D&D on less than all cylinders...

[STARP_JVP]

I'm just curious if anybody here has played D&D, or some other RPG, while either drunk, stoned or otherwise impaired. If so, what humourous stories lie in your experience?

I don't drink or do drugs (GEEK!) but I know folks who do, some of whom are gamers too. One friend of mine gathered together with his gaming group, all of whom had been at the jimmies for several hours. It was Dark Sun, and my friend was playing a Mull (half-dwarf). He decided to go hunting, armed with only a greatsword. He chased a bull (I think) through the wilderness for two whole hours of game time, with the majority of the action consisting of repetitive dice-rolling. All players were glued to the table, watching each dice roll with fascination. For two hours this kept up, before the DM decided to end it and orchestrated a fight with the bull, which the Mull won. This exercise, which in a normal game would have consumed about two minutes, took over two hours in this particular instance. And nobody got bored.

Another time, the same friend was stoned and playing Alternity. In the game, the PCs decided to play D&D, with one PC serving as the DM, so they had a game within a game. They briefly had a game within a game within a game as one of the PC's PC's decided to have the PC PCs play a role-playing game. So you have the real GM, playing an NPC with a D&D PC who is playing another GM. After a while they got so confused and sat there laughing for about three hours. I am not making this up.

 

[tetsujin28]

You're speaking of every session of my high school days

 

[Graf]

Actually not really.

I used to drink maybe 1000 ml of Iced Coffee during games in grade school. I turned into a hyper loudmouth for the first couple of hours and then an intense, cranky jerk. (Or even more of one that usual). When I was DMing I -needed- to have a latte and a cookie before the second half of the session.

I had a DM who used to drink when we were playing in college.... the games were fun, but he couldn't remember what had happened clearly the next day.

I knew a guy in NY who used to insist that he'd read the Vampire books during an acid trip and could "flashback" to any page and see it perfectly (apparently giving him total command of the rules). A few simple experiments demonstrated his technique for memory enhancement was less accurate than he felt.
(though he was both a bright guy and had a good command of the rules in general)

I've heard about people who used to LARP and drink. That apparently produced at least one fistfight.

I've had a player (a strong drinker by almost any measure) join my group because his old group drank while playing and it tended to ruin the experience for him. The "I'm sick of rolling, you just finish killing the orcs and you find some traps, but you probably disarm them and here.... have your treasure" type attitude that drinking induced mellowness tends to produce wasn't what he was looking for.

I find that gaming is a good substitute for substance use/abuse but that they rarely mix well. People who have issues usually have enough trouble corralling them without introducing substances.
(Plus lots of geeks aren't comfortable with all the substances available which tends to make it hard for them to feel like the game is a safe space where they can enjoy themselves.)

 

[broghammerj]

Well considering I don't do drugs (Wow I could be on TV with my winning attitude)! We do like to have a "Battle Beer" during long combats that leave the world hanging in the balance. I think it improves are battle cry. However, we have not reached the point of being in an altered mental state.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

My group has tried to play d&d and shadowrun while under the influence with out much sucess. Our GM for SR was very very very unfocused. And you really don't feel like RPing if you're seriously messed up.

Now if you're just a little intoxicated then it's alright and won't effect the game negatively. In fact it can help set the mood if the PCs are in a tavern/bar or elsewhere.

 

[Mercule]

Can't say that I have. In college, I drank like a fish, but Friday was party night, and Saturday was game day -- or something approximating that -- so, it wasn't really an issue. Plus, it takes a lot (like a whole bottle of whiskey, or more beer than I can actually fit into my stomach) to give me a hang-over, so there wasn't much interference, there, either.

We did have a guy, for a while, though, who'd crush up Smarties and snort them during the game. That was... different.

 

[Fieari]

First time I ever got really drunk, at a new years party, we weren't playing D&D but a friend of mine and I sat in a corner of the room and talked philosophy for hours, using almost exclusively D&D analogies.

My group will often have a drink or two during a game, but we rarely get actually drunk. We talk a bit more, roleplay a bit more, and roll dice a bit less when we've had something to drink, but it fades pretty quickly since when we play, we play for HOURS on end, so while the game dynamic shifts slightly under a bit of the influence, it's still a good game and everyone enjoys it in every state.

 

[caudor]

One time I was DMing a group during a marathon session and we were literally so tired we could not think straight. I believe everyone was actually so slap-happy that we might was well been drunk.

Well, anyway...this is horrible....they had just defeated a Medusa and entered a hall with a 10 ft pit in the middle. At the bottom was a petrified lizard man --stooped down, tail raised a little; he had been in obvious discomfort when he was petrified.

