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Post by kaitoujuliet on May 13, 2013 7:58:44 GMT -8
Bumping this thread because we have a bunch of new members and I'm hoping there might be new stories to add!
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Post by Arcona on May 14, 2013 0:45:57 GMT -8
Three stories from me. I mentioned one in another thread but it was pretty epic (for us) so I will reproduce here! Story 1 – V:tM Old World of Darkness. Our characters have travelled to the Middle East pursuing a lead concerning the library of Alexandria and how its Cainite (off course!) protectors used a blood magic ritual to save the important Noddist texts found within. To those familiar with WoD metaplot this refers to the Saiti. Our party is generally careful but for whatever reason we have been acting cocky in this session. We are employing my Nosferatu’s ability to hide others while going around the city, confident that me, my Ventrue and Tremere colleague can do as we please. After a couple of days of investigation and dodging the local Cainite population we end up having to fight a powerful anchillae to get info we need and have not managed to negotiate into receiving. We eliminate him, collect the info and flee without basically having lost much of our potency and ‘drunk with victory’. On the way to the airport we are passing through a district with low buildings and as we are moving quickly the ST has us roll perception+alertness. One of us notices that there is a figure standing at the roof of one of the buildings dressed in robes and rags. We step up and talk to him (in English) but there is no response. Tense seconds pass and we notice a few more figures emerge as the Assamites that control the city slowly take positions on the roofs all around us. Our Ventrue steps up and does his thing, speaking in fluent Arabic and using his Presence (awe) power along with his various merits to calm the situation. I don’t recall the exact things he said but we all thought it was pretty good and his dice roll was also very nice. So we leaned back thinking we were safe. As the ST did not respond anything we pressed on asking him what happens. The response was thus: “Your threats, pleas and oratory in both English and Arabic goes without response at first. Then you hear a sound that translates in all languages since the dawn of time : Kssliiiing” and does a moment as if unsheathing a sword. I don’t know why, but that Ksssliiing haunts me till today! Story 2 – DnD (Evil Party) We have been knee deep in enemies for many a room in a dungeon crawl where instead of adventuring for glory and fame we are actually playing an evil party hunting down the heroes sent to recover artifacts for the King. Our plan is to loot the heroes, steal the artifacts for ourselves and well… be all around bad guys (for various reasons, not just for the shake of evilness!) We have just defeated the Paladin and his cronies and we have chosen to take prisoners… because you know… the place has quite a few traps and our party is a Wizard, a Frenzied Berserker and a Rogue fighter and we cant really do traps (one of the skills the rogue didn’t develop for various reasons). After having lost all but one of our prisoners to the deadly traps we enter a strange looking room crossed by a strange river. We advance not realizing its an illusion and the DM has us rolling will saves. At the same time he puts music on the laptop that sounds very enchanting. He describes how we hear singing and before we have time to react we all run towards the sound finding it majestic. At the end of the room we realize we have been trapped by a bunch of …. Hmmm don’t recall the name of the monster but think something like sirens. Very calmly I tell the DM. I block my ears with my fingers… he responds, okay but how will you fight? At which point I respond… ‘I have the prisoner use his fingers!” to which the DM responded. ‘He refuses and backs away from you.” “Oh well, I go into frenzy, pull out two of his fingers and stick them in my ears. Can I act now?” Which was greeted with an amazing clapping from the rest of the group Story 3 – Epic level DnD (evil party, the same characters). Some background first. Our characters are now Epic (level 24 I think) and have been tasked by an Avatar of Kelemvor to investigate why positive energy seems to be ‘leaking’ in the multiverse. Now you might be asking why would evil characters care. Well we cared because we had been offered money in return… to be precise we had been promised 2 million gold for solving the mystery. The reason we cared for such money was that despite our high level our PCs acted like immature kids looking for money. We were the ultimate mercenaries, willing to do anything for money… our ultimate goal was to BUY Menzobranzan, the city of the Drow. This idea had spawned to us because the supplement for Forgotten Realms that dealt with the Underdark had given ‘prices’ of cities. Off course this referred mostly to the combined wealth of the city, not how much it ‘costs’ but our PCs (disgruntled male drow that had fled the city to avoid