Tales from the tabletop

[Darkniciad]

I'm going to use this thread to relate some stories from the genesis of my writing - the tabletop pen n' paper game where my fantasy world and many of the characters who inhabit it were born.

 

I'd considered putting some of these on the "About" page, but decided to scrap that idea and just post them here instead. I'll start with some I've told in other places before, though they should be new to most of you. And here's the first!

 

This tale centers around one of my players creating a new character. Everyone playing the game had many characters. We just picked up characters from our portfolio according to whim every time we sat down at our custom built plywood and 2x4 gaming table. When we didn't feel like playing one of our existing characters at the moment, we simply rolled up a new one for the day and added it to our portfolio.

 

The character involved in this story eventually became one of my four banes as a gamemaster. two of my players were extremely creative, and this always resulted in good rewards. The more creative the solution to a problem, the more the player was rewarded for it. They each had two characters powerful enough to be a disruption to the world order everywhere they went. The character in this story is a Drow Elf based upon the Forgotten Realms Drow, which are a chaotic and mostly evil race of underground dwelling elves.

 

This character began to show signs of danger from the beginning, rolling extremely high on every roll in the character creation process. There were only two rolls which were more than 2 away from the max, in fact. This qualified my player to create a Drow, which was designed to be a very rare type of player character, and thus had been a quest of everyone when we rolled up new characters.

 

Having qualified to play a Drow, my player immediately began working out an extensive back story for his character as he chose his starting equipment. My die rolls for his potential starting equipment were no less astounding – and foreboding – than his rolls to create the character. He started out with phenomenal stats and phenomenal equipment. One of my other players, already running another of my "bane" characters leaned over and whispered, "Cripes, he's going to be a bloody Cuisanart!" adding to my sense of foreboding that this Drow was going to be a test on my ability to control.

 

With his stats, equipment, and back story developed, there remained only one blank line on his new character sheet: Character Name.

 

This had always been a decision one had to make carefully in our gaming group. One's choice of name had to be carefully vetted in order to avoid anything that could be corrupted into a joke. "Wilburn" had already branded one of my brother's characters with constant "Mr. Ed" jokes. "Sanderen Fordson" naturally branded another player's character with a chorus of people humming the "Sanford and Son" theme.

 

The player in question chose not to play his new Drow character that day, deciding to spend a little time considering his character's name instead. He played a sadistic brawler named Zeothrox for that day's game session. The next day, his new Drow likewise sat on the sidelines as Zeothrox completed an adventure he had started the day before. The following three days, his Drow still sat idle with that blank Character Name line while he ran a recently created Paladin through his paces.

 

Upon completion of his Paladin's first quest, locating and bonding with his magnificent war horse, my player pulled out the character sheet for his Drow and put a pen to that long blank line. The Drow's first name emerged – Razza. It was meant to be reminiscent of Drizzt, a Drow Elf Ranger from R.A. Salvatore's novels. All the jokes we came up were weak and lame, and would never stick. Scott had succeeded in the first part of his quest to come up with a name his Drow could live with.

 

There was a break in gaming for a few days, as a couple of parties and sessions jumping off the cliffs at a strip mine pit took precedence over the game. When we returned to our cobbled-together table, Scott pulled out that character sheet once more, now with a full name...

 

Razza Rogan.

 

Immediately, one of my other players stood up and put on his best obviously-reading-it-off-the-teleprompter voice...

"Hello. I'm Razza Rogaine and I'm not only the President of the Hair Club for Drow, I'm also a client."

 

The hilarity which ensued dulled my sense of foreboding, for a time. The character's surname was changed to Kilsek after a few more days of consideration, after which the Drow stepped forth from the dark recesses of a cave at the bottom of the Great Crater. The damage had been done, however, and the "Rogaine" joke stuck with him.

[Darkniciad]

Here's another one.

