humble minion
Legend
Having recently moved house, and therefore having had to shift a couple of times my bodyweight in RPGs and related detritus, I found myself thinking more than once 'why the hell do I do this again?'
Especially when my first roleplaying experience, at the university roleplaying club, went something like this...
Warhammer - the gritty world of dark fantasy under the dread shadow of Chaos. Or at least that's the theory.
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Jurgen: I am a grizzled old veteran guard whose terrible experiences have driven him to become an intolerant witchhunter. You have no idea how complicated the Warhammer Fantasy character generation rules make it to be me. But I do have a 10-foot pole.
Heidi: I'm a mercenary, and so is my low-cut push-up 36DD leather corset. You want to make something of it, huh? Typical MAN! *groinkick*
Eltharienorienorioriel: I am a member of a superior, more refined race. That is why here, in the High Priest of Sigmar's chambers, I am using minor spells to look up Heidi's dress.
Thief: I'm the thief! *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Can't we all just get along? *rubs crystal round neck, strokes pet rat*
High Priest of Sigmar: We sent a junior priest to investigate the ominous abandoned castle of the legendary evil wizard Drachenfels. He didn't come back. For some reason, we are surprised about this. Go find out what happened.
Thief: Pay us lots of gold. *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
High Priest of Sigmar: No.
Heidi: Pay us lots of gold. *bends low over High Priest's desk, flashes cleavage*
High Priest: *sighs* Here is a little bit of gold, now get moving before the semester finishes and the game ends.
Heidi: This riverboat is boring. I will throw myself sluttishly at every male PC on board to pass the time.
Jurgen: Did you miss the part where I have horrible emotional scarring and am a militantly fanatic puritan? Go away and let me wallow in misery!
Eltharienorienarioriel: Although secretly I desire nothing more than to spend this trip in fluffy handcuffs calling Heidi 'mistress' and having candle wax dripped on me, I am a munchkin, so I therefore will stay in my cabin and study unspecified arcane writings in the vain hope of improving my spellcasting skill before we get to Castle Drachenfels.
Thief: *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Nature! Forests! Cycles of life! Cute little fluffy animals! Trees! Rivers!
Eltharienorienorioriel: These trees and rivers are inferior to the trees and rivers in elven lands.
Riverboat captain: Arr, mateys! The riverboat fell through a time/space warp during the month the DM was away with pneumonia, contracted because she refuses to take 'unhealthy, unnatural' Western medicine. So we have now arrived at Castle Drachenfels. Why is the rum gone?
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Eek! Evil undead horses! And an evil undead carriage!
Jurgen: Lo, I will mightily smite the evil undead carriage - with my 10-foot pole!
Eltharienorienarioriel: My elven enchantments are of an eldritch refinement and subtle power incomprehensible to you mere crude humans. Therefore I will defeat the evil undead horses by borrowing Jurgen's two-handed axe and using it to beat the crap out of them telekinetically, from a safe distance.
Heidi: Hmm, this must have been the bedroom where the junior priest was sleeping, before he disappeared. Ooh, I said 'bedroom'! *hip shimmy, eyelash flutter*
Thief: He left this note, warning about the unspecified rise of a great unspecified evil, and told us that we should do something unspecified to stop it. *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Jurgen: Evil that must be burnt out, root and branch. With flame and steel shall we scourge it from the world, even if we have to wade through a river of blood to do so! Follow me!
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Um...
Jurgen: What's the problem? You a heretic or something? *tightens grip on axe*
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Coming, coming...
Eltharienorienarioriel: Wow, judging from all these deadly magical traps, Drachenfels must have been very powerful and known many secrets. For an inferior, inelegant human, of course.
Sinister Whisper: Want to know some of Drachenfels' secrets?
Eltharienorienarioriel: Sure!
Sinister Whisper: Whisperwhisperwhisper.
Eltharienorienarioriel: Cool, I can now animate the dead! Now if only there was SOMETHING to practise on... *Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower's rat scurries past*
Eltharienorienarioriel: Hmmmm...
Heidi: I killed a zombie in the kitchen!
Thief: I killed a zombie in the kitchen as well! *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Jurgen: I killed a zombie in the kitchen too. It's good to know we work so well as a team. Except for the bit where all of you stood back and left me to fight the HUGE HONKING DEMON all by myself.
Heidi: Huh. Male chauvinist pig.
Eltharienorienarioriel: And this room is the legendary Chamber of the Poison Feast, where Drachenfels lured the nobility of the Empire to a banquet with false claims of his redemption, and then poisoned them all. As you see, the table remains fully set, and the dusty skeletons slumped over their plates belong to the heads of all the great noble houses of the Empire. This room must have remained untouched for centuries.
Heidi: Hey, watch me pull the tablecloth out from under the table setting without disturbing anything! *crashclatterclatter* What are you looking at me like that for? Oh, I know the reason. *breast jiggle* You men are all the same.
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Hey, all our food just turned rotten. Even the wheatgrass and guarana I packed specially.
Eltharienorienarioriel: From my vast studies of arcane lore in the finest elven libraries, I recognise this as the effects of a curse!
Heidi: Jeez, I'm glad we have you along, genius.
Eltharienorienarioriel: Don't worry, we can always eat the rat.
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: No! *hugs rat protectively* Hey, someone turned my rat into a zombie! Waaaah!
Eltharienorienarioriel: Oh, that was me. I was just trying something out.
Everyone: *dumbfounded stare*
Jurgen: Sorceror! Necromancer! Heretic! Confess your sins and your death shall be quick and merciful! *tortures*
Heidi: Castrate him! Castrate him! Here, I keep a garrote down my cleavage, use it if you like!
Eltharienorienarioriel: Not the hair, not the hair! *is tortured* Ow!
Thief: Check out these massive bloodstained ivory double doors carved with abominable scenes of depravity, demonry and torture. I bet this is the laundry. *opens door, then thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Elven spirits: Woe, for we are the victims of Drachenfels in ages past, condemned for eternity to offer non-specific warnings of doom to anyone who steps through this door! Doom!
Heidi: You're not actually very helpful for us to talk to then, are you?
Elven spirits: Doom, doom, doom! Oh, and stop torturing the elf, you'll need him now the UNSPEAKABLE DOOM is approaching!
Jurgen: Hey, what unspeakable doom, exactly?
Elven spirits: We cannot speak of the unspeakable doom, except that it was unleashed when the door was opened, and you must now defeat it or DOOM will doom the world to death and, uh, doom! Hark, it comes! Doom!
Heidi: *draws sword and dagger, prepares for battle*
Jurgen: *hefts greataxe, prays to Sigmar for strength*
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: I think I have some herbs that will give us a cleansing aura against the doom.
Thief: *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Eltharienorienarioriel: The puissance of elven magic is more than a match for any paltry doom from human lands! And now that you all know that, I'm going to pee my robe and run away.
Elven spirits: Doom!
DM: Well, I haven't done any work all semester, so I'm taking next week off to study for exams. So that's the end of the campaign then. Bye.
Especially when my first roleplaying experience, at the university roleplaying club, went something like this...
Warhammer - the gritty world of dark fantasy under the dread shadow of Chaos. Or at least that's the theory.
----------------------------------
Jurgen: I am a grizzled old veteran guard whose terrible experiences have driven him to become an intolerant witchhunter. You have no idea how complicated the Warhammer Fantasy character generation rules make it to be me. But I do have a 10-foot pole.
Heidi: I'm a mercenary, and so is my low-cut push-up 36DD leather corset. You want to make something of it, huh? Typical MAN! *groinkick*
Eltharienorienorioriel: I am a member of a superior, more refined race. That is why here, in the High Priest of Sigmar's chambers, I am using minor spells to look up Heidi's dress.
Thief: I'm the thief! *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Can't we all just get along? *rubs crystal round neck, strokes pet rat*
High Priest of Sigmar: We sent a junior priest to investigate the ominous abandoned castle of the legendary evil wizard Drachenfels. He didn't come back. For some reason, we are surprised about this. Go find out what happened.
Thief: Pay us lots of gold. *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
High Priest of Sigmar: No.
Heidi: Pay us lots of gold. *bends low over High Priest's desk, flashes cleavage*
High Priest: *sighs* Here is a little bit of gold, now get moving before the semester finishes and the game ends.
Heidi: This riverboat is boring. I will throw myself sluttishly at every male PC on board to pass the time.
Jurgen: Did you miss the part where I have horrible emotional scarring and am a militantly fanatic puritan? Go away and let me wallow in misery!
Eltharienorienarioriel: Although secretly I desire nothing more than to spend this trip in fluffy handcuffs calling Heidi 'mistress' and having candle wax dripped on me, I am a munchkin, so I therefore will stay in my cabin and study unspecified arcane writings in the vain hope of improving my spellcasting skill before we get to Castle Drachenfels.
Thief: *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Nature! Forests! Cycles of life! Cute little fluffy animals! Trees! Rivers!
Eltharienorienorioriel: These trees and rivers are inferior to the trees and rivers in elven lands.
Riverboat captain: Arr, mateys! The riverboat fell through a time/space warp during the month the DM was away with pneumonia, contracted because she refuses to take 'unhealthy, unnatural' Western medicine. So we have now arrived at Castle Drachenfels. Why is the rum gone?