suffering under matrons back when they had started adventuring) cared little for such technicalities. We also played our PCs with a fleeting sense of humor… so we would run from the city guard (be they level 1 warrior or level 20 paladins) because that’s what villains do! The characters were based of Mr Tulip and Mr Pin from the Pratchett novel and so the frenzied berserker drow (imagine a drow looking like Swatzeneger) and the rogue drow along with a human wizard colleague. Our planewalker characters are visiting Waterdeep in order to collect some clues about the mission we had been given due to the fact that a sage had indicated a connection between some cults in the city and the disturbance in the Plane of Positive Energy. Enter the funny stories: a) We have been roaming the streets and finally stop by a street vendor for some ‘meat on a stick’. We take four sticks each and consume them quickly. Meanwhile the guard shows up, having found us, and are about to attack us. We off course flee (rather than easily slaughter them) cause that’s what you do against the guard! The stall owner yells at us ‘HEY! HOW ABOUT MY Money!” the response comes “Its okay! You can keep them, but we might come back later to take them!” b) We manage to learn that the Cult of Asmodeus is involved in this plot somehow and so infiltrate them and show up at one of their ceremonies. During the ceremony they summon a Pit Fiend to guide them… the pit Fiend is the conduit that leads the cult. We jump up draw our weapons and attack the Pit Fiend randomly yelling “THE ABYSS SAYS HELLO YOU BASTARD! REMEMBER THE BLOOD WAR” causing more confusion about who the hell we are and what the Abyssal Taanari have anything to do with this! c) Lastly… we figure out that Asmodeus becomes aware of you when you speak his name. He can off course shut it out but the idea is that when his name is spoken he can see that location etc etc… the idea is that you shouldn’t speak his name even in secret! Our wizard decides to turn the tables on his… he uses his acolytes (he had leadership and epic leadership) mint new gold, silver and copper coins. Its coin has the face of the Devil-Prince on one side and the name Asmodeus on the other. We have the acolytes start spreading the new coins in the various corners of the multiverse ensuring the phrase ‘how many golden asmodeus does this cost’ becomes common place enough to give the Lord of the 9th a daily migraine! Overall this was one of the most fun campaigns I ever played… it included scenes were the Wizard would spend days trading cannons from Lantan trying to find buyers in Avernus for them. The rogue (after we got the money) ambushing a group of dopplegangers that appeared to him as Matrons interested in his offer for Menzobranzan and killing them (to their question ‘but if you knew, why did you do this?’ he answered ‘but to rob you off course’ – ‘but you have millions of gold’ – ‘well, now I have millions + whatever you are carrying on you!) and other such hilarity!
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Post by kaitoujuliet on May 14, 2013 10:25:47 GMT -8
Great stories, Arcona! I particularly like the Asmodeus coins--that's sheer brilliance. Have some karma!
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Post by rickno7 on May 14, 2013 19:07:47 GMT -8
Was playing a game of Rifts set on Wormwood(Dimension book 1, check it out, its epic, Crusaders get transported there and then a bunch of 1950's biker gangs get transported there and they replace all their horses with motorcycles). I was DM'ing with my cousin and some high school pals playing. At this point in time, I used a lot of "random" rewards. I LOVE making up cool one off magic items and handing them out, sometimes intentionally messing with the players just to stir things up. This was Rifts, it was HARD to make someone overpowered more than the books already did. One of the players of the group was a real stickler for being "fair", so I used a random table, making sure I was not playing favorites with my group.
My cousin rolls up a sacred WW2 era mystical Zippo lighter that allowed him to "Phase" with a puff of smoke and the smell of naphtha.
While trying to get into enemy territory, the players hide in a series of hay wagons. Fearing his was about to be searched, my cousin phases. The smell of naphtha alerts the wagoneers, they think there could be a fire and search his wagon. They sniff the other wagons and luckily do not search them, as the other players are in there. Still, everyone pooped themselves.
About 5 minutes later, my cousin thinks everything is clear, so he phases in... 5 minutes back from the current location of the wagons. He had thought he was traveling the whole time, but that's not how phase works. So he runs like a bat out of hell, and jumps into the back of his wagon again, this of course once again alerts the wagoneers(these creatures are dumb btw, not human intelligence). They go to search and AGAIN he phases, once again freaking out the wagoneers, this time they dig out the wagon fully. Completely confused, they load all the hay back on.
