1e. One of them was the effects of, well, eating trail rations all the time, based on experiences that a few of our military players had had being in the field.
Long story made short:
Against the Giants module series. Halfling Rogue. Giants are civilized; they have indoor plumbing (mountain stream fills catch basins and runs through the place; the security issue isn't an issue, because, well, they're averaging like 7 Hit Dice.)
So. Halfling Rogue is sitting on a privy hole over a mountain stream...and discovers the key to the Giant's sanitation issue.
Water wierds. Our randomizer was whether or not someone flushed the toilet in the upstairs bathroom in the house we were in.
One slithery tendril of icy cold mountain stream water (and one grapple check against a Halfling that A) didn't have his armor bonus and B) didn't have his Dex bonus), and, well, hilarity ensued.
Ever afterwards, that particular player would warn people, "Don't flush until AFTER the game is over..." for as long as we played D&D at that house.
And many of us used "don't flush!" as shorthand for "Do not anger the gods!" through college...
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My friends and I make the saving throw/skill check quips all the time. I'm pretty sure it's fairly common among those of our ilk.
My own strange-but-true experience - the strangest - comes from when a group I was with all independently showed up at the table with crossgender characters. As two of them didn't have cellphones and none of us knew the contact data for a third, there's no way they conspired to do this. They just all showed up, thinking they were going to do something different for a change. It was the most confusing game I've ever run.
I also once had a player who insisted on rolling Con/Wis/Int/Cha checks to determine her character's reactions to everything. Including, as a cleric of the deity of pain and suffering, whether or not she got nauseated and threw up at the sight of blood and death. It was in the same game as her boyfriend, who was playing a fellow whose idea of 'subtle' was 'blow on a signal whistle until the enemy shows up' - only he kept piping away on it during the entire fight. I am fairly sure the rogue was plotting to sneak attack him.
And then there was character generation one time when we were playing Heroes Unlimited... My good friend Foxfire rolled up a mutant after deciding that his character would be named Kaiser no matter what. He rolled up flight, fire blasts, and abnormal growth of his body hair as the mutation side effect. I'm not sure why, but we all broke down howling with laughter when the GM declared that Kaiser was, apparently, a Flying Flaming German Wolfman.
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Ever afterwards, that particular player would warn people, "Don't flush until AFTER the game is over..." for as long as we played D&D at that house.
And many of us used "don't flush!" as shorthand for "Do not anger the gods!" through college...
Wow. This thread has so much awesome in it. Reminds me of a time when I was at a girlfriend's house after damaging their water-system by backing into the outside piping (which was above ground for some reason). We had to adhere to a mantra until the plumber arrived.
"If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down."
Probably the most uncomfortably...awkward...moment I've experienced at a game table involved the GM's girlfriend when she was the only girl at the gaming table. We were playing in a game store where there was a back room with a door that shut, and one of the players could lock up the store at 7.
I'm going to say things that are, well, derogatory and potentially sexist.
She was there (sort of) to play the game. As in, if you told her what dice to roll, she'd roll them and call out numbers. She wouldn't remember which creature she was attacking, or what mini was hers. The GM made her character, and when we looked over the sheet, she was about twice as effective as any of the rest of us. On the other hand, the character was played horribly, so, eh.
Mostly she was there because she was...excessively needy. She needed to be with the GM at all times. And she needed to be the center of HIS attention at all times.
Which meant that when her character wasn't Doing Something (which, well, most of the rest of us avoided), she'd get petulant. And petty. And she'd try to demonstrate that SHE could get the GM to do whatever she wanted if she were distracting enough.
By the third session, 'distracting enough' meant wearing a too-small tank top and no bra, and flashing her breasts at everyone whenever she felt she wasn't getting enough attention.
On the next session, she just took it off, walked over to the GM, and put his hands on her boobs. And more or less offered the same 'privileges' to everyone at the table.
The GM was in college, she was, I think, seventeen or eighteen, and an emancipated minor. One of our players was in junior high and just getting into gaming (and at the age where being in the same room with theoretically accessible bare breasts triggered hormonal brain lock).
The other four of us ranged from 34 to 52.
Even in my 20s, a nice rack was less appealing when it was attached to behaviors that said "DANGER! DANGER! FSCKING HEAD CASE! DANGER!". When I'm old enough to go "You know, my friends have daughters her age...", seeing jiggling pulchritude with offers of "No, they're real. Feel, <GM's name> won't mind." it was tres awkward.
By the 5th session, she started missing one game a month, ostensibly because she was working. Her behavior got worse on the other game nights. Apparently, it was a challenge to her femininity that all of us who were over the age of 14 would look her in the eye and just talk to her. Or we were all secretly gay, because we weren't trying to play grab-the-teat whenever she walked around the table.
By the end of the semester, when finals started showing up for the GM, we all casually forgot to fill in the calendar for when we could show up for the next game, and started gaming at the book store rather than the game store where she'd been pulling these shenanigans.
Back when Dinosaurs roamed the earth and we coloured in our dice with crayons, my sister went on an alcohol named theme. Her Elven Ranger named Bacardi, the Elven cleric Zinfaedel, the human fighter named Bartles...
I'm forced to admit that, during the same era, I played Merlot the Magician, Lagavulin the druid, Talisker the bard... and later a fighter named Brut de Korbel.
Back in the early '90's, I had a g/f that would actually participate in RPGs. She came from a fantasy background that was heavily invested in Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern. Eventually she was given a psuedodragon sidekick (I can't remember for the life of me whether she was a wizard or a ranger). Based on one of her in-game character actions, the psuedodragon (which was played by the GM) decided to be distant to her character for awhile.
And she pouted. Slumped in her chair. Pulled her hair around her face. I felt embarassed. By the end of the session, the DM decided to have her sidekick and her PC work things out and she was back to normal. I wasn't sure whether it was a lack of maturity or petulance on her part at the time. But from that era forward, it has given me a disdain for any dragons whose names end in -th.
Just saw this one and thought...
One of my players once came across what I told him was a refuse bin in the caverns below a mansion. When he asked what its contents looked like, I told him "fecal matter". He then asked what did it smell like. The answer was the same, then he had his Ftr touch it, "What does it feel like?". After getting the same response..... he then asked "What does it taste like?". None of us knew how to respond, so I said once again "Fecal Matter!". After a moment of thought he looked at me and said ...
Good thing we didn't step in it!
Okay... but what's the strange part?
When I see fictional monsters/creatures on television, I wonder what their CR is....I routinely mentally assign stats and classes to people I know.
...... Guilty.
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...... Guilty.When I see fictional monsters/creatures on television, I wonder what their CR is....I routinely mentally assign stats and classes to people I know.
Yeah. I strongly suspect my ladyfriend of being a bard - and I know my two best friends are a rogue with a couple levels of ranger and a sorcerer with a level of rogue.