I'm bored.
someone tell me their favorite/funniest/or most bizarre gaming story.
OK, I’ll let you tell the one about the horse smearing its rider against a tree and my “that happened to me once” remark
I know you’ve heard this one before, but I’ll share for the rest –
When I was in the Navy, I ran a game at the Rec Center one afternoon for a group of seven or so gamers. As we were all on an island in the Pacific, you sort of played with a mixed group, which in this case included your regular assortment of enlisted, one officer, and these two kids from a family living on base (who were decent gamers for their age of 14 or so). On this particular Saturday, the two kids had to bring along their little brother, who was 10 or 11.
We were playing an adventure based on a desert pyramid, wherein was a notorious lich king. We gave the 10 year old what we thought would be an easy character to play – a barbarian.
So we go to the top of the pyramid and the group finds a shaft dropping into the darkness. They drop a tourch down to see how deep the shaft is, which takes a loooong time to fall – indicating a very deep shaft.
The 10 year old (AKA the kid) says – “I jump in.”
I was surprised a bit and explained that the shaft was at least a couple of hundred feet down.
“I’m a barbarian, I can handle it.” The kid replied.
“OK then.” I said and rolled the massive amounts of d6’s that the fall incurred. SPLAT! Dead on Impact…
Feeling generous, I let the kid pencil ‘the II’ on his character’s name and try again.
Next – of course you knew there would be a ‘next’ – the kid has his barbarian check a particularly suspicious intersection of a hall for traps. I don’t even think his character could check for traps, but I told him there was a ten-by-ten foot area in the center of the intersection, where the floor was two inches below the level of the rest of the hall and where the stone had been shattered or crushed by something.
“I want to go stand in the center of the area and hit the ceiling with my battle Axe,” was his decision.
“Are you sure?” I prompted.
“Yeah, I’m going to disarm the trap” The kid replied.
“OK.” I replied and rolled the massive amounts of d6’s that the falling ten-by-ten foot cube of obsidian incurred as it fell out of the ceiling and onto his character. SPLAT! Again… dead on Impact…
Still feeling generous, I let the kid pencil ‘the III’ on his character’s name and try once more.
Yep, you guessed it… This time the group finds a sailing ship buried in the pyramid with a large hole in the hull. Looking in, the group sees a glowing green gem on a bone pedestal at the far end of the ship, while the entire floor of the ship is filled three feet deep with human bones.
This time however, the rest of the group had caught onto the kid’s MO, so they helped him along a little – “Hey, why don’t you have your barbarian go get that gem, while we stand guard out here.”
“OK.” Says the kid.
Needless to say, the bones all rise up as skeletal lords when the gem is touched. At least this time the kid’s character got to kill one or two of them before being overrun and dragged down to yet one more graceless death.
At this point however, the Kid’s folks had returned, so we thanked the kid for playing, sent him off, and finished the game without any further incident.
BZ