Dumbest Moment Ever in your games

[Mayday]

I didn't do this, but a there was a brick I was supposed to hook up with. When he 'drank' electricity through Absorption he got strength and his skin hardened to near invulnerable levels so he grabs a power line and puts it in his mouth first thing, having only bought 1 d6 of Absorption....

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZAP Sizzle

Also someone's flying brick tried to do a move by on Godzilla. With no chance of succeeding.

[ChickenTomato]

I had someone playing a Leprechaun (teleporter with minor magic...don't ask) decide to pee on the exposed mechanism of a space station air lock door to short-circuit it. He convinced me that since he was Irish, he could pee on command.

I decided that the resulting Energy RKA automatically targeted a cerain <ehem> hit location.

[Jhamin]

There was the point when the heroes had infiltrated a boys summer camp they believed was a front for a master villian. When they got caught by the 19 year old counselor, the tem Gadgeteer and Brick pantsed him and ran away.

[Derek Hiemforth]

There was a character in the campaign named "Inviant," which stood for Invisible Giant. That's what his powers were... Growth and Invisibility, linked. Sounds interesting in theory, but was odd in execution. No one ever saw him when he was being a superhero, but his unconscious form would sometimes be found on the scene of superhero battles. The press even gave a name to this strange sleeping man in a costume who would often appear in the aftermath of SHIFT adventures: Narcoleptic Lad.

Anyway, one time a battle took place near the top of some skyscrapers in San Francisco. A news helicopter wandered too close to the fray, and was knocked into the side of one of the buildings. Its blade wedged into the building, but was still running. The copter shook as it hung by the blade, which was still trying to free itself from the building. The normals inside dangled dangerously above the cityscape.

Inviant went over to help. The first thing he did is yell out, "I'm coming to get you!" Now, this is back in the days when Growth gave you extra Presence, so his statement is very commanding and believable. However, they can't see him. So from the standpoint of the people in the copter, a disembodied voice is screaming that "it's coming to get them." Obviously, this inspires panic rather than reassurance.

Next, although the copter is reachable from the roof, Inviant climbs over the side and hangs from the building, King Kong style, while he tries to reach the copter. With one hand, he hangs on by a hole in the wall (created by the copter blade's impact), and with the other, he uses his great strength to pull the copter free. To this day, I'm not sure why he didn't just try to get the people out of the copter.

...or at least try to shut it down first!

Well, pulling it free while it's still running, the blade proceeds to smack Inviant in the face repeatedly. Since he had already taken damage previously in the super-battle, this is enough to knock Inviant out.

At the same time, it occurs to us that Inviant -- who weighs a great deal due to his huge size -- had been supporting his weight by hanging from an already broken section of wall. A large section of it breaks free in Inviant's hand.

So now Inviant is falling, unconscious, with a big chunk of wall in one hand, and a running helicopter with terrified normals in it in the other. Due to unconsciousness, he lets go of the copter and the wall. Some amazing piloting by the chopper pilot (and a stabilizing assist from one of the other heroes) enables the helicopter to right itself and land without further mishap.

Inviant, meanwhile, reverts to his normal, visible form, and begins plummeting toward his death. One of the other heroes -- the only one fast enough to catch the fleeing villain -- is also the only one fast enough to save the falling Inviant. So he saves Inviant, and the villain escapes.

The section of wall, meanwhile, hits the ground and crushes a vehicle on the street...

The team battlevan.

*sigh* Not SHIFT's finest hour. :D

[Super Squirrel]

Originally posted by ChickenTomato
He convinced me that since he was Irish, he could pee on command. Aye, that we can do. But I wouldn't use the Irish talent like that, not at least without having enough to drink to numb the pain.

I had a player who was challanged to a hand-to-hand fight by a member of a gang. He immediately went for a killing strike on the gang member and ripped out the juggular. Needless to say, the hunted he had gained spent no time tracking him down and killing him. (It took 8 Turns)

[Mayday]

There was a brick I'd forgotten about. He was helping the government with an anti-drug operation. He was told a meeting was going down in a certain place and that one of their own people undercover was there so he waits on a rooftop watching this go down.

He asks "Who looks different?" thinking that one might have superpowers I guess. He is told that one of the two making the transaction looks different than the rest, so he leaps off the building and does a Move Through on dude's head pushing his already very high strength.... on a complete and total normal, who happened to be the government undercover agent.

He's in prison for manslaughter.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Hero" who basically is a collection of guns and swords. We manage to capture Pantera and two other of Eurostar including Durok the big invulnerable guy. We dosed them with unconsciousness inducing drugs, locked her in a locker and the other two in chains in the hold of the borrowed nuclear powered bomber that the government had loaned us to get to this remote area.

Gun dude sneaks off from the team and opens fire with a full clip of bullets from an AK-47 at Durok. The bullets bounce off of course, and ricochet through the hold of the plane where of course, the nuclear reactor is.....

[Agent Escafarc]

Twenty+ years ago, one of my friends and I were adventuring in Module B1(Keep on Borderlands?) and attacked the "alcoves". Later when I heard the infamous "Gazebo" story I always wondered what the big deal was:D

[Willpower]

Mine has still got to be when my character Flavius, in order to stop the Eurostar from getting away, (Eurostar was trying to destroy the U.S.S. Constitution, the ship not the paper, and we were trying to stop them) picked up the U.S.S. Constitution and smashed them with it. :) Nothing like a self-defeating adventure.

[TheImperialKhan]

Back during the early days of it's existance Strike Force: Boston was called in to investigate a building that was packed with some kind of black goo that smelled like oil. The team detective, the martial artist White Dragon, approached the building to examine the substance.

Our brick Rock, an appropriate name for a brick don't you think, who was an alien silicon-based life-form, decided to see if it was flammable. Before anyone could stop him, he picked up a road flare, lit it, and threw it at the building which White Dragon, with no resistant defenses, was standing next to.

My character, the team techno-geek and powered armor wearer Centurion, grabbed White Dragon and threw him under cover. The cover was Centurion. Of course the building was leveled in a blast that nearly KOed Centurion despite his armor and would have turned White Dragon into a crispy critter.

Needless to say this incident did not do much for the team's reputation. :D

[Zaratustra]

The single dumbest scene I've ever seen has got to be when a band of brave young heroes called UNTIL and tried to take another hero to Stronghold for... punching a stop sign on the street.

... Can't believe you forgot that one, Mayday.

[TechnoViking]

In a campaign once, Deathstroke was trying make extra money illegal weapons and explosives on the black market.

The group tracking location of the weapons and explosive drop. At the drop there were all the members of Deathstroke, 10 normal thugs unloading the weapons, and two semis filled with weapons and explosives.

One of the team member teleported inside the one of the trucks. the next second, the group energy blasters fire at the second truck.

I asked "ARE YOU SURE?", the group answer yes.

I ruled it as a 10d6 RKA explosion, which set off the second truck for another 10d6 explosion.

It killed all 10 thugs, two members of Deathstroke and the teams teleporter.

Most people of the team had "Code vs Killing".

I gave the group -3 experience pts, tryied to forget this adventure ever happened and went out and got beer and pizza:).

Mike

[Gary]

I had a player who did a lot of detective work in tracking down a desolid thief who was stealing valuable items. He did a great job in tracking down the thief and managed to predict when the thief would strike next.

At the appointed time, he saw the thief desol into the museum. He desol'd in after the thief.

To make a long story short, the thief won the fight and managed to frame the PC for all the desolid crimes! :D

[rbezold]

I had some fairly young players once who seemed to have this strange obsession with trying to find disadvantages that couldn't be used against them. One of their favorites was Berserk/Enraged, as they reasoned that anyone who would set it off probably deserved what he got. To make a long story short the brick picked "enraged when farted on" 14-8. There was a bank robbery. The heroes burst in to save the day. The bank president (who was hiding in the lavoratory) comes out to thank the heroes and cuts one loose. In the ensuing chaos, the bank robbers walk away laughing.

[DrSavant]

I was GMing a tabletop game of Champions a few years back and this happened;
There was a villian known as "SLICK" who could run at incredible speeds by creating oil to slide on (he was made of oil) . Well our heroes saw him rob a gas station after which he slid away. They followed his oil trail and caught up with him.
One of the players thought it would be a good idea to attack SLICK with a fire based attack.
Needless to say SLICK caught on fire and so did his trail, the one leading from the GAS STATION.
BOOOMM!!!!! No more station, no more attendent.

