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RPG Gaming

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Just out of curiosity, does anybody here do pen-and-paper RPG gamery? I'm currently planning a science-fiction themed campaign using the BeSM d20 rules.

I guess a topic to start off with - what is the most ridiculous improvisation you've ever seen a GM do in a campaign?

For example, I once had a player who loved to check for traps where there weren't any. She kept insisting on searching for them even in empty hallways, so I decided to humor her and made a really obvious bear trap. And when she tried to activate it with a bullet, I had it explode like a land mine just to annoy her. It was fun. :)

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I don't understand the rule of the DM, Do you have set ground rules or can you just make shit up as you go along?

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 (Edited)

There are rules for how the game works, and usually the DM carefully plans the major events of the session in advance...

But you can also just make random crap up as you go along, if you wish.

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Darth Chaltab said:

For example, I once had a player who loved to check for traps where there weren't any. She kept insisting on searching for them even in empty hallways, so I decided to humor her and made a really obvious bear trap. And when she tried to activate it with a bullet, I had it explode like a land mine just to annoy her. It was fun. :)

One of my friends use to do stuff like this all the time whenever we played.  We once found what appeared to be a well in the middle of the desert (think of a fully bricked water well).  He insisted that there had to be something weird/bad about it and attempted to use every skill he had to discover what it was.  He was finally forced to give up as the rest of the players started moving on in the adventure.  The GM never made anything bad happen with it either.  It was just there to be there.

 

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At the risk of sounding like a really lousy nerd, I just can't imagine enjoying things like this.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Ah, my brief but memorable forays into RPG. Did it for the better part of two years. Some things stand out:

- One guy had a character name that was spelled something like: FLWUISNFODKANMTRGHSHNWTQAOPDJTGFECVK (or even longer) and he pronounced that name, "L".

- One guy had a character who used primarily psi-based attacks. The character's name? "Psionicus". It's like naming a white cat "Whitey".

- One GM or DM or whatever ran C'thulu games all the time. The thrust of those games was that you and your party are college students at Miskatonic University and you'd always encounter badass super natural demons. Well, after one or two games it was quickly obvious that your character had to have a high gun skill. This was boring to me that every single fucking game came down to gunplay, so when we started a new campaign, I created a character who was a Croatian grandmaster of chess, complete with annoying accent and no gun skills to speak of. I was in serious danger in every game and my accent (this is role-playing, after all) got on the nerves of one of my friends. This character was by far my favorite to play. After all, think of real life - how many random groups of people are populated entirely by expert marksman?

- The same guy who got annoyed by my accent decided to run his own game. Not to be a DM of some established game, mind you - I mean, his. Own. Game. He had been playing for all of a month or two and he thought he could run a game, just like that. He spun this little sci-fi tale in which the first major battle featured us in our ship against...the "Space Tank".

I wish I was making that up.

He showed us a picture of this drawing he made of the Space Tank; I wish I could show this thing to you guys. It was hysterically bad. Like Homer Simpson's winning entry in the "Design The New Power Plant Contest" - just awful, and hilariously so. And what's more, this Space Tank was basically invincible, yet we were supposed to destroy it in our first fucking fight. After thirty minutes had passed and we hadn't made a dent in it, he sheepishly said, "Ah, fuck it, y'all blew it up. Anyway, on to the next planet..."

He hadn't sufficiently allowed for the twists and turns players can spring on a DM. Early in that game, my character's ship was ordered to a stop by the authorities for boarding. They suspected that we had contraband on board, which we did. My character, who relied on talking his way out of situations, invited them to come on board and inspect. This completely knocked the DM for a loop. After the game he explained, "You were supposed to try and run to start a fight." But the last thing my character wanted to do was look suspicious, and what is less suspicious than welcoming and inviting the authorities in?

- Same game. The DM got a little better at running a game, and he separated me and my friend in adjacent holding cells. I was alone in mine, but my friend had a cellmate. This cellmate was one of those classic prison assholes, calling my friend bitch and ordering him around. This was supposed to lead to a story change, but my friend seemed legitimately frightened by the events. He just would not take the bait, no matter what the asshole cellmate said to him. I urged him to fight the guy but he just wouldn't. It was weird. He was really into it, and therefore paralyzed into not taking any action.

Sorry for the long reminisce.

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I played D&D 3rd Edition my last couple years of college, and then moved on to variations of 3.5 Edition for a couple years.  Had a couple friend who were really good DMs (what amounts to the storyteller/god of the game).  My roommate was known for his harsh tactics and insane attention to detail.  He spent an entire summer building a whole world, then ran probably 7 or 8 of us through it.  It was crazy.  Mine was the only character to live the whole way through.

Early this year, I decided that since I couldn't find anyone to play with, I would DM.  So I bought the 4th Edition Core Rulebooks and "Keep on the Shadowfell", a premade adventure meant to introduce people to the mechanics.  My wife, one of her friends, and her friend's husband all play, so I have to both DM and play at least one non-player character to make the fights more even (I made a dumb fighter who wouldn't be able to spoil the story).  We just finished "Keep" and I'm about to start them on "Thunderspire Labrinyth", the next premade adventure as I'm not ready yet to create my own.  I am modifying "Thunderspire" a bit, giving it some more coherency and a bit tighter plot.

It's fun, but I miss just playing.  It's hard to DM because if people aren't having fun, its no one's fault but your own!

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Played some D&D in middle school. Stopped in high school for football and chasing girls.

After TPM came out, it was summer vacation from college, and me and the old gang spent a month playing Star Wars RPG in my folks' garage pretty much every afternoon. It was a golden time.

I was the DM and we basically did plots from old Marvel Star Wars comics, because none of my pals had read them.