Gaming Stories

[Rob]

I hope this hasn't been done lately (though I bet I'm wrong), but I figured a good way to get laughs going is to find out any funny moments from gaming. Or you can go for epic moments, utterly stupid ones, moments of unreasonably bad luck, whatever comes to mind.

[rust]

A science fiction campaign. The team of explorers is stranded in the wilderness

because their all terrain vehicle (ATV) has an engine problem. While the team's

robot (an NPC) repairs the ATV, the player characters establish a temporary

camp for the night.

Player character: "Hey, robot, forget about that ATV and help me to carry this

stuff."

Robot NPC: "Task One completed, file ATV deleted. Task Two, transport of ma-

terial initiated."

Without the robot's data about the ATV a repair was impossible, and the team

had to walk back to civilisation ...

[ORtrail]

More of a snide comment moment really, but I still chuckle at bit thinking about it:

Star Trek: Prime Directive campaign. The Prime Team characters were at an M class water planet, other than a few island chains it was 98% water. A huge drilling submersible vehicle (with a laser drill capable of cutting through the planets tectonic plates) had gone missing for a week. Taken by rebel group? Too deep and too magnetic to get any decent sensor scans, the players were going over the planetary map and caculating the search radius. Then this conversation:

Player: "Hey, look, this doomed city is within the search zone! We should go there!"

Me: "Uh, yeah, that's actually domed city, but if your characters are heading there... it probably is..."

The underwater city actually survived the adventure.

Edited February 19, 2013 by ORtrail

[Rob]

Ten points for the scathing retort. Got any more?

I heard a Cthulhu one from my old group. They had been investigating a lot of strange, horrible events etc and got almost right through the adventure. They got to the edge of the woods and saw a huge hole in the ground, knowing that whatever was causing the hassle was down there. So, faced with the entrance to this...thing's hideout, what did our gallant heroes do?

They decided "**** this" and went home.

[rust]

This one needs a little language lesson. In German "ivory" is called "Elfenbein", which

means "elf's bone".

In a fantasy campaign a player character had the mission to establish contact with

a somewhat hostile tribe of elves and to win them as allies for the fight against inva-

ding orcs. At first it went quite well, he was captured by an elven patrol and taken

to their tribe's leader for questioning, and thanks to the elves's traditional dislike of

orcs the idea of an alliance was considered favourably. Then the elven chieftain at-

tempted some friendly small talk and asked the player character for his profession,

and in a temporary mental blackout he answered "Elfenbeinschnitzer" - "carver of

ivory / elven bones". This ended the negotiation, and minutes later also his life ...

[Rob]

Hahaha! That's harsh, but I'd have killed him too.

I should elaborate more on my Chthulhu story from the other thread. Here we go.

I was a private investigator, hired to look for another PC. After establishing contact in a way that made my GM giggle like a schoolboy (confronted him in a café toilet, telling him "This isn't usually where I conduct my business, but..."), I was taken away at gunpoint where I was then pulled into THEIR investigation.

A bunch of children went missing and we got a lead taking us to an ice cream van. We decided to stake out the area in different spots, with me in the doorway of a tenement building. I was seen by two police officers and asked what I was doing. My lack of confidence then, combined with brainfarting like a fucking pro, led to them taking me to a nearby police box. I was told to empty my pockets onto the tabe while my details were taken. The officer didn't bat an eyelid at the revolver (it was 1930s Glasgow, so maybe it was normal), but was very disapproving of the sap/blackjack. One cop put on the kettle and then went out to use the phone on the back of the box. Cue my desperate gambit to get back to the investigation in my greatest moment of madness to date.

The remaining officer turned away from me to make tea. I grabbed my sap and belted him in the back of the head, knocking him out. I was pleased at the result, but the cop falling to the floor made a noise, attracting the other one who I heard coming. I flattened myself against a wall and swung at the perfect time, hitting the second cop in the face. Two knockouts! YES!!!

I then ripped out the page from the notebook with my details, thinking I was being very clever at this point. I then cuffed them and took their keys and locked them in. Oh yeah, I'm feeling like a fucking genius at this point. So, I'm ready to leave and I can hear whistles. It's the cops, who have now woken up! Shit! Then, the blue light at the top comes on, which is sure to attract attention. So, I go to the back of the box, climb partway up and rip out the cable, letting it fall onto tram lines (I had totally forgotten we had trams back then). People come to their windows and shout out at me, asking what I'm doing. My ninja-like escape from any problems had just been undone and become even worse.

