RPG.NET rant #1 The Team That Couldn't Shoot Straight

 

RPG.NET rant #1

The Team That Couldn't Shoot Straight

 

I have been in a super hero frame of mind lately. Maybe it's the fact that I have Godlike and Freedom Force on order but it has set me in a nostalgic mood for the Champions campaigns I used to play in. Then as I remembered I realized those long lost games I began to shudder with the memory of THE TEAM THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT.

Never before or since has there ever been a super hero team so dysfunctional. We had no base, we met at a Burger King and then headed out in our flying Monte Carlo from there.

Let me tell you about the core roster of characters. Please share my Hell.

(The stories are real only the names have been changed)

MY CHARACTER: Take some BATMAN YEAR ONE, throw in Don Quixote and marinate with some pulp and you had my character. Out in the cold cruel superhero world with only his fedora, trenchcoat and one gadget he had his hands full dealing with characters like panda and Raccoon. I really enjoyed playing a beginner hero but he never really go the chance to develop as I would have liked.

THE INFECTIOUS GUY: His power? That he has ALL known diseases. He had to wear a containment suit at all times and he blasted villains with a gout of toxins and pus that equaled a ranged killing attack. The really fun part about this guy was that it turned out that his containment suit wasn't strong enough and my character was nearly taken out by a case of jaundice!

THE INSANE KILLING MACHINE: How insane? The player lobbied for a ranged hand to hand killing attack to properly simulate his character's deadliness. This crazy cyborg would just show up, fight (and mostly kill) the baddies then speed away. Who was he? Was he really on the team at all? I was never sure.

THE SUPEHERO INSPIRED BY THE WORKS OF AYN RAND: I admit I know little of Rand's work mainly because of the nightmare of this character- a mentalist named Atlas in honor of the book ATLAS SHRUGGED. When a fight broke out he would hide and fire off mental bolts while extolling the virtues of objectivism.

THE GUY WITH A JETPACK AND A HIGH POWERED RIFLE: When combat broke out he would zoom up into the air and start sniping. He had a kind of code against killing, he only killed villains if they fought back, or sassed him.

THE DINOSAUR IN THE CLIP ON TIE: I don't want to talk about this one, I just don't.

THE ONE MAN ROTATING GUEST STAR: Every week the player had a new character; every damn week. There wasn't an original one in the bunch, let me name a few and give you their defining moment. THE ONE BASED ON THE MAIN CHARACTER FROM AIRWOLF: Spent the combat trying to cross the map to his helicopter. THE ONE BASED ON THE MAIN CHARACTER FROM STREETHAWK: Spent the entire combat zipping around the map on his super-powered motorcycle. THE ONE BASED ON LSH's ULTRA-BOY: Died because he forgot that he couldn't use super strength and flight at the same time and he tried to catch a crashing spacecraft. THE ONE BASED ON LEE VAN CLEEF's CHARACTER FROM THE TV SHOW THE MASTER: Since most of the character points were spent juicing his character's defensive combat value through the roof he had no attacks that could hurt anything. he bounced around like a sterile flea hitting one villain after another until he was killed by a ranged attack. THE ONE BASED ON JULIAN SANDS CHARACTER FROM THE FILM WARLOCK: Skulked in the background and drained endurance points from any player character that wandered to close to him. THE ONE BASED ON ALPHA FLIGHT'S LEADER GUARDIAN: I never knew why he was there since our team was based in New York. His whole thing is that he would kidnap unconscious super villains to Canada for 'rehabilitation'. Since all the villains were sexy female villains my opinion was dubious.

THE BLUE-SKINNED RED-EYED FALLEN ANGEL: An ok character but the player insisted on making the character's secret identity himself.

THE LITTLE OLD LADY WITH AWSOME MIND CONROL ABILITIES: Another character that seemed to want to do nothing more than pound on my character because he 'looked sinister'

And lastly....

