Full Version: The New CLUE Files
| QUOTE (Crakkerjakk) |
| I find it odd that you seem to take such strong exception to the fact that I run my games in a different manner, given that the difference in my opinion is mere semantics. |
And that my friends, is the reason the CLUE files turned into debatacles like this one. It's ok for a GM to take strong exception to a different playing style, but not anyone else.
Yes, because I'm obviously foaming at the mouth denouncing how you play your game.
No, just how your players play the game.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let's just move on shall we...
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.
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. 
| QUOTE (knasser @ Feb 28 2007, 02:02 PM) |
| 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? |
I'd actually rather just post in this thread.
The reason is that I already spent a lot of time typing up this stuff a number of years ago so that I could secretly send it to the guy who was doing SLEUTH files. He never posted them and the site disappeared. So, even though I don't have any reason to doubt your ability to put the things on the site, from an emotional standpoint I don't really want to spend lots of time typing again for the sake of sending something to only one person. It just reduces the probability that people will recieve what has taken me a lot of time to create in terms of typing.
Anyway, without further ado, here are THE KILLER GM CHRONICLES!!!!!
Book 1: Hints of Shadowrun enter my life
My introduction to Shadowrun was one of the Shadowrun novels I read when I was quite young. I don't even remember the title, but one of the characters was a sammie with an uzi and dermal plating named Turtle, or something like that. It also had a story about a white guy who had an asian mentor and who was trying to recall his super asian mental training while facing death in order to fight down his panic. Then he ran into a chain wire fence. Then some runner team captured him and put him in a yukata with a Japanese beer company logo on it. And there was this chick. And a mage.
Those stories really, really got me hooked. Yukatas, asian mentors, and Japanese beer appealed to my mind in a firey and unforgettable way. The actual storyline have been long since forgotten but ever since I read those stories at an early age and tasted the golden, sweet cliches of asian mentors, Japanese beer, and yukatas, I'd wanted to play Shadowrun.
Book 2: Book Of The Killer GM
Trouble is for years I'd only even met one person who had ever heard of it at a summer program before I entered 7th grade and the only things he wanted to tell me about was how it used a lot of dice and how the "chunky salsa effect" for explosives was the best rule ever. I'd played some D&D before and was totally mystified when he told me that SR only used d6es.
Finally, when I was in high school, I had the chance to really, really play Shadowrun. My good friend who I will call X was my good buddy and was the local killer GM for my small group of socially rejected compatriots. We started back in middle school when X's family had actually just moved to the US from mainland China and I think that he was also pretty desperate to find friends who treated him well. Over the years we played D&D, Warhammer 40k, we wrote our own D20 based system set in the future, and finally, now, SHADOWRUN.
Book 3: Killer GM Of Shadowrun
The issue was that X really was a killer GM. In our previous gaming there was another kid who he always would single out for bad things in games using a very outrageous and over-the-top style for this. I don't feel to bad about it because I know that the singled out kid did the same thing to yet another kid at some summer camp and they were playing D&D.
When it came to Shadowrun, the SR deadliness compared to D&D combined with X's already killer GM tendencies to create real character bloodbaths.
Book 4: Bumbling Incompetence
My first Shadowrun character was a cat shaman with a green trenchcoat and blue anime character hair. I kept giving myself M and S stuns with drain after casting spells because I didn't know what I was doing. X decided to run a module which involved a boat trip with Bichu into Amazonia; I think this is a well known module but I forgot the title. I was the only player and there was a whole runner team being controlled by X since the module was for a full team.
The feeling I had of bumbling incompetence really started hardcore during the meeting with the Johnson.
Johnson: There's going to be awakened creatures in the jungle so watch out.
Shaman: What sorts of creatures live there?
Johnson: YOU'RE the magical expert, right?
Shaman: Um, yeah. I was just, uh, double checking. You know.
While X's comments on the part of the Johnson are probably really and truly justifiable, at the time, with me being unfamiliar with the system, I really felt out of my depth.
So, the NPC runner team and my shaman go on the boat with Bichu. We reach the first checkpoint, which we are supposed to stealthily bypass. I think I tried to cast a spell or summon a spirit to help us do this but unfortunately I didn't realize in terms of the rules that this would be instantly visible on the astral, so that made us immediately blow this part of the mission. (And, just in case you're wondering, no, there were no cues from the GM.) The entire checkpoint opened fire on us and some bad things happened. Luckily the NPC elf sammie had a rocket launcher which he used to blow up the persuing boats and we were able to continue on this Heart of Darkness lowbrow ripoff.