 

My gaming world was entirely my own creation, put together in the fashion of Frankenstein's monster from video games such as Dragon Warrior, movies, fantasy novels, and mythology. Eventually, once I got a job, official Dungeons and Dragons materials got thrown into the mix, but the world remained ever a unique alloy. The world was also a power nexus, highly magical, and almost a "Monty Haul" campaign, balanced by the fact the NPCs and monsters were given access to the same hauls of magic. Finding magic items in even the most mundane locations was common, and the high powered PCs often lamented when something as meaningless as a Staff of Thunder and Lightning was the most significant magical booty from that annoying wizard who dared to challenge their might.

One day, upon having emerged victorious from a battle with Nightcrawlers (teleporters with prehensile tails and drow-like weapon abilities, derived from Marvel's X-Men), the players were examining the spoils from the Nightcrawlers' lair as I rolled them up.

 

They were lamenting the "pitiful" gains from their hard-fought battle; a staff of healing, gauntlet of demon control, and an orb of entrapment within a dusty chest filled with more mundane objects. One of my players listed them off as "A band-aid stick, a glove of imp charming, and an orb of butt-hair knotting" as I was rolling up the remaining thing in the chest.

 

This was rolled out as a "mystery" item, exuding a powerful aura of magic but having a minor effect in reality, which also caused the holder to believe it performed some great service for them. The moment I saw the first roll for "mystery," I already knew what it was going to be, and knowing what else was going on while they were busy looting a single room in a vast fortress, I knew how I could take advantage of it right away. I continued to roll, but I had already determined all the other properties of the item and all the dice handling was just a cover.

 

I explained the last item was nothing they had seen before, and naturally they were intrigued. It was a small, perhaps two-inch orb of translucent stone which seemed to pulse with magic. When the player who had been so creatively naming the booty picked it up, I told him he felt a tremendous surge of strength upon touching the orb. Being the strongest of the party, and a bit of a bully, he naturally dropped it in his own pocket. The PC was a gorilla of a man, in more ways than one. He was closer to seven feet than six, at the upper limits of natural human strength for his frame, and hairy as a gorilla as well. He was the perfect subject for what was going to come next.

 

The Necromancer who called the fortress his home scried the erstwhile adventurers, paying little attention to anything but their looting, and promptly began the chant to raise the dead Nightcrawlers to life and surprise them.

The player characters turned on the stiffly rising Nightcrawlers, expecting an easy fight since it was the speed of the creatures which made them dangerous and undeath was naturally likely to reduce this asset. The fight began with the expected results, including two devastating blows from the PCs which nearly incapacitated two of the undead Nightcrawlers... then the PC with the mystery orb raised his sword for battle.

 

I told him to roll an extra d4 for his damage, which he took to mean his newly acquired orb of great strength was aiding him. He was quite surprised when his mighty overhand stroke missed due to a feeling like the stinging of a dozen needles in his backside altering his aim slightly. The battle continued, his companions continuing to mop up the floor with the greatly slowed creatures. Once again the PC with the orb missed with the great sweeping arc of his enchanted blade, again being assaulted with some sort of magical needles striking his backside.

 

The PC promptly left the Nightcrawlers to his companions and began seeking out the hidden or invisible wizard who was firing missiles at his derriere. He found nothing, and was still searching long after the second battle with the creatures was ended. Bending to look under a crude bed, he was once again assaulted by the unseen assailant.

 

Hearing noise coming from down the hall, the companions hurried in that direction to meet the threat, and hopefully accumulate more spoils of battle. As they broke into a run the PC with the mystery orb felt the stinging needles striking him with every step.

 

During the battle which followed with a pair or more or less non-menacing zombies, the PC once again proved to be almost completely useless, constantly missing and being stung by the needles. He had enough, and ordered the rest of the troupe out of the fortress hoping to find something that could shield him from the annoying wizard.

 

Returning to their own fortress a short distance away, the PC leading the group enlisted the aid of their wizard to determine what they could learn about their spoils, hoping for hidden powers in a couple of blades they had obtained. The PC finally found the source of his discomfort when he was informed that the orb he carried was a cursed item created by a mad mage... an orb of butt-hair knotting.

 

Jason refrained from making up creative names for unimpressive magical spoils from that point forward.

