This is the thread for posting those.
Here are mine:
#1: Once, when exploring some ruins in a desert, we came into a room with a deep hole and an invisible bridge. Since none of of had any Arcana (other than our non-cooperative Warlock), we had to find it ourselves. When we came over to the chest across the pit, we opened it and heard a large rumbling sound near the entrance to the ruins. When we came back, a large stone golem was standing in front of the exit.
#2: Last time we played, some weeks ago, we had to find someone young and pure of heart, and get them to help us obtain a gem of some sort. In order to do this, our strategists suggested kidnapping an 8 year old child, which would require us to sneak into town and do it. I, who in our current game play a LV6 Human Archer Ranger (humans were the only allowed race), had a Stealth score of 17. The DM and strategists said that this would mean a passive Stealth of 27, which since the peasants only had passive perception 20, practically makes me invisible. Everything went according to plan, and we kidnapped the child, without any repercussions. Except we now have a bounty on our heads, and the military after us, but other than that, no repercussions. Perhaps negotiations would've been the better alternative?
D20 Modern. Explosives Expert. Deep cover infiltration of Sotherby's collection of auction items to retrieve a Balor statue meant to be part of a terrible ritual, so we could stop it. Midway through, a golem starts rampaging through the city toward our location, probably intent on getting the statue himself. So, the explosives expert decides to use some C4 to stop it. He rolls to calculate via his knowledge exactly how much would take out the golem in question. And then, still in the middle of this warehouse full of valuable stuff from the world over, he decides to use four times the amount of explosives. All of which benefited from his double explosives damage class feature, etc.
The resulting detonation took out most of the building, nearly killed half the party, destroyed the golem, most of the goods, and resulted in the complete blacklisting of our group from all the agencies previously assisting us, the addition of all our profiles to Ye Olde Terrorist Watchlist, and the fugitive status which forced our group to go to ground and disperse completely.
My character ended up in Russia, writing novels for a living with my +16 Craft Writing. That was actually the best ending. The others....not so much.
Except we now have a bounty on our heads, and the military after us, but other than that, no repercussions. Perhaps negotiations would've been the better alternative?
If no one noticed you, how did you get a bounty on your head?
So, I use Grasping Javelin to harpoon her into us.
Turns out, she's a Lamia and has a whole plethora of stuff she can only do to people close by...
Now, I had told them all what kind of horses they were riding. I even gave them information cards with full descriptions. This guy was riding a mare...
Oops
We were playing a total homebrew game, sort of D&D in the Old West (not Deadlands, we based the game off of "Desperadoes"). We had one player whose PC was a half good-guy, half bad-guy. He always tried to do the right thing, but his social skills were, shall we say, "abrasive". The party had rescued the daughter of a houngan from kidnappers who sought to force the mother to use her voodoo-esque powers for their own gain. For their reward, they each received an increase in the ability of their choice. They went for things like "better accuracy", "faster draw", "more luck at gambling", etc. Except for "El Guano" (whose name didn't mean what the character thought it meant). His wish, after making several off-color and somewhat offensive remarks in the houngan's home, was "I want to be hung like my horse!"
Now, I had told them all what kind of horses they were riding. I even gave them information cards with full descriptions. This guy was riding a mare...
Oops
Now *that* was entirely snicker-worthy... How'd she take it?
-Sarena
Except we now have a bounty on our heads, and the military after us, but other than that, no repercussions. Perhaps negotiations would've been the better alternative?
If no one noticed you, how did you get a bounty on your head?
Well, they could be after the 8 year old.
Except we now have a bounty on our heads, and the military after us, but other than that, no repercussions. Perhaps negotiations would've been the better alternative?
If no one noticed you, how did you get a bounty on your head?
The short version: Our DM hadn't thought that through.
The long version: Our DM clearly hadn't thought that through.
We were playing a total homebrew game, sort of D&D in the Old West (not Deadlands, we based the game off of "Desperadoes"). We had one player whose PC was a half good-guy, half bad-guy. He always tried to do the right thing, but his social skills were, shall we say, "abrasive". The party had rescued the daughter of a houngan from kidnappers who sought to force the mother to use her voodoo-esque powers for their own gain. For their reward, they each received an increase in the ability of their choice. They went for things like "better accuracy", "faster draw", "more luck at gambling", etc. Except for "El Guano" (whose name didn't mean what the character thought it meant). His wish, after making several off-color and somewhat offensive remarks in the houngan's home, was "I want to be hung like my horse!"
Now, I had told them all what kind of horses they were riding. I even gave them information cards with full descriptions. This guy was riding a mare...
Oops
Now *that* was entirely snicker-worthy... How'd she take it?
-Sarena
Heh-heh, I let him suffer for the next session. The player was a good sport, making his PC refuse to pee where anyone could see and otherwise being very self-conscious. Of course, being the kind-hearted DM that I am, I made several dance-hall girls suddenly take a liking to him, start kitting on him and everything, I even let him have one good scene where someone tried to kick him in the privates (without effect), then I let him off the hook for the next session. I gave the PC back his manhood and increased his accuracy with thrown weapons (his pet weapon was a set of throwing knives).
Heh-heh, I let him suffer for the next session. The player was a good sport, making his PC refuse to pee where anyone could see and otherwise being very self-conscious. Of course, being the kind-hearted DM that I am, I made several dance-hall girls suddenly take a liking to him, start kitting on him and everything, I even let him have one good scene where someone tried to kick him in the privates (without effect), then I let him off the hook for the next session. I gave the PC back his manhood and increased his accuracy with thrown weapons (his pet weapon was a set of throwing knives).