The next thing I remember is that we were in the jungle looking for something. However, enemy troops were looking for us because we had to fight our way past the checkpoint. I still didn't really know what I was doing because one of the first things that was happening was I had to resist two SMG bursts. I think I had been trying to cast a spell which gave me more atrocious drain and wasn't effective because I wasn't good at the rules. I don't think I was really sure who had shot me, either, because I remember at that point my only strategem was to "drop prone".
Then my character took a deadly wound and lost an eye. Since the medical costs for recovery were huge compared to the amount of pay the mission gave I didn't have the funds to get a new eye of any sort and the character just ended up going around with an eyepatch.
My first few games were basically exactly like this one. Me, and whomever was also a player, would screw things up badly because of not knowing the rules, and we'd get shot to bits. The medical costs would always be a lot more than the payoff and so the characters would just kind run out of luck after a while and eventually be killed.
For example, I remember X running a one off game with some friends at a sleepover party. Everybody loved the idea of Shadowrun, but the actual game consisted of people falling flat on their faces due to the rules. I remember one guy wanted to make a katana swordsman with Armed Combat 6. However, because he didn't know about combat pool (and the GM didn't mention it) he ended up getting smacked down by two security guards with rifle butts. He said, "I think my character has lost confidence in his swordsmanship..."
Things got worse with time, though, in terms of killer GMitude.
Book 5: Third Edition
Eventually third edition came out and X wanted to play it. I was still struggling with the 2nd edition rules and didn't want to switch but X insisted that 3rd ed was easier on the player. I finally decided to go along with the switch and X game he his old 2nd edition book, which was nice because before I didn't own any SR rules. (That probably contributed to my rules suckitude.) So I could study the 2nd edition book and figure out a little bit more what I "should" be doing in any situation.
At this point in time we started gaming online over AOL IM because this was a lot easier and more feasible than trying to game for 45 minutes at a time during free periods. Because of the flexibility of online gaming we actually got some new players from other areas of the US, including my friend C who I'd played D&D with many years ago.
So, C and me are playing a third edition game with X. C decides that he wants to be an ork ninja and I decide to make a big 80s troll swordsman who is a physad. Part of C's character background is that he pays his landlord extra money to maintain a sprinkler system which keeps the character's bonsai collection in good health.
So, just entirely randomly, in the middle of a game, X says something to the effect of, "Okay C, when your character goes home he finds out that all of his bonsai are dead from lack of water."
"What? I pay the landlord to maintain the system."
"The system is clogged with crap and has not been maintained."
"I call the landlord to my apartment and demand an explanation!"
So, the landlord comes up, and is being very snarky to C's character, so C says, "my character uses his sword and KILLS the landlord!"
At this point, I decide that my character, from an in-character point of view, probably would help out his comrade even if he doesn't fully understand what is going on, so I add, "My character will draw his sword and also attack the landlord!"
The GM says, "The landlord touches something inside his jacket before he dies."
C goes, "Okay, I wrap up his body in garbage bags so we can dispose of it."
GM: "You hear a gasp from the hallway because someone out there sees what you're doing."
C: "Dude, we closed the door!"
GM: "You never said that!"
Me: "Do you really think he'd call someone up here intending to kill him and then leave the door open while talking to him? In fact, don't apartment doors swing closed?"
I don't remember exactly what the GM said about that but in any case there were now sirens and we had to flee the apartment building. Being 80s asian steroytpes, we leapt out the back window and ran through an alley.
GM: "You see a hobo"
I knew that X would use this hobo as some kind of damning witness later, so I sworded him. It's worth noting that since at this point in time I still sucked at character design my katana troll BARELY managed to land a called shot on the unarmed hobo, so it shows how even after all this time playing my understanding of the rules and strong character generation was still very weak.
GM: "OK, the block is completely surrounded by Lone Star and drones are flying overhead."
You know, like less than 1 minute after someone is killed using blades in a building.
Players: "Um, we run and hide in the subway station!"
GM: "Hmm. Okay. There's a pimply young guy in the booth."
Me: "I threaten him to make him let us through!"
GM: "He's behind ballistic glass so he doesn't care."