[Darkniciad]

Number three You might recognize the rather humble beginnings of Blorcasir, the god of Murder in my writing ( Now imprisoned by Zoraster ) as well as hints of Blackhawk Hall.

 

The city and country of Freeland was the standard starting point of all adventures in my world. Ninety percent of the characters who ever walked my world took their first steps in the city of Freeland and the wilds beyond. Freeland was a powerful and populous nation with access to great military and magical might. Thus, they were able to maintain order even unto the far reaches of the nation’s borders. Most foul and dangerous beasts had been slain or chased out of the land long before the first gaming session ever occurred. Only those creatures which were able to hide well and bred like rats, such as goblins, ever seemed to be found within the borders due to sheer numbers and stealthy, cowardly ways.

 

One such creature was the “Woodland Troll”. Woodland trolls were, in fact, not remotely related to trolls. They were something only slightly removed from goblins on the evolutionary scale, and actually were even more pitiful. Those familiar with the Dragonlance setting will have a point of reference to think of them as the Gully Dwarves of goblinkind. Rural people had named the creatures, and the name had simply stuck.

 

Woodland trolls are stupid creatures which really only exist because they breed so rapidly and constantly renew their numbers as they are slain by man, beast, and drowning while staring up into rainstorms.

 

It also made them the perfect first encounter for a fresh player or character who didn’t have much to work with or a limited understanding of the game. Even the least skillful player with the most pitifully weak character could manage to defeat a handful of these miserable creatures and begin their adventuring career. It helped that there was a (very small) bounty on them in Freeland since the military could not keep up with exterminating them as they had most other monsters in the nation.

 

Woodland trolls always fanatically attacked when encountered, although I had never really given any though to *why* this was the case. It was simply useful to give new characters a nice load of experience with combat in the game and experience toward leveling up without a lot of danger.

 

The character in this story was a newly rolled paladin on his first adventure, played by a veteran player. He knew, under the guidelines by which paladins worked in my world, that he would be starting off with little more than the clothing on his back. The quest to become a great holy knight started from the humblest of beginnings. What he didn’t know was that one of the secret rolls I made during each character creation had come up positive.

 

There were secret abilities I rolled for with each new character. If the character was female, they might have hidden natural abilities to use witchcraft that slowly emerged during play. All other characters had rolls to check for two other hidden abilities, mutant powers (as in Marvel Comics X-Men) and immortality in the fashion of the movie Highlander.

 

This paladin was the first, and only, character to ever make the 1 in 100 roll to be a Highlander-style immortal.

 

Thus he set out on his grand quest, never knowing what the fates had in store for him. Wearing only the clothing on his back and carrying only a stout club and a few packets of healing herbs he had gathered, the neophyte paladin ventured forth into the wilderness following the pull of his calling.

 

As was usual, he encountered a group of woodland trolls soon into his travels. It was a modest group, only three, and should have been little trouble for the average stray dog to dispatch, but such proved not to be the case.

 

While the rolls to create the character had been very good, thus enabling the player to even create a paladin, his die rolling proved much less effective in combat almost immediately. His initial strike completely missed the nearest approaching creature. It was the first time in the history of the game that a player character failed to draw first blood against woodland trolls.

 

I tossed the woodland troll’s black and red “devil dice” across the board for their first strikes. These dice were considered “cursed” amongst our gaming group, because no matter how cool they looked, they always seemed to roll miserably low numbers. Thus they were perfect for creatures that were always meant to lose. This time, the curse was not affecting the trolls to whom the dice had been assigned, but their opponent. Every strike they made hit, and did tremendous (for a weak creature with pitiful weapons) damage to the untested paladin.

 

Three telling blows made the player running the paladin choose to use his healing herbs immediately. He recovered most of his lost hit points immediately, the herbs being magical in nature. He then set himself for the next onslaught of woodland troll attacks. He expected, as anyone would, that the battle would quickly turn back in his favor now after the initial combination of his bad luck and the good luck of the trolls.

 

Such was not to be.

 

He continued to miss or do minimal damage to the savagely attacking creatures, which seemed to be possessed of the gods' own luck. In a few rounds, the paladin was dangling over the cliff of the hereafter by only his fingertips. A few more lucky blows would have ended his career right there as he expired.

