39 replies to this topic

[The Basilisk]

We've all played brave heroes and vile villains, and all of our game characters have stories to tell.
What's your favorite tale of adventure? It doesn't HAVE to be your's, it can be another player's tale, one you heard someone tell, or even one found somewhere on the internet.
Here beist mine, taken from some undoubtedly ancient and long lost 4chan thread:

I die a little inside every moment of every game because I know I'll never top this.

do we have a thread for this already i'm sorry
I edited the picture because no one here seems to swear often, and I don't wanna get in trouble :V

[The Inner Geek]

Some friends and I used to play a bit of TMNT/After The Bomb. I had a mutant Rabbit character once that had a few quirks. Among them, he wanted to be able to say that he'd killed a bear with his "bare" hands. He rather liked the play on words. Of course our GM eventually obliged by running us into this huge polar bear. My character valiantly throws down his guns and prepares to meet his destiny. After two rounds of getting his butt handed to him in hand to hand with the bear he dodges out of combat (he was the same speed class as a decent car so it was not hard to jump out of combat), picks up his uzi and commences to unload full auto on the bear until it's down to about 3 hit points. At which time he throws the guns down again and kills the bear with his bare hands. Barely, the bear still almost killed him.

It was no flying dragon take-down, but he was just a rabbit afterall.

[Crier]

My Story is more about a whole Group, on one Infamous night known forever in my DnD Group as the "Black Knight".

Now I am the DM for my group and we play by a nice blend of house rules and 2nd Ed. This particular session involved a cult, worshipers of Tiamat, in a Tower just outside of Raven Hill.

The Group? Roarans, a half orc Cleric/Fighter mix. Clair- elf mage/fighter, Frenk Elf Mage, Drak- Human fighter. Cleo- Elf Druid and Reg-Human thief.

They make it up the first floor, then get captured. They escape (thanks to Regs disturbing habit of keistering lock picks) Unarmed they take out a squad and find their weapons. Now armed (and in Roarans case pretty pissed off) They proceed to charge through the place doing a good job or ripping the cultists apart, night falls and their dice decide to sleep apparently.

First encounter after night fall, 2 Mages 5 fighters vs. my group of players: Players go first, Roarans rolls a 1, Which means bad news depending on the percentile. He rolls badly, Takes off Clairs left hand. Clair misses her turn due to pain. Frenk decides to use Fireball, Rolls a 1. Percentile roll...goes badly it blows up in his face resulting in a lost eye. Drak's roll. He actually hits something. Cleo- works on healing. Reg- Hides. Encounter finishes alright and the group takes a short break after shoring up the doorways.

Second encounter, Drak rolls a 1 takes off Roran's right hand. Rorans, who uses a 2 handed weapon tries to heal his hand back on (he's a terrible cleric) hand reattaches but turns completely to stone and immobile. With a str check he can weild his weapon 1 handed (had a str of 18). Clair uses magic missile to good effect. Cleo heals again. Frenk uses magic missiles to good effect. Reg Hides.

Third Encounter of the night....They rescue a paladin (npc) being held in the upper cells.

fourth encounter-- Cleo loses a Leg, Frenk has a spell backfire and grows horns, Drak loses an butt cheek, Clair loses half a foot. Reg Hides.

Fifth--Reg loses his head. No one mourned the loss too long.

Central room at the top--- They decide to charge in >.> No One notices the shadowy alcove...or the Giant Gong on the wall. They all Lose consciousness, as they fade out the see their rescued paladin throw 7 yellow stones, which transform into dragons. ( As it was a side quest in the main storyline to initiate a new player It felt wrong to punish them all for their stupidity. Call me too nice.) But this is my story of epicness...we all laugh about it to this day (5 years later). and we use it as a warning to new players.

[The Basilisk]

A guy I knew from a forum once made a "Goblin Slime Catcher".
he was just a sort of, I guess, classless goblin that carried around a ghostbusters-esque vacuum backpack he'd cobbled together, which sprayed slimes and oozes out of specially designed containment units. After they had liquidated his foes, he'd simply slurp them back into the pack.
Apparently it didn't end well.

[Sanael]

This is a few weeks ago in my 3.5 Eberron campaign. Big boss fight coming up, party walks around a while before finding the door to the boss fight, open the door.

Twelve Karrnathi skellies, eight Emerald Claw soldiers and the BBEG draw bows. The party quickly shuts the door.

Cleric says, ok, open the door. Fightertypes oblige. Cleric summons three celestial bison into the room, shouts to close the door.

Behind the screen, I roll a few will saves, the bison panic. I describe the sounds of a beef-powered blender as the herd stampedes in a fifty-by-fifty foot room.

