Fake War Stories

I was playing as a Half-Elf Ranger a long time ago, and got really lucky whilst rolling the character. Stats up to here, lemme tell you.

Despite this, I had absolutely terrible luck rolling during combat. How bad? Our party trusted the currently spell-less wizard to hold a critical hallway over me. It was bad.

Anyhow, despite my ineptitude, we managed to bust through this evil temple, defeat the crazed mummy at the end, and recover the enchanted, legendary bastard sword that was hanging on the wall. (Well, a +1 bastard sword, but it was so far the first magic weapon in the campaign.) Being the only one in the party who really USED swords of that type, it went to me.

And with it, my luck changed too.

Rolling twenties came as naturally to me as breathing. During one fight, I killed four goblins before the rest of the party had even rounded the corner. The difference was night and day.

My character had always been a bit aloof, but now grew positively stuck up. I was a whirling death machine! I was a god!

Arguments ensued. The provenance of my skill came under question. Until finally, it came out: “Without that sword, you’d be just as useless as you’ve ALWAYS been!”

In a fit of pique, I threw the sword away. It landed in the bottom of a river, and everyone stared at me. In particular the DM. “You’re… You’re sure you’re just going to leave that there? It’s a MAGIC SWORD.”

But I was determined. What good was being impressive in combat when your fellow party members saw you as nothing more than effectively a scarecrow that allowed a fancy magical sword to swing about and be awesome?

So we left the sword and carried on. As it turns out, my rolls didn’t switch back to being as terrible as before, and I proved to continue to be a competent fighter for the rest of the campaign.

But the DM took me aside a few months later, and let me know just exactly what I’d thrown away. Turns out that the sword I had was actually a legendary artifact that grew as it killed, gaining XP along with me, and growing in bonuses, up to +5, inflicting fiery damage, and granting magical abilities.

Still more importantly, it would grow in intelligence as well, eventually to the point where it WOULD have taken me over entirely, and I WOULD have been nothing but a scarecrow allowing the sword to enact its will.

He had an entire plot set up for this, whole cities full of NPCs to betray and win back the trust of, and had planned on taking me aside a few weeks into the transformation to let me know how the changes were altering my character, and had confidence that a) I could have pulled it off without the other players noticing until it was too late and b) it was going to be awesome.

And yet instead of the accusations and redemption happening over a few month’s time, it happened in an afternoon. The first afternoon. Probably forty-five minutes after first acquiring the sword.

I still imagine that sword down there some times, at the bottom of that river… Just conscious enough to realize how close it had come to being released, but not powerful enough to really do anything about it…

(submitted by Imperfect via MeFi)

A few weeks ago I was part of a fantasy based LARP event. My first day there someone gave me a bunch of advice and a tour.

The first bit of advice was “follow zombie apocalypse rules: never go anywhere alone or too dark to see.”

There were some other bits but I cant really remember them :P

When the tour came about they pointed down one of the roads that lead to some hidden section of woods and told me that that was called “Death Alley”.

For good reason apparently.

The first day went by and we encountered some bad things. Like bad to the point where I couldn’t even hurt them or they took too long to kill. The next morning I decided I wanted to go exploring. So i grabbed one of the other (more heavily armed and armored) noobs and we decided to take a walk down Death Alley, not even considering the consequences.

We reach the end of Death Alley (still alive) and we find this really cool building! We go exploring for a bit and leave. I step out of the doorway and go to say something to the other noob and the conforsation goes something like this:

Me: ::notices about 8 baddies:: We have a slight problem. Run.

Noob: What’s the problem? ::looks around::

Me: ::Runs::

Noob: ::notices the baddies and also runs::

We ran all the way down Death Alley, rallied the town, and survived the encounter. But that was only my first race of the event! The second one took place later that day before the feast.

Shortly after the first race we ate lunch and got some quests assigned to us. One of which is to find a mysterious blink plant. I went out with about 3 different search parties and searched the entire camp. The final search party—a wild elf ranger, a wild elf swordsman, and I—found a portal that we supposedly had to close.

The ranger got curious and shot an arrow into it. After a trip to LC and back we found out that a really bad baddie came out of the portal.

The swordsman and myself ran and drew the baddie away from the ranger and toward Death Alley. It casually walked while following us. Upon reaching Death Alley it burst into a full run. We valued our lives so we did the same.

I made it all the way down Death Alley alive (again) and I decided that that was my LAST time running through that place.

(submitted by super-contributor mrevand6!)

Last weekend I attended Ghengis Con in Denver. During a game one of the other participants told me of his experience at a previous convention. He’d signed up as Gamemaster for a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl and drew the morning slot. Only one person showed up at the time of the game, but they decided to play anyway.

Talking to the player, the GM learned that the gentleman was unfamiliar with the game. In fact he’d never roleplayed before and had no idea what the hobby was about. He and his wife lived in one of the small mountain towns of the Rockies, and every few months they’d drive into Denver to see what was happening. He’d discovered the game convention while his wife was at a doll show and, thinking it sounded fun, decided to drop in.

