While journeying through the woods of Kartakass,
the party heard movement one afternoon and spotted a fur covered creature
walking upright. Having recently been in a rather nasty little fight
with a wolfwere, they fired at the figure with bows and silver arrows, dropping
it. Upon investigation, they discovered it was a man wearing a wolfskin
cloak, not uncommon in medieval times. They buried the poor sod, but
not before taking his cloak and a plain gold band that was on one of his
fingers, despite the Paladin's protests.
The next village they came to, they saved it
from a predatory Hungry Dead (Some dragon issue I can't remember), and somehow
ended up back in the Forgotten Realms. Two adventures later they were
sucked back into Ravenloft to discover that fifteen years had passed.
A few adventures went by, and the Paladin got horribly devoured by a pack
of Hungry Dead.
Then, while they were burying the Paladin's mortal
remains, a crossbow bolt drove through the forehead of the wizard wearing
the wolfskin cloak. The crossbowman was later revealed to be a woman,
and deadly blade slinger who killed two party members at once, and sniped
down a total of five of them with a magical crossbow.
Eventually the party discovered that the woman
had originally come from the village they saved from the hungry dead, and
the man they had slain had been her husband. The shock of losing her
husband had caused the young woman to miscarry thier daughter. She
swore fealty to an undead knight of great power who brought life and maturity
to the dead infant, and trained them both for vengeance, on a vow of eternal
servitude. When the party fouled up his scheme, he got involved, and
through the woman who had hunted them, and served him, he knew everything
about them.
I like to include other players and objects
in my games. "I'm gonna look out the window.' is too vauge. Anway,
a PC was running solo, chasing Jean Tarrascone, also known as Plaything, and
Plaything had entered a room, the only exit a window with curtians blowing
gently in a breeze. We stopped for a second, and I sent the player
out of the room, and did some quick instructions. When I called him
back in, there was a missing player and the Cabbage Patch Doll we were using
for Plaything (My wife stepped out of the kitchen and threw it on a player
while me and the player were role-playing him talking to a local tough outside
a tavern) was missing.
"All right, show me how you're going to look
out the window." I told him. He slowly looked around the room, at the
other grinning players, the window with the curtians stirring gently in the
Texas summer breeze.
"Fuck that. I'm going back to the Inn."
he grumbled, taking his seat.
Discretion can be the better part of valor.
The party ditched all their cold weather equipment
and did not bother to go pick it up while chasing a murderer into the sandy
wastes of Har-Akir. When they had captured the killer, who had passed
out from heat stroke, and revived him, they marched right by their own equipment
and dead mounts, and into the teeth of a Lamordian blizzard.
They froze to death, the last ten feet from
the porch of an inn.
Warned repeatedly not go ANYWHERE alone, a
party member saw a beautiful maiden walking through a field at dusk, while
the rest of the party was passed out from exhaustion after a rather strenous
fight with a Class III specter known as Multha-Sek. He was on guard
duty, no one else was awake, and despite my prohibition, he had taken a chaotic
evil character so he could do what he damn well pleased. And he wanted
to do something to the bronze skinned goddess who had moved through the grass,
the sun shining from her golden hair that was tied with a blue ribbon that
was held by silver clip that resembled a bear trap.
Several of the players looked worried, and one
clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from making noise, but in all, no one
warned this player of the consequences they all saw coming.
He left his comrades unguarded and stalked the
woman, waiting until the began stripping naked to bathe. When she was
tottally nude, and preparing to bathe, he lept from the bushes, sword drawn,
and ordered the woman to lie down with her legs spread. The woman assured
him that he did not want to do this, but he leered and said he did.
I shrugged and told him; "OK, but you asked for it." He laughed, and
said that he was going to detect undead. I told him no undead, then
he used his psionic wild talent of Aura Reading to see her alignment.
I told him he could see Chaotic.
With a grin at outsmarting me, this belligerent
person had his character put his blade to the womans throat tie her down securely
with silk rope, tightening it till it drew blood. I shook my head.
No need to roll for a Powers Check, I knew what was going to happen, and
a Powers Check was a moot point in a moment.
Upon first insertion for the anal stage of what
was probably going to be a total rape, he learned why the woman wore a silver
bear trap in her hair. There was a double clang, and one meaty thunk,
and the PC was dead.
Silver Maids are the spirits of deceased rape
victims. When someone tries to rape them, all bodily orifices turn
into toothed maws, usually killing the rapist.
