Ratspeaker Mar 6, 2009

Your minds are too green

I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives

On a savior machine

Your minds are too greenI despise all I've seenYou can't stake your livesOn a savior machine





The funny thing about this is that the Best Gaming Experiences thread was originally created because too many people were posting awesome experiences in the Bad Experiences thread. But times have changed.



Anyway, I've been saving up some of my favorite posts from the past two threads for a while now. Unfortunately I do not remember who posted most of these, and Google isn't helping, so if anyone knows, please tell me so I can edit it in.



Wandering Knitter posted: I once gamed with a man who spent an entire session rubbing the flat side of a knife against his neck while glaring at the other PCs.



We never invited him back.

quote: One game, we were going along the side of a mountain, and we were ambushed by something, so the dm let me summon orcas on the slope so I could cause whale-alanches.



I also dropped a celestial bison from the roof of a building, through a skylight, onto an unsuspecting gaurd below.

quote: Pure sandbox games can be pretty fun, but they are entirely dependent on DM creativity. If you're drawing a blank that session the game grinds to a halt. I remember a D&D game where the players fought a Manticore on 3 separate combats because I couldn't figure out what they should be doing. I think I ended up fluffing it that the succession of Manticores were each avenging the previous Manticore, Inigo Montoya style.

quote: the bard spent the entire fight a little distance away, breakdancing so hard that it filled the other pcs with righteous courage. occasionally he would cast some sonic damage spell and yell "bam!" while striking an insolent you-got-served pose. one of these spells struck the deathblow.



the bard served the huge terrifying monster so hard that it died.

quote: Every Sabbat game I ever saw was nothing but one big munchkin wet dream. If it wasn't random slaughter and carnage (equestrian demolition derby anyone?), it was nothing but goth-Dragonball episode. In fact I know one game where the characters wanted some more experience so they got on bus and drove to a series of warehouses full of ninjas just so they flex their potence/celerity/obtenibration/vissicitude/temporis.

quote: Someone once told me a story about RIFTS being played in a gaming shop, he said something about rolling a crit with a knife, and that the crit rules said to roll every die readily available. Well they were in a drat game shop, so naturally being total nerds they rolled the store's entire inventory of dice. Ended up destroying a planet.



Don't know exactly how RIFTS works, or if the story's legit, but from whats been said it wouldn't surprise me.

quote: Lionel's biggest achievement came when Bob asked him to make a new character. Lionel found a demonic form power he really, really liked. It let him eat anything with no penalties.

We made our way into some corporate building to steal some information. Most of us chose stealth, but Lionel had a different solution. After the alarm sounded, he told us, "I'm assuming my demonic form and then I'm going to eat the security guard".



Play stopped. We tried to talk him out of it, but he was adamant that we couldn't have any witnesses. Bob tried to reason with him, letting him know that it would take a long time to eat an entire person and we'd definitely be caught.

Lionel's response: "No way, it only takes one turn! The book says I can take man-size bites!"

That took a moment to sink in. We had to call the game for the night.

quote: Well, the guy would show up with his books and stuff, then five minutes or so after we started he would slip out a bayonet and whetstone and start sharpening the bayonet. He'd randomly slam it down into his pile of books, interrupting whoever was talking and leaving the rest of the table wondering if he'd finally snapped and was going to kill us or something. He never did, nor did we ever find out if he had the gun that the bayonet would have attached to. Very quiet otherwise, played a mild-mannered elf wizard whose goal was to build a peaceful tree house with a library and alchemical lab. Guess he counts as an "American Psycho" type dude. All of his books had little triangular puncture wounds that went from the hardcover front to the hardcover back. His PHB was like swiss cheese, and was always the one given to newbies who didn't have their own gear.

quote: The paladin, as his FIRST course of action, drops chain-trow and declares he shall bugger the unicorn awake.

Angry Diplomat posted: I had an important villain flee to an impregnable fortress once. he was hiding inside this tower made of evil purple stone that was stronger than steel, with an enchanted door made from the same stuff. when they found out they couldn't put a dent in the walls or penetrate them using magical means, the bard says, "alright, I want to go to town and hire a wizard and a druid of at least these levels to accompany us for a day or so."