[lemming]

A slight explanation to my type of gaming style at one point in my life: Explosions happened all the time and if you picked up something that might be explosive, it probably was.

So anyway, we now go to a particular battle where the villians and heroes are fighting around a missle. One of the heroic bricks, Tamarlane, is an ex-robot. (Turned into a real boy by magic, but with all the old powers). He still relys on direction most of the time. The player has gotten frustrated that Tamarlane can't hit one of the villian Martial Artists and picks up the nearest large objects. Happens to be the missiles at which point, the other heroes all shout "NOOOOO!!!!", and Tamarlane goes "For once I'm following my own orders!"
*BOOM*
I think one of the heroes was still conscious and Allen the Unkillable man had been one body from death. (Ah, he was fine in a few seconds...)

I'm pretty sure a couple villians died in the blast as well. All in all, it was a fun game. :D

[Karma]

For those who don't know the 'Gazebo Effect' it is the habit of roleplayers when their characters are confronted with something with a weird name to automatically assume its a monster.

This was not a Champions game but a guy I knew had a character who was in his 'happy place' after being surrounded by metal bars (had a total phobia of metal as a curse placed on him by another PC after he was overheard joking about being the serial killer who had killed her friends (yes he was one of those people (both player and character) and was dreaming he was on a boat made totally of wood.
So he gets to this island (in his dream) and the GM says
"You reach the island and see it's covered with mangroves"
At which point the character started fire-balling them before they could attack him.
He was sent back to his 'happy boat' for a while.

Note: There were no monsters in the system (as far as anyone, including the GM knew) which had a name even vaguely like mangrove.

Boy I love the fact that I've seen the GE in action.

[winterhawk]

The sad thing is these were both by the same player...

...playing a sonic EB that requires ambient sound for powers. Goes to an NPCs house believed to be threatened by the nasty Ex-Commando with every contingency covered. The exchange went something like this:

Player: I ring the doorbell.

Me: There is no sound.

Player: I knock on the door.

Me: Your rapping on the door makes no sound.

Player: I send in a Sonar Ping.

Me: Your Sonar Ping DOES NOT RETURN.

Player: I kick in the door.

On the other side of the door is the nasty Commando guy with a white noise generator. No ambient sound. Force Field goes down and the mighty hero is one punched by essentially a highly trained normal.
***
...as the heroes on on the trail of a mystical threat which seems to be collecting random artifacts for some nefarious purpose. They invade his inner sanctum:

Me: Your in a library with many shelves of dusty old books. In the center of the room, on a bookstand, lit by an overhead light, is one particular tome that seems to have been read recently...the attached bookmark seems to be marking a particular page...(at this point I'm practically putting the Chuck Jones "THIS IS IT" neon arrows all around it)

Player: I incinerate it!

[Thirdbase]

The team was investigating a series of Dark Magic sacrifices and killings. After tracking down the home of a deceased member of the cult, the cult had summoned in something they weren't ready for, we found a small statue of a demon. I along with the teams mentalist, we had the best set weird senses, were upstairs and another character was downstairs, the other half of the team was outside.
Upon spotting the statue I being a great Mage, tell the mentalist "Do no touch that." After examining the rest of the room the mentalist decides that the only way to get more info is to do an object read on the statue. I repeat "Do not touch that." His reply to me is "Are you ready?" and to the GM "I grab the statue." Much to his amazement a Demon appears and battle commences, fortunately we were able to defeat the demon, but could get no more info from the statue since the magic was now gone.

"Never touch the EVIL artifact."

[Prometheus]

While running Day of the Destroyer for my group, one of the characters, Sentinel, made a few... questionable decisions.

1) Sentinel is first on scene at the hostage situation involving Villians International. He speaks briefly with the police officer in charge and assures him, "I'll take it from here." He decides not to wait for his team mates- minutes from the scene- and literally charges in, using his powered armor to blast through a wall. And runs into a waiting Golden Marauder. Powered Armor + Magnetic Powers = GM's option.

2) The team sneaks onto Dr. Destroyer's island via the main power plant, and surprises the ten technicians on staff. One of the techies has the presense of mind to bolt for the alarm- at SPD 2. One of the team members yells "Stop him!", knowing that if the techie hits the alarm, Destroyer's army will be on them like white on rice. Sentinel charges forward with a Move Through. On a normal. He reduces the techie to a mangled and broken mess, but then doesn't have enough room to slow down. Sentinel's glowing, rocketing form blows through the outer wall, and out toward the nearby agent quarters...

3) The heroes have fought their way into Destroyer's inner sanctum and come face to face with Dr. Destroyer himself. He rises from his throne and begins a soliloquy, "Greetings, ladies...". At which point Sentinel (again) lauches himself toward the enemy. He reasons that Destroyer can probably take a hit from him, so he figures he'd better go noncombat. He has to travel along a tight curve to accelerate to full speed, blows some levels to make the turn, lines up with Dr. D and unsurprisingly his zero OCV attack misses. Once again he doesn't have the room to stop and slams into the wall- only this time it's DEF 23. At his speed he knocks himself instantly into GM's option, and close to death. "...And gentlemen," continues Destroyer.

Sigh. Sentinel's player moved to Seattle, and we all miss him.

[death tribble]

We were travelling towards the villain's base and ran into the iceberg because we were talking. And I was never allowed to forget this incident.

Player doing Wolverine kills a villain in a shopping centre filled with people. Basically the player overdid the Killing attack. Then turns to the horrified crowd and say 'Yes I am a Mutie'

[Herolover]

Ahh, the fun of it all.
I was the GM and I had a player that was secretly being watched by DEMON. Well, he was attacked by DEMON agents getting out of a van and luckily for him his teamates were able help subdue the agents and capture the van.

The group investigated the van and used it and agents to discover that the local DEMON bases' entrace was located at a local parking garage. The group wasn't prepared to attack the DEMON base and for other reasons in the campaign wanted to use the knowledge of where the base was and the fact they knew it against DEMON. The question was then what to do with the van.

The first idea was to park the van and fill it with high explosives so that when DEMON opened it up they would go off doing great damage. Just to put this in perspective the following situation occured several months after the first bombing of the World Trade Center when terroist planted a car bomb in a parking garage. I kindly pointed this out to them so they went with idea number 2.

Idea number 2 was to use the van as a plant. They wanted DEMON to continue using the van. However, they had throughly torn the van up in their investigation and it had gotten damaged in the fight. So, they fixed it and took it back to DEMON parking it in the garage.

I couldn't resist asking if they took it to the car wash and got it detailed for DEMON as well.

[Klytus]

The one event that springs to mind was in a Vampire: the Masquerade game I was in.

The characters were newly-Embraced, like the just-made-a-vampire-last-night kinda new. Well one of the characters, Geofry, thought it odd that he had not gone to the bathroom for almost a day. In spite of the fact that he didn't even have the urge to go, he went to the bathroom and tried to pee.

"Roll your Willpower," says the Storyteller. "This is such an un-natural thing for Vampires to do, your difficulty is 10" (on 10 sided dice, this is almost impossible.)

Six dice are rolled. "Ok," sez Geofry's player. "I have three successes!"

Howls of pain echoed throughout the house as Geofry :ahem: lost three Blood Points into the potty.

[Mightybec]

My first character had a 12d6 HA and a 35 STR. While on patrol, I came across a thug robbing an old lady. I ran up to him and said to the GM "I hit him with everything that I've got" After a bunch of rolled sixes for damage, the GM calculated that the thug was dead before he broke his back around the light post acroos the street. Needless to say, the old lady that was covered in blood and body organs, ran away screaming.:D

Mightybec

[Tom McCarthy]

So many possibilities.

The team teleporter sees his teammate go berserk and fears he'll kill one of the agents attacking the base (penthouse apartment of a busy office building). So he teleports the berserk teammate downstairs, into a busy office.

[CrosshairCollie]

Oh, goodness, where to start? :)

This wasn't a Champs game, but it was Supers. A villainess had bribed some college frat guys into being 'thugs' for her, basically, and they ripped off an SUV and drove it into the middle of college as a distraction while she got what she was after.