I fled to the waitng car, where I had to be driven off and quickly. I was then told I had to remove the character from play as he'd be wanted all over the place. So, he fled, having been given money by another character. But at least he didn't die in the game

The character I used to replace him was later grabbed by the balls by a strange blob discovered in the aforementioned ice cream van. I just cnnot catch a break.

[rust]

Another science fiction campaign, the setting is a frontier colony. The wreck

of an alien starship is drifting into the colony planet's system, and the cha-

racters are sent to investigate the wreck. The alien ship is badly damaged,

the outer rooms have lost their atmosphere and there is no artificial gravity.

Moving slowly through the ship, the characters open the bulkhead to a room

which still has atmosphere and which contains the mummified corpses of so-

me members of the alien crew. As the atmosphere rushes out of the room,

the weightless corpses are sucked towards the bulkhead and drift towards

the characters standing there. The security officer of the team immediate-

ly draws his weapon and fights a heroic rearguard action against the many

advancing corpses ("Run, I cover your retreat !") while the other members

of the team fail to understand his problem and just stay there and watch

in disbelief. Shocked by the fact that the corpses continue to advance des-

pite being hit over and over again, the security officer finally runs out of

ammunition and prepares to use his unarmed combat skill to defend against

the first corpse that drifts close enough to him. He only ends his private war

when the team's engineer calmly remarks: "Hey, Mummykiller, this is not the

D&D campaign, they are dead, not undead."

[Rob]

Hahaha! That's as close as he's gettng to gratitude then

[Odin]

1st Scifi campaign (group players did NOT get along with each other. Really, it was like herding cats). Group is on a large deserted alien space station near the stations power plant. Two players get into an argument and then a firefight with each other. Rest of the group is trying to calm things down (and/or seeking cover). Player #1 says, losing the firefight, "Are those fuel cell tanks Rafael is taking cover behind?" I say "Yes, you are all in the fuel supply room, right next the the power plant. He is hiding behind very explosive fuel cell tanks from what you can tell." Player #2 (Rafael) laughs, "I'm a freaking merc. You can't beat my ballistics skill and I'm wearing body armor. You're a dead man walkin!" Player #1 grins evily, "I shoot the fuel cell tanks with my blaster!!!"

[seneschal]

I take it that ended the scenario rather quickly.

[soltakss]

Traveller scenario, PCs have a teleport device and a master surgeon (actually more like a mad scientist with a habit of making modifications while the other PCs are asleep). One PC is planetside when he trips a booby trap and a nuke goes off. The master surgeon teleports to him immediately and makes a stabilising medical roll as "It clearly says that he can stabilise the patient within so many seconds of the damage, allowing time to treat the wound later". The GM grumbled a bit, then grudgingly allowed it, so the master surgeon teleported back to the ship with said patient. When he used his computer to diagnose the injuries, it said "He's been hit point blank range by a nuke".

Worth a try, though.

[seneschal]

But ... being hit point-blank by a nuke worked out for The Amazing Colossal Man and The Incredible Hulk ... well, maybe.

Man, as a GM (and fan of Fifties sci-fi movies) I could have soooo run with that scenario instead of just writing off the afflicted player-character.

Edited February 26, 2013 by seneschal

[Odin]

But ... being hit point-blank by a nuke worked out for The Amazing Colossal Man and The Incredible Hulk ... well, maybe.

Chuckle....

[Odin]

Second SciFi attempt: Group was in a hallway and came to a locked door. Their portable scanner detected that the cargo they were after was behind the locked door. So the group stands around it trying to decide how to unlock the door. One guy says, "Screw it, I'll blow it open with my rpg." Everyone nods and stands behind the rpg toting merc who was 10' away from the door. I explained he was too close. He ignores me. I explain to everyone they are too close to both the door and too close to the back blast of the rpg. One guy says, "Yeah, that sounds like one of those GM tricks to get us all killed. Quick, fire the rpg!" The gunner fires the rpg which creates a massive explosion. I make everyone role to see if by luck they managed to escape the blast(s). The rpg toting character died (as did everyone else) but wanted to know if the door was destroyed.

[seneschal]

Favorite moments ...

Classic Traveller. My players had their characters chase villains fleeing in an air raft with their scout ship. The starship pulled in low overhead, and one of the characters made an Indiana Jones style leap from the open hatch into the open-topped hover vehicle. He missed and landed in the road (but he survived with injuries).

Justice, Inc. The player-characters, investigating an apparently haunted house, discover a scouting team of interdimensional robots bent on conquest. Confronting the robot commander, they try everything from bullets to buckets of kerosene to stop it. Their efforts eventually result in an incendiary combination that destroys the mechanical leader (and much of the mansion). One surviving robot, stuck in the mud after it toppled off the mansion's rear porch, is carted away by "top men."