He was a good sport about being turned into a woman
He did a valid job of roleplaying it too... Although I think I would have left him female for awhile. At least long enough to really get into it, and then had the wish "wear off."
But I'm mean like that. I'm glad that fun was had, though. Most of my Players in the past wouldn't have taken that nearly so well.
-Sarena
After being told that they could not come in by the old woman who answered the door, the player with see-through-walls powers looked inside and told the other player (only three of us had shown up that day) that he saw a large cylindrical object in one of the rooms that looked out of place. The second player confirmed that it was the source of the magical signal using the detection device they had with them, and used his anti-magic powers to destroy it.
One cry of grief later, the players found of that the object had been a sort of magical-equivalent to the iron lung, and they had just pulled the plug on a kid's life support.
That encounter was supposed to be a moral dillema between them turning the old woman in for unliscensed magic, as was the law (the entire city was under a magical dome to prevent the poisonous air from outside coming in, which could be destabilized by there being too much other magic beneath it), or letting her off the hook because of the circumstances. Instead, they managed to find their usual "Kill it" method of dealing with the story.
The party at one point encountered a darkness while running around a nightmare city, a darkness that managed to pick up and remove my character and another player (we both were seperated from the group and each other). My character found himself confronted by two freakish young girls (think the shining) who wanted to torture him. Thinking on the fly, he instantly made a deal with the devil to betray the party for torture in his place if he could go free.
I think that tickled the GM's funny bone, as one of the girls accepted and my character was allowed back to the rest of the party right away. The girl had said she'd call when it was time, though warned her twin sister was a trickster so beware. The other player was seperated from the group for far, far longer and did not look so good when he was finally allowed back.
Anyway, so cut to the party making an escape from the darkness later. My character receives the mental nod to stay, and to direct the others to going through a door. Externally, this looks like my charatcer is being a darn hero, staying back to delay the darkness while the others escape. I figured that if the GM really was letting me be this evil, and placing the party in danger, then it was a good nod to the party for my character to sudden;y be so self-sacrificing. Sadly, they all went through assuming some odd change of heart or hidden depth to my character - although some (including my fellow snatched player) did try to hang back to ensure he was ok. Man he had to yell at them to leave!
Of course, it turned out it was a trick - on me - and the wrong sister had given my character the nod. My character had doomed himself, and was given enough insanity points to be a terrified moron helpless to save himself. Still, my fellow snatched player was on hand and had stayed back at risk to himself to check on my charatcer. Was he good? Would he save me?
Actually, he would have. If the GM hadn't told me to re-tell my character's backstory, including the GM added bit, because my character was insane and terrified. And of course, the attrocity had directly affected my fellow player resulting in his sister's death.
Would he still save my character? Umm, well, even if he would have done it fully sane, he'd been through a snatched trip for ages and was mentally and physically in a bad way. Whatever the reason...yeah, my character was left with the darkness approaching at the last second, and I rolled someone new :D
Actually, the hindsight was that character wise I think my character would not have had the guts to betray the party when they were all actually gathered around him, swapping their safety for some unknown monster, and I think it was a metagame decision to play out being evil and see what would happen. Oh well!
Have your group ever been in a situation, where you thought "maybe that wasn't a good idea after all" or something like that?
This is the thread for posting those.
There are two moments I really regret in my RPG career. The first was in my first real long-term campaign (2001 or so, in D&D 3e); I had just rolled up a new monk, after losing my fighter at the end of the previous session. The group spent half an hour or so on RP, getting my new PC introduced to the party, and then transitioned into the first combat encounter of the night.
The party was at one side of a broad mountain pass, with hostile stone giants throwing rocks from the other. Having a decent AC and the ability to deflect ranged attacks, I volunteered to play vanguard and pull the giants back to the party. I broke cover and raced across the open ground. The DM announced that, by the way, rocks were too large to be affected by the monk's arrow deflection, and then the readied actions started going off. The giants critted with the first two rocks, and then there was no more target for them to worry about.
The second moment was only a few weeks ago. I follow a number of RPG design blogs, and after finding a handful references to "the worst RPG ever", I just couldn't believe that FATAL was that bad. I started tracking down references, and ever since I've had this nagging compulsion to rinse the inside of my skull out with Listerine...
Perhaps the next time your DM says "They're throwing rocks", you should point out the subtle differences between throwing "rocks" and throwing "boulders"...
The second moment was only a few weeks ago. I follow a number of RPG design blogs, and after finding a handful references to "the worst RPG ever", I just couldn't believe that FATAL was that bad. I started tracking down references, and ever since I've had this nagging compulsion to rinse the inside of my skull out with Listerine...
Thank you for melting my brain. The 'Induhvidual' that wrote that is a fan of Aristotle, and was likely a Psych/History/Philosophy major in college.
Mommy must be sooo proud. All that valuable education actually got used!I used to think nothing was worse than World of Synnibarr (I've been at the table with the designer, and it was *still* ugly). You have proven me wrong. At least FATAL doesn't seem yet to hand the PCs the ability to destroy the Moon in a good swipe. Really the only thing it has going for it.
BTW, I will give Byron props on one thing. His descriptions of tearing made me cringe.
On the other hand, I want him to take that crap about 14 hours max in childbirth and post it in a Women's forum. I spent almost 36 hours giving birth to my girls.
He can come talk to me when he's given birth himself. /
-Sarena