Anecdote Megathread

[Kelkesh123]

This is my tale. A tale of woe and dissapointment. Mostly dissapointment.

So I started off in my local D&D club group, who decided "WHO NEEDS PLAYER'S HANDBOOKS?". After reaching a consensus from the group that a level 1 rogue should be able to detect traps, we started off the game. We were called The Evil Side (with an opposing group of players playing The Good Side in a room across the hall), which was what our characters were supposed to be. We ended up all being pragmatic chaotic neutral, doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted to.

We had around 9 people in our group. NINE FUCKING PEOPLE IN A GROUP RUN BY AN INEXPERIENCED GM.
Which was loads of fun.
It didn't help we had a freshman named Marty(name changed) who would take actions for the rest of the group.
EX. Marty : Alright, what's it look like?
DM : There are two passageways. Both lead off into darkness.
Marty : We all go in the right one.
Everyone : Wat.

He had terrible social skills, got pissed off easily, and butted heads with the rest of the group.
The rest of the group was composed of Ian, a good buddy of mine, who was playing the groups fighter. He had some sort of acid scythe and could deal like 60 or so damage an attack at level 3. Now, I love Ian to death, but he had a few issues with D&D. Whenever he couldn't do something ingame, he got pissed and depressed at the same time.
EX. Ian : Alright, I'm going to cut through the rock with my scythe.
DM : Well, you can, but it might result in breaking the weapon.
Ian : Well...okay
(to me) Look at how useful my character is. He's so fucking useless. Everyone else can do shit, but look at me. I can hit shit. Goddamnit!

And then there was Joe. He was the group's Bardic whore. Nice guy, but he kinda got a bit touchy feely with other members of the party. In real life.
He would barely be in game, normally he'd run out and talk on his cell phone to friends, or be playing with Magic the Gathering cards.

Then there's Evan, our wizard. He was extremely quiet. Nice guy, but whenever a joke about gays was brought up, he'd shut it down through yelling. He was gay, and was extremely sensitive about it. We tried to tell him it was just a joke, and none of us are homophobic (except Marty), but he wouldn't hear it.

Next up is Trent, our cleric. He played a girl. He never did much. Occasionally he'd say "Lawl" and quote internet memes. He didn't interrupt the game with it though, so it never bothered me.

Next is Weston, our monk. He was extremely aggressive, hated roleplaying, power gamed the fuck out of everything. He clashed with me alot for the simple fact that I had fun.
EX. Me : I'll check the door for traps.
Weston : Dude, you can't fucking do that.
Me : I'm a rogue. I can check for traps.
Weston : Shut the hell up man, I'm trying to play.
DM : You can check for traps Sam.
Weston : What? Special treatment?
DM : No, it's a basic rogue skill.
Weston : Oh...
Kind of a douchebag, but he didn't ruin the gameplay...majority of the time.

John was our groups psion. He didn't abuse the fact that he was the only one with the Psionics Handbook, he would occasionally change the mood of enemies, but that was about it. He was very low key, but that was cool with me. At one point, he asked for divine intervention from his god (Cthulhu), and Cthulhu apparently summoned a flaming catapult because he got a 14 out of a 100. That guy kicked ass.

Our first session was us sitting around debating rules.
Our second session was us setting up my character and getting started.
Our third session involved us meeting a cloaked stranger in a bar and going to a cave he wanted us to investigate.
Our fourth session involved me getting caught under a giant rock.
Our fifth session involved me sitting under said rock until the rest of the party defeated a stone golem and let me out.

TL;DR?
HIGHSCHOOL D&D
THE WAY PROS PLAY.

[crash2455]

HIGHSCHOOL D&D
THE WAY PROS PLAY.

I'm impressed.  I believe your group contained every gaming trope imaginable.

My tale comes from earlier tonight, and I think it probably happens in every group at least once:  Really distracted players.

When everyone got in, I was informed that one person had gotten about 4 hours of sleep.  I asked them if they really wanted to play tonight and if they be able to pay attention (they fell asleep in my last session due to a similar sleep schedule).  It was probably a bad idea to have them bring someone else over.

I probably should have called the game about the time it started.  I told them that a month had passed since the last session, told them all the things that they could do (leaving room open for them to do their own thing), and asked them what they were doing during that time.  Between the chitchat (between the players and the other person) it took 4 players about 45 minutes to say that they were all doing one thing. 

