The New CLUE Files, Who remembers... Options

[Sphynx]

[Crakkerjakk]

Yes, because I'm obviously foaming at the mouth denouncing how you play your game.

[Sphynx]

No, just how your players play the game.

[Crakkerjakk]

Okay. First, I'm the GM. One of the perks of running the game, is that I run the game. If I decide the characters have to pirouette everyone someone says the word "purple," they have to do it. Of course, they are free to leave the game if at any point I start making autocratic statements like that. A kind GM comes to a compromise with his/her players about what each person wants from the game, and good times are had by all. A blowhard GM rapidly loses his players.

Second, your main point of contention seems to be that one of my players saw some pictures, and because pictures trump ANY other form of communication, including the briefing I gave about how the world worked fifteen minutes before Dave's moment of glory, the actions of the more experienced players around him, the "are you sure" bit that he was familiar with from previous games with me, and the in game warning I gave him when the bus driver floored it to get away from specifically him, I am a bad GM who is trying to railroad his players into playing the "right" way according to me, because I refused to specifically stop him and say, "Your character wouldn't do that."

I have never said that my way is the only right way. It is however, the way I run my games. Your blind obstinacy in villainizing me as some sort of buffoon who can't tell what a jackass he's being is beyond my goddamn comprehension. The only way I can make your insistence that I am somehow a horrible person because of my actions fit with a sane frame of reference is that you're merely trolling for a response now. Either that, or you didn't actually read my post, and have instead managed to come to the conclusion that I'm the "bad guy" and must be opposed at every point.

Either way, I'm done dealing with your asshattery. Go play in traffic, and do the gene pool a favor.

[Sphynx]

Yes, you ARE the GM, and despite what you seem to think, I was in no way inferring that your GMing was bad. I was inferring that a player playing different isn't.

There was nothing wrong with how you handled the game, I never once meant to insinuate otherwise. What's wrong is GM's haughtily deflamating their players actions publicly in a CLUE file, especially since they turned into the same flaming style discussion your comments have become.

What's wrong is that it's ok for your "blind obstinancy in villianizing" the player "as some sort of buffoon who can't tell what a jackass he's being" and unable to take out what he's dishing.

Lastly, I have nothing against you or your gaming. My entire reason for entering this debacle was because gamers should support gamers and not go making them feel a fool for being one. I support and like you simply because you are a gamer, and have made it a point to not de-face you in any of my comments. Your taking offense to me has nothing to do with the words I've said, because I've not once been insulting.

[Wounded Ronin]

Don't get this thread locked, guys. I still have to post my killer GM stories here when I get the chance to sit down and type them up.

[fistandantilus4....]

:noflame:

Let's just move on shall we...

[knasser]

Wow! I never realised that I was dancing around such a dangerous subject here.

For reference, what I would be grateful for, are any stories that are first of all funny. And second only to that, about people making great big cock ups. Where there is a suspicion that it wasn't much of a cock-up, i.e. due to lack of information the characters should be expected to have, the humour is lessened for that reason.

I have a few very good stories for the files emailed to me now, and I think everyone who reads them will be satisfied that the error lies solely with the player(s) and isn't due to unfair GM'ing.

Wounded Ronin (and anyone else), I look forward to your story, but is there any chance that you could PM or email it to me? That way, it will be fresher and more entertaining when I take the site live. Obviously post it here if you want, but my intention was to request submissions.

Thanks to all contributors,

-K.

[fistandantilus4....]

I'll see if I can get a few of my players to send in some. They tend to remember their fuck ups even more. :D

[Wounded Ronin]

[Wounded Ronin]

Well, here's a quick story about the early days of my GMing and the tension between my style and one of the players. The action is sort of funny but for me, looking back on it, the real humor has to do with the human relations aspect of it and how even though at the time neither of us realized it years later we found out that we were looking for fundamentally different things from role playing games. Basically, I was after my dice-fall-where-they-may strategic challenge, and he was on the contrary after a basically empowering mode of fantasy.

I had set up a situation where the players were being hired to do a run against Disney. I forgot exactly what the details were but Disney had two shticks: 1.) Out in the California desert they maintained a plastic tree, the "Tree of Woe", where they would crucify people they wanted to get rid of, and 2.) Disney security staff wore full body security armor which was shaped like Mickey Mouse costumes, and they carried assault rifles.