C: "I shoot him!"
GM: "It doesn't penetrate."
C: "It's APDS!"
GM: "Fine, you shoot him."
I forgot exactly what happened, but the situation unfolded such that my character ended up going down to the dark end of the tube platform, hiding there, and for some reason C's ninja was near the entrance to the subway station when the Star barged in.
The Lone Star guys all blasted away at the ninja with their Ruger Thunderbolts at close range. C had EXTREMELY good luck and only had, like, 9 boxes of physical instead of deadly with overflow. Either he was very lucky or he was cheating on his dice reports, but it doesn't really matter so much to the rest of the story except to mention that the GM complained to me after the game, "I had to shoot him like 4 times at close range!" Yes, he used the pronoun "I".
Anyway, C's ninja decides to play dead with his 9 boxes of physical and the GM decides that the Star guys are going to try and handcuff him.
GM: "OK, he takes one of your hands and cuffs it."
C: "I stab him in the wrist by surprise with my spring loaded blade!"
GM: "What spring loaded blade?!"
C: "I bought one before this session. It's a common item!"
GM: "When your character buys something YOU MUST TELL ME! But fine, (rolls dice) you give him a Light wound and the rest of the cops blow you away."
C: "I stabbed him in the wrist! I should have opened an artery!"
GM: "You rolled a L wound on him! That blade only does L damage base!"
Finally, the cops are coming for my character. I remember I tried to stack my modifiers by breaking the lights in the station so the cops would have to fight in darkness whereas I had natural thermo vision.
Of course, it didn't work (friends in melee) and my character also got blow'd away.
The best part of all this is that after the game X complained bitterly to me about our characters' behavior during this session. First, he claimed that C's character couldn't possibly be a true ninja because C's background never mentioned a ninja clan, and therefore he must just be a delusional degenrate rather than a true ninja. I mean, he was basically objecting to the character concept in strident terms but of course he didn't mention any of these objections during chargen. Then he claimed that swift death would be the inevitable result of any "unprofessional" killing of civilians. I think the term he used as "hell to pay", as in, "if you kill civilians there will be hell to pay!". So, from these statements, we can safely establish that he specifically planned to kill the characters all along in that session.
THUS ENDS THE CHRONICLES OF KILLER GM. ALL WHO READ THIS WORK, ARE BLESSED. THOSE WHO ARE TRULY ENLIGHTENED MAY ONE DAY HEAR THE SACRED LEGEND OF X RUNNING FOOD FIGHT.
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.
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.
Nice, and definitely not a classic CLUE file in that there was no player idiocy or GM asshattery. Still funny though. 
| QUOTE (Herald of Verjigorm @ Feb 16 2007, 05:10 PM) |
| You are aware that the link in the first one does not have any surprise Lone Star vans, but does have two mormons getting shotgun blasts to the gut provided by some paranoid runners? |
See, to me, that's worth a couple extra karma.
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.
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.
Hell, that describes 75% of the characters I've played.
Ok. 90%.
Ok. 90%.
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.
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.
The correct response would have been pretending to be bi.
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.
Surprisingly enough, the mage managed to survive this; the sammie, some distance away, did so as well.
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.
Surprisingly enough, the mage managed to survive this; the sammie, some distance away, did so as well.
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?
| QUOTE (Wounded Ronin) |
| Why undermine that with your spells and/or tactics? |
The mage was already sustaining spells on himself, the grenade was an afterthought and he considered how to best deliver the explosive.
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.
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.
| QUOTE (Guye Noir) |
| 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! |
Did the fighter take damage for each character landing on him? That would have been the true way of the jedi.
| QUOTE (Wounded Ronin) |
| Did the fighter take damage for each character landing on him? That would have been the true way of the jedi. |
Yeah, fighter took extra damage from the cleric landing on him like a ton of bricks. The rogue and I didn't take the tumble, in case that wasn't clear from the story.
| QUOTE (Guye Noir) | ||
Yeah, fighter took extra damage from the cleric landing on him like a ton of bricks. The rogue and I didn't take the tumble, in case that wasn't clear from the story. |
Ah, that warms my heart and puts me on a good psychological footing for the rest of the day.
when you gonna put some stories on the clue site?
Hmm. Well, this is not a SR story, as such, but it was a cyberpunk supers game, so I figure it's close enough.
