"Can't even die if she wants to".
Standing on a rooftop and visibility is down to practically nothing due to a supervillain creating a thick fog. Pulse (the hero) and Warchild (the villain) are on the rooftop, one of Pulse's teammates (a cyborg who's name escapes me now) has just fallen about 30 stories to the ground. (The Cyborg will eventually get up and walk away - he was damn tough, plus one of the other teammates managed to slow him down from terminal velocity :). Pulse has no idea that Warchild is still on the roof, and the fog is hindering everyone.
Pulse: I've got to take out Fahrenheit, or there's no way we can stop them.
GM: So what do you do?
Pulse: Well, I know more or less where he is, right?
GM: Yup, he's about 10 feet out.
Pulse: Okay. I'm going to go after him.
GM: Excuse me?
Pulse: I'm going to back up as best I can, take a running jump and try to grab him. Fahrenheit can fly, so I'm banking on the fact he might be able to slow our descent.
GM: You're sure. You do realize that Pulse might miss, fall 30 stories and die.
Pulse: <nod> I know. If Pulse dies, I'll just make up a new character. Besides, stopping the Wrecking Crew is far more important to Pulse than if she turns herself into a pancake.
GM: Ooookaaaaayy.... Make your roll.
(I roll, and actually succeed in grabbing him, despite the heavy penalties.)
Pulse: I think "I'll probably die because of this, but if it will stop the destruction of the city, then it'll be worth it," take a deep breath, then run and jump.
GM: You go hurtling off the edge of the building and into the thick fog. Your body impacts what has to be Fahrenheit, and you begin to fall.
Pulse: Dammit Fahrenheit, you better be able to hold us both up!
GM: Fahrenheit's response is a squawk and grunt of surprise, and you continue to fall.
Pulse: Uh oh... I don't suppose I can invoke divine favor here? <everyone chuckles> I sure hope we land on that building that was next door, and not head directly to the ground....
GM: Suddenly you're out of the fog cloud and you see the rooftop of the building rushing at you.
Pulse: I try to turn so I don't land on top of Fahrenheit.
GM: You just manage to roll slightly when you hit, your body on partially on top of him. You crash through the roof and and continue through for two floors.
Pulse: Ouch! How much damage?
<GM rolls>
GM: Well, you would have taken 35 BODY, but with damage reduction you only take 16, and your armor stops it all, so you really don't take anything.
Pulse: What about stun?
GM: See you next month, dearie.
Fahrenheit didn't make out so well, and only timely response by paramedics saved his life. There was a bit of a media circus, 'cuz it turns out that Fahrenheit was a 12 year old kid, but the home video shots of Pulse glittering like a diamond as she fell was on the headline/highlight reels for weeks. :)
I have time for one quick story that comes to mind...
A friend of mine was playing an air elemental/genie character and was fighting his arch-nemesis the Atomizer (I don't make these names up!). After a long fight we had him pinned down and it was the genies action. The genies big attack was a whirl wind with the effect of having the center hex clear. In the heat of battle he cried "I do my whirl wind and Atomizer is RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE!!! YEAH!! I HIT!!" later followed by several obscene words when he realized what he'd done. The GM was kind of a goon, but this was so funny that we all busted up laughing.
I think I may have mentioned these some time ago, but for the sake of spreading the tale far and wide, I'll risk repeating myself.
A fantasy hero campaign, on board a large ocean going war vessel, the ship gets attacked by a Sea Dragon. This huge monstrous beast is tossing the ship around, so we all have to keep making dex rolls to stay on our feet. One of the mages gets a bright idea;
Mage: "I jump off the side of the ship and cast my fly spell."
GM: <After a pause> "You what?"
Mage: "I jump off the ship. Then I cast my fly spell."
GM: "Ohhhkay... what's your magic roll with that spell?"
Mage: "11 or less..." <rolls dice> "A... 17."
GM: <to the group> "You see him jump over the edge of ship, and with a splash, begins sinking." <to the player> "Did you buy swimming?"
Mage: "No..."
GM: <back to group> "...then begins drowning."
The last time I made the mistake of letting the press or whomever name a character, I had a brick walk up and lean and casually break off a lamp post. The cop he asked what was going on turned around said "Ok buddy stay, Urkkkk" stopped and stared at my character. A newspaper reporter wrote in his story the next day a beat cop identified the new brick in town who stopped Ogre's theft down at the Third National bank as being called Urk. "Urk with a drop kick booted Ogre into the next county. By the time the cops got there Ogre had disappeared."
