Notable Gaming Experiences: The Gospel According to CobiWann's DM

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Notable Gaming Experiences: The Gospel According to CobiWann's DM

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

^^Thankfully none of my (Admittedly little) tabletop gaming experiences have involved man-childs like that freakazoid.^^

But of course we've had our moments of sheer silliness. After our main DM wasn't available on Skype to do Pathfinder like usual I got chatting around about various things with the rest of the group, and eventually the topic came round to one RPG...

FATAL.

Yep, we found the character generator and messed around, laughing our butts off about it and how it was a shame our DM wasn't here to play this, but then I had a flash of wisdom. We were gonna play FATAL to our own rules. We decided from the get-go to make it silly as possible, and end in the characters dying in some daft fashion. The rule was simply "Roll one d20 and see how awesome you do" on any action that I deemed important. And off I went to work on Maptools to hastily edit a pub full of characters and seeing what happens from there.

I'll just give the highlights. This was the most immature game ever.

* Snake decided to try and perform wrestling moves on every maid in the bar, they kept going out back. He'd try moves but he critcal failed all of them so he ended up accidently complimenting them.
* Mattox was a drunk old man, getting so drunk that he ended up naked writhing around on the floor, some of the trolls became "interested" in him. Thankfully the bar was set on fire so the trolls got roasted before anything could happen.
* Cold was playing a female character so according to the word of Tom Hall she had to have sex as much as possible in a highly comical orgy. Basically the resulting orgasm sent everyone flying back into the bar and one participant turned into mush after hitting the wall at a high velocity. Afterwards one of the bar owners came along to tell her off, thats right, I rolled to see how effectively the bar owner told her off, it was a critical success.
* The bar owners ended up fighting each other to be the one of serve the customers. This continued whilst the fire was going on, and before the building exploded he was on fire and he simply strolled out, ranting about the session's turn of events.
* At the end the characters died, Cold was killed by melting due to alcohol. Mattox died from a heart attack, and Snake turned into a comet and flew off into space.

In short, it was an absolute riot. I'm hoping to DM again, obviously a more mature session next time but the timing was perfect to play something silly.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2012 22:00

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:42

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

That is a pretty lovely thing to do to any player, newbie or pro. Why drop them in the middle of a situation like that without help? Heck, I'm starting to read Dark Heresy and the intro campaign doesn't pull a stunt like that, and we're talking about 40K here.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2012 23:14

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

Had my first Pathfinder GM session. It was pretty good!

Basically my team normally does slightly serious stuff mixed in with comedy, and I wrote this session to be all comedy as I'm not too confident in my abilities to pull off a more serious mission. So basically the team had no real missions from the Pathfinder society so they were ordered to relax and so visit one of the city districts at night and head into a bar.

Inside the bar a gang of goblins challenge them to a drinking game, which ends up horribly for our heroes. And whilst drunk they take on a knife throwing challenge which ends up with one of the players getting stabbed in the foot.

Then, our team plus knife go to a dance club, and fall flat on their asses multiple times and get thrown out. And then there is a horse race through obstacles including a water pit and a pit of LAVA. And then they take on a barbed wire course similar to the Saw Movies.

And finally, they stop a bank robbery and utterly pulverise the enemy so I made sure to draw in loads of blood splatters.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2012 21:12

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

Divine, your games sound absolutely...well, divine!

It's great to see a committed team and DM to come up with such plotlines and changing the SW continuity in such an interesting way, fan-fiction at its best! My usual Pathfinder group is struggling to meet up and I've sorta become the group's DM, problem is my skills are more into playing and lack encounter design credibility.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2012 16:00

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

I ran a session of Pathfinder a few days ago. Based loosely on the official campaign "The Sixfold Trial", I wanted to run the play scene, albiet with a drastically different script that was more focused on comedy. The results were pretty fun.

