The War Story Collection

[Chuckg]

As you might have known by now, I like to tell gamer war stories. Even in threads that aren't about them. We all have our Psych Lims...

 

So I figured since I like to both tell them and hear them, I might as well create a thread for them.

 

If you've got something you've always wanted to share but never found the 'right' thread to mention it in -- or if you have told it before but think it's been long enough that you wouldn't mind telling it again -- go ahead, trot it out. Storyteller's hour is now open!

[Chuckg]

As to what story I can tell that I haven't already...?

 

Ah yes, Fantasy Hero. A tale of tragedy and loss.

 

Once upon a time, in the land of the Five Kingdoms, there lived the free races -- the High Elves, the Dark Elves(1), the Mountain Kingdom, and the two rival human realms. The other races (halflings, gnomes, etc.) lived as tributaries or subjects of the largest five.

 

Danger this threatened this land in the form of the arch-sorceror Mordokaith, who sought to resurrect the Dark God himself(2) in a grand ritual that required five sacrifices... all of royal blood, one each from the five royal houses. (However, the ritual didn't require all the sacrifices to be done at once -- he could whack them as he caught them, in stages.)

 

One PC (mine) and one party NPC were, respectively, the younger daughters of the royal houses of the High Elves and the Dark Elves. Another one was the youngest son of the major human realm. My PC, Princess Avrielana, had started off the game as part of a diplomatic hostage exchange (my redundant youngest daughter for your idiot younger son) to seal a peace treaty between the largest human realm and the High Elves, who had just finished up an ugly border incident shortly before the arrival of Mordokaith.

 

Well, to cut a long campaign short, Mordokaith ended up scoring four out of five. He'd gotten a dwarf prince, two human kids, and a High Elven princess -- my older sister, as my PC wasn't home. So the game rapidly devolved down to 'if Mordokaith got the Dark Elven princess, the world died.'

 

Which is why Princess Avrielana, of the Royal House of Silvaraen, put aside millennias' worth of ancient enemy for the Dark Elves -- and used her own minor sorcery to take the place of their own youngest royal daughter.(3) Knowing that if Mordokaith kidnapped her, he would seal his own doom... not only would the sacrifice be incomplete, but the imbalance of blood (two from the same house) would completely throw the pentagram out of whack and obliterate his sorcerous powers entirely, rendering him easy meat for any swordsman.

 

Which is why Princess Avrielana lied to her bodyguards, told the party that her playing decoy was only meant to draw Mordokaith's strike force out when she actually meant it to kidnap her, deliberately tripped and sprained her ankle when she was busy 'running away' from his dragon-riding henchman, and actually had to hit her own chief bodyguard with a Fully Invisible daze spell to keep him from getting there in time!

 

And so she marched bravely to her death, knowing that her doing so was the only way in which an unstoppable horror could be forever vanquished.

 

(The meta-story behind the story is that we had an inexperienced DM who made vastly too powerful a villain for us to ever be expected to handle, and I had a choice of either walking out -- which was my first impulse -- or figuring out an extremely clever way to actually win the friggin' no-win scenario. When I finally figured out the above strategy, it was so thematically perfect that I honestly didn't mind having to throw one of my favorite characters onto the fire like a Presto log in order to make it work.

 

That game ended shortly afterwards, however.)

 

 

 

 

 

(1) Not drow. Think 'Lodoss'-style Dark Elves... i.e., just a bit dusky.

 

(2) Why yes, this /is/ one of the most standard fantasy plots of all time. Your point is?

 

(3) It helped that the two of them could damn near swap clothes anyway -- outside of minor differences in facial features and skin tones, one Elven Princess tends to be a lot like another.

[Doug McCrae]

Re: The War Story Collection

 

Originally posted by Chuckg

We all have our Psych Lims...

I thought you had a Catastrophic Irrational Attraction (1) to footnotes.

 

 

(1) A disadvantage from the DC Heroes rpg.

[Chuckg]

Feh, enough about me. Tell me your war stories, people! I didn't start this thread to listen to myself talk, I can do that anywhere.

[Mayday]

Well done! But I don't think I have anything to match that...

 

When I first started tabletop gaming our DM (AD&D) was a killer DM. He was trying very hard to level us up high enough to run a module but you could see the struggle. And when he finally got us to the minimum recommended levels, we died the first night. Sigh.

 

But, my story. My character was a homicidal elf named Lil. She didn't like other elves due to an ultra right wing orthodox upbringing that she just had to escape from. She was a terrible archer and inevitably would hit the paladin's warhorse or a PC if firing into melee, but nothing could hit her in return. She also failed every single charm check she ever made, including the 90% check.

 

So, we are in a crypt, the party splits up when the hulking first edition barbarian falls down a trapdoor. Lil jumps in after him to the DMs consternation and we find ourselves in the main tomb area with a sarcophagus and a statue of the dead man holding a really shiny black axe that screams 'Im EVIL!!!'.

 

The Barb player can see where this is expected to go, picks up the axe and surprise! Becomes possessed. The barb had dice such that he could never hit a female, so he attacks her and misses. Lil and he get in this very very LONG fight with her gradually whittling down his several hundred hitpoints with her scimitar and him never hitting her once. The rest of the party finally fights through the traps, minions and so on and arrives in time for her to land the final blow and bandage him. The priest performs an exorcism and we win. :-)

 

My best Champions moment was the Island of Dr Destroyer module. Mayday stealthed her way through the entire place while her teammates took the bull in a china shop entrance. We arrive at the final bunker and find Dr D about to launch his nuclear missile. The team goes in blazing, Mayday stealths around the perimeter to the computers and reprograms them to launch straight up, and come right back down again (BOOOM!)

 

Dr D finally notices and hightails it out of there as do we.

 

I just like that story because on my part it was successful entirely off of her skills.

 

Mayday's website has a complete and very long history just so I remember the fun times I had back then.