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Eek! Evil undead horses! And an evil undead carriage!
Jurgen: Lo, I will mightily smite the evil undead carriage - with my 10-foot pole!
Eltharienorienarioriel: My elven enchantments are of an eldritch refinement and subtle power incomprehensible to you mere crude humans. Therefore I will defeat the evil undead horses by borrowing Jurgen's two-handed axe and using it to beat the crap out of them telekinetically, from a safe distance.
Heidi: Hmm, this must have been the bedroom where the junior priest was sleeping, before he disappeared. Ooh, I said 'bedroom'! *hip shimmy, eyelash flutter*
Thief: He left this note, warning about the unspecified rise of a great unspecified evil, and told us that we should do something unspecified to stop it. *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Jurgen: Evil that must be burnt out, root and branch. With flame and steel shall we scourge it from the world, even if we have to wade through a river of blood to do so! Follow me!
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Um...
Jurgen: What's the problem? You a heretic or something? *tightens grip on axe*
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Coming, coming...
Eltharienorienarioriel: Wow, judging from all these deadly magical traps, Drachenfels must have been very powerful and known many secrets. For an inferior, inelegant human, of course.
Sinister Whisper: Want to know some of Drachenfels' secrets?
Eltharienorienarioriel: Sure!
Sinister Whisper: Whisperwhisperwhisper.
Eltharienorienarioriel: Cool, I can now animate the dead! Now if only there was SOMETHING to practise on... *Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower's rat scurries past*
Eltharienorienarioriel: Hmmmm...
Heidi: I killed a zombie in the kitchen!
Thief: I killed a zombie in the kitchen as well! *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Jurgen: I killed a zombie in the kitchen too. It's good to know we work so well as a team. Except for the bit where all of you stood back and left me to fight the HUGE HONKING DEMON all by myself.
Heidi: Huh. Male chauvinist pig.
Eltharienorienarioriel: And this room is the legendary Chamber of the Poison Feast, where Drachenfels lured the nobility of the Empire to a banquet with false claims of his redemption, and then poisoned them all. As you see, the table remains fully set, and the dusty skeletons slumped over their plates belong to the heads of all the great noble houses of the Empire. This room must have remained untouched for centuries.
Heidi: Hey, watch me pull the tablecloth out from under the table setting without disturbing anything! *crashclatterclatter* What are you looking at me like that for? Oh, I know the reason. *breast jiggle* You men are all the same.
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: Hey, all our food just turned rotten. Even the wheatgrass and guarana I packed specially.
Eltharienorienarioriel: From my vast studies of arcane lore in the finest elven libraries, I recognise this as the effects of a curse!
Heidi: Jeez, I'm glad we have you along, genius.
Eltharienorienarioriel: Don't worry, we can always eat the rat.
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: No! *hugs rat protectively* Hey, someone turned my rat into a zombie! Waaaah!
Eltharienorienarioriel: Oh, that was me. I was just trying something out.
Everyone: *dumbfounded stare*
Jurgen: Sorceror! Necromancer! Heretic! Confess your sins and your death shall be quick and merciful! *tortures*
Heidi: Castrate him! Castrate him! Here, I keep a garrote down my cleavage, use it if you like!
Eltharienorienarioriel: Not the hair, not the hair! *is tortured* Ow!
Thief: Check out these massive bloodstained ivory double doors carved with abominable scenes of depravity, demonry and torture. I bet this is the laundry. *opens door, then thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Elven spirits: Woe, for we are the victims of Drachenfels in ages past, condemned for eternity to offer non-specific warnings of doom to anyone who steps through this door! Doom!
Heidi: You're not actually very helpful for us to talk to then, are you?
Elven spirits: Doom, doom, doom! Oh, and stop torturing the elf, you'll need him now the UNSPEAKABLE DOOM is approaching!
Jurgen: Hey, what unspeakable doom, exactly?
Elven spirits: We cannot speak of the unspeakable doom, except that it was unleashed when the door was opened, and you must now defeat it or DOOM will doom the world to death and, uh, doom! Hark, it comes! Doom!
Heidi: *draws sword and dagger, prepares for battle*
Jurgen: *hefts greataxe, prays to Sigmar for strength*
Leafdaughter Moonbeam Peacebower: I think I have some herbs that will give us a cleansing aura against the doom.
Thief: *thief's player leaves, is replaced by random wandering new player*
Eltharienorienarioriel: The puissance of elven magic is more than a match for any paltry doom from human lands! And now that you all know that, I'm going to pee my robe and run away.
Elven spirits: Doom!
DM: Well, I haven't done any work all semester, so I'm taking next week off to study for exams. So that's the end of the campaign then. Bye.
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