The Team Telepath gets into the driver's head, and starts screaming 'Stop the car', then someone inside shouts 'step on it!' over and over, so the car stop-start-stop-starts. Eventually, the driver just screams 'That's IT', gets out, and shoots both driver's side tires. This car is not going *anywhere*, between two flats and being on dirt.

Blaster Guy (not his real character name) decides to start shooting the car, despite the lack of necessity. The other teammates flatten the thugs, so they're not going to get away, and he's *still* shooting the car. First shot caves in the side. Second one SCISSORS IT IN HALF. And he's still shooting. "Why are you still shooting it?"
"I'm trying to get it to explode!"
"Why?"
"So they can't escape in it!"
"It's BROKEN IN HALF, and they're all UNCONSCIOUS!"
"But I wanna blow it up!"
One of the other players, and characters, also realized that blowing up the car would likely mean setting a building or two on fire, to say nothing of likely KILLING THE THUGS, so she proceeded to cover the car with a Force Wall. And the player kept trying to blast through the Force Wall.
While the PCs were 'fighting' one another, the Villain got away.

[Gary Ciaramella]

My personal dumb moment as a player... my hero was enveloped by a water elemental, the elemental intending to drown my character. For a turn and a half I struggled to do everything I could to get the thing off of me before going unconsious... then I remembered that my character did not need to breath.

[DrSavant]

This event sticks out in my mind as "Just Plain Stupid"
4 players were involved; Sapphire(Brick), Kid-Magic(prodigy),
WildClaw(Wolverine without the attitude), Freelance ( gadgeteer who liked to go on Bounty Hunts)
There was a cop gone bad (Longarm= Stretching etc) and some maniac who liked to behead people with his mystic-ultra sharp battleaxe (Scalper).
Well it turns out that Sapphires DNPC was the only eye-witness to Scalpers most recent attack. [How do these things always happen to PC's DNPC's ??? LOL] The DNPC was under protective custody in a safe house.
Well the police chief calls in the heroes for an update on
finding Scalper, the press was fuming. Well Freelance and Sapphire were not there to play their characters so I NPC'd them. Freelance and WildClaw met with the police chief, leaving Kid-Magic to protect the witness.
When those 2 arrived to meet the chief, Kid-Magic's character asked if anyone else was there(Out of character)
As GM I said "You can be there if you wanted", he said "YES".
Of course it took 2 seconds after that happened to realize that they left the DNPC unprotected (from Longarm who had superpowers ,against trained agents[police].
Needless to say the DNPC got kidnapped, Sapphire had to pay $1,000,000 ransom. IDIOTS!!!

[BlackCobra]

Bear in mind:
1. This was my first self-built Champions character.
2. It was not the first or last stupid thing he did. (Let's just say it was probably a good thing Regeneration was changed to Turn-based recoveries.)

BlackCobra, a cheesy not-really knock-off of Spiderman, wants to sneak into the penthouse apartment of some guy (can't remember why, turned out to be another player's place). He's originally a jewel thief, so going up and knocking on the door won't work. He can't scale buildings, and the apartment is on the 25th floor. Ok, so he goes to the top of a nearby building, planning on leaping across. It's too far for him to leap, off by a few hexes. So I tell the GM "Ok, here's what I'll do: Cobra will run, leap as far as he can, hook his swing line on the roof the other building and loop around, dropping on the roof."

Well, guess what? I missed with the swing line the first time (25 floor drop -- ouch!).

This was just the first in a long line of mishaps that the character only lived through because regeneration:2 was enough to recover from nearly any not-fatal drop.

This was the first character in our gaming group to invoke the terminal volicity rules!

[austenandrews]

Originally posted by ChickenTomato
I had someone playing a Leprechaun (teleporter with minor magic...don't ask) decide to pee on the exposed mechanism of a space station air lock door to short-circuit it. He convinced me that since he was Irish, he could pee on command.

If it was zero-gee, that's a valid form of propulsion. :P

-AA

[Tim]

A Zero-gee Pee?

[tmutant]

If you like Dumbest, you'll like Most Embarassing.:D
http://herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threardid=471&perpage=15&pagenumber=1 (http://)

Can't get this link to work. What am I doing wrong? Anyway , I bumped it.

[Vondy]

Well... its the old submarine reactor room story:

The heroes, a group of government superheroes working for the intelligence community, decide to conduct a boarding action on a villainous organizations super-sub, wh.
ich can go WAY down.

The one whose securing the reactor room while the others secure the bridge and manual ballast controls runs into some mild resistance. He wants to make a big display so he says: I'm going to blast away!

I say, alarmed: at what?!

The player blurts out: the reactor!

Whoops....

Fortuanately the government had more than one team.

[Siberian Tiger]

I ran a campaign in which the players were trying to track down a superstrong serial killer. They had obtained a list of possible suspects from the authorities (It was set in Britain so I used STOP from Kingdom of Champions). They were working their way through the list, gradually eliminating the suspects. At the end of one encounter, the players were checking their list of suspects when our brick Lady Avenger said "Hey who's this Lady Avenger. We haven't checked her out yet !"

Dumbest thing I ever did was when playing MERP. My character took damage from an attack and was left dead. I forgot that and later on, was listening at a door to hear if anything was behind it. GM says "You don't hear anything" to the amusement of all the other players

[Yogzilla]

I managed to kill off all the PCs (and a number of NPCs) in the first session of an immortals campaign. Worse, it was by accident.

Sigh; the GM still won't let me live that one down. At least he can laugh about it nowadays...

-Yogzilla

[Burnout]

In a campaign quite some time ago, our intrepid group of heroes were investigating a possible corporate front for GENOCIDE. So 3 of our characters, a cyborg, a martial artist and a magic-wielding character, decide to check it out by posing as investors. Well we all go in there, pass through a metal detector, and just a few steps from the elevator are greeted by a well dressed man (we'll call him Bob).

Well Bob gives us a very warm welcome and says that at the moment the corporate office we were there to visit was having it's mid morning break. The entire office. Not even one of us blinked an eye, we just said "Oh well that's too bad". He then offered to buy us breakfast, pardoned himself to the bathroom, and mysteriously disappeared.

We were all sitting around wondering what had happened to him, when the GM just couldn't contain his laughter anymore. You see, I had forgotten that my cyborg was a mutant- he had regeneration powers which is why he survived the operation to put cybernetic implants in him. The metal detector? A mutant detector. Mid-morning break? Just when does an entire floor of an office building go on a mid-morning break?

To be fair, none of us worked in an office environment so we thought it could happen. LOL, man were we ever stupid.

[DocMan]

Originally posted by Yogzilla
I managed to kill off all the PCs (and a number of NPCs) in the first session of an immortals campaign. Worse, it was by accident.

And just HOW did you manage to do that?

Doc

[CrosshairCollie]

A nice fresh chunk of cheese for Embarassing Moments. Game I was in earlier this week (how could I forget this?), the GM trusted everybody to make their own characters, make them fair, make them good, etc etc (Cue all board browsers responding: "THE FOOL!")

Well, of the six players, only two of us had noncombat skills besides a simple PS. One nimrod, the focus of our story, didn't name his character. "I wanna do that thing where the media or my opponent gives me a cool name based on my powers and what I do!" I suspect he wasn't imaginative enough to come up with one, and wanted us to do it.

This guy, however, had an AREA EFFECT DAMAGE SHIELD. He thought that meant he was surrounded by a field of energy and nobody could go near him without frying ... but the ruling was that anybody could hit him, but the Damage Shield would go off in the Area Effect when he was hit. So, in short order, someone with a good STR wanders up and belts him.
*BOOM*
He goes flying back. Into a cluster of teammates who haven't gone yet.
*BOOM*
Heroes scatter like bowling pins. Oh, and it's a KILLING PENETRATING damage shield on top of it, so various and sundry Enrageds were triggered (actually just one, but everybody else got ticked off at the damage and wailed in on the guy anyway) and the other guy who made a character instead of a wad of points was out cold and nearly dead (he likes lightly-armored fast martial-artsy types). I just threw the other guy over my shoulder and walked out of the battlesite, since we'd basically lost before we got started. This, of course, gave me the perfect chance to talk to the media first. :) His name was 'Captain Brain Damaged Inbred Dip<feces>.'

More amusing, to me, was that I mentioned to the GM, offhandedly, that since that was an Area Effect power, and he didn't by personally immune, that he was affected by it just like everybody else ...