I figure, what the hell, they'll try throwing more spells at it but I can't see how they'd get through the tower that way. I ask him if he's sure he wants to spend the money and yes, he is quite sure. so the bard returns to the big evil tower in the mouth of an extinct volcano, hired spellcasters in tow.



he had the wizard animate the door, then had the druid cast awaken construct on it, so that the door was sentient. then he threw his nearly +40 diplomacy modifier at it and politely asked it to open.



the villain was very surprised to see them



And my personal favorite



quote: Oh, man, the first campaign I DMed fits squarely into this thread. It was 3rd edition, and the PCs were a half-orc barbarian, a halfling rogue, a human bard, and, because the party was looking a little fragile, my DMPC, a human fighter. I realize DMPCs are usually terrible and all that, but seriously, with an unoptimized fighter, what could go wrong?



Well, DMPC or not, a lot went wrong. The biggest problem was that I was a very permissive DM and the bard's player was incredibly clever and imaginative.



Rogue does the fighting, fighter does the rogueing



Ironically, the fighter NPC ended up being quite useful to them. The rogue preferred stabbing people and picking pockets to disarming traps, and I had built the fighter to be a pure-constitution, hitpoint-packed supertank, reasoning that a resilient meatshield would be useful for keeping the bard alive while the other two went ballistic on monsters' faces. The bard's player looked at Toughguy McSoakalot with his crazy Fortitude save and said, "hooray! You get to spring the traps!"



Hilariously enough, the NPC's background was that he had been framed for a crime and was lying low until the heat died down, so he really didn't have much choice but to stick with the party. They threw him into poison gas traps, spiked pits, goblin ambushes, collapsing caverns, and all manner of other madness, and if he complained the bard would just roll Diplomacy and score a 35 or something similarly ridiculous while basically patting him on the head and offering him a cookie. In retrospect it was extremely funny, but as an inexperienced and overly-permissive DM, it frustrated me quite a bit.



Hello, I'm Bardsby von Singerson, and this is my petting zoo



Every monster the party defeated, the bard would try to tame (he had maxed ranks in animal handling, obviously). Every NPC the party met, the bard would try to fast-talk (maxed ranks in bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate). If neither of these worked, he would use a spell or wand with a charm effect or something similar. He later took Leadership and got a negative-channeling cleric cohort so he could rebuke and control undead. This loving guy had a sack full of trained stirges, giant angry mosquitoes, that he could (and did) unleash on NPCs who angered him and appeared to have more blood than they really needed.



The party also developed a propensity for gathering prisoners/slaves. This came about after I had the fighter offhandedly comment that butchering defeated opponents was a little different than he was used to; he didn't really like killing in cold blood. What I intended as a bit of characterization became a weird obsession for the party - they would tie up and drag around every single NPC who didn't die immediately after the fight, sometimes leading around comical prisoner trains of dozens of duergar, drow, bandits, gnolls, orcs, and hell knows what else. This persisted, becoming ever more absurd as the bard used lies, intimidation, and magical fuckery to keep everyone in line, until...



You get HOW many wishes!?



We were playing through the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil module, which is really quite a good mega-dungeon if I remember right. It's got all kinds of cool poo poo, with a pretty interesting storyline, and a good DM could weave it into a campaign quite well. Unfortunately, one little bit of strangeness in a flavor-text paragraph ended up sending the campaign flying so far off the chain that it smashed into an alternate universe and destroyed it.



One of the clerics of Tharizdun carries a weird tentacle-covered staff thing that does crazy poo poo to any sane person holding it, unless they make certain will saves. In another part of the dungeon, controlled by a rival faction of crazy murder priests, is an altar used to sacrifice living beings to Tharizdun. A little sentence in the altar's DM-only description notes that Tharizdun grants a Wish in return for the sacrifice of a sentient being on the altar, if the person conducting the ceremony has that crazy staff. Whatever, interesting bit of flavour, right?



