[Useless Trivia Man]

It seems that we oughta have a thread for tabletop gamers around here...



During last night's D&D game, the players actually managed to surprise me with a very well-played unexpected maneuver.

The scenario: I'm re-using one of my favorite old adventure maps - the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth from the Dragonlance series - in a home-brewed adventure. This is a city ruin in a huge, deep (700' drop) open cavern under a swamp. There are only two ways in or out (unless you can fly): a climb to a higher ledge where you can find an ancient sewer pipe that leads to the surface, or the direct route: a pair of ridiculously large cooking pots, a very big pulley wheel, and about 700' of stout chain. Presto, it's a goblin elevator! (Note: Somehow, none of my players have read the Dragonlance trilogy, so this is totally brand-new to them. Bonus.)

The (7th level) player characters were captured, and are currently trying to escape from this goblin city/ruin. During their imprisonment by these goblins, they saw the goblins' "elevator" in use. They got free and took the back way (the sewer pipe) up to the surface level, and had even managed to do so without raising the general alarm (there are literally many hundreds of goblins here, and we've already learned that most of 'em have character levels).

They stumbled upon a large group of 20+ goblins at the top of the elevator. Most were non-combatants, who were in the process of jumping into the elevator pot (that's their "job" in the tribe - elevator crew). The fightin' goblins move to attack, and the rest jump into the pot and drop from sight as the giant pulley starts to turn, bringing another group of goblin badasses up from below...

At this point, Anthony (one of the players) gets very excited and shows something written on his character sheet to the guy next to him. He gets excited too, but tells Anthony to keep quiet about it until his turn. Now my mental alarm bells are going off, but I genuinely don't know what's coming. On Ant's initiative, he moves over to the pulley and declares he's making a touch attack on the chain...

With a rust monster antenna.

I was floored. I had totally forgotten that they'd faced a coupla rust monsters during one of the previous adventures, and they took two antennae for future use. I debated briefly whether or not to let it work, but this is the guy's very first campaign, and it really was a slick piece of work. I had to let the new player have his moment of glory, because I know he's still crowing about it today. It was one of those gamer geek stories he'll probably still be talking about ten years from now, and it makes me smile knowing I caused that.

So the antenna caused the chain to break, sending about 20 goblins plummeting to their deaths. Not to mention what happened to the goblins in the other pot, who get to have 700' of chain (and a big cooking pot) come down on their heads. (Afterwards, Ant realized he shoulda waited until the elevator was about halfway up, but the results were still quite satisfying.)


Anyone else got some good gaming stories?

[Useless Trivia Man]

Nobody else is doing any role-playing gaming 'round here?? This makes me a sad panda.

I guess I'll give this one more try. I'm a total RPG geek, and I actually like to hear how other people's campaigns are going.

We gamed Tuesday evening, and due to a scheduling quirk we managed to switch over to Dan's game... I GOT TO PLAY INSTEAD OF DM!! (It turns out that we actually hadn't played this particular campaign since February, so he had to give us a recap of what the heck we were doing.)

We're trying to oust a group of smugglers/pirates (YARR!) from a cozy little seashore village. We've discovered their hideout beneath the old "haunted" manor house, and we're currently about two levels below-ground. There are five of us in a pretty well-balanced group, and we're all currently 6th level: elf fighter, gnome ranger, human thief, human cleric, human wizard (ME!)

When last we left our intrepid group of adventurers... we had just defeated some bad guys defending a rope bridge. It's over water, of course, and the waters were shark-infested. We fully expected to find some underwater treasure, so we needed to get rid of some sharks. Someone in the party had a grappling hook and we all had rope, of course, and there just happened to be a coupla dead pirates lying around... so we went fishing!

The look on DM Dan's face was priceless.