 

Back in AD&D one time we were told to make lvl 20 bad ass characters. There were 4 of us and we ended up with a fire mage, an ice mage, a thief who had been through the gladiator kit and three others for the bonuses he would get, to end up as a thief with kit, and my newly made character Akhen'Isis who was a 10/10 paladin/priestess of Isis. At that time Priestesses got 5% magic resistance for every level plus sorceress style spellcasting, she had all the paladin immunities and abilities plus a kick ass sword (not Holy Avenger).

 

After a few fights with hill ogres and the like we come to a swamp full of lizardmen with our horses and pack animals. While the two mages are squabbling over Fire vs Water/Ice the thief goes off to recon the lizard army. He clubs one and drags it back for questionning only to find that a patrol heard the two arguing and attacked us.

 

As a paladin I charge the biggest lizard in the back, the two mages roll initiative and launch fireball and ice storm centered on the SAME hex at the same instant. The lizards and the thiefs mule with its carefully hidden mega thief gear die instantly. The only time we had a reaction from the thief, just horrified. :-) As for me, I made both my 50% rolls and ignored the damage.

 

Soon after we arrive at a cave, go in and find the room packed with lizard skeletons. On a dais on the far side is a skeletal lizard wearing a crown and old rotting clothes standing beside a gigantic skeletal lizard armed with a humongous spiked club.

 

Pally priestess activates Flight and soars over the skeletons straight to the lich and starts hacking away. The thief starts stealthing around the edge of the room towards the dais. The ice mage drops a spell, the fire mage drops fireball in the enclosed space not remembering the new 5' per square ruling in effect for that evening, and incinerates the ice mage and all of the skeletons, and nearly the thief too as he had no idea where the thief was. The thief decides to leave while he's still alive.

 

Meanwhile the lich keeps casting spells on me. The only one that I fail my 50% on was disease which as a paladin I am immune to. Lich dies, giant skelly dies in a fiery heap.

 

It's alot of fun to beat the GM at his own game when he is trying to kill you.

[Chuckg]

Well, to be fair, the DM in the campaign I listed above wasn't malicious, he just didn't know WTF he was doing. When I finally came up with the sacrificial flame-out macguffin, he was as relieved as anyone... by that point in the game he was only fifteen minutes away from a player revolt, and he knew it. That's why he actually let my idea /work/, when there were no specific rules to justify it.(*)

 

Of course, the campaign ended shortly after that incident, for obvious reasons.

 

 

 

 

(*) Unfortunately, the other two party members were roleplaying, respectively, "obsessively loyal samurai-type bodyguard of my PC", and "fallen in love with my PC", so I couldn't tell either of the other two characters exactly what I had in mind... as they'd have had to RP trying to stop me! So I simply told them that I had /a/ clever idea, without telling them /what/ clever idea I had, and that held them for the rest of the night... by which point, it was all over.

[Mayday]

There was another AD&D game with Lil run by that same DM. After a previous adventure we come to a walled city around nightfall and see an inn. The guards inside the city stop us and start harassing the barbarian (same barb as above) who of course clocks one with a fist.

 

The guards react by pulling swords and attacking. We fight back (all except the thief played by the DM's girlfriend) and kill them. On our way back to the gate more patrols attack, we kill them, more show up, we kill them. We had mountains of miniatures lying dead around us. Finally the royal guards show up, and we kill them too. More show up with the same results then a clearly superior guy in incredible armor and warhorse shows up with HiS minions, a royal Duke. We kill him too and keep going for the gate. The royal PRINCE shows up in even better armor and we toast him as well. Next the KING shows up with his bodyguards and we kill them also.

 

We killed every guard in the entire city, and once we realize this we head for the castle and lock the doors. Collect as much royal treasure as we could stuff into the royal ship at the private royal docks, and sail away.

[Chuckg]

Oh, if we're trading *D&D* war stories, I gotta million of those...

 

Now, where'd I put that other message board post on that other forum? Ahhh, there it is...

 

Originally posted by Chuckg

The Tale Of the Sneaky Old Lich

 

Now, all liches are old... it kinda goes with the territory. And some are sneaky... you might recall the tale of Malark the Dark, for example. But only one lich in my experience has deserved the title of The Sneaky Old Lich in capital letters, as he made being old *part* of his being sneaky.

 

Once upon a time, a few gamers with the collective IQ of the Knights of the Dinner Table (pre-Sara) were schlumping along a tower. Their party thief was me. I was new to the campaign, and rapidly considering not sticking around long enough to get old in the campaign, but in any event, here we were.

 

In any event, our evil party was on yet another hack-loot-and-burn expedition to the local ruins, when the party's scout (me) turns the corner and immediately starts running a mental checklist.

 

Skeleton? Check.

 

Dressed in mage-robes? Check.

 

Holding a staff? Check.

 

Glowing eyes? Check.

 

Well, as fast as you can add "1 + 2 + 3 + 4" = "Why the *HELL* am I still here?", I immediately turn around and start breaking the lightspeed barrier in the other direction. For as the experienced gamer knows, the above combo spells "Lich".

 

Of course, as I run back through the entire party screaming "Lich! Run for it!", the party's leader... an arrogant lawful evil cleric of Bane... proceeds to demonstrate all of the forethought and strategic planning of a gazebo. No, wait, even the Dread Gazebo is smart enough not to screw with a lich... at least not if you're ony a 9th to 10th-level party. In second edition.

 

In any event, Sir Cleric The Extremely Dim proceeds to stop my "desertion" with a Hold Person spell. Since thief saving throws *suck* vs. Hold Person spells, I was paralyzed.

 

He seemed to think that paralyzing the scout as it fled in terror, instead of asking the scout *WHY* he's fleeing in terror, was a more productive activity.

 

In any event, the point was moot, for as the party was just starting to discuss how to punish my cowardly desertion of my post, the lich hobbled around the corner on its staff.

 

Immense complaining from the party about "Killer DM!" then commenced, until the DM started having the lich talk.

