The lovely stupidity of some players...

[Patrick-S&S]

I posted this on the Hârn Forum but since I am soon to embark on my first D&D (Kalamar) campaign in many, many years, I thought I could post it here as well since this has really nothing to do with the game (Hârn) I am currently gaming, but about players in general. Here is the "lovely tale" from my Thrice Evil campaign:

After five successful sessions where the PCs have had a hard time yet survived one of my players has his PC killed. Now normally that would not be a problem for me because the dices are not always with the players no matter how good they are. I can accept that without a problem and I can even accept when a PC dies from a heroic deed, against impossible odds, trying to save the others. What I can not, at least can not understand or accept, is when a characters dies of pure stupidity. Imagine this...

You are blocked in a house surrounded by dozens mindless undead of a lesser version of the Anmorvin (a powerful undead in Hârn). No matter how many limbs you chop off, no matter how many heads you crack they still come after you, crawling, limping and so on. There are several ways to escape from the house that are not obvious such as using a bowl of holy water that you had seen before (but forgot in the heat of battle), the two windows in the back of the building in the beginning of battle, a prayer to your goddess, magic and so on. One of the player thinks ahead of the GM and decides to...

Jump out through one of the windows directly into the crowd of dozen of Hârnic "zombies", play dead and have the zombies take him to their leader of Morgath (Hârnic Chaos God) priest who surely must be behind this deed/death. Now imagine hearing (I added this for fun...) "Fresh... Brain..." from the start of the undead's approach and all the way during the several round long battle. In spite this the player was so sure that the undead mindless freaks would not eat his brains and that they wanted only to capture them, to bring the PCs to their leader (he had left the island days ago after summoning the dead).

Said and go the character jumps out through the window, in spite the other players warnings (they were busy with their characters fighting the zombies), with the words, and get this, "Geronimo" (had he survived I would have awarded him with a fat bonus), straight into the arms of the undead freaks. He pretends to be dead and is shocked when the zombies starts picking his brains out. Of course his call to Larani (Hârnic War Goddess) to save him is a failure, him being out of grace and all, and since the other players hasn't seen where he went, they can not help him either. Although it was a good laugh (really brought tears to the eyes of some of the other players when he screamed Geronimo) I had to question the player's motive, and ability to think properly, for doing this.

This will go down to the history as one of the most stupid acts a player has ever made in our games. The player, who is named Jonny and is my uncle, has a strong will and has a monopoly in crazy acts compared to the others at the gaming table. He has calmed down much compared to the past but now seems to have slided into old habits again. It seems that I will have to tie his next character up a bit so that it does not happen again. It is almost like if you were attacked by crocks while sitting in your boat on the Nile, and decided to jump in with them, "pretending" to be a crock yourself so that you could swim "safely" towards the shore and escape...

Now do you have other mindless and stupid acts like this to tell?

 

[Harlock]

Now do you have other mindless and stupid acts like this to tell?

Heh! Did you make this pun intentionally? That killed me. Player got his branis eaten out and all. Woo. Keep em coming.

 

[Number47]

Well, I did have one character encounter a gelatinous cube. Said cube was bright green from having fed off of slime for the last fifty years. I describe that the corridor end in a smooth, shiny, bright green wall. He declares that he checks it for traps. Sigh.

 

[Patrick-S&S]

Re: Re: The lovely stupidity of some players...

Heh! Did you make this pun intentionally? That killed me. Player got his branis eaten out and all. Woo. Keep em coming.

Well I did add the "fresh... brains..." stuff but other than that this is a genuine story. The player really thought the zombies were a part of a greater plot and that they would only grab the PCs and drag them to the zombies' master. Psycho...

 

[Zappo]

Well, I had a PC attempt to fly through the Plane of Lightning while wearing a full plate.

 

[Lazybones]

Patrick-
I'd let the player be--types like him are priceless for table entertainment and classic stories (some of the greatest stories on the story hour forum have featured players who managed to stagger, stumble, and generally blunder into near-tragedy). If his actions affect only him, then fine; if they drag the rest of the party down then the other players can help you to keep him in check. Just make sure he has some backup characters ready in the wings before each session.

 

[Zerovoid]

Well, I did have one character encounter a gelatinous cube. Said cube was bright green from having fed off of slime for the last fifty years. I describe that the corridor end in a smooth, shiny, bright green wall. He declares that he checks it for traps. Sigh.

I would have probably thought it was a magic portal and tried to walk through it.