 

He was immortal, however, and his "death" triggered the ability within him. I kept it hidden from him as he awoke, naked without a single possession to his name on the floor of the woods. A strange man, who the player correctly assumed to be an avatar of his deity, explained how he had come to survive in the player’s mind.

 

This is where the paladin’s relevancy to the story ends. It was his ill-omened battle that gave birth to a new deity in my world, however.

 

I now knew why woodland trolls attacked with such tenacity, only to die quick horrible deaths. The god of the woodland trolls, Blork, blessed all those of his children who could manage to do even the slightest harm to another mortal, especially a human. He granted them many mates for this great accomplishment, as well as “riches” such as the creatures considered them. If they died, they were taken to dwell at his side in what passed for heaven in his realm.

 

These three, having killed a paladin while taking only minimal wounds themselves, were immediately elevated to a proxy (think of an angel, although it would hardly apply to these creatures) in Blork’s court.

 

My players sat groaning and laughing as I described what was going on, never knowing just how much of a pain in the posterior region Blork and his proxies Kronk, Blah, and Ick were going to be as time marched on in the game. With proxies to help guide his hordes, the woodland trolls became even more of a nuisance. Naturally, the first places they always chose to invade were the lands and castles of the player characters.

 

It was a great deal of fun harassing my players with them any time they started to get a swelled head. There’s nothing like having to spend an entire gaming session slaughtering an infestation of woodland trolls in your castle keep to deflate the ego, especially when a small number of them had been blessed by their new god.

[Darkniciad]

Here comes another one! Anybody who's read the Arts Ardane series ( Kampar's Wand ) will see some of where it came from in this tale.

 

Wherever they are found, and wherever they have traveled, Kender evoke a common adage amongst those who have encountered them.

 

"The most dangerous thing in the world is a bored Kender."

 

I must beg to differ in this tale.

 

For those who don't know Kender, they are a race of Halflings (or Hobbits should that reference be better suited to your knowledge) that inhabit the world of Krynn, the setting of the Dragonlance Saga. I imported them into my world after reading my first Dragonlance novel, and they quickly became some of my favorite characters. Kender are utterly fearless, even to the point that dragon fear will only make them feel "a little funny," because they have no sense of personal danger whatsoever. They also have no concept of personal property, acquiring and losing things with such regularity that they are often surprised at what they find within their own pouches. A Kender family heirloom may have been in the family for all of two weeks. They do not view this as theft, but rather as "borrowing" and become quite indignant when called thieves. Their most salient trait is their insatiable curiosity. It is the trait from which everything else is born. Fascination with seeing a dragon for the first time overcomes the natural fear reaction. Seeing an interesting item "close to falling out" of someone's pocket will prompt a Kender to rescue it from the brink and examine it, confident that they will return it later and the person will be glad for the help in saving it from being lost.

 

The Kender in this tale is one Darmok Tinkettle, ran by a player in my group with a flair for creativity... and driving a gamemaster nuts.

 

Darmok happened upon a fascinating little staff on one of his adventures, which was quite obviously magical. The item was an artifact which could duplicate nearly any spell effect in existence, but had a chance that it would fail to function. It was also restricted to the Chaotic Neutral alignment, which Darmok was. It required a command word to activate its power, and unfortunately Darmok did not know that command word. Once the command word was discovered, a practiced mage could learn to discern the enchantments within it and activate the powers he wished to use. To those without magical skill, it randomly cast spells as if it were a high level wizard.

 

Whenever an item like this showed up in the campaign, I gave a 1 in 1000 chance that the character might stumble across its command word, even without study. The player would just ramble off a command and roll to see if the number came up. A Kender is the perfect sort of character to come across one of these, ready and able to rattle off fascinating "magical phrases" while pointing the magical item at all sorts of people, places, and things.

 

Darmok would regularly pull out the staff as he adventured, trying new command words. "Abracadabra," "Hocus Pocus," "Ala Peanut Butter Sandwiches," and numerous other phrases failed to activate the magic of the item. Being a Kender, Darmok was untroubled, knowing he would figure it out eventually. Also being far removed from his kin as he adventured, he managed to hang on to the fascinating little object.

