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Rolemaster Moments for June 2002 - page 2
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This story happened some time ago, when one of my friends had his first go in being a GM in our group. Everything went pretty good, until the party entered a dungeon beneath a house, where they had to fight several opponents and began to run short on hit points.
At this time it was a habit to hide equipment like healing herbs in chests and cupboards in dungeons —although there had also been one event, when portions of Winclamit had dropped out of thin in air into the lap of the wounded. So the party rushed towards the cupboards in the room after their last quite hard melee. Expecting gold and herbs the first character (mine!!) opened the cupboard without further examination…
The problem was that the cupboard had been planned as a trap by the GM and as my character had not checked for anything like it, he felt the full effect of it. A large halberd on a spring was waiting for my unlucky Beorning ranger. I would have survived it, when it had not been the first attempt of my friend as a GM. He had miscalculated the OB for the trap and it was a bit too high - also getting a surprise bonus. Then as things usually go in situations like this, he rolled high and did not use any GM Screen and by this could not let mercy prevail.
Well, my cool ranger was dead and bleeding on the floor. The halberd had just taken seven hits from my character, but that had been just enough to finish him off. And as usual when something bad happened, the whole group was laughing themselves to the floor - except for the GM and me who were exchanging puzzled looks.
By the way, my characters still opened cupboards by standing next to them!!!
Some incidents from Spacemaster/Cyberspace:
A company had hired the characters to rescue some of their employees, who were held as hostages at an abandoned airport. The characters jump into their jeep to reach the airport. They kill most of the kidnappers, and in the end there's only a small plane with five hostages and six heavily armed terrorists left. "What do you do?" I ask the players. "I toss in two grenades", one of them replies. "Are you going to let him do it?" I ask the others. "Fine with us," they say. I roll my eyes and start rolling damage, eleven times. The result: All the terrorists are killed immediately. The hostages survive unscathed. The players take this news in their stride, as if they were expecting it all along. Then I tell them the hostages are complaining loudly about having grenades tossed at them. The players look at each other and decide to kill them, so they won't tell their employers.
A new player was going to join with a premade character. I give him the sheet while the others discuss a plan. They need a flying vehicle, they find out. "I know." someone says, "let's go talk with New Character. I hear he has a one-man helicopter." New player is brought in. The others ring his doorbell. The new guy looks down from his tenth floor apartment and sees them standing on the street. He scans his equipment list. "Hey! I have a helicopter! I'll impress the others by flying down to them." He then sits on it and pushes off the balcony. "You forgot to start it," I tell him. One loud splat later, the others decide they need a new plan.
Finally, one game I wasn't in, but someone told me about: The players were the usual group of criminals. One of them happened to be a Media type, however, who one day got the scoop of his life. They pull off a big bank job and are on the run with half the police force on their heels. Every channel in the city is covering the chase from their helicopters. Every channel but Channel 7, that is - they have a live feed from INSIDE the getaway car.
Another stellar moment from the same campaign that brought you "Don't Taunt The Shaman" and "Case Of Mistaken Mortality..."
In our party's ongoing quest to thwart the evil shroom people, we had to break into an ancient Armory and get some magical weapons and such that would give us an important edge in the war to come. Our current party composition (this is relevant) included:
Lady Azrael, the beautiful wild elven witch healer;
Keller Dyson, a soldier from another continent whose family was killed by
witch hunters;
Dorian Garamonde (that's me), a human beast master who met Azrael at her coven;
Mark, a mercenary who also wanted some loot out of the Armory;
Mary, a companion of Mark who absolutely cannot stand witches;
and Rigel, a half-zebra, half-kangaroo, Dorian's animal companion.
We had been exploring the armory for several days (there was a LOT of stuff in it) when Dorian happened upon a strange magical war hammer. He picked it up to examine it. Instantly, he was possessed by the spirit of a paladin. He became the epitome of righteousness and goodness. This is a good thing, right? Wrong. The trouble with having an attitude like this forced on your character is that you have to attack other party members that you suddenly perceive as evil, like anyone who tries to pry a magic hammer out of your hands because you can't drop it. (No self-respecting intelligent weapon wants you to be able to get rid of it.)
Important background point number two. In this armory there is also a "Dark" item room where a whole bunch of really scary stuff is stored. Dorian had been in there once before and almost gotten possessed by a demon. With his new paladin attitude, he thought it might be a good idea to go and kill this demon. The result? He became possessed by the demon AND the hammer SIMULTANEOUSLY. (The DM rolled for which side would come out on top each day.) Thus were born LightDorian and DarkDorian.
The demon was exorcised a short while later, but getting rid of the hammer proved more difficult. People managed to yank it out of my hands, but this only meant they were possessed instead. We traded off for a while, until a bad roll happened to drop the hammer into Rigel's pouch.
After the near death experience that followed, we came to a realization: You never want to have to deal with a possessed kangaroo.
The death of a character is never something to take too seriously or too lightly however characters sometimes die in ways that can kill real people with laughter so extreme that breathing becomes difficult.
The party in question was traversing a sprawling desert after having negotiated an elaborate tomb complex within a partially buried pyramid. They were a little tired and worn out as they had accidentally released an ancient Orc-Demon known as the Lord of Nightmares from his prison within the Pyramid.