 

And it turned out that the lich was talking like it was completely senile. It quavered, it quibbled, it rambled, it had the oldest-sounding "Ay? Wot's that?" sort of 3000-year-old man voice, and it was about as menacing as the average retirement home inmate.

 

So the party, thinking that the DM had given them a 'harmless' lich to abuse as they saw it, proceeded to mock it.

 

The lich drew itself up, offended, and cast a spell. In response... a little blob of light dribbled out of its fingertip, bounced off the floor, rolled up against our feet, and sat there and did nothing.

 

Hysterical laughing commenced. Except from the paralyzed thief, who'd already figured out at least some of what was coming next, and was really wishing that he was un-paralyzed so that he could a) talk and run.

 

The lich, apparently frustrated at its spellcasting difficulties, then started casting another spell. The party, hoping to see an even more amusing spell failure, didn't even try to stop it this time.

 

So it waved its hands, and muttered, and... nothing happened. Well, nobody *saw* anything happen, at other rate.

 

And the lich then just stood there blinking and scratching its head, like it couldn't figure out what was happening.

 

Well, after another round of heartly laughter and unflattering comments directed at the lich, the party decided they'd had enough fun and skipped ahead to the "cut its head off and loot the corpse" stage.

 

So as our party fighter stepped forward, sword drawn, he...

 

... bounced his nose right off an invisible wall.

 

And at that moment, the lich straightened up and said in a perfectly *non*-senile and very Emperor Palpatine-like voice...

 

"Excellent."

 

At this moment, Dame Awareness began to dimly beckon to my fellow party members that maybe, just maybe, they'd miscalculated somewhere. So they asked the DM what was going on.

 

The DM continued on, in character.

 

"What is happening, my young fools, is that your fighter has just encountered the second spell I cast -- the one you *thought* did nothing. An Otiluke's Resilient Sphere."

 

(Note -- for those who don't play D&D, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere encases the target in a temporary, unbreakable, and *transparent* sphere of pure force.)

 

The party members started to gibber in fear.

 

"But... what was the *first* spell, then?"

 

And the lich smiled.

 

"Delayed Blast Fireball."

 

(I'd figured this out at least two rounds ahead of time, of course... and by this point, I'd gotten over being angry at getting killed by someone else's stupidity, to laughing at the expressions on their faces.)

 

You do not want to know what happens when one is locked /inside/ a spherical containment bubble of pure force with an exploding fireball.

 

Especially not when your DM, not satisfied at merely ruling that you have no normal saving throw, instead whips out the calculator, calculates the spherical volume that such a fireball would normally cover (and the sphere would be almost 200 feet in radius), divides that into the much smaller spherical volume of a 20-foot sphere (which for those of you who savvy math have just figured out means that the force of the blast is being multiplied about a thousand times)...

 

... and uses the previously-mentioned x1000 or so damage multiplier to calculate just what kind of hits we took.

 

12,000d6 or so worth of fire damage later, no save, we were officially adjudicated as being the first adventuring party in the history of the campaign to have successfully achieved hydrogen fusion.

 

And thus ends the tale of The Sneaky Old Lich.

 

[Mayday]

Oh I like that! I love liches anyway but thats funny.

 

Lets see, Champions stories.

 

There's the time Mayday stayed behind to guard the base while the rest of Vanguard went to investigate a sighting of our main enemy, Psiona, who we knew was hunting us down. At the last minute two others stayed behind with me. Just in case.

 

So Mayday happily uses her mechanical skills to whip up boobytraps and improve the defensive network capabilities. Back in the sealed off control room with the two, she's hacking the computer AI to improve its defenses also, when Psiona's forces (P.S.I.) arrive and start their seige led by SoulFire, when suddenly Mayday bursts into flames!

 

Immediately thinking, but thats impossible! My eyes go wide and I swing around to face our team pyro, jaw hitting the floor. "You ATTACKED me!" Our super regen brick, Prime Directive, quickly takes pyro's head off, literally, to find it was a ninja robot duplicate.

 

Realizing we've been compromized Prime suggests locking all the Vanguard out of the computers except for him and I. Prime is creepy and weird, but it makes sense. So she locks out everyone except herself and American Valor, our team leader who she'd trust with her life.

 

A hacker alert comes over our AI and Mayday gets into a hacker war with who claims to be Night Warden, our original team leader and Batman clone who died before she ever joined the team. Since obviously he's dead she tells the hacker as much and then blows up his keyboard in his face.

 

The hacking stops and Prime Directive calls for her attention. When she looks, the skin of his arm has done a Terminator. Hes a ninja robot also. And Mayday can't affect mindless robots at this point. Otis, the AI refuses to alert the team to whats happening, hes long been compromised and working for PSI. She tries a mind link with the first team member she locates, an ancient avatar of the egyptian moon god, who declines the mindlink. Before she can reconnect with someone else Robot Prime takes her out gently and Otis lets PSI in.

 

Vanguard returns to find Night Warden (surprise!) IS alive although he has to prove himself, (noone that arrogant couldnt be Night Warden) and they hightail it to PSI's secret base, under a laundromat. The building is set with explosives however, and Omen is standing right there watching her (grr). PSI sets the bomb timer and heads for their escape shuttle. Not wanting to die Mayday follows them but warns Vanguard to get out also.

 

AV follows the mindlink through several walls and boards the shuttle just as it launches. Psiona goes into a fit about betrayal (hey lady YOU kidnapped ME) and mind blasts Mayday. Mayday is built to take down mentalists. She is a mental brick with armor piercing Ego Attacks. Strapped into our seats we are trading blows when Mayday instead zaps the shuttle PILOT, utterly fries his brain and the shuttle keels over and dives for the ground.

 

PSI uses their teleport rings and escapes, AV grabs Mayday and protects her as the bomb goes off. Meanwhile rather than run, Vanguard had hunkered down in a blast proof armory after tossing out all the weapons, and exerted everything they had to generate rPd. They survived but AV and Mayday landed in the hospital for a few months. Well, she did. AV healed up in about a week.