One of the players - let's call him John to protect the guilty - gets a tip that an illegal transaction, most lilkely involving high-tech weaponry, is going to go down in the near future in the meat-packing district of the city. (he's actually been making a living ripping off criminals... or should that be "other criminals"? anyway...)
So John heads down there, does some scouting, figures out where it's taking place, and sneaks into the decrepit building by climbing down an unused cargo elevator shaft. He finds a position he can watch the deal from without much risk of being discovered (it's not a good ambush spot unless you can tear through a cinderblock wall with your bare hands), and he waits for the merchandise and money to show up.
The parties to the deal show up - apparently, what's being sold is in heavy, refrigerated cases with a lot of built-in monitoring equipment that take a couple of men to carry, and the buyers take the time to have some techs carefully examine them. Finally, the money comes out, and John makes his move - he punches one of the people to death through the wall, then leaps through, and starts wreaking havoc. The buyers react with a lot of shooting, while the sellers are a lot more coordinated - most of them withdraw, doggedly providing covering fire for the guy in charge, while a couple stay back to protect the second in command as he gets out some electronic device with a keypad, and starts to frantically enter what look like various six-digit codes into it.
John sees all this, but he dawdles while killing men with guns, and it's not until the guy with remote finishes his typing, tosses it among the cases, and simply stands there with his eyes closed that he realizes he probably should have done something. So he runs up to the cases, picks up the nearest one, and charges out of the building with it...
This being a supers game, he does regain consciousness following the brilliant white flash and the loud noise, inside a (now ruined) building half a block away and gets to lie there groaning, waiting for his arms to grow back, thinking about all the money which just got vaporised, while watching the pretty lights of police helicopters overhead, part of what will end up being one of the largest manhunts in the city's history.
One of the players - let's call him John to protect the guilty - gets a tip that an illegal transaction, most lilkely involving high-tech weaponry, is going to go down in the near future in the meat-packing district of the city. (he's actually been making a living ripping off criminals... or should that be "other criminals"? anyway...)
So John heads down there, does some scouting, figures out where it's taking place, and sneaks into the decrepit building by climbing down an unused cargo elevator shaft. He finds a position he can watch the deal from without much risk of being discovered (it's not a good ambush spot unless you can tear through a cinderblock wall with your bare hands), and he waits for the merchandise and money to show up.
The parties to the deal show up - apparently, what's being sold is in heavy, refrigerated cases with a lot of built-in monitoring equipment that take a couple of men to carry, and the buyers take the time to have some techs carefully examine them. Finally, the money comes out, and John makes his move - he punches one of the people to death through the wall, then leaps through, and starts wreaking havoc. The buyers react with a lot of shooting, while the sellers are a lot more coordinated - most of them withdraw, doggedly providing covering fire for the guy in charge, while a couple stay back to protect the second in command as he gets out some electronic device with a keypad, and starts to frantically enter what look like various six-digit codes into it.
John sees all this, but he dawdles while killing men with guns, and it's not until the guy with remote finishes his typing, tosses it among the cases, and simply stands there with his eyes closed that he realizes he probably should have done something. So he runs up to the cases, picks up the nearest one, and charges out of the building with it...
This being a supers game, he does regain consciousness following the brilliant white flash and the loud noise, inside a (now ruined) building half a block away and gets to lie there groaning, waiting for his arms to grow back, thinking about all the money which just got vaporised, while watching the pretty lights of police helicopters overhead, part of what will end up being one of the largest manhunts in the city's history.
| QUOTE (djinni) |
| when you gonna put some stories on the clue site? |
Sorry. I had to learn PHP. Have done that now and have put the first five stories on the site. There are still some to format and upload which I'll do later. We desparately need some more, though, so please send me one if you have one. I can't believe the well of idiocy has run dry already!
In deference to the rumours that the original CLUE founder did not want the name re-used (though I've been unable to get in touch with her), I have renamed it the N.O.C.L.U.E. Files. (Thanks Shadowdragon for the acronym).
Cheers,
-K.
Yay! I'm number 1! I've got a few more for ya' I'll send in a bit.
| QUOTE (knasser) | ||
Sorry. I had to learn PHP. Have done that now and have put the first five stories on the site. There are still some to format and upload which I'll do later. We desparately need some more, though, so please send me one if you have one. I can't believe the well of idiocy has run dry already! In deference to the rumours that the original CLUE founder did not want the name re-used (though I've been unable to get in touch with her), I have renamed it the N.O.C.L.U.E. Files. (Thanks Shadowdragon for the acronym). Cheers, -K. |
w00t!