Now my cousin, he learns from mistakes. He says "before they start moving again, I want to phase in." So he does. Phases right into the hay, which is solid matter. He gets shot into a random direction, and this direction was strait up. He goes flying out of the back of the wagon, some 200 feet in the air, hay is flying everywhere. With the wagoneers watching, he falls back into the wagon, breaking through its floor and the wheels go flying off from the impact. "uh uh.... I phase"
By now the players had just given up on letting him fumble through this. Someone says "while they're looking at him make an idiot of himself, I'm rolling for surprise attack"
I do not know if this translates to a good or funny story, but we still talk about it to this day, 14 years later, giving him shit for it. He smokes, and uses a zippo often, and someone will say "better check the hay wagon, smells like fire" and he'll say "stfu"
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on May 14, 2013 20:36:35 GMT -8
THE ABYSS SAYS HELLO YOU BASTARD! REMEMBER THE BLOOD WAR Holy shit. I just fell out of my chair laughing at that one. Too fucking funny. And that Asmodeus coin trick was god damn brilliant. The guy phasing in and out of that hay wagon made me laugh out loud, too. The fact it became an out of game joke makes it even better. Man. I'd better think of some epic/hilarious stories of my own gaming experiences.
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Post by Arcona on May 15, 2013 1:42:53 GMT -8
I remember a funny for me, not so funny for the PCs story.
I was running Planescape for my friends and we played a published Planescape adventure, heavily modified.
The plot involves the use of the 2nd edition spell Feign Death used by a cult to basically kidnap people or something like that. So the game has parts combat, parts investigation. It all starts when one of the not really dead, dead gets picked up by the Dustmen and when they prepare to bring him back to their base he wakes up and explains what happened to him.
The PCs were involved in the story as one of them was a Dustman and they set out to figure out what the hell is going on.
To cut a long story short, (ha yea right!) after a few sessions they have collected quite a few leads and have some idea of what is going on. They storm the headquarters of the cults base only to find that its not really the headquarters but rather a portal room that leads TO the headquarters.
The HQ is a small floating volcanic island in the elemental PLANE OF FIRE. It used to be the palace of an efreeti and is now used by the cult as a base of operations. The reason not everyone is dead when they get there is a bubble placed around the island to protect those within. The bubble extends till the top of the highest spire... more or less 100 feet high...
The PCs get there by activating the portal and go commando style. They creatively use Rope Trick to hide and cause ambushes and avoid taking the big bad guys on a frontal assault. Which was very smart given this was the HQ of the Cult full of guys that could beat the floor with them if not approached tactically. Off course as time goes by and 2-3-4 patrols and some lieutenants are killed/gone missing the whole base is on alert. Eventually, the PC make a mistake and they end up surrounded by enemies with the enemy caster using dispel to stop the Rope Trick spell.
Now an important information... the wizard had just leveled and gotten the spell Polymorph. So he promptly changes into a dragon and has the group mount him to try and escape. But given bows, spells etc they realise they might die or have issues so...
The wizard says:
"After having everyone on my back, I cast Dimension Door. I port us upwards 720 feet so we have time to discuss what to do."
Me: "Err... are you sure?"
Party: "Yea, quit stalling, worried we ruined your trap?"
Me: "I want an answer from Peter, he is casting the spell, he decides."
Wizard aka Peter: "Yes, I dimension door 700 feet up!"
Me: "Okay... you cast the spell, you exit the 'door' 700 feet up and given that none of you has any short of fire protection you are pretty much instantly immolated."
Party: Stunned silence....
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2013 16:05:16 GMT -8
The PCs get there by activating the portal and go commando style. Wait...they attacked without underwear?
