Things I've learned in gaming

[Cynical Cat]

Our new metaphor for brutal mind control in Vampire: The Masquerade?

The hypnotoad.

[SirNitram]

The more harmless, simple and unthreatening Martin's character is, the more horribly he's able to introduce apocalypse on a large scale. If he wears glasses, run for your life. If he's got glasses he hand made and a love of poetry, pray for a swift, merciful death.

[Cynical Cat]

For an Astartes, captured prisoners are not prisoners, they are loot. Example (Magnus): "I don't see a Water Caste prisoner, I see a potion of speak Tau."

[frigidmagi]

So I've been running a tabletop game of Monster Hunter, set in the modern day the high concept is that monsters are real and the government is covering it up. All the players are the survivors of monster attacks recruited by a private company to kill bad things for much money. They're stationed in Detroit. Why? Lots of reasons, but mainly because I am a bad man.

Well in the first session, the players killed a bunch of zombies being led by a ghoul (who are sapient, descendant from degenerate humans who split off from us before the pyramids were raised). This ghoul had friends, see all the ghouls in Detroit are crypts. In the second session, new players come in so they meet up at the airport and go to their mentor's house Caesar Hamil (A half white, half Mexican veteran monster hunter who lost a chunk of his leg in the business). While they're all palling around and drinking beers, they hear a car backfire in the driveway, realizing that they had not in fact ordered a pizza, Sean one of my players goes up to the door and opens it... To find a Ghoul duo wielding pistols, Sean gets knocked on his ass in the resulting gun play. The Ghouls all open up, bullets slamming through walls and windows and the players open up right back, mostly trying to shot through the doorway... Where Sean is sitting, he gets shot by his own team twice. Once by Jack using a Browning Automatic Rifle (man that hurt). (Moral? Don't stand in front of your party members in a gunfight).

Well they drive the ghouls off, and despite flopping around in a pool of his own blood, Sean gets the car's license number. Chris loots the bodies and finds a business card, for Spearmint Rhino... Which is a strip club. Guess where all the boys want to go right?

Well they get in there after patching up Sean, who walks right up to the bar and orders and I quote "Give me the biggest, thickest bottle you have!" Jack jumps in, pulls Sean away from the bar and orders expensive brandy and vodka for bottle service to their table (for those who don't know bottle service is basically bring the bottle to me and go). This attracts some "off duty" strippers smelling cash. Chris gets Jack and Sean lap dances (the other 2 players Adam and Ben were carrying concealed pistols and felt lap dances were a bit risky). At this point Ben notices that there are private rooms in the back of the club and two of them have large muscled men in suits with shoulder bulges in front of them. He goes to the bar to get info.

Meanwhile Sean tries to get info out of his dancer with this gem "So... Huh, seen any armed men around here lately?" It goes about as well as one could hope with the dancer offering directions to a gay bar. Jack does better but due to some bad rolls, the dancer thinks he's fishing for a date and gives him her phone number. Ben has discovered that the big men in suits do not work for the club and that in one of the rooms there is a skinny overdressed white boy who likes to pinch and slap the dancers. The girls do not care for it and have to be more or less bribed and blackmailed to go in there.

Chris has gotten tired of sending the boys out to do a man's job. So he goes and gets his own damn lap dance and buys a bottle of the good stuff splitting it with the stripper and chatting her up, starting with an apology for Sean. He's told "Oh that's not even the strangest thing today." Upon prying a bit, he finds out that she and the others performed the other night for what she was sure was a bunch of guys for a hospital ward with a powerful benefactor (who basically rented the entire club for a night) they all had yellowed skin, bad teeth, no hair, sharp nails and smelled awful (ghouls!). Chris gets the information to contact the manager figuring he can find out from him who rented the club that night. At this point Adam frusrated decides to try and get Sean to act crazy(er) so he can make a run for one of the rooms. The rest of the players agree it's time to cut and run at this point (moral, know when to leave)

The next day Caesar tells them that he has a meeting with his contacts and they should come but they have to play cool. The players all agree this is no problem (famous last words). They pull into an abandoned neighborhood, with only crack addicts about. Caesar takes them to a large house with a walled off backyard. He goes in and they hear barking. Caesar calls them in and they come in and find a low building made of concrete cinder blocks with a duo of 3 headed dogs chained in it. The players do a double take and then almost lose their shit.

