Roles and rolls

[Mike Morbid]

I'm sure those of you who have played table top roleplaying games have interesting tales of your adventures. Wanna share? Here's one of my favourites.

 

It was Villains & Vigilantes, an old superhero rpg in which the gimmick is you are playing yourself. In this one, the GM had adapted the Marvel Universe to the game. In one session, the biggest of the baddest showed up, ready to munch on Earth. Yep, it was Galactus. Being young and reckless (both as players and as our characters) we charged in without a second thought. Things did not go well. By the time it got to my turn in initiative, I was the only one left conscious. To make matters worse, I was just a street level hero. My only actual superpower was teleportation. I knew that this action was the only one I was going to get, so I did the only thing that came to mind. I teleported into his brain.

 

He died instantly, of course, but Galactus was critically wounded and fled to heal himself. My character was posthumously declared one of humanity's greatest heroes, and was awarded 3 charisma points. I suppose I rolled up another character after that, but I can't remember anything else that happened.

[Oubliette_Red]

For me, in all they years... decades... <.<  I've played there's always been one person that had the "über" character. And by that I don't mean they min/maxed the hell out of them, but they were always some high-level deposed demon/god, untouchable, yadda-yadda-yadda. I'm sure you all know the Mr. Über type, .

Like in a Marvel campaign, the GM allowed players to select their own abilities rather than roll for them. More than one player chose Rogue's power-copying ability, this guy spent the point to make it permanent (rather than rolling to see if it was temp or perm). And of course, his character was again undefeatable <eyeroll>.

My character on the other hand, had body, breathing, and digestive adaptation, the ability to control gravity (increase or decrease by a gravity or two) for quite a large radius, something like 8 blocks, but could power-shift to only effect herself cranking gravity up to 8. With her body adapt, that allowed her to punch Mr. Über through a wall, knocking him out.

 

Man was he pissed. "She wouldn't do that! We're teammates!"

GM: "You walked up behind her during combat and tapped her on the shoulder."

 

[TheOtherTed]

My two most memorable tabletop RPG moments are both from the game I played the least - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  I only played when I was tapped to "substitute" for someone, or when we were bored and someone offered to run a one-off adventure.

 

I subbed in once to play a paladin - a class I knew next to nothing about, and, honestly, didn't particularly like.  The B-plot culminated in the character fighting another knight in a "trial by combat" situation - the knight was a favored hero of the people, but known to be a bad guy by the party.  He tried to kill my character with a dagger that had some sort of spring-loaded needle or small blade coated with contact poison (don't ask how my paladin recognized that), but I managed to put him down.  Trying to play the honorable Dudley Do-Right, I picked up the dagger, retracted the needle, and dropped it, then made a show of thanking whatever god the paladin worshipped for my victory, reaffirming the paladin's fealty to the king, and offering to pay weregild to the knight's family.

 

One of the other players, usually pretty passive and sedate, gave me an uncharacteristic look of revulsion and said, "That was so honorable it was disgusting!"

 

In the other story, I was more in my element.  I played a chaotic neutral halfling thief, and for some reason my character and the party's fighter just did not get along at all.  At some point, we were tasked with exploring some tower in a keep.  The fighter told me to scout ahead for traps while we climbed the tower's steps, but I made a big show of saying, "oh, sure, let the little guy go first.  Can't risk the big, brave, handsome warrior coming to any harm, now, can we?"  I went on like that until the fighter said "Fine," and stomped ahead.  We got about halfway up when the top and bottom doors slammed shut, and something - can't remember if it was water or poisonous gas - started filling the tower.  The fighter whirled on me in anger and said, "Why weren't you checking for traps?!"  To which I replied, "You were in front..."

[Heronator]

On 5/24/2020 at 6:33 PM, Oubliette_Red said:

For me, in all they years... decades... <.<  I've played there's always been one person that had the "über" character. And by that I don't mean they min/maxed the hell out of them, but they were always some high-level deposed demon/god, untouchable, yadda-yadda-yadda. I'm sure you all know the Mr. Über type, .

Like in a Marvel campaign, the GM allowed players to select their own abilities rather than roll for them. More than one player chose Rogue's power-copying ability, this guy spent the point to make it permanent (rather than rolling to see if it was temp or perm). And of course, his character was again undefeatable <eyeroll>.

My character on the other hand, had body, breathing, and digestive adaptation, the ability to control gravity (increase or decrease by a gravity or two) for quite a large radius, something like 8 blocks, but could power-shift to only effect herself cranking gravity up to 8. With her body adapt, that allowed her to punch Mr. Über through a wall, knocking him out.

 

Man was he pissed. "She wouldn't do that! We're teammates!"

GM: "You walked up behind her during combat and tapped her on the shoulder."

 

Nothing brings me more joy than when a grognard gets his incredibly well-deserved comeuppance.

[Redlynne]

Order of the Stick #428

[DarionLeonidas]

I still play Villains and Vigilantes (second edition) and I still love it.

Virtually  all of my CoH characters are based on characters I made for V&V, which in turn were based on comics I wrote, drew and published independently back in the 1980's. Bringing my V&V characters to life in CoH has been one of my greatest hobby joys.