I've got one - short and sweet.
In my game, there is a dimensional portal through which a fantasy realm connects with the supers' world. At one point, this was discovered by a band of orcs of a scouting/plunder mission. So the heroes show up. One of them - Malaclypse - is a very self-important and overconfident powerful mage (ironically from the superhero world), glides forward towards the charging orcs with his always on 'hovering' flight and makes a PRE attack (I forget what exactly it was, but was not bad) and hurls a huge fireball (I think one-hex AOE) at them and watches for their injury and retreat. Well, unfortunately, the orcs were in battle-lust mode and trying to make points for their god of War, so a couple of them were unaffected by the PRE attack.
So on their DEX, one of them approaches and swings his battleaxe for a measly little 2D6 HKA. Alas, Malaclypse is powerful, but aside from magic, is pretty much NORMAL! So his crappy DEX does no good, and his crappy PD lets all of the damage through and Malaclypse the Great is lying on the ground (well a little above the ground) bleeding and nearly unconscious.
Fortunately, his player is a died-in-the-wool roleplayer and enjoyed it as much as everyone else; "Nope, he wouldn't have put up his force field (in hindsight), why would he need it? He's MALACLYPSE!"
One of my best moments as a player....
The setting: Generic D&D world (that was the system being played). Most of the group were near munchikins. It was D&D what do you expect. I was playing a PC Drow raised by Dwarves from infancy, did I mention that I was near munchkin too.. 8).. his name Obsidian. In his playing life he had had some problems with racism, not surprisingly. As another note- Elves here had no facial hair.
Background: we were investigating the demise of a dwarven nation. The local town (our home base) had a patron demi-god that was originally from around there. He was half high Elf, Half Greater Orc. There was a statue of him in the middle of the town, and it was rumored that "the greatest treasure anyone could have" was hidden somewhere in the statue.
Adventure: not real important. We solved the mystery. However in crawling through the caverns we stumbled onto a set of passages that led to a peculiar set of rooms... one of which looked out onto the town. We surmised that somehow we had been shrunk and were inside the statue. There was a legend above the room (which appeared to be a study) that said: The greatest treasure.
We get inside, people are going over the books looking for spells, ransacking the desk, etc. I go and look out the window. I see the town square, bustling, the main tavern with people going in and out and laughing. I just stand there and watch. About this time someone in the room mutters in disgust "there is no treasure here". Then that tingly sensation that goes down your spine when inspiration hits you does it's thing. I turn and in character say "You don't understand. This guy was a 1/2 Orc, 1/2 Elf. He was strong, smart, had all the wealth you could want. The treasure is outside the window. The acceptance of the people around you. The being "part of" a community. Of belonging." Everyone just looked at me disgusted.
Later, after everything was done, we met the DemiGod (just after the climactic battle). He talked to each of us in turn. Everyone was healed and received some sort of reward (money magic items rect) when it was my turn he told me that I truly Understood. He gave me a Wish. I used it to get a beard.
Here is one from the "I gotta change that Disad" Dept.
I was playing Shellhead. My second champs character, and the first I had built myself. He was a monster. 3rd ed rules.. about 520 points to begin. He enraged or berserked at just about anything. He was a BRICK's brick. Well anyway we were in our base (FIDO, and AT-AT walker with a smiley-face and "have a nice day" on the side. We run into a major demon thing with a major pool that stand about 100' + tall. He blasts the FIDO and it cuts through the armor, the interior, and into the elevator where we were. The GM rolls (in plain sight) and it hits me. I go through the elevator, through the wall of the FIDO and into a hillside. Out but just barely. The healer in the group comes over to help me out, and I wake up.
GM: Roll you enraged when knocked unconscious.
ME: uh.. a 5.
GM you're enraged.
ME: I plaster Esper (with an apologetic look at Esper's player).
I nail her, KO her in one punch (do a fair amount of body too) and join the fight, whereupon the demon promptly stepped on me and I was out of it.
We ended up ramming him then stomping him to jelly with the FIDO.
>And if you remember my comment about the PC that could only hit people in
>the hand? Well, he expertly lopped off three in this fight... starting an
>amusing (to us anyway) trend.
We had something like that in an old RuneQuest game, and the *weirdest* things would happen. We had an Elf and a Troll getting along (mainly through blackmail on the Elf's part :). That same troll could also swim, and the centaur could be really sneaky.