Oh, no. The bard was still playing Pokemon with the NPCs, and he inevitably captured and managed to subdue the mad priest with the staff. Through some weirdness - I think an antimagic field was involved - he managed to make him harmless enough to interrogate, and then promptly passed all his intimidate rolls with flying colours. As soon as the priest mentioned wishes in exchange for sentient lives, rear end in a top hat Bard found inspiration.



The party smashed their way through that part of the dungeon, enslaved everyone within, found that loving altar, and set up the ritual. Then rear end in a top hat Bard took the staff in hand, succeeded his will save, and, with the help of the barbarian's brute strength and judicious use of various mind-affecting spells, started feeding his hilarious prisoner train into the altar like some kind of horrible, bloody, Lovecraftian clown car. I frantically read and reread the flavor paragraph, and was eventually forced to concede that, yes, it did specify one wish per sentient life, and there was no mention of a limit to Tharizdun's generosity.



After the altar swallowed up the two dozen or so guys they had with them, the party went raiding and enslaved a group of gnoll workers in a nearby cavern, then sacrificed them too.



They ended up with something like 36 wishes before I finally managed to break through that "everything within the rules is acceptable" early-DM barrier and told them that the altar had broken and wouldn't work anymore.





I wish I was Superman



The first thing the bard did with all those wishes was to dig through obscure splatbooks/adventure modules/God knows what and find these weird evil rituals that turn people into powerful guards. The first one was some transformative spell that, despite almost nobody in the multiverse knowing it, was apparently of a low enough level for a Wish spell to duplicate. This caused the rogue to turn into a half-shadow, which made him automatically succeed every move silently check ever, as well as being able to turn ethereal and having +6 or so to Dexterity. The rogue thought that was pretty cool, since his idea of "roleplaying" amounted to "I pick his pocket, then congratulate myself on being an awesome pickpocket".



The bard then turned his attention to the fighter. He showed me an adventure from somewhere or other that involved people being turned into crazed half-golem monstrosities. The rules for the ritual to do so were in there, and he could, by wishing for the golem arm as a magical item and wishing he knew how to carry out the ritual, do the same to the NPC! But he wouldn't be crazy because the rogue would knock him out first, and the pain wouldn't drive him mad. I, being a first-time DM, didn't know what the hell to do about this, so I just shrugged helplessly. The bard got his confused half-golem bodyguard (but not upset, because he rolled over 40 on his bluff check to convince the fighter that the cultists did it), the rogue got to laugh about how he knocked out the perpetually-unfortunate NPC with a sock full of copper coins, and the fighter got damage reduction, spell resistance, and haste or something like that.



The barbarian wasn't having any of this "diluting my strength with evil book magic" nonsense, but that turned out okay because a basilisk later turned him to stone and then the bard had him animated as a golem and then had a druid Awaken him and that meant that he was basically the same character except with Hardness 8, construct immunities, and a shitload of strength. I don't even know, all I could do was stare dumbly at this crazy bastard as he pointed out the different spells and how they worked.



The party later had a portable hole installed in rockbarian's mouth so that he could "eat" useful items and retrieve them later, though this ended up getting used as a halfling pillbox instead, with the rogue peeking out of the terrifying stone berserker's open mouth and peppering everyone with arrows. Also, they wished for a Lifedrinker Axe, and the bard gleefully pointed out that its level drain did not affect constructs, meaning that the barbarian could use it without negative effect, meaning that every enemy they ever fought after that wound up with a boatload of negative levels within the first few rounds.



The bard chose not to apply any silly templates to himself, instead settling for some combination of magic items that made it mathematically impossible for him to ever fail at any charisma-based skill check likely to arise before early epic levels. He spent the rest of the wishes on a shitload of money and powerful magic items for everyone in the party.