After "OH SHIT NAZIS ATTACK,"  the group split up, and we probably had about 4 rounds of combat from one group (who were a bit more focused) and the slightest amount of investigation from the other in the other 2 hours of the session.  I finally just said "Okay, we're done for tonight" when I tried to explain something to a player 3 times and it became apparent he wasn't listening. 

I later found out that 2 of my players and the other person were all there on around 4 - 5 hours of sleep.  Needless to say, I got pretty annoyed, and explained to them that I would appreciate their attention next game.  I am asking them if they're actually interested in my game and they at least say that they are.

Maybe I should bring the box of pain to my next game.
[/whiny bitch]

[The_Last_76]

Probably my scariest moment in gaming was a few years previous, when I was a player in a Call Of Cthulhu RPG without actually knowing what Call Of Cthulhu was. None of the players did, truth be told. I learnt later that the scenario we had played was essentially H.P. Lovecrafts 'Rats In The Walls'. Considering I hadn't expected a horror RPG, and we were only told that it would be a 1920s 'Real-World' setting, I certainly didn't expect the horror I was to witness.

There were no combat sequences, and really only minimal roleplaying. But I did not sleep that night, nor for the next few nights after it.

Probably the highlight of the evening came when we where exploring the ancestral estate that was the setting, delving deep into tunnels that did not exist on the building plan and the GM describing the slow, dragging sounds of claws and fur on stone as we descended deeper.

I actually heard these noises. I thought I was going mad. After the game was over (some 2 months later), I was told he had a CD player and was playing various sounds on as low a volume as possible, hidden underneath the table.

I've been hooked on Lovecraft ever since.

[Setherick]

I was about to say, "Don't we have an anecdote thread?" But then I realized how old this thread is (from start date). Should I merge this or leave as is?

[The_Last_76]

I must have missed the latest anecdote thread - my apologies.  Merging would be the best option.

[Setherick]

I must have missed the latest anecdote thread - my apologies.  Merging would be the best option.

It's stickied, but whatev. Merging now.

[The_Last_76]

Found an ol' wordfile that was written up a little while ago following a friends short-lived Military campaign.

The concept was fairly solid.  All massed combat was done using a simple wargame system - a modified version of Necromunda, if I remember correctly.  All the more involved playing that focused more on individual characters rather than units was done with a modified d20 system, based quite surprisingly off of Mutants and Masterminds.  We only played a single session before it fell through.  The players loved it, but the GM went walkabouts on us, sadly.

23-14th Whiteshield Conscript Squad of the Ypress PDF:

Sergeant Vken, armed with an .25mm repeating auto-pistol and fencing rapier.
Private First Class Hurikan with a .45 Calibre Mordian Pattern Rifle with x12 scope.
Junior Drill Commissar Luinste with a Stubb Hand Cannon.
Fire Team C-Blue - Muerre (Modesty), Aenid (Halo), Ishta (Dame), Ramirez (Rat), Havelock (Hack) armed with Ypress Mk39 Model Autofire Rifles.
Fire Team C-Red - Regis (Gob), Praetus (Cutter), Khan (Gold), Scythia (Calamity), Pontius (Mongrel), Yarn (Frag) armed with Ypress Mk39 Model Autofire Rifles.

Mission One:

Ambush.
Situation De-Briefing; While performing a standard combat sweep on the borders of Rogue Habcomplex 44-A, the 23-14th Whiteshield Conscript Squad was ambushed by a superior fireteam of Ypress Rebels armed with stolen lasweapons, approximately 25km South-East of Habcomplex 44-A in the ruins of 624 Living Unit destroyed in a previous tank action. Outnumbered and outgunned, the 23-14th began a fighting retreat after approximately three minutes of exchanged fire, whilst being bracketted by supporting Mortar fire and enemies in elevated positions. Thanks to excellent leadership on the part of Sergeant Vken they managed to escape with only 4 casualties (inluding Sergeant Vken himself), all of which were deemed walking wounded by the squads corpsman.

