Stupid Deaths, Those Wacky Players Options

[Panzergeist]

Wow, that one really does take the cake. I bet team one never let team two live it down.

[FrostyNSO]

The Team:

Ivan - Ex-Russian Spec Ops, certified Surgeon
Ramsey - Ninja Bounty Hunter
Torch - Fire Mage, questionable sanity, minor diety
Nathan - Ex Kamikazi Addict, supposed Bodyguard of Ivan
Ichi - Blind Swordsman
Cobra - Combat dude first character, no gunnery skill

The Plan:

Drive a pickup bearing the team and a mounted .50 cal, pull up fast, and stop short of the entrance to a tent-city style, temporary medical clinic in Chicago. Overpower the guards, storm the place and take control before the guards can react, extract an unwilling cyberneticist, egress without firing a shot.

How It Went Down:

As the pickup screams towards the clinic, Ivan fails his crash test. Instead of stopping short and allowing the team to hop out, the pickup jumps the curb, hitting both guards out in front of the clinic at waist level. The pickup plows into the canvas and scaffording, sending surgical tools, doctors, and patients flying. The truck is surrounded in canvas, and without supports, it falls upon the team's heads.
Everybody hops out. Struggling to find their way through the canvas, both Ivan and Nathan trip, hopelessly lost in the canvas. On the other side of the truck, Ramsey, Torch and Ichi (amazingly) make their way through and untangle themselves from the rubble. Ramsey spots the cyberneticist. Holding up empty hands, he shouts
"Stop! We're here to help!"
Holding up SMG's, the guards open fire. Luckily, Ramsey narrowly avoids the gunfire. Ichi stands unphased. Torch soaks their measily bullets. All the while, Cobra sits atop the pickup, surrounded in canvas. His only friend: The .50 cal he leans upon.
Hearing gunfire, and fearing the worst for his team, Ivan shouts the order to Cobra in his thickest russian accent.
"Cut her loose!"
To Ramsey and Ichi's horror, the roar of the .50 caliber machinegun screams loud above the din of the trashed clinic from behind them. Torch isn't worried: Cobra couldn't possibly be shooting in their direction. Cobra indiscriminantly sprays his deadly payload in a barrage of suppressive fire throughout the clinic. Narrowly avoiding the first barrage, Ramsey shouts to Cobra, who naturally, doesn't hear a word he says:
"Cease fire! Cease fire!" As the guards, doctors, patients, and the target get mowed down by the vicious salvo, Cobra continues. Ichi stands tall, confused by the carnage, and manages to avoid all gunfire. Ramsey takes 2 .50's in the chest, dropping him instantly. Torch gets his head taken off. Ivan and Nathan, saved by their ineptitude, lie safely on the ground.
Finally, Cobra runs out of ammo. Ivan grabs the cyberneticist. Nathan Grabs Ramsey, and Cobra grabs Torch. The clicnic, is dead silent. Not a soul but themselves has survived.
The team takes stock of what they have gained and lost, and decides it would be best to leave. As the pickup drives away, Cobra decides he would like to keep the .50 cal. Attempting to remove the gun from it's mount, Ichi figures out what he's trying to do. Not wanting to see such a weapon fall permanantly into the hands of such a dangerous individual, the Blind Swordsman grabs Nathan's pistol, and points it at Cobra's head.
"Leave the gun or I'll blow your frickin' head off!"
Nathan, thouroghly surprised, leaps up and steps between the two.
"Hey hey hey! We've killed eachother enough today, just let him take the -"
<BLAM!>
Nathan takes a slug to the face, dropping him like a hot pile of crap. Ichi:
"I told you to leave the godamnned gun." Ichi sits down, satisfied. Cobra quietly dismounts the gun. Ivan continues driving, BTO's "Taking Care of Business" blaring throughout the pickup's cab.

[DocMortand]

... wow.

Here's my own stupid death.

The group - a couple troll sammies, me (fox shaman), a stealthy idiot nicknamed "Captain Ebola" and a couple other worthies I don't remember.

The run - simple. Capture a cyberzombie and it's handler. Doesn't matter WHOSE cyberzombie...just capture one.

We get in fine, blow up a few things in a corp compound to attract the cyberzombie, which was the "guard". The cyberzombie doesn't come out, so we get impatient and go in after it.