It turns out there WAS underwater treasure, too. After looting, we stumbled upon a pirate in a cage. The prisoner used to be the pirate captain, up until the mutiny... We left him in his cage for the nonce, and immediately thereafter we met up with the current - and more bloodthirsty - pirate captain. We were winning, dammit, but he had some magic trick that allowed him to teleport to safety. He then healed up and scrounged some reinforcements, and we faced off against him (and all of his cronies) a second time at that same rope bridge. This was a great fight, and we did manage to pull off a win; unfortunately, Mr. Bloodthirsty managed to escape again. I want his frog king head, but Dan's threatening to turn him into a recurring campaign villain...

End of session.

It was yet another great game night, full of sillyness, obscure movie quotes, and puns galore. I can't wait for the next one.

[n9zee]

Heh, those are pretty good tales!

I haven't role-played in quite some time, as my interests have changed to Warhammer 40k (though I still have all my D&D 3rd ed books). I do have a 40k story, though. We were playing a game of Apocalypse, where there's really big armies and bigger warmachines (Titans). So my friend John's Titan is shooting everything in my ally's army and decides to throw his Vortex grenade to add insult to injury (if something gets hit by the template it dies automatically, unless it's a really big thing, like a Titan. I'm sure you can see where this is going...)

John throws the grenade and rolls for scatter. It ends up landing on the Titan. Now the Titan has 2 structure points left, it will lose d3 of them from the grenade. My brother, John's ally, is going "Don't roll a six, don't roll a six, don't roll a six..." but, alas, John rolls a six.

Losing both remaining structure points, the Titan is destroyed. Now it still has a chance to do some damage. An explosion from the meltdown could, if John rolls good (and he has been all day), eliminate a good chunk of my side's armies out to a radius of 2 feet(!!)

He proceeds to roll a 1 on the damage chart. All that happens is the Titan collapses as a wreck and ends up blocking half the table. Tom and I are saved!

I don't remember who won the battle but I'll never forget the look on John's face as his Titan went down without a whimper to his own weapon. Can't wait for the next battle!

[Bodhisattva]

I'd talk a bit about the Exalted game, but we're on hiatus from it after I dropped being the Storyteller 'cause one of the players was being a huge douchebag about who had the final say over rules - according to the books and the developers, it's supposed to be the Storyteller, but this guy refused to accept that.

[Useless Trivia Man]

I think I'd really enjoy 40K if I had someone to play against. I never tried to get into it though, cuz that is an even more expensive pastime than my D&D (and I've got a ridiculously large 27-year collection of D&D stuff).

I do still dabble with some Battletech though, and there was an unforgettably lucky shot - from a battle almost 20 years ago - that still comes up in conversation occasionally. We never tried to do any campaigns with our BT games, and we got to a point where our skirmishes got almost TOO unwieldy: Me against Brad in a Company vs Company (16 'mechs per Company) free-for-all. That battle lasted for months, and we would sometimes only get in a single round of combat in an entire evening.

In the early stages of that titanic clash, Brad got in a very lucky shot. He took a potshot with a large laser at one of my 65-ton Crusaders; he needed to roll box cars to actually hit, and pulled it off. Then, just to make it worse, he managed to roll a head shot! I had a brand-spankin'-new Crusader without a scratch on it... except the head was gone. It didn't even get to fire at anything and it died.

[Maelgwyn]

I have never role played at all. My school didnt have the people there and I never got any interest for it.

Thats one thing I would like to correct

[Jeff N.]

I've got one for you.

In the group I RP with there's a man named Paul and Paul is an idiot. So much so that we have yet to run a campaign that he has not put at least one of my characters in mortal danger through his own ineptitude. In fact, I've made it clear to him the next time it happens I'll end his character in a suitably horrific fashion. Well, he finally made me do it.

This particular incident occured while we were playing an All Flesh Must be Eaten campaign. We had rolled up 104 pre-genned characters for an epic campaign. It took us two weeks to square away all the character info. Once we finished, we assigned each character to a card in one of two decks. The character I drew was a gambler/drifter, which set me up to handle the situation we were in quite well.

Ironically, Paul drew the LARPer and to be fair, he played the stereotype quite well. The zombie type we were playing against was a contact strain that was a very slow onset. the infected people would wander around looking for orange juice until they were riled up, and thier bodies were quite fragile. We were raiding a convenience store when the first full-blown zombie attacked us.

