Author Topic: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")  (Read 10200 times)

Offline warzoneD

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This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« on: September 29, 2008, 01:08:35 PM »
I've been loving these posts - so here's mine.

Worst/Best gaming story - what game, what happened, etc.  For mine - check out the WFRP game I talked about in the last This Week In Geekdom post 9/25/08.

D

Wedge

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2008, 02:22:43 PM »
For those of you who know the game wizwar...

My friends and I were really into it.  We started out each Saturday D&D session with at least one game of Wizwar.  It was a routine we enjoyed immensely.  Well... we also liked the game enough to make our own cards.  In the box set you get a few blanks so we typed up a couple... one was a special card that touted the powerful flatulence of a player in the group and we called it: "Trebor's Stinking Cloud" (notice Trebor is Robert backwards).

Well, Robert was a particulary annoying player in the game... he'd always head hunt instead of trying steal treasures even if the game would be quicker and easier for him.  Another player, Jaime, decided it was time to end Robert's little campaign of chaos one day.

Jaime's Black Wizard moved, created a wall to make a dead end out of a long hallway.  He then moved adjacent to the dead end and created the "trebor's stinking cloud" in the dead end.  Then he moved just beyond Robert's Blue wizard and cast a spell (can't remember the name) that pushed him down the hall into the dead end with the cloud of butt-funk.  And to cap off the funny maneuver he created another wall sealing Robert's wizard in a box in his own funk dealing 3 damage each turn.  The manuever was so clever and aprapos that a chorus of laughter ensued for the entire 5 turns it took for the Blue wizard to choke on his own stink.  Ahhh... toilet humor gets us every time.

Offline joshuaslater

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2008, 02:37:00 PM »
Nice one Troy.  Applaud button in effect.
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Offline Sylvas

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2008, 04:26:49 PM »
here's one, based on the game Arc of Fire (WW2 minis game)...

my friends Craig and Steve were playing a game pitting Steve's Germans versus Craig's Russians in a scenario in which the Germans had to clear out some buildings...

Craig was allowed to place one unit in ambush formation, and he placed a unit of Soviet Guardsmen armed with PPSh in a building, but due to some unfortunate turns, he wasn't able to do anything with them, since he was getting pounded in other areas of the battle...

So Steve walks with a unit of SS Comandos, and while searching the buildings, he walks into the ambush...Craig has 9 Soviet Guardsmen, and the PPSh had a rate of fire of 3, so 27 shots at the unit of SS that have just walked into this ambush...

these being Soviet Guardsmen, they needed a 6 or less on a d10...

27 shots, 27 d10...

not a single one hit...

it was 15 minutes before we stopped laughing and Craig stopped ranting and raving, a feat in which he still rants about to this day...
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Offline shenlung

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #4 on: September 29, 2008, 04:39:45 PM »
Hehe - he sounds like the polar opposite of my friend Jeremy.  Some examples:

WHFRP - He's playing a dwarf trollslayer.  We're down in the sewers to surreptitiously meet an informant (Jeremy doesn't know this).  About 15 minutes into the evening's session we hear a "skitter" off in the shadows. 

Jeremy - "I throw my axe at the source of the noise." 
GM - "Roll percentile.  You need a '00' to hit"
Jeremy - rolls 00
GM - "Oh crap.  Roll d6 for damage"
Jeremy - rolls 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 1 for 37 total damage.
GM - "Ok, you just killed the informant.  Game over for tonight." 

Granted, the GM should have prepared for the eventuality as Jeremy is known for those types of die rolls....

Battletech - he jumps his Spider in behind the other player's Atlas in a "bring X tonnage worth of mechs to the fight" type of match.  I forget the die rolls exactly, but it was basically a perfect called head shot that killed the pilot.  Basically equivalent to calling your shot on a d000.  After about 15 seconds of stunned "did that just happen" silence, we all laughed to the point the other player's conceded the match.

