A Tale of the Days of Eld
Back when the Greyhawk supplement was a work in progress clerics used 2d6 to turn undead*. As I recall, you needed a 7 or better to turn skeletons, and an 11 or better to turn zombies.
One fine day a party entered the local gilded hole in search of treasure, experience, treasure, magic, and treasure. Along the way they kept running into skeletons and zombies.
On the first occasion the party's doughty cleric stepped forward with his holy symbol held high and intoned in stentorian tones (or as stentorian as a lad of 20 can muster), "Back to the depths of Hell, ye foul creatures of corruption and pestilence!"
Nothing. The skeletons marched on and the party fighting men had to chop their way through the calciate horde. (Is "calciate" a word… …I guess it is now.)
This was repeated again and again, until the fifth encounter when a discouraged, tired, and cranky cleric looked at the mixed bag of skeletons and zombies and mumbled dispiritedly, "Oh, go away."
They went away.
From that moment on in that group the magic words for turning undead became, "Oh, go away." Never failed.
*Everything back in those days called for a roll of 2d6 to determine success/failure. If not for Lou Zocchi and his decision to carry polyhedrals in his catalog (and his later decision to manufacture polies of higher quality than those then available) we'd now be talking about the 2d6 System.
Most evenings are strictly family time, and son Alex plays in my weekly PRG game session too.