I was outside watching the street and Paul went in to find something like a sword that he could use. Well the zombie jumped the counter and in true Paul fashion after the DM tells him to roll to see if he is too afraid to move in exact terms, HE ASKS IF THERE ARE ANY ADDITIONAL PENALTIES! In standard fashion for our DM, if you ask a stupid question, the answer is whatever screws you more. He manages to keep from being totally terrified, but when he attacks, the thing's broken arm cuts him and he gets infected.

It turns out they can smell their own, so they follow us from location to location until we're running through the sewers in front of a zombie horde. I figure out he's the reason they can track us so I spin around, shoot him in the knees, then set him on fire. To add insult to injury I steal one of our military guy's grenades and lob it back down the tunnel after we're clear. Finally, as a special measure, when we came back through I pissed on his corpse.

He hasn't made the same mistake since.

[Useless Trivia Man]

I introduced one of my buddies to D&D roughly two years ago, and he has turned into a total Gamer Geek. (I'm so proud!) He's even gathered up his own Sunday night group and is starting his very first campaign. This week he learned a very important lesson that I (unfortunately) experienced a decade ago...

It is NOT FUN if one of the players decides to get shit-faced drunk while playing D&D. It's one thing if everyone's drinking together, but when he's the only one drinking?? It frog king sucks for everyone else at the table.

...And now you know.

[Farangu]

I have one from a couple of years ago. I managed to talk a fair number of my friends into trying D&D, with me being the stereotypical dwarf fighter (I was 16, everyone's stupid then) and my friends not being much more original, save for one who made a mongoloid half-orc who carried a big club and mostly talked about cheese.

After getting a suitable 1st-level task(clear out some old castle), we bugger around the rooms until we find a few large beetles. Fate being what it is, my rolls are shit and the beetles are apparently ninjas, and I end up falling dead. The rest of the group defeated the beetles, then proceeded to pick up everything of value from my corpse. I thought it a tad rough that they go right to the pillaging, but quickly dismissed it.

The next room they tried had a door that(unknown to us) was magically locked and couldn't be opened in this game. My group tried picking the lock, casting spells at it, and the mongoloid tried beating it down, but to no avail. However, they really wanted to know what was behind there. So, their next bright idea was to pick up my corpse, place a helm on it and try and use it as a battering ram. Needless to say, I didn't take that very well.

"C'mon, DM! What the f%#! Roll it so that my spirit comes down and tells them not to!"

Unufortunately, he wanted to see them try even though he knew it wouldn't work. He felt for my pain, though, and described it as such: "You pick up the body of your dear friend and load him down with as much clutter and detritus as you can find, and align yourselves with the door. *dice roll that will have no meaning* You charge with all of your strength, but instead of hearing the door give way, you hear the corpse's spine and neck bones disentegrate."

I thought that at least my body had taught them to leave well enough alone. Then the mongoloid half-orc thinks, and just says, "Knock?" They try that, which also doesn't work.

Needless to say, that party was in for a rough time when I learned to DM.

[The Illusionist]

Been quite a while since I had a really good RP session - I have a few frieds that roll occasionally, but it's rarely more than a hack'n'slash-fest with the depth of a teaspoon. I still have some good stories for such a conversation though.

Having said that, most of my stories come from the - so far omnipotent - likelihood of my most ridiculous and dangerous ideas tending to work, to varying degrees. Let me start with the familiar D&D anecdote...

A fairly big group: 2 Dwarf Fighters, a Dwarf Cleric, an Elven Sorcerer, a Human Fighter and Me, in my ever-popular role as Human Rogue. Quite a bash-heavy party from the look of it, but don't be fooled - they were all pretty incompetant at MOST things.

Example: The party tracks through the woods to find an old castle that had been taken over by an Orc Warlord, and the surrounding area build up into a make-shift Goblin/Hobgoblin village and fort. The idea was to get into the castle, kill the Orc, and run like hell before his Half-Orc Barbarian Boydguards turned up.