Later in the same campaign, the adventurers tangled with Dr. Fu Manchu (never named) and the Si-Fan. My description of the sinister Chinese man with glowing green eyes apparently gave one player's young son nightmares. I must have been doing something right.

[Rob]

This one is just silly. My first game with the group I'm heading. We play my home made game using BRP. They cross over into the other world and rescue one of the scouts they are meant to find. The army dr patches him up. The hitman decides to help get him to his feet, for the purposes of pickpocketing- and gets caught. I got to the toilet and when I get back, everyone is laughing hysterically and I hear mention of chloroform! It turns out that to help the P.I and the hitman search thispoor bastard, the chemist (played by my fiancee) wanted to chloroform him! I give her a luck roll and she fails- she has none with her.

FINALLY, the doc helps send the guy back to his own world, safe from further molestation. They pretty much tried to abuse the guy they just rescued. And this is out FIRST session! They're insane!

In that same campaign, they brought down these birds. Pretty vicious things, or would be if not for the negative Db. They get shot down, but aren't dead (party hasn't discovered how to kill them yet). Doc uses bandage to bind the (sharp-edged) wings of one such bird and sends it back to her world for their employer to study. Suffice to say things will not end well

[Odin]

SciFi attempt #3. Group goes to recover an alien scientist (looks like a giant three fingered bird, called Rraery). One player is a scientist-turned-pacifist missionary. There is lots of gun fighting and the whole time the scientist/missionary is complaining everyone is too violent. The group finally corners the Rraery alien scientist and his Rraery bodyguard. A merc unloads on the wounded bodyguard after it surrenders and shoots the Rraery scientist once in the leg. The human scientist says, "Dude are you f*^$ing crazy? There's no need for that, that's not fair, they surrendered! You unloaded a full mag into that guy and shot that guy once in the leg." The merc shrugs, unloads a magazine in the wounded Rraery scientist, turning him into a chunky alien salsa and says, "You happy now? I treated each fairly." Everyone stares in silence. The leader of the group chimes in, "Um, you realize you just killed our objective, right?"

[seneschal]

Um, is the merc's player the same guy who blew up the space station last time? I sense a pattern here ...

I had one player who always had to start a bar fight, no matter what the game or genre, no matter what the odds, and whether a bar was handy or not.

[Odin]

Um, is the merc's player the same guy who blew up the space station last time? I sense a pattern here ...

I had one player who always had to start a bar fight, no matter what the game or genre, no matter what the odds, and whether a bar was handy or not.

Oh no, that's the crazy thing. 3 separate groups. 3! In group #1 and group #2, anyone that played a merc felt the need to show the universe they were a merc and to prove they were king of the hill (which always ended badly for them). Group #3 has a merc in it and he generally plays real calm. Funny thing, he's a former U.S. Army Ranger, so he understands when to use force and when not to, but when he does use force, he is rather...unapologetic about it.

[wbcreighton]

Not sure if this qualifies or not, but in one of our first Runequest 2 campaigns back in junior high school we had a "know it all" player who was playing a jerk of a PC. He was constantly getting on all of our nerves doing all the classic stuff ( trying to steal extra treasure, I found it I get to keep it , etc ). We were in the midst of a big battle when one of the PCs fumbled his bastard sword attack. The result was a 92 which is hit nearest friend and do critical damage. The player rolled hit location it was the Head. The nearest PC was Mr Know it All. The GM notified Mr Know it All that his beloved PC had just been decapitated. The player looked down at his character sheet for a few seconds, picked the sheet up, burst into tears and ran out of the room. After he left I looked around the table, and all of the players and GM had the biggest smiles on their faces, it was priceless. Mr. Know it All never came back to play again.

[The_Scilent_chronicles]

Me and a couple of friends were playing Coriolis (a swedish gritty sci-fi RPG). My character was a former jedi-like agent (Including the jedi mind tricks) and we were on our way to slay a big bad guy with mystical forces claiming to be a god.

We were walking in a dark old service passage in the deep forgotten engine rooms of the Coriolis space station, and we met his servant. He was sitting atop a great cog, some fifteen meters above the floor where we stood. He was being generally creepy, and I was the only one of us three characters that he had noticed, and so I got to stall the bastard while the other two sneaked up behind him and stabbed him in the neck.

But they never really got that far.

Both of these bad guys (The self proclaimed god, and his servant) had names, and they had been mentioned only quickly before we entered the engines, and so I had misunderstood who this character was. My original intention was to go all Jedi mind-trick on the guy, and gonvince him that He is the one who should be the God, but I mixed up the name.

