Your favorite PnP story

[Captain_Wizbang]

Funny, Historical, stupid, embarrassing, whatever...


Ill post mine after another cup of coffee.

[Splatterfart]

To date the most fun we've ever had at the table actually took place between myself as a DM and a single PC in a solo game. We were sort of burnt out on the game at the time. We had a solid group of players at the time and got together every saturday night. We once had 12 players running at the same time. People seemed to have a terrible time remembering where they placed their character sheets however. So, each week became the same: Roll 12 entirely new characters, I would thinking of a plot on the spot (I prefer not to use pre-made adventures in MOST cases), help half the guys build toons that really didn't know how, then spend maybe an hour or two actually playing. It simply became tiresome.

We were always the good guys, heroes, "Children of the Light," whatever. I got together with one of the other "main guys" that played there each weekend & started a little brainstorming session to see what we could do to liven things up. I don't remember who it was, but one of us spouted out (as if by accident) "WHY do we always have to be the good guys? Just once couldn't we be the scourge of the earth?" We sort of laughed about it and moved on, but the seed had been planted. Over the next few days we both started rolling some idea around in our heads.

While hanging out a few days later the topic came up once again. "I have an idea" he says. "But it's something totally different from what we've been doing in the past." Intrigued I asked him to continue. "One guy. A game that is all about one guy. We always try to play these games about an army of good guys taking on the armies of darkness for the sake of the multiverse or something crazy like that. Let's scale it down. Zoom in on that ONE guy that becomes famous -- or in this case... infamous..." Immediately a world of possibilities began buzzing through my head. After about an hour we had collectively created and fleshed out Tak Nightcloud, a low level ruffian of one of the many houses of Calimport.

It was blatantly apparent from the word "go" that Mr. Nightcloud had a wicked dark stream within him unlike anything else we had ever played. Our first few sessions focused around his day to day guild thieving duties. His first assignment was to "shake down" a place that was failing to pay its "protection" money. Tak went in with another member of the guild. Got the owner into his back room (pocketing a corkscrew from the counter as he went), and made it clear that it would be a mistake should the payment not be made in full. The owner turned begrudgingly, slide a panel aside to reveal his little wall safe. Tak sensed something was up, however, and took position out of sight quietly behind the owner's back.

The owner exclaimed "HERE YOU GO!" as he turned with a pistol in hand (we incorporated blackpowder weaponry into the game). The 2nd thief from the guild soon found himself with an extra hole in his chest and a wave of inky blackness washing over his consciousness. Tak quickly sprung into action. Within a round or two he had disarmed the weapon, pinned the owner's arm against the wall, and using the corkscrew he snagged back in the bar area screwed the owner's hand into the wall above his head. After a few quick smacks Tak looted the small wall safe (taking extra time to pocket and hide a little something extra for himself of course).

As he began to leave the dwarven owner spat some obscenity toward Mr. Nightcloud's general direction. So, in typical Nightcloud fashion, Tak calmly walked over, looked the dwarf in the eyes, then ripped the corkscrew straight out of the wall rather than unscrew it.

He was the definition of Neutral Evil. Absolutely cool, calm, collected, and wicked to the core. He was the greatest being in the world. The world was his for the taking.

After many sessions he struck out on his own. Naturally, his methods made him no friends. After many close calls he eventually found himself caught by a posse of sorts. He managed to evade them for quite some time, but eventually succumbed to pure exhaustion. He awoke with a blade in his chest and a boot on his throat.

It would've been the end of him, but an Devil with his own agenda known as Maeve was ready and waiting. In short, Tak signed his soul to the devil in exchange for a second chance at life and a power unlike anything he had ever known -- something Tak simply couldn't refuse.

He awoke still on the ground, but breathing normally. Soon waves of wracking pain flooded over him. He found his body twisting, jerking, breaking, and changing. After what seemed like a lifetime of agony he stood reborn as a half-infernal. He found himself faster and stronger than ever with claws to rend his enemies to shreds and wings to carry him to new heights both physically and metaphorically speaking.