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2013 17:51:51 GMT -8
Bumping this thread because we have a bunch of new members and I'm hoping there might be new stories to add! This is a fun thread, I'll play. Someone once said something to the effect that happy families are all boringly the same, but unhappy families are all dysfunctional in their own special way. Gaming stories are a little like that. It's harder to do a story of Epic Success Against All Odds justice, because all too often it sounds a lot like everyone else's stories of Epic Success Against All Odds. But Epic Failure often happens in very special, never to be repeated ways. This is the story of how I met an International Grandmaster of Epic Failure. Someone had tried to start a gaming club at my undergrad university, and a friend of mine had agreed to run a one-off game of Fantasy Hero for the club, basically a con game without the convention (and without the strict time limit, thank goodness). So I show up and the GM has us draw from a stack of upside-down character sheets--no choice, no horsetrading, you play whatever you draw off the top. The premise in essence was that the greatest heroes of the world must stop Epic, World-Crushing Evil. I hadn't known the GM long enough to realize that he lived for that kind of plot, and a one-off game meant he could really cut loose. The characters were nicely done. I drew a half-giant with great strength and epic damage, but weak in the armor department. Kind of a battlecruiser, if you think about it. Someone I'd never met before and never saw again drew our battleship, a dwarven champion with extremely good armor. The 70-year old fire mage with excellent magic but rather poor eyesight was brilliantly played by a born ham. Sometimes his familiar got him pointed in the right direction. Sometimes. Rounding us out there was a rogue and a combination archer/spellcaster drawn by experienced players, and a paladin played by someone who knew hero very well. And then there was the half-triton drawn by another guy I'd never met. Call him Ned. It quickly became apparent to me that Ned had never played a role playing game; he clearly didn't quite get it and consistently made obviously bad choices. Well, that's how an open game goes, right? Except a remark here and there suggested that he had played with our GM before--inconceivable, of course, he clearly had no experience. To me the bad choices seemed simple naivete and lack of common sense. I understood not with whom I dealt. Otherwise, things went well; by the time we were well on the way to the inevitable epic finish, the dwarf and I were calling each other "rock brother" and all and sundry were having a good time. Then Ned stretched forth his Power of Epic Fail.... We were camped in the ruins of a city mysteriously destroyed by great evil. It's Ned's turn on watch. He hears something out in the darkness. Ned says he's going to investigate. By your self, we're thinking? *Here*? We're all asleep and can't say anything, however. Someone asks "are you waking anyone up, Ned?" "Nope," he replies. We all look at him, stunned. We'd visited this city, vibrant and healthy, less than a week before. Whatever did it could still be out there, and he's going to just waltz out and see?!? After we all recover, someone asks hopefully "I hear him leave, right?" so the GM lets us all make perception rolls. Naturally, we all fail--Ned's dark powers will not be denied their gallon of blood. More knowing looks between the GM and the players from his group. I think it was at this point that I passed a note to the GM asking "has he ever played before?" The reply: "yes, and over and over again...." So much for my "just a n00b" theory. My God, how can it be? This is getting long, so let's call that Part I. I'll leave the story with Ned's half-triton going to investigate noises in the darkness, alone, in the ruins of a city that is practically still smouldering from some unidentified but clearly cosmically powerful evil. We can find out how that worked out in Part II (unless you're all bored).
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2013 18:20:22 GMT -8
My friend had not gotten through to the slaver, but he had gotten through to Fawn's brother that what he wanted to do was wrong. Pure role playing gold and all I did was follow along and fill in the parts they needed to make their story work. That's awesome.
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Post by Forresst on May 19, 2013 12:32:54 GMT -8
Aww, man, don't leave us hangin'!! I wanna hear how Ned done got hisself blowed up!
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Post by CreativeCowboy on May 19, 2013 12:47:56 GMT -8
Aww, man, don't leave us hangin'!! I wanna hear how Ned done got hisself blowed up!
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2013 16:26:32 GMT -8
Aww, man, don't leave us hangin'!! I wanna hear how Ned done got hisself blowed up! I just didn't have time to write it all up. Here's the final installment: We last saw our man Ned strolling out into the night by himself in a city just destroyed by awesome evil. I've never understood what went through his head at times like this, but may just have been an attempt to do the awesome thing. Well, it would be awesome to take out Cthulhu with a plastic spork too, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to give it a try. :-) In any event, it could have been much, much worse for him, as the noises led him to a simple encampment of rather nasty, hard-bitten bandits rather than the Cthlulhu's Lair all of us feared. "So what are you going to do, Ned?" Even though our characters weren't present or even conscious I think someone may have been desperate enough to suggest that he might want to come back and tell us about it, but without much hope. Of course you know Ned's reply. "I'm going to attack." The half-triton wasn't bad in combat, but he was not overly-armored and rewarded a bit of finesse. Ned obviously had no finesse, and was heavily outnumbered--this was going to go very badly indeed. I am pretty sure that this was a simple encounter we were intended to win easily. Now we were staring disaster in the face, and the only question in our minds was precisely what kind of disaster--loss of a character was certain if we abandoned him and very possible no matter what we did. On the other hand a rescue could end in