They Can't be Beholders! We're only 3rd Level!, Or When runs go really really wrong. Options

[Sendaz]

The title goes back to a long, long time ago when we were playing with a DM who had an 'established' world where pretty much anything could happen. Our junior party had taken the notion of exploring a cave system that the local dwarves were having problems with several somethings that were interrupting the mining operation and no real survivors of the altercations to provide clues. Our band on intrepid heroes of course went in, finding a large chamber with a few floating orb like shapes on the far end.

Our fearless leader rallied us with the cry of 'They Can't be Beholders! We're only 3rd Level!' reasoning in his mind they would be gas spores or something similiarly obnoxious but nothing out of our league. So we fired arrows, spells and closed to finish them off.

They were Beholders. (for those who never played AD&D, just substitute the term 'Mobile Organic Magical Heavy Weapons Platform' and you get the idea)

TPK. And not just killed, but killed in a dazzling array of ways including petrification, disintegration and other fun forms of death.

Now I am sure everyone of us has a tale of when a run went south in a truly spectacular fashion when your group may have bit off more than they can chew and not necessarily through any direct fault of their own beyond maybe not retreating/evacing sooner or even just not engaging in the first place and we'd like to hear these tales of misadventure if only to share a chuckle.

[CanRay]

Almost killed the Troll Tank in my group with a bottle of purgative once. And actually did some physical damage with an electric fence.

[Draco18s]

Destrikens.
Or however they're spelled.

Well, technically a beholder came first, but we never actually saw it.

But the GM--who I might add, was a complete asshole--used these sonic hounds to herd the party along the railroad. And the train station was redcap city where the redcaps invited us with open arms.

And threw us into their gladiatorial arena.

Where they built a castle on top of a giant spider.

The wizard got strength drained to paralysis ("Strength drain doesn't hurt you that much, you're a wizard!" the GM says to the grappled and quickly paralyzed player). My character (barbarian) got a bridge dropped on him by the aforementioned sonic hounds from the underdark. The only reason it didn't kill me outright was because the other players cries foul. I did spend the entire combat making strength checks to get out (I had to roll a 15...as a barbarian with a natural 18 strength), so I provided no benefit to our side.

I believe one other character died outright.

That was the first session.

The wizard and I didn't show up for round 2.

[Moves]

I'm GMing a run gone bad in Terre Haute (small Indiana city), and my Reservoir Dogs in question decide to tag about eight cops on the way out of the building.

The team's pictures are all over the trid, the matrix, you name it. The rigger's all like "Eff this" and he skips town.

So you've got a troll tank, a psychotic sniper, and a nutjob mage just sitting around without a car.

"Hey. Let's walk to the mayor's house and kill him."

The motion passes 3-0.

Do they take side streets? Nope. These guys walk straight up the main drag with their guns and swords and talismans all on display.

Every cop shows up and they're perforated on an overpass by Ruger Superwarhawks and SWAT Riot Shotguns.

It's been twelve years since that debacle, and we bring it up in every planning session.

"Hey, we could always walk to the mayor's house and kill him."

[SpellBinder]

This is third-hand from me, but I'll try to be good on the details:

As told from a GM for a short lived SR3 game, one of the characters was a rigger running from the Russian Mafia (unwanted love interest on the Russian's part) and was having a van that she had sunk something like ¥800,000 into it worked on.

Well, she gets a call from her mechanic contact telling her that she needed to come down to his place. When she gets there she finds the mechanic bleeding, her (highly illegal) van in pieces, and evidence that the Russian has tracked her down to Seattle.

She does not call her friends (the other players) for help (I think one of them may have been a magician who knew Heal), nor does she call any other contacts for aid. What she does do is call the regular emergency commcode for medical assistance and high tails it out of there.

As I am told, as soon as the medics got there and saw the illegality of the garage & the van they contacted Lone Star. Her contact was last said to be handcuffed to a hospital bed with his whole life now completely ruined. Not to mention the party's main mode of transportation while on the job was carted off to a Lone Star impound yard.

[Draco18s]

"Hey, we could always walk to the mayor's house and kill him."

Reminds me of two stories, actually.

One was an epic level one-shot for D&D.
We had to go kill the emperor (legitimate reasons: he'd been alive for 400 years and it was causing somewhat of a schism--gogo prophesy made at the time of his birth that said that when he left power the empire would fracture). GM told us beforehand that if we tried to leave capital island, we'd have to fight a 30 HD kraken. As the session starts I raised my hand and said, "So..who thinks we could take a 30 HD kraken?"

Irony is, it might've been an easier fight.

The emperor was a dragon.

The other story comes from Shadowrun. New player, run to destroy an R&D project at a fireworks factory. We blew up their project (and yes, it was an explosive). Building on fire and all of us running for the exit with Lone Star all of 2 minutes away, the newbie says, "I'm going to use my grenades and rig up some traps."

