My, how the adventures have changed...

[Gumby]

Exalted

The Eclipse Caste Ironic Featherweight Sofa, the Night Caste Golden Darkness Oxymoron, the Dawn Caste Sword o' Plenty, the Twilight Caste Patient Lemonhead, and the Zenith Caste Brilliant Tableleg set out to destroy every Dragon-Blooded in the Realm, the Deathlords, the Fair Folk, half of the Sidereals, any God that looks at them funny, and that mountain, because it's there.

On the way, they encounter a country that asks them to journey into the Underworld and retrieve the still-beating heart of the Deathlord Treader in Molasses, so that it can be exposed to the breath of the Goddess of Truth, Beauty and Wagonwheel Spokes. They figure there's something shifty about the country and slay every last man, woman, and child, and then use necromancy to create an invincible undead army from the destruction.

After setting alight the Blessed Isle in a blaze of iridescent amaranth, they go into the Underworld anyway, where they find a chest. The Night fails his Larceny check and is incinerated by the deadly force of the tears of Okina-yukami-Otaku, the Goddess of social anxiety. Inside the chest though, is the Glorious Fivefold Guillotine Saber, a daiklaive of great power that can instantly slay everything in five parsecs if they don't have a perfect defense charm. The Dawn already has a better weapon and the Eclipse uses the daiklaive to sweep up the ashes of the Night Caste, in order to bring them to the Five Maidens and beseech the Maidens to resurrect his fallen brother. When he does so, the collective weight of his Socialize Dice Pool breaks the gaming table in half.

 

[T. Foster]

In my personal experience, magic-users would lob flasks of oil (we called them Molotov cocktails).

As far as I can tell, there are no explicit rules in OD&D (1974) or any of the supplements either (excluding Holmes BD&D). I think the house rule my group used was 1d6 points of damage per round for 2 rounds. I do know that when the Holmes BD&D game out and said that it should be 1d8 the first round and 2d8 the second round we were shocked and were divided as to whether to up the damage or not.

I never played OD&D in its day (I was an infant at the time...) so I can't attest to what people did or didn't do in actual play. As you mentioned, though, there weren't any rules in the book covering "molotov cocktails" (those didn't show up until the Holmes Basic Set and AD&D) so I don't think of that as part of the quintessential OD&D experience (and, in fact, I specifically don't allow them in my OD&D games -- you can dump out a flask of oil and set the pool alight, but you can't stuff a lit rag in the flask and throw it as a bomb).

The 1E example should definitely have included the mage hurling oil-bombs, though (and possibly toasting one of his allies with a misthrow). With a direct hit (which, the way most DMs I played with rule it, only requires a hit on AC 10) causing 3d6 damage (2d6 on round 1, 1d6 on round 2) it's by far the most effective weapon in the 1st-3rd level AD&D characters' arsenal, and it usually doesn't take long for the players to figure that out.

 

[Numion]

WFRP

Immediately thereafter, a goblin attacks with a rusty cleaver and severs the dwarf's femoral artery. The trollslayer bleeds to death in the filth two rounds later.

a) Impossible - fate points
b) Not likely - Goblin vs. a troll slayer, one hit?

 

[trollwad]

Gamma World (Omega World)

Four neophyte aspiring adventurers (a clever pure strain human with a rusty knife and a staff, a two-headed mutant human with telepathy who can project laser beams from his eyes, an eight-legged mutant dog with an oversized jaw and an enhanced sense of smell and a 9’ tall mute green water-breathing cactus with poison needles, insect attraction, and narcolepsy) wander into a farming village and are tasked with recovering a “sacred fire stone.” The village elder’s flying metal vehicle (a levitation car) is no longer working and he has one of his young advisors guide the adventurers thru a burning desert to a ruined complex of the Ancients where he believes a replacement can be found.

Along the way, the PCs encounter a hermit with strange mental powers who is being attacked by a mutant ant. The cactus uses his insect attraction to lead the mutant creature harmlessly into the wilderness. After a brief discussion, the overjoyed hermit telepathically conveys to the two-headed mutant that the party’s guide is treacherous.

Upon arriving at the Ancient complex, the PCs prepare to enter, but the guide says "I will go no further; I will wait for you here." The PCs decide that the guide is no longer of any value to them and stake him naked over a hill while the cactus attracts mutant ants from miles around.

Lighting torches and entering the complex, the eight-legged mutant dog smells a group of badders (upright mutant badgers who secretly idolize the mascot for the University of Wisconsin) approaching. The PCs ambushes the group of 12 badders as they round the corner. The mutant’s laser eyes and the cactus’ poison needles do immediate damage to a number of badders, but (at least the Gamma World) battle settles into an interminable 20 minute (game time and real time) melee as the catus’ narcolepsy sets in and he drifts to sleep in the corner and the pure strain human’s staff and the dog’s bite take forever to finish off the injured badders.

