All-Time Classic Roleplaying Game Moments

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

During one of our 36 hour D&D sessions one of the fighters (joe) fell asleep. A couple hours before, we had just finished dividing up a treasure and joe’s share included a sizeable amount of valuable jewels.

My brother (the thief of the party) leaned over and said very softly “Give your jewels to the thif Joe… Give your jewels to the thief.”

Perhaps you had to be there and sleep deprived?

Another session was much shorter. Our little group was travelling by ship to an island to reclaim it from the wilds. A day or so from our destination we sighted a pirate ship approaching. I just happened to be reading the formula for the Telekenesis spell in the old Players Handbook. I asked the captain (through the DM natch) for his largest chest. The DM had no idea what we wanted it for. We filled it with as much weight as we could and sealed it. The parties Cleric and I started furiously figuring speeds and weights.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was waking everyone up and arming themselves to repel borders. As the party prepared to meet the pirates in battle, these odd requests from the spell casters were a minor distraction that no one paid any attention to.

Finally, I anounced that I was ready.

That got everyone’s attention. The pirate ship was still very far away. They all looked at me and asked, “Ready for what?” I esplained that once the pirate ship was in range I would cast telekenesis on the chest and send it at the pirate ship. The DM asked (a little puzzled at this, he knew I could not do it more than once) what good that would do. I explained again, that if I hit the ship near to water level, it should act something like a torpedo.

By now the entire party was paying attention. The DM decided that I had to make a to hit roll with a couple appropriate disadvantages. I made the roll. The priate ship went down loooooong before any of the ships came into contact. The DM picke up a large folder with character sheets, maps and adventure notes and said “Well, there goes that.” and threw the whole pile into the trash.

He got us all back soon after by sinking our boat with a water dragon.

Advice: “Never go into the water with all of your belingings in a bag of holding.” :wink:

82

A couple more Tully stories (I’m really starting to like this guy :slight_smile: )

We had some down time as we were waiting for the local mage guild to finish up some magic items we had ordered, so the DM threw in a few random adventures for individuals or pairs. Here was Tullys:

I forget the details, but one way or another I (as Tully) come across the head of the local thieves guild doing business in a tavern. After some chit-chat it comes up that the guildmaster has a job that I might be able to help out with. A local merchant has gotten a bit behind in paying his gambling debts, and I was asked to “collect” from him. The debt was 1000 platinum pieces (a princely sum). Well, being a chaotic-neutral rogue, I accepted the job.

It was early morning, and this merchant had a reputation of going out carousing until the wee hours. I follow the guildmaster’s directions to the house, straighten myself up, and knock boldly on the door. The DM (a little confused at my actions) has the merchant answer the door, bleary eyed in a bath robe.

I look right at the DM, put on my happiest smiling face and say (oozing false sincerity) “Good morning fine sir! I’d like to tell you about the church of Kord.” And then tell the DM that I use the opportunity to scope out the inside of the house. It was Mormon missionary season in the area (they do appear to show up in waves), so the other players knew what I was going for.

Well, he wasn’t interested in saving his soul from damnation, so I left, and spent the day at a cafe across the street staking out the house. Just after sunset, the merchant left, leaving me free to ransack his home. I took his wardrobe of fine clothing, along with 900 platinum pieces worth of coins. I sold the clothing for 100 gold, so I had 910 of the 1000 platinum the merchant owed.

I went back to the guildmaster, and (making the best bluff roll of my life) told him that I scoured the place, but only came up with 300 platinum pieces. Well, he thanked me for my attempt, told me that they’d continue putting pressure on the merchant, and paid the 25 platinum we had agreed as my price. I walked away with a net profit of 635 platinum for an evening’s work.

As a continuation of that, the guildmaster told me that he had some business competition in another town (where we “just happened” to be going anyway) that he wanted eliminated with extreme prejudice, and offered to pay me 750 gold to make it happen. I got the information and half payment up front. Then when we came to the other city, met the target, told him about the bounty (raising the payment I was offered to 1000 gold), and told him that since he seemed a decent fellow, I’d refrain from killing him for only 750.