The troll learned to swim kind of by accident. We were accosted by a Duck, who tried to escape us - when his attempts at highway robbery went awry - dove into a nearby pond and headed for the bottom. The troll, not being very smart, went in after him - forgetting he didn't know how to swim. :) He succeeded in every single roll the GM had him make against drowning.
The centaur, as per the RQ rules at the time, started off with a negative Sneak skill. But, being the daring centaur she was, she tried to sneak up on the enemy. Her roll? Critical success. It was amazing. No matter what dice she used to make her rolls, whenever it came to sneaking, she succeeded. Heck, by the time the campaign was over, the centaur actually had Sneak skill of 10%, which is godlike compared to the standard centaur (who starts at -15% or so, if I remember correctly).
The story behind the blackmail between the elf and the troll? Well, I was playing the elf (and my brother the troll, and for those of you who aren't familiar with RQ, trolls and elvs do not get along - trolls think elves make tasty snacks.) I forget what the exact situation was, but it ended up the troll needed to be healed or he'd die, and the elf was the only one who could do it. I made him swear on his mother's bones that he would never again try to eat me, or any other elf, unless I said he could. Oh, he bitched, and complained, and moaned, gnashed his teeth, but eventually relented. It was priceless. The whole group was laughing - including my brother - but the troll was not amused.
I was in a game with a werewolf PC (this was an *extremely* freeform fantasy game, not far from a typical early T&T game in tone, though using Hero rules) who kept rolling up the "Vitals" location for his bite attacks. After the third time, one of the other players turned to the werewolf's player and said, amid the giggling, "Hungry, aren't you?"
In a 75+75 point four-color game we played (The concept was a team of very underpowered superheroes, who would have trouble as a team against any one standard villain, never mind a whole group of them.), the GM wanted to put us all through our paces solo in Secret Id. in combat.
The first to go was 'Weapon Master,' a minor martial artist with a talent for turning anything he picked up into a lethal and amazingly accurate ... well, weapon. He was confronted by two thugs with knives threatening the wheelchair bound boxing coach under a covered walkway on campus. WM declares he's pulling his martial strike, putting his levels to hit the first thug in the head, hoping to knock him out cold. He has a 7d6 Martial Strike. WM rolls to hit.
Oops, exactly what he needs, so the thug takes full body, not half for pulled. WM rolls seven sixes for damage, to the head, on a PD 3 thug. To add insult to injury, he rolls to subtract four from knockback, doing a further 10d6 to the corpse when it hits the concrete wall of the walkway, for a further thirteen BODY. And there were witnesses. Keep in mind, this is not WM's big attack, just what he does unarmed when not trying.
WM's trial is speedy, and fair. The boxing coach testifies that the punch was pulled, and WM had held back. Audio recordings show that WM tried to talk the thugs out of the fight, and that he struck the man, a notorious three-time loser, only as a last resort to save lives. But the level of damage to the thug, who the GM ruled was literally splattered messily over the whole tunnel wall, was so enormous that WM's Secret ID gained a reputation. No matter what happened from then on in the campaign, thugs would comment, in relief, that they were glad to only be facing us mere superheroes, and not "The Atomic Fist Kid."
Several gunslinger mentality type normal martial artists do show up, but, when shown a photograph of the scene, decide discretion is the better part of valor. Atomic Fist's reputation grows faster, based on that one punch, than the entire hero group's. When, several hundred collective experience points later, we faced Professor Muerte and were on the ropes, Esper read WM's mind, to discover his Secret Identity. Reeling in horror, she screamed, "Oh no! It-it-it c-c-can't be! He's really Atomic Fist! Run!" This gave us enough breathing room in the fight to regroup.
The funny part is that WM hated the Atomic Fist reputation. Imagine a superhero out to make a name for himself, completely overshadowed by his mild-mannered civilian identity.
Well now, there was the player who introduced a new character into a campaign, "The Spectral Strangler", a masked Mexican pro wrestler with Affects Desolid on his STR. The team had some fairly potent combat types at that point, and the Strangler was designed as a low-powered thug-basher. So, what does he end up doing, on his very first outing, as his very first combat maneuver? He has to put Proff. Murete in a headlock. Curiously enough, by sheer coincidence, every time the Strangler bought himself a new, flashy maneuver, he always ended up trying it out on Muerete......
The Good, The Bad and The Other...
Here's a few that I've done myself.