It was a low-level party, all about 1-3 at most, but we were all pretty well built - Rogue with good Dex and high stealth skills, warriors with good STR and CON with an assortment of Great Weapons... On paper we were good at what we did, for our respective levels, though in very straightforward ways.

DM: "So, what're your plans?"
Rogue: "Sneak around the outside of the village, climb up onto the huts and carefully garrotte each Goblin sentry as they come by, until they're either dead or I get spotted and run, leading them back to the rest of the party."
Everyone else: "Let him do that."
Human Fighter: "I run headlong into the middle of the village and start butchering everything in sight."

Village of some 300 in size, plus Orcish Warlord within earshot.

DM: ".....Okay. Anyone want to alter their actions?"
Rogue: "Yes. I'm going to climb onto the hut, sit and watch, and then throw a canister of Alchemical fire into the mob when they've just about finished eating the Fighter."
Everyone else: "Sounds good - let him do THAT!"

Another tale from the same game happened shortly afterwards - luckily the DM took pity on the Fighter and had the Goblins "fail their morale check" after HE took 90% of his hitpoint total in damage in 2 rounds and forced everyone else to pile into the melee to save him.

We reach the Castle, and the door is not guarded. How Odd. I check it for traps - none. Strange. I try to lockpick it - no need, it's open. Interesting...

We open the door and step over the threshold - Ah, so THAT'S why it was unlocked - there's an army of 10 Platemail wearing Half Orcs, 2 score of Goblins and an Orc Warlord stood at the far end of the chamber, grinning, and waiting for us in full knowledge that we were coming. There's 20 metres of open floor between us and them - just a tapestry rug laid onto the flagstones.

DM: "Any last requests?"
Dwarf Fighter #1: "Find something heavy to hide behind."
Dwarf Fighter #2: "Sounds good, I do that too."
Elf Sorcerer: "I cast Mage Armour, then hide behind the two Dwarfs!"
Human Fighter: "Let out a warcry, and then run headlong at the entire mob with my greataxe."
DM: "....You're very sure you want to attack the army single-handedly?"
Human Fighter: "Yes, I do - they're only Goblins and Half-Orcs. I've killed loads of them so far!"

(More to the point, loads of them almost killed him so far...)

DM: "Alrighty then... Rogue, what are you going to do?"
Rogue: (Without making any kind of spot check or trap finding roll) "I'm going to fold my arms, stand here and watch as the human fighter runs out into the middle of the floor and the pain starts happening. 2 to 1 says the floor gives way and he drops into a pit, evens says there's a hidden rune of fire or something under the carpet."

Incidentally, the floor gave way and dropped him into a cellar with a newly turned werewolf. Sadly, no one took me up on my bet.

I turn now to SLA Industries - a sci-fi game based in a world controlled by a totalitarian media state, where law and order have broken down so far that the Players take on the role of "operatives" - basically, Special Forces soldiers that work mercenary mission for the Corporation.

We were recently started out, and once again predisposed to a combat-based game. We were sent to investigate why a chemical plant had stopped mid-production, only to find it all but abandoned. Deeper into the bowels of the factory we find the reason why - a Manchine (12ft tall, 4 armed robot that had been sent irrevocably insane due to the horrors it witnessed over 2 centuries of literally unceasing warfare) had escaped from the Wasteland around the edge of the city and somehow ended up here, slaughtering the technicians.

We're doing well to start with - we're on a walkway some 3 stories above the Monster, and it has no firearms to speak of, so we stand where we are and unload some 10 gauge shotgun slugs and some 10mm Armour Piercing bullets into it.

DM: "The Armour Piercing rounds seem to work to an extent, but the shotguns are barely scratching the paintwork."

This was a problem, as only 2 people had 10mm AP rounds, and only one of them could shoot for toffee. If we sat back and let him take it down alone, by the time he'd done enough damage (AP are notoriously good for piercing armour but useless for actually hurting things) it would have climbed the wall and eaten at least 2 of us in the meantime.