Because that's when a two foot tall man with a red concial had in a white wife beater and small sawn off jeans comes out. Caesar is his homie. There's some high fiving and chatting before they go in, down a ladder and into a 5'5 tunnel lit with Christmas lights, at the end of the tunnel there's a round green door. With a gnome in a muscle shirt, shaven head and a sawn off shotgun standing guard. At this point Sean makes a Sanata's workshop joke and we learn that a man can make a real honest sounding apology with a shotgun shoved in his balls.

They're brought into the main room, a large earthern chamber, with doll funture scattered around and a low homemade bar. Gnomes are pumping (10 to 20 pound) weights, drinking booze, listening to rap and playing cards. They're led up to the Head Gnome, who has enough rings and necklaces to compete with Mr. T, a mouthful of gold teeth and gold frame sunglasses. He greets Caesar like an old friend and they down to business. See gnomes can turn invisible, see through illusions and smell shapeshifters. This makes them great spies and counter spies. Hence Caesar hiring them to sniff out all the ghouls hiding places. The Gnomes will do it for some cash, to quote the head gnome "I'm a hustler my man, it's all about the Benjamen's!"

This is when Sean starts whistling it's a small world after all.

The gnomes go apeshit and Caesar is just barely able to calm them down.

This is when Ben (not CT) leans over to Sean and says "Thank God, they didn't hear you compare them to Keebler Elves" The Gnomes hear that and we're back to apeshit. They start screaming "THUNDERDOME! THUNDERDOME! THUNDERDOME!"

Caesar keeps it from being to the death but Sean has to go barehands with a half dozen gnomes, the ring is set up and... Sean loses Int. One gnome runs up to him drops to his knees and alley ops the next gnome up, who promptly dropkicks Sean in the face. It goes downhill for him from there.

Sean manages to to punt one out of the ring, but the next gnome leaps up and bites a chunk out of his ear Mike Tyson style. Sean elbows that one and boots him. And then gets hammered in the balls. As he's sitting there groaning from his balls being knocked around... I roll a crit for the last gnome (in savage worlds that gives you extra damage dice, which means you can be killed in one crit). I roll the damage... Maxed out.

Flavor text:
"As you are bent over clutching at your now ruined family jewels, the last gnome in the party struts over to you and almost gently tilts your chin up with his left and with his right... He does a huge wind up and a massive swing. You feel an explosion on your chin and the last sound you hear is the one of your head slamming into the ground."

The session ends with the players dragging Seans knocked out ass out by his ankles while the gnomes go crazy with triumph. The players loved it.

Moral of the story? Just cause my NPC buys his shoes in the baby section doesn't mean he can't knock you the fuck out!

[Norseman]

Talk about short tempers! This is practically Mannekin Pissed Off territory, they'll fight at the drop of a halfling.

[B4UTRUST]

Talk about short tempers! This is practically Mannekin Pissed Off territory, they'll fight at the drop of a halfling.

You know, it's little things like those sort of jokes that will get a man killed. It sounded like it was a pretty short fight though. I think they kind of overreacted though, that their anger dwarfed their common sense. Maybe they just weren't big enough to take a joke or two. But in the long run I think that's a pretty small flaw overall.

[frigidmagi]

There's a place for people like you two..

THUNDERDOME!

[JimmyTheCannon]

The level 2 Sorcerer in the party should NOT be the one opening things that are making strange noises.

[Dark Silver]

Actually, he's the perfect one to be opening those things. Level 2 Sorcerer's are a dime a dozen. But where are going to find a level 3 rogue?

[frigidmagi]

Same place you find any level rogue, down in the bad part of town. Hell just grab a street kid and offer him job, it's not like you're actually cutting his life expectancy. Fuck, a street kid might live longer with an adventuring party then on the streets of your average DnD city.

[JimmyTheCannon]

Yeah, well, I thought it was a good idea, too... until the water elemental I'd freed one-shotted me with a crit.

[frigidmagi]

For some reasons the various genies, spirits, elementals, demons and angels we free from chests, bottles, lamps and a camel (long story) are never grateful. It's never hey thanks for opening that lid I was really cramping up. It's always "ARRRRRGGGHHH YOU FREED ME FROM A SMALL SPACE NOW YOU DIE!"