 

The non-hositalized team members tracked PSI to a tanker in the Gulf (it was a New Orleans campaign) and boarded the ship. They beat up a few normals and entered the hold where they found rooms and scientific labs. They entered one of these empty rooms and the pneumatic door shut behind them. The room went dark. It went very quiet outside.

 

The lightning projector lit up the room and the guys pried open the door only to see a complete blackness on the other side. When one put his sword into the blackness nothing came back. After a half hour the room crashes onto a hillside somewhere that turns out to be the Jurassic.

 

The GM ended it there but said that if they could work out a way to get home he'd let them roll on it. These were their favorite characters and it took them a few weelks and a lightning storm, alot of scavenging from NightWardens gadgets, plus a lightning blast from the projector to repower the time capsule, but they made it.

[Blue]

This is excruciating! An opening for war stories big enough to drive a truck through, and yet I can come up with nothing. It's not possible that I've already told everything to you guys, is it? I mean I've been doing this over 20 years!

[Chuckg]

Well, *I* haven't heard them before...

[nexus]

Strange Love

 

This is the weirdest thing that's happened in a game I was gming and it was totally without any planing on my part. I was gming a team between two characters from different, but linked campaigs, Black Widow and Spider Queen. Both were female, spider themed martial artists who even bore a coincidental physical rememblance to each other. So I decided to make them long lost sisters. During this adventure they would uncover the ancient Spider cult responsible for their birth and powers.

 

Little did I see the character...falling in love. And becoming intimate. And there was nothing I could do to stop it without ruining the mystery which had been building for awhile. And, to be honest, part of me found it hysterically funny. I have to admit the look on the player's faces when it came out in the end was priceless too.

[Hermit]

Just last night... a PC and NPC have gotten hitched in my Champions game. Each had a bachelor/bachlorette party, and got totally smashed (along with most of the rest of the PC group... plus Witchcraft who is a friend of Nightbringer).

 

Enter Firewing.... looking for a rematch with a hero who has not shown, and is angry enough to lash out at buildings at being stood up as it were.

 

Our hereos, still smashed, race to do battle. One of the heroes, Poltergeist, has the power of possession.. .and tries to enter him. I see she does not have the ability to affect an alien class of minds, but at the same time, I figure it should have some effect. Firewing makes an ego roll and expells her.... but she's stone cold sober.

 

And Firewing seems to have gotten her intoxication.

 

So we have a drunken Malvan, several drunken heroes doing battle in MC.

Hilarity ensues. A cab is thrown at Firewing (When one of the sober heroes tells a drunken one to "get a cab" ... the message was misunderstood), one shoots right through a Nar Cola sign on a missed move through... so on.

The Champions rush up to help and turn the tide, and Firewing is brought low (and will likely have a hangover to boot).

 

I don't know about the players for sure, but 'I' had fun.

[Tim]

How did you handle intoxication? hat penalties did you give?

[Hermit]

I think (as I'm not sure) I played a bit fast and loose with it, giving a -1 to -3 (most minus 2) on Dex checks, OCVs and EGO rolls depending on how smashed they were.

[Blue]

Anthem's First Adventure

 

The character was actually in Chaosium's Superworld, but has since been transplanted. Campaign Concept: Each player builds a normal and a low-power character. That way the GM can vary the level of the adventure. "Today you'll only need your sidekicks". There were three players (including me).

 

The GM decided to learn the Superworld mechanics by running me through a game (since we were roommates at the time). I built the low-power character first (Anthem).

 

While my main character would be the studly primary hero, the sidekick was going to be a much simpler, weaker character; a teenage girl with the unexplained ability to take massive amounts of damage. In my current campaign she's got the max DEF allowed for a starting character and some Damage Reduction.

 

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

 

For some reason we're based in Chicago (I think just for a change of pace). Anthem goes out on patrol with her selection of shurikens and her snazzy new unfiorm, which is a combination of exercise clothing, a leotard, and an american flag that has been fashioned into the jacket (there's a story behind the flag).

 

She comes across the train tracks and can see that there is a soft glow coming from inside one of the cars, which is not surprising. Likely some hobo is keeping himself warm. But she realizes that half the cars parked here are tankers, some marked flammable, so she goes over to ask them to put it out and move to another car. She calls to them and there's movement inside. When she reaches the door she can see through the crack that a figure has just jumped out the other side wearing protective flameproof clothing. Inside the car she can see the fire in a small spot, but she can hear the hiss of a cannister of propane that is sitting in the room. When she realizes there are a dozen of them, she tries to force the door open and put it out. But she's a low strength character that relies on minor martial arts training to do dammage. She squeezes through the narrow opening, knowing that the cannister likely won't fit back out once she does, but she figures she can either put out the fire or throw it through the roof panel that is open.

 

KABOOMIE! It goes off and the GM apologizes. "Either you can make another character or we can just say this never happened."

 

"No way," I say. "She's a newbie. She's supposed to do the occasional stupid thing. Besides, you haven't rolled damage yet."

 

GM: "Well, I said there were ten cannisters but I think that's too high."

 

Me: "Oh, c'mon. No takebacks. Roll away."

 

The GM rolls slightly above average. And tells me the damage without making eye contact. I apply it. Then I double-check. Then I tell him to check it in the book and make sure I did it right.

 

GM: "Why?"

 

Me: "Because she's still conscious."

 

GM: (after checking) "That's some serious defense but not much offense I notice."

 

Me: "You said she'd be fighting agents. I figure she can take them out. She'll have all kinds of trouble with the big guys until I buy up her offense. Until then she can just piss them off by staying awake."

 

GM: "You might have taken some damage for being blown some distance."

 

He calculates more damage.

 

Me: "I'm conscious so I'd like to somehow land safely."

 

I don't recall if there aren't any stunning rules or if we just didn't apply them. Either way he let me be acrobatic and land safefly. Then I point out something I knew would hurt me.

 

Me: "Did the other tankers go up?"