Oh well. I told him to pack his shit and
don't come back until he was ready to try following the rules and playing
someone that wasn't stolen from my casting call. One player suggested,
rather nastily, that he seek professional help. He never did return, and
I heard he went on to play Vampyre the Masquerade. Oh well, no big
loss as far as I'm concerned.
While tracking
a rather nasty murderer, a player told me that his character was going to
look out the window. Grinning, I sent him into the bathroom and set
it up. When I called the player out, the window was open, the drapes
stirring in the Texas breeze, and I told him to look out the window just
like his character would. I put a bowl on his head, a wooden spoon
in one hand and the lid to my wife's big kettle in his other hand and told
him to go to it. With a grin he held the bowl with the spoon and leaned
out the window, looking first left, then right. When he looked right
he screamed "Oh shit!" and jerked as a loud phht sounded, the bowl dropping
onto my lawn and he screamed. He jerked back into room, without lid,
spoon or bowl, to reveal red dripping down his forehead.
I had put a player outside with a paintball gun
and red paintballs standing next to the wall, by the corner, waiting.
I had rolled a natural 20 beforehand, but figured I'd let my friend's skill
decide where the shot hit.
Dead center. His characters Int dropped
from 15 to 4, making him dumber than a kobold. An icepack and an apology
later, he found the whole thing funny, admitting it was his own fault that
the killer had tagged him with the crossbow from his own horses packs.
One night, I had it all set up. The
3 players I had targeted were sitting together on the sectional couch, and
the game had been underway. They were in a forest hunting a Mountain
Loup-Garou on the slopes of Mt. Balinok, when the heard some rustling in the
bushes. They told me they were going to prepare themselves and watch
the bushes (They were newbies to Ravenloft, but not AD&D, and had all
started playing recently, even though we had all known each other a couple
years). I leaned forward and kicked the stuffed bunny out from under
the coffee table.
"You see a rabbit come out of the bushes."
I sighed.
"RAARRRGGHHH!!!" a friend of mine howled, leaping
out from the gap between the middle bend of the sectional couch, throwing
aside the tablecloth hiding him, his face hidden by a wereworlf mask and
clawed and furred werewolf paws on. Now my friend is a long armed dude,
and he grabbed all three of them. Ever see an Army Ranger piss his
pants? These guys lost it, I mean freaked. One wet himself, one
ran screaming, and the female fainted.
Once everyone calmed down, and we found out
that the Ranger had a childhood fear of wolfmen stemming from an unfortunate
Halloween joke gone wrong, we all agreed only the guy that bolted out of the
house and still hadn't come back was left alive. We found out later
he ran nearly two miles (Hey, he could do the two mile in 13:10 minutes during
a PT test, and that time, he was real motivated), then walked back,
stopping at the AM/PM for a beer to calm down. He was a bit paraniod
about where he sat for about a month.
OK, you may have noticed, we had two PC's
with firearms, one was Virgil, the other-Damascus. While many DM's might
figure that two Navy Colt .45's, a Winchester .30-.30 Lever Action, and a
pair of shotguns might be unbalancing to the campaign (my players were experienced
DM's so they knew what I'd put up with), I knew this was no problem.
hhehhehehe The Party rode into town, dressed to be noticed, hunting
Ralts and Javelle, who were escaping with an Ivory Virgin. The last
time this town was visited, the party saved the village from some Loup-Lefaux
(Werewolf/Dopplegangers) so the party figured they would have no problems.
Wrong.
Standing in the middle of the road into town
was a guy in Old West gear, cowboy hat shading his face, and his stance showing
he wanted trouble.
"Virgil! You lowdown cowardly polecat,
I'm calling you out!" the figure intoned in a deep, gravelly voice,"My name
is Charles McDairn, and it's time to find out which one of us is faster."
The player grinned, and the PC climbed off the horse, throwing back his Sarape
to reveal matching pistols. The sun was beating down as the two squared
off at about 25 feet, a difficult range with the poor quality firearms they
were packing.
The draw occured, and Virgil proved much faster
than the menacing figure. Bang, Bang. Two shots, and the figure's
head jerked back, the cowboy hat flying back as Charles McDairn hit the ground.
The player grinned, thinking he had a shot at more ammo, and the PC went
walking toward his downed foe. I had another player lay on the floor,
a curling iron in one hand, and a cap gun in the other, having already been
briefed, my cowboy hat partially shielding his face. Virgil's player
held two capguns in his hands as he walked up to the 'corpse'.