So, I hit upon a bright idea.

Melee Specialist (Me): "I take out my powered scythe, take a run at the railings and leap over them."
DM and Others: "....Why?"
MS(M): "The shotguns aren't working, but if I get up enough air-speed in the drop I might be able to do some damage with my strength bonus."

My logic was impeccable - discounting a few negligible features such as self-preservation....

Amazingly enough, I was playing another Agile/Roguish character, so not only did I manage to make the hit and cleave off one of it's arms thanks to some lucky die-rolling, but I even landed on my feet and managed to duel with the thing for a few more turns while everyone else ran down and finished it off.

It has to be said, however, that you have never seen Player Character stupidity until you've seen it at a LARP session.
Live Action Role Play is human beings putting their own flesh on the line in the name of Plot, and even though the weapons are combat safe they still bring up bruises and other minor injuries from time to time, and that not including what happens if you abuse the landscape and the props...

Example the first: Duck and Cover.
We play our games an the sight of an artificial woodland that has been placed on top of a fairly small but still impressive hill range. Steep paths lead to plateaus and in several places, hidden pits and cliffsides obscured by foliage.

Not that a 50 foot drop at a 70 degree angle ever stopped anyone from taking one look at the incoming monsters and then launching themselves sideways in a desperate bid to escape.

All I can say is, it was lucky they tried it in Spring and the thorns and nettles hadn't grown back yet

Example the Second: The Illusionist's Guide to Trap-Finding
Burnley Tower in England is a custom-built area for LARP groups who want to try something different. A space of some 400 meters by 400 meters has been converted into a labrynthe of bolt-holes, tunnels, passage ways and even crawlspaces suspended above head height that one must access via ladders and ramps hidden around the site.

In our system, Classes are specified by a 'Path' - Fighters are Warriors, Knights, Archers or Monks, while Rogues could be Thieves, Scouts, Charlatans etc, and have access to different skills. Thieves are the closest thing Rogues get to being close combat specialists.
I as my catman (a Half human, Half Cat anthromorph-type race) Rogue/Thief was the most agile person in the building - mechanically and physically - so I took straight to the tunnels, popping out and stabbing a few people who deserved it whenever I could, all the while searching through the Maze to get to the hidden objective in a secret room somewhere in the middle.

So far, so good.

Having found the objective, of course, awakens the guardian - should have known better, but my kleptomanic tendencies shone through and I went for it without looking what I was doing. Any RolePlayer should have known better - I forgot.
Queue Benny Hill antics being chased around by a "Death Knight" (big, nasty undead monster that is physically bonded with its platemail armour, making it difficult to destroy without special training) carrying a 7ft Spear, that I had to try and fight with a pair of 18" long shortswords. Yeah, sure... Time Pause! *run away!!!*

Straight into the nearest bolt-hole. Now, as I said, I'm probably the most agile person in the game given that a) I'm only 23, I'm a relatively short 5' 10" and c) I don't weigh 20+ stone, so the nearest place was a tunnel with an exit set 4 feet from the actual floor, so attempting to do something spectacular I took a diving lunge into the opening.

THUD!

The Tunnel was only 2 feet deep, and so I should have carefully climbed in to crawl at a 90 degree angle from what I actually was attempting to do. Ow.

Then I realised that I had forgotten that there's actually a small drop from the opening to the floor of the tunnel, only about a foot or so but it was enough for me to have tucked by head in and gotten completely stuck, upside down, legs akimbo and dazed in a dark, dusty tunnel.

While someone poked me in the face with a spear for more damage than I could have taken on both arms and legs combined. D'oh...

And finally, Example the Third: Rogues are Trap-Finders. Leave the mysteriously unlabeled potions to someone else.

