D&D Urban Legends: I new this guy who...

[cthulhu_duck]

2. There is never a mention of dice, even though you would think the dice-gambling connection would be an easy one to exploit. Always wondered about that.

In High-School, in the Eighties, I was told that D&D was Evil, because when you created a character, you used 3d6 to roll the stats. The best you could roll was an 18 - which could only happen when you rolled 6, 6 ... and 6.

 

[Krieg]

In High-School, in the Eighties, I was told that D&D was Evil, because when you created a character, you used 3d6 to roll the stats. The best you could roll was an 18 - which could only happen when you rolled 6, 6 ... and 6.

Of course that was when KISS stood for Knights In Satan's Service! I bet Gene Simmons got a kick out of that one! lol

 

[Treebore]

No. That's a daffy old urban legend made up by tour guides and other ignorant goobs to explain why glass at the bottom of old windowpanes is thicker than glass at the top. The real explanation is that it was MADE that way.

Tell that to the original windows in my dads 155 year old house. Plus my Chemistry book, dated 1998, needs to be revised to change this inaccuracy. Plus I will need to e-mail the Chemistry Department at my old college and make sure they get updated, since 3 of their teachers/professors all stated that the book is correct in stating that glass is somewhat like a fluid in that it becomes mishapen over a period of decades, due to the pull of gravity and heat changes, and does indeed become noticeably thicker, at the bottom, and thinner at the top. Window glass, at least since mass production, was never made thicker at one end than the other. They were always uniform.

 

[Cassander]

Both true stories, but people have paid homage to them in subsequent games, and then tell that story as though it were the original. Most of the people who say they (or a friend) were there for the original occurrance are probably wrong.

--Impeesa--

How do you know the Gazebo and Head of Vecna are true stories?? They both sound very engineered to me. Who would really have two competing groups of PCs and have it just happen to work out that way? Sure, it's vaguely possible, but it does sound like a setup. The Gazebo is also a bit too crafted to be real. So, um, whats the evidence that these ever happened? (They are fantastic stories though!)

Btw, this is a GREAT thread.

 

[Cassander]

Such a good thread that it deserves a *bump*

Any other stories??

 

[Torm]

My first DM was a friend's dad when I was 10, and it was played very much as a family game at his house - they knew it taught math and other knowledge. But my second DM, when I was in junior high, made that woman (Everyone here who has had a woman DM give a shout! :::hears crickets:::) in the Chick Tract look like an amateur. We had to have our character sheets mostly in our heads because he had us play in a room lit only by candlelight, everything was in character or else, and .... we had a string of family pets go missing and show back up decapitated on Halloween several years in a row, and he always had a knowing smile whenever it was brought up around him.

Idle thought: Would a female DM be a Dungeon Mistress, instead?

My own superstition is thus: Before the game and after I have rolled my dice, I will place them with the most favorable number sticking up(20 on the d20 for example).

I do almost the same thing, but the opposite way - I set my dice to low (1) if I want high (20) and vice-versa, the idea being that having the die show a number makes it subtly less probable that I will roll that number. Like how rolling a 20 is 1-in-20, but rolling it twice in a row is 1-in-400...

 

[Henry]

I do almost the same thing, but the opposite way - I set my dice to low (1) if I want high (20) and vice-versa, the idea being that having the die show a number makes it subtly less probable that I will roll that number. Like how rolling a 20 is 1-in-20, but rolling it twice in a row is 1-in-400...

I never mentioned this before, but there's also that thing about how the high number is always on the opposite side of the low one; if the die rolls a certain number of turns, it's more likely that it will come up on the other side.

 

[Vaxalon]

Dice superstitions are one thing.

Gaming legends are another.

I guess I was always too insular to hear most of the legends, but I'll tell you one thing...

One of my old DM's took the 20-sider from his dice set (this is back in the days of the "low impact plastic" dice in the basic set) and rounded all the corners except those opposite the "20". He thought it would make the 20 come up more often.

The joke was on him. He never rolled a 20 on that die again.

 

[Mystic_23]

My one "D&D is evil" story:

I have a friend who was a bit unstable, and one day brought a gun to school and started blasting away (he didn't hit anyone, though) because he was sick of being considered a joke at the school.

Anyway, he stopped going to the school, and had to spend some time in one of those places where they send kids who shoot up the schools, take drugs, etc...

Anyway, a year later I was on the bus going to the other school (at the time, we had some high school classes at the Junior High across town and had to bus back and forth for those classes) a group of freshmen were talking about the incident. This one kid who insisted he knew him was talking about how he was into the occult and "He had a whole bunch of D&D books in his basement, and an alter with candles" and other such refinements.

Anyway, I just laughed, and turned around. I explained that that kid didn't know the guy...that he was my friend. I explained that he was NEVER into D&D...and furthermore, he lived in a 1 story house and didn't even HAVE a basement.

I think they just thought he was into the occult because his name was...wait for it...Damien.

 

[Count Arioch the 28t]

Dang. Those stories were messed up.

Torm: Are you serious about the decapitated house pets thing? Because that's crazy, I would seriously harm someone who harmed one of my animals.