On a slap-happy whim, I also described a few of stone cylinders below him, and one of them of had a pearl sized object embedded along the side. Hopeing it was a gem, one player hoped down and picked it up to investigate. I decided right then and there that the object embedded in the stone was a peanut. Then it hit them. Uh, that's enough...I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

The game session ended with everyone holding their sides or rolling on the floor. Despite the degeneration of my game as such, it was of the most memorable sessions I've ever run.

 

[Luthien Greyspear]

Not that I'd do this now, of course...

Years ago, before I got a job and a house and all the other things that make me a mature, responsible adult (jah, right, as if), I was a bit of a Deadhead. I went to every show that hit my area, and of course I considered it my duty to enjoy the Dead's light show to the fullest, if you get my drift. Nothing really dangerous, just acid, which, in the late 80's/early 90's was very diluted from the original version of LSD.

Anyway, the very first show my gaming group and I went to was a bust. We got scammed for tickets, and couldn't get in to the arena. Well, as enterprising young men with no sense of reality at the time, we decided that the best thing for us to do was to head home and find some other (safe) way to entertain ourselves. So we lifted three cars out of the way that were blocking our car, and drove home. Tripping.

We made it home safely, and by now the peak of our trip has passed. One of us suggests that we put on some music (probably Floyd or Zeppelin) and play some D&D. Okay, I say, grabbing the latest issue of Dungeon. Write up a couple of characters for a heist. So my friends write up a human thief, an elven magic-user thief, and a dwarven fighter-thief, and away we go.

I don't really remember much of the session, for obvious reasons, but one encounter really stood out. The party was outside a main guard room, and decided to rush them. The dwarf opened the door, and then the elven MU/thief cast blur on himself and tumbled into the room, tossing two poisoned daggers at the first two guards. The party had also been hasted before opening the door, so everyone was moving quickly and (we imagined) very fluidly. One of the guys said, "Man, can you imagine how cool that must look, him all hasted and blurry and bouncing around like Spider-man?"

Well, in our states, we couldn't help but TRY to imagine it. We sat there just grooving on the mental image of what the character must have looked like for about 20 minutes. No talking, no dice-rolling, just 4 tripping twenty-somethings with Pink Floyd in the background going, "Whoa, that's pretty cool. Wasn't that cool? Cool."

Needless to say, I don't do that kind of thing now. I like my fights to actually get finished.

 

[painandgreed]

I was with some friends to play some D&D and we were driving a big red shark someplace out side of Barstow and the bats had just begun to attack. The game was mostly free form as the DM made stuff up as he went and was good enough to hold it together and keep it really fun without being too silly. Our thief had, for the fun of it, snuck into the king's castle and wandered out with the (golden jewel encrusted) royal seal not even realizing what it was. Once news was spread around town that somebody had stolen the royal seal and the thief copped to it, the fighter decided he has to take it back. So he tried to break into the castle to return the seal and when that failed tried to just turn it over to some of the guards. There was a misunderstanding and they attacked despite his pleas. He ended up killing one of them before he ran away, still with the seal. My character, the bard, was looking for a job and found one. I was going to play for the queen no less. Seemed that the thieves who had stolen the seal had returned to the castle to retrieve it from where it was hidden and in escaping had killed her nephew while he bravely tried to stop them and she needed somebody to sing at the funeral. Things were getting deperate as they had a desription of our fighter and were chasing us around town with detection spells. I came up with a plan. We had and NPC thief with us who was much better than we were and I sent her to find somebody stupid and greedy enough to hold the seal for us without contacting them. Once found, I had the fighter approach the target and offer them a huge sum of money to hold the seal till the deal was done while making sure that the NPC thief was in the same tavern when the deal went down. That night, I sang at the queen's nephew's funeral and afterwards introduced my friend the NPC thief to the queen because she had overheard some information on the nephew's killer. We ratted out the stupid guy, they got the seal back, and we got the reward money which we split. We all bought horses and were leaving the city when the guard at the gate recognised the fighter and caught him. We went to a high level magic-user we knew and he snuck us into the dungeon and teleported us all into the wilderness just to get rid of us and end the ordeal. While wandering down the road we came across a group of dwarves being attacked by humanoids and we joined in to help them. We killed all the humanoids but they had manged to kill all the dwarves. We looked in the dwarves wagon and found a single crate with a carefully packed golden jewel encrusted royal seal inside. Seemed that the adventure had taken long enough (several weeks) that they had to order a replacement seal from the dwarves and this was it. We left it in the wagon and just kept walking down the road.