I don't understand how giving 36 wishes to my enemies could turn out this badly



The party was easily able to bulldoze the rest of the module. Highlights include:



- The barbarian becoming angry when a gnome tried to cast Enfeebling Ray on him, declaring "I pick him up and eat him," and then rolling double 20s on the unarmed attack after grappling him, instantly killing the gnome with a bite (in fairness, this one isn't really a worst experience; it was hilarious)



- The bard somehow clearing 50 on a diplomacy check and convincing an angry dragon that it should take the time to listen to the party, then launching into a ten-minute salesman schpiel trying to hock his tamed stirges as guards for the dragon's treasure room, and succeeding



- Killing an entire army of 100 or so first-level fighters by throwing a single Ochre Jelly in a jar at them and then running as far away as possible ("they all have bastard swords, and Ochre Jellies just divide when hit by slashing weapons!" Yeah, too bad you have to figure out how to kill 700 Ochre Jellies when this is done)



- Discovering that, rules-as-written, the barbarian could destroy four cubic feet of solid stone with a single full power attack



- Killing Imix, Prince of Elemental Fire, a 14th-level giant super elemental with all kinds of scary templates and magical items, in two rounds



...and that's how I become a millionaire, or maybe King. Can I be both?



rear end in a top hat Bard was not content to slay a demigod in twelve seconds. No, he wanted to bring the whole world to heel.



The first thing you should know is that the Return module takes place in a huge fuckoff mine in an extinct volcano. Having killed or enslaved literally every living creature in this entire sprawling cavern complex, the bard promptly went to the nearest city and diplomacy'd up a few hundred workers, who he would hire to refit the mine and get it up and running again. The Stronghold Builder's Guide was consulted, money was counted out and spent, and pretty soon rear end in a top hat Bard was a wealthy gold magnate with one of the richest mines in the region.



But, hey, why mine gold when you can command gold to rise out of the ground? A little searching, more diplomacy, and he was able to gain a cleric with the Earth domain as one of his (many, MANY) followers. In exchange for rations and the occasional 50 on a charisma-based roll, this cleric heaped even greater quantities of money in rear end in a top hat Bard's lap. rear end in a top hat Bard took this money to a local wizard, had him create some magical items with uses per day, and rented out these items for a fee, making back the cost of creation within a few in-game months. All extra money went into more "initial cost, no upkeep" ventures, until this guy was basically just printing money on a grand scale. Rockbarian and Shadowrogue were his shady enforcers, while Fightergolem did odd jobs.



The party went on a couple of brief adventures before rear end in a top hat Bard's player came up to me with a little spreadsheet detailing the time that had passed and the income he should have. I don't remember the exact figure, but I do remember that it was basically enough to buy one of everything in the Stronghold Builder's Guide and then heap even more enchantments on top!



To make a long story short, they ended up with a flying castle, and a flying galleon, and a crystal in the castle that could cast Earthquake and Reverse Gravity so that an entire city would fall apart and smash into itself, and a fountain that could cast Heroes' Feast, and a personal army (everyone took Leadership), and...



The barbarian, at least, had a great sense of humor about the whole thing. Instead of being an annoying powergamer, he was a hilarious powergamer; his magic items included a Monocle of Searing Ray and a flying Rowboat of Doom (anyone whose shadow it fell upon was affected by the Doom spell). He even had a wizard make a Butt of Stinking Cloud, which was a golden butt which, when squeezed, would cast Stinking Cloud once per day. Height of high school comedy, right there. I don't think he ever used it, but he sure did love his dapper eye laser.



To make an already long story short, that campaign ended with the party fighting gods at level 14 and deciding that basically nothing was a threat anymore and it had stopped being fun. I have to admit, though, that even with all my frustration as a DM, the insane amount of godmoding and gleefully over-the-top powergaming was actually incredibly fun in its own way. I started sending great wyrm dragons at them, only to have them shot down by their flying galleons with batteries of Maximized-Fireball shooting cannons.



So. As a DM, worst experience with roleplaying. In terms of hilarity and fond memories, surprisingly not that bad.

I also loved the story about the guy whose friend had a homebrew campaign with superpowered elves who needed to touch a tree every 24 hours, and then the players blew a hole in the planet and it turned into a post-apocalyptic campaign, and all the elves died. I only have a small excerpt from it saved, though. Ratspeaker fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jan 13, 2012