Ever seen Halloween's Michael Myers do that
sit up move? That player could emulate it perfectly. We had put
some Avon pore cleansing stuff on his face, wait till it dried, then tugged
it loose, putting fake blood in the pockets, so the left side of his face
looked hideos. Virgil's Player screamed and dropped the cap pistols,
jumping back, and the 'corpse' shot the cap gun three times. Everyone
began busting up laughing, and we went back to the table, having revealed
Charles McDairn was some kind of undead Old West bandit. Virgil got
plugged pretty bad, but managed to survive. That was the last time
he just walked up to a body. As a sideline, Charles McDairn bugged
Virgil and Damascus forever.
It was a perfect
PC, not a score under 15, and max hit points. Pretty good for not hearing
a single die being rolled on a hard wood table. With a grin I handed
the player back the character, and told him to go ahead and use the levels
in his level pool. I checked my notes and lied, telling him he could
use a maximum of seven of his fourteen levels left in his pool. Voila,
mister perfect, the 7th level cleric was born.
A few adventures later, this guy was racked,
and the other players were getting a might bit testy about the whole thing.
+4 field plate, +3 shield, +3 mace and a Pearl of Power. He was a walking
tank, with, surprise surprise, nearly maximum hit points, and had some how
aquired nearly three times the experience of the rest of party, and over
triple what I had recorded for the character. (Isn't it interesting
how some people auitomatically assume a DM is both blind and metally defiecient,
like we're baseball umpires or something)
Now came the trigger. The party was trapped
in a room, the walls closing in, and six daggers for the seven characters.
Our subject the cleric grabbed on up with the players customary "One of them's
mine!" battle cry. The Paladin shrugged and said he'd go without.
The lights go out, there is a hideous scream,
and the lights return to show a slight misting of blood on the marble floor
where the Paladin had been standing, and a few chips of white enamel from
his armor. Now on the table sat 5 glass rings, and six characters.
The Cleric bashed the theif over the head and took the ring the thief clutched.
Click. AAAAHHHH!!!! A single drop
of blood the size of a dime, and two strands of hair the color of the thiefs.
Now 4 feathers, 5 characters. Plock, the cleric slashes open the wizard
with a crit (no surprise, it was his 12th for the night, I used to keep track)
and the wizard's fingers are chopped off, and the cleric now holds a feather,
a glass ring and a common iron dagger.
Click AAAAHHHHH!!!! A tiny charred
piece of cloth the color of the mages robe. Now there are three gold
coins, four PC's. The warrior draws his blade, but get's hit with a
blade barrier and reels away from the table. The cleric has a coin,
the psionist has a coin, and the other cleric has a coin. The Warrior
does not.
"Go to hell." the player snarls, "I'm gonna
go buy soda." He grabs his car keys and heads out the door. If he hadn't
left his gaming stuff, I would have figured he was gone for good.
Click. AAAAAHHHH!!!! A scrap of
theWarrior's beard, and a bent buckle from his pack is all that remains, along
with a slight misting of blood. Now there are two black stones, and
three PC's. The other cleric grabs a stone and turns to bash the subject
cleric, only to catch the mace right in the mouth. Crit (of course)
and she's down and drooling teeth and blood. The psionist picks one
up and glares at the cleric.
"Someday you'll pay for this." the psionist growls,
setting his hand on the butt of his Navy Colt he had picked up in Masque
of the Red Death.
"Ya right." the cleric sneers.
CLICK AAAAAHHHH!!! A small streak of blood,
and a bloodsoaked chunk of cloak. Now there is a single piece of sharp
mirror on the table.
"I'd rather die than live like you." the psionist
growls, folding his arms. The player folds the character sheet and
leans back.
CLICK AAAAHHHH!!!! Now there is
nothing on the table, and the surviving cleric looks around, the room strangely
warped to his perception. He hops over to the newly revealed door,
open to the sunlight, spreads his wings and flies out in a fluttering of
wings, past the party, who is standing outside and laughing over the final
test of Thorvold's Tomb, the Paladin staring in awe at the Holy Avenger lying
sheathed before him.
With a mournfull caw, the crow flew on.
"Gimme that damn character sheet, cheater!"
This one is a personal favorite of mine.
Talk about bad dice rolls all the way around the table, sheesh. Combine
that with the Dragon Magazine Good Hits, Bad Misses, and you have sheer chaos.
Anyway, let me set this up....
The party had been chasing the blade singer from
above, the undead knight, and some of their lackey's for months, all wrapped
up in the SOul of Fire campaign in Ravenloft. The Servants of the Ebony
Skull had some parts, the PC's had the others. For once, the PC's outnumbers
the S.E.S. and they fully intended on beating some ass.