However, he was now bound to a contract with a master hanging over his head. Not something he would ever tolerate. The process left him torn spiritually, however. A sliver of his conscious soul remained intact and separate from his body. And though he was not consciously aware of it (not at first) he found himself being haunted by a twisted, angry version of his former self. Both consciousnesses felt themselves the superior, though the spirit was bound to the body -- a fact that would cause it to twist and grow more full of hate.

Tak's single purpose at that point became to find a way to hunt down Maeve and remove him in an effort to maintain his new, more powerful status yet free himself of any binding obligations..

For months we played on having a great time has Tak began to build a network of contacts, followers, and hunt down artifacts of great power that may assist him in his designs. Along the way his haunting spirit would take great pleasure in possessing the bodies of otherwise good-folk and forcing them to do horrible things. These hauntings often resulted theft, murder, or the *ahem* spreading of the bloodline. More often than not the offspring that resulted from these unions found themselves imbued with various ghostly powers such as the ability to pass through walls, phase out of sight, or see spectral creatures.

We took a three month break at one point. But in total the game lasted about 18 months and finally ended once Tak found, confronted, and defeated Maeve in a game of mental skill, rather than physical force. With his contract negated the Tak body and soul were able to reunite which caused him to ascend from the realm of mortal bonds and laws to become the immortal being he always strove to become.

We decided to end Tak's story in the infinite layers of the abyss. His megalomania grew so great that he felt he could conquer and dominate the infinite layers of the abyss (for only one completely deranged and self-impressed could ever feel themselves capable of controlling an infinite -anything-).

It was a great series and showed us that even the bad guy can be good to play from time to time. To date we've attempted only one other "evil themed" game. We ended it shortly after, however, as it simply didn't compare to the fun we had during the days of Tak Nightcloud, the self-proclaimed "Master of the Infinite Abyss."

[Musouka]

Watching the group sacrifice a corpse of a dead orc to a blue dragon after planting several explosive devices on the body.

This was high level content, yet the dragon would've still been impossible if my group had just attacked the dragon with their best. So they used cunning.

The rogue placed a bunch of blast disks that were set to a timer. Carried a corpse in the darkness of the dragon's cave, while making the required sneak attack checks. Holding the body upright, he made a called shot at the dragon's eye. Lucky 20 scored a critical hit, and the dragon's vision was affected. At the same time he had to make a bluff check to make it seem like the dead orc shot the crossbow.

Then he high tailed it out of there, the dragon ate the orc body, which was freshly killed from a previous encounter in a not so far quarter of the cave. The group anxiously waited, made the damage roll of about 5 of the disks, more than doubling the damage, as it is on the inside of the dragon. It was enough and the blue dragon just flopped over a nice hole just below it's chest.

The DM was quite funny about how he described the foul smell of dragon flesh and orc bits strewn about the cave.

[Vanquishedfo]

Sorry OP but its just crazy to start another thread like this. and general most individuals posts would be lengthy enough to warrant thier own Thread on the RP section. Thats where most go to post very well written tales of various PnP exploits.

[Musouka]

Funny, Historical, stupid, embarrassing, whatever...


Ill post mine after another cup of coffee.

That is one heck of a cup of coffee... what is it? Seaworld's Whale tank filled of Coffee?

[katz]

I was pretty new to PnP. hubby got me into it. we had a bunch of lowbie characters. i think we were all 1st or 2nd. hubby was playing a big beefy fighter-type. can't remember if was a paladin or a fighter. point was, big, lotta HP, lotta damage. most of the rest of the group was a bunch of con-dumped gimps (lol) myself included. anyways, during one encounter, a bugbear shows up, intent on making lunch of us. hubby's char was on the other side of a room or hallway... too far away to make it to us in a single round. bugbear was headed straight for us... but hubby... on the other side of the room... won initiative.