The DM is trying to decide how much of an alignment shift those two adventures should cause…

Finally, financed by the previous “donations”, I set up what might be one of the more broken scenarios involving magic items. I purchased a two “Gloves of storing”, magic items that act as a mini bag of holding (up to 10 pounds), stashing (or retrieving) whatever you have in your hand when you snap your fingers. I put my dagger in the left hand (a “sinister” rogue seemed appropriate), and my bow in the right. This allows me to switch weapons as a free action in combat, without having to take the “quick draw” feat or worry about stowing (or dropping) one during combat.

83

Amusing incident from my Superhero game last Friday. Breaking into a top-secret government facility, the PCs encounter metahuman resistance in the form of a black and white clad fellow with an encircled ‘M’ on his chest.

Several amusing guesses as to his name follow, which the fellow, Myrmidon, does not respond to…

“Metaman? Mindmaster?” etc. etc.

Finally, having had enough, the NPC replies. “If you’ll turn around and go quietly, you’ll be allowed to leave the facility unmolested…”

In unison, two of the PCs : “Ah, the Molester!”

84

Nine months into a D&D campaign, we had finished a major adventure and the DM decided we would do a fun “side mission” before we continued the main campaign’s story arc.

Our party of three uncovered a bordello of zombies, and went in there to clean house. We battled with the necromancer who was running the joint, who became so wounded he had to flee.

My friend Aaron thought chasing down the necromancer to polish him off would be a good idea, so his elf sprinted down the corridor to try to catch up to him. At which point his elf was disintegrated into a pile of ash by a wand the necromancer kept for emergencies.

We buried the elf’s ashes at sea and then went to Denny’s.

85

Tell me about carefully constructed campiagns gone wrong…

Old 1st edition AD&D (which we still play from time-to-time)…

Well, Yeenoghu (demon-lord of gnolls) had long been plotting over many adventures to establish a foothold on the Prime Material plane. Due to the whims and uncertainties of interplanar gates, his beachhead army of gnolls, vrocks, and harpies, led by his arch-wizard (who had long been scheming to double-cross Yeenoghu and himself rule the local area but that’s another story) had to enter from deep in the mountains and exit into the lands (coincidentally :wink: ) owned by one of our players, a fighter lord who had a well established keep and barony over the nearby lands.

Well.

It was the greatest seige battle setup ever seen in AD&D experience, one that would be talked of amongst geeks the world over for decades, and make our PCs the greatest heroes of legend in the campaign. Our 5 PC’s, left bravely to defend the keep with 2,000 of their finest men, against the 20,000 strong unwordly demonic army. This was going to make Helm’s Deep look like child’s play.

I had great confidence in my PC’s and intended the battle to drag long and hard into a heavy seige, lasting weeks or even months, ultimately winning only by the barest of luck, and for the evil arch-mage to retreat to the mountains to his secret fortress where revenge would be plotted and all manner of new adventures would await them, while Yeenoghu’s attention is focused on the PC’s for additional revenge and further adventures.

In a brilliant bit of PC ad libbing, when faced with the army, the PCs said “screw it, to the hills!”, polymorhed themselves into sparrows and cast invisibility on themselves leaving their army to fend for themselves, and flew off behind enemy lines, leaving the demon army to cavort and caper about their defenseless keep without a single arrow being fired. They snuck into the arch-mage’s tent, assassinated him, then rushed to the still open gate and into the 235th plane of the Abyss. Their goal? Find the demon lord and return with his head. Of course, I had no adventure planned for that eventuality, so had to call “recess” for the weekend, and toss out my 50-some pages of carefully scripted adventure.

