So weirdness abounds... to cut to the story my gaming group has seen hard times. Not the type of hard times you'd expect of a gaming group with people moving away but, just life really. 10 monthes ago one one of our group had his wife brutally stabbed to death and of course we took a hiatus. It was after this that I accepted the mantel of GM and started running RotRL. Well my party was just finishing up chapter 2. However one player playing a rogue tried to sneek into the tower and was grappled by the Scarecrow. Well X being X turned her mentally inside out and learned everything there was to learn from her about the party. Which resulted in one PC death and the rogue for the most part going unstable and becoming a NPC. So the stage is set for the next game .which is this coming Friday. My friend Yarry gets to play his new character and we are playing at his house. Turns out today I was stuck in meetings all day. Until I noticed an email from Yarry. To make things clear Yarry is married to his wife Cricket and one of their daughters is Ember. Anywas this is what Yarry's email said (sorry for any swear words)..
First of all, this is a true story. It happened to me, last night, in my own home.
No s~*%.
My very own RL random encounter. Brief details are as such:
Woken up at 4:40 AM to a pair of armed men wearing masks standing in my bedroom doorway. One is wielding my decorative skull sword that was hanging on my wall.
They look confused at first, then the smaller one, whom I have dubbed "Weasel" started demanding money from us.
They were horrible at their job, giving us conflicting instructions, and generally bungling things.
The bigger one, who reeked of alcohol, came over to the bedside. I have dubbed him "Thug".
I mentioned we had kids in the house, and they tried to keep us quiet.
Weasel had me get out of bed, get on my knees, and face the bed with my hands behind my back.
He (Weasel) brandished the decorative sword and had Thug come over behind me to tie me up with duck tape.
Thug was wearing disposable food-prep gloves and was extremely inebriated, and could not manage to use the duck tape. They had brought it themselves, and it was extremely old and was sticking to itself too much.
Thug cursed in slurred Spanish and ripped the iPad and cable off the bedside table, using the cable to "tie" me up. He bungled the job, and by the time he was done, my left hand was already free without me trying (DC 2 Escape Artist Check).
At this point Weasel was pointing the Big-Guns Sword (which I won the right to have for a year by winning the last yearly Magic the Gathering Tournament) into my neck while Thug generally bungled things.
This is when Cricket got mad. She had been standing on the bed, and threw a heating bag at the back of Weasel's head. It hit and succeeded in distracting him.
With their attention diverted towards Cricket, I realized it was "Go Time".
I sprang up and engaged Thug and Weasel. Both turned their attention towards me, despite Cricket repeatedly hitting Weasel in the back of the head with the palm of her hand.
Weasel lunged at me with the sword, which I sidestepped. I then grabbed the blade with my hands (its a dull ornamental piece after all) and ripped it from his grasp.
Realizing it was a s$!@ty weapon, I threw it away to get it out of play.
Weasel was fully engaged with Cricket at this point, and I had joined the melee with Thug.
I grabbed a hold of Thug and began grappling him. (I made sure to follow the flow chart). We fought back and forth for a while.
I looked over and saw that Weasel had an arm around Cricket's throat and was wielding a screw driver. He raked it across her throat, raising an angry welt. This made her mad. You don't want to see her when she's mad. She redoubled her attacks.
Meanwhile, at this point I had started yelling at the top of my lungs, trying to wake my children and alert the neighbors. I think my grand soliloquy was "HELP! HELP!".
The yelling panicked Weasel, and he pushed Cricket away and dodged through Thug and I's melee and out the hallway, knocking into Ember in his haste to leave.
Thug was a little slower on the uptake, and we fought for a while longer. He threw a pair of punches, that I cleverly blocked with the sides of my head.
Still grappling, he pushed past me into the hallway, and then out into the living room. There we fought among the boxes upon boxes of girl scout cookies littering the room ready for distribution.
The fight spilled out onto the front lawn, all icy and covered in frost. Still grappling, I grabbed ahold of the front of his jacket, stuck out my leg, and performed the most basic of martial arts throws, Basic Trip Number One.
Thug fell over onto his face, and I jumped on him, getting him in a head lock, still yelling all of the while.
Ember ran to the neighbors and pounded on their doors, waking them. She then ran and dialed 911.
Cricket came and sat on Thug's legs to immobilize him. He resisted at first (and tried to pinch me to get me off of him) but the fight soon left him.
The neighbors soon showed up, one wielding a baseball bat, which was superfluous at this point, but it made me feel reassured just the same.
The cops seemed to be taking forever to arrive, but in all honesty it was probably only ten minutes or so. My toes and feet were freezing, as I was pinning the guy to the frost covered lawn in my pajamas. My Battle Pajamas, as they will now be known.
The cops showed up in a torrent of lights and sound, converging from three different directions at once.
They got out of the car quickly and took over apprehension of Thug.
Then all of the paper work started...
Will regail you with more details over beer soon. Be safe.
~~yarry "Battle Pajamas" gonzalez
I am so glad that my friend and his family are all safe and sound. things could have gone for the worst and I am so glad they didn't. From my friends email first off I as GM have awarded him and extra hero point, secondly we decided as a gaming group that he has improved trip and does not have combat reflexes. Yes we were being silly. I'm just glad my friend and his family is ok...
Way to go for your friend and his family!
The silliness goes along way.
Stay Frosty. :)
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/02/20/home-invasion-robbery-latest-in -santa-cruz-crime-spike/
Yikes!
I'm glad everyone's OK, and that Thug and Weasel were so incompetent (and drunk). This could have turned out much worse.
The only time I ever had a random encounter with an intruder in my own home was a few years ago, and the only resemblance was the intruder's state of inebriation.
I live in a college town, and over the past decade or so, more and more of the homes in my neighborhood have been converted from single-family homes to multi-unit apartments, which are mostly rented to college students.
One time a few years ago, I must have forgotten to lock my back door. At about 3:00 AM, I heard the sound of someone puking downstairs, and I assumed that it was my then-ten-year-old daughter. I went downstaris to check on her, and found that it was a young woman I'd never seen before in my bathroom, puking her guts out, and reeking strongly of alcohol. I picked up the phone and called the police, which she totally didn't notice, despite the fact that the bathroom door was open, and I was watching her as I spoke with the dispatcher. After I hung up, I asked her if she was OK.
Well, that's when she seemed to have noticed me. She screamed in surprise and then ordered me to get the hell out of her apartment or she'd call the police! I calmly told her that SHE was in MY house, and that the police were actually on their way. She then proceeded to try to drunkenly argue with me that we were actually in her apartment, until I turned on the lights. That's when she seemed to realize that I was actually correct. About 90 seconds later, four police cars pulled up, with lights and sirens, and I opened the door for them before they had to knock. I let them escort her away, and then gave a statement.
To the woman's credit, I did actually get a note of apology from her in my mailbox a few weeks later. (I think the judge and/or her parents may have ordered her to do that, but I like to think it was on her own initiaitive.)
I knew one of the responding cops personally (we attend the same church). He later told me that the dispatcher had coded the call as "home invasion", which elicits a very different response than "drunk kid in the wrong house," which they actually do have a code for in this town.