Your Most Embarrassing RPG Moment

I was playing in some sort of ruleless RPG based on an the evengelian (sp) series. Being that I had never watched the it, I had no idea what to do, and wound up running around Tokyo in a giant robot shooting at Angles and my "buddies".

After my first death, I had started naming my characters Redshirt #X, in honor of Star Trek.

My last Redshirt went to an illegal garage in Tokyo, bought the most powerful pickup they had, and outfitted it with the biggest self-destruct device on the planet. He died in the center of a plasma beam, just moments away from detonating a bomb that would have turned Japan into Crater Lake.

And then the Angles won and destroyed mankind.
 

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Most embarrassing moment, hmmm....

It was my first campaign. It was also my first real introduction to fantasy in general. Anyway, we have to assault this castle to retrieve an artifact to save the world.

In order to do this, I (being the rogue of the outfit) had to get up on thr roof and secretly steal it while my buddies made a distraction out front.

So we go in to town and buy a couple potions of levitate. Me not knowing how to use a potion proclaim thus: "I pour it over my head."

Image the shock from my fellow RPers. Since then I have become their rules lawyer, so as not to repeat these kind of incidents.

**Edit, I cont spiel**
 
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First edition, one of the first games I'd ever played. I'd rolled up a brilliant halfling thief and I was really looking forward to developing the character. While scouting out some caves, I tried to Hide in Shadows from some zombies. I made a great roll so I couldn't figure out why they made a beeline for me. By the time I realised that Hide in Shadows doesn't work against zombies, I was boxed in a corner...
 

Well it's not my most embarrasing moment, but it was the funniest thing that ever happened in an RPG I was playing in...

We're playing 2e, the Underdark campaign (big boxed set, lots of crawling around underground, great fun). We've captured two people, and we're threatening them to get them to spill the beans on what's going on.

My good friend Richard's fighter (Dudley Townstead) picks up their treasure. It's a magical house, reduced in size. We'd already discovered that it had lots of money and items inside, all reduced, and we needed the command word

Richard: If you don't tell, I'll break it!
Them: Uh, we've lost, so we don't care, whatever...
Richard: I'LL BREAK IT!
Them: Uh...

So Richard throws the box over his shoulder. The other three characters lunge forwards trying to catch it, and the DM calls for dex rolls. Everyone fails. Everyone. The magical house, with enough gold and items inside to raise us up a level, goes up in smoke.

Then we met some trolls next session and everyone dies.
 

Hm... I was running Dead Gods, with my usual group including a friend we'll call Dave and a newcomer we'll call Fred, invited by Dave. Everyone else save me and Dave found Fred annoying and wanted to get rid of him. Even I must admit he was fairly dull, but I wanted to give him time to settle. Still, there were some negative waves floating around even if everyone was as polite as usual. You know, body language and all of that.

So the second session with him the party arrives to an ominous dark temple in an otherwise blasted world. The temple is a powerful illusion, so powerful in fact that anyone entering it will die, no save, no if, no but. The players are supposed to figure out that it is an illusion, while staying well away from it before. To give them all the clues I can, I describe in details the waves of ungodly evil that emanate from the temple, so powerful that they stun you just by looking, and the insane drum music that comes from within, yadda yadda, and the feeling of sickness that comes from getting too close. A hidden fiend tries to Dominate a couple PCs to make them enter the temple with little success (the other PCs stop them). There are (illusionary) dark cultists that beckon the PCs to enter. So basically they have been told in twelve languages that they shouldn't enter.

Well, Fred gets dominated and begins walking towards the temple entrance. Dave however is the only PC close enough to stop him. Instead, he chooses to follow him, while the rest of the group, too far to act, mumbles that it doesn't look like a good idea. Since I somehow felt at a subconscious level what was going to happen (though I didn't completely realize it), I did everything I could to convince Dave to stop. I described with even more power the sheer evil and pain emanating from the entrance, and the complete, utter devouring darkness within, and I prolonged the two rounds it should have taken them to climb the stairs for minutes, hoping he changes his mind. Nothing.

Eventually, I give up and state: "Ok, you pass under the great horned head above the entrance. After just a few steps into the darkness, the evil power overwhelms you, and you fall to the ground. Dead".

