Anecdote Megathread

[Fizban]

Ahhh, Rod of Wonder.  In a game I played once, a fighter received some sort of limited wish as a boon for completing a quest, and their wish was for a Crossbow of Wonder.  I thought, what the hell, and with a pop, there appeared the crazy crossbow.

The party's next quest was to hunt down a vampire that was preying on the inhabitants of a town.  Now, vampires in this game were suave, sophisticated, and moved in Matrix time when violent.  This one was watching from the roof of a building, and using subtle magical effects to make the party's evening rather unpleasant.  At one stage, the sharp-eyed ranger of the group spied the vampire upon the roof, and whispered to the fighter - figuring that if they both shot at the same time, perhaps they'd get lucky and stake it through the heart with an arrow or crossbow bolt.  So, holding a normal conversation, they suddenly whirl around with the ranger yelling 'Fire!' and shoot.  Of course, the ranger, with his fantastically high archery skills, missed.  But the fighter, who I think had only recently scored a proficiency with a crossbow since receiving her shiny new toy, managed to score a hit, which was followed up with a bright purple flash, and noise which sounded like a cross between a shriek and a quack.

Wondering what went on up there, the fighter turned to the dwarf and said, "How much do you weigh?" <scrabble to look at character sheet> "Ummm, I don't know." <grin> "Wrong answer - I fling the dwarf onto the roof."  Another successful roll saw the dwarf being nodwick'd up onto the roof, where he found a large, angry, waddling Emperor Penguin.  As large and angry as it was, it was a damn sight easier to subdue than a vampire, so they tied it up and brought it to the town's mayor for their reward.

They walked into the chambers of the town hall, pronounced to all and sundry (not many, since it was quite late at night by now) that they had captured the vampire and that it would haunt them no more, and produced a restrained penguin. Their reward was, oddly, not forthcoming.  They told the story about the magic crossbow, to which the mayor shook his head and said, "I don't believe you."  The wizard of the group retorted, "Look, I'll prove it - I dispel magic on the penguin."

Now, strictly, polymorph magics aren't so easily dispelled.  But as a DM, I like to reward stupidity with pain, so I let this one go.  The dispel takes effect, the penguin turns back into a very angry vampire, who quickly breaks free of his bonds, bullet-times a half-dozen attacks around the room causing general mayhem, tips his hat, before promptly becoming a mist and flying out the window.  No doubt the party would have been more useful if they hadn't left their weapons outside the mayor's chambers so they could approach him.


Speaking of vampires and crossbows, that reminds me of a novel exploit which happened whilst I was actually playing.  My low level cleric at the time, Hasluck Greybane, was likewise hunting down a vampire in a city with his companions, who chose quite stupidly to split up to find it.  Having spied it at some distance, Hasluck did the only thing he was really equipped to do at long range, and fired his crossbow at it.  Natural 20!  "That's got to stake it," says I, but we were playing 3.5, and the DM, not wanting her big boss to fall so easily, responded, "Well, no.  You haven't even confirmed the critical yet."  Never say that to the dice - natural 20. A crestfallen DM nods quietly, "Fine, your crossbow bolt lodges right in its heart, staking the vampire, paralysing it as it falls to the ground."

My cleric's dump stat was charisma (He was only about 18 years old, but wore a fake beard and tried to convince everyone he was a learned prophet, and preached at people constantly from a scroll which he wrote himself).  So when the time came to go and tell the story of his success, no-one would listen to him.  But the party member he was with was a sorcerer, and when he began to spin the tale of Riley, the Sorcerer who saw someone take down a vampire with one shot, the crowd was eating out of his hand, (natural 20) "Really?  You actually saw someone do that?  Tell us more!  What was it like to see someone take down a vampire so skillfully?  Did you blink, or have your eyes open the whole time?  What did it look like?  Wow, I hope my kids grow up to see something great some day."