Result: Villains win, heroes do more damage to the battlesite than all the villains combined. Ironically, the last one standing was Explosion Man ... who my character, in full view of the media from every local station, casually KOed from 40' away with a laser gun, and the headline quote: "THAT'S for having a stupid super-power."

I 'encouraged' the GM to review the characters more closely in the future. ;)

[Rage]

that is classic

[Blue]

LOL! Thanks I needed that. Cap'n BDID.

[Fortunatus]

Quicksilver, an alien robot modeled after the T2000, is highly vulnerable to electricity. He also suffers from memory loss when he's shocked. The worse the shock, the worse the memory loss. He's also got a 25 INT, unlike his player.

After the team's first major fight, in which Quicksilver is nailed a few times by the bad guys' lightning-firing Storm clone, the team leader decides that they ought to stick around to talk to the press. She figures it will allow them to do some damage control with regard to their public image, since they just got trounced.

Quicksilver obliges her by boldly striding up to the most popular TV reporter in the city and telling her that he has no idea what just happened because he reboots every time he's hit by electricity. He then goes on to detail every last power and disadvantage he has, heavily emphasizing his deep-seated fear of electricity.

Later, after the team got wind that every thug in town was buying stun-guns like they were going out of style, and after every villainous organization in the state started equipping their agents with electricity guns and hiring supervillains with names like Shocker and Thunderbolt, the player complained bitterly to me that his vulnerability was coming up far too often in play. Apparently, I was being unfair.

[Tim]

Originally posted by Fortunatus
Later, after the team got wind that every thug in town was buying stun-guns like they were going out of style, and after every villainous organization in the state started equipping their agents with electricity guns and hiring supervillains with names like Shocker and Thunderbolt, the player complained bitterly to me that his vulnerability was coming up far too often in play. Apparently, I was being unfair. [/B]

Uhhhh...... Yah.:rolleyes:

[CrosshairCollie]

Hmm ... well, if quite literally every villain the PC team is going to encounter over the next 4 adventures or so is going to be packing someone with electrical attacks AND knows exactly who to use them against, you might want to go ahead and boost the Frequency of electrical attacks on his Disads, akin to the 'Silver isn't that common, no, but I'm a WEREWOLF. Everybody knows silver hates werewolves!' theory. What you do with the 'extra' Disad points is up to your style, though.

[BNakagawa]

I remember one time, we're playing powered armored suit SF characters and we're infiltrating a base infested by boomers. We know they have an enormous amount of dangerous grunts to throw at us, so we booby trap the hell out of a key intersection of tunnels.

When the attack comes, a long shot comes in and manages to hit our demo expert and lo and behold, the hit location is a storage spot for more explosives.

He survives the impact, but the damage sets off the explosives, which sends him flying, which lands him right in the middle of the trip wires, which sets off our booby traps, which sends him flying back the way he came, landing in yet more triggers, detonating yet more booby traps.

All our planning, all our setup blown all to hell and despite getting tossed around like a ragdoll, our demo guy hadn't taken a body pip yet. (although he was knocked way the hell out due to a massive concussion)

I think that was the last time we set up boobytraps like that.

[RevHooligan]

My dumbest moment as a GM was when the 800 pt demon preparing to attack our hereos was undone by a lucky guess of his True Name. Since he was forced to follow the PCs' orders, R'gnak became the largest sanitation worker in NYC.

[tmutant]

Not even a bump. More of a dredge. Funny stuff here.:D

[Rath]

Heros attend charity event for orphans. Kid steps up to team brick demanding to "fly" and won't let it drop. Brick tries to weasel out of it by asking the kid, "Where's your mommy and daddy" "Whaaaaa"

[Klytus]

How could I have failed to post this sordid tale of epic stupidity?

The game is Vampire:the Masquerade (yeah, most of my stories are from that game system - it's where we do most of our playing). Two of the characters in our group: Sid, a Nosferatu vampire (the ones who are ugly with a capital UGH and look like monsters) and Dennis were sharing an apartment. For reasons irrelevant to this story, they woke up one morning (er, evening rather) without blood and were ravenously hungy. When this happens to vampires, they go into frenzy, but it is still possible to exert some control over your actions. Dennis' player makes his Self-Control roll and says he wants to go out the back way into the alley. Sid's player, on the other hand, doesn't even bother rolling dice. He decides to ride the frenzy for all it's worth. "I'm going out the nearest and easiest exit. I guess that would be the window." Undaunted by the fact that it is two stories up, out he goes. After landing on the street, he says "I grab the first warm body I can find and feed from it." With a dark smile and evil chuckle (never a good sign!), the Storyteller obliges.

When Sid regains his senses, he sees that the lifeless body in his hands is a uniformed police officer. Then he notices that he - having just gotten out of bed -is wearing nothing except his boxers. Looking up, he notices the half-dozen or so horrified witnesses who saw the whole thing. He realizes that he just broke the Masquerade big time! The second Sid looks up at them, the mortals all scream and run away in terror. Exercising the same calm and rational thought that got him into into this mess in the first place, Sid pulls out the cop's gun, and while waving it about cries out, "Wait! Come back! I can explain!"

[White Heat]

This was my Vampire campaign. Yes, when G.O.D smiles, it is already too late. And yes, lest you need ask, Sid was executed for gross stupidity approximately two game sessions later. Well, for that, and his Masque breach... :)

Fortunately, my cousin didn't hold it against me. He wanted to know what took me so long.

[Lord Mhoram]

Originally posted by Klytus
He realizes that he just broke the Masquerade big time!

I would assume by context that the masquerade is an unspoken (or spoken) rule not to let humans know about vampires?


Never even opened a white wolf book, but curious.

[WhammeWhamme]

Originally posted by Lord Mhoram
I would assume by context that the masquerade is an unspoken (or spoken) rule not to let humans know about vampires?


Never even opened a white wolf book, but curious.

I've never opened a game book for them either, (oh wait; I lie. A wraith book; no vampire) but I read some of their fiction, and saw the tv show based on it.

The Masquerade is more than a rule. It is the way of life for the 'not so evil' vampires. Co-exist and blend in with humanity or be killed by other vampires. Of course, not all think this is a good idea.

Never let a human know unless they are to die or to become a vampire.

So, ol' Sid there just brought down the wrath of A) Vampire Hunting Humans and B) Most of the vampires in the city.

Not good.

:cool: :D :p

[bwdemon]

Here's one of my worst from many years ago...

Playing a speedster, I came up against a villain named "Sandman". Having been a loyal fan of comics, I assumed he could turn his body into sand and had other similar powers.

My character was faster and there was no element of surprise, so I went first. Trying to end this as quickly as possible, I attacked him with four multiple move by attacks right off the bat, hitting with all of them and stunning him. I then learned that his namesake power had nothing to do with sand, but was an always on END Drain (prior to damage shield rules).

Four 10d6 END Drains (prior to current Drain rules, really only 5d6 Drains now) later, my character couldn't so much as breathe, let alone fight. That fight taught me not to assume that a similar name means similar powers and to look into reduced endurance occasionally. :)

[Insaniac99]

great first post bwdemon!

[Klytus]

Originally posted by Lord Mhoram
I would assume by context that the masquerade is an unspoken (or spoken) rule not to let humans know about vampires?

Never even opened a white wolf book, but curious.

The Masquerade is a rule that is spoken, written, and harped upon at every opportunity. It is the #1 rule in vampire society (well, at least one sect of vampire society). Violation of this rule is punishable by Final Death.

Sorry I didn't expalin that in my post. But WhammeWhamme is right on the money about the fallout of this incident.

[Trebuchet]

Here's one of my own less impressive moments. After years of playing the slow and heavily defended Ranger (62 PD/58 ED) and the tactically sophisticated Spirit Ninja, I decided I wanted to play a less complex character who was a novice superheroine. So I came up with Flash Dancer (Late ''80s!), a pseudo-speedster/martial artist with a high DEX and SPD (38 and 8 respectively) but very low defenses (13 PD) and CON (18). She was only 17 years old at the time.

Her very first adventure, she deploys with the rest of the Sentinels out of the JumpJet to confront a supervillain team. She wanted to finish off her first opponent, a villain in an embroidered silk karate gi, quickly using her superior speed (25" Running) so she decided to do a Move Through. She charges at him and (You can all see this coming, right?) and the villain with his held action does a Martial Throw on her for 14d6. You do the math.

