D&D Story Time

[Ankari]

Greetings Scribers,

This thread is a product of this comic (the link will change when the new comic goes live. Check on the 12/3/2012 comic for reference when it changes.)

I love D&D stories. I think D&D is the gateway drug for many fantasy authors. To honor this once taboo hobby, share your best D&D stories.

Here's the format:

DM Cruelty Score: 1 (My Little Pony) 10 (Makes the guy from Saw look like a My Little Pony). If you are usually the DM, rate yourself honestly.

Story:

I haven't played for awhile, but here's a typical scenario with my group.

DM Cruelty: I'm a nine. I sometimes feel that most of the cruelty is self-imposed because my players are as stubborn as boulders.


DM: Ok guys, the orc has (Ranger) surrounded. (Warrior) is getting smashed by (Boss Orc) while (Wizard) and (Thief) are lying unconscious on the ground. What's your next move?
Ranger: This is BS. This orcs have to die. I'm attacking.
Warrior: This is BS. I want to grab (Boss Orc) and toss him at the orcs surrounding (Ranger).
Wizard: This is BS. How long am I knocked out? Can I roll to wake up?
DM: We just did. You're knocked out for 3 more rounds.
Wizard: What the hell, man? What kind of encounter is this?
DM: Well, if you didn't try to smash (Boss Orc) with your staff, you wouldn't have been hit by his Daily Ability.
Wizard: But I was out of spells.
DM: Yes. But your staff has a magical attack.
Wizard: I wanted to save it for an emergency.
DM: You're right. While you're knocked out an image of what an emergency is forms in your mind.
Wizard: What?
Thief: You're an idiot, Wizard. He is telling you that this is an emergency and you should have thought about using your staff now.
Wizard: Whose the idiot? You tried to backstab (Boss Orc) while he's surrounded by his minions.
Thief: I'm a thief, that's what I do.
DM: OK guys. I'm rolling attacks.
Group: WAIT!
Warrior: Guys, what can we do? I'm at half my HP and I don't think I can survive this.
Ranger: You can do it. Watch what I will do.
DM: (Ranger), you have five orcs around you. You have 10 HP left. What are you going to do?
Ranger: Where's (Priest)!
Priest: I told you that I left. I ran out of healing potions and prayers. I can't do anything. I have a couple prayers that can help us evacuate.
Group: Hell no!
Warrior: This (Boss Orc) has the Hammer of Broken Skulls. I need it.
Priest: You can't use it if your skull is broken.
Group: (DM), what are our options?
DM: I'm the DM, not your rational thinking. You have 10 seconds to decide.

This is almost how every battle goes. My players don't understand what tactical withdrawal means. They think its a video game (like Everquest) where players keep pressing buttons until the enemy drops.

I know it's very generic scene. That's why I want to hear from you. Maybe I'll find enough motivation to gather the group again.

 

[BWFoster78]

Sorry, gave up on D&D years ago. I liked strategy and planning. The "role playing..." *shudder

 

[Steerpike]

I tend to run somewhat similar games. If characters sit around debating strategy in the middle of a fight, the enemies are going to attack again.

In my homebrew world, anyone can cast spell. Only thing is, magic is dangerous. It is dangerous for casters, who have some training in it, and it is extremely dangerous for others, who can wound or kill themselves and others if they screw up, and go insane, etc.

So in one of my favorite stories, the party has been attacked by some horrendous wolf-like beasts and things aren't going well. Despite that, the party ALMOST manages to get through in one piece. One by one, characters start dropping, and who knows if they're unconscious or dead at this point. Finally, the mage falls and the only players left standing are fighters with a few hit points. The main wolf-beast is still on its feet and it is clear the fighters are going to die and then the beast is going to slaughter any other party members who may still be alive.

A fighter gets knocked over next to the prone form of the mage and then has the idea to play dead. Since there is another fighter still up and attacking, the wolf-beast turns to the one player still standing. Then, the fighter who has been knocked down crawls over to the mage and gets out his spell book. Dread settles over the table. Even when the mage is casting, people run for cover.

The fighter finds an offensive spell that might be able to finish off the wolf-beast. He's got one chance to get the spell off, and the only thing that is going to work is a natural 20. If he fails, he's got no chance to contain the runaway magic since he's not a caster, and it will just kill him.

Every player stands up. I stand up. We gather around the table and follow the path of the die as it rolls from the player's hand to bounce along the table. It comes up natural 20. A cheer erupted from the table that probably woke the neighbors. The fighter got the spell off and managed to knock the wolf-beast unconscious. The other fighter was then able to kill it.

This was about six years ago and when I see some of those players they still talk about it.