My first session in what was to be my most beloved and longest running game and gaming group(5 years, weekly). Anyway, I'm playing (Huzzah!) Capt. Spith - basically a Spider-man clone, with Batman's drive and about 50 points of 'heroic' Psych lims. We're in an abandoned Villains' base, cleaning it out of Aliens (TM). Yep, like in the movie(s). So Spith is at the end of a corridor against two of the beasts by himself, but DEX and SPD were both enough higher than the aliens' that I could dodge and Haymaker alternately and was slowly wearing them down. Then, out of nowhere, a body-morpher-brick turns himself to faceted crystal and dives into the mix with us. His first blows immediately started doing BODY and started them bleeding. ....oops.... Fortunately, I was already savvy to their acid blood thing and immediately leapt my no-resistant-defense self out of harms way while crystal-boy continues to make a big mess....
Another game, I was playing a female 7-foot brick (Gretchen) with a small mimic pool. We were wading through a small crowd of agents. Well Gretchen's favorite all time attack was to grab whatever her opponent used as a weapon (when applicable) and thwack them with it. Often lost effectiveness with weaker materials, but it was soooo satisfying. Well, she had a rifle in her hand by the muzzle, and wanted to thwack 3 or 4 agents who were all in a bunch, but didn't have confidence in her OCV to get them all, so needed a distraction. In a burst of inspiration, she remembered her instant change! So just before her attack, she flashed her costume into a bare-chested 'bunny' corset, which successfully 'stunned' the male agents, and got them all!
Capt. Spith again, and the team was fighting classic X-men Sentinels. Round about the middle of the fight, Spith got entangled with a big wad of goop that my 30 STR would never get out of. Well this GM allowed 'EGO pushes' where an EGO roll would allow huge pushing of powers, with accompanying damage to the pusher. My roll yielded me +30 to my STR and 8D6 to myself. I *almost* broke through the goop ENT, but not quite. Then a teammate managed to paste a human foe in this mix-up and kill him, and I got to see it. Spith's 20-point Code vs. Killing kicked in and another 'EGO-push'. Another +30 STR and 8D6 to myself (self-damage, of course, with no defense), and valiantly broke through the entangle and fell on the floor unconscious and bleeding out of my ears.
The most recent moment was a moment of triumph and failure all in one attack.
In our first combat of the game, we were facing a stone Golem. My character being young and not knowing much about magical creatures such as golems only saw that one of our party members had instantly been disintegrated by the golem's punch. (The thief had actually started to go invisible and finished going invisible just as the golem knocked her out.) My character, drew his sword and leapt into action. He went for a straight on attack on the golem and I rolled a 3!!! Everyone was ooooing and ahhhhing until the gm said that because I rolled a three that my sword wouldn't break. The entire attack bounced off the golem's defenses and only because I rolled a three did my sword not take the damage shield damage vs. bladed weapons.
Then the golem hit me. My character was screaming all the way across the room thinking that he was going to disintegrate just like the last member did.
You can imagine his surprise when he did not die and when the thief magically appeared in the corridor later on. There was a lot of explaining to do.
Heh... then there was the time that the busty 20 COM heroine tied up the villain with her costume...
There was a short lived comedy game that included a supermodel with a 60 com and a 25D6 mind control based on seduction. I think that the special effect was that she batted her eyes and then asked them to do something.
I once wrote up "Captain Cretin, the Dimwitted Detective" and his sidekick, Bimbo for a high powered campaign I wanted to join.
CC had density increase - only the more levels he activated, the dumber he got (he did have some skill levels with INT skills because he was used to it) he always had 2 levels on (he also had a suppress against his own DI so he could concentrate and get less dense)
Bimbo was a 36 Com woman with an always on area effect INT & EGO suppress based on her pheromones and rather buff and graceful body (25 STR & 26 DEX).
Bimbo would get everyone distracted and then she and CC would pound the crap out of them. Bimbo had a hell of a lot of useful knowledge skills, and a 30 INT, but the villains tended to ignore her. She'd study the area, (do some demo skill rolls) and mark a big X in lipstick so Cap would know what spot to hit and bring the building down.
This cropped up on GURPS net a few months ago when the subject was ignoble player deaths.
Mark Steuer <steuerm@nichols.com> recounts this tale: Many years ago (back when we all were still playing D&D), I ran a game where I pitted two groups against each other.
Several members of Group One came up with the idea of luring Group Two into a trap. You remember the Hand of Vecna and the Eye of Vecna that were artifacts in the old D&D world where if you cut off your hand (or your eye) and replaced it with the Hand of Vecna (or the Eye) you'd get new awesome powers? Well, Group One thought up "The Head of Vecna."