I love those guys :slight_smile:

86

An amusing mini-anecdote from a game I’m currently in… a new civilization we encountered expressed some confusion at our centaur wizard’s form… but told us of the wemics they’d seen… “with the mind of a man and the Strength of a lion” … prompting me to introduce the Centaur (whose Intelligence was quite sub-par for wizardly duties at the beginning of his career) as having the mind of a horse and the strength of a man.

87

I’ve had more than a few amusing moments in games at Origins, the big RPG convention being discussed over here, and have shared but a few.

Twice I’ve played Tunnels and Trolls with its creator, Ken St. Andre. Made all the more memorable by his uncanny physical and vocal resemblance to Wallace Shawn.

In my introduction to the Call of Cthulhu game, I was treated to the second-most unusual set of miniatures I have yet encountered. The GM running the game told us that the guy with the regular miniatures had had a slight car accident, and couldn’t show up in time… but I must assume that to be untrue, because his substitutes were just too good. They were Legos.

That’s right… the team of 1930’s Investigators were all Lego figures, and we crawled through a tomb constructed of Egyptian-decor Legos. Complete with secret passages and traps. My archaeologist even had the misfortune to fall down into a well of some kind and be eaten by a Lego alligator.

The mixture of the “horror” setting and the Legos was priceless.

88

First of all you have to realize that we took a little liberty with the D&D rules. Our GM was really good, and we made characters that had flaws and bonuses dependant on real life experinces and whims we made up new spells and such as we felt reasonable, but it was generally fairly well balanced. And critical roles of 100s really were powerful for whatever it related too(we converted most things of chance to d100, just so the sucesses and failures would be that much more spectacular). We didn’t fight that often so usually our bonuses didn’t really effect power balance that much. One day however we realized that we may be tinkering a bit too much without thinking about all the consequences.

So I had this wizard who saw his whole previous team burned to death in a cave(we played pretty Ironman rules). He was the only one left so he got retired. A while later the GM wanted to start some other newbies in gaming, and asked me If I wanted to join, so I decided to bring the old wizard to get the group started off, and get them used to our system. But I didn’t want to dominate the thinking-part of the game, so we had come to the conclusion that he was completely obsessed with Fire. Just for once I wanted to play a total badass wizard, so we made up some stuff for this one time adventure. He had spent 20 years focused on every element of fire and got some pretty serious bonuses for casting fire spells, but that was all he could cast. He got double damage to all fireballs, and once a month could channel directly form the fire plane to triple damage above that.

The set up was he had heard of a magic crystal that multiplied the effects of fire by 5 times. So he hired a group of adventures to help him get it. ALong the way he stopped in every town looking for firebased weaponry, and in one town picked up this old Fireball wand. Well we finally reached the temple where the crystal was supposed to be, and started in.(This character was also scared of caves and being surrounded). So hafeway down the hall one character tripped a trap and Skeletons started coming out of the wall. Seing that he was to be surrounded. He cast fire feet(a sire based speed spell we made up)ran back outside.My thinking was that I would et the newbies deal with the situation. Unfortunately the DM had planned on us being surrounded and push toward the center of the temple But my character running past all the skeletons and triggered them to come after him. So we seperated as a group and the newbies went deep inside, annoyed at my cowardace thinking to abandon me,while I dealt with the skeltons alone. Once outside I began casting fireball after fireball at the skeletons coming out the door. I eventually ran out of fireballs after killing nearly 100 of them. Then I thought about the wand and decided to use it. The DM realized he had forgotten to roll for the wand stats and rolled, getting this odd look on his face(I didn’t know it at the time but he rolled a 100 which under his system meant it was a true ancient artifact, and was a infinite wand of 3d6 fireballs, with a one time shoot-the-whole-wad cast of a D16 fireball to drain all it’s power in one huge blast). SO I just kept casting fireball after fireball from this wand, killing 20-30 skeltons at a time(my character had athe natural ability to double any fireball stats, plus he was in a fire frenzy by this time so he was doubled again) So he was hitting 3d6 fireballsX6 every round.