 

[Ankari]

Every player stands up. I stand up. We gather around the table and follow the path of the die as it rolls from the player's hand to bounce along the table. It comes up natural 20. A cheer erupted from the table that probably woke the neighbors. The fighter got the spell off and managed to knock the wolf-beast unconscious. The other fighter was then able to kill it.

This was about six years ago and when I see some of those players they still talk about it.

These are the best moments of a tabletop RPG. They can go both ways. My chest aches when I see my players hype themselves up on a hope and a prayer. They describe the scene and what they're going to do. They look around for acceptance. When the party nods encouragingly, they roll the die and......

A) Cheer when they roll a 20.

B) Go on a violent tirade on how much I suck and ask themselves why they even play this game.

Option B is the most common outcome.

 

[Ankari]

Sorry, gave up on D&D years ago. I liked strategy and planning. The "role playing..." *shudder

Yes, but you HAVE to have an awesome D&D story in there somewhere. Share it!

 

[Steerpike]

Option B is the most common outcome.

Yeah, 5% probability isn't very good. Most of the time, it ends badly, and I've had players die grisly deaths being on the wrong side of that roll. But that makes the few times when the roll actually succeeds that much more epic!

 

[MadMadys]

You want a D&D story? You’re lucky I jump at any chance to procrastinate my actual writing.

I’ll forgo the cruelty index because I cannot appropriately label it. You see, I only ever played D&D once in my life so I lack any other point of reference.

I’ll whisk you through a brief background. Year and half ago, a friend of mine whom I am about to go on a trip with is invited to do some D&D with some friends of hers I’ve never met. I admit some amount of curiosity on my own part. I would have considered myself a dork but never could make that jump to actual roleplaying. As we were leaving on a flight the next day for Amsterdam, I decided to join her, thinking that at worse I kill them all in a rage and escape to another country.

The players, as I have sadly forgotten their names, will instead be substituted for characteristics. The first is the DM, tally mctallenstein. I’m a solid 6’ but he’s about 7 foot and a hobbit. He’s the DM and, though his height would make one generally nervous, is a nice guy. This all takes place at his house with his wife, also playing. She’s homely mctallentein by that association. She’s quiet but, again, nice. Next is blowhard who was involved in some ten different D&D games with other groups at the same time so he very much knew his stuff and made sure everyone knew it. Also on board was short girl who was also very quiet to start but gradually opened up. Again, she had quite a bit of RP experience. Then there was obviously me and my friend, also female, who had played a total of no D&D ever. This was good for me since I would not be the only total newb in attendance.

So we’re playing some vampire variant of the game which made no difference to me because I had no idea what was going on. We created our characters, which we had quite a bit of help on, of course, and I opted for making a character close to the only vampire character I ever liked. Cassidy from the Preacher comic series (see: my avatar). I nicknamed him ‘Cassidy Could Careless’ to match my general attitude towards my character’s life.

Now I knew that in order to take any of this seriously I would have to somehow disengage the mental blocks in place to stop me from ever revealing my inner-dorkiness. I asked tally if he had anything to drink. After he told me about iced tea, cola, green tea I asked if he had anything TO DRINK. He got me the second time and showed me a very nice bottle of whiskey of a brand I can’t recall. I warmed my tummy with three shots, poured a tumbler glass with some water to keep me going through the of the game (or at least the first hour). My friend, noting the reasoning of my actions, made a whiskey and cola mix for herself.

So the game starts. Now I am not well versed in the lingo, goings-on or general gist of all this so forgive me all you experts out there if I skimp on details. It was a while ago, I was drinking, and I was confused for most of it. I had my character mostly follow the others because I really didn’t know any better.

After an hour of nothing happening we were sent on some quest to retrieve a vial of some special child’s blood from a subway king vampire dude. Awesome, I think. Only I don’t think it and actually say it aloud with a heavy dose of sarcasm. They reassure me things will pick up and so we head down to the subway. It isn’t long before we encounter a group of hooligan vampires who, for some needlessly complicated reason, we need to interact with to pass.

Now I will say when I created my character, Cassidy Could Careless or C cubed as I started to call him, I dropped as many points in endurance, vitality (or whatever the equivalent is) and strength while doing as little with intelligence, magic, charisma and all that other stuff as I could. I was cautioned against this by them, saying that, since was my first time, I should do something a bit more rounded or easy. As you can tell, I ignored such things.

So we encounter these thugs and they say we either have to solve a riddle or beat them in a fight. The group wants to do the riddle, as I guess a lot of them are smart or something, but, as I’m at the front of the group and impatient, I choose to duel them. Now the thug I have to fight is some super dude-pire that my companions thought would basically give me a free colonoscopy. Undeterred, and not giving a dern, I stepped into the arena.