Group One spread rumors all over the countryside (even paying Bards to spread the word about this artifact rumored to exist nearby). They even went so far as to get a real head and place it under some weak traps to help with the illusion. Unfortunately, they forgot to let ALL the members of their group in on the secret plan (I suspect it was because they didn't want the Druid to get caught and tell the enemy about this trap of theirs, or maybe because they didn't want him messing with things).
The Druid in Group One heard about this new artifact and went off in search of it himself (I believe to help prove himself to the party members...) Well, after much trial and tribulation, he found it; deactivated (or set off) all the traps; and took his "prize" off into the woods for examination. He discovered that it did not radiate magic (a well known trait of artifacts) and smiled gleefully.
I wasn't really worried since he was alone and I knew that there was no way he could CUT HIS OWN HEAD OFF. Alas I was mistaken as the Druid promptly summoned some carnivorous apes and instructed them to use his own scimitar and cut his head off (and of course quickly replacing it with the "Head of Vecna"...)
Some time later, Group One decided to find the Druid and to check on the trap. They found the headless body (and the two heads) and realized that they had erred in their plan (besides laughing at the character who had played the Druid)...The "Head of Vecna" still had BOTH eyes! They corrected this mistake and reset their traps and the "Head" for it real intended victims...
Group Two, by this time, had heard of the powerful artifact and decided that it bore investigating since, if true, they could use it to destroy Group One. After much trial and tribulation, they found the resting place of "The Head of Vecna!" The were particularly impressed with the cunning traps surrounding the site (one almost missed his save against the weakest poison known to man). They recovered the "Head" and made off to a safe area.
Group Two actually CAME TO BLOWS (several rounds of fighting) against each other arguing over WHO WOULD GET THEIR HEAD CUT OFF! Several greedy players had to be hurt and restrained before it was decided who would be the recipient of the great powers bestowed by the "Head"... The magician was selected and one of them promptly cut his head off. As the player was lifting "The Head of Vecna" to emplace it on it's new body, another argument broke out and they spent several minutes shouting and yelling. Then, finally, they put the "Head" onto the character.
Well, of course, the "Head" simply fell off the lifeless body. All members of Group Two began yelling and screaming at each other (and at me) and then, on their own, decided that they had let too much time pass between cutting off the head of a hopeful recipient and put the "head of Vecna" onto the body.
SO THEY DID IT AGAIN!... [killing another PC]
In closing, it should be said that I never even cracked a smile as all this was going on. After the second PC was slaughtered, I had to give in (my side was hurting)... And Group Two blamed ME for all of that...
Well, I don't know if I would necessarily consider this to be a STUPID action by a player... more like a player getting his just rewards...
It was an AD&D campaign (you notice how ALOT of stupid things get done in an AD&D campaign?). I had just started the players running through 'The Egg of the Phoenix', just as a new player joined the game. After noting the module that the party was running through, he asked if he could play a paladin. Thinking nothing of it, I agreed.
Several weeks into the game, Keith (the new guy) casually mentioned that he had the 'Egg of the Phoenix' module at home. (of course he assured me that he had never read it and wouldn't look at it until after we finished it). I later overheard him tell one of the other players (you know how some people have that whisper that carries further than their normal voice?) that the only reason he was playing a paladin was because he knew there was a really kick-ass holy sword at the end of the module. I started paying closer attention after that (it was a LARGE group -about 12 people so I hadn't payed particular attention to HIM until then) and noted that he DID always seem to know in advance what was coming up.
So....
When we got to the point in the module that the PCs were supposed to come across the holy sword, Keith went RUNNING into the room, right to where the sword was prominently displayed and grabbed it before anyone else could. The sword immediately responded with a bright, cheery voice...
Sword: Hi!! Who are you?
Keith: I am Sir George Whatever, Paladin of (i dont remember who he worshiped), are you a holy sword??
Sword: Why, YES I AM!!! In fact, I am the most powerful HOLY SWORD in the world!!
Keith: Great!! What can you do?
Sword: Why, anything of course, after all.. I am a HOLY SWORD!!! With me, you will be the mightiest paladin in the world!! But first...
Keith: What?
Sword: Well.. now that you have a HOLY SWORD!!! you don't need any of these 'other' magic items. You have to get rid of them.
Keith: uh... okay (and proceeds to give away ALL of his magic items)
Sword: and... you don't need all those gems anymore. Those would look MUCH better mounted on my hilt. Just go ahead and press them there, they'll attach themselves...