Party opens the door, cleric dismisses the bison, and the pcs deal with BBEG without his minions.

[redambrosia]

I've been wanting to post this for a bit, but I couldn't remember the specifics. Finally got some answers out of my husband (the DM), though the player responsible for the epicness was totally useless

We were playing a dragon & giant campaign in 2nd edition, I was a giant (for now....) and the others were dragons. We were sneaking into a fire-giant strong-hold to try to swipe a little something from them (try to imagine dragons and giants sneaking ). Anyway, that worked out about the way you'd expect and we got into a "little" tussle. Our adamantite dragon goes to claw claw bite and rolls a crit. Then another crit. Then just a normal hit. Then the next round he goes to claw claw bite again and, crit.... crit.... crit

Is the world ending? Did Bryan just crit 5 out of 6 hits? And the non-crit was still a really good hit. WTF is going on!?

He made up for it later though by critically failing and breaking his claws on one hand against a wall. That was more in line with our normal experiance.

[SamuraiJack]

I played two characters in a long running campaign back in college.. my Fighter named Bronto (int+wis =9) and his hafling thief handler/care giver Lucky. Bronto had succeeded in killing or getting the party mortally wounded a couple times by wanting to play with traps, opening doors without listening, wandering off down a hallway after something shiny (usually when they forgot the Thief was keeping him out of trouble and sent Lucky ahead to scout).

We finally defeat the evil dragon who had been running the humanoid crim syndicate in the area and split up the treasure hoard. Bronto becomes fascinated by an iron ring with celtic knotwork on it. It radiates minimal magic and IDs out as a ring of sustanence or something so they let him have it. A couple adventures later he breaks his favorite sword on an spectacular critical miss and says 'Me wish sword was not broken'. The ring glows and his sword repairs itself. Bronto, being like a 5 year old in a mans body says 'Oooh. Me wish could see that again.' Ring glows.. sword breaks.. then is repaired.. its at this point the rest of the party has figured out what is going on and of course the ring won't come off.. His third wish was for 'me wish me feel strong like before me die' and got his constitution restored..

[Golf_Whiskey]

My favorite PC/Campaign Story was from a few years ago. I was GMing and the game was set in Westeros (Game of Thrones Land) a couple decades before the events of the novels. The characters were members of a minor House in the Vale of Arryn and my friend Chuck, who alternates GMing duty with me, played Tragan, the heir to the House. Long story short, Chuck played this character as a straight-up Machiavellian genius who manipulated the other characters and the other NPC House members like a puppetmaster. Every other Party member had reason to dislike Tragan in character, but not only was he the heir, he also cowed them by the force of his personality. Here is the best example of this:

Tragan's sister had gotten pregnant out of wedlock and Tragan found this out. Determined not to have the reputation of his House tarnished, he had her poisoned and blamed the killing on her lover. Not only that, but he convinced the sister's betrothed (another minor noble) that the lover had killed her to prevent them from being married. In a fit of rage, the noble killed the lover and was banished from his lands, and Tragan made a power play to seize those lands. The other characters suspected that Chuck/Tragan had orchestrated all this, so they summoned him into an isolated chamber and formally confronted him about it. Like a boss, Tragan simply denied it, stood up, and walked out of the room. The other players, both in character and out, were just stunned and speechless. It was one of the best gaming moments I've ever had, watching all this drama unfold.

[sumbloke]

I haven't played a huge amount of RPGs, so my best story is the one of a character I never got to play.

A DM told me he was going to be starting an epic-level campaign, so I designed a character for it. Because I didn't know what level we'd be starting, I only designed him to level 20 (I later found out he was going to be starting us at level 35). The character was called Chuck and he was a half-ogre who was really good at throwing things - he had a prestige class which allowed him to use an item up to his medium or heavy encumbrance weight (I can't remember which) as an improvised weapon. When I told the DM about this character he said I couldn't play it, even though at level 20 he still needed a size category increase to use the Tarrasque as an improvised weapon.

The alternate character I designed was called Chuck. He was a halfling who threw lots of little things. He went around pretending to be a human child, carrying a "plush" iron golem - an iron golem with a built-in Shrink spell so that if he got into battle he could unshrink it and have it hold the opponent while he threw things at them.


My best story of something that actually happened in a game was one game where I was playing a mermaid who was a manipulative type of character. At one point there was a battle of some kind starting, so I went up to one of the other PCs and said "You're a big, stong man... you'll protect me..." <roll>

[The Basilisk]

An ogre hoisting a very startled Tarrasque over his head is an EXTREMELY pleasing image, and I commend you for it.
I'D have let you chuck with chuck...