a TPK if we botched it. On the gripping hand we might lose the climactic encounter if we were short a PC (even with Ned at the helm). That GM knew Hero inside and out and I already suspected the final battle was going to be a finely-tuned just-winnable nailbiter--tuned, naturally, for the full party. We didn't have a lot of healing in the party and needed to be fit for the final confrontation. Little children could have figured out the score, and at this point the GM is looking nearly as horrified as we were. I assumed at the time that the look on the GMs face was because he didn't really want to turn the embryonic gaming club's first open game into an epic slaughter. What I didn't know until later was that the half-triton was the GM's favorite out of the party he'd written up. He'd had a half-triton player character long ago that he loved dearly but seemed dogged by bad luck and eventually died unsatisfyingly, and he took a fair amount of grief for it. I think the GM was rooting for whoever drew the half-triton to redeem the reputation of the entire race and character concept with his gaming group. Instead, it went to Ned. The Dark Gods must have laughed. Naturally we've all been negotiating with the GM about how soon we could make more perception rolls. Once actual battle commenced someone managed to make it and of course woke everyone else up. Now came the crux of the problem: the GM had been a stickler for treating armor like armor and not a personal force-field belt or a set of bullet-proof long johns, which meant that it was going to take time to get ready for a serious fight. For those of you who haven't played hero, the rules make combat take *very* little game time (slightly reminicent of Car Wars), so this was not a trivial issue. The dwarf made it clear that he was not going anywhere without his plate armor, and the geriatric mage with no defenses made it clear he was not going anywhere without the heavy fighters. I don't remember about the paladin--I think he asked if they could speed up getting armored if he and the dwarf helped each other suit up and the GM agreed (this may have been simple mercy more than a dispassionate ruling), but it was still going to take a *long* time as champions combat goes. The ranger/mage and the rogue, who depended more on CV (effectively dexterity, for you non-hero types) and didn't wear all that much armor anyway, decided that the triton's only chance of survival was for them to snatch up their weapons and go without armor. Now the die was cast--to save one character we were going to feed the party into a meat grinder by ones and twos and risk a lot worse. I tried splitting the difference and just buckled my shield on my arm, meaning I'd arrive significantly behind the first two but far ahead of the heavy crew and would have enough defenses to have some staying power. Our two light fighter types arrived at the scene of battle just as the triton went down in a pool of blood--they kept him from being killed immediately, but at the cost of becoming fresh meat for the defeat-in-detail meat grinder. (For those who wonder why he wasn't dead, hero is by default rigged to knock characters out before death--you can change that with enough optional rules, but it's pretty deep in the system. The GM may have been quietly ignoring the bleeding rules, however.) It was at this point that I learned about Ned's second, greatest Power: you just couldn't stay mad at him. Most players will not suffer the Slings And Arrows Of Outrageous Fortune pleasantly (even if it was really Outrageous playing, not Fortune, that put them behind the 8-ball), but Ned never complained, never blamed anyone else, never sulked. He wouldn't even show signs of boredom while watching the rest of the party fight while his character lay in GM-option land (and this being Hero, that wait could be quite a while). Throwing him out felt like kicking a trusting puppy who just knows you're doing it for their good somehow. It was this power that gave him such power to wreck game after game with the same group. The two rescuers who had taken point already had fairly serious wounds by the time I arrived armorless but at least with a shield and, so to speak, jumped head-first into the wood-chipper that this fiasco had become. I had the damage to be pretty effective in turning the tide, but without armor I too was fairly seriously hurt before the battle was over--I'm not sure if the other three even got there before the last bandit fell. I think the dwarf may have stayed with the slow-moving mage while the paladin ran ahead to arrive just in time to take a couple of swings. So we averted the outright loss of the half-triton, but at the cost of putting more than half the party on the casualty list--I don't remember what healing the paladin had but we were beyond his powers to really put us in fighting form. The GM had pity on us and allowed a detour to get some healing that I am absolutely certain wasn't part of the original game, and eventually we did win. But thanks to Ned's second, darker Power of puppy-like innocence I ended up playing with him many times after that. Just as the GM had said, it was the same result every time, but somehow, Ned managed to figure out some new crazy, epic fail each time--sometimes just visiting disaster on himself, sometimes (as in the present story) on everyone. Eventually I started keeping a mental list of "Ned Stories." Most are much shorter than this one, and I probably can't tell some of them very well anymore, but somehow the stories ended up making it worth the trouble. But this one is my favorite. And, as you can all guess, once it was over I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
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jfever
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Post by jfever on May 20, 2013 4:04:22 GMT -8
Then Ned stretched forth his Power of Epic Fail.... Naturally, we all fail--Ned's dark powers will not be denied their gallon of blood. genius
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Post by Arcona on May 28, 2013 14:54:20 GMT -8
Please sir... can I have some more?
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Post by kaitoujuliet on May 28, 2013 16:42:16 GMT -8
I just finally got caught up on the saga of Ned. Awesome stuff, and definitely epic. Epic fail counts!
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