This actually happened a second time, when Hasluck destroyed a second vampire later down the track, with a well rolled searing light ritual - now Riley could tell the story of how he had seen someone - always the nameless someone - kill two vampires single-handed!  And of course, no matter how loud and squeaky the protestations from Hasluck ("It was me!"), the crown was always cheering for Riley, the Observant.

[Mckma]

Funny story.  The short version, ran Patrick's Unauthorized Content yesterday, added a few more ulterior motives.  The characters became so suspicious of the one character with "official" additional instructions they ignored Whitworth and a guy who was trying to steal corporate secrets (who did so right in front of them).  It was a lot of fun, thanks for sharing the notes, I'll put the recording up at some point...

[Wooberman]

Short Story from Last nights game of 3rd ed WFRP.

To set the scene, The intrepid group of warriors had been hired by a noble to help him move into his new (and obviously tainted) keep in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere, whilst keeping an eye on his staff.

Things go slowly to start with after one small group of Beastmen attack the caravan on its way to the keep. Eventually we get to the keep and after some short sneaking and sleuthing we managed to find a shrine to an undefined ruinous power in the sub basement.

Fast Forward to the finale in the same shrine, The righteous heroes are all but incapacitated from a combination of invading beastmen and drugged venison whilst battling a recently summoned daemonic fury, the cult leader and his mesmerized coven. The Sigmarite Initiate and High Elf Wizard's Apprentice are both unconscious, the pair of interchangable wood elf archery types (one waywatcher, one scout) are busy turning the mesmerized cultists into pincushions and Rori, my Dwarf Troll slayer is going toe to toe with the Fury.

Rori's particular "shame" is being caught in accessory to adultery... not really a shame to him but dwarven culture demands these things so he became a Slayer, Just wanted to add that.

The Fight is getting really nasty as the cultists are working as a sort of HP battery for the Daemon so basically we have a large amount of HP to churn through until the Daemon is beaten. With two fifths of the party inactive and the wood elves dealing negligible damage, the heat is really on poor ol' Rori and he's on his last legs. 

Eventually we're just down to the Daemon, all of the Duracell cultists have been exhausted and the cult leader is riveted to a wall. Rori is plowing in hit after hit and suffering from internal bleeding, minor head trauma and a ruptured spleen (gotta love critical wounds in WFRP).

In a moment of desperation, the Wood elf Waywatcher feeds the priest a healing potion and the priest comes to. He seizes the opportunity and invokes Sigmar to bless his hammer and attacks the Daemon.
During this time the priest's player is describing something very similar to the finale of this little vid...
 

<a href="" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win"></a>

In response, Our fresh DM informs us this this is exactly what happens, in the priest's perspective. What really happens is that the Priest crawls across the floor muttering something unintelligible and drops his hammer on the Daemon's foot because only 1 wound was inflicted. The Daemon suddenly becomes unstable and is banished for 100 years and a day... as it was on 1 hp.
After that we called the game, partially because it was 2.30am and also because we couldn't stop laughing.
Who says Warhammer has to be completely Grimdark?

[clockworkjoe]

nice. I need to play Warhammer Fantasy some day.

[Fizban]

So, talking about superhero games makes me want to tell a short story about the last superhero game I ran, using a system of my own design (the mechanics for the non-superhero bits I stole from a game called Kill Puppies For Satan).

The important characters at this point were Simon Saez (a council worker with the ability to summon doorknobs and use them to open doors in anything); John Doe (a grifter with the ability to swap the minds and bodies of people and animals); and Nick Berman (a local government mayor with the ability to create objects out of thin air).  The other two members of the hero troupe (with the ability to control electricity, and grease and oil respectively) were off on another adventure.

All of the superheroes had a secret shame/flaw to balance out their powers.  So any doors Simon created burst into flame after an indeterminate period of time; John had developed a psychosis after a couple of centuries of swapping his brain into other people's bodies; and Nick Berman was the mayor of a local shire and couldn't let his superpowers be known.