The party came across a lush oasis within the depths of the desert, as they were very low on supplies and water they decided to enter the oasis and replenish those supplies. The party knew that these desert oasis' are always magnets for other creatures that could be troublesome and entered carefully. The Oasis was laid out as a semi circular hillock that tapered in height to almost nothing at one end. Nestled within the semicircular hill was a pristine lake. The Hillock was in fact the ancient buried hibernating form of Father Dragon, the oldest and largest dragon in existence upon this world. This dragon, unlike standard versions of RM dragons, was a Sage and definitely "good". The party explored the Oasis thoroughly. The drawn map showed Father Dragon's vague but definitely draconic outline as well as the rubble and foliage that covered the hibernating form. The halfling rogue found two cave openings on a large outcropping at one end of the "hill" and decided to investigate those 2 moist steaming caves.
The halfling was given ample information that the steam rising from the 2 caves varied in intensity on a slow but regular pattern. He was told that the interior of the cave did not appear to be rock and was covered in some kind of moist viscous ooze. He was told that the cave was unstable and seemed to shift and undulate under his feet. He was told that the stench emanating from the cave smelled strongly of acid and rotten flesh. Still the halfling descended at a slow crawl. When light was no longer sufficient for halfling vision he proceeded to light a torch successfully. The results were rather predictable and spectacular.
The dragon awoke with a snort rearing to its full height. The halfling managed a strength check (open-ended roll) and stayed nostril bound. The dragon then sneezed (failed SD/SD/CO check) the halfling and smoldering torch into the ground from a height of 100' at 200 mph. (I knew some useless trivia that a human sneeze occurred at approx. 200 mph). I viewed this as terminal velocity and rolled a +150 Huge Crush attack even though it was a 100' fall. I subscribe to the wrap around rule on falls. If you roll 450 then 3 top of the chart rolls are resolved. This time the dice came up a total of 525...
The halfling hit the ground with tremendous force breaking both legs, slid across the ground into a jutting boulder (breaking most ribs), the halfings force was still sufficient to launch over the boulder, as if a ski jump. The halfling flew end-over-end, broken limbs flailing, into a tree in direct line of the sneeze. The connection with the tree broke the halflings arms. Surprisingly the halfling was alive after 3 E's, 3 C,s, and an A all in the 50+ range. The halfling however could not climb effectively to hold onto 50+ the tree. A luck roll indicated that the halfling was not wedged into the tree branches and fell 10' to the ground. The fall roll was um 100. House rule is that an um 100 is top of the chart 150 no matter what. The halfling did not survive this final indignity. His career ended lying draped over a boulder at the base of a small tree with a broken back.
The morbid wincing laughter quickly degenerated into hysterical fits of laughter after I had the dragon farmer blow the halflings dropped back pack onto the remaining characters.
Not many can claim death by being sneezed across an oasis into a stationary object by an oversized dragon. (He was supposed to be a party ally). From that moment on the dice used have been dubbed the "Dice of Death" and have remained in use for about 6 years. Players are very happy when they go missing but they always seem to turn up again.
Every now and again, I like to run a campaign of extremities. It gives the players a chance to play hideously unrealistic characters with super powers, and I get to throw in all sorts of creatures they've never had the nerve to have nightmares about. Sometimes though, common sense goes out the window along with reality.
One of my favorite examples was the archer, Aethmos. Pretty much every extra rank John had went into his archer's bow skills. During character development, John purchased every talent he could get that would increase the bowman's progress. Every copper piece he made and every commission he accepted went into buying the best bow he could find (+20 Dragon horn bow, troll slayer, breaks only on two consecutive natural 66's). At second level, using a normal bow, his OB was +135 with racial bonuses and such added in. I purposely had to redesign adventures to keep the opposition behind walls and trees, windy environments, cramped dungeons, etc. It got to be a little annoying.
But every character has faults, and Aethmos' downfall was women. Especially in Teyalla, a kingdom I created after watching a National Geographic special (John should have seen this one coming). Archers are the most highly regarded members of the armies, and were in short supply as the kingdom for some reason could not produce good bowmen. After winning his contest (easily - 14 of the 20 archers couldn't even hit the stationary target), Aethmos was praised as the greatest archer ever, was given a head ornament to signify his high esteem in the culture, and a harem immediately surrounded him. Obviously, Aethmos is staying a while.
Stay with me here.... The TV special I saw was about a tribe in South America where crossed eyes are considered a beauty trait. Babies have ornaments placed on their noses to draw their eyes inward. Aethmos had every chance to notice this, but failed to see the danger (I gave him a couple of initial perception rolls, and one every day thereafter, but as I said, every rank went into the bow...). He especially didn't notice the dangling pendant on the front of his new hat, not with all the women distracting him. Imagine his surprise at the next archery contest a couple of months later when he appears wearing his victory crown, and I announce a -90 penalty to his shot.
John's response: " I knew it! The hat's cursed! Get the animist over here and get this damn hat off of me!" Me: "You can pull the hat off yourself, no problem" John : "Okay, I do. Get the curse off of me." Terry (the animist's player) and I have an off-table discussion, then return. Terry breaks the news to him in a not so subtle way that there's no curse to remove or healing to be done. To rub it in a little more, everyone at the table crossed their eyes and started heckling John. John "Fine then! 'Bite me!' I yell, and fire at the animist." Me: "Roll"
Ain't it a shame when the penalty makes you miss the animist ten feet away and skewer the king on the review stand?
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