Post Game Experience
Sergeant Vken 60 + 6 (Survived.)
Private First Class Hurikan 60 + 1 (Survived.)
Junior Drill Commissar Luinste 60 + 1 (Survived.)
Fire Team C-Blue 0 + 13 (Two Wounding Hits, Survived.)       = +1 BS, The Kids Got Talent (Muerre)
Fire Team C-Red 0 + 4 (Survived.)                            = The Kids Got Talent (Scythia)

Journal of Private Johann 'Modesty' Muerre

Day: 86 - 5 775 456 M41

Got my first taste of combat today.

We were executing a standard sweep towards the middle of the day - maybe 1400 standard. Down near Hakenville; where Ms. Gunterfierd used to live before the fire.  Fire Team C-Blue had point, C-Red was on rearguard.  Hack and Rat had called a stop and we all took to ground. I remember thinking they were just showing off. Commissar Luinste never exactly made a habit of accompanying us on combat patrols, and I would have bet good denarii that they boys were just trying to show up the rest of the squad.  They looked so comical, hunched up behind a fragging bathtub that had found it's way out into the street in pieces.  The brute and the rodent. Funny guys usually.  I stopped thinking it was a joke when I heard the shouting come from down the street.  Dirt started spraying up in conical jets before I realised we were under fire. I must have been standing there like a jack-ass, because it took a body tackle from Halo to get me down in cover.  Holes appeared in the wall behind where I was standing.  I'm not a superstitious person, and Throne knows I'm not the most faithful - but I haven't got a doubt in my body that the Emperor guided Aenid that day. She saved my life, and I thank the Emperor that she was more on the ball than me.

The Sergeant starting yelling orders, but I could barely hear him over the sound of lasfire. I was hunched up under a fallen sign.  I think I managed to fumble the wax stopper out of my rifle barrel at this time. I know, I know - I shouldn't have had it in on a live fire patrol, but I didn't want mud to spoil my rifling. It's a fragging bastard to clean, and there is a smegging tonne of mud out there.  I think it was the right decision, even if I'd never tell the lash about it. I heard more than a few shouts from down Regis' side that made it pretty clear that mud-spoil was proving to be a bit more than a nuisance.

PFC Hurikan must have been on his toes, because he was up on a second story ruin by the time I noticed him - eyes down the scope and taking pot shots at targets I could barely make out.  The lash and the sarge had fallen back to C-Red, trying to keep an exit window open.  I'm fairly sure we were surrounded for a minute or two there.  I heard Calamity did a good show down that side, but I wasn't there to see it. 

I took the hint from Hurikan and ordered C-Blue to lay down a barrage of suppressing fire at the UF's. I must have done something right because the return fire lessened considerably.  I heard Commissar Luinste order the fall back in my microbead so Halo, Dame and I kept up a field of suppressing fire while Rat and Hack pulled back to us.  Hack was breeding pretty freely from a wound to his neck, but Rat insisted that he was fine.  C-Red started covering our backs and we pulled out to the RZ.  It couldn't have lasted more than a few minutes, and I never once actually saw the enemy.  Just what they did.

Hack wasn't the only one who earnt himself a souvenir from their first action.  Calamity now has a rather dashing scar across her waist, which she insists on showing off. And I earned a few stitches on my thigh. Didn't even feel it happen.

I was promoted from Conscript to Private. I am scared out of my mind.

[Joven]

Probably the only gaming anecdote I can really remember, had found out another person I knew played D&D and me and 2 of my friends were invited to join in on one of their games.

They were like level 3 and we started making our characters while they started wrapping up some roleplay from their last session or something, I made a fairly generic neutral rogue, one of my friends (C1) made a mothery-type cleric woman, the goal which to facilitate the joining of our characters to their established group, and my other friend (J2) made a paladin who was insane and followed Torm I think (whoever the god of justice is). After some chatter at the tavern we found our little group and theirs had a common goal and we all looked trustworthy, so we teamed up.

The guy playing the paladin ended pretty much every sentence with "FOR JUSTICE!" and was playing up his characters mental illness and paranoia, which the DM hosting was kinda taken aback by. C1, who was the DM for our group, was intent on making sure that J2 stuck to lawful good, because previously he only played evil characters (his last character forced crippled kids to fight to the death, had a staff made of the bones of some old people he killed and ran a drug ring, etc.) and had earlier made a statement about how 'good' was relative, especially when dealing with the mentally ill.

