renau1g
First Post
[sblock=Long-Winded Response]
So I and another guy have been DM'ing since 2e for a pretty stable group of players. There's one person who's the Whiney one, upset when his attacks miss, whines when the monster Coup-de-Grace's him when he's in the negative a second time, previously being saved by the Cleric's ranged healing spell. He's whines that the mechanics of the game don't allow him the freedom he wants. I and the other DM say there needs to be mechanics in the game to ensure that rulings happen fairly, i.e. when you try to jump from the balcony and swing from the chandoleer and careen into the enemy, there's a jump check involved, a Dex check to grab the chandoleer, and an attack roll with a bonus +1d6 damage and +2 to hit based on a charge.
Anyways, this person said, I'm going to make my own game up, loosely based on d20. So he spent a long time coming up with it, a game loosely based on Caribbean colonization days and a no-magic game. He was very specific about this point because we couldn't play any character who used magic. When I asked him how we'd heal after injury, he said don't worry about it, I'd see... that should have warned me.
For character generation, we used 5d6, drop the lowest 2, which led to high-powered PC's, which isn't a bad thing. But then he revealed that all the PHB races were out, and we had to pick either a human, or a mutant (think Kevin Costner - Waterworld, who could breath underwater, etc.). On top of that there were huge stat bonuses for each class, a +6 to each important stat.
So I and my wife make Barbarian PC's from the north looking for a cure to a mysterious disease that's wiping out our people and that our holy men can't cure. (I suggested it be Smallpox or something like that). So after character generation I had a 24 Str and a 22 CON, while my wife had the reverse.
We started the game off in a town, divided into 2 parts, Richville and Poorville (yes those were the names). We docked in Poorville and were asking around where we could find a medical person. We found someone who was willing to help us, but they wanted 1000 gold to come, so our next focus was on getting wealth. A one-eyed man was standing on a podium calling out that he'd pay 100 gp to anyone willing to allow him to shoot an apple off their head. My PC agreed thinking he could take a simple arrow shot with his 48 hp (yup, at first lvl). The guy shot and hit my PC in the eye, rendering it useless. I was speechless, the DM hadn't rolled or anything. My PC raged and charged forward intent on crushing this person with his greataxe, but all the peasants decided to get in my way, blocking me from the target and he got away. A man approached me and said he could help. I followed and was informed that this person was the mayor of the town and because everyone had voting rights, Poorville's citizens kept him in power because of stunts like today. I vowed that no matter what heppened my PC was going to kill him, even if it cost him his life.
But the DM told me not to worry, his solution? An eye patch... I was ready to scream, but then he explained that this eye-patch gave me a +2 to Spot checks... I asked how could me losing an eye and covering the whole with this piece of fabric actually help? No real answer, but just told me that it was a scripted event and he'd informed one of the other PC's (his brother) about it pre-game so he wisely stayed out of it...
Ok... I can get over it, I just left the eye-patch there and we continued on our way. We met up with the other two PC's and found common cause. As we were walking to our tavern we heard someone call out to us "Pssstt". After investigating we came upon a stable and entered inside... we encountered Mr.Ed...or at least his in game counterpart... WTF? I asked what is a talking horse doing here. The horse explained that he had been a rich socialite, and found a MAGIC LAMP and summoned a genie, misspoke due to his drunkeness and was turned into the horse. I metagamed and despite my PC believing it to be an evil spirit, I swallowed my tongue and continued on. He told us we needed to get the lamp back, which was in the stablemaster's home... So we decided to rob it at night, and the barbarians were actually the stealthiest ones (as there was no armor allowed) so we snuck in and found the lamp. We decided to knockout the sleeping husband/wife in bed to ensure we could get out of here without being seen.
So we stood next to them and did subdual damage, both of us maxing out damage by the luck of the dice, causing 20 subdual damage...but neither of them were knocked out and so instead of rolling initiative he said they go and start screaming. We tried again and finally subdued them. The DM told us "Now you've done it, the guards are going to be after you because of this" I said fine, I'll cut out their tongues (oh yeah, no alignment in the game either) that way they can't rat us out. He said they'll draw your pictures and that'll lead the authorities to you, so I said I'll cut off their hands then....(note I'm getting more and more frustrated at this time) and he says ... they'll use their stumps to make general arm motions and because we were larger than average that'll lead the guards to us... I sighed and killed them both, which pissed the DM off. I asked how the hell did these commoners survive that, and he said "well not all commoners are first level, this was the StableMASTER after all..."
So we go back to the horse-man (who I forgot to mention has the magic ring embedded in his hoof) , but decide as a group that we'll kill the horse and summon the genie ourselves, as we all wanted the wealth and power. After we succeed on this (and the horse taking about 100 hp to fell) we try the ring and the genie comes out of the lamp. He is angry and says that because the horse-man hadn't completed his 3 wishes the genie couldn't grant more wishes.
We decided to rob the horse-man's house as he had told us about his fabulous wealth. We snuck into Richville and found the house, broke in and found the hidden vault in his room. Now our party rogue-type (a new player, late to the game) tells us he has the lock, and tries to unlock it (after checking for traps and rolling a twenty). The PC takes 20 on the check, but can't open the lock...so we decide to go get some gunpowder and blow it open.
We pour the gunpowder in the keyhole and around the hinges, intent to either blow the door off, or blow out the lock. Now the DM is really angry now and quite snippy with us, so I imagine some sort of bad event happening. We use the person's dining room table as cover and led a trail of gunpowder down the hall and to the top of the stairs, where we were. Once the fuse was lit, we watched (and my wife and the mutant left the building, still not trusting the DM). The equivalent of a 20th level trap went off and each of us had to make a reflex save (which my PC did, but the other guy failed) and then we took 20d6 damage...
I asked WTF could have caused that and was told that because this man had sooooo.... much money he had a MAGIC trap installed, despite being told numerous times magic didn't exist...I survived, but later all the PC's were captured by the guards and executed for the murder of the stablemaster (he had a child hiding in his closet that saw us)
So yeah that's it... no wait there was a magical pommel gem that would give us a +1 to hit and damage...
Yeah that campaign super-sucked.
[/sblock]
So I and another guy have been DM'ing since 2e for a pretty stable group of players. There's one person who's the Whiney one, upset when his attacks miss, whines when the monster Coup-de-Grace's him when he's in the negative a second time, previously being saved by the Cleric's ranged healing spell. He's whines that the mechanics of the game don't allow him the freedom he wants. I and the other DM say there needs to be mechanics in the game to ensure that rulings happen fairly, i.e. when you try to jump from the balcony and swing from the chandoleer and careen into the enemy, there's a jump check involved, a Dex check to grab the chandoleer, and an attack roll with a bonus +1d6 damage and +2 to hit based on a charge.
Anyways, this person said, I'm going to make my own game up, loosely based on d20. So he spent a long time coming up with it, a game loosely based on Caribbean colonization days and a no-magic game. He was very specific about this point because we couldn't play any character who used magic. When I asked him how we'd heal after injury, he said don't worry about it, I'd see... that should have warned me.
For character generation, we used 5d6, drop the lowest 2, which led to high-powered PC's, which isn't a bad thing. But then he revealed that all the PHB races were out, and we had to pick either a human, or a mutant (think Kevin Costner - Waterworld, who could breath underwater, etc.). On top of that there were huge stat bonuses for each class, a +6 to each important stat.
So I and my wife make Barbarian PC's from the north looking for a cure to a mysterious disease that's wiping out our people and that our holy men can't cure. (I suggested it be Smallpox or something like that). So after character generation I had a 24 Str and a 22 CON, while my wife had the reverse.
We started the game off in a town, divided into 2 parts, Richville and Poorville (yes those were the names). We docked in Poorville and were asking around where we could find a medical person. We found someone who was willing to help us, but they wanted 1000 gold to come, so our next focus was on getting wealth. A one-eyed man was standing on a podium calling out that he'd pay 100 gp to anyone willing to allow him to shoot an apple off their head. My PC agreed thinking he could take a simple arrow shot with his 48 hp (yup, at first lvl). The guy shot and hit my PC in the eye, rendering it useless. I was speechless, the DM hadn't rolled or anything. My PC raged and charged forward intent on crushing this person with his greataxe, but all the peasants decided to get in my way, blocking me from the target and he got away. A man approached me and said he could help. I followed and was informed that this person was the mayor of the town and because everyone had voting rights, Poorville's citizens kept him in power because of stunts like today. I vowed that no matter what heppened my PC was going to kill him, even if it cost him his life.
But the DM told me not to worry, his solution? An eye patch... I was ready to scream, but then he explained that this eye-patch gave me a +2 to Spot checks... I asked how could me losing an eye and covering the whole with this piece of fabric actually help? No real answer, but just told me that it was a scripted event and he'd informed one of the other PC's (his brother) about it pre-game so he wisely stayed out of it...
Ok... I can get over it, I just left the eye-patch there and we continued on our way. We met up with the other two PC's and found common cause. As we were walking to our tavern we heard someone call out to us "Pssstt". After investigating we came upon a stable and entered inside... we encountered Mr.Ed...or at least his in game counterpart... WTF? I asked what is a talking horse doing here. The horse explained that he had been a rich socialite, and found a MAGIC LAMP and summoned a genie, misspoke due to his drunkeness and was turned into the horse. I metagamed and despite my PC believing it to be an evil spirit, I swallowed my tongue and continued on. He told us we needed to get the lamp back, which was in the stablemaster's home... So we decided to rob it at night, and the barbarians were actually the stealthiest ones (as there was no armor allowed) so we snuck in and found the lamp. We decided to knockout the sleeping husband/wife in bed to ensure we could get out of here without being seen.
So we stood next to them and did subdual damage, both of us maxing out damage by the luck of the dice, causing 20 subdual damage...but neither of them were knocked out and so instead of rolling initiative he said they go and start screaming. We tried again and finally subdued them. The DM told us "Now you've done it, the guards are going to be after you because of this" I said fine, I'll cut out their tongues (oh yeah, no alignment in the game either) that way they can't rat us out. He said they'll draw your pictures and that'll lead the authorities to you, so I said I'll cut off their hands then....(note I'm getting more and more frustrated at this time) and he says ... they'll use their stumps to make general arm motions and because we were larger than average that'll lead the guards to us... I sighed and killed them both, which pissed the DM off. I asked how the hell did these commoners survive that, and he said "well not all commoners are first level, this was the StableMASTER after all..."
So we go back to the horse-man (who I forgot to mention has the magic ring embedded in his hoof) , but decide as a group that we'll kill the horse and summon the genie ourselves, as we all wanted the wealth and power. After we succeed on this (and the horse taking about 100 hp to fell) we try the ring and the genie comes out of the lamp. He is angry and says that because the horse-man hadn't completed his 3 wishes the genie couldn't grant more wishes.
We decided to rob the horse-man's house as he had told us about his fabulous wealth. We snuck into Richville and found the house, broke in and found the hidden vault in his room. Now our party rogue-type (a new player, late to the game) tells us he has the lock, and tries to unlock it (after checking for traps and rolling a twenty). The PC takes 20 on the check, but can't open the lock...so we decide to go get some gunpowder and blow it open.
We pour the gunpowder in the keyhole and around the hinges, intent to either blow the door off, or blow out the lock. Now the DM is really angry now and quite snippy with us, so I imagine some sort of bad event happening. We use the person's dining room table as cover and led a trail of gunpowder down the hall and to the top of the stairs, where we were. Once the fuse was lit, we watched (and my wife and the mutant left the building, still not trusting the DM). The equivalent of a 20th level trap went off and each of us had to make a reflex save (which my PC did, but the other guy failed) and then we took 20d6 damage...
I asked WTF could have caused that and was told that because this man had sooooo.... much money he had a MAGIC trap installed, despite being told numerous times magic didn't exist...I survived, but later all the PC's were captured by the guards and executed for the murder of the stablemaster (he had a child hiding in his closet that saw us)
So yeah that's it... no wait there was a magical pommel gem that would give us a +1 to hit and damage...
Yeah that campaign super-sucked.
[/sblock]
I really wanted this to be cool. I loved practically everything from R. Talsorian but they should have just worked to make their Interlock System actually interlock instead of recreating a poor man's HERO System.