The job of the three was to create a diversion in a mechanic's shop office, where illegal immigrant slaves were being stored in a container in the yard.  The reasoning, plan and execution of the group went like this:

We need somewhere to park the car.  What, we can't find a parking spot?  That's okay, it's a weekend, we'll just drive the car up to the local primary school, Simon can create a marge door in the wall of a classroom, and we'll park in there.

Now, how are we going to get into the mechanic's shop to create a diversion?  We can't just walk in - let's transfer our minds into the minds of those galahs over there and fly in (meanwhile making sure our bodies, now with galah minds, are safely locked away in the classroom).

Let's fly into the mechanic shop and see if we can find the slaves (this they actually accomplished!).

But how will we make a diversion? "I know," says Simon, and without another word flies into the office of the mechanic's shop.  The workers are of course a little surprised at the fact that a galah has just flown into their office, but they assume it must be domesticated, and lost.  They offered it a cracker, and the galah responded, "Ooh, yes please."  Now they were intrigued.  One actually pulled out there mobile phone to film the cute bird.  But the distraction had only just started.

The galah continued in its squawky conversation with the workers, answering their questions and seeming like a really well-trained bird.  Then the galah decided to really get the show on the road, and said, "Watch this!" before Simon the Galah decided to summon a doorknob in full view of the workers - by coughing it up.  The galah coughed up a full-size glittering crystal doorknob, which bounced once before rattling across the desk the bird was perched on.  The workers were a little shocked at this point, not really sure what to make of this display.  A galah had just come into their store, held up a pretty good conversation, and then coughed up a doorknob much larger than the parrot's head. 

The other superhero-cum-galahs were perched safely in the rafters of the shop, boggling at this diversion, but eventually decided that it would be a good plan to exist the store while the people's attention was fixed on this fixtures-producing avian.  Upon hearing his companions leave, the final galah said, "Vote 1 for Nick Berman!" before taking to wing and flying out of the store itself.

Upon returning to their car, they found their human forms perched up on school desks, squawking away and flapping their arms about.  John quickly transferred their minds back, before they jumped in the car and drove off, just in time to look in the rear vision mirror and see the primary school burst into flames from the magic garage door that was installed.  Ooops.

And for icing on the cake, when the heroes got home, they saw this on the 5 o'clock news:

[Sondra at the news desk] Thanks, Gil.  In other news in Eastwood, a fire broke out at the Eastwood Primary School today.  While no-one was hurt, as it is currently school holidays, fire investigators were surprised to find a secret garage-style door entry into the classroom which had caught fire.  Also found in the classroom were tyre marks from an as yet unidentified vehicle.  Investigations are continuing.

Finally, we'll leave you tonight with the viral youtube video that is sweeping the nation - Berman the talking Galah!  Apparently this video was also filmed in Eastwood today, making for an exciting day out in Sydney's East.  I'm Sondra Hayward, for Channel 10's First at Five news.

[Ending music with galah dancing around, saying 'hello', 'help me', being given a rice cracker and saying, 'thank you', before asking those around if they like Nick Berman, and then saying, 'Oh, yes, watch this' and coughing up a door knob, and saying 'vote 1 Nick Berman', as well as some footage of Mayor Berman saying, "I don't know that galah, but it obviously knows a thing or two about politics."]

[Flawless P]

How's about this for some insane player logic.

We are playing Keep on Shadowfell, and we met up with Splug and to my surprise Balgron the Fat. Being that I am attached to the other Balgron I felt inclined to not kill him, so we kiddnapped his fat ass and threatened him with death if he didn't help us. Splug was continuously insisting that we kill Balgron so I said "Dude if you want him dead so much do it yourself." Then Splug let out the Goblin "Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes." at that point I was torn between the two and so I decided it should be settled in the only logical way, we then surrounded the two of them and had a Goblin cockfight.

Somehow the Paladin found this honorable. Probably because he is a Goblin as well.

two npc's you like for no reason have a disagreement?

Settle it in an impromptu round of NPC combat!