I swear, if I had half his luck, I'd go to vegas and come back with a whole lot more money than I have now!
What, these?  I've had these minis forever dear, they were just in a box in the garage.... :D

Offline warzoneD

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2008, 05:04:06 PM »
@ Wedge's story - HAHAHA!  Applaud. 

@Shenlung - Ever notice that every WFRP adv. somehow ends up with a trek through a sewer???

Just to add -- We used to play the occasional game of "Junta."  Our "Robert" was a guy named Ron.  He oh so desperately wanted to be El Presidente (just went on and on about it till your ears bled) so one night we made him president EVERY TIME and then continued to have coup after coup after coup--  It was priceless.

ALSO - we played an old Eon game called "Dark Over" - It's based on one of those really trippy series of sci-fantasy books from the 70's.  The rules are a bizarre hodge podge of ideas, but there's one duel mode where if you win you can MAKE UP a rule that every player has to follow (e.g. every one must speak in rhymes, everyone must drink a beer if they say the word "sword", etc.).  Brad, ingeniously came up with you must immitate the player to your left for the rest of the game (their manners, speech, play style)...we laughed so hard watching our friends do interpretations of eachother our sides hurt...
« Last Edit: September 29, 2008, 05:08:57 PM by warzoneD »

Offline Sylvas

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #6 on: September 29, 2008, 06:25:59 PM »
here's one I did...

when I was in college, I was in an AD&D game (1st ed.) and the premise was that the characters had to be based off of a culture that existed between 800-1400 ad...

we had a French cleric, an English Knight (Cavalier), an Italian mage, a Spanish thief, and a Romanian dwarven fighter...I made my character after everyone else, and I noticed that every one of the characters had one thing in common...

they all spoke Latin...

well, I just had to be difficult, so I made a Germanic Barbarian named Guenther (don't know how to make an umlaut)...

he was really strong, pretty dextrous, good constitution, and not entirely stupid (Int 12), and he spoke next to no Latin...I mean, why would he, he's a Hun...

on top of this, he was on his quest of manhood, and in his tribe, the most powerful elders and leaders hunted the elusive "big lizards" that flew in the sky...and the only way to properly achieve his manhood was to walk right up to one and announce his intentions openly the the "big lizard" that he was about to die...

anyway, enough of the back story (I can always make more posts), in this case, the group had to sneak around and ambush a group of Orcs...now the rest of the group was doing all their sneaking around stuff, and the mage said that he had some tricks that could help, but Guenther raised his hand and adamantly stated that he could sneak around without any help from the "useless priest" (they had no mages in his tribe, only priests, and since the mage couldn't heal him, Guenther considered him useless)...

the group is sneaking around with thief skills or invisibility spells from a scroll, but Guenther was on his own...the DM let me know that I had failed a Move Silently roll, since he knew that I could role play it, and as such, here's what happened...

Guenther had stuck a bunch of sticks, mud, and grass on him, using his tribes knowledge of tracking and hunting, and while sneaking around, he walked up behind an Orc, tapped him on the shoulder, and when the Orc turned around, he whispered to the Orc "Shhh...I'm sneaking around you...I'm sneaking away now"....

do I need to say that he only had a Wis of 8...
 
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Offline Petru5

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #7 on: September 29, 2008, 06:39:26 PM »
One story that still cracks us up is when we were playing Twilight: 2000.  If anyone has played this game, you know that the combat system was cumbersome on a good day and it usually took the entire night for a single firefight of any size.

My friend Jeremy (that 'lucky guy' that I've read about on this forum, regardless of his name) had created a full-blooded Apache named Michael Broken Arrow Half Moon somesuch or another.  We gave him no end of Hell calling him Cochise all the time.  Jeremy was also the loudest, most annoying player we had in the party...you know the type, if you laugh at his joke at the beginning of the evening, you'll hear it all night.  Wait, I knew there was a reason he liked David Letterman!!! 