THE DESTROYER OF CAMPAIGNS: With his combination of rules lawyering and outright cheating he could unmake an Amber diceless game. His character was supposed to be just a guy in powered armor but his merciless point-whoreing created an unstoppable juggernaut. How unstoppable? How about knockback that sent NPCs off the map? How about combats that lasted a number of rounds equal to the number of adversaries facing him? How about the high-end Dr. Destroyer had to run for his life? Finally the GM tried to kill him with a nuclear explosion- this knocked the character unconscious for ONE ROUND then he recovered...

Shortly after the arrival of the last character the campaign died, all I have left now are the memories but with therapy and drugs I hope to supress them.

Things I'm Thankful For #11 - That 10 years later people are still reading the RPG.net rants!

The Binder of Shame by Francis Hogan

 

The RPG.net Rants

Uncensored, Unforgettable and Uncorrected

Click here to download the Ebook version of THE RPG.NET RANTS

2002 was the year I first started to post stories for the amusement of others. (Aside from that shameful X-FILES fan fiction of course.) I began with these gaming anecdotes that I shared on the forums of RPG.net, a relatively safe haven for me at the time. They were strange little tales told in a kind of screenplay format that I used when I sketched out story dialogue.

 

The first one was pretty simple but as they went on they became more and more grandiose but they were raw and fun little bits of humor. I never bothered to proofread the things or set up any real kind of coherence or internal continuity- although snippets of these tales do show up in PRICE BEAKS AND HEARTACHES.

 

I'm posting them to the blog so I can add them to version of THE BINDER OF SHAME I keep here. I will do the first two today and then set up one a week until they're all there.

 

I've moved on a lot since I first created them but many of the folks that first came to know me through them are still reading my work now and they still keep finding new readers all the time.

 

If you have no idea what I am talking about prepare to be amazed, amused and offended.

 

And be warned these stories appear exactly as I did when I posted them on the forums. I haven't tried to edit them for fear of diluting their raw power.

 

Also I'm pretty damn lazy...

 

RPG.NET rant #1: The Team That Couldn't Shoot Straight

RPG.NET rant #2 The day I killed the entire party before the first combat encounter

RPG.NET rant #3 A Night At The Inn, A Day At The Racists
RPG.NET rant #4 The God Trip
RPG.NET rant #5 Achy Breaky Mythos
RPG.NET rant #6 Monty Python Mishaps In The Deepest Pit Of Homebrew Hell

RPG.NET rant #7 Kobayashi Maru With Random Violence and Supermodels
RPG.NET rant #8 What Do You Mean You Lost My Wife's Kidney?
RPG.NET rant #9 Never Leave Your Nads Behind
RPG.NET rant #10 Death By Thumbs
RPG.NET rant #11 Night Of The Caped Cadavers
RPG.NET rant #12 Cannibals, Rednecks And Transgendered Astronauts
RPG.NET rant #13 Trapped In Jedi Academy
RPG.NET rant #14 Reservoir Torgs
RPG.NET rant #15 The Wrong Room In Ryleh
RPG.NET rant #16 The Great Gamma World Death March
RPG.NET rant #17 The Bad Rifts Project
RPG.NET rant #18 The D&D Session That Mostly Wasn't
RPG.NET rant #19 The Prequel Trilogy I: The Creep On The Boarderlands
RPG.NET rant #20 The Prequel Trilogy II: The Dead Guy Gets The Pizzas
RPG.NET rant #21 The Prequel Trilogy III: All Hands On Dec
RPG.NET rant #22 The Last Straw Trilogy Part One: Warhammer The Spoilers Generation
RPG.NET rant #22 The Last Straw Trilogy Part Two: Talisman- This Time Its Personal
RPG.NET rant #23 The Last Straw Trilogy Part Three: Once More With Filking
Vampire The Mass Kid Raid: An RPG.NET Rant postscript

 

RPG.NET rant #3 A Night At The Inn, A Day At The Racists

RPG.NET rant #3

A Night At The Inn, A Day At The Racists

originally posted to RPG.net on 08-22-2002 10:31 PM:

WARNING THE FOLLOWING STORY IS TRUE AND IS ALSO VERY VERY POLITICALLY INCORRECT. READ AT YOU OWN PERIL. ALSO BE WARNED SPELLING AND FORMATTING ERRORS ABOUND.