She woke up on the JumpJet heading back to Sentinels HQ. :D

[DocMan]

Exercising the same calm and rational thought that got him into into this mess in the first place, Sid pulls out the cop's gun, and while waving it about cries out, "Wait! Come back! I can explain!"

I think this about sums up Sid in his entirety.

Doc

[Lightray]

:nonp: This thread is so undead it's dropping maggots on my keyboard.

Nonetheless, I have a story.

Way, way back in the days of Champions II, we had a teammember name of Morphus, a shapechanger. This was when you did shapeshifting with multipowers of extra limbs, flight, HKA claws, etc., etc. It was janky, and we liked it.

Anyway, the GM was pretty lenient about letting Morphus try goofy tricks he didn't have the powers for.

So, there we were, fighting what was essentially Godzilla, wading upriver on the Mississippi River, headed for the St. Louis Arch (of course). Our team is mostly energy blasters, buzzing about Not-Quite-Godzilla and doing a couple STUN each Phase.

Morphus, clever shapeshifter that he is, decides to jump into Not-Quite-Godzilla's mouth and turn into something that will stop NQG cold.

He turns into a giant tapeworm. :ugly:

So, basically, we had to take down NQG, then administer a really, really big dose of medicine. Then we had to collect Morphus The Giant Tapeworm once he'd been "expelled", and get him back into normal form.

Then, next adventure, we discovered how tapeworms reproduce. As we had to exterminate the hundreds of shapeshifting, giant tapeworms that had infested the Mississippi River.

:idjit:

[phydaux]

I'd say this was the third time I had EVER played Champs (back in the Champions III days).

I had a character with the classic Multipower - Flight, Force Field and Energy Blast.

We were fighting a a group called the Ecogens - Eco-terrorists who were all mutated in some way by toxic waste. There were about five players, and we managed to get wind of what industrial site the Ecogens were going to hit next. We decide to stake out the industrial site.

The GM asked us where we're going to hide. Well, most of the other characters all have Stealth or Invisibility, but my character has nothing like that. He DOES, however, have Full Life Support. So I tell the GM "I'm going to fly up to the top of the smoke stack and sit up there."

The GM says "Well, the visible effect of your Flight and Force Field will give you away if you're up there."

I say "No problem, I'll turn off all my powers except the Life Support."

Well, that's when we learned that one of the Ecogens was an Earth Elemental Brick with Earthquake powers. His earthquake colapsed the smoke stack and my character, without any powers activated, fell 60 feet onto a pile of rubble.

Splat!

--------------------------------------

Same scanario. It's a few phases later. My character had taken phase 2 to take a Recovery. My character had taken some Body damage in the fall, but he's still got a little Stun left. Now it was phase 4 and I activated my powers. The GM was outlining what villian was closest to who. He turns to me and says "And THIS is the one closest to your character." He then shows me a hand drawn picture of a guy shooting lightning blots from his fingers.

I count hexes on the battle map and see that it's about 20 hexes from me to him. I start thinking "This GM likes his homebrew villains to have MASSIVE DCV. There's no WAY I can zap this guy from 20 hexes away. I've got to get closer."

Now my Multipower has a 60 point reserve. I can put 40 points into Flight and get to this guy, but I'd only have enough left for a 10 PD/10 ED FF - Not enough to keep the character safe until he can reconfigure and start letting loose. But then I start thinking "This villain's picture shows him shooting bolts of lightning..." So this is what I tell my GM:

"I'm configuring my Multipower to 20" of Flight and a 20 ED, ZERO PD Force Field. I fly right over and hover right in front of him."

The GM says "Are you sure?" and I say "Yeah." So now the other PLAYERS all say "Are you sure?" and I say "Yeah, it'll be fine."

And that's when Mr. Lightning Bolts used his Held Action and his 60 STR to smack my character into uncontiousness. He was Knocked Back 20 inches at an angle and struck the side of a five-story office building, where upon he then fell to the ground (for the SECOND time that night) for even MORE damage.

My character DIDN'T die. But it was close.

[proditor]

The group: Dragon (Highly trained normal with guns and some bizarre mystic skills) Solitaire (Highly trained Alien, Martial artist/Knife fighter), Gamera (Highly trained normal who couldn't die), Myrra (Mutant Teleporter with defelction/reflection powers) and Flame (Standard energy blasting human torch type). Sponsored as a rapid reaction strike team by the US government, both Dragon and Gamera are serving detached duty form the military.

The situation: They are approaching the evil villain's island base in a Grumman Widgeon. This is a small 10 or so person twin engined prop float plane. The group decided it would be "More inconspicous" Well, on the way in, the far more sophisticated defenses start firing and the palyers actually manage to stop all of the attacks except one Stinger missile which pretty much shreads part of the engines. The plane in now in an extreme free-fall plummet to death some 5000 feet below. They are told that at the speed they are currently going, they can probably get the nose up, but they are going to rip the wings right off the plane. The group quickly uses Solitaire's gadget pool on the fly to make "brackets" to hold three parachutes along the inside of the plane. They cut/burn/blast holes that the chutes can deploy out of and the pilot (Gamera) yells back "Strap yourselves in, just before you pop the chutes, I'll try and pull her out of this dive" I ask everyone at the table "How do you strap yourself in?" I get answers, good ones, from everyone but Gamera. So, he pulls up, the plane pulls out of the dive only 50 feet above the water, the wings straining to come off the plane, and they all pop the chutes. The plane goes from near Mach to less than 100 mph in seconds. Everyone gets minor bruises from their straps. I look at Gamera. "How were you strapped in again?" He just starts laughing.

He flew through the front windshield, all the way to the island some 1000 or so feet away where he slammed into a palm tree and slid the 20 feet to the ground. The group comes running up to check on him. He stands there a moment, dusts himself off and says "I'm fine, no I'm good." Staggers a little "Smoke 'em if ya got 'em." and promptly passes out.

[teh bunneh]

Not a Champions game, but fantasy:

The heroes are trekking through the dungeon & find a magic key. Eventually, they figure out that this key unlocks a magic door that leads to the treasure room. Without the key, the door opens into a trap -- a hallway filled with razor-sharp spinning blades.

So they find the treasure and start hauling it out. Then one of the players says something like, "I wonder what's at the other end of the trapped hall?" He opens the door (without the key) and charges in, hoping to make it to the other end of the hall before the blades slice him to ribbons. Thanks to his extraordinary barbarian toughness, he did (barely).

"What do I see at the end of the hall?" he asks.

"Nothing," I reply. "Just spinning blades that tear into your flesh."

"There's got to be a way to shut it off!" he yells, getting desperate.

"There is," I say. "At the other end of the hall. The magic key. Which you already learned opens the door to the non-trapped treasure room rather than the death-trap hallway."

Friggin' idiot. :rofl:

Bill.

[DocMan]

This happened many years ago in a Vampire the Masquerade game.

One of the players was embraced as a vampire as a 9 year old. She quickly became a combat monster with heavy potence. Since she was just a little girl, but fought like a brick, she tended to go out and use herself as bait when she was hunting. One night she is hunting down on the waterfront and this guy pulls up next to her in his car. He tries to grab her, but she knocks him out, feeds from him and then decides to teach him a lesson. Leaving him out cold on the sidewalk, she takes his keys, locks his car, turns toward the river and "throws the keys as hard as I can."

The GM looked at her and said. "OK. Using everything?"

She replied, "As hard as I can."

The GM asked, "How much potence does your character have?"

The final ruling was that the keys went across the river, through someone walking home from a late night at work, and were lodged in a brick wall.

Doc

[Tech]

Oooo, oooo! I finally get to tell this story, which is years old and still laughed at in our campaign. :D

Years ago, a young friend of ours (who is now playing music on cruise ships nowadays, enjoying himself - the poor guy) simply didn't believe that our group GM would kill off a villain.

At one point, the Viper nest leader had found out the identity of a hero or two. With it went the usual threat of 'join Viper or everyone you know will be in trouble'. Now, this conversation with the hero group was in a factory with huge vats of hot, molten metal contained in them.

In the course of a battle with supervillains (I'm assuming they worked for Viper but I don't remember), an extremely heavy shockwave occurs due to a very heavy hero falling to the ground - he weighed 100 tons. The resulting shockwave makes one of the vats of molten metal tip over and tons of molten metal pours onto the nest leader.

