In my youth Jim was the older, wiser AD&D guru all us dumb kids looked up to. We were still in high school and he had a house and a wife, so even though he wasn't really that much older than us, we pretty much hailed him as our hero. That's why we put up with so much crap from him. He killed A LOT of our characters. We carpooled to his house and on the drive over we would talk about the cool replacement characters we had made. I usually brought two or three new PCs every session, under the assumption that my current dude and at least one replacement would die during the next few hours. Below are all my characters that lasted more than one session. Behold, the victims of Jim.
Chester of the Pointy Hat, page 2
Chester, page 3
Chester, page 4
Chester, page 5
Jim may have been a killer DM but Chester's death was all my fault. The party was trying to locate and slay a black dragon. We figured out where the dragon lived on the dungeon level, but the party couldn't agree as to the right course of action. After much heated debate, I declared in a loud voice "FINE! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU GUYS DO! I'M GONNA GO THROW MY FIREBALL AND YOU GUYS CAN CLEAN UP AFTERWARDS!" We were only 50 feet or so from the dragon's lair, so of course it heard the whole damn conversation. When I kicked open the door I was promptly melted with acid breath.
Razzak Gristlyguts, page 2
Razzak, page 3
Razzak was once in a really tight spot so he started chanting "Demogorgon, Orcus, Demogorgon, Orcus." This was back when saying a demons name gave a flat 5% chance they would take notice. The dice eventually came up for Demogorgon and he sent a retriever to investigate. The retriever tore through whatever menace we were fighting at the time and then turned its attention to the party. I had to throw myself into a rapid river to escape, nearly drowning. The rest of the party were slaughtered to a man. That was effin' awesome.
Arius Claudius, page 2
Arius, page 3
Arius, page 4
Arius was my PC who entered play as the bondage slave of a troll. Despite this rather inauspicious beginning, I got a lot of good play out of him.
Botonimous Bradelbreek, page 2
I retold this dude's most memorable adventure here. At one point in the campaign he was significantly higher in level, but then he got drained several levels in a wight attack.
Mochimoto Tojo, page 2
Wow, this dude's stats were egregious even beyond the usual level of cheating in that campaign. Not that high stats ever helped us that much.
A Return to the Stars
-
After a veeeeerrrryyyy long, and mostly unplanned, hiatus, Stuart and I got
together to play more Stargrave in recent days. It was good! It was also a
bit ...
The story of the retriever is terrific. I recall similar things having happened in my own campaigns of old, though my players tended to favor devils over demons when it came to inopportune summonings. One incident involved their agreeing to a contract with Asmodeus in exchange for his assistance. Naturally, the Archfiend's casuistry screwed them over and they found themselves imprisoned in Hell (from which they did escape, albeit not without the loss of all their equipment and permanent injuries -- critical hit table, oh how I loved thee).
ReplyDeleteI can still remember vividly the look on the face of one of my players as it dawns on him just how carelessly they had worded their contract. His response was one of genuine rage mixed with despair, a Charlton Heston-esque, "Damn you!" to which Asmodeus replied, in what I still find a chuckle-worthy comment, "Why, thank you."
Good times.
Thanks for tales, always love reading stuff like that.
ReplyDeleteThe name Chester of the Pointy Hat really cracks me up for some reason.
Also man you guys had some beefy stats.
I agree with GrayPumpkin. Was your group using the ability generation rules from Unearthed Arcana?
ReplyDeleteI love that these PCs are on notebook paper. We used notebook paper (and graph paper) more than anything else.
ReplyDeleteEarly in the campaign we rolled 4d6 drop lowest. Later we used the Unearthed Arcana method. By the end of the campaign we just wrote down a bunch of ridiculously high numbers and hoped the DM approved.
ReplyDeleteDid you use the "So you wanna be an orc?" article from Dragon to make that Xvart? Kind of looks like it, with the witch doctor multi-class thing. That article is awesome, I've tried to con many players into rolling up a Xvart from it.
ReplyDeleteGood call, skeleri! I did use that article. I'm also a fan of the new humanoids article in that same issue.
ReplyDeleteWas that the one with the swamp orc, dog men, and lion men? I vaguely remember a rock troll in there too...
ReplyDeleteThe very one. I thought most of those monsters were evocative rather than over-detailed.
ReplyDeleteHey! The Dragon with the article "So you wanna be an orc?" is one of my favorites. I rolled up over a dozen characters with that article and the other articles in that issue got lots of use.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a while since an article has inspired me to that level.
Stan