Somehow I found myself back in El Disgusto's basement, Psycho Dave had decided it was his turn to try and run D&D. El Disgusto, Weasly Crusher, Cheating Bastard, Deviant Boy, Short Attention Span Larry and yours truly were the players. I was curious to see how Psycho Dave ran a game. I was sure it couldn't be as bad as Deviant Boy's dungeon where the treasure horde was a room filled with bound naked halflings and staves with Permanency and Grease spells cast on them.
How wrong I was. How wrong I was.


Psycho Dave: "Still shaking from your encounter with the Giant Shrunken Apple Head Woman and make your way to the in. The rain is cold, cold like cold rain."

El Disgusto: "I continue to ride underneath the wagon... ninja style!"

Psycho Dave: "You realize that no one even knows you're there yet."

El Disgusto: "Good."

Psycho Dave: "You do realize this is the third session of the campaign."

El Disgusto: "The ways of the ninja are hard to understand and inscrutable."

Psycho Dave: "Fine. Roll to see if you hang on."

Me: "We need to be on guard, we still don't know who brought us here and why."

Weasly Crusher: "My fighter is ready for anything, except for creatures that drain life levels. I refuse to enter into any dungeons or tombs."

Me: "Uh, you know this game is DUNGEONS and dragons."

Weasly Crusher: "I worked too damn hard to be second level to loose it over some damn wraith."

Short Attention Span Larry: "Hey cool! Cinemax!"

Deviant Boy: "Hey cool! Shannon Whirry!"

Me: "Are you here to game or what?"

Short Attention Span Larry: "I can do both. Just let me know when its my turn to fight the Shrunken Apple head Woman."

Psycho Dave: "After a few more hours of travel you finally find yourselves at the Inn. This is the place where you will finally meet with your employer the mysterious wizard Shickelgruber in the morning."

Cheating Bastard: "Why is that name so familiar?"

Me: "I stop the wagon in front of the Inn."

Psycho Dave: "Roll for it."

Me: "This is getting a little out of hand now."

Psycho Dave: "Roll for it."

Me: "I need to roll to stop the damn wagon?"

Psycho Dave: "You're the one that said that you were just all of a sudden stopping the wagon. Ever heard of slowing down before you stop."

Me: "I didn't think I had to be that specific. Ok I slow the wagon down and-"

Psycho Dave: "Too late. You said it. Roll to see if you can stop the wagon without crashing, or do you want to bitch and whine some more."

(Roll)

Me: "Crap."

Psycho Dave: "OK the cart flips over. Everyone else make a save versus death. Yes you too Larry."


As you can see I soon realized that Psycho Dave ran a game in roughly the same way that Warwick Davis in the film Leprechaun granted wishes. Everything you said your character did was scrutinized for some way to screw you over and the dice ruled all. He was the only guy I know who used a random monster encounter chart for Call of Cthulhu. You haven't lived until you've had a character go mad because he saw a nightgaunt sitting in a restroom stall reading a copy of the Necrnomicon.



(Roll)(Roll)(Wander over to the table and Roll)(Roll)(Roll and a nudge)

Cheating Bastard: "A perfect 20!"

Weasly Crusher: "I can't believe the wagon fell on my head."

Cheating Bastard: "I can't believe your eyeball popped out, what kind of crit tables are these?"

Psycho Dave: "The manly kind. I've been coddling you with those Arduin critical hit tables for too damn long."

Short Attention Span Larry: "Am I bleeding to death?"

Psycho Dave: "No."

El Disgusto: "Since my ninja was under the wagon I sprint into the shadows and observe the party.

Psycho Dave: "Roll for it."

(Roll)

Short Attention Span Larry: "Am I bleeding to death?"

Me: "Uh... where is Lamont?"