Can you provide a link, for those of us who're truely daft?
| QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Mar 18 2007, 09:02 PM) |
| w00t! Can you provide a link, for those of us who're truely daft? |
Apologies. I changed the file extension from .html to .php when I made the site active so the original link you might have had was out of date. (Still v. pleased with myself. My housemate can program but I think he'd kick me if I asked him to do any more website work for me
).The new link is now:
http://www.knasser.me.uk/clue.php.
There's a link to it on my main site, also.
Thanks for pointing that out!
-K.
Well, if you want to put more material on that site you could also just C&P the stories I've already posted to this thread.
When I can think of more (I've got a lot of memories I have to sift through) I'll post them to this thread as well.
When I can think of more (I've got a lot of memories I have to sift through) I'll post them to this thread as well.
Thanks for all of the submissions so far. I've still got some others to put on the site when I have time, but please keep them coming! I've just added two more, now.
I'm really glad that this has finally got off the ground, and it would be great to build up it up further!
Cheers,
-K.
That last one with the grenade was priceless.
Yeah - TN of 17! And I don't think anyone can say the player wasn't given fair warning, this time.
And I'd just like to note that the logs say over three-hundred separate visitors have come to have a look since Sunday. Okay, knock a few off for revisits with new IP addresses, but it's still loads! That makes me happy!
The more files you get up, the more you're likely to get. You should start naming them instead of just #1.#2,#3. Maybe taking the dubbing from the text and give it a name instead of a number in the menu? Just a thought.
| QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0) |
| The more files you get up, the more you're likely to get. You should start naming them instead of just #1.#2,#3. Maybe taking the dubbing from the text and give it a name instead of a number in the menu? Just a thought. |
He has caught t3h corr3ct.
O.k. I'm not writing this to humiliate anyone, just to share a humorous event that occured in a game I GM'd.
Some background:(short and sweet), The group of Pc's has met with a new player (don't worry this guy isn't new to the people or game just to the campaign at hand i.e. he started late in the campaign.) Previous to the gaming session (during character gen.) the player decides he wants to work for Lonestar. I roll with the punch and tell him he is undercover following the trail of shadowrunners whom have recently caused havoc with Aries. In the group we have a 2 gunslinger adepts, mage, Troll shaman and newly appointed 'face' (undercover) adept.
The Pc's and new player have wonderous adventures for quite awhile (call it 8 months real-time. sessions run every Sat.) Then things start to go bad, seems Lonestar is always getting in the way of there now high profile jobs for lucrative clients. Slowly after a few busted missions (by Lonestar) some of the Pc's begin to suspect. They start checking into things, They start paying attention to loose ends and finally act upon the suspision that the 'new guy' there 'face' is a double-agent. They confront him (and here is the crazy part) after much discussion (most of which was them deciding how to kill the new guy) they buy his line of crap and release him to remain part of the team. The next mission doesn't fair too well and the Troll Shaman loses an eye to a Aries Mac guard. Some of the team, including the shaman believe that the 'face' has been lying but all that is belayed by the 'face' putting his life in danger to save one of the gunslinger adepts (who promptly makes a private agreement to all ways back up the 'face' as a act of gratitude.) This mission also involved a lot of secretive doging by the 'face' to keep Lonestar informed of the groups plan, in which he is almost caught agian passing along info.
Knowing full well that his number has been punched once he decideds to set the runners up. There next job requires that they enter a abandoned warehouse.
Mage: Looks directly at the 'Face'. "This had better not be a set up."
Shaman Troll: "Don't worry boss, I'll keep an eye on him."
Everyone gets a great kick out of the pun.
As the team enters the meeting area Lonestar springs there trap. Part of the plan was for the 'face' to suffer a gunshot from Lonestar to put him in the clear. As soon as the shooting begins the 'face' goes down and feigns unconsciousness.
Mage: "I knew he was a traitor! He set us up!
#1 gunslinger: "F#@k it, I'm going out in style!" and he declares that he draws his weapon.
Shaman: "I cast a mana blast at the 'face' and make sure he's dead."
#2 gunslinger: "What!? We're under fire! Besides I've sworn to protect him, we haven't proved anything, there maybe another answer."