The GM says "One look at him and you can tell he'll never bother you again" to which the player says "I blast him!". The GM informs the player in a grave voice, "You can tell he'll never bother you again." The player replies, "I blast him anyways!" The player group is amazed that the obvious hasn't connected with the player. One of the other players, exasperated says, "Look! He's dead! He's croaked! His face is melted off!" Accompanying group laughter. After a long pause, the (still-not-getting-it) player says "Wellllll, if you think so."

[CrosshairCollie]

Oooo, oooo! I finally get to tell this story, which is years old and still laughed at in our campaign. :D

Years ago, a young friend of ours (who is now playing music on cruise ships nowadays, enjoying himself - the poor guy) simply didn't believe that our group GM would kill off a villain.

At one point, the Viper nest leader had found out the identity of a hero or two. With it went the usual threat of 'join Viper or everyone you know will be in trouble'. Now, this conversation with the hero group was in a factory with huge vats of hot, molten metal contained in them.

In the course of a battle with supervillains (I'm assuming they worked for Viper but I don't remember), an extremely heavy shockwave occurs due to a very heavy hero falling to the ground - he weighed 100 tons. The resulting shockwave makes one of the vats of molten metal tip over and tons of molten metal pours onto the nest leader.

The GM says "One look at him and you can tell he'll never bother you again" to which the player says "I blast him!". The GM informs the player in a grave voice, "You can tell he'll never bother you again." The player replies, "I blast him anyways!" The player group is amazed that the obvious hasn't connected with the player. One of the other players, exasperated says, "Look! He's dead! He's croaked! His face is melted off!" Accompanying group laughter. After a long pause, the (still-not-getting-it) player says "Wellllll, if you think so."

Mind like a steel trap.

That's been outside for 20 years and is rusted very solidly shut. :)

[Egyptoid]

I GMed a high powered convention game, and the party wizard had a
large notebook of spells in his Var.Power Pool. something for very nearly every situation.

plus, he had a magic bow and 36 magic arrows, for use on things with power defense.

so let's recap:

A) lots of magic for most things.
B) back up killing attack for the magic resistant things.

so what did the wizard do all night ?
he hung back and shot arrows at EVERYTHING.
he used 1 detect spell later on, out of combat,
but the rest of the night: twang, twang, twang.

the rest of the players and I as the GM tried to ask leading questions,
and some players were rude, "perhaps some spells from the wizard?"
but there he was, Master of Archery. :help:

[Kestrel]

During a convention game, I was playing a shapeshifter called Proteus. The team's mission was to investigate possible wrong-doing on a space station. While they're on the station, Proteus seduces one of the research scientists and sleeps with her. While she's asleep, he sneaks into her closet and disguises himself as one of her blouses. The next day the scientist puts on the "blouse" and goes to work at the high-security facility on board.

Meanwhile the rest of the team have found out there's a villain group who's built a particle beam to be used as a terror weapon, inside the facility. They decide to storm it at about the same time my character arrives.

The team is fighting against the bad guys and not having an easy time of it. Proteus thinks he can enlist the girl's help and get her to work the control panel to shut down the defenses. So he starts whispering to her. Needless to say, the poor woman is a bit freaked out by the battle already, so having a disembodied voice talking to her is really pushing things. So Proteus tries to convince the woman who he really is.

Proteus: "Remember that guy you went home with last night?"

Scientist: "Yes. What does that have to do with anything?"

Proteus: "I have a confession to make; I'm not just another all-cotton fabric." *Gives scientist a light squeeze by contracting around her.*

Scientist: *Let's out a blood-curdling scream and promptly faints.*

Proteus: "Okay. That didn't work as planned."

[Desert]

I unfortunately have to admit that I fit here.

I was playing a swashbuckler in D&D and for the most part was very new to roleplaying.

We were doing something, and there was a rapier style fight with what was basically an female pirate captain of a ship. I had thought that it had been a fun battle, so I chase her down, thank her, and give jewels to her.

She is a pirate.
She is evil.
The DM is vindictive
I was an idiot.

So, she refuses the jewels and kidnaps me. So the plot of the next story in this campaign is for the rest of the group to rescue me from the pirates.

P.S. This is the same campaign with the exploding clones mentioned... somewhere else by me.

[Korvar]

Wow, a thread brought back from the dead not once but many times :)

Shadowrun. Near future cyberpunk with magic.

For reasons I can no longer recall, we are deep in Tir Tairngire, the Elven stronghold on the West Coast of what used to be the United States. We have no ID, no money, no contacts, no nothing. We manage to get a couple of assassination missions in return for Getting The Hell Out.

We spend ages planning the first hit. Phrases like "triangulation of fire" are used. We have backup shooters, rendezvous points and all sorts.

When it goes down, my character is up close, pretending to be a Japanese tourist, ready to deliver the letter that has to be left on the corpse in the (hopefully imminent) confusion.

Shot 1 is taken by the newest player, the star of this particular tale. I'd spent the last several weeks explaining every single roll to him, multiple times. It never seemed to take. So I explained (again) what dice he needed to roll, and explained (again) what the result was.

The GM told us that a Bullet Barrier spell suddenly came up, almost deflecting the bullet entirely (only a Light wound).

Now, we all knew that only the most experienced and advanced Mages could make a Barrier spell that came up automatically. Those experienced and advanced Mages can do all sorts of rule-breaky stuff, and are quite terrifying. As the target wasn't a Mage, one of their entourage must be.

I assume we are all dead.

Fortunately the second shot (taken by an equally new, but much better player) does a Serious wound, and the third shot takes the target out entirely. We didn't even need our backup shooters.

Hurrah! I leave the note, and we're all heading out, visions of victory drinks floating before our eyes, celebratory music playing in our ears, when I hear:

"I haven't killed anyone yet. I'm going to shoot one of the bodyguards."

<needle scratch sound>

And then, our sniper has a choice between two bodyguards; a large gentleman who has reacted inhumanly fast to the shots, who has drawn a pistol, or a slower, smaller, scholarly looking gent.

Okay, he was a new player, but I'm sure we explained that the pistol couldn't even push bullets that far, let alone hit anything. And the big bodyguard is clearly armoured, and clearly cybered. And the wimpy guy? Probably the one who set up that Bullet Barrier. The kind of mage to whom range penalties are minor inconveniences to be ignored. The kind of mage who can break the very laws of physics to blow your brain out your ears from a mile away. But, crucially, much more likely to be squishy.

But he still chooses to shoot the bodyguard, because he's biggest.

So, one minor scratch to the bodyguard later, the mage centres versus penalties, and our sniper is wearing part of his frontal lobes as earrings.

It was at that point if I asked the GM if we still had any of those remote controlled explosives we had used earlier, if we'd given any to the sniper, and could I remember the correct frequency?

We did eventually get away, and even gathered up our sniper, although largely because he was evidence as opposed to any desire to save him. And the Deadly Mental Wound he took meant that his share of the take was put in a trust fund to finance his ongoing treatment for Persistent Vegetative State. We left him in a Tir Tairngire hospital surrounded by machines that went ping, and never looked back.

Good times. Good times.

[lobsterGun]

Phantos is a 6ft tall male human infected with nanotechnology. He glows with an unearthly white light, can fly, shoot lightening bolts and teleport through electrical lines.

He is trying to infiltrate a villain base and has decided to ambush a villain and take his costume as a disguise. Which of the following villains will Phantos choose...

A) Chessire Cat - a teleporting martial artist. His costume is a Karate Suit and a full face mask.

2) Charger - an electrical blaster. His costume is blue tights with yellow lightening bolts and a full face mask.

d) Mandingo - half-man half dog. His 'costume' is a pair of purple shorts (to maintain his remaining dignity).

...drumroll...


If you answered d) you are correct! Award yourself 2 points for remembering the topic of this thread. If you answered A) or 2) you fail and should report to the nearest termination booth.

[Enforcer84]

I GMed a high powered convention game, and the party wizard had a
large notebook of spells in his Var.Power Pool. something for very nearly every situation.

plus, he had a magic bow and 36 magic arrows, for use on things with power defense.

so let's recap:

A) lots of magic for most things.
B) back up killing attack for the magic resistant things.

so what did the wizard do all night ?
he hung back and shot arrows at EVERYTHING.
he used 1 detect spell later on, out of combat,
but the rest of the night: twang, twang, twang.

the rest of the players and I as the GM tried to ask leading questions,
and some players were rude, "perhaps some spells from the wizard?"
but there he was, Master of Archery. :help:
Perhaps the player couldn't grok variable powerpool and felt more comfortable with the Bow?