El Disgusto: "My parents took him camping. Get this, the damn vet says the dog is suffering from stress. Stress! What the frig does a damn dog have to be stressed out about?"

Deviant Boy: "Well if I could lick myself I sure wouldn't-"

Me: "Why didn't you go?"

El Disgusto: "Camping? Why would I want to go camping? Nature kills! Haven't you learned anything the wilderness encounters tables?"

Deviant Boy: "I walk into the Inn for a drink."

Me: "What about the wagon?"

Deviant Boy: "Leave it it's not like we paid for it or anything."

Psycho Dave: "So you all walk to the Inn? Make a dexterity check to see if you slip in the mud."

Short Attention Span Larry: "Am I bleeding to death?"

(Roll)(Roll)(Wander over to the table and Roll)(Roll)(Roll and a Nudge)


The Inn was a kind of medieval strip club with all the wenches wearing thongs and dog collars and that's about it. We found a table and got drinks and waited for the wizard to arrive. Some of the girls tried to offer us lap dances, those who got them had to Save versus Petrifaction.


Me: "I survey the room and take a drink."

Psycho Dave: "Save versus poison to see if you get drunk."

Me: "No! This is bullshit!"

Psycho Dave: "Just roll the damn dice for God's sake."

Me: "I'm a dwarf! A dwarf! There is no way that a Dwarf would get drunk on some pissant human ale."

Psycho Dave: "Hmmmm. I see your point."

Short Attention Span Larry: "What have you got to drink here?"

El Disgusto: "Nothing."

Short Attention Span Larry: "Didn't your parents leave you any food?"

El Disgusto: "They left me some cash for groceries but I decided it was better spent on Warhammer minis."

Short Attention Span Larry: "Ok I'll get a glass of water."

El Disgusto: "The HELL you will. If you dirty any of those glasses I will have to wash them and I am not going there. Drink from the tap or not at all."

Weasly Crusher: "I look for someone to pick on."

Cheating Bastard: "I help him."

Psycho Dave: "Make detect traps roll."

Deviant Boy: "I buy one of the wenches for the night."

Psycho Dave: "Make a Charisma check.... oh and Ab3 roll a d20."

(roll)(roll)

Psycho Dave: "Ok you find a companion for the night and Ab3, you failed your Save versus poison and get stinking drunk."


Being drunk in a game like this is not a good thing, the GM 'simulated' drunken behavior by letting each of the other players dictate what your character did for five minutes. So as my dwarf sang show tunes while dangling from a chandelier with a half-full spittoon on his head. The night at the Inn rolled on.


Me: "You know it's like midnight now, maybe we should just fast forward ahead to the morning so we can meet the wizard."

El Disgusto: "Oooo! Oooo! His dwarf is all drunk and now he's whining!"

Me: "I am not whining and hey at least my character is involved with the party."

El Disgusto: "You're just pissed because you're not a ninja. How are things looking on the roof anyway?"

Psycho Dave: "It's still raining."

Deviant Boy: "Hey I'm taking that saloon whore John Norman style."

Short Attention Span Larry: "Who?"

Deviant Boy: "John Norman... wrote the Gor novels... they taught me everything I needed to know about women."

Me: "So how is that whole restraining order thing working out anyway?"

Deviant Boy: "I'm done with her. I think this girl from the movie theater is hot for me though. There's something about the way she says to me 'Want Butter Flavoring'?"

Weasly Crusher: "What about me? When do I get my barfight?"

Psycho Dave: "Well you do see this scrawny nervous looking kid at the bar."

Weasly Crusher: "I walk up to the kid and give him a shove."

Cheating Bastard: "I follow him."

Psycho Dave: "The kid is at the bar nursing a Shirley Temple."

Me: "I don't think that a medieval tavern would serve Shirley Temples."

Psycho Dave: "Fine. He is drinking an Ye Ole Shirley Temple."

Weasly Crusher: "I shove him."

Psycho Dave: "Roll to hit."

(roll)

Cheating Bastard: "I tell the kid- 'He doesn't like you.'."

