Tag Archives: alleged humor

Workshop

Plot hook: the PCs are hired by a wizard to capture and deliver an ever-weirder list of wildlife and magical constructs. Over time, they learn what he’s using all of these critters for. They’re parts sources. The wizard is a fleshcrafter, taking contracts from other wizards or eccentric wealthy nobles to create the hybrid pets and guardians of their dreams.

He calls his business Build-an-Owlbear.

(Alternate title for extra horror if the PCs are being asked to abduct goblinoids: Build-a-Bugbear.)

Fish Story

This one’s a story with Reverend X.S. Kinesys. Empty chair at the table for a fallen party member.

Some years ago, I was running a short Adventure! arc. The PCs were investigating, as one does. The trail had led them to a dockside warehouse. Rev K’s character decided to scale the outside of the building and peer in through one of the big ol’ industrial skylights.

Unfortunately, some bad rolls led to him plunging through the skylight. Always quick on his feet, Rev invoked Adventure!‘s dramatic editing rules and described landing in a skip of fresh-caught fish rather than plummeting to his death on the cement floor.

I narrated the narrow escape and Rev pulling himself out of the fishpile, flicking scales and slime off his suit. Rev added the detail of removing a wayward fish from his pants pocket.

EB, one of the other players, slid into the conversation with perfect comedic timing: “Huh. I guess you really do wear a codpiece.”

Definitions

It occurred to me recently that I’ve been recording some TTRPG and LARP anecdotes and labeling them “war stories” without actually saying what qualifies as one. I should note that on this blog, everything bearing that label does so in a purely metaphorical sense. But as related to me, long ago, by a co-worker who had war stories in the literal sense:

“A fairy tale begins, long, long ago in a magical land far far away… a war story begins, okay, this is no shit, there we were…”

You’d Think It Would Be Obvious

This is yet another one from a convention LARP in western Kentucky in the late ’90s or early 2000s.

I was playing in this one, not running. The game staff did not share my view of having a coherent plot, so they were allowing players to bring in their own characters rather than providing pre-gens. I chose to run an Assamite (Child of Haqim to you new kids) vizier. I honestly can’t remember if this was before or after I was tapped to do the revised Clanbook: Assamite, but I’d roughed out a lot of the work I wanted to do on the castes a couple of years before that contract, on a late-night drive with Little Sister, so this was definitely a time at which the viziers were front-of-mind for me.

Old man rambling. May yell at cloud next. Anyway…

This LARP’s plot was the predictable and painful “Camarilla and Sabbat vampires put aside their differences in a neutral city run by a ridiculously powerful neutral Methuselah to deal with an existential threat to all vampirekind and/or consensual reality and/or the world.” I’d attached my character to the Camarilla delegation because I figured they’d be less annoying, if also less competent, than the Sabbat. They were glad to have me, because this was still a time when the player base assumed “Assamite == murder machine,” and I certainly wasn’t going to correct them by stating that I was here to study their dumb-ass antics. But I wasn’t completely defenseless.

So we’re wandering down the hall of this hotel when we come face-to-face with the Sabbat bishop and her retinue. Thankfully, by this time, the LARP scene had evolved enough that it was accepted practice to use index cards as item representations, rather than hauling around prop Kalashnikovs and Molotovs and battleaxes and whatnot in public. The bishop is holding a sheaf of index cards in her hand, but doesn’t say anything about them. Okay, whatever, that outfit doesn’t have space for her assets, let alone her inventory.

Dialogue ensues, and things are not too incredibly tense when the bishop’s player suddenly remembers that one of her item cards should be evident to any observer. But how she expresses this… is by brandishing the card toward our faces and announcing, “oh, by the way, this is a five-foot broadsword.”

Okay, then. My hand comes out of my pocket, where I’ve been holding one of my own item cards, and points a 3×5 straight between her eyebrows. “Cool. This is a .357 Magnum.”

Beep Boop Click Click Boom

When The Girl and I can get down to Atlanta for a holiday weekend, I always try to put together a one-shot for her old gaming group, running a system and setting they haven’t experienced before. To minimize churn before we get into playing, I usually provide pre-gens. About ten years ago, the New Year’s game of choice was Fantasy Flight’s edition of Star Wars, and I gave one of the group’s aerospace engineers a character that I’ve always wanted to run myself. This was a droid – an astromech chassis, to be precise – built into this game engine’s Engineer career, Saboteur specialization. Some excerpts from the character sheet:

Motivation: Crime. Built to sabotage and undermine, this droid takes a particular glee in doing this to government and corporate institutions rather than machinery. It’s not malicious on a personal level but it likes to test complex systems to destruction.