These poor skeletons kept coming and coming, he had set it up so that there were 20,000 plus of them from an ancient city, never expecting us to actually fight them, just to run farther in the temple But there was nothing we could do about it. I had a frenzied character standing there out of compulsion with a infinite supply of fireballs, and the skellies kept coming out compulsed to try to fight me since I ran past them. But they never had a chance to get near me, and their bones disappeared immediatly when they took enough damage ro die. Finally the DM said ‘okay dude you stand there for the next day and a half frying 20,000 Skellies’ I’ll go deal with the other team.

So he took the rest of them through a dungeon thing and I finally came back upon them they were fighting a giant Iron Golem. The GM had forgotten that from a long earlier adventure I had a psychotic hatred of Golems. I attacked them on sight with all the power I could muster. But got a triple damage bonus. So I unloaded the D16 fireball. with fire plane channeling. So I had one double from fire mastery, and one triple from psychotic hate and a triple from fire plane channeling. Then one of the other players got init on me and waited to cast a double effect spell on me. Then the DM just kind of slumped cursed and rolled a die. After a long set of swearing he said that the Fire crystal was the life source for the Golem and I had managed to activare it, for 5 more times. D16 fireball 3232*5. I rolled well on the dice(at this point we were all rolling on the floor laughing from the absurdity of what we had created) 75X180 for a 13500 point fireball with around 30 times the normal radius.

AT this point the DM starts pretending to figure things out and one of the newbie chicks asks if I killed the Golem. The DM with a perfectly straight face says, “The Golem has been vaporized, along with the entire party, and the temple. I’m just trying to figure out how much of the country is still there, We just witnessed the first ever Thermonuclear detonatioin in D&D history”.

We all rolled new characters and played stuff closer to the vest for a while.

Wow that was a longer story than I intended.

89

Hehe I remebered another one of my smartass, screw with the GM, manuvers.

I had a thief, pretty boring guy I don’t remember much about him. There was a big fighter type in our party, who was my best friends, and let’s just say our characters had a problem with authority, so we pushed it as much as we could.

One time we pissed off a king by suducing his daughters, and he found out and had us arrested taken to the castle. The king demanded saticfaction. and said the fighter had to duel his champion to the death. The duel had lot’s of ritual but the king was honorable.
Suddenly I had an evil flashback to the knife fight scene in Butch Cassidy. I asked the king what the rules to the duel were. The GM was totally surprised and said, “There’s no rules it’s a fight till one of them dies”. Finally the Ritual was over, and the fight began. Immediatly my character jumped into the ring and stabbed the King’s champion in the back, killing him.
The GM gave me a look of death and said as the King" You can’t do that" I said “why not” You never said I couldn’t when I asked the rules, Your guys is dead, We win"
The King gets even more pissed and says “Damnit, You have to fight my next best fighter, and only the guy in the duel can get in the ring”

So my friend playing the fighter gets in the ring again, and starts the rituals over. Which at one point involve the new champion kneeling and bowing to swear the king that he will fight bravely. Suddenly the guy playing to the fighter gives me and evil look, and says “I’ll chop off his head while he kneels” Killing the second guy.

When the GM/King says “What the hell are you doing, the fight hasn’t started yet?” The guy says, what do you mean started, you never mentioned that we had to wait till the fight started in the rules. I am beggining to question your honor, always changing the rules in the middle of the duel."

On the third guy I, carefully not stepping in the ring, shot him in the back with a poison crossbow dart.

We got siezed and ended up in prison.

90

I love a good juxtaposition. That’s why the following three convention sessions stand out in my memory.

Call of Cthulhu / Scooby-Doo

Okay, if the hilarity isn’t already apparent, you should leave now. Shoo.