 

During one adventure, Darmok found himself in a spot of trouble. Caught perched on a narrow ledge with a group of very angry ogres snarling both above and below him, he was certainly in dire straits.

 

Pulling forth the staff, he pointed it at the group of ogres below. He shouted "Work!" in a loud voice, and my player rolled the dice.

 

I sat open-mouthed and stunned when he rolled the one in a thousand number that meant he had found the item's command word.

 

Laughing, I rolled the dice and discovered the spell which had randomly activated was Meteor Swarm. Shaking my head in disbelief, I rolled up the damage and found that he had nearly decimated the group of ogres below the cliff. Those who survived, and could do so, ran for their lives. Those atop the cliff likewise did the same.

 

Now a very proud Kender possessed a magical staff of great power. Intoning its mystical phrase "Work!" he played with the item for a few minutes upon reaching the top of the cliff. Fireballs, lightning bolts, stinking clouds, and all manner of fascinating, deadly magic spewed from the staff at random vegetation.

 

Now fancying himself a great and powerful wizard, Darmok set out for a nearby town to borrow a wizard's robe. Finding a woman's summer dress hanging out to dry, he made a few modifications and was soon dressed in the powder blue robes of a great wizard, with a very low neckline.

 

Strutting up to a magic school, he presented himself as Darmok the Magnificent and started to walk past the wizard who minded the gate.

 

"Oh no, you little thief, the last thing we need in here is one of your kind picking up something and running off with it to cause mayhem."

 

Darmok sputtered and fumed. "My kind? Thief? I am insulted, and everyone knows not to insult great and powerful wizards! We are stubbly and quick to anger!"

 

Pulling forth his staff, he aimed it at the offending wizard and spoke the command word. The wizard he was aiming the staff at laughed when one of the random failures of the item rolled up and nothing happened.

 

"Hmmph, must have been holding it wrong. Let's try that again. Work!"

 

The item did not fail this time, rolling up an itching spell which had the wizard guarding the gates scratching furiously and screaming for help.

 

When others arrived, one made the mistake of saying, "Oh no, a thieving Kender! Get it away quickly!"

 

"Well, I never! If you are all so rude, I'll just find another place to show my magic to then."

 

"Get out of here before I set your topknot on fire!" one of them yelled at Darmok.

 

Never threaten a Kender's topknot. It really is a bad idea, trust me. Once again the staff came forth and Darmok shouted, "Work!"

 

I groaned when the spell effect was a mass dispell. Every magic item and ward in the general vicinity ceased to function immediately. The wizards knew it, and began to panic. Darmok, of course, did not and thought the staff had failed again.

 

"Work!"

 

A powerful stream of water shot forth from the staff, blasting the wizards back into the building. Derisive shouts about Darmok prompted him to continue his assault, thinking that people who were so rude must be evil wizards, and as a good wizard it was his duty to bring them to justice.

 

I breathed a sigh of relief when the spell was Teleport Self. Picking up my stack of folders containing the maps of various locations in the world, I selected one randomly. I closed my eyes and pulled out a random map, opening it under the table.

 

I groaned again, knowing this was not going to be good. The location was a temple, far from any civilized land, where a lone guardian held the key to preventing a flight of deadly black dragons from ravaging the world. The most prized possession of their horde was the key which imprisoned them in a pocket dimension. The guardian ensured that no one raided their treasure-filled lair and disturbed the six foot long pure onyx statue of a crouching black dragon. Removing it from the lair would not only break down the barriers preventing the dragons from returning to the world, it would serve as a beacon to draw the dragons to it.

 

The guardian, a golem created by the most powerful of magic, had a very limited vocabulary and scope of thought. Thus, it intoned exactly the wrong phrase upon Darmok's sudden appearance in the lair's entrance hall.

 

"Stop, thief, or be destroyed!"

 

"Oh yeah? Take this pasty face! Work!"

 

I slapped my forehead when the staff caused a dimensional shift, then banged my head on the table when the golem failed its saving throw.