[Froggy the Great]

My first Deadlands character was a deputy in the town, always reporting to the sheriff and never accepting promotions to full Sheriff. After all, "They shoot the sheriff, but they do not shoot the deputy."

Then he was dragged off and eaten by wendigoes.

[Argentee]

I played a Ravnos (Vampire Gypsy) in a WoD game once who was best friends with a Malkavian (Insane vampire). Both of them were fond of pranks.

The two of them got large smiley face iron-ons, irons, and then broke into the Tremere stronghold and ironed the smiley faces on the back of their Ceremonial robes.

On another occasion, they ghouled 30 chickens (giving them super strength or stamina or dexterity... for chickens). Dyed them with food coloring in bright neon colors, then the Malkavian put on a chicken suit and we released the chickens in a night club with the Malkavian leading the way and declaring the great chicken rebellion!

On another occasion, same night club, my character cast in the middle of the room an illusion of Rod Serling doing the introduction to the Twilight Zone... but since she had only seen Rod Serling in black and white, the illusion was in black and white...

[The Basilisk]

A friend of mine was once in a game with me that had one of those 'chance of catastrophic failure' rules going for it.

He tried to listen at a door a roled a 1, so he ended up deaf from a six inch long splinter that jammed itself in his ear when he put it to the door.

Edited by The Basilisk, 19 December 2012 - 05:55 PM.

[Gailbraithe]

Two quick stories:

 

A) In a 2E D&D campaign I'm running, my friend Matt makes a half-ogre grappler named Tahnk.  Grapples the heck out of everything, much like the luchador above.  One day the party is wandering through the wilderness, and sets up camp.  Tahnk's player has been drinking all night, he's getting a bit silly, and becomes very insistent that his character is wandering off alone to "do his business."  He's being really dumb and wants to "role play it out!"

 

So I tell him he finds a nice bush to stand behind, drops his trousers and is about to do his business when an OWL BEAR rises up from the other side of the bush and roarsqwaks at him.  We spend a couple of minutes debating what a roarsqwak sounds like exactly, and then resolve the combat.  Tahnk is able to successfully grapple the owlbear before it can attack.  Using the 2E grappling tables, we determine that Tahnk has the owl in a full nelson.  He maintains the hold until the owl bear passes out, screaming for help the entire time.

 

The party successfully hears him, comes running, and arrives just after the owl bear passes out.  And I smile and say "You come over a slight rise, and in the clearing below you see Tahnk standing in a bush with his pants around his ankles.  Directly in front of Tahnk is an unconscious owlbear.  Tahnk appears to be holding the owlbears arms back and grinding his hips against its rump.  You're not entirely sure, but he appears to be [CENSORED] the owlbear."

 

For the rest of that campaign whenever the party needed to intimidate an NPC, they would point to Tahnk and explain that this guy was so tough he [CENSORED] owlbears, and Tahnk developed a reputation throughout the land for being a degenerate owlbear [CENSORED].

 

2) Beta Playtest of Pathfinder, running the Dungeon Crawl Classic adventure Castle Whiterock.  My friend Eric is playing an Elven Cleric (forget his name).  The party is fighting a few orcs, enough that there is one per player.  Eric is getting beaten up on pretty badly but due to the layout of the tunnel he can't move out of harm's way.  He attacks the orc and gets a critical hit.  We're using the critical hit deck, and he gets a really awesome Bleed damage result and leaves the orc staggered, but the orc doesn't go down.  It's going to get in another attack before it dies and Eric knows it.  But it is definitely going to die from the bleed damage right after that. 

 

He begs the other players to break off from their fights and come kill this orc for him, so that he doesn't go down before he has a chance to heal himself.  Everyone asks how many hits points he has (metagaming, but I allow it), and then starts teasing him for being so concerned.  The other players all decide not to help him out, promising him that he'll be fine, and the worst thing that could happen is that he goes into negatives.  One player actually says outloud "There is no possibility that you'll die."

 

I go to roll the orcs attack.   Eric says "He'll get a critical hit."  I roll, natural twenty.  Eric sighs and says "He's going to confirm." I roll, natural 20 again.  Eric grabs his character sheet and crumples it up.  The damage is 3d12+24.  I roll a 12, 12 and 11.  Eric's character  has 12 hit points and a 12 Constitution, which means the orc takes him to -47 HP, a good 35 points past "Completely Dead."

 

Everyone else at the table just sits there silently as Eric fumes.  I felt so bad for the guy, but at least it wasn't my fault -- I'm not the one who decide to abandon him to fate, like the other player's did.  They all felt so guilty.  Just the worst thing I've ever seen happen to a player.

[The Basilisk]

WOW, that's some rotten luck if ever there was any. Poor Eric...