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.