Role Playing Remembrances

This page is a collection of funny things that have happened in roleplaying campaign I've been in over the years or that friends of mine have told me about.  They're really only of interest to me and those others involved but maybe other people will find them funny as well.

Rune Quest

1) The RQ3 party I was running found the old channel marker buried in the mud near Corflu in the long scenario from the River of Cradles book. They hauled the glowing, floating orb back to Pavis where they paid the local Lhankor Mhy's a lot of money to get it analysed magically. The result of the test (which of course was to reveal two magic properties)? "It floats and it glows!" The players in that campaign still bring that one up. What happened to the orb? It's the proud showpiece of the Zola Fel temple in Pavis which offered to store it for them.

2) That same party recovered some crystals from a broo treasure trove and played Russian roulette trying to attune the crystals.  I asked one of the players if he really wanted to attune a particular crystal and despite the strong warning the gods issued he still tried it!  They were overnighting at Sun Dome temple in Sun County and that night the templat guards came a running when they learned of the chaos monstrosity with 12 pt aluminum scale armour (the character belonged to the Zola Fel cult) that was in the guest barracks.  The character in question surrended to the authorities and was sentenced to execution by a volley of Sun Spears.  The ogre who claimed to be his father showed up with a Lunar escort offering to take him with them but the character refused to go with him.  After a failed DI attempt by his sole friend among the party he was fried at noon.  (This was the same guy who got his body tattooted with Gbaji riddles by the self-same ogre father and tried to cover them up with red dye.  Didn't work so he had himself skinned by a blindfolded Xiola Umbar.   Ouch!)

3) This one happened to me.  I was playing a troll Xiola Umbar who had a trollkin follower.  The trollkin died and I felt obligated to DI for him.  This was stupid because of course I managed to use up all of my power in the process.  The character had to live from then on with a very "grateful" trollkin dancing around her chanting, "A trollkin lives a charmed life!" and a power of one.

There was another player in the same campaign who DI'd for his dead warhorse and got it back for the same price.  I think the same player used up most of his power on another occassion by DI'ing to harden some iron armour.

Paranoia

When I first started running Paranoia all the players were more or less completely ignorant of how the system worked.  One of the players had gotten ahold of some hand grenades which he was using on his foes.  I was doing all the rolling so they weren't really aware of the damage done.  But all they could tell was that the grenades weren't doing much PLUS it was hard to hit anyone with them.   So what did the player do?  He ran up to his opponent (a robot I believe) with a grenade in each hand, pulled both pins somehow and held both grenades up against the robot.  That's when I finally rolled decently.  Bye-bye robot and character.

Call of Cthulhu

The party was wandering around inside a deserted mansion when one of the players opened a closet door.  On the other side of the door was a 10 gauge shotgun.  Boom!  Near maxium damage.  One of the other players ran over immediately and said that he was looting the corpse.  I looked more closely at the map on which the miniatures had been placed and noticed that the looting character was the one who had actually opened the booby-trapped door.  Oops, looks like you're the corpse and the formerly dead guy is doing the looting.  Turnabout is fair play.

Stormbringer

When I ran Stormbringer (a long time ago) a party was exploring a dungeon when they came upon a maddened demon that had been imprisoned for a very long time.  One of the players teased the demon by saying, "I can go in, and I can go out", stepping in and out of one of the cells and waving his arms at the demon which just got angrier and angrier.  Another character went a little closer to tease the demon some more and was torn to pieces by the angry demon whose arms were a little longer and stretchy than the second or even the first character realised.

Powers and Perils

An inherently silly system, but fun.  I still get warm feelings thinking about the party of ubermensch straight out of Hitler's wet dreams wandering around the countryside with their wagon full of cheese.  (Which they needed to feed themselves since it possessed the best weight-food value rating and they ate like elephants).  There was one puny little character that didn't have supernatural physical stats who was normal sized.  There was the fight with the pack of lions where the lion cub got around behind the uber-shaman and hit him.  If we'd been using the rules correctly he would have been killed automatically.  Fortunately for sense's sake we misread the rules and let him live.

The other really amusing thing that happened was when the NPC daughter of the Greek Emperor (I think that's what she was) was stuck in the elevator with that same shaman.  This was the elevator that consisted of an open basket within a huge cave.  Some goblins then cut the rope which let them fall.   They fell hundreds of feet and the shaman managed to shape change into a bird.   The daughter tried to do the same but failed miserably and hit the ground going at terminal velocity.  Fortunately she was one of these uberpeople too so she wasn't killed.  Just knocked unconscious.  Unfortunately for her chain armour it wasn't as tough as her and disintegrated on contact.  Again, it turned out that I'd misread that rule and she should have been killed.  It was more interesting the other way though. 