‘Thug attacks you. What do you do?’ Tally asks.

‘Let him hit me.’ I say, taking a sip. I roll to see how much damage I take and I take none.

‘Ok, he attacks again.’

‘Let him it me.’ Roll, no damage.

‘He atta,’

‘Hit me.’ As I roll, again taking no damage, my companions don’t seem to register what I’m doing. They think it’s a ballsy move but in fact I’m just doing the opposite of what I think I should. Finally, after 5 rounds of me taking hits I finally change my answer,

‘Headbutt him.’ I roll and apparently it knocks the dude out. ‘Cool.’ I say.

After that, blowhard just starts laughing and the two quiet girls start clapping. I finish off my drink which they quickly refill in gratitude. I’m polite with my thank yous, of course.

We continue on until we find that vial we were looking for only it’s in the possession of some sinister, leather clad, sunglass wearing-even-though-we’re-underground, jerk wad vampire. My companions all go into attack mode and are knocked out or weakened or whatever happens when they get slapped around. I’m left standing because of some contrived reason I can’t recall.

So I’m pretty toasted by this point. I’m a fairly chill drunk but I’m prone to having ill-regard for consequences. Especially if those consequences are totally in a make believe world of vampires. So, we come to it,

‘Master Vampire dude attacks.’ Tally asks.

‘Let him hit me.’ Shorty quiet girl protests immediately saying I can’t do that. Blowhard backs her up. DM tally says I can but all the math shows I have to roll some specific thing to not get decapitated. I halfheartedly toss the dice and… roll that very thing.

‘Wtf.’ Says blowhard only without the acronym.

‘C cubed is such a B-A.’ My friend, now also quite drunk, adds as we high-five.

I’m asked what I want to do next. I ponder this for a moment.

‘Backhand his wenches.’ This vampire lord had several vampire concubines which had beaten my friend’s character so I wanted justice. I roll and successfully chain a five finger salute to three of them.

They try and attack, I let them have at me, and again, I take no damage.

‘What do you do now?’ DM asks.

‘Uhhhh…’ I let out a whiskey burp as I think. ‘Pull down the scaffolding.’

It had been previously mentioned they were surrounded by construction bits as they were remodeling or something. The comment was offhand at the time and it seemed everyone else almost forgot. I roll and the move kills all the baddies.

‘I then acquire his sunglasses, the vial, and then walk away as everything explodes behind me.’ I roll, as they’re laughing, it goes through. I revive my allies and we end it there.

Everyone is all chummy and nice now. Blowhard asks me to join some of his other games, tally asks me to join in his other one too. I turn them down and never return preferring to envision myself as Mifune from ‘Yojimbo’. I find out later that tally actually framed my character sheet, stained with whiskey, with ‘Most B.A. Character of All Time’ written on the top and kept it in his game room.

Cassidy Could Careless will never return as his legacy could not soar higher. The real reason? The sky could not handle that much awesome. It would lead to massive thunderstorms and tornados of fists, I reckon.
Thus concludes my lone D&D encounter.

Hope that was the type of experience you were aiming for.

 

[Leif Notae]

Never really DM'd, but I have some great moments as a player in a 10+ scale DM.

The best was the man who had no idea about gaming in general. This was in the 3.0 heyday, so you could mishmash anything and get away with it. His goal was to be Iron Chef Elven.

He couldn't cook to save his life. We named our 1 on the d20 the "fish" after he attempted to make lamb. This was when 1 was auto-failure and 20 was auto-success (thank goodness I talked them out of it).

We marched through the woods, heading to a large quarry where we heard about some ancient treasures to stem the tide of a brewing civil war. I was more mishmash than he was, but I was also a Dragon Disciple at this point and becoming a white dragon (they aren't stupid in his game, they are frighteningly cunning. It's like dealing with a tiger with scales).

The others were Iron Chef, a mage/cleric of life (who wanted to kill things), and three key NPCs, not to mention a few others to make it complicated.

Well, since IC doesn't know about the lore, he stumbles across an owlbear. First reaction? "I'm gonna sing it a lullaby and make it my companion!"

Yes, you can twitch now.

Suffice to say, the "owlbear" was actually a clockwork construct, and "momma's" favorite weapon was the projectile spear shooting from the cannons that were her arms covered by fur. He jumped into the tree, told us he had this, and fired an arrow.

One... arrow...

The return fire was a ballista bolt that slammed through him, pinned him to the tree, and knocked the tree over due to the close range and force. Guess who had to save him?

Thank goodness I was a meatshield at the time.

The other one involves sex and the term "flip her like a pancake", but that'll be for another post.

 

[Ankari]

Today's comic reminds me of what D&D is all about....

A Gnome Through a Keyhole