Keith: uh... okay (proceeds to give ALL of his money to the sword. The gems magically attach themselves to the hilt)
Sword: I know where there's a dragon. Lets go kill it. Thats what paladins do. They KILL dragons. Especially paladins with HOLY SWORDS!!!
Keith: But, what did the dragon do to deserve getting killed?
Sword: How should I know? It's a dragon! Thats enough reason to kill it! Lets go!
Keith: but.. what about the quest I'm already on?
Sword: Oh.. THIS quest is beneath you now that you have a HOLY SWORD!!! let these other losers take care of it. You deserve bigger and better things!
Keith: But..!
Sword: Shut up! Just do what I say if you want to be the most powerful paladin in the world!! Lets go!
About this time Keith started to figure out that it wasn't really a holy sword (heh). He finally (in disgust) tossed the sword in the corner (after finding out he couldn't destroy it) and tried to get his magic items back from the rest of the party (his money was a lost cause). Of course, his previous magic weapon had been a +3 intelligent sword (one of the most powerful in the game up to that point) who was now offended and wouldn't have anything to do with him ;) He started to whine about 'but - you CANT take out the HOLY SWORD!!!'. He shut up when I asked him how he knew it was supposed to be a holy sword.. He was a little less greedy after that ;)
The funniest thing about this was as they were leaving, the party thief hangs back to check out the sword a little closer.
Sword: Hi!! Need a sword?
Thief: Uh.. yer too loud for me. I'm a thief, I need a quiet sword.
Sword: (in a whisper) I can be a thief sword. In fact, I'm the most powerful thief sword in the world!!
Thief: Really? what can you do?
Sword: Why.. I can do ANYTHING!!! (pause) Got any gems...?
For the next 2 years the thief dragged this sword around with him, convinced that it was the most powerful sword in the game. I think the only powers it EVER displayed were detect invisibility, detect gems and detect secret doors. (and it NEVER did any of them for free - it ALWAYS charged gems) At every opportunity it informed him of how many gems other party members were carrying, and tried to talk him into stealing them ;)
I've been looking over your web site, and I think I might have a story to add to your collections. This one took place at a convention, where we were off to "capture" an mutational asteroidish thing. I was playing a character of mine based off of a radio melodrama I'd done as a term project in college - "Captain Calamity". He's a brick who dresses in mauve, he tells his opponents, "This would never have happened if you had listened to your mother... after all, a boy's best friend is his mother!", he has the disadvantage "Reputation (14-): bull in china shop....
You get the idea. :)
Anyways, we've all been shifted into this alternate timeline (the title of the adventure was "A M.O.B.I.U.S. Agent in King Arthur's Court") and we've just arrived at a tavern. Everyone else gets off their feet and asks for beer or hard liquor. The good Captain stumps up to the bar and shouts, "Barkeep! Lemonade!"
For some reason, this garnered some strange looks from the other players. :)
At this point, one of the other players has a character called "The Conductor", who believes that everything that's going on around him is part of a movie he's making. He points at the Captain and says, "Time out!" Suddenly, the Captain finds himself on what is clearly a sound set. Gaffers and sound techs march past nearby, there's his trailer in the distance.... I decided to go with this as far as I could. I quickly mimed pulling out a cellular phone and dialing, and then proceeded to have a one-sided conversation with air. "Yeah, is Lenny there? Look, I really need to talk to him. What good is having an agent if he's always out to lunch? Hi, Lenny! It's me... look, I don't care what they offer, you've got to get me some serious acting roles. I want to do more than just pay the rent! No, no, no... I told you, there's no way in hell I'm going to act as a stunt double for Arnold again, I don't care how much he's offering. Look, just set me up some interviews and I'll do the rest, OK?" *growl mutter gripe*
Needless to say, it was a hell of a fun game, and that was just an interesting little adventure flavor on the side. :)
Ahem...just something that happened in a champs game here at school...sorta thing to go on your "smooth moves" section of good/bad/stupid...sneaking through the sewers to ambush a flipped out superhero...
"Roll your Stealth roll"
"Uh...an 18"
"You trip over a loose rock and fall straight into the sewage flow. You are then struck on the head by part of the tunnel roof which falls in...you've DEFINITELY alerted him"
Bob The Swordsman
It started in character creation. I'm in the habit of telling my players to dream up WHAT they want the character to do, then work out HOW they do it. So when starting a new fantasy game, here's how the character concept came out.