Psycho Dave: "The kid cringes and says 'I'm sorry.'."

Weasly Crusher: "I shove him again!"

Cheating Bastard: "I say 'I don't like you either. You just watch yourself. We're wanted men. I have the death sentence in twelve kingdoms...'"


I knew where this was going, I think Weasly Crusher was the only one who didn't realize. The only thing really surprising about the whole thing was that thanks to Psycho Dave's homebrewed Crits and Fumbles tables his Samurai somehow managed to behead himself. Eventually my character regained some degree of sobriety and retreated to his room to wait for the morning and the dread wizard Shickelgruber but the night at the Inn had no end in sight.


Psycho Dave: "You fail your roll and slip in a puddle of blood. Roll a d6 to see how many teeth are knocked out."

Cheating Bastard: "I challenge the damn Viking to an arm wrestling match!"

Weasly Crusher: "They say your head can live a little while detached from your body, I try to call on my god."

Deviant Boy: "I'm still doing the saloon whore!"

Me: "I would think you'd be sleeping by now."

Deviant Boy: "My character is like me, he can do it for two three hours before he finishes. Women love that."

Me: "Really?"

Deviant Boy: "Especially Canadian women."

Short Attention Span Larry: "Is it ok if I look through your comics?"

El Disgusto: "Is it Ok if I beat you with the Stick of Pain? My ninja breaks into their rooms and snoops around."

Psycho Dave: "Roll for it."

(roll)

Me: "Why can't you just meet up with the damn party and not do all this weird stuff?"

El Disgusto: "He's a ninja! I'm ROLE-PLAYING!"

Cheating Bastard: "I head up to my room. I want to get that Resurrection Scroll out of my Bag of Holding."

Weasly Crusher: "Geez how many magic items does your character have?"

Cheating Bastard: "Ninety-six."


How did he end up with 96 magic items? Allow me to explain. The way they set up high level D&D games in my neck of the woods was to have you roll up your character and then roll once on the treasure tables for each level they needed your character to start at. Psycho Dave had planned his campaign for 12th level characters and above, so Cheating Bastard's character was a 12th level Wizard-Cleric-Fighter-Thief-Illusionist-Druid-Ranger-Bard with limited Psionic abilities. His explanation, really lucky die rolls had allowed his magic user to get ahold of a Wish Ring with the maximum wishes. The Wishes had prolonged his life and allowed him to pursue multiple career paths so that now he had a small magic arsenal stored in a Spelljammer craft that he had held in a bag of holding.
A good thirty minutes of game time was eaten up by this long drawn out explanation of the origin of the 12th Level Everything man. I suggested that we all have our characters go to sleep so we can meet with our employer the morning but no one else seemed to be interested. Deviant Boy kept going into lurid detail about his escapades with his girl for the night. Weasly Crusher kept whining about his head. Short Attention Span Larry kept quiet, no surprise since he was busy trying to play the game, watch Star Trek and read a Gor novel. El Disgusto continued to break into our character's rooms and pilfer our things, until he crossed paths with Cheating Bastard's bag of holding. Cheating Bastard kept his familiar in the bag as a kind of guard dog. So the stealthy ninja ended up having his ass handed to him by a Quasit permanently polymorphed into Rush Limbaugh.
I didn't understand that last bit either but I couldn't bring myself to ask.


El Disgusto: "Untie me! The other ninjas know I'm here!"

Cheating Bastard: "Once he's tied down face first on the bed I check and see how the fireplace pokers are heating up."

Psycho Dave: "Roll a d20."

(roll nudge)

Cheating Bastard: "I'm so awesome, another natural twenty!"

Psycho Dave: "The pokers are white hot."

El Disgusto: "You can't do this to me! I'm a ninja!"

Cheating Bastard: "I get the hottest, sharpest looking poker and approach the bed."

Me: "Why are we doing this?"

Cheating Bastard: "I'm teaching him a valuable lesson."

El Disgusto: "My character flexes every muscle in my body at once!"

Psycho Dave: "Why?"