Also keep in mind that this game took place over AOL IM, so we could not read each others' facial cues or nonverbal cues, but rather just had to go by what was being typed on screen.

So my friend, who is playing a mage, is trying to elude Disney patrols while in the Disney amusement park. He is aware of two patrolling Disney personnel who are approaching his character but he is not aware of a squad of five which are further away and are not visible from his character's location due to the density of obstacles in an amusement park. The squad of five are also completely unaware of the character, but the closer group of two are about to discover the mage.

So, the mage decides to elude the first two security guys by casting either Flight or Levitation. The idea is that the mage will go straight up into the sky and the patrolling guys are unlikely to look straight up, which seems reasonable.

The problem is that going straight up into the sky would make the mage very visible to the group of 5 further away, since the act of going straight up into the sky would be a very conspicuous action if you were far away enough to have a large perspective encompassing at least some of the distant sky.

So, I decided that the group of 5 used their assault rifles to open fire on the levitating mage, as they were looking for that specific character.

The player, at this time, started arguing with me that there was no way that anyone could open fire on the character since the two guys would be unable to see the levitated mage. I agreed and said something along the lines of, "It's someone else who is opening fire."

So, the squad of five all fired on the mage and caused a D wound between them all, which of course caused the mage to lose consciousness and plummet towards the ground.

This made my friend freak out and before his character actually literally died from overflow or anything like that he started saying that he wanted to Hand of God. I explained that the character wasn't dead yet and therefore it was not possible to Hand of God. I explained that in order to Hand of God the unconscious character would, after hitting the ground, need the combination of damage boxes filled and bleeding out with time to exceed the character's Body score (or whatever it was) in overflow boxes.

At this point in my personal development I still believed in trying to mitigate extreme negative circumstances so I decided that the group of two whom the mage had initially eluded would be amazed to see a mage slam on the ground at their feet and that they would administer first aid (successfully) so that the character wouldn't die.

But, my friend was very disturbed by this turn of events and was very unhappy at the time and so he kept wanting to Hand of God.

In the end, the mage in question was eventually rescued by the rest of the party. After being captured and interrogated by Disney the mage was nailed to the Tree of Woe out in the desert where the party could easily perform a retrieval. Just like in Conan The Barbarian.

[James McMurray]

Nice, and definitely not a classic CLUE file in that there was no player idiocy or GM asshattery. Still funny though. :)

[Smiley]

[Warmaster Lah]

Wounded Ronin that was a great story!

and therefore he must just be a delusional degenrate rather than a true ninja.

See that would have been a better character idea to me than being a "real" ninja.

[Smiley]

Hell, that describes 75% of the characters I've played.

Ok. 90%.

[ornot]

My brief story of player ineptitude.

Two street sams have been hired by Mr J to locate and 'discourage' a blackmailer. They know where he lives and where he likes to go out to party. I'd spent some time designing the security system for the building this guy lived and worked in, and possible ways of circumventing it, including everything from hacking the security system, blasting their way in and even base jumping from a neighbouring building. Thus I was a little irritated when they decided to stand in the street outside and wait for him to emerge.

After being told to move on by the Star several times they decided to rent a double room in a hotel overlooking the building. I don't know why they wanted a double, as they were both male. After watching the building all night and observing several vehicles with blacked out windows enter and leave they eventually twigged that the target was not in the habit of taking unguarded evening constitutionals.

So they followed their other lead, which was that this guy liked to frequent a particular stretch of strip clubs and gambling dens. Being too stingy to pay the cover charge to get in to any of these clubs, nor grease the palm of any of the doormen, and fluffing their social tests, they learnt nothing, and after a while decided to go into a girly bar and get drunk.

Taking pity on them I had the target and his bodyguards enter the club while they were in it. Once again they fluff their shadowing checks to watch him unobserved, so his guards come over to investigate. In a effort to dispell suspicion one of our street sams decides to flirt with his partner, and pretend to be gay, so the guards just thought he was checking them out. Somewhat astonished I remind him that he is in a girly bar. His face registered first confusion, then shock, and then fell as he realised just how stupid his plan had been.

Plan B involved much violence and fleeing into the night before the Star could show up.

[Wounded Ronin]

The correct response would have been pretending to be bi.

