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« on: June 30, 2010, 02:06:15 AM »
Well I decided it was time for me to put together a story for the podcast now that I have been going to the forums for a while, and tell you why I no longer play DnD. Dungeons and Dragons will always hold a place in my heart because for many years it was all I knew about role playing. I will never forget my first character, a minotaur mage for a Dragonlance Campaign, or my favorite character, nor my first world I created while DMing, a funny little planet that was way to big a task for a naive high school nerd to build. But out of all of my games I have ever played or ran, none will be as memorable, (or as scaring) as my seafaring adventure I made for my friends.
As with most games it started as an idea based off of a movie. Soon after Pirates of the Caribian came out, like most gamers, my group decided to make a pirate game. It took 4 months for me to draw up maps and find any net book I could for rules on how to run an ocean based game. After months of planing we were into the game and everyone involved was having fun. There was one player who was my best friend and he decided on playing a neutral evil kobold sorcerer. We had many talks about this character and how he wanted to run a game where he would be the villain in the form of a lich and it would be awesome to cross the two games. It would be like my game was the prequel to an awesome campaign.
It took 5 games before the players had requisitioned the ship I had designed for them and now they were on their way to starting the ocean part of the their adventure. The kobold had started to wreak havoc on the ship. He made it so bad for the players that eventually he ended up in the brig and stayed there a majority of the adventures. We had gotten a player playing a paladin along the way who was letting the evil little sorcerer live as long as he was decent to the team and I mean he is a kobold, what harm could he do right?
At the end of a hard fight the kobold tried to kill the paladin leading it to a quick fight that landed the kobold on the end of a long sword. Trying to be nice I offered my friend one Wish (from the god he worshiped) so he could wish to be a lich. Instead my friend, bitter about his character being killed, wished that everyone he had ever met was dead and in hell.
I was stunned and didn't know what to do. Should I let the wish go through and be a mean GM or do I go through with it and let the players get out of it. I flipped through the DM's guide for advice and found an artifact that would make all my months of planing not be wasted. I resorted to the Deck of Many Things. I had done this before and the results were not good for the players, but this time the were in hell and mean what worse could happen.
I stated that Asmodious was going to let the hero's try to get out by using the cards because he stood to gain their souls completely with the deck anyway. After I announce this my friend said "If you bring that damn deck in this game I will stab you in the eye." I told him that I was the DM and I was going to do it besides it was his damn character that got them into this mess in the first place.
He didn't like that answer. He leaped across the room with the ferociousness of a Dire Wolverine and jumped on top of me screaming "TAKE IT OUT! TAKE IT OUT!" With pencil just like he said. It took two of the bigger players to pull him off and restrain him during which I made my escape. (I was a little guy.) I saw him 5 minuets later acting like nothing ever happened yet I could remember the pencil being inches from my right eye.
Needless to say the game never continued from that point on. I do miss playing my RPG's and with all of my friends moving on I no longer have a group, but sometimes I am glad that I don't have to worry about running into someone as bat shit crazy as that.