Anyway, Michael used a compound bow a la Rambo or Luke Duke.  Usually this amounted to him using explosive-tipped arrows like grenades, but one particular evening he was adamant and loud about shooting his 'golden BB' at a MiG that was harrassing the party.  Just so he'd shut up, I humored him.  Long story short, he rolled perfectly on every die roll I threw at him on a combination of dice (d20, d30 & d100).  Yes, folks, he stuck an explosive-tipped arrow through the air intake of the port wing, causing a fatal BOOM that sheered the wing off the plane. 

I still hear him talk about it 20 years later...Oh, the agony!!!
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Offline Veez

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #8 on: September 30, 2008, 04:47:21 AM »
I call this essay “Why I Stopped Playing Warhammer.”
It was first round of a Warhammer Fantasy tournament at my FLGS over a decade ago.  I was playing my beloved Dark Elf army.  My respectable opponent was playing a chaos army stocked full of demons.  He won initiative.  I had set up a fraction of an inch closer than I had intended.  First action his flamer demons leaped forward and barbecued my entire unit of knights to include the army general.  I can’t remember if they even got a save.  The entire remaining army broke and fled.  I did not roll a single offensive die and the game was completely over. To his credit, my opponent was apologetic over the whole thing.

I sold off my Warhammer Fantasy armies and have never looked back. 
VeezCon products:  Not as good as if they had been actually produced by a real figure company, but better than using your shoe to proxy with...sort of!

Offline Dr. Nick

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #9 on: September 30, 2008, 05:15:16 AM »
well, whfb got better after the 5th, belive it or not...
"Don´t anticipate outcome. Await the unfolding of events. Remain in the moment."

Offline Petru5

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #10 on: September 30, 2008, 05:26:58 AM »
Ya know, after reading about WHFB and WH40K here, seeing how much it costs at my FLGS and listening to the players at said shop talk about those games, I'm glad I never got into them.  I think the figs are cool and I own several WH40K figs to use for other things, but I was never inclined to give it a go.
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Offline Archer

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #11 on: September 30, 2008, 08:24:23 AM »
Lots of good memories... almost too many to list.  One of the better ones actually is from a 40k tourney up at Dakka Dakka some six years ago.

  I took up a mostly Scout army, with one squad being a full unit of Shotguns (one of the most useless weapons in the game, next to the lasgun).  It did recieve a bit of ridicule- good natured to be sure but it was made fun of... until we started play, which game one was against a Space Wolf player.

  Now, my opponent was a relatively smart player and he did not like some of the options for crossing the board to get at my army.  The battle took place in an icy river valley, with three large stone causeways across and a fording point.  The river fording points gave you a chance to get stuck... and he did not want to chance them so he braved my shooting on the bridges.  Most of my AT gear was light weapons, which his rhino transports were only minorly worried over (I had 3 Heavy Bolters (two on speeders), a plasma cannon and two rocket launchers).  He had enough targets for me to shoot at to not worry about being stopped by light guns and scouts...

Well....

On my turn 2 (I went first in the game), my HB's either stopped or blew up his transports, my Missiles stunned his tank, the plasmacannon took out a heavy weapon bike, effectively stopping his advance.  With his Wolf Lord out on the table closest to my shotgun scouts, I had moved them up within range to shoot all 9 shotguns and one Bolt Pistol.

  When the dust settled, all 18 shotguns blasts hit and the bolt pistol did not.  Roll to wound....  Oh look, 10 wounds (needing 5+ on a d6).  Wolf Lord had 3 wounds, the three Bloodclaw marines with him within sighthave one.  Wound allocation.... and he failed each of the blood claws.... and 3 of the six save left to his WL.  Dead Wolf Lord....

  It all went down hill from there....  his wolf scouts showing up and charging my snipers, only to have them play Dog Baseball and the lone unit of grey hunters crossing got charged by my Captain and the reaction marine squad.

I think I lost maybe 25% of my force to 85% of his by the end of the game.  It was bad.

  The next game was against the Eldar- and dude's army was a touch cheddar-y. I don't remember exactly what happened... but I do recall I lost less than ten models for a tabling of him- and he had slaughtered the player before me.