We are unceremoniously dumped into a room containing a large and aggressive monster, with no suggestion as how to get out. As my Rogue again (who miraculously survived the Spear encounter thanks to "the Durkan Effect" - take half a dozen hits, pass out and then remember how much of your magic armour remains, which means you're battered but physically unharmed), sensing that the Plot Stick was being taken to a literal level for use, I immediately jumped up onto the nearest table so that I had 360 degrees of directions to escape in - and found 3 items.

A blue gem in a bowl of white powder, a bottle of cloudy liquid and a pair of gloves.

The idea was that one person would take the gem, run to the door, and it would magically let them through. The next person would carry the potion, splash it on the door, and do the same. Wearing one or both of the gloves would work the same for the last person, and at the end of the game they'd find out that each item had some interesting properties that would count as some kind of reward for surviving.

In a move strangely familiar to most RP circles (Potent hair restorer? I drink the lot!) I grabbed the bottle, quaffed the contents and made a run for it.

....then fall over, choking, while everyone laughed themselves silly.
See, potions are 'unknown' so as to discourage people from drinking them without getting them properly identified, and just in case that's not enough the actual 'potion' used was punishment for not being so paranoid as to leave it alone. One mouthful of Vodka, ground coffee powder, water that had previously had raw ginger soaking in it and a small piece of raw onion as a chaser, and I was only too happy when the Monster came up and started beating me with a stick...

Good times

[Useless Trivia Man]

Illusionist, tales like yours are the precise reason I started this thread. I sincerely hope you didn't do any permanent damage to yourself during that larping leap!

The good news: I've now joined a new gaming group. (As if I didn't already have enough of 'em!) They're playing every Sunday night, and this is the first regularly scheduled weekly game I've been in since the early 1990s. Awesome-sauce.

The bad news: I played my first session with the new group Sunday evening. I was told by the DM (one of my closest friends) that we'd be starting around 6:30, so I showed up right on time. He and I had already gotten my character rolled up earlier in the week (w00t on starting at 3rd level!), and I showed up ready to get into some action.

We didn't actually start gaming until after 7:30, because of several issues. We're gaming at A's house, because he doesn't have ready access to a baby-sitter for his son. Fair 'nuff, I totally understand that. Unfortunately, A had to work late, and he didn't get home until about 7:15. His live-in girlfriend (she's also gaming with us) warned us that her dad was coming by to do laundry. This is apparently a regular occurrence on Sundays, and according to the DM he normally shows up, quietly does his laundry, and goes home.

But not this time.

Dad shows up, and he is staggeringly drunk. He interrupted every few minutes, primarily wanting his daughter to come drink with him, and she proceeded to get toasted right along with daddy...

During all this, the party decides to go back to town to rest up and sell off the loot they've already gained thus far in the dungeon. These are all newbie players and a newbie DM, so they're having a really hard time staying focused on the game with all the distractions going on, and once in town they're all kinda wandering aimlessly while one guy monopolizes the DM's attention. (They got their hands on a magical weapon they couldn't use, and he was busy trying to learn its powers. Eventually they got it sold and split the cash.)

I finally got sorta fed up with waiting, and asked one of the other players if he'd gone to the tavern yet. He's brand-new to D&D, and doesn't even want to respond in-character... so I turn to someone else who at least understands what he's supposed to do. I finally manage to join the group while the DM is still dealing with Drunk Dad and the haggling over the magic weapon.

Eventually we get everyone introduced, and we finally get headed back to the dungeon. Hurray! Let's go kill something, 'cuz I'm starting to really feel the need to pound on someone...

With all the time-wasting, we managed to get through two rooms. We're not even entirely through the second room, though we did kill off three of the five stirges in there. The other two flew away sated with our blood, but we'll find 'em and pick 'em off later. But it was already 10:00, and most of us had to work the next morning. Oh, and by now father and daughter were both blitzed.

I had to discuss our poor outing with the DM afterwards. Happily, he's informed me that this was very definitely not a normal night, and I was apparently not the only one frustrated by how little we accomplished. One guy is only 30 XP from making his next level, and if we'd killed the last two stirges he woulda made it!

But even after all o' that, I'm looking forward to next week.

[Jeff N.]