Concept : The players take on the roles of the Scooby Gang, investigating mysterious occurences at an amusement park inherited by Fred’s cousin. In Innsmouth, Massachusetts. As such, we bump up against real Cthulhian horrors, like Deep Ones. I was Scooby. I did the voice, too.

What really elevated this session to brilliance, though, were the Scooby Gang’s special powers. Shaggy and Scooby had a limited number of ‘Escape’ points… they could burn one to run safely and comedically away form any situation. Velma had points she could spend to ‘lose her glasses’ … while groping around on the floor for them, she was effectively invincible. Danger-Prone Daphne could ‘buy a clue’ … spending a point to find some important piece of evidence, while simultaneously getting herself into trouble. Fred’s power? It was the best, if you know the Cthulhu system. Fred had zero Sanity. That meant he was stark raving mad. His insanity? Refusal to believe in the supernatural, no matter the evidence.

Call of Cthulhu / Ghostbusters

Again, hilarity obvious. Ray, Peter, Egon, and Winston head to Miskatonic University investigating a mysterious haunting, and the plot threads lead them ultimately to Innsmouth, Mass. I got to be Egon, which was a personal thrill. This was an especially good session, because all of the players were big Ghostbusters fans, and could quote the movie often and appropriately. Being Ghostbusters, we had somewhat more resistance to the loss of sanity most Cthulhu Investigators go through … and Deep Ones are just Fish-Sticks-Waiting-to-Happen, when you have a Positron Collider on your back.

Slayers (Anime) / Ravenloft

The original Castle Ravenloft vs. Lina Inverse and Friends. Castle didn’t stand a chance. Obviously, this is more entertaining if you’re familiar with Slayers.

I was Gourry. Now that was fun. Lina’s player and I had the bickering down to a tee. And of course, once we get to the village and learn of the vampire problem, I go buy a big bag of garlic … and proceed to eat the entire bag on the way to the castle. I had to rescue Lina later from an Evard’s Black Tentacles spell (how appropriate, for an anime game…) … so I shook her once she was cut free, and breathed heavily in her face as I said “Are you okay, Lina?” (In game, obviously. Not out of the game)

We had Strahd on the ropes, witht he help of the Sword of Light, but Lina went for the Dragon Slave. Blew up the entire castle.

91

Another anecdote about the aforementioned ‘Azrael’ character, sort of an amusing coincidence.

Azrael was lucky. I mean, I have lucky dice, and they serve me well in a variety of games, but when playing Azrael, they were faultless.

There was a magical fountain… it’s from AD&D, listed in the second volume of the Encyclopedia Magica, for the curious. I can’t remember the proper name, but it’s under ‘Fountain.’ The gist of the fountain was that if you took a drink, the GM would determine how many random magical effects would occur based on a chart, and then how many of them were good and how many were bad on another chart.

So, rolling, I get four effects… three good, one bad. Uh-oh. There can be some truly nasty stuff on that chart. I forget the three good effects honestly, with all the other abilities Azrael eventually accumulated. But then it came time to roll the negative effect.

I rolled. The GM looked at the chart… and chuckled. Azrael had paid a most terrible price for his newfound powers. He’d become left-handed.

The most innocuous “bad” result on the chart.

92

Crud! I forgot one of the best Origins stories.

Picture it, if you will : The In Nomine RPG (a game of Angels and Devils, if you’re not familiar with it) - and the PCs enacting a slightly twisted version of Kevin Smith’s Dogma.

I was Loki.

And this time, he survived. (His death in the film was a great injustice, I felt. :smiley: )

93

I recently had a fun moment in a Spycraft game; forgive me if I boast :).

The details don’t matter; we were being chased around the docks by two speedboats full of machine-gun-wielding mooks. Our own boat’s pilot moved us close to one of our chasers, and our group’s soldier leapt onto the enemy’s boat. I shrugged and followed suit; although I’m just the crew’s lowly mechanic, I knew my way around a boat and could take over piloting the thing once our soldier killed off the trio of mooks onboard.