Mage: "He's an f'ing traitor! I activate a spell lock with Bullet Barrier."
Shaman: " I cast my spell on the 'face'."
#2 gunslinger: "If he begins to cast the spell I bear down on him (take aim)."
#1 gunslinger: " we are in the middle of a scrap! If I see #2 take aim at the shaman I bear down on him."
Mage: " Are you people f'ing nuts!"
Initiative is rolled.
Mage : "I delay my action."
#1: " I delay my action."
#2: " I delay."
Lonestar: "You're all under arrest! Hands up! We have you on several charges of Robbery, mass destruction, accessory to murder, murder, kidnapping..."
Shaman: "I cast my spell at the 'face'!!!!"
everyone else waves a delay...except.
#2 "I shoot one eye in his only good eyeball, my pistol is loaded with rubber bullets soo... he should survive."
#1 "I shoot #2 just on principle! With real god-damned bullets, APDS!!!"
Mage: " u people make me sick. I cast Urban Renewal, force 10- all my spell pool to the drain test."
Afterwards they argued for about 40 mins. Then the 'face' and I let them in on all the things that we had done (mostly prompted by the 'face'). there was a moment of silence...
'Face': "You guys let me go without asking me to give up my alliance to Lonestar, so I figured I better close the door before you all closed it for me."
They all looked at each other then the chuckling and laughing began. They all became friends again and actually praised the 'face' for doing a job well done.
Of course that was the last time these people ever played SR together for a long-time.
They decided to play D&D for a break. Less complicating.
Some background:(short and sweet), The group of Pc's has met with a new player (don't worry this guy isn't new to the people or game just to the campaign at hand i.e. he started late in the campaign.) Previous to the gaming session (during character gen.) the player decides he wants to work for Lonestar. I roll with the punch and tell him he is undercover following the trail of shadowrunners whom have recently caused havoc with Aries. In the group we have a 2 gunslinger adepts, mage, Troll shaman and newly appointed 'face' (undercover) adept.
The Pc's and new player have wonderous adventures for quite awhile (call it 8 months real-time. sessions run every Sat.) Then things start to go bad, seems Lonestar is always getting in the way of there now high profile jobs for lucrative clients. Slowly after a few busted missions (by Lonestar) some of the Pc's begin to suspect. They start checking into things, They start paying attention to loose ends and finally act upon the suspision that the 'new guy' there 'face' is a double-agent. They confront him (and here is the crazy part) after much discussion (most of which was them deciding how to kill the new guy) they buy his line of crap and release him to remain part of the team. The next mission doesn't fair too well and the Troll Shaman loses an eye to a Aries Mac guard. Some of the team, including the shaman believe that the 'face' has been lying but all that is belayed by the 'face' putting his life in danger to save one of the gunslinger adepts (who promptly makes a private agreement to all ways back up the 'face' as a act of gratitude.) This mission also involved a lot of secretive doging by the 'face' to keep Lonestar informed of the groups plan, in which he is almost caught agian passing along info.
Knowing full well that his number has been punched once he decideds to set the runners up. There next job requires that they enter a abandoned warehouse.
Mage: Looks directly at the 'Face'. "This had better not be a set up."
Shaman Troll: "Don't worry boss, I'll keep an eye on him."
Everyone gets a great kick out of the pun.
As the team enters the meeting area Lonestar springs there trap. Part of the plan was for the 'face' to suffer a gunshot from Lonestar to put him in the clear. As soon as the shooting begins the 'face' goes down and feigns unconsciousness.
Mage: "I knew he was a traitor! He set us up!
#1 gunslinger: "F#@k it, I'm going out in style!" and he declares that he draws his weapon.
Shaman: "I cast a mana blast at the 'face' and make sure he's dead."
#2 gunslinger: "What!? We're under fire! Besides I've sworn to protect him, we haven't proved anything, there maybe another answer."
Mage: "He's an f'ing traitor! I activate a spell lock with Bullet Barrier."
Shaman: " I cast my spell on the 'face'."
#2 gunslinger: "If he begins to cast the spell I bear down on him (take aim)."
#1 gunslinger: " we are in the middle of a scrap! If I see #2 take aim at the shaman I bear down on him."
Mage: " Are you people f'ing nuts!"
Initiative is rolled.
Mage : "I delay my action."