Yeah.

He makes it out of the building and tries to steal a car. He sees one of the other PCs--a mage, IIRC--and essentially kidnaps her, gets her to cast a that spell that alters your clothing (so he looked like a fireman) tries to bluff his way past the cops and fire crew, then tries to hijack a moving car, whereupon the mage cast Alter Memory on him and started screaming for help.

He was arrested for arson, which he confessed to, as having "woken up and decided to blow up a fireworks factory." He didn't get to resist the spell for another 6 months. We worked it out to be two years before he recovered his original memories.

[Vegetaman]

Almost killed the Troll Tank in my group with a bottle of purgative once. And actually did some physical damage with an electric fence.

I pulled this off once when I was GMing... Troll Sammy took a sniper bullet and was very close to going down in one shot. It was so bad that the rest of the team, who up to this point had been brazen and would not take a hint to cool it, decided to COMPLETELY ABANDON the run in progress. At least they didn't let the troll bleed to death on the tarmac. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

[FuelDrop]

Me and my fellow GMs tend to try and avoid TPKs, but we've had our fair share of players trying to kill themselves.

I share with you a single fateful sentence.

"My light milspec has chameleon coating. That means I can wear it without anyone noticing, right?"

Not something you want to hear in the middle of a nice restaurant in downtown Seattle.

[craftomega]

Ahh these are awsome.

Fist game of Dnd for me. I deside to roll a thief.

So we finish our first quest and go to the gang of of hardened criminals who hired us. They lead us into there booty room and say, you may each take one thing. So I took a piece of awsome armor everyone else took something. As we were walking out I saw a pile of wands, I tried to steal one. I passed 7/8 checks to see if I got away with it. No one survived.

[tasti man LH]

It seems like whenever I don't want a TPK to happen, it happens anyways. And if I do want one to happen, my players are successful in dancing out of it.

For instance, I was running the SRM Back in Business for the first time. So I got to the climactic warehouse shootout when the team has to find Captain Jack.

So for those that don't remember, the setup of the warehouse is that it's manned by a total of 6 ork guards, armed with only Ares Predators, 2 Force 6 fire spirits, and 4 Ares Sentinel Rail drones.

The mage of the group didn't think to do an Assensing check until after the team had already blown the door down, and by the time he did, the fire spirits had already gotten the jump on them. While they were successful in defeating (thanks in most part to the mage calling their bound water spirit) the fire spirits still managed to soften them up for the opposition. And then I had the guards and the drones come out...and here's where problems start.

For starters, out of the four man runner team, only one of them really used firearms as their main weapon, the rigger. Problem was (and this is kind of a weird thing with this player), he's a bit too over-cautious to the point of being gun-shy. So during the fight, he wasn't firing as many shots as he should have had. Two of the other members of the team, the mage and the bioware-enhanced street sam, chose their primary weapons to be swords (the mage had a claymore and the street sam had a nodachi). Last was the TM, and while he had a pistol, he might as well could have been tossing stuffer wrappers at the guards.

So yeah; knife to a gunfight. Don't do that.

And to make matters worse, I was rolling really well that day and they were rolling complete crap, flopping on both their Defense rolls AND their DR rolls. So that even the drones, with their DPs of 8, were STILL flooring these guys.

So the final results ended with almost everyone on the floor lying on the floor dying, ridden with bullet holes, with only the TM left. Thankfully, he was able to hack the turrets and shut them down (I was merciful and said that he could hack the terminal that the drones were hardwired to wirelessly), was able to revive the street sam with First Aid, and they were able to take out the last guys, with help from the water spirit.

Suffice to say; sometimes, a TPK could happen even if you don't intend it to happen.

[Umidori]

So in addition to our Standard SR fare, my gaming group decided to have a crack at Earthdawn. Most of the players were moderately interested, but the one who typically plays mages put in a bunch of effort and time readng up on the magical lore and various schools of magic before deciding to play a Nethermancer.

So the first game I run is a preset adventure, which I borrowed from a fellow GM friend. The team is going along the rails fairly smoothly, but they're still new to the system and they're asking me and the Nethermancer about various things that pop into their heads regarding the game system and the world.

The player behind the Windling Beastmaster (odd choice, I know, but hey, it's worked well so far) did her own research on Windling culture and was trying to roleplay out the fact that Windlings are freaked out by death and consequently don't like the undead. She was initially concerned about being in the same group as a Nethermancer, but we figured it was a great chance for roleplay, and so she was trying to get into the swing of things. Her character is trading distrusting quips with the Nethermancer, and says something about how he'd better not be fiddling around raising Cadaver Men or whatever around her unless he wanted a windling arrow in his eye.