[White Haven]

Another chapter in my ongoing saga of trying and nearly succeeding to horribly, horribly kill Mr. Coffee's 40k character, aided and abetted by Mr. Coffee himself habitually taking point. To be fair, he's a tough motherfucker these days, but there are times when that just...doesn't help. So we're in a series of tunnels in our Rogue Trader game, trying to chase down some Dark Eldar. I'm on my Sneaky Commando character, along with his Sneaky Commando squad, and we've caught up enough that we can hear their footsteps, but judging by what we're hearing they can hear us too. Our assault elements are all buttoned up, so I stand up and jack a stun gas grenade down the tunnel as I call for a storm. They know they're being followed, so I don't want to give them any more time to prep.

Turns out they had enough.

Our storm elements go charging down the tunnel, past my Sneaky but Lightly-Armored Bastards. Coffee's Inquisitorial Interrogator in full power-armour takes point. Runs into a tripwire. Rolls a 98 (oh dear god bad) on a check to avoid it. The tripwire is linked to a filament grenade. One cloud of monowire and a bursting charge later, and Coffee has taken 23 damage past power-armour and toughness. He has 24 wounds. He wisely sits the fuck down and lets everyone else carry the charge.

The lesson here, is either don't take point, or don't be Mr. Coffee.

Not as bad as the last time he almost died, but the last time it was at least very nearly a Heroic Sacrifice involving a holy relic sack of grenades and melta charges being used as a melee weapon against a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch.

Ever wonder why Inquisitors have so many augmentic limbs?

[frigidmagi]

Okay this happened today in the Supers Game from Hell. The boys took the transcontintental railroad from New Orleans through the Gator Republic, heading up to Little Rock. Sadly the train was jumped by bandits. At this point our "heroes" jumped into action. The group was as follows:

Charles X: A one armed psychic from Haiti who fled to North America after a fight a voodoo priest went bad.
Dr. Merlin: An inventor, the man who rallied the group and leads them towards the campaign objective, the semi-mythical city of Glimmer.
Earl: A good old boy, never meant any harm, from the hills of Appalachia. A 10 foot tall, impossibly powerful hulk of an illiterate (possibly mentally retarded) sword swinging monster.
Gummer: A teleporting peasant from Georgia who can also summon a damaging field. Also illiterate and stupid as hell (both Gummer and Earl have the lowest intel score a human can have in this game system).

Earl leaps into action stopping short of a trio who are kidnapping a very well dressed young lady who is screaming her head off. The biggest of the group a 7 foot tall monster (who does not impress Earl) loads and fires a recoilless rifle into Earl's chest... And does no damage (I rolled poorly...). The bandits on the roof, in the train car (the luxury car!) and on the also open fire but submachine guns are simply too wussy to hurt Earl, the Appalachian Murder Machine. At this point Gummer teleports in and stabs to death a bandit on the roof top (causing Doc Merlin to yell in protest, he sees himself as a hero and heroes don't kill!) and activates his damage field, which is too small to hit the other rooftop bandit. But does reach through the roof of the railroad car...

This is where Charles runs throwing a large table (tk) into a bandit, who was already suffering from the damage field and takes a hit himself. Meanwhile the innocent bystanders on the train are dropping like flies. Doc Merlin runs in but doesn't enter the train. The bad guys go again, with the big guy firing the recoilless rifle and missing (at this point I threw the dice back into my bag cursing and traded them out) while the other bandits did no real damage. Earl goes for a swing only to be parryed by the enemy heavy (who wrecked his Recoilless rifle, adios beautiful, you died before your time!). Gummer teleports behind the next guy (hitting even more people in the train with the damage field) and stabs him to death. Doc Merlin enters the car and start rendering medical aide to try and keep the innocent deaths down. He saves 7 out of the 11 passengers.

Charles has to spend the turn shaken. Due to friendly fire.

The enemy heavy attempts to melee Earl and swiftly learns that was a horrible, horrible mistake. The splatter went maybe 20 feet there. But the two remaining bandits have fled with their wealthy, pretty abductee! Gummer decides to follow but the bandits have a good head start and are fleeing through heavy swamp. Gummer is able to track them but runs face first into an ambush, which he escapes from easily because you know... teleporting.