 

Darmok spent several happy hours exploring and examining all the fascinating items in the horde, naturally pocketing many of them into his numerous pouches of holding. Then he happened upon the statue.

 

Examining it, he thought it would look good in front of his friend Thakkor's castle. So, he decided to take it to him as a present. Scratching his chin, trying to figure out how to move the massive thing, he remembered an orb of levitation he was carrying. Upon picking it up with the magical orb, the player looked over at me and said, "Is the opening on my purloin sack wide enough to slip over the statue?"

 

I nodded my head and said, "Yes," with a definite note of foreboding.

 

Darmok then proceeded to slip the purloin sack, a large bag with a holding enchantment upon it, over the statue. It vanished, completely weightless and easy to carry, into the extra-dimensional space contained within the magical bag. He also raked copious amounts of coins and gems into the sack while he was at it for good measure.

 

Whistling a merry tune, Darmok set out for new adventures. Around the world, wizards of power panicked. They knew a great evil was awakening, and someone had removed the only means of containing it. Mindless of this, Darmok skipped across the unfamiliar landscape while a flight of ancient black dragons slowly battered the barriers preventing them from returning to take revenge on those who had imprisoned them.

 

I quickly pulled out my ace in the hole, Rogan Illiciat. A deceptively ancient and powerful sorcerer, he knew things and could do things others could only imagine. When the world threatened to come apart at its seams, I reached for Illiciat's power and knowledge.

 

Teleporting Illiciat to Darmok's location, I had him begin questioning the Kender about the guardian and statue's whereabouts. Kender are notorious for launching into stories only barely related to the subject at hand, and Darmok was no exception. He related a tale about how his uncle had once found a dragon statue while evil drew ever closer to release into the world.

 

(My player made up the story about Darmok's uncle on the fly. It was actually very good and entertaining.)

 

I knew the time when the dragons would break free was near, so I had Illiciat take action. He cast spells and detected that the statue was on the Kender's person, all the while Darmok continued his tale. Knowing it had to be in some sort of bag of holding, Illiciat began disenchanting all of such bags on Darmok's person.

 

"Hey, what do you think you're doing you old goofball!" Darmok screamed as his pouches spilled their contents. He was soon sitting atop a large pile of purloined goods, including eventually the dragon statue, as he was fumbling to grasp and aim his magical staff.

 

"Take this! Work!"

 

The staff failed to function, thankfully, and I had Illiciat teleport the Kender several feet away, immediately followed by teleporting the statue back to its place in the lair. Returning the statue to its original position, Illiciat cast the spells to seal the dragons once more tightly in their prison, as he had done once before .

 

While Darmok gathered up his possessions and prepared to storm the lair again to retrieve his present for Thakkor, Illiciat managed to shift the guardian back into this dimension and further ward the lair against intrusion. He then teleported back to the Kender's location, finding Darmok had just finished picking up the last of his things.

 

"You ridiculous little creature, you nearly brought the entire world to disaster!"

 

"And you stole my statue, you thieving son of an ogre's butt pimples! I'll show you, dirty thief!"

 

"Work!"

 

Fortunately, a random teleport once again rolled up, averting yet another potential disaster.

 

Darmok managed to hang onto that staff for the longest time, far too long for my nerves, only eventually losing it upon venturing into a Kender village for a visit. I had to pick up the pieces of my world quite often until it thankfully fell into the hands of NPCs I could control.

 

The most dangerous thing in the world is a bored Kender with a magical artifact.

[Darkniciad]

This one's not a story, but still a look into how the game evolved, which in turn evolved into my writing.

 

There were quite a few characters with either natural or magical abilities to use mental powers, including astral projection. The form of astral projection in my game world was based heavily off Professor X of the X-men comics from Marvel.

 

Naturally, my players were going to end up getting into battles of some kind in the astral plane, so I had to come up with a combat system. I devised a set of stats based off the physical stats, granting combatants a form of psychic hit points. At that point, I was a little stumped.