I have a good LARP-type story for you. I screw around with a couple friends who are into Belegarth and whatnot. On occasion I'll go out and fight with them because I miss SCA and fencing. On this particular occasion I had brought my younger brother J2(all our names start with J and he's #2) with me. He's a big guy at 6'7" tall and around 270 lbs.

We get out there and in true meatshield fashion J2 picks up the biggest two-handed sword he can find. I picked up another two-hander and the rest of the group armed themselves with a variety of one handed swords and round shields. We step away from each other a bit and call for the fighting to start.

One of my buddies,N, thinks he's hot shit as far as the fighting goes. He steps up and throws his shield up against J2's swing, trying to show off and get into his guard. J2 hit the damn shield so hard N's arm goes numb, the shield flies backward, and N racks himself hard enough to put him on the ground. I was laughing so hard I dropped my damn sword. N refused to spar with him for the rest of the day and to this day swears he's not human.

[Micalan]

Some great ones here. I DMd a D&D game with two real-world mythology nerds who thought that in D&D, dwarves turn to stone in sunlight. They were playing a dwarven couple and I didn't know they thought this and when they turned out to be nocturnal I thought, "Hey, a cool touch. I mean, they live underground so why not? My eyes'd hurt in sunlight, too."

So most of the campaign takes place in the mountain and the Upperdark, but finally they stumble upon an opening ot the surface while running from some earth elementals.

I say, "You round the corner and the sun shines d-"

Then came wailing and cursing. "Aw, dude, that's not fair!" etc., etc.

I asked what's wrong, they tell me, confused, and I explain to them that this is not Norse mythology, this is basically Tolkien (which they never read). Finally, we get straightened out, then I say, "By the way, the elementals are still behind you."

One replies, "Well... do they turn to stone in sunlight?"

"No."

"Crap."

"Yeah."



Nowadays, I play White Wolf games - mostly Vampire: The Masquerade and various New World of Darkness ones (my favorite being Changeling: The Lost), but we'll be playing a Star wars campaign based on the exalted system soon, and I'm planning a Scion campaign.

The only ones I don't think we'll be playing in the foreseeable future are the Aeonverse games, as I can't find the books anywhere.

But yeah, we have tons of fun in White Wolf, but less good anecdotes, as we joke around and stuff but none stand out in my mind and it's more a "you'd have to be there" thing.

For example, a player of a Tzimisce pushed a crossdressing hooker's genitals into his body, making him physically asexual. He also made the arm of a radical Black Panther-tpye guy who was saying "Down with the white folks!" totally white. The man then ran off screaming, and we happened across him later in the chronicle, still running and screaming. Hilarious at the time.



So, for all you roleplayers out there who were where I used to be (that is to say, D&D) check out White Wolf's games. A much simpler, and less limiting (and in my opinion, far better) system that's more focused on roleplaying. And Exalted and Scion are just more epic. In those two you are, to some extent, godlike.

We've also converted Forgotten Realms into the Storyteller system - New World of darkness rules - by combining the epic spell's seed system from D&D with the Mage: The Awakening system from that game to make the magic, and then created new merits for the class features.

[Useless Trivia Man]

It's all a matter of taste, really. Some people get more enjoyment out of the role-playing aspect, and some prefer the combat. I do enjoy a good piece of role-playing, but my players are definitely hack 'n slashers. I don't mind that at all - I'm more than happy to give 'em what they want.

I've tried some of the White Wolf games, and while I can see their appeal to some, I simply prefer to play D&D.

(Disclaimer: Having said that, I do not play 4th Edition. I started playing D&D with the red boxed set in 1982, and while I have been willing to roll with the changes up through 3.5 Edition, I'm quite unhappy with the newest "upgrade.")

That said, back to the table...

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I was fortunate enough to get in two nights of gaming this weekend. I've been trying to do a once-a-month game with an old college buddy who lives about 45 minutes away, and we got together at his place Saturday evening. This was our third session in this fledgling campaign, but I'm relatively sure it was also our last session.