 

[noretoc]

I have one, I have one.
We have a player. We call him Ray. I will not mention the time he used an evil artifact, the whole party was on a major quest to destroy, even though he knew it would take over his soul, and return to his master, to save the rest of the party from a dragon, who they were already kickign the snot out of.
Instead I will share a couple of other stories. Once RAY was being interogated by an evil assasin. More like being tortured. The assassin asked "Where are the other". RAY, not knowing where they are said "I bite my tongue off and swallow it" Being the nice person I am, as a DM, I ask "Why?" He replies "So I can't tell him anything". I also reply, trying to slam some glimmer of a clue into him. "You don't know anything. You can't tell him what you don't know". His response... "I bite it off anyway"

Next the juggernaught. I don't remember the details, but I belive it was goblin pushing a large rolling pin, trying to crush the PCs. RAY, wanting to look cool I guess stayed in the corridor, rather than running. I said "Make a saving throw to get out of the way" He said. "I stand where I am" I say "It is going to run you over and crush you" RAY says. "I don't care, I take the damage" A few rolls later he get up, leaving his dead character on the table and walks home. Till this day, when we wish to show stupid pride, we use the term "I don't care, I take the damage"

 

[Tsyr]

I had a player who was fairly new to shadowrun one time... We had all tried to stress to him that shadowrun was a fairly lethal system, and that shootouts were not a terribly good thing to engage in if you valued your character...

The group had been tailing a target for a while through the city, under strict orders to not let themselves be seen until they could be sure of killing the guy and leaving no witnesses. They tracked the guy to an alley where he was meeting with some contacts, selling blackmarket biotech... He was playing a spy-type adept, and had been "roof hopping" through the city with magicly, with the rest of the party was down below. He was looking down at the exchange, and counted two street samurai, a dwarven decker or rigger (he couldn't tell) with visable weaponry, what looked to be a hired wagemage bodyguard, a couple of generic "punk" type orcs with visable weaponry, and a troll with no visable weaponry other than a pair of katana (Another adept, though he didn't know that). Thats not counting the target himself, who was known to pack an Ares pistol and was rumored to be a good shot with it.

Shadowrun players should realize how much firepower we are talking here. And they were in a dead-end ally, in a very defensable position, and an escape route (An open sewer hatch) if things went really bad. (Dumpsters and such to crouch behind). For non shadowrun players... well... in shadowrun, combat is very deadly. Pistols kill. Even little ones. And these guys had Ares and better weaponry (The dwarf had a Lone Star pistol in his jacket). Even given that the character didn't know about the pistol the dwarf had, or that the troll was an adept, that's a lot of firepower.

None the less, the character is convinced that they can easily take out the group (The player's group consisted of the spy-adept, a rigger, a decker, a shaman, and a gunman with no cybernetics beyond a smartlink). And so, after relaying his plan, he acts on it... over the crys of "stop you moron!" from the group... and jumps down into the alley, pistol firing.

...

Well... though a LOT of luck, the players DID win... the leader of the group decided that they owed the rookey a hand once, and decided to try to get him out of there... he went down in seconds, but the group had a good Doc Wagon plan... The rigger sacrificed his car by driving it down the alley after the shaman had pulled the guy out of it under cover from the gunman...they hightailed it to saftey with the characters body and called docwagon...

The character survived, but he was almost a total cybernetic rebuild... right arm up to the shoulder, left arm up to the elbow, right leg up to the hip, eyes, lungs, right ear, a couple ribs replaced... (he took a grenade blast a bit too close, but not close enough to finish him off)... hence all the bad damage on the right side)... he wasn't an adept anymore, lets put it that way. (For non shadowrunners, cybernetics mess up magical ability.)

 

[Sigma]

I've been running a city-based thief game for a while and the characters encountered some enforcers on their turf stirring up trouble. In this case, it was a group consisting of 2 kobolds monk/rogues, a halfling knife-fighter, and a half-orc bruiser. I ahd given the characters warning that the halfling street gang they were fighting with had a kobold tribe under their thumb, and that those kobolds were deadly unarmed combatants. When they approached the group, I mentioned that the kobolds were unarmed, but moved fluidly, and seemed as if they weren't concerned about their lack of weapons.

What does the first character to go do?

He moves through the threat zones of both kobolds and the halfling knife-fighter, triggering attacks of opportunity all around. He gets nailed with a stunning blow and then pummeled with sneak attacks, taking around 30 points of damage. As if that weren't bad enough, the position he moved to left him flanked by the two kobolds, leaving him open for even more sneak attack love. He went down to 0 hit points and the rest of the group barely managed to save his life.

The real mystery is why he chose to move to a tactically inferior position and soak up attacks of opportunity against these foes. We have yet to puzzle that out.