Player: I want to hack stuff up!
GM: Care to be more specific?
Player: I want to hack stuff up with a big sword!
In the end, I wound up doing the powers for him, by copying them from my conversion of a video game character. He briefly looked at them, and said they were okay. When it comes to battle, however...
Player: Okay, I'll use my Whack! (Special AP strike that takes a full phase)
GM: Okay, your opponent clobbers you.
Player: What about my attack?
GM: It takes a full phase.
Long pause.
Player: It does?
I had one hero get knocked off a building once. Knowing she wouldn't get too injured, I didn't worry and smacked onto the sidewalk. Though right after that another character walked over and asked "Didn't you install flight jets recently?"
On a similar note, I was once in a group where the heroes agonized for half an hour about how to get across a moat. Suddenly, one of the characters piped up with, "Wait just a moment, I can Fly!"
After hiding in the wilderness for years, the faithful retainer, the old wizard, and the young prince-in-hiding come into town. By sheer coincidence, one of the wizard's oldest and dearest friends from 15 years ago is there and recognizes him.
The other wizard tells him that the land over which he was lord now belongs to their worst enemy (another wizard). That his daughter is held hostage there, with magic so that she thinks everything is normal and that the evil wizard is her father. That he can't rescue her because his magic would set off detectors set for him. That the people are so frightened of the evil wizard that if they talk to anyone in the area they will be reported immediately.
So, the characters quietly sneak into the castle of their leader's oldest friend and kidnap his daughter.
Seriously, it never once occurred to me that nobody would check a single detail of the story, or be the slightest bit suspicious.
The same campaign, the wizard leader in question (Horansho) was believed to have murdered the old king and his family. (Rep: Regicide, 14-). A few weeks into the game, he is challenged by castle guards.
"Who are you?"
"Horansho the great!"
"The regicide?!?"
Same group, the young prince wanted to join the evil bad guys, rise through the ranks, get close enough to the evil dark lord, and murder him. Never mind that everyone would think he was a simple murderer and hang him. Never mind it would take years. Never mind that he would have to perform acts of great evil to be trusted. Never mind that many of the enemy's agents were wizards, and could read minds.
While visiting another dimension, they find a world where their are strange lights in the sky, and sneak into a city via the slums. People grumble a bit about the strange lights in the sky and the bad weather. "This didn't happen when the old king was in power", they'd say. They also appear to be afraid of the men in the black uniforms.
So, the heroes meet a homeless man in the sewers. He says he's the king, and he wants his throne back. So the heroes give it to him.
They never ask anyone at all, "Is this the king?" Or, "What did the king look like?" Or, "Why did the prince take over?" With no reason except that some people in the ghetto complain about poor weather control and resent the police, and with no justification other than "He said he's the king", they proceed to put a crazy street person on the throne.
(OK, so he was the king. He was also a megalomaniac who believed he was a God, and who was justifiably overthrown with the approval of the masses, and who, along with kingship, gained powers far beyond weather control.)
My favorite was when the team entered an Aztec Souvenir shop searching for a special magical item. One of them strode up to the counter and honestly asked, "Do you have any Aztec Souvenirs?"
In one superhero game, another player-character was an energy projector with the Disadvantage that he got Enraged when people laughed at him. Only an Enraged, not a Berserk; he'd only attack the one who laughed at him, not everyone around.
We were investigating some sort of super-villain plot at Disneyland, and this character decided to go undercover on his own; he put on one of the Disney-character costumes, specifically Goofy. And while walking around Disneyland as Goofy, several children spot him, and how do these children react to Goofy? Of course, they laugh at him.
Fortunately, the character just barely made his role to avoid going Enraged; one point less, and he'd have fired off a full power energy blast at them, followed by the rest of us having to track him down and arrest him for mass-murdering children.
I had a group of PCs decide, mid adventure, to track down a brick of hash and smoke it among them. (PCs were all college students.)
Unfortunately, this was right before they were set to be ambushed by villains. You see, one of the PCs needed a 'radiation accident', so she was going to be hit with a 'power negation gun', and they'd need to track down the villains and fix things.
So, as they stopped at a liquor store to pick up some more beer, they sent in one of the two non-stoned PCs. The PC who wanted the 'radiation accident' was straight (and the one driving) and was required by plot to get hit by the gun. The other non-stoned PC (a ROTC guy) was pegged by a lucky shot on his way to the store. The other three PCs were barely functional [one brick of hash split among three people is quite a lot].