We get to a room that's small (maybe 7-8 m wide) and my character is freaking out over all the bad mojo going around (dark astral spots, etc.). The cyberzombie is off in the room, then it turns on. The two trolls rumble forward and are thrown to either side in the room. I panic, and decide to uncork my main combat spell - Stunball. I figure it should drop like a rock at Deadly... So I fire it at the zombie, who was heading for the door.

Now do the math - cyberzombie is 3m away, radius of Stunball Deadly is 6m, target is cyberzombie.

In a cataclysmic blast I knock myself, the two trolls and the rest of my party insensible, and do jack to the cyberzombie. We wake up in a holding cell for the mega corp (I think it was Novatech, actually...even better) and we're told that they have installed crainal bombs. I decide - ya know, this isn't worth it, and try to cast a spell...and my head goes *splick*.

Eh...definately not one of my proudest moments.

[Slait]

I was reminded of a run I went on that turned horribly, horribly bad, I was playing for the first time in a few years, a trog with ceramic bone lacing and red skin, the other pcs were 2 phys ads, and a street sam (the first char for the person in question)

We are hired to intercept a pickup from a supply base in Egypt, and bring it back to Seattle, and are given the use of a plane. We do recon on the buildings, find they're impenetrable, so decide to take the shipment as it moves, the problem being, we don't know when it moves.

The first physad gets the smart idea of going into the compound, to hide in the shipment, so we know when its coming out, he's quickly caught, and detained.

The second adept wondering what has happened to the first, also decides to enter the base, and is quickly killed, as they now have been alerted to a run against the,.
The first phys addy is killed as well because he attempts an escape, and fails miserably at it.

Me and the Street Sam being the only ones left, I get the smart idea, to go rescue our friends, from the military compound. To do this, I load a truck full of C4, and drive at it as fast as I can, hoping the bluff will pay off, the Street Sam sticks back at our hq.

My bluff is called, I end up having to fight a squad of heavily armoured guards, and decide to frag it, and just take them all down with me, so I detonate the C4.

One survivor, the street sam, playing her first game, and the only one smart enough not to willingly tangle with military forces in foreign countries....

[kevyn668]

Frosty, that story rocked! :rotfl:

I gotta ask, were you GMing or playing?

[FrostyNSO]

:evil: I'm Ivan.

[Panzergeist]

That one is almost as good as the Head of whatshisface.

[Grinder]

Trying to pick up a grenade to throw it back. If you're failing you're in the center of the explosion. Guess three or four characters of the same player died that way....

[Demosthenes]

The scene:

A small underground car park.

The characters - A street mage, a cat shaman, and a street samurai.
The opposition - A group of none-too bright Yakuza.

We are ambushed as they enter the carpark, and try to duck for cover. Unfortunately, the only "hard" cover available is a motorcycle. This was the first time we'd ever been on the receiving end of a nasty surprise in SR combat (a looooong time ago it was too, back when I actually got to play. I'm not bitter.), and we kind of over-estimated the amount of threat the enemy represented. I say "We", I mean the street-sam.

He had been carrying a couple of kilos of C-12 around all day for no good reason, and saw this as a perfect opportunity to employ it as a grenade (it is worth noting that this character completely lacked anything approaching a throwing skill).
He sets the timer on the explosives, throws the brick of C12 at the Yaks, and rolls (defaulting to quickness). One check of the scatter diagram later, and the street-sam's improvised grenade-o'-doom is lying on the ground rather less than a metre in front of us...

Amazingly, we didn't die in the explosion. Unfortunately, neither did the Yakuza, who took cover behind a car...

[ Spoiler ]

In fact we all lived, only to be killed later because the street sam decided he wanted to do something cool when getting out of our light aircraft when we were flying back from Bug City. So he jumped out. About four seconds after we landed. When he realised the damage was going to kill him - and the other three players and myself had spent about ten minutes telling him "Dave, you're going to die" - he detonated his explosive vest of uber-badness and C-12. And blew up half our plane. While it was doing 200kph on the runway at Sea-Tac.
Lone Star were not happy. In fact, Lone Star were so unhappy that they spent the rest of my character's (brief) life making me unhappy too...
The experience really drove home the aphorism "never work with someone crazier than yourself"...
:dead:

[Club]

[fistandantilus4....]

I saw a PC go out trying to "bat" back a grenade with his ak-47. Well... the GM had read somewhere that there are types of grenades that go off on impact. Guy ended up looking like Wiley Coyote.