El Disgusto: "To weaken the ropes! What are you stupid?"

Cheating Bastard: "My character presses the end of the hot poker against the ninja's buttcheeks."

El Disgusto: "You'll pay for this! You'll all pay for this! Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! Hastur!"


I for one never thought I would be glad to see the arrival of a member of the Cthulhu Mythos. Hastur showed up and stomped on the Inn killing everyone. I don't ever recall being so happy but sadly in a game like this death is fleeting, only trauma and humiliation endure.
The party found themselves resurrected in the crater where the Inn had been. A figure in brown and black robes stared at us. After some preliminary insults he led us through a strange looking portal.


Psycho Dave: "The Wizard Shickelgruber leads you through a portal and you find yourself on a wasted landscape. Tall dark chimneys belch ashes into the sky. The air is filled with the stench of burning flesh."

Cheating Bastard: "You sure we're not smelling the ninja's ass?"

El Disgusto (Waving the Stick of Pain): "Don't make me use this!"

Psycho Dave: "All around you strange devices and men in dark uniforms are walking around doing stuff. The wizard explains that he needs your help to get the Wand of Orcus."

Weasly Crusher: "Why?"

Psycho Dave: "To explain the wizard leads you through a metal gate with the words WORK LIBERATES engraved into it. He takes you to this huge pit filled with emaciated bodies. he explains to you that he needs to use the Wand to turn these bodies into undead so he can beat back the armies invading his land."

Me (My high school education kicked in right about then): "Wait just a goddamn minute here-"

Psycho Dave: "The wizard pulls back his cloak revealing his piercing blue eyes and small dark moustache."

Me: "We're in a concentration camp? So we can help Hitler win the war?"

Deviant Boy: "What's he paying us?"

Psycho Dave: "Gold teeth."

Me: "You're kidding right? You can't be serious."

Cheating Bastard: "This is cool, kind of a 'Shindler's Lich'"

Me: "This is unbelievable! I wasted six hours of my life for this?"

Psycho Dave: "Yes it is unbelievable but we're here to play a game not debate the so-called Holocaust."

Weasly Crusher: "How many gold teeth does it take to make a gold piece anyway?"


Very calmly and quietly I began to pack up my papers and dice. I promised myself I was just going to leave, not make another scene. I didn't know if I'd ever game again, I was pretty sure I had hit rock bottom. It didn't feel like I had expected.


Short Attention Span Larry: "Hey you big liar! I thought you didn't have anything but water. Look at all these bottles of Mountain Dew you have stowed under the stairs."

El Disgusto: "Stay away from those!"

Short Attention Span Larry: "What's the big deal, I just want a glass or two. Heck I'm so thirsty I'll give you a buck for the whole damn bottle."

El Disgusto: "No! You don't understand! That's not Mountain Dew."

Short Attention Span Larry (Pausing in unscrewing the cap on one of the bottles): "Huh?"

El Disgusto: "It's- it's urine."

Me: "That's funny I thought you said urine."

El Disgusto: "It is urine, I don't like to go upstairs to the bathroom when I'm watching TV so I go in the bottles and throw them away later."


Being a wannabe horror writer I often describe people having skin-crawling sensations, I had never truly experienced it until that very moment. I looked around the room, realizing now that there half-full bottles stashed everywhere. Some were crusted with age and other substances.

This I realized was rock bottom.



Me: "When do you throw these bottles away?"

El Disgusto: "I'll get around to it sometime."

Me: "I need to go home now. I need to go take a shower."

Psycho Dave: "What about the game?"

Me: "I trip and fall on my sword-"

Psycho Dave: "Roll for it."

Me: "I fall on my sword again and again- UNTIL THE HURTING
STOPS!!!"

And then I went home and never, ever played D&D again and I certainly never drank another bottle of Mountain Dew.

RPG.NET rant #2 The day I killed the entire party before the first combat encounter

 

RPG.NET rant #2

The day I killed the entire party before the first combat encounter

originally posted to RPG.net on 08-09-2002 12:02 AM:

THE FOLLOWING STORY IS TRUE. ONLY THE NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT ME FROM A SAVAGE BEATING WITH THE STICK OF PAIN.