 

GM: (winces) "Probably." (rolls dice) "Actually... no. The nearest is seriously damaged but in tact.

 

Me: "Where is flamesuit guy?"

 

GM: "He's further away. Still in the blast radius though." (Rolls damage. Laughs to himself.) "You dont' see him."

 

Me: "I'll go the direction he went."

 

GM: "Well, with a search of the area, as the fire engines approach from the distance, you find parts of him."

 

Me: "...Parts?"

 

GM: "Burning uniform here. Hand there. His flamesuit apparently wasn't blast-proof."

 

Me: "So... guy sets bomb to either blow the tankers up or blow me up, but turns out to be the only victim. Anthem's first lesson: Don't confuse EVIL with SMART."

 

GM: "Seems that way."

 

I make sure the fire is contained before leaving as the fire trucks approach.

 

Next day I learn that the villain was actually a vigilante. I decide to break into the rail yard office and check their records. It seems the flammable containers weren't really flammable; just hazardous. If he'd blown it up correctly the chemical would have gotten into the air. The vigilante had apparently attempted to draw attention (via fire) to the illegal activities of the rail yard. He didn't expect to even damage the tankers much. The explosion was as big as he wanted.

 

The GM says he failed to anticipate how much the explosion would hurt his NPC, a hero called EXTREME (This was in the years before this became a common MTV adjective).

 

While in the rail yard trying to leave with the records I come across the watchman. He tells me to drop them and I should have realized there was no way he should have been able to see me unless he had special senses. I flee with the records knowing I can outrun a watchman. He, however, goes "crinos" (to use a WoD) term and becomes a hulking werewolf that proceeds to toss my character all over the rail yard.

 

My charact attempts to elud this guy for about two hours (real time!), getting smacked around, ducking through sewers, going into abandoned buildings, trying to flag down cops (who run like hell when it comes out of an alley). This is when the other players enter the game and help take him down.

 

During the fight, she got knocked through a plate glass window and got up. Then she got knocked into a wall and when everone through she was down she got up and jumped on its back. Finally they subdued him and I turned over the evidence to the police.

 

It was fun, sloppy, and just like it should be fore a rookie hero. And part of that was because of the fact that it was the first time using the system.

[Guest joen00b]

Back in the AD&D days, we had a player named Doug who loved to be the center of attention. Doug is a smart, creative, intellectual player who can test the limits of any GM, and if they give him the chance, he takes it. Of course, when he does push them, he seems to think he can reverse time when he's pushed them too far, but he forgets at that point the GM is usually a bit pissed at him.

 

We had one GM by the name of Josh who was downright ruthless. He and his brother Matt would co-GM campaigns to make sure neither would miss story points and it made it easier in combat situations for two GMs to help resolve player rolls and get it done faster. Faster combat = more time for another combat, etc. It's basically agreed that combat takes up most of game time, and Matt and Josh were great at efficiency.

 

Well, Doug would start off his little 'escepades' by announcing he is sneaking away from the rest of the party. At that point, everyone in the group knew it was a good time for smoke breaks, food breaks, hell, run home and do a few loads of laundry because Doug would suck all of the GM's attention with his little escepades. Luckily we had 2 GM's for this grand campaign, and while Matt would try to deal with Doug, Josh ran us through the motions of the rest of the campaign.

 

Finally, about our 10th or so gaming session, Josh anounces "The kid gloves are off. You know the way we run the game, you know what to expect from us, we're no longer going to go soft on you." This was more of a warning for Doug than the rest of us.

 

We pull into a town, and my archer immediately starts looking for Bowyers (as my bow was broken in a fight), basically, everyone was going off to get supplies, food, entertainment... it was our first stop in a town in about 3 months according to the beginning story and time that had passed since we started. Doug immediately takes off to go stealing.

 

I can still remember the way it happened. He took Matt to an aside to begin his little adventure and about 10 minutes into it, Josh butts right in and saays: "He points his crossbow at you while his son rings the bell for the Town Watch." Doug thought it was the greatest thing! He had both GM's attention, effectively stopping the game while we listened on. A few people in town began chasing him and the town guard caught up, they closed the city gates, as his reputation had then preceeded him (he was egging the guards on) and they finally cornered him. He turns with blades drawn, ready to fight out of the corner against 20 some guards! Thus far, we had all been watching for 15 minutes while Doug was attempting to make a mockery of Josh and Matt. There were at least 20 guards in front of them, half with crossbows, half with long spears, and another 15+ on the walls walkway with crossbows.

 

Josh tells Doug in roleplaying: "Drop your weapons and turn yourself in for your crimes or your corpse will be decorating a cage!" Doug, roleplaying back: "You'll never take me alive!"

 

Jsh reaches over, grabs Dougs character shhet, crumples it up, takes a lighter to it above the sink and excuses Doug from the rest of the game. Doug, increduously, looking on as the GM is trying to light the crumpled paper with a Zippo, is unsure of what just happened. Matt, with great glee after weeks of having Doug take up valuable game time with his antics announces: "Your character is dead, you can rejoin the the gaming group once this campaign is over."

 

Doug began spitting out all sorts of excuses to how they wouldn't have been able to kill him, he would do this, do that, etc. Josh tells him "You have been stealing my GM partner for weeks on end for hours at a time to do nothing but be a pain in our collective asses. If you want to go through with this, fine!" He grabs dice, asks for an AC, then begins to riddle the thief with 35 crossbow bolts, followed up by 10 long spears. The damage was astounding and he was dead, Josh told him to get the f*ck out and never come back.

 

Doug began playing in another campaign of a communal friend, he tried his stuff on him, the GM (who was playing in Josh and Matt's campaign and knowing what was going to happen), would tell him, hold on, hold on, in a minute, etc. At the end of the night, after he had worked with the rest of the group in furthering the campaign, he would ask Doug: "What was it you wanted to do?" He would say, break into a house, or steal something, and he would get the standard reply: "There was no money in the pouch, it was filled with stones to make you steal it instead of the real money... ok, thanks for coming by guys, same time next week." or "The window is locked and you can't get in... ok, thanks for coming by guys, same time next week."

[Chuckg]

I have a 'torture the DM' story of my own.

 

Now, I am not a saint. I like attention, I like outwitting the DM, and I especially like taking an 'unwinnable' scenario and breaking it. But I know my personality flaws and try to either channel them into acceptable directions, or restrain them when they're going to screw up the game.

 

However, one DM in particular -- a guy called Dave -- unleashed my inner beast.

 

Now, when it comes to gaming with people who I didn't like in games I didn't enjoy, I have several lifetimes worth of experience... there was a "gaming drought" in my life where the only gaming I could find was the community college RPG club. Since by campus rules no officially sanctioned club -- and unofficially sanctioned clubs couldn't use table space for club activities -- could turn away membership save for non-eligibility (i.e. -- wasn't a student on-campus), that meant we got stuck with everybody you never wanted to game with.

 

Couldn't back out, though. I was committed... and, well, desperate. But little did I know...

 

Anyway, Dave had several bad habits as a DM:

 

1) His buddy Mark -- not the same Mark I game with now, who's a cool dude -- got treated differently than the rest of us. And by "differently", I mean "sonofabitch might as well have had 12d6 Luck".

 

2) Dave brought his religious biases to the game table -- blatantly. And his religious biases were 'your religion sucks and is full of evil people and only a retard would believe it and I will blatantly rub your nose in it every day'.

 

At first this wasn't readily apparent... the D20 campaign was loosely based on medieval Europe, and the Church /did/ have a lot of bastards then. But it's possible to give even the Inquisition an unbalanced portrayal if you put enough back into it, and Dave did.

 

And worst of all,

 

3) Dave was boring. Scenarios all took the same form, and we never met quality opposition. It was an 18th-level orc hunt, basically.

 

 

The campaign was D&D 3e, the party level was 18th, and the party alignment was "evil". I was playing Devlin, a 15th-level NE half-dragon rogue. Devlin had his good points -- he was intelligent, strong-willed, a master mariner and merchant, and the slickest tongue in the west. He also had his bad points --he was a greedy sociopath who not only /would/ sell his parents into slavery for a quick buck, but /had/. Well, at least the human parent, the dragon parent was a bit beyond him.

 

My friend Bob was playing Infernis... 18th-level CE high priest of Ahriman.

 

Oddly enough, the two became friends -- as in, 'Infernis realized that Devlin was most useful to him', and 'Deviln realized that Infernis was the true power in the party, and that it's a lot better to be on his side than the other one'.

 

At first, we were merely trying to do what 18th-level evil PCs do... attain mass wealth and power. Until we noticed that Mark's PC somehow always got the "good" item in treasure picks... to the point of getting a Ring Of Three Wishes when the rest of us were getting like 10,000 gp. And that NPCs seemed to always defer to Mark's character without rolling, while the rest of us had to max our Bluff and Diplomacy to get anywhere. And etc.

 

Anyway, a couple sessions in me and Bob have hit critical mass. Our own plans for slowly amassing a power base are going OK, but Mark's just having everything fall into his lap without even needing to RP.

 

So instead of leaving, we decided to break the campaign.

 

And then, what I can only call divine inspiration struck.

 

Now, we were playing a 'high fantasy' variant of the medieval world -- elven island kingdoms where Atlantis should be, the medieval Church actually having clerical powers, dwarves in the mountains, an Underdark society in the sewers of Byzantium, etc, etc. So we had opportunities.

 

So we hauled out our copies of "The Book Of Vile Darkness" and noticed something... there are rules in there for permanently 'aspecting' areas with evil mana by peforming dark deeds there. Well, a level four aspected area, aka "Darkness The Likes Of Which The World Has Never Seen", has a rather curious property -- any evil magic cast in such an area is absolutely undispellable.

 

Of course, in order to 'taint' an area that thoroughly, you must perform something on the order of the birth of a dark god... or the genocide of a sentient race. Impossible, no?

 

And then I remembered that Dave had said in the first week that the "last several hundred survivors" of the drow race lived under Constantinople. (Yes, I know, the Inquisition and the height of Constantinople aren't historically at the same time. So? Fantasy world.)

 

Well, several hundred actually *is* a manageable # for an 18th-level party, especially if you cheat and use prep time and lots of fire elemental summons.

 

And most especially if you don't even directly fight the drow, but simply use large fires underground and in the air shafts to suffocate the bastards. (Elemental Swarm and an 8th level cleric/10th level Fire Elementalist is your /friend/!)

 

And then we stole(1) Mark's Wishing ring and use to Wish open a temporary portal to the home plane of Ahriman, Infernis' deity... and Bob's own Miracle spell to make the portal permanent... and the genocide of the drow to make it undispellable.

 

In short, we permantly opened the Hellmouth. Directly underneath the world's seat of civilization. After first *creating* the Hellmouth from scratch.

 

Four weeks into the game.

 

Dave was /very/ put out that we broke his little planet, but he didn't have any way to stop us without cheating so openly that even he couldn't get away with it. The game ended very shortly thereafter.

 

Of course, I'd never do any such thing to a DM who was actually /trying/, but when the DM isn't playing fair, neither will I. Nor my friend Bob.

 

 

 

 

(1) He accidentally tripped and fell on the party fighter's +5 sword while coming back onto the ship one night, right after Infernis had accidentally cast a couple of spells... such as "Harm" and "Channel Via Undead". (Our party fighter was a PC vampire. Evil campaign, and all that.)

[Mayday]

Very early in my GMing days (IE when I really sucked at it) I created Carman & Co. A group of people assembled by Carmen Cadiz with the purpose of keeping tabs on them all and curbing their less benign impulses. It was a large group, once I started I just kept making more and more of them. C&Co had houses everywhere, linked by a teleporter network. Members included people from several nations, all ages, professions and motivations.

 

Carmen herself had no real powers. I think she could create a sort of blue glow. But she had Presence, wealth and was a high society figure.

 

Her right hand man was Salvo, who had built himself a powered armor suit and over time had become dissatisfied with the state of the world. Politicians who squabbled and stole and abused the trust of their people, wars for no good reason, people that starved while other nations threw away food.... His girlfriend was Prima Donna, a SuperModel with pheremone powers of mind control.

 

My two heroes followed Salvo back to his base in a complex of supposedly derelict buildings, underground in a high tech facility with a nuclear power plant. They got in and split up. The male PC, also an armored hero, found Prima and Salvo's personal quarters, with her taking a shower. She assumed it was Salvo and said she'd be out in just a minute, and came out in a wet towel to greet her lover.

 

The PC took off his helmet and pretended to be Salvo although their armor looked nothing alike (and he looked nothing like Salvo who's face he'd never seen). Without blinking an eye she shimmies her way onto his lap and lets him get a really big hit of pheremones, then freezes him in place and gets the real Salvo on her cellphone to get over here.

 

The female PC saved him and they ended up fighting Salvo in the control room containing the nuclear reactor (of course). I carefully described the coolant cables leading to the reactor along with the rest of the room and the armored PC decided to shoot them, causing what would have been a nuclear meltdown underneath New York City.

 

Somehow they averted it and took over the base for their own. Once they discovered the teleport network they started launching raids on Salvo and Prima by porting directly into their houses. The network was global and so they often bounced, at full combat readiness, into the middle of a Carmen house party that featured a US Senator and the Ambassador from England, or an Aegean yacht party that included the Prime Minister of Greece.

 

When I left for college they ran the game for themselves and it got much better. :-)

 

I had introduced a thug named E. Blayne (Evil Blayne) and his twin a Texas Sheriff with a cowboy fetish (dubbed Evil Evil Blayne by my players). E Blayne assalted one of the lesser members of C&Co, a New Jersey housewife with a 1d6 flaming fingertip who's sole motivation was to be a wife and mom and not burn down the house. She killed him for it and with E.E. Blayne the Sheriff on her trail headed for Mexico, followed by Channel 5 Live!.

 

Channel 5 LIVE! was a trio composed of a vain news guy with perfect hair, a camera guy who was never around and always found in an alley passing over mysterious packages for mysterious cash filled envelopes. The third was the driver/mechanic of the news van who hated his job, his co-workers, Texas, criminals, police, technology, nature.... The van kept breaking down and so each night while the Hair was filming his live reports ("...Day FIVE of the Killer HouseWife ManHunt!) in the background just barely on camera could be seen and heard the mechanic cursing up a storm, kicking the van, throwing his tools and giving the REAL story... in short, Channel 5 LIVE! ratings went through the roof as this mechanic/driver became a must-see tv celebrity.

 

While I hated the fix my poor housewife was in the news reports were hysterical. Channel 5 LIVE! had been my creation also, they mysteriously showed up anytime superheroes broke out into a fight.

 

Another Channel 5 LIVE! escapade involved one of my mad scientists, a genetic engineer who dumped his monstrosities (half eagle half scorpion! Half bunny half doberman!) into the sewers. Sanitation workers began to go missing or refused to show up for work. Dog walkers started losing doggies and joggers too. Eventually the national guard was called in and Channel 5 LIVE! interviewed their CO near one of the manholes. Behind him you could see the well armed brave young soldiers dropping in all very professionally while the CO assured the public that the problem did not exist but would be cleared up in no time.

 

You heard gunfire, then screams, more gunfire, a boot came sailing out of the manhole and the CO never blinked, he stayed firmly On Message looking straight into the camera as behind him flamethrowers laid down covering fire and tentacles (half squid half jellyfish!) started coming out and grabbing more soldiers. Very much like the scene in Aliens.

 

They never did entirely clean out the sewers and later on my Mechanon-like villain Cyber took over Costa Rica, renaming it Cyberica. In order to defeat him Salvo took over El Salvador, and renamed it El SalvoDor. Cyber sent an army of robots walking across the Gulf of Mexico's seabed towards Florida, unfortunately I dont remember how it was stopped but I do know that El Salvodor was not hooked into the teleport network.

[ChuckB]

Had one game where I was the GM (our group rotates GMs) and had a scenario in upstate NY where this small , snow-bound was completely deserted except for the adults who all hung themselves , all the TVs were playing this odd '50's test-pattern that showed a dog's head snapping at ballet dancing marionettes that danced just out of reach , there was a merry-go-round operating at a much higher rate of speed than normal and there were other bizarre details as well.

 

The players investigated for awhile and then local authorities told them that 3 super-villains (Pulsar , Dragonfly and Ogre) were robbing a NYC bank and it was bring your daughter to work day so there were lots of children hostages.

 

The PCs (very begrudgingly) left the mystery to deal with the bank robbery instead.

 

Later on I told them that the earlier scenario didn't really have a conclusion and I dropped it into the lap of one of the other GMs (who did a good job creating an adventure around all the bizarre details I'd left him).

[Chromatic]

One of my favorite remembered adventures involved the Boston Protectors campaign. Some insightful background:

 

This was fairly early in the 11 year run of the campaign, probably year 2 or 3. The group was rather imballanced flavorwise:

 

Scales: (played by Lemming) Big, strong, slow, covered in metal scales. Didn't have his full magic or VPP at this time.

 

Chromatic Dragon: Martial Artist, Scientist/Skills guy. Think Batman with less gadgets and a better kick.

 

Allen Richmond: Normal guy, favored student of Chromatic, basically a highly skilled normal DNPC.

 

Veronique: Super fast martial artist with a nifty amulet with a bunch of ultra slots: desolid, invisibility, ego attack, teleport.

 

Danielle, Veronique's DNPC : another highly trained normal.

 

Ice Avenger: Had cold powers no flight, but armor, blast, darkness, some sciences that Chromatic didn't have.

 

Con-Man: Brickish, with obviously very high Con.

 

BattleDroid: Big alien robot of battle.

 

Artful Dodger: Martial artist, who was rumored to have two peg-legs (character assassination through poor artistic capabilities-wheeee)

 

the group was clearly hand-to-hand heavy. And at this point in the campaign, very light in the occult knowledge.

 

We had been fighting groups of villains over shards of power, mystically powerful artifacts that could be tapped into and boost power levels. There had been roughly half a dozen or so encounters and the group had been partially successful in collecting the artifacts (Sam Bell's villain group the Sorority had collected the other bits).

 

We eventually manage to get all the artifacts together in one spot (organized a truce with the Sorority) so that our two teams great minds could work together to discover the secret behind the power of the stones.

 

Through some suberb dice rolls, and a leap of logic from the players, we figured out that all the power source stones possibly fit together to form a larger mass.

 

It is decided that this is a _good_ thing. (in hind sight I see how foolish this was, ah but we were young and powerful at the time). Cut forward to the "big bad" scenario:

 

When all the pieces are fitted together we discover they form a giant pentagram. It is at this point, that Danielle runs up and steps into the center of the powersource/pentagram. (now as I recall this adventure, there were a lot of wierd unexplained things that had been happening to the heros--the reason for that becomes immediately apparent) There is a huge explosion, and instead of Danielle, DNPC human; Glasya, ruler of many planes of Hell stands at the ready, laughing at us foolish humans.

 

We have a huge battle, Protectors and our arch-nemesis the Sorority on one side, Glasya and her summoned hoards of demons on the other.

 

We were doing ok, holding our own, until this exchange happens:

 

GM: OK, Glasya moves across the area and blasts at you three Martial Artists.

Players: we dive for cover. (three delays are used up)

GM: Glasya's Spear gets to take its move on phase 3 now....

Players: wild looks of confusion until we get the understanding of the situation: Glasya has her Spear and Spetum bought as followers (on half her points) -- basically sentient weapons.

 

The shock wears off and we manage to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory, and Glasya gets away that evening. She would return (a number of times) and eventually we beat her and banished her back to whence she came.

[Ken Solo]

Back in '98 (a lifetime ago for some of you I know, but for me, the last stable campaign I ran- if I dare call my players 'stable') I started a campaign with the adventures in the back of the BBB. The players and their characters were diverse to say the least. I'll briefly describe the characters, the players shall remain anonymous.

1. Mental Midget - a 15-year-old midget mentalist.

2. Doc Shock - a MD with electrical powers (whose player had an unnerving ability to roll 13 'vitals' on hit location with his electric grab maneuver. We came to call it his "Turn your head and scream" attack)

3.Tank - a woman with 140 STR and a "why shouldn't I kill the bad guy? Or you for that matter?" attitude

4. Mr. Black - The quintessential G-Man (Dist. Feat: Dark suit and glasses and radio earpiece)

5. Atonement - a long dead ghost that built himself a physical body so that he can atone for past sins. He can shed this shell at will.

All the PC's (except Midget and Atonement) are members of SPAD (federal police) Mob Rule is the scenario. They see the drive by assassination attempt on the Mob boss, and investigate like good little Feds. Few days latter Tank sees a man thrown out a 5th story window. She catches him and jumps up to see two Viper agents in the apartment. For kicks, she throws one out the window, and arrests the other. They get the clue about avoiding Pier 17 next night. Our Feds show up, fight the Viper agents, and stop the weapons shipment. However, the property damage is high as Tank used the CARGO SHIP as a missile weapon to take out the sniper on the roof near by.

The team had some issues, but got the call about the bank robbery and arrived on the scene. Atonement went ghostly to scout out the interior situation, as any team with an invisible, desolid scout should do. (this part is foreshadowing for what happens later) Mr. Black calmly declared everyone under arrest as the wall exploded out at him. Ogre and the Viper agent bank robbers are subdued. They have to put up with Barbie Binkers the TV reporter (actually an undercover Viper agent) (I loved this role!) They also meet Merry Franks a newspaper reporter who is a little more understanding.

They put clues together, the save a baby from a house fire and are generally feeling good about themselves. (I decided to give them a few heroic things to do so they can fully appreciate just how spiffy they are compared to normals, but I felt they needed one more easy fish...)

Their car parked at a stoplight under a highway overpass, a carjacker steps up and waving a Saturday Night Special, demands the car. Doc Shock steps on the gas, but Tank gets out. She grabs and throws the would be assailant straight up THROUGH the bridge. As his pulped corpse causes a traffic pileup, Tank casually leaps up and takes his wallet. The remaining team climbs the embankment and tries to arrest her, but she resists! So between Midgets ego-blasts and Shock's DEX drains she is taken down. A whirlwind trial lands her 7 years in Stronghold for manslaughter. Merry Franks writes an article lamenting the tragedy of a superhero snapping under the immense pressure of her powers. WJOY’s Barbie Binkers warns the public that any one of the Fed super team could turn on us next. Serpent (the Viper nest leader) is pissed, as he wanted all this limelight for himself. He calls the Assissinos.

OK. So here comes the part where the women are kidnapped and the heroes are supposed to go to the junkyard (where the supervillian team lies in wait) to free them. But, they refuse to bite. Midget just mind scans for Merry Franks (whom he has interviewed with) and tracks her to the mansion lair of the Serpent. Atonement went ghostly to scout out the interior situation, as any team with an invisible, desolid scout should do. He went in the basement window, saw the hostages, went back out the basement window, and reported back that two Viper agents guard them. The team charged up the long, long driveway to the mansion, up to the front door, kick it open and charged in, and were cut to pieces by all the emplaced Viper agents and automated guns. --- Ya see, Atonement only scouted the basement, even after hints like “Is there anywhere else you’d like to go while you are invisibly scouting?†What could I do?

Doc Shock survived the crossfire because he had prioritized freeing the hostage, and so rode the power lines into the basement (teleport, only where electric outlets are). He eventually just surrendered.

Ahhh, the classics.