Last game was against another Wolf player- who was using an army I would have built had I played space wolves (lots of grey hunters, bikes and speeders, the the support Leman russ tank).  I hammered his force on Turn one and it degenerated into a scrum on the following turns.  I lost that game... but it was epic and bloody.  Those games I don't mind losing.
John "Archer" Tinney

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Offline warzoneD

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #12 on: September 30, 2008, 08:29:25 AM »
@ Veez - I had a beloved Drk Elf army too - but it was 3rd edition (pre Dice-hammer or Hero-hammer) when you needed to have a min. of 30 or so Xbowmen.  My general was a mutated 4 armed D Elf on a chimera.  Games took all day. Good times!  i stopped after that itiration of the game.




Offline dmcgee1

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #13 on: September 30, 2008, 03:34:16 PM »
Champions (great game, miss it, lots!)

I had a gadgeteer-type character who was susceptible to sonic damage.  Our group was a really great bunch of guys except for one - Dave Wall.  Few of us tolerated Dave, and the rest just plain old didn't like him.  His characters were always min/maxed for whatever character type he wanted to play.  If it was a brick, he maxed strength, defense and speed, sacrificing intelligence, skills, etc.

On that particular night, we had managed to fall into the villain's trap, and were all imprisoned by our own weaknesses.  I was strapped to a chair with headphones, with the threat that as soon as I attempted to move, speak or through anything other than effort of mind, my character's brain would be jellied by the sonic attack.  They conferred for quite some time before devising a domino plan where one of us would free me, and then I would free the next, who would free the next, etc.

Our weathermaster-type was Dave, who was encaged in a neutral humidity/ionazation and whatever else the GM could use that prevented him from using his powers - in the cage.  It was decided that he would try to use his powers beyond his imprisonment.  The GM stated that it would take a perfect roll of "3" due to not being able to determine all the necessary factors (such as being able to feel the humidity, etc.)

In a great roll he was form precipitation/condensation around my headphones and short them out, getting the necessary "3" to be successful.  The moment I became free I was able to free our telepath from his trap, by repairing the headphones and focused the beam on his restraints, who then went on to free our brick.

Our brick went to free Dave by, basically, destroying his cage.  Unfortunately for Dave (and to the extreme but well-hidden delight of the rest of us) he rolled the proverbial "18" - a dead failure.  Dave's cage imploded, taking Dave with it.

The look of sheer dejection on the guy's face and the unwillingness of the GM to allow Dave any "divine intervention" was awesome.

For my worst moment, I recall Champions, as well.  I was playing an acrobat/martial artist-type.  One of the bad guys was holding a gun to an npc's head.  Thinking that I should have no problem foiling this, I let my ego take over my brain, and proceeded to get the npc killed when I tried to wrest the gun from the bad guy.  It sucked, and I truly felt like crap in real life for having gotten the red-shirt killed.  However, I gotta say that it was in character, as I had taken glory-hound as a limitation.

To this day, I carry a picture of the little npc's he left behind.   ;)
« Last Edit: September 30, 2008, 03:36:06 PM by dmcgee1 »
If sing, sang, and sung, sink, sank, and sunk, and drink, drank, and drunk, how is it that it isn't bring, brang, and brung, think, thank and thunk, and ding, dang, and dung?

Don't even get me started about bad, badder and baddest.  Run, ran AND run...again?  C'mon!

Offline warzoneD

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Re: This Week In Geekdom 9/29/08 (Or "The Stuff of Legends")
« Reply #14 on: September 30, 2008, 04:39:04 PM »
Argh!  Champions some great times, but also some horrible and looooooooong torturous battles. 

First time I ever played someone handed me a pre-gen called Ogre.  He was SPD 3.   Little did I know.   It was a massive fight with 6 heroes and 6 villains.  Two hours later, by the time they got to phase 4 (my first chance to act) some baddy had stunned me so I spent my round unstunning....two hours later....phase 8...stunned again....two hours later....repeat until nauseous.  In short, I spent the night watching TV.

D