To help our 2 groups become friends, C1 decided to have his character bake pies for everyone as a midnight snack, and they all went to their rooms with their new pies, and of course J2 decided to have his character fuck it, if for no other reason then he was insane. The people who we were playing with thought it was weird, but funny, so whatever, the characters came down the next day and since C1 had rolled good when making them they said how good they were, J2 said that yes, indeed the pie was tasty. 

C1 decided to take that moment to call J2 on lying, since he was a lawful good paladin OF JUSTICE! it was outside of his character to lie, and since he fucked the pie, commenting on its taste would have been a lie. His response, without skipping a beat, "What? I ate it." At that point the group hosting were completely...baffled? but after much recoiling, we finally started to set off.

However, we didn't get very far, some altercation occurred between my character and some NPC (who was some victim forced into a bad situation kinda, if i remember right), probably meant to be a plot hook to get us to investigate some gang syndicate or something, but the sight of some minor injustice was too much for J2, and he decided that I was wronged and the NPC had to die. After some fighting between us and the group, everyone pleading for us to just let the poor guy go etc, J2 had managed to grapple the NPC and I was going to them shoot him with my bow. One of the other characters had stepped between me and them to act as a shield and the DM said that there was no way to hit the guy unless I rolled a nat 20, which of course is basically D&D language for "the next thing you roll is going to be a nat 20", x3 critical, +sneak attack on a low level character = dead.

The DM was kinda at a loss and by that point we had spent so much time dicking around at the tavern that we never got around to doing anything else, and for some reason we were never invited back to play with them (although 1/2 their group did say it was fun, apparently we ruined the game for the other 1/2 lol)

[The_Last_76]

Note to Self: Three Fire Giants are no longer a challenge when your players have an army to back them up.

[Flawless P]

Obviously written for laughs but I figured I would share it.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/there-was-always-that-one-kid-that-ruined-every-dd-game-.../

[Maze]

As a note, great and hilarious anecdotes, lack of response does not mean lack of interest. I've shared a a few of them with friends personally.

[Flawless P]

Yeah that should actually be clarified, I too share these stories with people, as well as telling them where I got them, I always try to think of somthing witty to say after a story, but I never can... hence no response.

[The_Last_76]

So naturally, I carried his head around with me for the next two levels.

I just laughed so hard I choked.

[Flawless P]

So, I am pretty sure I should sue "Adventure Time" for violation of my intellectual property...LoL


Seriously though, they have to have some kind of survelliance being done on my brain. About 2 years ago or so I ran a campaign of evil characters. One of which was named the Yellow Jester, or just Yellow for short. He started off as a standard NPC with some levels in the Dragon Magazine Class "The Jester". I made him solely because I needed someone who was cruel but hilarious and I LOVE Gauntlet Dark Legacy. He wore a Yellow Jesters outfit with a pointy hat and everything.

So a few days before our weekly session one of my players called to ask if his younger brother could join in, I told him we couldn't add in a new character where we were so he would have to play as the Jester. His brother apparently loved the idea and by our Thursday meetup he was good to go. We ran through one session that was cut short by a surprise visit by one of our friends who lives 3 hours away so we cut it short to socialize. By the next week everyone was ready to go, only problem is I lost the jesters character sheet. After telling my buddy I lost it we formulated a plan. Out of no where this Jester becamse god like, he could basically do whatever he wanted to do the only prerequisite was he couldn't do anything that had and "real" impact on the PC's. His major claim to fame was having sleeves and pockets of holding. He then put tons of different things into the bags including many Shoggoth. He would play mean tricks on the PC's and even made one of them think his house was on fire. He would also fly to random towns and drop off a few Shoggoth(Chaos Beasts by game terms) and use them to transform the populace of the town into chaos beasts. So in order to somewhat acknowledge the things he was doing I had a Tarrasque come and eat all the Shoggoth. I decided that the Tarrasques true mission is to keep the Chaos Beast population down. So he decided to defeat the Tarrasque, I reminded him of the rule banning him from doing anything but trickery and whatnot. So his answer was to drop all the chaos beasts he had on it. His logic "eventually it will roll a 1 on its Fortitude Save"

[spoiler]Corporeal Instability (Su): A blow from a chaos beast against a living creature can cause a terrible transformation. The creature must succeed on a DC 15 Fortitude save or become a spongy, amorphous mass. Unless the victim manages to control the effect (see below), its shape melts, flows, writhes, and boils. The save DC is Constitution-based.