To gurther explain the situation: I told the servant that He was the servant of someone claiming to be a god, but I called the god by the servants name, then unintentionally told him "You should be the God, not [servants name]", which resulted in complete identity crisis for the poor sod, and I rolled such a successful score on my mind trick that the guy started spinning around in panic, fell down from the cog he was sitting on, and died.

That was fun.

Then there was the Tentacle Rape-scene when I played an 8 year old demonologist girl in Svavelvinter, Swedish High Fantasy. Don't judge, we were starving, and needed something to distract the guards while we stole their food and money, Plus, they were escorting a priestess of a religious group that was a sworn enemy of my kind. What should I have done? Just summon Mighty Cthulhu to kill them? I could have, But then I wouldn't have this story to tell people.

[Atgxtg]

I was running a Star Wars campaign. THe PCs were on a ship transporting a Senator's Daughter, whom the bad guys wanted to use to put pressure on her father. Now only one of the player characters has any ability with MEChainical or TECnical skills and the others were all heavily focused on combat stats. The ship they are on was sabotaged by a Commando Droid which is hiding inside the 3-man escape pod, and popped out of hyperspace right in front of the wrong planet, and is about to crash. The Commando Droid has been programmed to pop out of the escape pod, grab the girl, and escape in the pod, leaving the PCs to die horribly in the crash. It's blaster is set to stun so it won't hurt the girl, which it needs as a prisoner. But the best laid plans of droids fare no better than those of mice and men.

THe PCs deice that they need to play it safe and send the Senator's Daughter out in the escape pod just in case they can't manage to land the ship. THe one guy who can pilot the ship opens the hatch to the escape pod and is completely surprised by the Commado Droid, which promptly stuns him and the girl. THe droid barely has time to compute that though before he gets blasted apart by the bounty hunter and two mercs. All those guys could shoot the wings off a fly an 100 meters. The poor droid didn't have a chance.

So there the PCs are standing on the bridge of a disabled ship, plummeting into a planet, with only a three man escape pod, and the only people qualified to fly anything more complicated than a paper airplane out cold on the deck. I fully expected things to turn nasty, with the mercs abandoning their friend and the girl to a fiery death. It was certainly understandable, and almost forgivable. But no, they surprised me. One merc turns to the other two guys and said:

"We need a volunteer to take Adam (the PC) and Geo (the Senator's Daughter) down in the escape pod?"

The Rodian bounty hunter said, "I'll do it!"

At this point the GM (moi) asks the first PC to repeat what he said, and then I exchange eye contact with the guy playing the Rodian as if to ask, "Did he say what I though he said?". I was hard pressed keeping my mouth shut and not blurting out the details of the situation.

The Rodian was treated like he had volunteered for a suicide mission, and went to the planet in a nice safe escape pod, while the other two guys took the "easy way down" in the burning fireball that had once been a space yacht, vainly looking for the air brakes. The Rodian PC couldn't believe his good fortune, and had expected he was going to have to gun down at least one of the other PCs to get a seat in the escape pod. The only thing that surprised him more was when the two knuckleheads managed to survive the landing.

[Rob]

That is nuts. Another bout of insanity at the table for us tonight. The group continues from saving one scout last time and tonight, they got into a town, where they are stared at as everyone (except the party) has grey skin. They managed to befriend a stall vendor and god chatting, telling of what they had encountered; the large, hawk-like creatures that wouldn't die (They were essentially KO'd). The NPC looks impressed that they "killed" these things, having been told they know nothing of this realm.

NPC: How did you know to crush the beak?

M: What now?

M gets very drunk one one beer (as theirs is a lot stronger) and ends up getting arrested. He then escapes from the guard post and makes his way towards a city before ducking into the woods (with two crossbow wounds).

The others, meanwhile, en route to the city have a run-in with a few zombies, but manage to take them all down. As they head north, they meet two guards who grill them about why they're here (this domain doesn't like foreigners much). After fumbling a persuade skill, S decides they should leave. However, A, not taking too kindly on being told "bugger off to where you came from) decides to whip out her gun and shoot them. Cue a big fight (guards' armour value helped) in which my fiancee's character is badly hurt as a result of this and one of the guards is dying.

Right outside the city gates. This will not go well Especially as M is trying to lose two more guards in the woods. And he doesn't know what's there

[Pctrollbreath]

One of my first gaming sessions, back in the early eighties, playing red box D&D

We are exploring a dungeon when we come across a crypt, in which a Mummy is sleeping in an alcove near the treasure.

Being a really clever sort, (aka a total noob) my wizard sneaks up to the Mummy.........and plunges a wooden stake into it's heart........

Half the party ended up dead

[Rob]

That is really unlucky. But funny