[kevyn668]

[Grinder]

I thought the player learned out of experience. But no chance, as it seems. His chars all want to kick or throw back grenades. Our actual GM started using grenades who explode on impact. Up to now, the player hadn't lost another character, so it seems to work. :D

[James McMurray]

[Demosthenes]

[Tarantula]

I dunnno, I've though of making a hockey adept. Rollerskates, hockey stick, non-aerodynamic grenades he slapshots at people.

[Fortune]

Well then he would have been toast anyway when it landed.

[Demosthenes]

[mfb]

the funniest character death i've seen happened long enough ago that i don't remember the character's name. he was at a meet with some other runners, waiting for the Johnson, and got up in the face of the street sam for some reason or another.

"i'm the best there is at what i do," the nameless character informs the sam. the sam guts him, then takes the keys to the guy's Westwind. the other runners, as well as the Johnson (who'd shown up by then) all shrug, move to another location, and continue the meet.

[Foreigner]

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[ShadowDragon8685]

Best. Thread. EVAR.

Please don't let it die.

[Bastard]

Ok...I wont

I think I already posted about the Dragon Slayer and Tomo, so here is another

This is more of Player Stupid Death and not Character Stupid Death


The Story of Josh's Tiger(we cant remember its name :( )
After raiding a small corp, they found some important persons home addy in the computer data base and decided to pay a visit at four in the morning. Three entered and one stayed guard. Well somehow the team managed to alert one of the neighbors (they werent too stealthy getting in), so they called the police.

Since the team took so long getting in, as well as out, the patrol car was passing as they were leaving. This time they passed a stealth test to stay out of view, but one character decided to take a pop shot at the police (due to a flaw, so it wasnt really out of nowhere). Here erupts a fire fight and a second near by unit arrives as backup. The shapeshifter tiger adept who was guarding, hid behind a car on the opposite side of the street. Somehow he become unconcious, but he never made a move on the cops that they knew of.

The rest of the team fled and the police gave chase, but luckily they got a way. Well since the police never saw the tiger, he was still hiding behind a car, so there he lay. No one looked for him not even his team.

The run wasnt over, but we called it a night and would pick up the next week, to finish. Unfortunately the next weekend, the player couldnt find his character sheet for the shapeshifter. To this day (about eight years later) it still hasnt turned up, even in the old first edition book we still have. So in game, the character drowned in a rainy Tacoma gutter, in less than three inches of water, while his friends ran away and went to Denny's.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Haaaa-hah! That's a good incentive not to be criminally irresponsible with your Csheet. :)

[kelvingreen]

Okay, I'm owning up to my own embarrassing failure here although there are a couple of things to bear in mind:

1) our group was very new to gaming in general and Shadowrun specifically at the time.
2) as such, we were good players, and we didn't read the GM's sourcebooks between missions.
3) I don't know to this day whether the character in question actually died...

In the previous mission, my street sammy got munched and was laid up recovering, so I was using my backup, a burned-out mage straight from the GM's screen handbook (told you we were new to the game!). We were tasked to investigate an isolated compound run by a mysterious organisation, but it turned out to be a doublecross, as the organisation was legit, a sort of social group for magicians.

At this point, experienced players and GMs might be getting mental images of an out of control train...

In a later mission, my mage got mashed by something or other (most likely a failed Drain test), and because we were on the run and/or poor, we couldn't afford treatment for him. Not to worry though, as the group remembered this social organisation for mages, and called them up. They were more than eager to help a fellow mage in need and took my character in for treatment.

The GM ruled that it would take a while for the character to heal, but that my sammy was back in action, and I could finish up the mission with him. He also took my mage's character sheet.

(We were new to gaming. We didn't know then that this was pretty high on the list of "suspicious GM behaviour".)

My sammy didn't get munched again, and I pretty much forgot about my mage. I asked about him a couple of times, and our GM said that we was working on a plot to bring the character back in style. Since I was happy with my sammy, I didn't press the point.

Time moved on. There were more runs. There were more characters. There were different games. Eventually our GM went off to university and I got picked to take his spot. I requested some time to prepare and spent a few months buying and borrowing sourcebooks in order to put a campaign together.

One day, the fate of my mage was revealed in a sourcebook I vaguely remembered my GM having in his "GM only" pile:

Universal Brotherhood.

We willingly gave my character to the UB for medical treatment. :wobble: