Truth imitates art? Espionage urban fantasy I've considered.

[Midas]

I've considered a modern fantasy where the villains are malicious "trolls" (or ogres, or bigfoot, whatever you call them locally, same critters) who are psychic and can persuade normals that the huge ape creature they see is just a man. It works well enough that few people see the real creature, but they never quite have the act down, and keep tripping the uncanny valley reflex.

 

Our Heroes would be people who get roped into foiling the plots of the trolls.

 

Then these two posts show up...

 

 

"Back then, it was like pre-internet...numerous BBS's...

So this guy replies to one of my messages on time about us playing D&D, and he says he is in the next town over...

 

So he asks if he can come join our next game, and I tell him that would be fine. Thank GOD that next session was not at my house though and it was at a friends house, we gave him directions to my friends house.

 

So the day before our game, I get a message from him, asking if he can "dress up" for his part, he says he is playing a battle worn fighter who has been though a lot of hard times...

 

So we go to my friends house, and it is dark out, and I remember his Mom was in the living room watch TV by herself, and we are gaming in his kitchen. We hear a car pull up, and look outside, I see a big guy getting out (I forgot to mention he was in his early 30's)... I can't see him because it is dark, but I can tell he is a massive guy. Not super fat or anything, just big, like Andre the Giant or something.

 

So he comes up and knocks, and I make my friend answer it because it is his house. We are in the kitchen, and he is gone for several minutes. He finally comes in the kitchen, his eyes are open wide and he is white as a ghost. He is carrying like a dozen D&D books with him (the guys).

 

And a second later, the man enters the room and we probably all got the same look as my friend. This guy is about 7 feet tall, maybe 350 pounds. He is wearing tin foil amour with a dark bed sheet wrapped around him and safety pinned around his neck like a cloak. He also has a plywood sword that is wrapped in foil and a pair of nunchucks (those two sticks with a rope in the middle), and they are made out of paper towel tubes.

 

But that wasn't the freaky part...

 

Oh no, it get's worse. His face is all messed up, like almost like that guy Chunk from the Goonies, like we can't tell if it is fake like a mask, or real like his face is all messed up or something.

 

We played D&D, and the guy was just a plain old freak, talking to his imaginary friend, acting out scenes in the kitchen with his tin foil weapons... it was one of those things where we were all to scaired to say anything and just went along with it.

 

I remember at one point my friends Mom came out to see how we were doing, and she had no clue this guy was here, and she jumped about a foot when she came into the kitchen and saw him standing there.

 

Oh, one other thing I didn't mention, the guy had these massive boots on...

 

The reason I was glad the session was not at my house was because we decided (as a group) that the dude was just to freaky to have over again, we wondered what would have happened if he had gotten mad or something... So we never replied back. Apparently he drove over to my friends house a few times looking for us, and his Mom never answered the door.

 

We still to this day have no idea if he was wearing some kind of mask or if he really had a messed up face. Probably not a mask because of how poor quality his fake weapons and armour were... We wondered if he played D&D because he had a physical problem and that was a way he could 'disguse' himself and fit into a group by roll playing it and stuff.

 

Man oh man, I am in my mid 30's now and getting goose bumps recalling that night."

 

True story.

 

I run games at our local convention all the time...A guy walks by.

 

A big guy.

 

A HUGE guy.

 

I'm talking, morbidly obese. I can't even guess his weight, but if he had to sit down he'd need a chair for each ass cheek.

 

OK, no problem. Guy's got a glandular problem or something, right?

 

But following closely behind him is the smell. The reek. The stench. Like horse sweat and rotting garbage all mixed together. It's like a palpable cloud of stink. You know that cloud of dust that follows Charlie Brown's buddy Pigpen around? Like that, except not dust.

 

And it lingers. He continues past us down the hall, but the stink decides to stick around and hang out. I look at the people in the hallway around me, and they've all got the same horrified look that I have.

 

Man, I don't know. I guess his body was just too large for him to effectively wash, or that he's got colonies of fungus growing under the flaps of skin or something. But gawdamighty, it was bad. Maybe I should be sympathetic. All I know is that if he had walked up and said "I've got a ticket for your game," I would have shook my head and said that he couldn't play in my group. No way.

 

So maybe a couple of skunk apes have gotten the gaming bug?