[Fizban]

In the game I ran last night, I had to think up a mini quest on the spot, because the main player for the evening (who had his mage test) didn't turn up. But I had a couple of old players from the game drop in for a cameo, which meant that in the party, I had a worshipper from each of the members of the good pantheon. So I figured, worshipper's challenge! Set the party five tasks, one that represents the beliefs of each god, and reward them for acting appropriately, and doubly so if the correct worshipper was the one who came up with the correct response.  The test itself was a crab catching competition - biggest crab wins.

So far, the worshipper of Wisdom went the wrong way to where the crabs were; the cleric of Holiness bribed an official; the cleric of Justice suggested robbing another competitor for their crab; and the cleric of Nature suggested dragging the crab upside down over a rock shelf. The worshipper of Mercy has yet to act so contrarily, but they haven't finished yet.

This is normally a really conscientious group - I don't know what brought out the crazy last night.

[A Digital Native]

So apparently I made an http://www.obsidianportal.com/ account. It says I joined a year ago, and that same day added the story of my first time playing as a PC. I got some chuckles out of it, and thought I might share it with ya'll.

P.S, this is a direct copy and paste from the site, with some quick editing for readability.

July 30, 2010 00:11

While I had known about this site a while before I started playing, and have wanted to record my games for a while now, I have only just received the inclination to actually start, and so decided that this place was the easiest way to do it. So, these first few posts will be a brief chronicling of what has happened thus far. (At least, what I remember thus far.)

After creating my character, Earl, a hafling rogue, Justin plunges me straight into his world. I woke up on a beach, seeing nothing but more beach, and a dirt trail leading up into some mountains. So, I walked along the beach, wondering where the adventure hook was. I soon came across a fellow halfling, sitting at a campfire. After hailing him, I decide that he seems trustworthy, and follow him as he walked along the mountain trail. As we walk, he explains to me that he was a sentry, looking for fresh recruits. He and his fellows have set up a camp in the mountains.

At camp, I was introduced to… Cassandra(?), and some bald guy I promptly named Douche. Cassandra, a fighter, was sent here by her king to cleanse the local area of threats. The king wanted to create a new town, and didn’t want any pesky monsters to stifle it’s welfare. Douche looked like a giant muscle in armor, and had a fancy for creating weirdly shaped swords. That halfling guy was a rogue as well, and seemed to be a scout for this motley crew. The camp had, instead of tents, wooden shacks. Three, to be exact. One was a barracks, with enough beds for 12 people. One was a supply shack, and another, an armory, which was locked… They were going to go clear out a nearby cave of monsters the next day. They asked if I would like to help them. “Sure,” I replied. “Koo,” they said.

Tomorrow morning we were to head out and clear the cave, then cave it in by blowing up it’s entrance.

The sun was still relatively high in the sky, so instead of waste a day at camp, I decided to go explore the rest of the island (I presumed) I was on. But before I headed out, I asked if I could take the night watch. The halfling guy was apprehensive at first, but I convinced him to let me do it.

I took the trail that went further up the mountains. Awhile later, I came across a cliff. But it wasn’t a cliff. It was a hill. Kind of. Anyways, It offered a great vantage point of the island. Up there, I saw on the beach, a ship, wrecked. I decided to investigate it. There was a great, gaping hole in it, so I climbed in. on the lower deck, I saw signs of a struggle. Bodies and and blood, strewn and smeared, respectively. The upper deck wasn’t much different. I noticed that the bodies were lacking anything metal. Coins, weapons, even belt buckles were gone. I did, however, find some brass knuckles, tucked away in some nook nobody had cared to search. As I exited the ship, I saw footprints and blood leading into the jungle. Following them, I found a dead body of someone, presumably of the ship, dead, and missing an arm. Further in the jungle, I heard hisses. Spooked, I left the site at a brisk pace. I came across the ship again, and then was hit with a brilliant idea. The ensuing conversation went like this:

“Does the ship have cannons?” I asked, innocently.

“Well, yeah, it’s a pirate ship.” Justin replied.

“I take a cannon.”

“What?”

“I take a cannon.” I replied, a little more clearly.