The GM handed the player a character sheet for a stalwart Ranger, gave him a brief overview of play, and they were off. When the player ran into his first monster, the Gamemaster helpfully pointed out the Ranger’s skill in archery and swordplay.

“So what do you want to do?” the GM asked.

The player studied his character sheet. “It says I can do bird calls,” he noted.

“That’s right,” the GM replied, somewhat puzzled.

“OK. I do a bird call to distract the monster, and then sneak past him.”

The fellow rolled the dice and successfully evaded the monster. In fact, over the course of the game, the player cleverly avoided every monster in the dungeon, with nary an arrow fired or sword unsheathed.

(found on defective yeti)

I’m a long time supporter of a small and relatively unknown LARP called RISING. It’s a zombie survival larp, and the weekend events are always full of great stories I will cherish for the rest of my life. The story I’m about to tell is about something I did that was, as one of my fellow players called it, “legendarily failtacular”.

One quick lesson in RISING rules to explain the story. In this post-apocalyptic setting, one of the few medicines that can be used is steroids, and game physics dictates that someone dosed with them—for one swing—deals 5 times the damage. On the next swing, 4 times the damage and so on untill it wears off.

Example: if you can only do 1 damage in melee normally, if a doctor hits you with steroids, your next attack will be 5 damage, then 4, then 3, then 2, untill you’re back to 1 damage. This little syringe, I always noticed, was widely ignored as not that useful. But i found a sneaky way of using it, as this story will show.

I was a Marksman at this particular event (ranged attack specialist, firearms, etc. NOT a beefy melee fighter), and I tagged along with another group as I came alone that year. The wonderful DM liked to incorporate meal times into the game as to not break ambiance. So our first morning in the event, our groups got word that our food drop landed in the mountains nearby, an area we knew was “mountain man” territory.

Feeling remarkably hungry after a night of killing zombies I decided to follow along on the quest to get our food. A short hike brought us to a clearing where a mountain man on a 4 wheeler with our food crate strapped to the back was getting ready to ride off to his group.

A short bit of diplomatic back and forth got the mountain man to agree to let us have the crate provided we offered him something of equal value. An argument broke out in the group as to what all we could do without so we could have breakfast. Feeling a bit clever, I stopped the argument (this is all out of earshot of the mountain man, who was also one of the GMs), “Guys, stop! There’s no reason we have to lose a damn thing to this guy. We outnumber him and no one else is around! If we kill him quietly we can have the food AND his gear. At the low cost of FREE!”

This becomes the winning idea and then the conversation becomes how to do this dastardly deed without making alot of noise.

And then I had another epiphany.

“Hey doc, do you have a steroid? Good. Hit me with it.”

Then I drop my guns and pull my only melee weapon, a knife about the size of a bowie, “Hey dude, I have this knife. It’s a hunting knife, really sharp, good for skinning game, etc. Would that be a good trade?”

I don’t know what the guy was thinking, but he made it too easy.

“Well, I don’t know…bring it here and let me have it.”

So I held it out and when I got close enough I got a good grip and “let him have it”.

In 5 quick stabs I did 15 damage in a game where the average human has 1 hit point and the average zombie has 5 or 10.

Point is I don’t know how many points a “mountain man” had… but I know I’d done enough.

The GM looks at me just baffled, “are you SERIOUS?!?”

I grinned, very proud of myself, “Yup. Gotta love steroids. So I’m looting you.”

The GM quickly gets his head back in the game and says words that may as well have just been “you fucked up.” He smiled and said, “you hear a ticking noise.”

The mountain man, in fear of this exact scenario, booby trapped his 4 wheeler to EXPLODE in the event of his death. A little fact that I think should have been mentioned EARLIER… but I digress.

I turn, cuss, and run while the timer counts down. The 4 wheeler blows up taking our breakfast with it. Not only was I the bane of the breakfast table (until the GM showed pity and gave us food anyway), but I then became public enemy number 1 in the new plot where the mountain men declared war on our camp…

Another time we were playing AD&D (2nd edition) and the characters were summoned before the infamous Lord of the North (whom the PCs had heard a lot about but had never met, he was a serious badass in our world’s meta-geopolitical game).

So as the Lord of the North is basically acknowledging that the PCs could be somewhat useful to him, our ranger decides to get lippy with him: 

Ranger: “Screw off you over-important prick, we will not work for you.”

Lord: “YOU WILL BOW TO ME AND SHOW YOUR RESPECT, MORTAL.”

Ranger: “Bite me.”

Lord: “DIE” ::casts Power Word: Kill::

Ranger: ::fails save, dies::

Rest of the group: “What the fuck were you thinking, Ranger?!”

Ranger: “Well, I didn’t think he was going to kill me! And besides I might have made my save…”

(submitted by Vindaloo via MeFi)

I’m running a Pathfinder game with my kids and some friends. 