The Nethermancer's player laughs, and out of character says, "I looked them up, and Cadaver Men are MEAN. But don't worry, I can't create them until Tenth Circle, so there's no way your Windling will have to deal with them until we're all a lot stronger."

Naturally, the second combat encounter in the adventure book was a pack of Cadaver Men, and they nearly killed the entire party.

We've since sworn off Earthdawn after a second adventure, if only because the combat takes friggen' ages! We're consequently considering running a modified SR5 ruleset in an Earthdawn setting once the group manages to convert to the new system in full. Might hold off on that until the Companion books comes out.

~Umi

[Shortstraw]

Got quite a few but the most recent one involved myself (cleric) and the sorcerer fixing a broken teleportation circle meanwhile the rest of the group decides to wander off as they are bored. They decided to investigate a waterfall which of course was directly below a harpy nest and as the highest will save between them was a +5 it ended rather badly. The best part was being cheap and reincarnating them - all 3 came back as halflings and the barbarian suicided so he could be re-reincarnated and got halfling again - I love dice.

[tasti man LH]

On that note, whenever one of you guys are planning a run for your PCs (as GM), does the question "How badly do I want to fuck these guys up" come up, and if so, where on your priorities of run criteria?

Me personally, that's always the first question I ask myself when writing out a run. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Shortstraw]

I prefer to set it up like disarming a bear trap with your face - go about it without great care and it will end badly.

[Draco18s]

Got quite a few but the most recent one involved myself (cleric) and the sorcerer fixing a broken teleportation circle meanwhile the rest of the group decides to wander off as they are bored.

One of the GURPS game that I am/was/will be* in went downhill when the players got bored. The GM is very anti-railroad, so even when the players don't know what to do, the GM will remind them of open plot threads.

Anyway, game 1 (which is so numbered as having been the first of two games, though I did not join until later) the players decided to "fuck the main plot, time travel ahoy!" and went 1000 years into the past for whatever reason (and it was a one way trip).

Game 2 started up as a "Lets follow the original plot after the first group FUCKED WITH TIME."

And that's how my character became related as a direct ancestor to his entire species.

*I have previously attended sessions. The game will likely have sessions in the future. The game is currently on hiatus as the GM deals with real life.

[Eratosthenes]

This one GM I only briefly played with once pitted our fresh, straight out of chargen group of level 1's against a group of 20 charging grimlocks (2 HD creatures). Faced with certain doom, but having initiative, my polearm-wielding cleric set to receive their charge. The GM decided that the first grimlock (mind you, these are blind monsters) stopped just outside of range of my polearm, and threw his battleaxe at me.

I didn't play with that group for long.

[ShadowDragon8685]

One of the best ways to freak players out is to have a Johnson call himself Herr Brackhaus, and give them a job that is... Perfectly straightforward and on-the-level.

[Sendaz]

One of the best ways to freak players out is to have a Johnson call himself Herr Brackhaus, and give them a job that is... Perfectly straightforward and on-the-level.

That's just... eeeeeeeeeevil (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

can almost guarantee the party will rip itself apart trying to find things wrong where there are none.

[Doc Chaos]

One of the best ways to freak players out is to have a Johnson call himself Herr Brackhaus, and give them a job that is... Perfectly straightforward and on-the-level.

You are an evil and very, VERY cruel person. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

That's just... eeeeeeeeeevil (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

can almost guarantee the party will rip itself apart trying to find things wrong where there are none.

You are an evil and very, VERY cruel person. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Thank you, thank you very much.


Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a team sits down, hears "Greetings. I am Herr Brakhaus" in a thick German accent, and immediately excuse themselves, saying they regret to inform him that they must decline his job and would not like to hear any details, and then immediately skip town and go to ground somewhere else.

[Shortstraw]

I thought all the SK johnsons used Herr Brackhous not just the large bitey one?

[ShadowDragon8685]

I thought all the SK johnsons used Herr Brackhous not just the large bitey one?

Only when they actually want it known that it's an SK job. Also, there are rumors that some non-SK Johnsons have taken to using Herr Brakhaus's name to invoke his reputation.

But then, honestly, think about it. Even if the odds are very low... Do you really want to take the chance that you're dealing with Lofwyr in the flesh? Really?

[Sendaz]

I thought all the SK johnsons used Herr Brackhous not just the large bitey one?

They do, that's the rub as you never know when your dealing with Herr Braukous or Herr Brackhous since he can appear in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Tends to make players nervous, even if they are playing it straight.

[Shortstraw]

Bring 50kg of rating 15 explosives to the meet and if he isn't concerned it's his biteyness.

[Draco18s]

I have to unfortunately inform people that I have no idea who Herr Brakhaus is.
Best I could come up with was the agent for a Great Dragon (or possibly the dragon himself).