“How are you gonna get it down?”

“I’ll push it off the the side.”

Justin sighed. “Alright.”

“Sweet. How many cannonballs do I find?”

“They’ve got a whole pile of them in the lower deck.”

“Koo. I’ll take 20. How much gunpowder?”

“None.”

“What?”

Justing grinned at me evilly. “After a couple seconds of thought, I mentally smiled, and replied. “Fine. I’m still taking the cannon and shot, though.”

 “Alright.”

After dragging the thing up the cliff-hill, which required a series of athletics rolls, I headed back to camp, and talked to Cassandra.

“I think I deserve some sort of payment if I’m gonna be helping you guys.”

“We don’t have much money.”

“How about some gunpowder?”

“For what?”

“My cannon.”

“We don’t have any.”

“Then how are you gonna blow up the cave?”

...

Justin grinned. “Damn you."

“We only have enough extra for 2 shots from your cannon.”

“Alright.”

After that, I went up to Douche.

“Can you combine my sword with these brass knuckles?”

He nodded.

Oh yeah. Douche doesn’t talk. What a douche.

After paying him some gold, I decided to go exploring a little more. I followed the mountain trail up to the tippy-top, and there I found the cave entrance, covered by a runed door. After trying to open it for a bit, I decided it was time to call it a day.

I went back to camp, and slept. I was awoken by that halfling guy to take my watch. I waited, until I was sure he was asleep, and promptly began picking the lock to the armory.

Justin sighed.

After successfully breaking in, I found some crates filled with unfinished weirdly shaped swords, and my brass-knuckled short-sword. In a locked chest I found a scroll with similar runes found on the cave doors, and in another, the gunpowder. I put back my swordknuckles, so that they would’t know I was there, and put the locks on the same position they used to be in. After that, I waited until dawn, when Cassandra woke up for her watch. I slept until called upon to storm the cave. Before we left, I was sure to take my cannon.

We got to the cave, and Cassandra pulled out a scroll, and read the runes. Magic happened, and the door began to open. Thinking fast, I placed the cannon in front of the cave, poised to shoot if anything tried to jump out. I was not disappointed. As a thin, man-like creature with blue scales and a fuck-ugly fish-like face jumped out at us, I stuck my flint together and a resounding BOOM! was heard as the fish-man was obliterated. After that, we shuffled our way into the cave.

The cave was moist, and the ground covered in shallow water. As we advanced, fish men armed with fake gold tridents and loincloths pestered us, but were cut down with ease. And, like a true adventurer, I took their tridents. As we entered a second room, an iron gate separated Douche and I from Cassandra and that halfling. They urged us to continue, which, seeing as our exit was blocked, we did. More fishmen attacked us, and when we got to the next room, another gate separated me from Douche. This time, Douche was ambushed by even more fishmen. He motioned me to keep going, so I did.

After rooms of fishmen death, I came across a single fishman, almost identical to every other one, except this one had a necklace on. It was a simple red orb on some string. Thinking he was special, I killed him, and tore off one of his fingers. I then came to a room that contained a wall with 4 orb-shaped indentations. I put the red necklace in the first hole, and went on through some more rooms with baddies. I harvested both necklaces and fingers from their respective owners, then placed all the orbs in the holes. The wall shook, and slowly lifted itself to clear a path to the next room. In that one, I battled more fishmen. However, this battle was comically entertaining, as one of the fishmen kept critically failing his attack rolls, and was stabbing himself and his comrades. After killing all of his buddies, I felt bad for him. So while he cowered for fear of his life in a corner, I approached him, speaking soothing words.

“This won’t hurt a bit” I said, raising my knuckled sword. The blow was meant to knock him out. Instead, I punched him square in his face. I heard a sickly CRUNCH as he yelled out it pain. Thinking quickly, and punched him again. Luckily, this time he did get knocked out. I hog tied him, and went on to the final room.

This time, I found a fish-man, just as fuck-ugly as all the others, but covered in runic tattoos. A bit intimidated, I charged ahead...

