General Category > RPGs

Anecdote Megathread

<< < (60/66) > >>

sinanju:
What happens next? He makes up a new character for the next adventure. The Expendables had a high turnover, which was both expected and intended. It was a game for a bunch of rules lawyers and ruthless power gamers, whose credo was "if it's a fair fight, you're doing it wrong." They expected the GM to be as ruthless as they were. And as we all took turns running games, that was generally the case.

Except for Todd. Poor Todd. He just didn't have the killer instinct. And one day he decided to run a GURPS Vampire the Masquerade game. He asked if we wanted to be Camarilla or Sabbat. "Sabbat!" we chorused. I'm sure he had some kind of plot in mind, and it involved fighting werewolves, who tended to attack us by jumping in and out of the Umbra like Nightcrawler teleporting all over the Oval Office in that X-Men movie. (I was pretty sure it didn't work that way, but whatever.) We dealt with them by throwing grenades around wrapped in silver wire.

When we weren't busy fighting werewolves we were street racing through Portland, shooting at (and throwing grenades at) our opponents because We're Sabbat. We Don't Care! We engaged in contests to see which of us could be cruelest and most inventive about killing humans. (And I have to say this is one of the few times I saw this group all pause, and consider what they were doing, and back off because it was just to psychopathic even for their murderous characters.)

Meanwhile, one of Todd's pet NPCs hosted live local wrestling shows on television on Friday night. Of course, he was a powerful vampire. So one of the PCs decided it was time for some diablerie. On live tv. So he goes to the wrestling show, kills any (human) security guards who try to stop him, and goes after the NPC vampire with a broadsword. The vampire's vampire goons intervene and there's a huge vampire brawl on live television. PC fails to kill the NPC, but does manage to get away.

At which point the Prince of the City calls my character and another PC into his office. He demands that we find our friend and kill him for what he did. We refuse point-blank. We point out to him that he didn't have us searched before we entered his office, we're very heavily armed, and we can take him and his goons. And after some dithering, we escape unharmed.

The thing is, if ANYONE in the group but Todd had been running that game, our response to the Prince's orders would have been to click our heels together and salute, shouting, "Sir! Yes, sir!" Because we'd have known that the Prince of THAT campaign both could and WOULD murder us in a heartbeat for that kind of insubordination. But this was Todd. We knew he almost certainly wouldn't have them react that way, and more importantly, we were pretty sure that if he'd tried we COULD have taken that roomful of NPCs. We'd have tried, anyhow.

So, the lesson here is: these guy will run roughshod over you as GM unless you've demonstrated you can play hardball too. Which is why, when confronted with a helicopter gunship, these guys immediately surrendered (except for Frank).

trinite:
I hope the President-For-Life used Frank's PC-knowledge to start conquering other dimensions, with Frank as his general.

Redroverone:
A little over 30 years ago, I was privileged enough to get an invite into a D&D group that ran on Thursdays, whose GM was affectionately known by many many people (including one Mr. Gygax) as Mad Ruthie. Why, I never learned. Anyways.

The campaign was, at best, total chaos. Party strength ran from as few as seven to as many as 20(!) people in a night, depending on how many people from the ever rotating cast would show up on a random Thursday. Levels ran from first to around 10th, or so. I never made it past level 7 with any character, however. Anyways.

First levels were essentially DCC funnel characters. Sent into rooms, with instructions to report back what they saw in the room. Generally, they never came out, so the party knew when to gear up for a fight. Once you made second level, though, you weren't the FNG anymore, and so you were golden. Well, except for the mass combats with the huge fatality rates among the low levels.

Along the way were simply the zany creations of a very imaginative lady and the really bad ways her players reacted to them. Among them was finding a Bag of Holding with a Sherman tank inside. A magical box that cast Teleport when you spoke the magic words 'Calgon, take me away!'. The old man in a room with a pile of housecats. The housecats reacted badly to our Fighter killing the old man, and the resultant 'combat' ended with our Fighter losing one eye. Of course, none of the Clerics cured it, and soon after someone replaced the crest on his shield with a cat's paw. The first level who wandered into a room with a beholder, upon which said beholder rolled six attacks, none of which hit, and the first level exited the room and said that he didn't see anything. I miss those games.

Addendum: After I came back to games a few years ago, my first group was playing the Lost Unicorn Star Trek TNG game. The GM was foolish enough to tell me that the only things he wanted out of my character was no psionics and no hybrids. 'Everything else is fair game!', he said. That was a mistake, and the reason why their ship ended up with a Breen pilot. Much hilarity ensued.

Jace911:
Just finished a one-shot of the new Delta Green with four friends who had never played or heard of it before they sat down (Other than what I told them to see if they were interested). Their mission: to search the apartment of a recently-deceased Friendly and former DG agent to make sure his heirs didn't find anything incriminating or dangerous when they came to collect his things. By the end of the day two of the agents were dead, one was missing time, the fourth had a psychotic fear of identical twins, and a state park four hours away from the man's apartment had been burned to the ground with nearly twenty dead.

Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.

(Full write-up to follow)

Henry Hankovitch:
Had a pretty intense Legend of Five Rings game last night.  The group had been tasked with eliminating a Scorpion daimyo and all his heirs, for treason against the clan.  This included the daimyo's nine-year-old son.  When they'd finally "rescued" the son from blahblahplot, they debated for a while what to do with the kid.  Unsurprisingly, most of the group was not willing to kill a little kid.  While they did that, the group's Soshi infiltrator (ninja posing as a rank-and-file samurai) wandered over and slipped the kid a poison drink; several hours later, the boy is dead.

At the end of the session, the player of the Soshi asks, "so how much XP for the kid?"

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version