 

I knew that I wanted the players to be able to have nearly unlimited options in the astral plane, ala Xavier's psychic battle with Farouk. The inspiration came from -- of all places -- Aerosmith.

 

The song "Draw the Line" starts this way.

 

Checkmate, honey

Beat you at your own damn game.

No dice, honey

I'm livin' on the astral plane

 

Those lines and the cadence of the song are what inspired my method of psychic combat.

 

Each combatant says what he or she is going to do, then the opponent counters. There are no dice rolls or stat checks of any kind. The other players in the room simply determine if the one player or the other has failed to react quickly enough to his opponent's attack. A second or two of stunned silence or a pitiful, half-baked response resulted in a loss of a psychic hit point.

 

I create a sword and shield and swing at your head to decapitate you.

I create my own sword and shield, block your blow, and launch the sword at you like an arrow.

Blocking with my shield and shooting lightning at you.

Reflecting the lightning back at you.

Catching the lightning, turning it into ball lightning, and throwing it at your balls.

I... I...

 

BZZT! Point! Chestnuts roasting on an electric fire!

 

It was a rapidfire exchange of pure creativity, and it worked beautifully. Luckily, I had players who didn't argue too much when the decision of the group ran against them. They knew when they had "stumbled", and accepted the smack down.

[Darkniciad]

Meckataur the Destroyer was actually one of my player's characters, and a serious problem to control in the game. As with everything, we countered it with humor.

 

We used miniatures in the game, playing out combat on a grid map. This gave us something to do when, for whatever reason, actually playing the game wasn't a real option. We would paint up miniatures for our characters, or monsters. Many of them we purchased from hobby stores, but to fill out the ranks of especially numerous creatures, we also took advantage of board games like Hero Quest. Those contained large numbers of common enemies like goblins and skeletons in plastic. Perfect for the rank and file, while the more expensive lead ( yes, the were actually made of lead back then ) or pewter figures represented specialized enemies or leaders.

 

Hero Quest contained a miniature for a gargoyle

 

 

This miniature so well represented my player's vision of the character that he wasn't worried about using a cheap plastic miniature instead of the expensive ones. He spent time melting down bits of excess plastic figures and army men to turn the whip into a spike tipped flail, melted off the goofy looking helmet and resculpted it, etc. Then, he did quite a good paint job on it, creating a representation worthy of his character's fearsome reputation.

 

It's actually this miniature that I use as a visual when writing Meckataur.

 

The thing was, he hadn't considered that every one of the several Hero Quest sets we purchased had a Gargoyle.

 

One of my other players took an extra gargoyle, and proceeded to resculpt it as well. He did quite the paint job on it, though it was... shall we say, different. I was about the only one who knew what he was doing in secret.

 

The original Meckataur went missing from the miniature box one fine day as we set up to play a game. Leaving my player fuming. Everyone was telling him to use one of the blank gargoyles for the time being, and we'd find his eventually. That's when my other player said, "Oh, here he is."

 

His version of Meckataur was painted in hot pink, wearing baby-blue armor, wielding a bouquet of flowers in place of a sword ( pirated from a Lego set ) and brandishing a penis-tipped whip.

 

In a horrible, put-upon lisp, yet another player called out, "Beware the wrath of Meckataur the Wonder Florist! Rawr! He'll scratch your eyes out!"

 

The whole room ( save one ) broke out into explosive laughter that went on for quite some time, as I recall. My player was from that moment forward stuck with the Wonder Florist tagline every time he said, "The Destroyer," which happened a dozen times a game

 

In another misadventure, one of my other players decided to run a campaign in a setting called Gamma World. This was fairly common when everyone wanted to play, and I wasn't around. Someone else would take a shot at the big time and DM with my general rules, but were otherwise free to do as they pleased, so long as they could explain how it happened. If the conditions were met, anything that happened in the side adventure became part of the larger game, including any gains.

 

What happens on Gamma World is that radiation causes mutations under certain conditions that I'm not really familiar with, as I never read the source material or played it. These mutations aren't controlled by the player, and are generally useful, although there are some mild to truly bad negative possibilities.