[Kenn]

Ah... so many to choose from...

One time a gadgeteer hero rigged up a universal translator device, first question "Do you speak English?"

The mage with the arrows reminded me of a character who was a vigilante martial artist type who carried a big powerful ray gun for use against parahumans who might not be hurt by a normal human doing karate. On one occaision, while storming a criminal's lair, he used the blaster on all the human rifle toting guards, but when the mercenary brick showed up it was time to go mano a mano. The vigilante got creamed.

But my favourite was in D&D...

The party goes back to the tavern, mourning a lost comrade. There they make a new friend (new character for the guy who played the lost comrade). NPC woman in bar asks for help being escorted home. New friend volunteers the group. We go. We're besieged by Whytes (or however you spell that). We fight them off. We get her home. New friend makes a point of saying he kisses the NPC woman "long and lingeringly". DM to player: "And you roll up a new character; you just tongued a succubus."
Succubus starts to fly off into the sky. One of our mages (played by the GF of the player whose character was just killed) launches a Fireball spell. Out of doors. In a city. Roasts the party and the whole neighbourhood.

[Hugh Neilson]

But my favourite was in D&D...

The party goes back to the tavern, mourning a lost comrade. There they make a new friend (new character for the guy who played the lost comrade). NPC woman in bar asks for help being escorted home. New friend volunteers the group. We go. We're besieged by Whytes (or however you spell that). We fight them off. We get her home. New friend makes a point of saying he kisses the NPC woman "long and lingeringly". DM to player: "And you roll up a new character; you just tongued a succubus."

Succubus starts to fly off into the sky. One of our mages (played by the GF of the player whose character was just killed) launches a Fireball spell. Out of doors. In a city. Roasts the party and the whole neighbourhood.

???fireballs cast into the air roast the neighbourhood below???

Let's see...

There's the wizard who cast a Cone of Cold from the third or fourth rank of the party...before looking the spell up to find its range was "0". Measuring the AoE, it was just long enough to freeze the front rank.

His next spell was "teleport".

But I must go with the player who watched negotiations with a rather large and scary, but not overly smart, Giant over passage across 'his' bridge come down to offering him a single copper piece enchanted with a Continual Light spell. Which the cleric could cast every day, several times if need be.

He snuck back that night to the giant's lair to steal back the copper piece while the giant lay sleeping. OK, this is already pretty dumb. But we must meet the criteria of the thread title.

So go ahead and guess what he did after sneaking into the room where the Giant lay snoring, and found the "pouch" into which the giant had carefully tucked the coin a few hours before?

That's right. He opened the pouch. In the dark room. With the sleeping giant. SPLAT.

[Ruckus]

I had a 4-color Champions series in 1994. My team of players were on a moonbase that was the Stronghold for supercriminals. There had been no communication with the base so they had sent a group of government supers to investigate (the PCs).

One character (I think his name was Blowback) had a god awfully powerful explosive rka energy blast and the rest of the team had little else in the way of being protected from the environment. The entire team thought of there being some sort of jail break when in actuality an alien horde invaded the base and had siphoned of the life of the guards. Irronically, the cells that housed the criminals was also protecting them; the Aliens would eventually get through but it would take time.

Despite *every* hint i could throw that it seemed that the jail was still in lock down and it might be a good idea to keep on the space suits only 2 kept them on. The rest expecting a superbattle wanted more mobility.

I thought to point out that maybe something more was going on that i would show one of them one of the creatures in a non-combat arena. So as they walked from the landing bay to the main complex through a 20 foot wide transparent tunnel i pointed out that a creature *on* the lunar surface about 100 meters away was observing them.

Before the leader could ask any thing of me or any players, Blowback rolls his dice and announces that hes goiing to fire through the godawful- powerful rka energy blast at the creature. I pointed out that this was a relatively confined tube *on* the moon. I looked from player to player for someone to state the obvious, no one bit. Everyone agreed that they could fly or use other powers or use one of the other players to help them. I even fudged the first die roll ensuring that:

A: the tube didnt completely give way and

B: the players might get the idea that puncturing the air fille tube that you are standing in with no life support equipment might be a bad idea.



I even made a point of just putting a crack in the plexiglass to emphasize that there was a hiss of escaping air.

To no avail.

Blowout undaunted fired again this time pushing his powers up a notch and faster than you can say explosive decompression; "spaced" himself and all but two members of his team.

The two suited player had no powers that were of any use in getting the characters back inside. Even not allowing for the instant death of what is in effect dry cleaning ones lungs.

Ironically it led to a more interesting version with some of the criminals along with the two heroes getting off the base.

[AlexShinjo]

So here is a dumb moment for a game I was GMing. I had told the players I was tired of trying to decode what their intentions in the game was so that night I was playing everything literal. If you said it you did it exactly the way you said it, so becareful how you word things.

We are in this underground maze,
Me: "so what are you going to do now"
Player: "I'm going to run until I can't run anymore"
Me: "You sure"
Player: "Yep."
Me: "Ok. Roll your D20"

Well he rolled a 1 so he basicly ran his happy but straight into a rock wall and knocked himself out cold. He sat there looking at me with this look like "why did you do that?" all I could say was... "Hey, I warned you"

Thats my moment.

[Balabanto]

This is my worst D+D moment ever. I was DMing, and the PC's are hunting a really big white dragon. In ice caves, even.

So they're fighting it, on the edge of an ice chasm, and one of the PC's says to me "I run up, leap, and land on the dragon's head."

Ominous silence occurs for about a minute. One of my players, who's been with the group two sessions TOTAL says this.

"Can you say...Scooby Snack?"

Player: I take two called shots to the eyes. (Rolls two natural ones, and we all know what that means in D+D on a to hit roll)

Me: So, oh, keeper of the initiatives, who goes next?

Keeper: The Dragon.

Me: (Rolling to hit with enlarged, hasted white dragon. This is second edition. The dragon did something like 2.7x it's base bite damage.) Dragon rolls to hit. Natural 20. Maximum damage. Rolls to hit with a claw. 20. Maximum Damage. 19 for other claw. That's it.

So. The dragon flips you up into the air, catches you with his mouth and bites, shoving you through his teeth with his claws in a greedy grinding blender. The dragon belches. Next....

I have more stories, but you'll have to get me to tell them later.

[Gnaskar]

In a campaign quite some time ago, our intrepid group of heroes were investigating a possible corporate front for GENOCIDE. So 3 of our characters, a cyborg, a martial artist and a magic-wielding character, decide to check it out by posing as investors. Well we all go in there, pass through a metal detector, and just a few steps from the elevator are greeted by a well dressed man (we'll call him Bob).

Well Bob gives us a very warm welcome and says that at the moment the corporate office we were there to visit was having it's mid morning break. The entire office. Not even one of us blinked an eye, we just said "Oh well that's too bad". He then offered to buy us breakfast, pardoned himself to the bathroom, and mysteriously disappeared.

We were all sitting around wondering what had happened to him, when the GM just couldn't contain his laughter anymore. You see, I had forgotten that my cyborg was a mutant- he had regeneration powers which is why he survived the operation to put cybernetic implants in him. The metal detector? A mutant detector. Mid-morning break? Just when does an entire floor of an office building go on a mid-morning break?

To be fair, none of us worked in an office environment so we thought it could happen. LOL, man were we ever stupid.

Was I the only one who read this and thought a cyborg should have had trouble enough with a normal metal detector? In my experience it's best to avoid things like that when you have hydraulics bolted to your thigh... (or a computer in your brain, or what not)

[input.jack]

Early CHAMPION game, run in 1983.

The PCs have just defeated an entire team of eight supervillains. The seven heroes are all conscious, alert, and fine. But most of them have things to do. The UNTIL agent asks if one of the heroes can ride along in the armored super-paddy wagon, to make sure the villains dont regain consciousness and do something dire.

None of the heroes volunteer.

EXCEPT for the scary looking guy who dresses like an Victorian undertaker, carries a razor-sharp magical scythe, and calles himself "Doctor Death; the Collector".