 He went down just as easily as the others.

After killing him, I hit some levers that were in this room, assuming they opened the gates. As I went to exit the cave, I grabbed the fish-man and dragged him back to my friends. Puzzled, they left my fish-man alone.

We blew up the entrance, watched it cave in, and went back to camp.

“Well,” said Cassandra, “It’s time we take off.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We are going back to tell the king that this are is cleared. I’m not sure where you are going.”

“What? I’m the one who did all the work, and you’re going to take all the credit?”

“Yep.”

“Fuck.”

So, we went our separate ways.

I grabbed my cannon, and my hog-tied fish-man, and started my trek on the beach.



It was later decided that my alignment get knocked down to evil. Some bullshit about me torturing that poor defenseless fish-man. Whatever.

[FolcoTook]

Catching up on the podcast, heard the phrase "kill it with fire" and it made me think of this story...

Was DMing a 1 ed. AD&D game. It was a pretty basic low-level adventure. Some bandits had kidnapped the daughter of a local magistrate and were holding her at their fort. The PCs have been hired to get her back. Adventure ensues.

So the PCs get to the fort which is pretty much a ramshackle affair built with wood pretty close to the edge of a great desert (in other words, we're in an area that's pretty hot and gets little rainfall). Now in retrospect, I'm not sure where the bandits got the wood to build a fort (ramshackle or otherwise) at the edge of a desert. Probably from the plot vendor. But I digresss....

One of the players is my brother whose first tool to solve any situation tends to be fire. The PCs decide they need to create a diversion and then sneak into the fort (which is pretty much going along with what I expected them to do). My brother decides the theif should sneak up to part of the wooden wall and set it on fire. The very dry wooden wall.

So nobody sees any issues with this plan and in fact are all very enthusiastic about it. The fire is set, the alarm is raised, and the PCs sneak into the fort. While they are looking for the kidnapped girl to rescue, I come up with some on-the-fly rules for the chances of these bandits (who I had already determined were somewhat incompetent and disorganized) to put out the fire. I figured they had about 5 rounds to do it or the fire would start spreading exponentially.

It did.

By the end, the PCs no longer had to sneak around the fort because everyone was running for their lives to just get out of the place. But they did manage to rescue the girl and get out alive. Of course they burned up a handful of plot hooks that had to be planted elsewhere, but no module survives contact with PCs intact, right?

-FT

[Wooberman]

Stumbled over this awesome anecdote - Enjoy.

http://www.reddit.com/tb/rmuuw

[Setherick]

Stumbled over this awesome anecdote - Enjoy.

http://www.reddit.com/tb/rmuuw

HAHA! Awesome.

[Moondog]

Stumbled over this awesome anecdote - Enjoy.

http://www.reddit.com/tb/rmuuw

I would murder a DM that tried to take my hit point count away from me. As if I wouldn't know how goddamned hurt I was? BLEGH.

[Setherick]

Stumbled over this awesome anecdote - Enjoy.

http://www.reddit.com/tb/rmuuw

I would murder a DM that tried to take my hit point count away from me. As if I wouldn't know how goddamned hurt I was? BLEGH.

I actually like immersive RP'ing (then again I was an improv actor in an applied theatre troupe for awhile), but it's hell on the GM to keep track of it all.

[Moondog]

Stumbled over this awesome anecdote - Enjoy.

http://www.reddit.com/tb/rmuuw

I would murder a DM that tried to take my hit point count away from me. As if I wouldn't know how goddamned hurt I was? BLEGH.

I actually like immersive RP'ing (then again I was an improv actor in an applied theatre troupe for awhile), but it's hell on the GM to keep track of it all.

What's immersion have to do with being put at an (unrealistic) mechanical disadvantage?

[Setherick]

What's immersion have to do with being put at an (unrealistic) mechanical disadvantage?

The easy answer to this is for me to ask you to quantify the current number of HP that you have IRL at this moment and your maximum HP. Also, can you quantify in real time the amount of HP that you lose from a combat situation?