It was the end of the 1980's, for some reason the group of players in my area had established a strange attraction to Avalon Hill's catch all RPG LORDS OF CREATION. The players had coaxed me into playing it once before but the session had been disturbing. The players had played characters based on themselves. When that game began one of the players, we will call him 'Psycho Dave', started out the campaign by having his character kill his parents.

Things went downhill from there.

So months later we are all there in the basement of another of our players, whom I will refer to as El Disgusto, and I have been talked into trying to run Lords of Creation again. There are five players- Psycho Dave, El Disgusto, Deviant Boy, The Amazing Boozehound and Weasly Crusher.

I already have a great idea for a campaign, about our reality being attacked by another alien reality. You may think I am ripping off TORG but this was years before TORG. I was ripping off the Dr. Who episode HORNS OF NIMON.

I explained to the players that they were to make ordinary modern people and they campaign would detail their attempts to survive in this strange new world. Kind of a RED DAWN meets GAMMA WORLD.

So character creation begins and it goes something like this-

El Disgusto: "I want to make a ninja!"

Me: "Well you could be a master martial artist but I'm not sure if a ninja is exactly..."

El Disgusto: "A ninja! I want to play a ninja! What kind of a game is this where you can't pick what you want?"

Me: "Ok you can play a ninja."

Deviant Boy: "I'm going to play a stripper."

Me: "Ok then."

Weasly Crusher: "And I'm his character's cousin. She's a stripper too."

Me: "Great... just roll up those stats then."

Psycho Dave: "I'm going to play a former Navy Seal. He has medals of honor and no one knows that in his spare time he kills hippies and midgets."

Me: "That's very interesting, and he has the same name as you too. Great."

The Amazing Boozehound: "I'm playing a dwarf fighter... hic!"

Me: "No. No, see this is set in the modern era. There are no Dwarven fighters."

The Amazing Boozehound: "Oh."

Me: "So what was your second choice?"

The Amazing Boozehound: "What?"

Me: "For a character?"

The Amazing Boozehound: "Oh... lemmie think."

Deviant Boy: "My character and her cousin are having an affair."

Me: "Wh-what?"

Deviant Boy: "We're lesbian strippers."

Weasly Crusher: "We're in love."

Me: "I- I-"

The Amazing Boozehound: "Can I play a midget?"

Psycho Dave: "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

Me: "Maybe you could play a ninja?"

The Amazing Boozehound: "Eh... I'll just play a guy who's like a cop or somethin'."

Me: "Ok roll it up."

Psycho Dave: "You know human blood looks black in the moonlight..."

Weasly Crusher: "My character and her cousin have matching toe rings."

Me: "FOR CHRIST'S SAKE JUST ROLL UP YOUR CHARACTERS!!!!!"

Eventually they created their characters, so I began to set the scene. Well I tried to set the scene but see El Disgusto's parents had left town and he had one responsibility... to feed and walk his parent's decrepit dog Lamont. Of course El Disgusto had done neither in days so the dog would frequently pad up to the top of basement steps and howl mournfully.

Anyway, once El Disgusto had gotten done beating his parent's dog into silence we began to play. I set the scene describing a world where strange spider like creatures had enslaved humanity and how the players had all just escaped from one of the slave labor camps.

The first problem erupted-

Psycho Dave: "What? What?' We don't have our stuff?"

Me: "We never went over equipment lists because I thought-"

El Disgusto: "Dude, my ninja has to have a motorcycle."

Me: "I explained the alien spiders-"

Deviant Boy: "Our toe rings? They took our toe rings?"

Me: "-they have reduced the human race to a state of slavery. All our technology."

Psycho Dave: "No way would they take my guns knives and explosives!"

El Disgusto: "And my motorcycle... who could steal a ninja's motorcycle? My guy would fight to the death for his motorcycle. Nice going dickweed."

