Wofano Wotanto
Hero
As an addendum to my earlier post, one of the most entertaining (albeit confusing) early D&D experiences I can remember was a night at that community center where we had five D&D tables going and the GMs had all set up a common story around their players going through magical gates to each others' tables to resolve a quest. Our group of 3rd to 6th level characters started on one table and over the course of an eight hour session (oh, to be young again) we moved through all four of the others and finally back home again. It being OD&D and all, we left a whole bunch of corpses behind us, recruited new blood form other campaigns as replacements, and had a couple of PC decide to stay behind on one table or another rather than continue traveling. The GMs all had different styles and hadn't really coordinated their overall plans much beyond trying to get people through a gate to the next table within a couple of hours tops - which in one case involved a greased slide trap, and another used the "This way to see the egress" chestnut from Barnum & Bailey's circus.
It was stupidly chaotic and at least one group was clearly out to kill or at least rob every "foreign" PC they crossed paths with, but it still sticks in my memory after nearly half a century. Probably never going to get to do anything like that again, and I'm not sure I'd want to. It would spoil the unique feel of the original experience.
For anyone curious, my 3rd level human fighter wound up getting an arm bitten off, then later had a small troll's arm stuck on as a replacement, and finally staggered home broke, naked below the waist, and with a bunch of dirty tattoos on my back where I couldn't see them, but I did live through it and the quest reward was a whole level, so I'll call that a win. "Lefty" became his new nickname, and I believe he lasted another two weeks before meeting a messy demise in an acid trap, big old troll arm and all.
It was stupidly chaotic and at least one group was clearly out to kill or at least rob every "foreign" PC they crossed paths with, but it still sticks in my memory after nearly half a century. Probably never going to get to do anything like that again, and I'm not sure I'd want to. It would spoil the unique feel of the original experience.
For anyone curious, my 3rd level human fighter wound up getting an arm bitten off, then later had a small troll's arm stuck on as a replacement, and finally staggered home broke, naked below the waist, and with a bunch of dirty tattoos on my back where I couldn't see them, but I did live through it and the quest reward was a whole level, so I'll call that a win. "Lefty" became his new nickname, and I believe he lasted another two weeks before meeting a messy demise in an acid trap, big old troll arm and all.
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