#1: " I delay my action."
#2: " I delay."
Lonestar: "You're all under arrest! Hands up! We have you on several charges of Robbery, mass destruction, accessory to murder, murder, kidnapping..."
Shaman: "I cast my spell at the 'face'!!!!"
everyone else waves a delay...except.
#2 "I shoot one eye in his only good eyeball, my pistol is loaded with rubber bullets soo... he should survive."
#1 "I shoot #2 just on principle! With real god-damned bullets, APDS!!!"
Mage: " u people make me sick. I cast Urban Renewal, force 10- all my spell pool to the drain test."
Afterwards they argued for about 40 mins. Then the 'face' and I let them in on all the things that we had done (mostly prompted by the 'face'). there was a moment of silence...
'Face': "You guys let me go without asking me to give up my alliance to Lonestar, so I figured I better close the door before you all closed it for me."
They all looked at each other then the chuckling and laughing began. They all became friends again and actually praised the 'face' for doing a job well done.
Of course that was the last time these people ever played SR together for a long-time.
They decided to play D&D for a break. Less complicating.
That's awesome. Nothing like a good double cross.
Great game,well done
| QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0 @ Mar 20 2007, 12:28 AM) |
| The more files you get up, the more you're likely to get. You should start naming them instead of just #1.#2,#3. Maybe taking the dubbing from the text and give it a name instead of a number in the menu? Just a thought. |
I've added a couple more to the site. I absolutely agree with this and I hope to keep the site building for quite some time. Holychampion, I took your posting to the thread as an 'okay' to copy the story to the site. I really hope that is okay and you don't mind the story being preserved for posterity. It was just too good to waste. Of course, I'll take it down if you ask.
I don't know whether I should post to this thread to announce new additions or if people should just assume that there is more being added and check back every few weeks. I think I will continue to announce in this thread for the time being and stop if it becomes annoying to people.
For those who have submitted stories, you might like to know that I got about 150 hits to the CLUE files in the last 24 hours! So you can be assured that you're all doing your bit to improve the compentency of Shadowrunners everywhere... or something like that.
And please keep them coming.
-K.
absolutely a o.k. with me. Thanks.
I read #8 last night, and went into a complete gigglefit. Keep 'em flowin, guys.
OK, here's one I posted on DSF years ago, but it really fits the bill as to what this thread is about, so I'm gonna repost it.
| QUOTE |
Basically, the opposing force was occupying a rocky hill to the southeast of the walled battlement style fortification the PCs and their 30 mooks were occupying. They knew that the opposing force consisted of 100 physad ninjas with a mortar, 4 snipers, and lots of AKs. D wound number one was one of the PCs deciding to run up on the battlements and wave his silver plated pistols repeatedly in the direction of the mountain. He got sniped out. Then, for reasons that are far, far beyond me, two of the PCs decided to split their already small amount of soldiers. They sent one group on foot to charge directly at the mountain, and the others went out on foot in a lengthy "flanking" manuver. However, the distances were great enough that this made absolutely no sense at all. The group running directly at the mountain got shredded by assault rifle fire as they ran across the snowy plains with no cover, and the "flanking" group got annhilated after a few mortars were fired and one of them turned up a direct hit. (That was the other 2 PCs.) They ran out on foot in spite of the fact that there were many large transport snowcrawlers in the fort, which had been brought up many times, and in fact the PCs had rode in on a snowcrawler convoy. Before anyone suggests I didn't make the distance clear, I did. I supplied a map with the distances clearly marked on the map itself. Also, let me add that there was not even a real reason for them to sortie in the first place. I hadn't even said the word. I wondered why they wanted to leave the protection of the fort. The group was salvaged because one guy who was drunk the first session was sober the second, and the first thing he immediately did at the beginning of the second session was call for backup. Then he and the other remaining PCs (all 30 of the soldiers were annilated) took a snowcrawler and drove it out the big open main gates away from the occupied hill. They were able to escape and scoop up the bodies of the dead/D wound/pre HOG PCs and the ninjas occupied the fort. And that was that. EDIT - and I decided to never, never run 100 ninjas again. Because I had to roll 100 physad attacks with lots of dice! |
Might I recommend some good editing. In the first story alone I've found:
"magical scrolls from the DIMR."
What is DIMR?