Weasly Crusher: "Couldn't we have hidden our toe rings inside ourselves?"

Deviant Boy: "Good role-playing!"

The Amazing Boozehound: "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

Me: "I don't really think you are giving this a chance."

El Disgusto: "Shut up Lamont! I said SHUT UP!"

The arguments and dog beatings took up another hour or so of my life but finally I said that I would 'retool' my ideas.

Me: "Ok remake your characters as naval officers. You will be playing the crew of a nuclear submarine ordered to hide at the bottom of the sea when the invasion began. You will be the team sent to investigate the surface, you will be fully equipped with weapons and other stuff. "

Psycho Dave: "Much better. Is there a chance that I killed the submarine captain and took over?"

Me: "No."

El Disgusto: "Ok I am a naval officer but I am also secretly a spy for the ninjas."

Me: "Seeing as how all of the civilized world has fallen to the alien spiders I don't think that matters much."

El Disgusto: "On no those aliens only THINK they got the ninjas."

Me: "Fine whatever."

Deviant Boy: "My character is a tough as nails commando... but she's really hot."

Weasly Crusher: "I'm her cousin and we're lesbians."

Deviant Boy: "We're in love."

Weasly Crusher: "We share a bunk."

Me: "Please... save it for the game."

El Disgusto: "Shut up Lamont! Don't make me get the stick of pain!"

The Amazing Boozehound: "Wh- why is my cop on a submarine?"

Me: "You're playing a navy MP... don't you remember?"

The Amazing Boozehound: "Oh ok."

Me: "Anyway. The captain of the submarine is worried because he hasn't heard from Washington in six months. He calls you in the middle of the night to his office-"

Deviant Boy: "Since it's the middle of the night my character shows up wearing a flimsy teddy."

Weasly Crusher: "Ohhh me too."

Me: "The captain says-"

El Disgusto: "Shouldn't the captain roll to see if he notices me? I am a ninja after all. I-- Stick of Pain Lamont! Stick of Pain!"

Me: "The captain orders you to the go ashore and find out what has been happening."

The Amazing Boozehound: "I say- Dammnit Captain! I'm a good cop!"

Me: "He wants you to go ashore immediately."

Psycho Dave: "I say we fire our nukes."

Me: "Immediately!"

The next hour of the game was taken up with the crew listing the many types of guns, knives, rocket launchers and butt plugs their characters would bring. Sometime during the discussion Lamont, desperate for food and suffering for what would turn out to be terminal dysentery tried to walk down the basement steps only to collapse into a quivering furry heap atop an orange crate of freshly painted minis. El Disgusto howled with rage and went to town with the stick of pain until Lamont hid behind the furnace.

Finally we got back to the game:

Me: "Ok you've got your raft as full of equipment as it can be and you're-"

El Disgusto: "Wait... what about my motorcycle?"

Me: "What?"

El Disgusto: "My character wants to bring his motorcycle."

Me: "Look your character spent the last six months on a submarine."

El Disgusto: "Then so did his motorcycle."

Me: "How in the name of all that is holy could you get anyone to agree to bring a motorcycle onto a submarine?"

El Disgusto: "What are you asking me for? You're the one running this crappy game!"

Me: "Ok then. As you all are standing there an Ensign Bruno says 'Don't forget this!' And rolls a motorcycle off the deck onto the rubber raft. The weight collapses the raft and you are all tangled up in it and the motorcycle. You are dragged down beneath the surface of the ocean and drown. End of game."

To punctuate this I took the Lords of Creation rulebook and threw it against the wall. Harsh words were exchanged on all sides. Who knows we might have even come to blows if not for Lamont staggering out from behind the furnace and spraying stream of doggie diarrhea over couch that had everyone's coats draped across it.

In the pandemonium that followed I made my way home. I can always get another coat.

Price Breaks and Heartaches: part eleven

The story you are looking for has been relocated and retooled.

PRICE BREAKS AND HEARTACHES can now be found here.

If you can't find one of your favorite chapters don't worry, it'll be back!