The S.E.S. had made it to the top of a 750 foot
cliff by Mt. Balinok, and were staring down at the party, jeering and making
fun of them. One PC raised his crossbow of distance, fired, and shot
the Bard in front of him in the head, dropping him like a rock. The
Bard's player glares at his wife, grabs the car keys, and goes on a chips
and soda run.
One of the two Wizard PC's tries "Monster Summoning
III", so we roll on the Ravenloft "Dangerous Magic and Powerflux" Chart we
had developed out at Belton Lake on Saturday. POOF!! Thirty
hungry dead appear and devour the Wizard, the wounded thief, and bite three
PC's. Great, now their infected.
"That's it, no more Mr. Nice Guy!" the Paladin
proclaims, drawing his heavy Phase Crossbow. He pulls the trigger and
shoots the undead knight in the hip.
"Here, have it back!" the undead knight yells,
pulling it out and tossing it up in the air, underhanded. The crossbow
bolt +3 arcs way, way up (The undead knight had a 24 Str), then begins plummeting
down. The Paladin is ignoring the bolt as he reloads the crossbow.
At least until the bolt enters the top of his head and exits his recturm
(Hit in the head, instant death crit after a natural 20 and an 01% on the
crit roll. Jeez, these guys are getting hammered!)
"You killed my friend! When we get up
there, We're gonna beat your ass!" Shouts the second wizard, shaking his
fist.
"Here, you can try it now!" the undead knight
yells back, and throws their pack mule at the Wizard. The Wizard tries
to run, but the Blade Singer uses a captured Wand of Telekinesis to guide
it right onto him. Splat. We argued for about 10 minutes, laughing,
about how much damage a fully laden pack mule, thrown from 750 feet up, hitting
an unarmored, 90 lb. wizard would do. We decided, no damage, just plain
dead.
One of the PC's, a dwarven fighter with mountaineering,
breaks out his crampons and rock hammer, and begins climbing the cliff while
the PC's fire arrows to give him covering fire. The psionist is firing
about every 3 rounds from the Sharp .50 buffalo rifle he brought back from
Masque (Hey, 12 PC's, 2 survivors, I let them keep some of the gear).
About 3/4 of the way up, the Class V specter, Lhere-Khan, leans out of the
cliff wall and touches the cramps just under the dwarf, instantly crumbling
it to dust (decaying/aging touch). The party is yelling at the dwarf
to watch out, but Lhere Khan has pulled back into the cliff side.
"Here, catch!" the Blade Singer calls out, leaning
over the cliff. She drops the +3 dagger she took from the mule-crushed
wizard, straight at the dwarf. Thunk, hit. Crunch, crit on top.
Chest wound, 3 rounds till death. The dwarf falls back in a spray of
blood. One of the players goes: "Wouldn't it punch right through him?
It might hit one of us." The player next to him Charlie Horses him
for feeding the DM.
In poetic justice, the random roll caught the
guy that suggested it, punctured his chest, a lung, and dropped his Con by
two. I'm shaking my head.
"The forces of evil wave, laugh, and turn away
from the cliff, riding off." I tell them, wanting to end this slaughter.
"Hey, we had them on the ropes!" the psionist
grins. "I vote we ride the other way to outsmart them."
Before the movie
the Mummy came out, we had something much the same happen. If you've
been reading above, you'd discover that our Ravenloft group had two survivors
from Masque of the Red Death. A human psionist, and an Athasian Mul
who was transformed into a gigantic African American. Both wore trench
coats, Old West styles, and carried firearms. The psionist-2 Navy Colt
.45's, a lever action .30-.30 Winchester, and a Sharps .50 rifle, the Mul-a
sawed off shotgun and a normal shotgun, along with an Army .45. They
both had plenty of ammo, and had used the Ring of Granted Desires (A ring
that granted one wish to any holder, providing they could defeat the Gaurdian
of the Ring) to make sure they never ran out. They took the 3 in 10
chance the round would be faulty cheerfully. They were also very
careful about cleaning their weapons (rats...) so I never got them that way.
Anyway, they were in the Ilse of Shakta Domo,
kind of a desert Haiti-Ciaro cross, and they needed the Eye of the Pharoah
(A fire opal the size of a man's fist!). They had pulled it out of
the tomb after engaging the Pharoah's spirit in a riddle contest for it,
and unknown to the rest of the party, the thief had stolen a gold coin the
size of a dinner plate (Actually a prayer disk) from one of the mummys surrounding
the Pharoah's interred remains.
So, anyway, here they are, they have the Opal,
and are in the Hoka's Oasis Inn, winding down for the night. The psionist
and the Mul gladiator (known as Damascus) are sitting in the hallway, cleaning
their weapons while the rest of the party argues over what part of the Soul
of Fire to go after next, when they hear a crash downstairs and an eerie
cry.