"have the decker reate a student identity "
Create
"Eventually they found out which room the scroll were put in to at night. "
Scrolls
"They still had a few days left no the time table of their run, "
'on', I guess...
"He'd eventually acquired him self a ruthenium polymer stealth suit that he used on jobs, including thermal masking, and ultrasound emitter/detectors. "
He'd eventually acquired him self a ruthenium polymer stealth suit with thermal masking and ultrasound emitter/detectors that he used on jobs.
"Most of his powers deaalt with stealth. Things like traceless walk, wall running, improved stealth, all that."
Most of his powers dealt with stealth; things like traceless walk, wall running, improved stealth, all that.
(and so on...)
I know you don't want to edit someone else's words, but you need to remember in this case you're the editor. You need to make the stories comfortable to read, and make sure they have proper flow. I think most people who submit stuff expect that, at minimum, their typos will be corrected, and probably won't complain if sentence structure is modified.
"magical scrolls from the DIMR."
What is DIMR?
"have the decker reate a student identity "
Create
"Eventually they found out which room the scroll were put in to at night. "
Scrolls
"They still had a few days left no the time table of their run, "
'on', I guess...
"He'd eventually acquired him self a ruthenium polymer stealth suit that he used on jobs, including thermal masking, and ultrasound emitter/detectors. "
He'd eventually acquired him self a ruthenium polymer stealth suit with thermal masking and ultrasound emitter/detectors that he used on jobs.
"Most of his powers deaalt with stealth. Things like traceless walk, wall running, improved stealth, all that."
Most of his powers dealt with stealth; things like traceless walk, wall running, improved stealth, all that.
(and so on...)
I know you don't want to edit someone else's words, but you need to remember in this case you're the editor. You need to make the stories comfortable to read, and make sure they have proper flow. I think most people who submit stuff expect that, at minimum, their typos will be corrected, and probably won't complain if sentence structure is modified.
To be honest, I have been doing some tidy up on errors in the submissions, but I've focused on the ones that really make it hard to understand what was meant. Okay, not everyone is familiar with the Dunklezahn Institute of Magical Research, but you can get through the story without it. The truth is I put quite a lot of time into my own work, such as my fiction or the setting material, and I'm always happy to receive corrections on that (well, maybe not 'happy' exactly
), but the CLUE files I turn into HTML and ram them up there. It's a little sloppy, but I have a lower standard for that. If someone were to send me a piece of fiction that they wanted published, then I would go through it with much greater precision and give them some feedback on it first. But the CLUE files... I don't have the time for it, I'm afraid. You're making the mistake of assuming I have some sort of paid reason to do it. There isn't and in fact, the hosting is all paid for out of my pocket. It's done purely for the fun of it.So while I appreciate what you're saying, I'm afraid that the CLUE files are always going to be a little slapdash. But I hope no less the entertaining for it.
The (lack of) ability to write well and articulate your thoughts gives information. The writing skill and style of the author assists the reader a tool to determine, in this case, potential mitigating factors to a botched run. If your GM can't structure a sentance, then perhaps he can't strcture a run, and a CLUE file results.
I understand you don't get paid. I just think spending thirty seconds to drop it into word and correcting red underlined words wouldn't take too long (probably around thirty seconds 
)
But otherwise good work.
) But otherwise good work.
FWIW, I've found the files I've read to be pretty uninteresting, and I think writing style has a big part to do with that.
~J
~J
I think a good story has as at least as much, if not more, to do with who's telling the story than the actual content.
A good storyteller can make a trip to buy bread sound exciting. A poor storyteller can make anything dull.
A good storyteller can make a trip to buy bread sound exciting. A poor storyteller can make anything dull.
| QUOTE (Demerzel) |
| The (lack of) ability to write well and articulate your thoughts gives information. The writing skill and style of the author assists the reader a tool to determine, in this case, potential mitigating factors to a botched run. If your GM can't structure a sentance, then perhaps he can't strcture a run, and a CLUE file results. |
Dem., as it is you I am going to assume that the above was an illustration of the principles of irony and not, in fact, someone lambasting another's spelling and punctuation whilst making their own gramatical errors.
Seriously, the author of any of those posts might be dyslexic, have English as a second or third language or simply be endowed with overly large fingers. Whilst Nezumi has a logically correct point (albeit that I am lazy), yours draws an incorrect relationship between the author's English and his culpability for his player's ineptitude.
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