Except we get over to the boat, and the soldier (critically fumbling a grapple check) gets thrown over the side, into the water. The two non-pilot mooks train their submachine guns on me and point-blank spray me full of bullets.

I’m just about dead, and armed with a shotgun, and outnumbered three to one. So when my turn comes, I look at my enemies and ask, “Can you swim?”

I give them just enough time to be confused, then chirped, “I can!” and point my shotgun into the boat’s steering system, blow it all to hell, and dive overboard.

The resulting explosion as the speedboat plowed full-speed into a luxury yacht warmed my heart :).

Daniel

94

Not bad, LHD, not bad at all.

I still have a few older ones I haven’t dug up yet, but one of the recent ones I’ve played in will be worthy of mention to those double-threat roleplayer/comic book aficianados out there.

The system : DC Universe RPG. (West End’s d6 system)

The setting : a (very) post-Legion of Superheroes Universe - all the species of the now-faded galaxy have withdrawn to a single supersystem, loaded with inhabitable moons, and cloaked from the eye of the universe by exotic spatial conditions. Hundreds of billions of sentients. Justice - or rather, law - is enforced by the Science Police, twisted into a Borg-like collective, enforcing the dictums without compassion or compromise.

The set-up : Sky Lad, a member of the Legion’s last incarnation, the one responsible for helping the survivors of the galaxy migrate to the system, arrives in the present day after the Speed Force propelled him through time. He wishes to found a new incarnation of the Legion - using the best metahumans he can scrounge up. As it turns out, the presence of an active Legion re-activated some old directives in the Science Police, forcing them to cooperate with us.

So far, I’m really enjoying this game because of all the 20th-30th century DCU things that keep cropping up, but one incident in particular, from the last session, was of special note.

We’d captured a loathesome extortionist in the previous adventure… he was a horrid man, with hundreds of wives, who ran extortion rackets, and had a penchant for using his ability to taste things at long ranges to sample people.
As it turns out, he had made contact several years back with a girl who seemed to appear to him in a dream - she was actually a Kryptonian, trapped in the Phantom Zone, using her abilities to “phase” into our reality for brief periods. He was her focus… she loved him, and that gave her the power to manifest fully, as long as she concentrated.

So we learned as much as we could about Kryptonians and the Phantom Zone from our records. (All of which I knew as a player, but not as a character). We learned of the Phantom Zone projector - and we found there was a busted one at the Museum of Justice, curatored by one Mr. Ivo. (Heh.) I had formulated the plan : since we were far too weak to take out a full-blooded Kryptonian, we would just send her lover to the Phantom Zone with her, where he’d pretty much have to be faithful to her and her alone… and where, I imagine, he could never “taste” anyone again. :smiley:

I’m devious.

95

In AEG’s 7th Sea game system, my character was a MacDonald School Swordsman and Knight of Queen Elaine hooked up with a party of adventurers who had caught the eye of the Queen for their heroic exploits. I was to tag along with them and report on their exploits.

Well, my first adventure with the group (I joined an existing game, so the other PC were quite a bit more advanced than I) took us to Eisen where we were going to track down and kill the Verschlingen (sp?), a great snake-like monster plaguing the countryside (think Anaconda x2).

This dread and terrible monster was considered well-nigh indestructible, and the party was moaning and groaning about “impossible” and “hopeless” tasks until my character quite jokingly came up with the Krieg Schweine: two 5 lb. kegs of powder and nails strapped to the side of an angry boar-hog.

To my character’s chagrin, the party decided to try it, and “my plan” worked well enough. This only emboldened my dunder-headed Scotsman-analog to try the same tactic during the defense of Freiburg, when Eisenfurst Fauner Posen’s forces had encircled and laid siege to the city. Mac (my character) sent several dozen Krieg Schweine scampering out to the starving enemy’s lines and watched in gleefull anticipation for half-starved soldiers to descend upon the Krieg Schweine and their doom.