"Coooin!" comes a scratchy voice (OK, OK, it
wasn't until the after action reports later that night that I realized I
had accidently mimiced a Scooby Doo episode)
The Mul and the psionist snap together their
weaponry, and ran to the top of the stairs, to see the mummy coming up the
stairs. The psionist quick draws his pistol, and gets a speed drop
from average to very fast due to his rolls, and a 2 for his init roll.
Damascus fumbles it, and is still trying to load the street howitzer.
Twelve shots, and the psionist is dumping the
shells, the mummy is still coming, grating out "Coin, coin, coin!" The
psionist is sweating and cursing (and so is the player, it was 95 degrees
that night!) and the Mul is still trying load.
"A little help Damascus!' the psionist yells.
He knows the sound of his Navy Colts will alert the rest of the party.
He backs into Damascus, who drops both shotgun shells on the floor.
The psionist misses his Dex check and falls onto his back just as he snaps
the revolvers shut. BAM, a shell through the foot. (Hey, I just
said he fell backward, the player rolled himself to see if the pistol went
off, rolled the hit, and said he blew one of his toes off on his own. )
The psionist curls and begins firing at the mummy (Considered to be one of
Anktopot's Children, even though he was the high priest of Bulati the IV),
just staggering the approaching menace. The player is really worried
at this point. His blood has been spilled, and now, because of a curse
laid on him, his enemies all know where he is. The mummy is still approaching
when the PC flips open the pistol and rolls his speed loading proficency.
Oops, natural 20 on the left hand pistol. The pistol spins out of his
hand, hits a step, and falls to the common room floor below.
"Shoot him, shoot him, shoot him!" the psionist,
Virgil, is screaming.
The wizard runs up and slams into Damascus, who
misses a loading roll, and drops the shells again. The wizard, a wild
mage, lets fly with a magic missle, and vanishes in a pillar of flame (Hey,
he rolled it, flame strike centered on caster), to reappear as a charred
corpse. Oops. Good thing the two firearm wielders had Rings of
Fire Resistance.
"Loading!" Damascus roars, pulling two more
shells out of the bandoleer under his trench coat.
The psionist has reloaded, and the Paladin runs
by, missing his Dex check to clear Virgil, and kicking the just loaded Navy
Colt out of his hand. The mummy is mere steps away from the landing,
and the PC's are starting to worry. The paladin leaps down and begins
fighting hand to hand with the mummy, going for a wrestling throw.
Failure, and the mummy throws the Paladin over
the banister. He crashes into a table and is knocked cold (We had some
interesting house rules)
"Cinematic Combat!" the priests player declares.
The players get XP based on thier actions, instead of the monster, but, on
the other side, the less clothes and the higher CHA they have, the better
AC and H.P. The Paladin instantly regains conciousness, being a clean
cut hero type.
Bam, the thief bumps Damascus, who drops the
shotgun shells. Damascus throws the PC into the mummy and pulls out
two more shells.
"COIN!" the mummy exclaims triumphantly, throttling
the unlucky thief and advancing.
The priest casts Eternal Breath on the
thief, negating his need for air, and the other wizard begins digging through
everyones things, trying to find out what this mummified maniac is after.
"Loaded!" Damascus yells triumphantly as the
Paladin begins charging up the stairs. Seeing he can't shoot for fear
of hitting the thief and the Paladin, he holds his action while Virgil leaps
off the stairs, rolling and coming up with both pistols (Nice action, worth
350 XP!) in a modified Weaver stance.
Damascus fires, blowing apart the steps the
mummy is standing on. The mummy and the thief drop from view and into
the jakes beneath the stairs. The wood fails it's save, and both drop
into the cesspool beneath. The priest begins unlimbering rope to drop
to the thief.
"Found it!" the other wizard cries out, charging
forward with the huge coin.
"Whose is it?" Virgil asks.
"The thiefs!" the wizard replies. She
throws the coin into hole in the stairs, and listen to the triumphant "COIN!"
Damascus pulls out one of his sticks of dynamite (He's down from five to
two by this time) He lights it off of his cigar and throws it into
the hole.
The dynamite goes off, blowing the thief into
scrap meat when the methane gas brews up too, sending a fireball out the
jakes door and up through the stairs (Cinematic Combat keeps anyone from
being hurt). The mummy comes staggering out, slightly burnt, but still
intact, and staggers off into the night.
"Damn graverobbing Yankees." Damascus growls.