BEING YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY
Sir Dano The One Fingered
Sir Dano, a combination of several comical characters, was determined to defy Second Edition superstitions and retain his paladinhood, indeed to retain the alignment level of ‘lawful good’ well, forever! While on his first adventure, exploring a ruined city (guess which one), Sir Dano descended the well. Probing the murky depths, he found a ‘black iron ring’. Well, he did what all self-respecting adventurers would do, he put it on his finger! Too bad paladins have to be ‘lawful good’, and he had just slipped one level of virtue to become only ‘neutral good’.
Sir Dano: "I take it off then!"
GM: "You don’t want to . . . and you spent no Points in resistance, it all went to sword skills."
Sir Dano’s solution? Hack off his finger! Being so apt with swords, he had no difficulty in this task, but his hopes of being restored to ‘lawful good’ status had about as much chance as sewing his finger back on with thieves’ tools (this was not attempted). Deciding that he had already lost a finger for the damn ring, and that most magic only affects a person once, Sir Dano put the ring on a different finger.
GM: "Okay, well, now you’re chaotic good."
Sir Dano: "Damnit—ooops! Well, off with that finger too then!"
Unfortunately for Sir Dano, there are nine ‘alignment’ levels. By the end of the night, he had no thumbs and only one finger, just enough to wear the ring which now, being ‘chaotic evil’, he had no willpower left to remove. And determined though he might be to wage war on virtuous people, all his skills, all in swords, were for naught with his stubby hands.
Master Of Direction
I’ll let the quotes, verbatim, speak for themselves.
GM: "Ready to map? Okay, your light flows thirty feet up the passage ahead. You come to that point, and see a door to your left, and the corridor continues forward."
Player: "I go right!"
GM: "You slam into the wall, suffering 1 point of damage."
Player: "I only have 1!"
GM: "Then you slam into the wall, suffering blunt stupidity trauma, severe enough to shake your useless brain loose your now lifeless body."
Charge!!!
This tale is a trilogy of errors, all made by ‘Dennis’.
First, while exploring the city of Northwood, Dennis gets in trouble with the King. Okay, we’ve all done that from time to time. However, it didn’t help his position when in court he played a trump card of claiming amnesty because his own King had bigger balls than the King now judging him. His punishment (and not so subtle plot-device of the GM) is to prove his self-proclaimed courage, as well as favor in the eyes of the divine if he is of greater nobility, by slaying the Kurgan, a legendary dragon terrorizing the nearby hills.
Coming at last to the desolation surrounding the lair of the Kurgan, the GM describes the area as so devoid of life there aren’t even crickets or birds—everything is disturbingly quiet. Dennis, for some reason unbeknownst to the rest of us mere mortals, says "Okay, I shout out to the rest of you guys (the party) to hide, so the Kurgan doesn’t know we’re here!"
Well, the Kurgan heard him, and came a rip-snortin’ out of its cave-lair. Winning the initiative, the beast rained down a breath weapon of fire and brimstone. So great is its damage that it made a crater thirty feet deep, so sayeth the almighty GM. However, so sayeth Dennis, it MISSED by one, because of that magic ring he found last week. The GM, being fair but dramatic to the end, describes Dennis as having "Felt the heat", and that his toes are now hanging over the rim of the massive, THIRTY FOOT DEEP crater in front of him that the dragon just made. What does Dennis do with his turn? Can you guess? That’s right, CHARGE!!! He tumbled into the crater, falling thirty feet to his death. And yes, he asked how deep the pit was, questioning the GM’s rolling for damage three times.
Check Your Character Sheet
Darron and Todd are trapped in a pit. Well, Darron is, but Todd is sure to be on his way soon enough! Never fear! Being an ultra-tough fighter, Darron had the points to survive impalement on the 4’ tall spikes. Todd is 20’ above, looking over the ledge. Darron is too weak to climb back up. Does Todd have a rope to lower? No, so he undresses and uses his fashionable clothes to fashion an improvisational rope-ladder. Yet, his highly priced clothes are weak and cannot take his weight, so he falls onto the spikes as well. Checking his character sheet for some miracle medicine, he sees no rope, but a 20’ bullwhip, which incidentally, the rules, however flawed, say is STRONGER than rope.
Run ‘Em Into The Ground
‘Matt’ was on a journey to a Devil’s Tower-like rock in the west. Already half-crazed with dehydration for not bringing enough water, and given his intense hatred of gnomes, he was not pleased to see a sailing vessel—in the desert—full of gnomes. Rolling along on logs which a ground crew continually replaced in front of their ship, her captain hailed Matt and asked if he’d seen an ocean nearby. This was too much for his psychotic aversion to the diminutive race to stand, and after trying to kill them, he fled from their powerful magic, "As fast as my horse can carry me!" The horse went at full gallop for over three hours, finally collapsing underneath our insane adventurer, just where three large creatures happened to be nesting under the dunes . . .
The Cup Of . . . Christ!
Simply put, the party traveled the world for years (of playing the game, and lifetimes for their characters, prolonged by magic and miracle), finally found the Holy Grail, and then died in the wilderness because they didn’t pack enough food. The Grail had water, but they starved to death in the wasteland. "Christ!" was all Jack could say when he realized this critical oversight. The GM's reply was a no-brainer: "Exactly."
Anybody Home?
‘Zach’ had just joined the group, and ignoring the usual rhetoric about this fantasy world’s differences from the mainstream, such as how dragons are very powerful, he proceeded to make a very mainstream character, that is, a power-hungry one, in this case, a necromancer. So, when the party found a dragon’s lair, he just waltzed right in. His ability scores maxed for wisdom and other beneficial paths to greater spells, he had little in the way of dexterity to avoid the fire and brimstone that bellowed out of the darkness. It was this incident that helped him remember and memorize all differences in this world thereafter, such as the sage advice of "Chaos, the Art of Necromancy, is self-defeating".
Wand Of Blunder
Ever take, like, a ‘wand of wonder’, and, like, dude, point it at your crotch? Ever been the GM, like, wondering what prompted a player to seriously declare such an action? "Dude, there’s a 3% chance of a growth spell!" Um, yeah, and about a 90% chance of rather strange, unpredictable results too. Turns out this character’s—er, ‘dude’s’ penis turned into a boa-constrictor which proceeded to strangle him to death, including swallowing the wand, which made several interesting mutations before the fat ‘penis-serpent’ and its still-attached host finally ran out of life points.