Unfortunately, things weren’t going too well for our side either, and several hundred of our starving soldiers jumped off the walls and took off across the open field after the Krieg Schweine.

Fauner Posen took this to be some sort of attempt at a sally and ordered a general attack; unfortunately for her, her army’s center got confused, mangled and scattered by the Krieg Schweine, leaving us enough forces and time to beat off and defeat her flankers. At the end of the battle, it was clear that she no longer had sufficient force to take the city, and she withdrew.

Captain Sir Robert Hamish MacConnell was declared Hero of Freiburg. He was presented with a silk banner depicting an exploding pig, and great Generals and Field Marshalls prevailed upon him to write a book about the Proper Tactics For The Employment Of The Krieg Schweine.

96

Several interesting moments at Origins this past weekend.

The high point for me was, in a Champions game based on the Justice Society, whacking Nazi speedster Zyklon in the head with a hurled dinner-plate while playing as Olympic-athlete Mr. Terrific.

In a Pulp-themed Champions game, playing as Indiana Jones (and rubbing elbows with Doc Savage, the Shadow, and other luminaries) - rescuing a plunging Simon Templar from certain pain by lashing out with my whip and catching at his ankles.

97

Some fun things that came up in some past sessions with Tully, Rogue extra-ordinaire.

  1. While questioning a hobgoblin king, Tully decided that we had gotten all the info we needed, so slashed out with his dagger. The hobgoblin, caught by surprise, took around 30 HP of sneak attack damage. During regular combat (the DM hastily gave the hobgoblin a few levels of fighter and a couple levels of barbarian), Tully got to act earlier than than the goblin, allowing me to sneak attack again. Then the sorceress shot of a few magic missles. The hobgoblin stood up, attempted to attack me, critically failed, and fell down the stairs leading up to his throne, where he was immediately fell upon by the druid’s tiger, killing him.

Needless to say, this was considered murder in cold blood by Devon, our Lawful Good cleric. But, he had been as surprised as the hobgoblin, and didn’t get a chance to do anything about the rest of the party. Devon’s god (St. Cuthbert, for those familiar with the D&D pantheon) told him that as punishment he would lose 3 caster levels until justice was served.

This lead to Devon cursing every party member who participated in the slaughter. Once we got back to town, the sorceress and druid went around doing good deeds to redeem themselves in the eyes of the cleric.

Tully decided that was too much work. He snuck into the room of the party’s fighter, who was in charge of our "Bag of Neat stuff Holding " (a bag of holding containing items that could come in handy in certain situations, but aren’t needed on a regular basis). Tully swiped the bag, took the ring of 2 limited wishes, wished off the curse, put the ring back in the bag and went to bed.

Between the initial slaughter and the subsequent method of “redemption”, Tully went from Chaotic Good to Chaotic Neutral. :slight_smile:

  1. Well, the above meant that Tully had some free time while the rest of the party atoned for killing the hobgoblin. So he spent the afternoon wandering the town’s market pickpocketing random people.

At one point, we had to tell the DM to adjust his “treasure” rolls. He was using the standard treasure table from the DM’s guide, using a d20 for the level, then percentile dice for the coins gained. At one point the roll dictated that Tully stealthily snuck off with 4d10 x 1000 platinum pieces (which would weigh at least 80 pounds and be enough money to buy a small town). The DM re-rolled. :slight_smile:

After a couple failed attempts, Tully started get chased by the town watch. Things looked grim until I activated my “Cloak of Arachnidia”, and it’s once-per-day web spell to cut off pursuit.

The next morning the inn had a wanted poster (with a bad artist’s rendition) of the “Arachnid Bandit”. Tully swiped it as a souvenier. :slight_smile:

  1. And there there was the alchemists shop I broke into for some supplies, and found a cash box with 25,000 gold pieces and a convenient wand of Tenser’s floating disk (at 5th level) to carry it away with. The other players (not the characters) told me that I absolutely couldn’t leave that much cash lying around, so I took the coins, traded them in for light-weight jewels, and didn’t tell the other characters.

What, they expected a chaotic-neutral rogue to share?!?

98

I DM’d a campaign for years back in the 80’s. A running joke in our game was the mythical +47 Halberd Of Destruction. The players always clamored for this weapon of game imbalancing, always knowing I would never actually let something like that exist in the game. Until one day…

They had just finished off the Evil Überboss, and were preparing to loot the place. As they headed to the treasure room, the corridor forked. They could see that they could go one way or the other, but they would not be able to return. One room was filled with mounds of gold, weapons, and general magical accoutrements. The other contained nothing but a gleaming halberd.

They fell over themselves trying to be the one to grab the legendary weapon. When the dust settled, the lead fighter had it…the mythical +47 Halberd Of Destruction!

What he didn’t know was this:

+47 Halberd Of Destruction: 1d12 damage. On an adjusted roll of 20 or more, completely annihilates the target. Charged item. When item runs out of charges, it is rendered non-magical.

So even though they now had a +47 Halberd Of Destruction, they didn’t know what it actually did. Or that it was a charged item. With one charge remaining.

Then, a kobold walks into the room…

<damn, where’s the evil smiley of evil DM’ing when ya need it?>

99

I’d have to say the hallmark of my AD&D adventuring party was the instigation of complicated and dangerous schemes with no real preparation.

One evening, we took it upon ourselves to infiltrate the stronghold of a near-demigod named Demonican. Now, Demonican’s minions at the time were not overly bright, so our mage thought it would be a faultless plan to use a bit of magic to look like the Big Man himself.

So, after a bit of dress-up on the rest of the party’s part and the strict instructions that none save our mage was allowed to talk (because, he told us, we couldn’t be trusted to not muck things up), we boldly swaggered into the stronghold.

“Halt, who goes there!” shouted a stronghold guard.

“You worthless lackey,” sneered our disguised mage in his best villian voice. “I am the MIGHTY DEMONICAN!”

The guard noticably paled. The mage continued. “If you value your life, you will LET ME PASS!”

Holy crap, the rest of us thought. This was going to work!

But one word… one innocent, little word popped the charade…

“…please?”

Another comical moment happened to one of my characters, a 2nd edition psionicist. As luck would have it, most bosses were highly psionic and enjoyed engaging in psionic combat. As I was the only PC psionict, I (and by extension, the party) was a frequent target for attacks.

One particularly nasty boss (Ithillo the Illithid) completely incapacitated me and began psychic surgery. By the time the rest of the party came to my rescue, I had amnesia and was completely blocked from my powers. My friends began to fill me in on who I was.

Me: “So, I travel with you guys? What do I do?”

Now, my friends knew that everytime I used my psionics, it was like a beacon attracting horrible mind-controlling critters.

Smart-ass friends: “Um, you’re a fighter!”

And so I was a fighter. And remained as such.

For months.

In real-time. (We played almost continually every Fri-Sun, too.)

100

OK, so it was DnD 2.0, towards the end when the supplements were out of control. The game was a world hopping campaign and my chracter was a smart-alek low-level fighter named Dirk Bravo. (A tip of the hat to Mad Martigen of Willow fame.)

We had just visited the Charlamagne setting, where Dirk had seduced a French lady-in-waiting, and had made off with quite a haul.

Fast forward a couple of months, realtime. We pick up the game again and I notice the note on my character sheet “20,000gp”. So I ask the DM and the other players “Am I carrying all the cash?” They all said yes, since I was the strongest.

Did I mention Dirk was chaotic neutral?

The money was quickly spent on an elaborately chased and enameled suit of Elven steel plate armor.

And eqaully quickly lost when they were captued by the Drow.

Chaotic neutral means never having to say “I’m sorry”.