Meanwhile, at the train, Doc Merlin works feverishly to heal up Charles and the remaining passengers who were hit by the damage field, leaving Good Old Earl alone with the first recoilless rifle he's ever seen. Deciding he's never seen a gun his size before, he's gonna try and shot it. Despite having bent the barrel. He loads a shell that could kill WWII tanks and the rifle... explodes. Earl is fine but the sharpel tears through the train, almost killing Doc Merlin and Charles and the train passengers right there (I couldn't stop laughing for a good 5 minutes). There's alot of screaming, burning bennies and healing rolls to avoid death and give Earl a lecture he won't forget for a good half an hour!

Luckly Gummy returns! And tells his teammates he can lead them to the bandit camp and he does! After getting lost for an hour and making enough noise to alert them (I got to do an ambush YAY!). They find a themselves on a series of low, heavily grown over islands surrounded by almost black marshy water. The islands have bridges linking them together, frail looking ones (I had these bobby traped so I could drop PCs into the water for happy fun times!). On the biggest island was a bonfire and... Hey isn't that the girl?

Sadly they managed to convince Earl not to go running in. Instead Charles TKed the hogtied girl in a dress and began to hover over to them while Gummy teleported to another island to keep them covered with his firearm. That's when I sprung the ambush. A hail of gunfire did... DICK ALL (Much cursing here). But there was a light in the darkness! Gummy had chosen his hiding spot... poorly and a giant ManGator Abomination of nature reared out of the water and slammed his jaws around Gummy tasty, tasty flesh! Knocking Gummy down to a single wound.

Earl, the Teetotaler Thrasher, screaming about how he's gonna have new fancy boots. Leaps into action bashing it with his greatsword of doom... And almost killed my precious gator! I spent a benny and frantically rolled to save the Gator (I managed to roll damn well and soak all the wounds, not a dent on my boy!). Gummy teleported back to the group covered in his own blood and gator spit. While Doc Merlin and Charles fought for his lives against the bandits and did a damn good job of it to (fucking swamp rats can't do anything right!). The Gator struck back at Earl drawing blood (he's bleeds! The Titan bleeds! He's immune to anti-tank weapons but not the fangs of fury!). Earl stumbles back and does an attack straight from anime (note to self, monitor group's viewings of entertainment) and again scores enough to kill the Gator (who the fuck rolls a 32 on 5 dice! I hate the max reroll rule! HATE!) again I spend a benny and... The Gator dies. With Earl loose the bandits flee for their leaves (they're uneducated swamp rat bandits, not idiots) and the group withdraws, with Earl dragging the Gator man's body chattering about boots...

What I learned: If I tapped them fast these knuckleheads will do more damage to each other by accident then I will on purpose.

What they learned: Earl must never be left without adult supervision. Also never stand in front of Earl in a fight... Ever.

[Cynical Cat]

In Eclipse Phase combat "You fly, you die."

[Lys]

[Hotfoot]

Not even Mordred is immune to a sneak attack by a Krinos Ragabash wielding Excalibur.

[White Haven]

Every Inquisitorial warband will, without fail, run into shit that should be handled by some OTHER Ordo. Every. Damned. Time.

Fuck's sake, we're Ordo Xenos, what is all this warpcraft and heresy bullshit!?

[Cynical Cat]

Every Inquisitorial warband will, without fail, run into shit that should be handled by some OTHER Ordo. Every. Damned. Time.

Fuck's sake, we're Ordo Xenos, what is all this warpcraft and heresy bullshit!?

It's really impolite of them, but Heretics don't go around wearing labels for easy identification and assignment of proper investigators. The fuckers also cross-polinate so before you know it you're dealing with deviant heretics cutting deals with chaos worshiping xenos for techniques that will allow them to summon a demon horde. Inconsiderate fuckers.

[White Haven]

It's especially irritating for my Administratum character. No no, you're outside my jurisdiction, I'm going to have to transfer you to the proper department. Please hold for the Ordo Hereticus.

[Karrick]

It's especially irritating for my Administratum character. No no, you're outside my jurisdiction, I'm going to have to transfer you to the proper department. Please hold for the Ordo Hereticus.

That honestly sounds like punishment enough because you just know, this being the Imperium, that the person you transfer them to is going to have a jurisdictional complaint about it and they will transfer the prisoner to someone else and it will happen again and again. In the grim darkness of the far future there is only... paperwork.