An affected creature is unable to hold or use any item. Clothing, armor, rings, and helmets become useless. Large items worn or carried—armor, backpacks, even shirts—hamper more than help, reducing the victim’s Dexterity score by 4. Soft or misshapen feet and legs reduce speed to 10 feet or one-quarter normal, whichever is less. Searing pain courses along the nerves, so strong that the victim cannot act coherently. The victim cannot cast spells or use magic items, and it attacks blindly, unable to distinguish friend from foe (–4 penalty on attack rolls and a 50% miss chance, regardless of the attack roll).

Each round the victim spends in an amorphous state causes 1 point of Wisdom drain from mental shock. If the victim’s Wisdom score falls to 0, it becomes a chaos beast.

A victim can regain its own shape by taking a standard action to attempt a DC 15 Charisma check (this check DC does not vary for a chaos beast with different Hit Dice or ability scores). A success reestablishes the creature’s normal form for 1 minute. On a failure, the victim can still repeat this check each round until successful.   [/spoiler]

So as he said, yes it eventually did, hence he eventually turned the Tarrasque into a Chaos Beast.


I hate you Magic Man, you bastard.(No really though him and his brother showed me the episode and i sat there horrified and entranced as everything I had seen done by the Yellow Jester was done by the magic man.)

[Z]

I tell you this in only the strictest confidence. I may have played in the most incompetent campaign ever.

Originally, I was going to go on and on and on with how I came to meet the worst DM in the entire world, but there's far too much to cover. Instead, I'd like to give you a bullet point list of the various indignities I was subject to, and frankly subjected myself to, before finally understanding that BAD GAMING IS WORSE THAN NO GAMING.

-Imaginative Houserules!
I thought the DM was kidding when he said I need to "roll up a dragon " when I was creating a character. As it turned out, every member of the party had been given a special ring that allows the user to turn into a Dragonborn instantly, allowing you to switch between entire characters as a free action. Also, we could swap out any of our abilities for free at any time. We could grow wings and a Dragonborn head whenever! We were also all telepathic, and could teleport to any location we had visited.

-Skillful Storytelling!
The aforementioned magic rings were given to us by an NPC simply called "the Battlemaster." It was our sworn duty (apparently) to band together and stop a war that happened THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO AND IS GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN FOR SOME REASON I GUESS? We didn't really get any precise instructions on how to stop the mystery war, but a we were expressly told that the first step was to liberate an airship that was actually a living construct that was also a spelljammer (?!)

-An Amazing Cast of Characters!
We were able to interact with a grand total of three NPCs in the first month of the game. One of them was a talking table.

-Challenging Combat!
In the beginning, he would throw a lot of monsters at us that were two levels below us, and he would get flustered when we barely needed to use a healing surge. Eventually he would become visibly angry when we would turn his dumbass rules around and actually use them in combat. I don't think there was a single time we were legitimately bloodied. Except, you know, when he would say an attack hit us without rolling for it because "trust me, it would have hit."

-Scintillating Situations!
He had a female black dragon in his campaign that more or less raped all of our characters systematically. He couldn't understand why we found the idea objectionable.

-Exciting Locales!
By express order of the DM, we weren't allowed to play at anyone's house. He set up shop in a local restaurant and would awkwardly flirt with the college-age waitstaff. He was 45, balding, was equipped with a horribly unkempt beard, wore shorts everywhere, had giant old people glasses, and was pretty consistently bedecked in superhero t-shirts. This, as you can imagine, was rather awkward for me.

-Dynamic Environments!
Within two months of the game beginning, we were transported to Gamma World to find and recover a SECOND living-spelljammer-magic-airship. My character had his hand replaced with a shotgun after I made a joke about Monks not having ranged abilities. Also, various mutations turned my skeleton into metal, allowed our party's dwarf to control nanomachines with his mind, and made our warrior grow a second fire-breathing head.

That's not even the half of it. I may compose this into actual stories at one point, but it's hard to even start.