he ran as far as he could in his turn, which got him almost to the bugbear, and his free action at the end was to shout "Hey! Ugly! I heard you had a small set of BALLS! I wanna make a pair of CUFFLINKS out of them!" complete with a little hand gesture reminiscent of adjusting a set of cufflinks. to this day i have no idea how the DM managed to keep a straight face as he RPed the bugbear's response. "Rrrrrrrr?" as it turned to charge the big beefy guy, giving the rest of us an attack of opportunity. after the rest of us began breathing again after laughter overload, we handily wiped the floor with the destracted bugbear and continued on our journey.

but that lives forever in my mind as the funniest thing that has happened to me in a PnP session :D

[cloudyspam]

Just started a new campaign a few weeks ago, so all our characters were quite fresh. We were supposed to all be members of a religious order, apart from my character, a halfling rogue that was hired initially for one job, who stayed with them.
To say our group is dysfunctional would be a slight understatement. Our leader, a half fae archmage, is level-headed, and his plans would usually benefit the group if we actually followed them. Case in point: a recent assignment required us to rescue a fae from slavery, by buying her from an auction in a large warehouse near the centre of town. We had been given enough money to be able to buy her, so Tobias (our mage) suggested that we do that. Tara, our troll ranger, decided to start dancing, because that's what she does. I had sneaked around the back, to rescue the rest of the slaves, because my character had briefly been enslaved as a child. It was all going reasonably smoothly, until several things happened rather fast.
1. Our mul barbarian got into a fight with several guards in the auction house, and killed 3.
2. I bumped into 4 guards, handed them a forged note, stabbed the guard reading it in the groin, killed 2 others, and missed with my knife as the fourth ran away.
3. The troll stopped dancing, and started shooting at approaching guards.
4. After freeing 60 kobold slaves, I accidently angered them, forcing me to flee back towards the auction room with them hot on my heels.
5. The mul punched the auctioneer so hard he exploded.
6. I burst into the room with the kobolds, tried to throw a flash bomb to clear the area, and set the warehouse on fire.

The sad thing was, this was possibly our best attempt at following the original plan. Whilst we rescued the fae, due to the closeness of the neighbouring buildings, we burned down a good half of the town, traumatised the fae so badly she went comatose, and what's more, we got no loot from it whatsoever, and the DM threatened to make the rest of the group self-combust if they caused so much chaos again, seeing as their order is all about law and order :D

[Ugumagre]

Nice story, Cloudyspam :D
Could have happened to our group again.
Playing Kult (great game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kult).
First, as a small introduction, the DM tells us how we loose our jobs, as for the story purpouses we have to be needy.
One of the players does everything possible for not losing the job "I sue my boss, I look for another job..." 30 minutes of gameplay lost, the DM getting impacient...
After a lot of running around (usually because of this one player that wanted to play his role to exactly) we try to get somebody out of the hospital, without making to much noise. Some 5 innocent killed civilians later and the police alarmed, we leave the hospital.

[cloudyspam]

Yeah, all the people in our group are quite tall (second shortest sits at 7 ft, with the largest at 10) besides me, the token tiny person. Invariably, most of our plans take merciless advantage of this fact.

DM: The palisade ahead is too high to jump up and grab the edge, and the sides are too smooth to climb.
Fae: Ok guys, lets pull back and assess the situa-
Troll: Let's throw the halfling!

Or

DM: From the castle ramparts you can see the assassin fleeing on foot in the distance! He's out of bow range, but if you set off now, you may just catch up to him.
Fae: Ok, grab your gear and move out!
Mul: Wait! I took exotic weapon proficiency: Siege weapons last level <loads halfling into ballista>
Me: I could use feather fall
Fae: But- <casts feather fall>
Mul: FIRE IN THE HOLE!
DM: Ok, well you're lucky, and you manage to hit him with your feet as you fly into him.
Me: Don't I get sneak attack damage?
DM: Sneak attack from a ballista?
Me: I'm pretty sure I surprised him, so at the very least I should get initiative. And since I hit him with both my feet, can I roll for both of them?
DM: <sigh> I need a beer.

Yeah... If there's a way to complete the quest which involves tossing/firing/catapulting me, we tend to find it. If it involves mindless destruction we also tend to find that too. Isn't it great being on a holy quest :D