Malgus the Barbarian Sorcerer and the rest of the gang (two Rangers, a Fighter, and a Cleric) have to go into a mausoleum to seek a book. Currently the gang is in the mausoleum looking at a chest and a sarcophagus. 

Malgus: “I’m going to check the chest for traps.”

Me: “Um… ok. Roll.”

Malgus: ::roll 8:: “So…”

Me: “Cool bro. Chest looks great to you.”

Malgus: “I look at the lock. What’s it look like?”

Me: “It has a key hole, but underneath it there are three pins.”

Malgus: “Ok, I pull one.”

Ian (fighter standing next to him): “That’s a bad idea Noah..”

Malgus (Noah): “No, I checked for traps. There aren’t any.”

Adam (Cleric): “What are you doing over there…?”

Malgus: “I’m pulling the pin.”

Me: “Which one?”

Malgus: “Third one.”

Me: “Ok. Uh….roll 2d4.”

::5::

“Roll a d20. You want under your constitution.”

::17 = fail::

“Ian, you’re next to him, roll a 1d4”

::1::

“Okay, so you both get blasted back and quickly blinded. When the blast clears you have this tingy taste on your tongue and weird iron smell in your nose, but other than that you feel fine.”

Malgus: “Cool.”

“I pull the other two.”

One of my very first campaigns took place in a small town— a humble location with little more than an inn, blacksmith, and church. One day, upon returning to town after a small skirmish, one of our fighters was taken to the local church for curing and healing.

After making the appropriately large donation and waiting for the services to be performed we “split the party” and wandered around the church halls admiring the paintings, stained glass, and other works of art. Once our fighter was back to himself we took him to the inn and spent the rest of the evening drinking and telling stories.

The next morning before heading out our halfling (thief), who decided to use the outhouse before leaving, began to inquire about how to value some items while I waited for him just outside the door.

It became apparent that the items he was asking about were of religious origin and, right before I was able to put two and two together, a substantial group of armored riders from the church crested the hill.

“What have you done!” I yelled and, before he could answer, I instructed him to run.

He flung open the door and told the DM that he was running down the hill towards the creak, heading under the bridge. The ever-creative DM told him that was fine but, because he took action in such haste, and he was hung over from drinking, and was reasonably in fear of his life, that he forgot to pull up his pants and therefore began to tumble out of the outhouse and was rolling down the hill.

It was chaos from there on out and I don’t recall much of the rest other than we were all in tears and our sides hurting from laughter the rest of the evening.

The thief (Noose) was from then on known as Noose Tumblefoot.

God damn it Leeroy.

Early in my first experience with D&D, our party was looking for a particular mine where orcs were doing some bad things.

I don’t know, who cares.

Anyway we came across two of the guards but kept our distance to stay noticed. We decided our best chance of finding the place was to listen in on their conversation. Unfortunately, all our Orcish speaking characters were too big and armored and terrible at espionage-related tasks to pull this off.

We debated a while until I had an idea: I asked our DM if I—a gnome bard (shut up)—could sneak over to them, listen extremely carefully, and come back and repeat the sounds I’d heard to the rest of the party for them to translate.

He glared a DM-glare at me and said simply: “I’m thinking of a number.”

I took the die in my hand and calmly rolled a natural 20 of pure destiny.

(submitted by brennathings)

We had a party (D&D 3.5 campaign) that was working directly for the king of the country. The two main party members, as far as the kingdom story line was concerned were:

• Lord Hek, Captain of the Guards (lvl 12 fighter), and;
• Mobius, High Inquisitor (lvl 11 Diviner, with no offensive spells, to this day one of my favourite D&D characters)

Anyway, the PCs were following up on a series of murders and the trail led them to one of the large noble houses. After breaking into the house the party found its way to the 3rd floor and were faced with a massacre: body parts and blood of the house guards were everywhere. We were stunned.

With this evidence we were sure that the lord of the house was the guilty party. Then, out of an adjacent room came streaming a bunch of royal guards along with the lady of the house (who had an evil snarl on her lips).

She shouted out: “Guards! These men have come to my house and killed my men as you can plainly see. In the name of House Raven, arrest them at once!” 

Just as Mobius starts to speak to try and Diplomacy his way out of the predicament, Lord Hek yelled: “Off with ‘er head!” and picks up the die.

Rolls a natural 20… With his Vorpal Blade.

With the mage still at a loss for words and Lady Raven’s head falling from her severed neck, Lord Hek declares: 

“I am Lord Captain Hek, and this is Mobius, the High Inquisitor! By order of His Majesty the King we have tracked and found the instigator of the serial killings, Lady Raven who is now dead at our hands. You will secure these premises and await further orders while we report back to His Majesty.” 

…pause, gaping maws all around… 

Lord Hek: “IS THAT CLEAR?”

All the guards, in unison: “YES SIR!”

And that is how Lord Captain Hek saved the entire party from a long series of adventures focused on imprisonment, false accusations, and fall from grace.

All hail Hek!

(Submitted by Vindaloo on MetaFilter)