[Cain]

My famous tale of player ineptitude:

I'm GMing again, and the mission is to take out a heavily-secured facility. Now, they're getting paid to cause heavy damage and carnage, so they go in packing heavy, knowing the opposition will be just as well-armed. Since they need to raze the place, they even brought satchel charges; research has revealed the walls are all heavily reinforced, so extras are packed.

Things are rough, but they're still going well, up until this point, when the oppostion barricaded a hallway.

Let me skip ahead to the punchline:

Me: (to mage) Let me get this straight. You're in a two-meter wide, ten-meter long hallway. The barricade is about 7 meters in front of you. You're sustaining a Levitate Self and Improved Invisibility spell, you have a moderate Physical and a Serious Stun wound, lighting is bad and you have no vision enhancements, and you want to do what?

Mage: I want to fly over them and throw a grenade. I got a frag left, it'll mess them up.

Me: *pause* Ohhhhkay. You're only dropping it, so I'll go against base TN of 2....(calculates modifiers) Target number 17. You do have Thrown Weapon, don't you?

Mage: Yup. Lessee... I got it at one.

Everyone: *pause*

Me: Are you really sure about this?

Mage: Yup. I'll drop it, and fly right past. I can spare one from my combat pool.

Me: Ohhhhkay.

Mage (rolls): oh.

Sammie: What??

Mage: I rolled all ones.

Sammie: Spend some karma pool, doofus!

Mage: I'm out of Karma pool. I spent it to resist drain.

Me: Well then. (I start pantomiming) You grasp the grenade in your left hand, pull the pin, and throw. An object goes flying. Then you look down at your left hand, and have a second to yelp. :vegm:

Surprisingly enough, the mage managed to survive this; the sammie, some distance away, did so as well.

[Wounded Ronin]

I always felt that occam's razor applies when dealing with grenades. It's better to cast something on the grenade to make it go than it is to cast multiple things on yourself so that you can be in the position to use the grenade. One big point of grenades is indirect fire. Why undermine that with your spells and/or tactics?

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Guye Noir]

Ooh, can I play?!? I've got 2 good stories of player stupidity. I hope you don't mind that it's not actually Shadowrun, just good old fashioned DnD. It's still funny though, and one of them is entirely my fault.

The party is walking down a 5-foot wide hallway, single file. Fighter's in front, behind him the cleric, then the rogue, and then me, the mage. GM says the fighter and cleric should make relfex saves (Agility check to avoid a trap, in case anyone is unfamiliar with d20). The figher fails, and falls through a trap door down a 20 ft pit, taking some serious damage. The cleric succeeds and jumps backwards away from the newly opened pit. But the rogue is right behind him, so he has to roll relfex as well to avoid getting hit by the cleric. He succeeds his roll and also jumps bakwards into me. My turn to make a reflex save and I fail, and the rogue hits me. This is when things started to go bad:

Me: I push him back and say "Get offa me!"
GM: Are you sure?!?
Me: ... Yes!

I think you can imagine what happened next. Every roll succeeded and failed in all the right places such that the rogue hit the cleric and the cleric fell down the pit and landed right on top of the fighter!



The next story happens in the same session about 5 minutes later. Something I failed to mention before wast that this hallway was in the sewer system of a fairly large city. After some healing and more exploring we come to an open area that is just about filled with garbage and human waste (think the garbage compactor scene from Star Wars, only grosser). Naturally, living in all this waste is a big monster for us to fight.

The GM shows us a picture of the monster and the fighter (yes, the same fighter from before) points out that it bears a striking resemblance to a creature from a video game that is vulnerable to fire. (Now, something you should now about the player playing the fighter: he's very stubborn and not too bright. Once he gets an idea in his head it's extremely difficult to convince him otherwise). So, naturally, the fighter wants to throw an alchemist's fire (DnD version of incendiary grenade)...

...in the sewers

Since this is a medieval setting, none of our characters knew anything about chemistry or physics. As you can imagine, the entire place went up in flames, the explosion shook the entire city, and we nearly caused a church above us to collapse. Miraculously, none of us died, although the fighter in question came pretty damn close. Alhtough, he only survived because I put myself in considerable danger to save him; I felt kinda bad for dropping a cleric on his head.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Guye Noir]

[Wounded Ronin]

[djinni]

when you gonna put some stories on the clue site?