After melee, the PCs wake up the cactus and take a funny-looking card from the large badder. The card opens up a strange heavily sealed door on the side of the room. There is a strange metallic (lead) chest that on the other side of the door. The metallic (lead) chest is easy to open and unlocked and contains a red glowing stone (marked nuclear fuel cell in Ancient) – opening the chest makes the pure strain human very sick. The speedy dog quickly closes the chest. The next morning, the pure strain human develops agoraphobia.

The two-headed human sneaks into the village at night (while his comrades hide on the far side of the village behind cover and prepare to provide a distraction if needed). The mutant human resolves to use the sacred stone to power the levitation car and escape with it into the wilderness. He attempts to replace the old sacred stone in the car with a new sacred stone but not being a pure-strained human he screws up the exchange, blowing up the car, the sacred stones, himself and most of the village.

In Gamma World, the surviving party wanders into the wilderness, broken and battered, but possibly wiser. In Omega World, the rest of the party gains a modicum of experience for their travels and a full level for accidentally nuking a village.

 

[Satori]

The Eclipse Caste Ironic Featherweight Sofa, the Night Caste Golden Darkness Oxymoron, the Dawn Caste Sword o' Plenty, the Twilight Caste Patient Lemonhead, and the Zenith Caste Brilliant Tableleg set out to destroy every Dragon-Blooded in the Realm, the Deathlords, the Fair Folk, half of the Sidereals, any God that looks at them funny, and that mountain, because it's there.

On the way, they encounter a country that asks them to journey into the Underworld and retrieve the still-beating heart of the Deathlord Treader in Molasses, so that it can be exposed to the breath of the Goddess of Truth, Beauty and Wagonwheel Spokes. They figure there's something shifty about the country and slay every last man, woman, and child, and then use necromancy to create an invincible undead army from the destruction.

After setting alight the Blessed Isle in a blaze of iridescent amaranth, they go into the Underworld anyway, where they find a chest. The Night fails his Larceny check and is incinerated by the deadly force of the tears of Okina-yukami-Otaku, the Goddess of social anxiety. Inside the chest though, is the Glorious Fivefold Guillotine Saber, a daiklaive of great power that can instantly slay everything in five parsecs if they don't have a perfect defense charm. The Dawn already has a better weapon and the Eclipse uses the daiklaive to sweep up the ashes of the Night Caste, in order to bring them to the Five Maidens and beseech the Maidens to resurrect his fallen brother. When he does so, the collective weight of his Socialize Dice Pool breaks the gaming table in half.

I literally laughed out loud.

 

[Stoat]

a) Impossible - fate points
b) Not likely - Goblin vs. a troll slayer, one hit?

(a) Maybe the Trollslayer already used up his fate points? Maybe his player felt it wasn't in character to try and cheat death?

(b) Extremely unlikely, I'd say, but within the realm of possibility. Besides, somebody has to be critted and killed by a pitiful goblin or it just isn't a WFRP parody.

 

[Satori]

I'm not talented enough, but we need a Vampire: The Masquerade adventure! As long as it includes a munchkin Brujah played by a 14 year old WoW player, a mysterious Tremere played by a guy who constantly wears a trenchcoat and sunglasses, and his starving artist Toreador gothic girlfriend with black lipstick and fishnets stockings on her hands.

 

[Numion]

(a) Maybe the Trollslayer already used up his fate points? Maybe his player felt it wasn't in character to try and cheat death?

The game is about heroic fantasy, but yeah, there's nothing stopping players from pissing away characters. That's hardly a function of the system, though.

I just pointed it out because WFRPs lethality is vastly exaggerated on the net, and seems to get worse with each telling. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, but it essentially has it's roots in D&D style gaming (well D&D where characters never get past level 5, anyway).

Fate points actually make the first 1-4 sessions of any WFRP campaign basically deathless, in my (quite extensive 1E WFRP) experience.

(b) Extremely unlikely, I'd say, but within the realm of possibility. Besides, somebody has to be critted and killed by a pitiful goblin or it just isn't a WFRP parody.

I thought these tales were about typical sessions, not freak rolls and players intentionally getting characters killed. WFRP, Trollslayer vs. Goblin - bet on the goblin. Every time.

 

[Pants]

The game is about heroic fantasy, but yeah, there's nothing stopping players from pissing away characters. That's hardly a function of the system, though.

WFRP is heroic fantasy?

I know it's lethality is exaggerated, but it's still an extremely lethal game, with many, many bad things that can happen to characters other than death.

 

[Sitara]

Actually an encounter with a couple of gobbles could seriously screw up a 'fresh and typical' wfrp v2 party. It could very well be a drain on FP's. If someone was out of FP's prior to the fight, then death is certainly possible.

Also, even assuming all pc's defeatd the goblins, and the Trollslayer had to spend a FP, then they would have been salughtered by the sorceror had he not failed his roll. (all the sorceror needed to do was summon one demon)Insta TPK, at least for those who had no FP's to spend.

Diseases are completely in the narrators control though.