Strange Research - GMing can lead to weird places sometimes

[Armitage]

I've often wondered if I'm on some federal watch list based on internet searches I've done for Champions adventures.  Quick examples:  nuclear weapons, missiles, plus the various Google Maps views I've done of prisons, military installations, etc.

 

 

There was a story in Knights of the Dinner Table in which they were playing themselves during the start of a zombie apocalypse, so Brian began doing net searches of local gun shops, explosive recipes, places to obtain chemicals, etc.

Cut to a military base, where the searches are setting of alerts.  The commander starts receiving reports from his subordinates when suddenly...

"Wait...did you say Muncie?"

"Yes sir."

"Sigh.  Cancel the alert.  Those damn gamers again."

[DShomshak]

FBI agent "So let me get this strait. You've been looking up Syria, Nazis, and maps of American military bases because you want to run a roleplaying game where a Nazi sorceer tries to raise a muslim vampire that's being stored in a military base by a sinister masked man who is really a general?"

 

You "yes"

 

FBI agent "Stop lying."

Would it be scarier if the FBI agent said, "Mr. N___, I think you have the kind of mind we need. Are you ready to serve your country?" And then he reveals what agency he really works for.

 

Dean Shomshak

[womble]

Yes it is. Life is finely tuned to be a cause by random events.

You might want to try again with that second sentence.

[Weldun]

Well, I can now add drug smuggling to the list. Specifically, Nacro-submarines and Narco-tanks. Every time I think that I might be getting a little ridiculous with the gangs in my game (one of which is heavily influenced by the '80s classic, The Last Dragon), I find that the real world has trumped me.

[BoloOfEarth]

I'm amused at the occasional serendipity of in-game elements and real-world stuff.  For instance, I've introduced the Norse goddess Gullveig as an opponent to the superhero PCs, with her taking human form as a Norwegian woman named Vera Gold back in the late 1940s.  Since one PC was researching her, I decidd to write up some background for her and wanted to pick a town in Norway she supposedly came from.  Given that "Gull" = "gold" in Norwegian, I looked for a town with "gull" in the name, and found Gullaug.  Perfect, says I.

 

Then I noticed on Google Maps a notation for "Dyno Industrier" and decided to check what that was.  Turns out, Dyno Industrier is one of the world's largest manufacturers of commercial explosives.  Established in 1947.

 

It couldn't have fit better if I created it myself.

[Narf the Mouse]

Would it be scarier if the FBI agent said, "Mr. N___, I think you have the kind of mind we need. Are you ready to serve your country?" And then he reveals what agency he really works for.

 

Dean Shomshak

...I smell a game idea.

[Ninja-Bear]

You might want to try again with that second sentence.

Fixed it. Thank you Womble.

 

And it should have read "Life is too finely tuned to be made from random events"

[womble]

Fixed it. Thank you Womble.

 

And it should have read "Life is too finely tuned to be made from random events"

Um, no. Random events have tuned life. Mutations are random events. Meteor/comet impacts are random events. Random events combined with their interaction with life and the environment drive evolution.

 

But that's as far as I'm going to go if this is going to get turned into a conversation like two best mates I used to know (one rationalist, the other deist):

"Made," said the deist.

"Just happened," said the rationalist.

Repeat, potentially, ad infinitum. They'd between them settled somehow on three repetitions before letting the matter rest.