Still having the gut feeling of what was going to happen, but not quite putting a finger on it, I say that the other PCs see the corpses raise and vanish into the darkness - so as to leave me some room for damage containment later.

Dave and Fred said nothing special, but they clearly took it as a message that I didn't want Fred in the group (like hell! I say these things directly when I have to!); after five minutes or so and some not too enthusiastic comments, they declared that they had to go home. I felt sooooooooooooooo embarassed, but I just didn't know what to say. Before denying that I did it out of spite, the concept had to be made manifest, but noone at the table would mention it. :o

I've never seen Fred again, but I'm still good friends with Dave. He no longer plays much, but that's mostly because of busy schedule. I still regret not having seen clearly what was coming. I pride myself on my high empathy, but that day I must have really botched it.


As a player, I was fairly embarassed recently while playing Vampire - I was playing a Brujah (tough and fast vampires, among the best fighters) and, due to incredibly poor luck with the dice, I first accidentally started a fight when I just wanted to get this common street thug in a dark alley, and then got severely beaten by him on top of that. I ended up with less blood than what I started the encounter with, instead.
 

Zappo said:
As a player, I was fairly embarassed recently while playing Vampire - I was playing a Brujah (tough and fast vampires, among the best fighters) and, due to incredibly poor luck with the dice, I first accidentally started a fight when I just wanted to get this common street thug in a dark alley, and then got severely beaten by him on top of that. I ended up with less blood than what I started the encounter with, instead.

LMAO. :D
 

Second edition, Planescape...

The players are deep on the 5th layer of Baator, seeking the famed dagger of Rathan (was that the name?).

So they're in a stronghold, they manage to alarm everything inside, and combat ensues.

Surprisingly, the Pcs are doing fine (due to uber-luck). They played so poor their entrance, and made so sure to get the attention of every Baatezu inside, that I had to bring them all in, if only for believability (and so I wondered how long it would take before TPK). But I amazed at their creativity as they still do fine.

But then, The fire genasi entropist attacks with a fire wall. All more knowledgable players look shocked. You guest it, Here comes the hiatus... Rolls later, appears a ringed-shaped fire wall centered on the caster, heat inside. All players save the bariaur wizard are inside the wall. They're dead. Then the bariaur runs for it, take a wrong turn, and run into a gelugon. Too much for him, TPK.

Morale: never use wild magic, even with spell keys, when fighting Baatezu, or at least not attack fire immune baatezus with fire walls. Boy he was humiliated...
 

Here's what happened to one of my players. This is spoiler for the future of my webcomic, but I'll try to keep it vague and hopefully you'll all forget by the time that chapter rolls around.

So there the party was, deep within a ruined efreet palace, in a bizarre room that was once used to embalm efreet. While investigating an opening on the wall, they set loose a rather large fire elemental. After a few rounds of combat, one of them casts wall of ice to keep it away, because they're getting peeled and want to use one of their items to banish it (it doesn't always work). The caster has to make a concentration check, having just taken damage, and rolls a 1.

"OK," says I. "You fail. Oh, and roll again." (I treat fumbles much the same as criticals; you have to roll again to activate them.) The caster rolls another 1.

I blink. That kind of bad luck is very rare and deserves something special. "All right," I say eventually. "The magical energies surge forth uncontrolled and condense into a dome of ice, sealing you in with the fire elemental. The rest of the party is trapped outside."

The caster didn't even manage to draw their most powerful weapon before they got a flaming arm through their chest. The fire elemental went down shortly afterwards, although it wasn't from combat damage (they finally dispelled it). It was a cool encounter, but a sucky way to die.
 

Me and my best friend, both highschoolers, both managed somehow to get into the Dwarven Forge Master Dungeon Crawl at a con. It was only a group of six, run six times for six groups.

Anyway, the final boss was a rakshasa who was posing as a cowering administrator. A party of good adventurers had basically run into the administration of an underdark amusement park at which we were security guards and started killing everything. Mind you, this was the climax of the adventure. So instead of figuring out to help out the good party, which is about to slaughter the BBEG, we halt it long enough (using hold person, stunning attacks, etc) just long enough for the rakshasa to reveal itself. Oh, and I had spent the last crossbow bolt shooting the lawful good fighter of the other party in the head. Boy did we feel dumb. The Rakshasa killed all of us, except for the party wizard, who went all gaseous form and flew away.
 

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