 

My player had decided to take Meckataur to this world, in order to make him even more ridiculously overpowered. I wasn't around much for a month or two because I was otherwise engaged.

 

But anyway, the campaign had more or less come to a close before I took a day or two off because I was exhausted. That's when I got to hear what had happened to Meckataur.

 

Things had started off pretty well. He'd managed to acquire mutations that turned his horns into incredibly dense weapons, and very effective head armor. He'd acquired an extra set of arms which he could pull back into his body at times when they would be in the way. ( You've seen the arms in the story ) His wings became stronger, and a few other minor things. He was having a good run, where everyone else had managed to roll up at least one irritating or detrimental mutation.

 

Problem was, he got greedy.

 

His next mutation made him nocturnal. It was a bit of a set back, but he decided that it was acceptable, as he was a demon who preferred to strike terror at night anyway. Still feeling lucky, he played on, going for one last mutation, in hopes of gaining one more power to bring back to the main world and make my life as the Dungeon Master a bit more of a living hell.

 

Such was not to be. His final mutation made him afraid of the dark. Nocturnal, and afraid of the dark.

 

Meckataur returned to the regular world a four-armed, adamantium horned, dragon-winged, gibbering mess *laugh* It took several weeks of game time for his lackeys Mopario and Arlene to counteract the last two mutations, providing a much needed break from trying to keep him under control.

[Darkniciad]

If you enjoy these, odds are that you'll also enjoy the adventures of the Spoony One in his Counter Monkey series.

 

Counter Monkey

 

And:

 

The Spoony Experiment for more Spoony Goodness.

 

If you've ever played Final Fantasy 8 and haven't seen it, check out the Spoony Review of the game. Laugh Riot.

[Darkniciad]

This is a short one that just popped into my head.

 

Once again, the butt of the joke is Meckataur the Destroyer.  He was in human disguise, having journeyed into the past via a magic portal in an attempt to discover information about the Devil that had stripped his humanity.  Meckataur had fully accepted his new form, but Belasco ( Yes, lifted from Marvel Comics ) was still a thorn in his side.

 

In the process of trying to uncover information, he happened across a shopkeeper who was not only unhelpful, but downright rude and obnoxious.  One of the conditions of the magic that had sent Meckataur back was that any attempt to cause physical harm to another being would instantly send him back to the present, thus wasting a vast expenditure of resources.  So, the all-powerful murderous demon was forced to keep his instincts in check and deal with the asshole.

 

Eventually -- after having to give up a large amount of coin and a few other minor things -- he got the information he needed.  Before moving on to the next contact and completing his mission in the past, my player took great pains to discover the name of the rude and annoying shopkeeper, as well as any other information possible.  He wrote the name rather prominently on the pocket of his character sheet folder, so as not to forget it.

 

Quest complete and information in hand, Meckataur returned to the present.  He didn't act on that information immediately, though.  Meckataur the Destroyer had a far more important task to complete.  Returned to his true form and in a murderous rage, he focused his lackeys and every resource on finding the descendants of the rude shopkeeper.  The man himself had surely died, as it was in excess of 200 years later, but Meckataur was determined to wipe out every root, seed, and branch of the man's line in retribution for the treatment he'd been forced to endure. 

 

I strung him along, watching him waste resources and game time on his obsession.  Time and time again, all the magical might at his disposal failed to produce even a single heir to the rude shopkeeper.

 

Several of my other players had already caught on to the joke, but remained silent.  Meckataur wasn't only a threat to the game world and a dungeon master's nightmare, he was equally worrisome to the other players.  So, they were perfectly content to watch him fume and flail about in Nightmare Castle, accomplishing nothing.

 

It was close to a month later when my player was sitting at the table, still pissed and accusing me of fudging die rolls to keep him from accomplishing his goal when it finally hit him.  He stared at the name he'd scrawled in black permanent marker on the pocket of his character sheet folder -- eyes hardening -- and then let out a growling roar worthy of Meckataur himself before hurling the folder across the room and stomping out the door.

 

As we all laughed our assess off, his folder lay on the floor, open and displaying his folly to all the world.  The name written there was...

 

Wadsworth Nuthing.