Dragonquest

A fun, but flawed system.  I played a long sequence of warriors wearing half plate and armed with hand and a half swords who died in the first scenario.  Finally I got one who lived long enough to gain some noteriety.   (This was the character with the Will of 5 who got scared by oxen, which in the system were technically ugly enough to cause Willpower rolls.  I ran screaming from one once...)  I was gifted with a magical banner that made my character more powerful and we were hot in battle with a powerful foe when another player said, "Make your death curse, Oliver."  "Huh?", I replied.  At which point he dashed the two components of universal solvent, something borrowed from The Fantasy Trip, to the ground which disintegrated everything in a two hex radius, including of course myself and my horse and the enemy.  But not the banner.  Later that character was brought back through powerful magic and was rendered ugly enough by himself to scare people.  (He got some really ugly demonic armour..)  This was the same character who got the ability to gain  con points, stats points and healing from drinking the blood of friends, enemies and innocents respectively.  I only killed and drained one character though and he was retiring the character anyway!  He still hasn't forgiven me.

This same campaign saw an ugly incident of wish fulfillment.  One of the players was playing a giant character and during a battle he attempted to trample an enemy who was also being fought by another character.  The player for the giant rolled a fumble and the other players all chanted, "Hit nearest friend!", which he obligingly did.  Then he rolled for the hit and got a critical!  Then we all chanted for the worst possible result "Crush hip" which he obligingly rolled.  Wham!  Nice bunch of friends, eh?

The same player had a different character in a different scenario where we were once again crawling around undeground.  A stealthy character was crawling along the ceiling of the same cavern when through some mischance he dropped his belt pouch.  He yelled "Look out below" and the character on the ground tried to catch the pouch.  He didn't unfortunately (or maybe he did) but either way the two parts of the universal solvent got mixed together when the vials broke and Kaboom!

Homophones Kill

Another amusing incident from that campaign was when we were searching for a treasure that we had heard was the weight of a small boy.  Well we were wandering around underground again and discovered a small cork channel market.   We took it with us and then someone voiced out loud, "The weight of a small buoy?" and we all leaped on the poor thing and tore it to shreds.  Of course the DM was rolling around on the floor laughing at us and was probably very glad we didn't run across a small lad wandering around underground.

Universe

Another fine SPG RPG.  I used to get bored really easy (I'm better now honestly)) and I was playing a character who didn't have anything to do.  We were on this primitive planet and as a joke another payer and I equipped this robot with some tentacles and tried to set it up as a god.  It worked beyond our wildest dreams and the locals started worshipping the robot.  When we asked for sacrifices they wanted to sacrifice virgins.  We figured we were going too far, so I playing the new god Cthulhu asked for sacrifices only when the sun was at it's highest.   I was trying to get the concept of a solstice across to them but unfortunately they interpreted that as meaning every noon!  We got out of the god business after that.

AD&D

It almost spoofs itself.  This is something that happened in a campaign a friend of mine was in.  I did not personally experience it.   Somehow this party ran into the god Thor and my friend managed to insult Thor.   Thor threatened him and my friend not liking the tone in his voice told him to. "Blow it out your magic hammer, Thor."  At this point Thor took his magic hammer and hit every other character.  Unfortunately for just desserts this missed my friend but devastated the rest of the high-level party.  This was the same smartass who insulted the demon in Stormbringer.

Another incident that occured in a campaign my friends were in was the creation of the muleetov.  A wizard had a mule which he loaded up with oil flasks.  This mule came in handy when they were fighting a dragon who tried to flame the poor mule.  Kaboom, no more mule, no more dragon.  At least that's how I remember it being tolf to me.

Rosie's Canteen

Rosie's Canteen was a glorious free form roleplaying system set around the eponymous canteen set in the Old West.  It was something a friend of mine did at our old con in Winnipeg, WinGames.  A person liked by few was playing a gun runner who had a wagon full of dynamite.  A clumsy character in a second story window overlooking the wagon was trying to attack someone else with the dynamite.  The character (it might have been played by me but that was a long time ago) tried to throw the lit stick of dynamite but fumbled his throw.  Random rolls for direction and distance, oops right out the window down onto the wagon.  Kaboom!   No more gun runner.

All remembrances are the fault of Oliver D. Bernuetz and any mistakes are due to his faulty memory.  c2001.  Last updated May 18, 2001