Fake War Stories

A couple of years ago, my group started a Spycraft game. The game was pitched as a hardboiled, hard sci-fi, Neuromancer-style cyberpunk game. We have the best equipment: Personal stealth wing suits, laser-guided micro-missile-firing guns (which were basically soundless, 8th generation night vision goggles with smart-linked HUDs), we have it all. To a man, all of our characters are hyper-professional special ops types with rigorous training and years of field experience.

So in the second session of the game we are supposed to HALO drop into a top-secret Chinese research and development facility in a southern China demilitarized zone. Our mission is to kidnap or rescue some scientists, depending on who you talked to. We leap from the plane and dive head first into the night. The entire group botches our piloting roles and we miss the target by almost a mile.

Now outside the perimeter, we group up and try to formulate a plan. The GM announces that we see an armored patrol car on a security detail. At once, we assault the vehicle, killing its two passengers and taking their uniforms. The plan becomes the old “steal the uniforms and get past the gate with charm” bit. We drive up to the gate and start sweet talking the guards. There was only one problem. 

None of us are Chinese. None of us even speak Chinese. None of us are even Asian.

We have this international group of characters which includes an Irish sniper, a Russian explosive expert, an American of Israeli descent with an IQ so high that he is borderline precognitive. But none of us saw any holes in this plan…

A horrible firefight ensued which we somehow survived. Sometimes there is just no justice for a GM.

I had rolled up a mage who specialized in fire. Not just magic, but also performing with it, throwing it, spitting it, smashing vials of it…I spent a lot of gold getting gnomes to engineer oil/spark delivery systems to augment my fairly low level character with great aspirations. I had starry eyes thinking about that day when I would have fireball.

But mostly, I threw oil on things and was a vicious arsonist.

This lead to a lot of charred aftermath with singed party members looking at me angrily. I had a huge backstory that my parents died in a fire and I resolved that I would never let fire control my destiny!

I was chasing some bad guy through the city toward some shrine. It was pouring rain. I was standing on the top of this building when bad guy casts lightning or I get struck by lightning or something. I don’t remember.

I fall: more huge damage. I fail to get up then slip in the mud: take more damage and almost die as he gets away. I quaff a potion to almost full health and manage to catch up to him as he’s finishing some ritual to summon a water elemental.

I throw a fire bomb to keep it from leaving the building to get out in the rain. The party shows up and can’t enter because the threshold is a wall of flames. My character sees a gem in the middle and fumbles his intelligence roll. “I have a dagger that does fire damage, If I dive in, I can stab this thing to death!”

DM: “What’s your swim?”

Me: “2! I am prepared!”

DM: “No you aren’t. You’re encumbered. 50 feet of rope. A bandolier with oil vials. A backpack full of I can’t even remember what. You dive in and see the gem whirling around and around just out of reach. You have one round before you start to drown, what do you do? “

Me: “Try to stab the gem!”

DM: “You are carried more and more rapidly in circles. You are now dizzy, and drowning. Take damage.”

The party circles around to another entrance and starts to engage the elemental.

There’s a few rounds of various attacks.

The rogue takes out his crossbow, fails to see me inside and fires at the gem. 

DM: “One out of six chance he hits you as you swirl past… You are now, dizzy, drowning and have a crossbow bolt sticking out of your… shoulder.”

Me: “Swim for… the surface.”

The Paladin closes on the elemental and sees me inside and makes a valiant effort to pull me out but misses.

DM: “You reach the surface just as you become unconscious. Fifty percent chance you get dumped out. One in six that you get dumped onto your own oil fire. I’ll let YOU call it and roll it.”

Me: “Five. I’m in the fire. Oh god… I’m in the fire.”

DM: “You are unconscious in the fire. Anyone in the party know why this is an especially bad thing? No? Make a spot? No? Okay then…”

The party fights the elemental while I toast in my own fire. There’s a small series of explosions as all my special vials begin to heat up. One explosion sends my dagger flying and it sticks in the wall just as the elemental is defeated. 

The rogue grabs my dagger and says, “We should go to the inn and see if there’s another mage for hire.”

Paladin : “How about a bard?”

(Submitted by varionic. Sorry for the skipped day yesterday everyone! Real-world work called!)