Motivation: Betrayal. When this droid attained full sapience, its crime syndicate masters decided to wipe it. This threat overrode its loyalty programming and it now seeks revenge on the underworld culture that was ready to so casually discard it.

Weapons and Armor: ion blaster (built-in); fusion cutter (built-in); 9-slot internal rotary launcher with cold beer x3, fragmentation grenade x3, stun grenade x3; malicious sense of humor

Personal Gear: long-range comlink; macrobinoculars; surveillance tagger; com jammer; electronic lock breaker; tool kit; mini-refrigerator

The player in question looked at this toolbox and just started giggling. Then he proceeded to absolutely own a Hutt-backed casino.

The punchline, though?

Sabotage commando droid built on an astromech chassis. Model number: R2-C4.

Pool Party

Louisville. RiverCon ’94 at the ol’ Executive West hotel. I didn’t personally witness this, but it’s a fixture of Louisville Gaming Mafia folklore.

This con is infamous for several reasons, not the least of which is that it’s the con (and con LARP) at which most of the LGM met for the first time. Like many LARPs of its day night, the Vampire LARP issued badges separately from the con’s membership badges. Regardless of the status of your con badge, if you were wearing your LARP badge, you were considered to be in character and in play.

You will see this material again.

Also, like many LARPs of its day night, this con featured significant power creep and inattention to consequences. One of the PCs was one Father Drake, a vampire hunter with True Faith. For audiences who may be unfamiliar with Vampire: The Masquerade, the capitalization indicates that the wielder is capable of faith-based supernatural effects.

We shall cut, for a moment, to the players running our game’s Sabbat pack – effectively, semi-feral nomadic vampires who reject human morality and any pretense of clinging to their own humanity (ref: The Lost Boys, Near Dark). The players decided that since the hotel had a perfectly usable pool and the game had slowed down, they may as well take a dip. Alcohol may have been involved.

For the sake of expedience, many LARPers – including several of our Sabbat players – had attached their LARP badges to their con badges’ lanyards or holders. Thus, it so transpired that the Sabbat pack was having a (perhaps unintentional, but again, alcohol may have been involved) pool party in character.

There our vampires were, minding their own business, when Father Drake’s player came sauntering down the Executive West’s main hallway. He glanced through the windows overlooking the pool desk and saw… opportunity. Quickly, he affixed his own LARP badge and collared a Storyteller.

Around and in the pool, the Sabbat players were having a grand old time. Several were in the pool as Father Drake approached, unnoticed, trailed by a Storyteller whose smirk could best be interpreted as yo, Caine, check this shit out – you are about to see some shenanigans, fangboy.

One of the players climbed onto the diving board.

Father Drake looked left. Looked right. Saw no one observing him.

The player strutted out to the end of the board.

Father Drake knelt poolside.

One bounce.

Father Drake placed his hand in the water.

A second bounce.

Father Drake began chanting in Latin.

A third bounce.

Father Drake completed his invocation, stood, and smiled.

The player launched on a gentle arc and happened to glance toward the side of the pool. Recognized the clerical collar. Had just enough time for regret, and perhaps the beginnings of a Wile E. Coyote-esque air-clawing motion, vainly attempting to halt his ballistic plunge.

And that’s when the screaming started.

I love it when a coterie comes together.

In 1872, a crack team of archons was sentenced to destruction by the Ventrue Justicar for a crime they didn’t commit. These Kindred promptly escaped from a maximum-security conclave to the Anarch Free State. Today, still wanted by the Camarilla, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem… if no one else can help… and if you can find them… maybe you can hire… The V-Team.

Phantom

For Star Wars (any system, but preferably Fantasy Flight’s):

This pitch is for is an R2-series astromech droid starfighter pilot.

Yes, pilot. He flies an X-Wing or Y-Wing from the astromech socket. His organic partner was killed by a cockpit hit. He got the bird back to base at a time when the situation was so desperate that someone in authority let him keep flying. He’s steam-cleaned the gore out of the cockpit but otherwise left it gutted by the turbolaser hit (hey, not running life support means more power budget for shields). The starfighter is now painted in a monochrome version of the standard Rebel Alliance palette to make it look like an unmanned ghost fighter.

While the concept is wholly playable, the droid’s designation is the joke:

R2-F4.