Now, the rest of the Players ALL know that Dr. Death begins each fight by writing the name of each and every villain on site down, in his Book of the Dead. (This is usually a Full Phase Action for him, and the PLayer just assumed that if there were more than five villains, it would take two Phases). If any of the villains survived the fight, Dr. Death would then strike their names from the book, looking very, very annoyed. Everyone thought this was funny, because the rest of the team all had Codes vs. Killing, and had managed to stop Dr. Death from keeping ANY names in his Book of the Dead. Until now.

Somehow, all 6 of the other PCs just blanked on what Dr. Death was really like. The team leader even told him to go ahead and ride in the back of the van!

Cut to the inside of the van, some three blocks from the scene, and Dr. Death knocks the single UNTIL agent in back wtih him out. Dr. Death's Player then mimes picking up his scythe.

Light gently dawns on the other Players, who begin to look horrified....

Dr. Death: *SLASH!*

Its not as much fun this way....

*SLASH!*

...But Ill take what I can get.


So Dr. Death callously murders eight helpless, bound human beings, and merrily hops out of the van when it stops at the next light, blood dripping from the scythe and the doors of the police van.

Dr. Death's Player was quite gracious about retiring the character, who (naturally) was placed on the Most Wanted list, and became an NPC villain.

Half the other PCs had the decency to retire over the indicent.

It still gets brought up from time to time.

[CrosshairCollie]

Early CHAMPION game, run in 1983. (Snip)

I have to admit, I probably would have 'fallen' for it because I couldn't have imagined that character making it past the GM.

[jkwleisemann]

Maybe not, but I'd like to think I'd have caught it. The guy is blatantly a killer, and you send him off on an errand where the *stated goal* is to keep the guys from regaining consciousness?

C'mon, it's like you're begging for it, at that point....

[CrosshairCollie]

Maybe not, but I'd like to think I'd have caught it. The guy is blatantly a killer, and you send him off on an errand where the *stated goal* is to keep the guys from regaining consciousness?

C'mon, it's like you're begging for it, at that point....

It's one of my hangups, as it were ... I tend to assume that everybody has the same compunction against playing evil characters that I do (aka I never do and never will and will never allow one as a GM), so I would assume that this guy is simply playing up an act to intimidate people like, well, Batman or something.

[matrix3]

It's one of my hangups, as it were ... I tend to assume that everybody has the same compunction against playing evil characters that I do (aka I never do and never will and will never allow one as a GM), so I would assume that this guy is simply playing up an act to intimidate people like, well, Batman or something.
If I'd been GM, I would probably have fallen for something like this, too. At least, if the guy didn't have some PsychLim like "Casual Killer" or "Reaps Souls for His Master". Then, even I would have been alert to his danger...

[input.jack]

-I- was the GM for that game. It was my first time running a Champions game solo, and I had seven Players. Plus, the guy playing Dr. Death was -really- hard to anticipate. He was working on being a stand-up comedian (it was 1983, after all), and I couldnt tell what he was going to do or not.

Plus, this was about the eighth combat the team had been in, and hed never managed to kill anyone. I was counting on the other PCs to run interferance.

I always include a major NPC now, to make sure I have a voice. ;)

[Pawthorne]

D&D campaign..

The characters have finally made it to the tome of the Evil Undying Pharaoh King where his armor and sword lay in a golden sarcophagus. The armor shimmers in an evil blue glow and the warped, negative energy runes along the sword seem to shift and coil with dark intent. The naked blade hisses mist into the air like black dry ice.

Player: "Um, I pickup the sword and see what's under it."
GM: "you.. pick it up? The sword that was said to possess the evil spirit of the Evil Undying Pharaoh ing?"
Player: *casually* "Yeah, I just pick it up and put it down outside the sarcophagus. I wanna see if there's loot under it."
GM: "Your character would just pick up the huge, 2 handed, black-mist/rune covered evil soul-possessing sword that the Vizier warned you about?"
Player: *visibly frustrated* "YES, I move the damn sword and check under it!"
GM: "Ok, um. As your fist closes on the hilt made from the skin of murdered slaves, you feel your soul ripped into a million shreds as the Undying Pharaoh King's spirit possesses your body. Everyone roll for initiative."
Player: "Wait! what happened? I was just moving it!"

*sigh*.. I think I was more than fair with my warning.

[Karma]

I was counting on the other PCs to run interferance.


See that's how I would have played it. Even if he had the 'EVIL' Psych. Lims. Heck alot of my games have blatently evil PCs in them, as long as everyone accepts that when the *Heroes* realise that 'Dr. Death' isn't just playing it for atmosphere that they will take him down and the player will have to make a new character.

Then again I'm in a game where my character is EVIL, but since his Evil is focused on the greater EVIL the do-gooders are willing to let him be (apart from constant attempt to convert him to the side of Good which he only puts up with because these guys are his friends and are affective in helping him kill his enemies). Then again it is D&D and killing of Evil snake men isn't just allowed, it's encouraged.

[Korvar]

D&D campaign..

The characters have finally made it to the tome of the Evil Undying Pharaoh King where his armor and sword lay in a golden sarcophagus. The armor shimmers in an evil blue glow and the warped, negative energy runes along the sword seem to shift and coil with dark intent. The naked blade hisses mist into the air like black dry ice.

Player: "Um, I pickup the sword and see what's under it."
GM: "you.. pick it up? The sword that was said to possess the evil spirit of the Evil Undying Pharaoh ing?"
Player: *casually* "Yeah, I just pick it up and put it down outside the sarcophagus. I wanna see if there's loot under it."
GM: "Your character would just pick up the huge, 2 handed, black-mist/rune covered evil soul-possessing sword that the Vizier warned you about?"
Player: *visibly frustrated* "YES, I move the damn sword and check under it!"
GM: "Ok, um. As your fist closes on the hilt made from the skin of murdered slaves, you feel your soul ripped into a million shreds as the Undying Pharaoh King's spirit possesses your body. Everyone roll for initiative."
Player: "Wait! what happened? I was just moving it!"

*sigh*.. I think I was more than fair with my warning.

Seriously. Any time the GM says anything like "Uh, are you sure that's a good idea?" the answer is "No. No it is not a good idea. So my character is doing something else..."

[jkwleisemann]

*chuckles* Well, that depends on whether or not the action is in character for the *character*. More than once, I've been asked that, and answered:

"No, of course I'm not sure it's a good idea. I'm actually pretty damn sure it's a *bad* idea. But I got 20 points for this PsychLim, so I don't have much of a choice, now do I?"

[Manic Typist]

D&D campaign..

The characters have finally made it to the tome of the Evil Undying Pharaoh King where his armor and sword lay in a golden sarcophagus. The armor shimmers in an evil blue glow and the warped, negative energy runes along the sword seem to shift and coil with dark intent. The naked blade hisses mist into the air like black dry ice.

Player: "Um, I pickup the sword and see what's under it."
GM: "you.. pick it up? The sword that was said to possess the evil spirit of the Evil Undying Pharaoh ing?"
Player: *casually* "Yeah, I just pick it up and put it down outside the sarcophagus. I wanna see if there's loot under it."
GM: "Your character would just pick up the huge, 2 handed, black-mist/rune covered evil soul-possessing sword that the Vizier warned you about?"
Player: *visibly frustrated* "YES, I move the damn sword and check under it!"
GM: "Ok, um. As your fist closes on the hilt made from the skin of murdered slaves, you feel your soul ripped into a million shreds as the Undying Pharaoh King's spirit possesses your body. Everyone roll for initiative."
Player: "Wait! what happened? I was just moving it!"

*sigh*.. I think I was more than fair with my warning.



Alright, but that´s a dumb moment that led to a cool fight, right???

[Shadow Hawk]

Seriously. Any time the GM says anything like "Uh, are you sure that's a good idea?" the answer is "No. No it is not a good idea. So my character is doing something else..."

Dork Tower's Igor...
Drank a potion labeled "Potion of Exploding Entrails".
Grabbed a "Gem of obvious self destruction". Twice.
Attempted to slay a dragon from the inside.
I'm sure there are more.

[csyphrett]

I was ina cyber punk game once. I blooped an escape vehicle in the cockpit as it flew at me. The GM ruled the plane came straight down on top of me instead of staying straight.
CES