The fight did not go well. At one point, the PC in the store, realizing that his electricity powers were gone, decided to 'jump start' himself by sticking his finger in an electric socket...
The plot had required them to win that combat, but all the GM fudging in the world couldn't save them...
In defense of the players, I ran my campaign so the end of each session was a cliffhanger of some sort. That meant that there were often lulls at the middle of a session when folks could get 'off panel' stuff done. They just mistook a lull before an ambush for a lull for off-panel time.
Was a D&D game (Return to Tomb of Horrors actually) I was running. I am not really spoiling anything by saying that there are Undead involved. Okay; so after weeks of travel where the PCs are harassed by Vampires, the party finally reaches the school of Necromancy. They manage to sneak in and get into the tunnels beneath the school of Necromancy. Running low on spells, they find a room with only one exit, but it has three coffins in it.
I swear to god, I nearly had a hernia laughing when they looked right at me and said "Let's make camp."
Didn't look in the coffins, even when I asked them if they wanted to. Oh no, they wanted to sleep up and regain spells first.
I dunno what they were thinking. It was a game I was running at a local convention, so I had to retroactive save them. We still had four hours in the time slot to go. So I had them all wake up from a dream of dying by vampires. Set them back five "days" in the past and had the whole thing a warning dream from their respective deities.
bumped into your hero source page, and the bloopers you put up. I've got a story I just had to share.
Our current adventure is a Victorian Steampunk thing. There's a witch(energy blast, stun only, invisibility and flight, with any broom), a half-fae cook(she controls the air), a mercenary (shadow step teleportation and a katana), an abomination (undead flesh golem Brick), and my character a wereman, born a wolf, cursed into human form. We were raiding a warehouse trying to find a government scientist who had run off with a Jekyl/Hyde potion, which he was currently selling on the black market. Our witch reconnoitered and discovered the basic layout, while our half-fae cook brought some fog in to help things along. We decided that we should make a big entrance. Our Brick at one door, me at another. The Brick burst through the door, grabbed the nearest bad guy, and through him through a wall yelling FLEE at the top of his lungs. The bad guys started taking his advice, running right for the door I was behind. So I entered in my were form, howling and gnashing teeth. One thug fainted, one had a heart attack and died, one guy spun around too quickly and brained himself on a pile of crates, and one guy charged ME pulling a silver knife. We went toe to toe, and I wasn't particularly worried as I had a shotgun and he didn't. By the time he went down he'd taken a shotgun blast to the chest, one grazing shot from a rifle, two or three direct hits from rifles, and been beaten in several places with the shotgun. Needless to say I've since recruited him as a minion.
During a white wolf game, using the new rules for most everything, but inventing rules for Mages, Wereanimals, and Immortals, we were faced with three vampires and two ghouled dogs. We had three mages, a werecat, and and Immortal (who didn't know it yet). We were in a museum defending a magical peace pipe. Our storyteller hadn't intended us to succeed in defending the pipe, and had actually tricked my character into revealing the parties plans to defend the pipe to a group that, my character, believed to be unrelated to the faction trying to steal the pipe, and then told me about it!! I started the encounter in the security control room with another mage. Things went south pretty quickly. The two dogs moved in to distract us while the vampires snuck in. I tried to give what quintessence I had to the other mage in the control room (it didn't work, and we hadn't decided on rules for quintessence yet anyway), and booked to where the other players were fighting. Bringing along a magical device that we all referred to as "the mystical taser of doom". While I ran from the control room to the room with the pipe. The guy I left in the control room transformed the security cameras into laser cannons destroying the dogs quickly, and garnering enough Paradox to look like someone had messed with his dimness setting for a while. Then the vampires came in. One went down fairly quickly to the laser cannon/cameras(I believe the player in question rolled 6 or 7 successes on each attempt). The next one ran in slashing our werecat across the back (his last action) while the other vamp stole the pipe. The werecat ran after the pipe while the rest of us faced the vamp who'd slashed our werecat. Three of us, two mages and the immortal, all faced the vampire. Between the Immortal and I we did enough damage to stun the vamp every round except the second to last. At which time the other mage, a guitarist, decided that the spirit of Jerry Garcia had caused the security cameras to protect him. Stepping forward raising his guitar before himself, he proceeded to use his True Faith in Jerry Garcia to stun the vampire for a round, at which time the Immortal and I finished him. Meanwhile the werecat grappled with and finished the last vampire and returned the peace pipe.