One of the players apparently didn't feel like playing this game anymore, and his "good" character chose to kill off the party's wizard through deliberate neglect, then chucked the wizard's unconscious body into the river just for the fun of pissing off the wizard's player. I was struck speechless.

After I took a few minutes to calm down, I actually said, "I'm done. Let's quit playing D&D and go do something else now." I did get a small amount of satisfaction when I later trounced the offending player at Scrabble...

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Happily, Sunday night's weekly D&D went far better. It was a pretty typical evening of dungeon crawling, and our low-level party managed to kill off a few orcs, stirges, and a pair of troglodytes with their pet bear. We even managed to level up. I'm having much better hopes for this group now, and I'd really like to see this weekly game continue.

[Useless Trivia Man]

Continued dungeon-crawling last night - right now I'm actually playing much more than DMing (not that I'm complaining!) and Dan's actually doing fantastically well considering how little DM experience he has. Dan 'n Betty brought their brand-new baby girl, and Chelsey brought her 7-month-old daughter too. This was a new one for me - concentrating on the game was challenging with all the cute baby noise in the room. UTM Jr. didn't know what to make of all these babies invading his turf!

Anyway.

My wizard (Bob the Wizard), our cleric (Neal the Cleric) and the rest of the group are currently ousting some smugglers from the coastal village of Fair Haven. At the end of last week's session I was sure that we'd let the smugglers' captain escape, but last night we managed to corner him and take his scurvy ass down. 'Twas very satisfying, and we found the smugglers' primary treasure trove. We scored Big Loot, and after the dust settled we found out that we were only 100 XP away from gaining our next level. Of course, we had to go take on one more encounter so we could level up... that encounter turned out to be a Huge crab (25' across!!) and a pair of sahuagin (fish-men) sentries. We already know that the smugglers had made a deal with this sahuagin tribe; now that the smugglers have been stomped, it's time to go after their undersea partners-in-crime.

And yeah, we levelled up. 4th-level spells for me! w00t!

[Jeff N.]

I have to skip my usual Friday night gaming session because of the holiday.

[Useless Trivia Man]

I knowwhatchamean, Jeff. Our Sunday night game got preempted this weekend because of other plans by the rest of the crew.

On the upside, I'll probably be playing poker with most of those guys tomorrow night instead.

[Mektig]

I will never forget the time I was suspended over a giant pit with my half dragon companion. I was trying to think of a way out, getting no help from my NPC follower (he was unconscious). Eventually after running out of ideas I decided to let myself and my companion fall. On the way down to the bottom of the pit I proceeded to beat the crap out of my companion until he arrived at 1 hit point. Lo and Behold he turned into a dragon just like I wanted him to do and we both fly out of the pit to safety. My DM still says it was an idiotic thing to do and that the only reason he allowed it to work is because he wanted the campaign to last longer than 3 games. (He still wont admit it was a somewhat good Idea.)

[n9zee]

Saturday, I have a 40k Cityfight. I'll have to take some pics and let you know how it goes.

[Xzarf]

(Disclaimer: Having said that, I do not play 4th Edition. I started playing D&D with the red boxed set in 1982, and while I have been willing to roll with the changes up through 3.5 Edition, I'm quite unhappy with the newest "upgrade.")

I would have to agree with you there UTM. I have played D&D since 1987 and I like 3.5 (also looking forward to playing with the Pathfinder ruleset) but I can't stomach 4th ed. I just can't get over the feeling that I am playing a MMO with dice and paper.

I am currently playing through "The Shackled City" campaign path with some buddies and having a blast. Having more fun interacting with the NPC characters in town then the actual crawls. If you know the campaign at all... my character, a druid with distaste for nobility, is romanticly pursing Anna Taskerhill (a noble/bard and leader of the opposing NPC party).
The thing that sucks is that the DM has taken a job 2 hours away from here in a small town and so he comes in only once a month and we play for 8-10 hours on the weekend. It somewhat breaks the groove you get going with weekly game but at least we are still playing.