The players were:

unusualgoth as Rok'San, already established in the group as a violent sex-fiend.
tehsnakerer as Runt, another violent character with a perchant for acrobatics. Also he can't read...
neo (Newbie to the game) played a Bard named Eddie Beethoven Mercury King Charles The Third. Yep.
bb9 as Kur'wreah, a solid fighter for the group. The most sensible player.

The team get a message to go to a town and find a contact, with code words assigned to them. As soon as the game started they all ran to the market table with all the chicken. Once that was done they headed to the tavern (Not above fantasy cliches here!) where they were to guess who the contact was by using the codephase. I expected it to take a while but Runt stood up onto a table and shouted the codephrase to EVERYONE, and then to their faces. By process of elimination they found the contact, who promptly slapped him.

The objective was to retrieve an Amulet Of The Planes from a baron who enjoys performances, and so they audition for a play which has a high mortality rate. I custom wrote the script with the usual bad riffs and memes (Including The Room, GI Joe, and a whole lot more), and given Runt's inability to read Eddie moved in to stick next to Runt to help him read the lines.

To cut a story short, the session was pretty good fun!

# ¿ May 12, 2012 21:50

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

Well just did an online game with our group, trying the FUDGE system for the first time. It went well

The setting was in the Valley Of The Kings, the players were to explore a recently discovered tomb. The characters were from a wide variety of backgrounds:

* Jack Churchill
* Samuel L Jackson
* President Barack Obama
* Rasputin
* Kirby

The players headed inside and explored the area, Kirby acted as an air filter and cleared out the dust, allowing the other characters to breathe easier. Inside the tomb were lavish goods (Which the players would just not take!), and coffins. In the back of the tomb they found the pharoah Rameses the 8th who had risen from the grave. To fight off the mummy horde, Samuel L Jackson shouted them down (Killing four of them in the process), Kirby turned into a bowling ball and Jack Churchill rolled Kirby into the horde whilst hacking at Rameses. Rasputin was manipulating the bone structure of the mummies and Obama managed to convince the mummy horde to join the side of American Democracy. Jackson then punched Rameses square in the face, killing him.

Outside the tomb, a load of cars were driving towards the players, but with ill intent..to be continued in our next session.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2012 21:29

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

Had a fun game with my Skype group, we Fudged up some rules and played "superheroes", the following transcript was written by our DM which is fairly comprehensive.

quote:

Gunman: The man of a million guns. He has the power to turn anything he can pick up into a firearm with intense concentration and a mental image of what he wants it to be. He must be able to physically lift the object to mutate or operate it. He is of pretty average strength to boot. (Temascos)

Shifter: Has the power to manipulate many features about his own body. He can remove all friction from his feet, or make himself burn at thousands of degrees, or turn his head into copper if he so wishes. So long as it is his own body he has free reign over what to do with it. The laws of convection happen with heat, but it is localised to him entirely. So long as he starts the effect he feels no negative effects from it, bar weight of new appendages. He is naturally quite strong, but can make himself stronger with concentration. (Cold Chaos)

Patches: The groups healer, with a rather unusual twist, he needs a host and an object to 'heal' his allies. He transfers the properties of one object to the person he is touching to patch up wounds. This power also operates as an attack, it is based on Patches intent when transmuting the object. The party being transformed (if friendly) can make their transforming intent clear, any wounds on them will be patched with the material the object is made from, before healing naturally as flesh. (Sweed)

Mold: Patches brother and his greatest ally, while Patches can pass on the properties of an object to others Mold can turn into any tangible object with a degree of concentration, the more complex the object the lesser the time he can hold onto the mental picture necessary for his power. It is greatly aided if he has recently held the object or has it in sight.

After a long night of work taking down a mob boss known simply as 'The Boss', a group of local super heroes are going to celebrate at a nearby tavern, drinks and merriment aplenty at their good deeds as the news is running a story celebrating their deed, eventually they get called over by a large man named Larry for a game of high stakes poker, feeling lucky already tonight they partake, winning hand after hand. They are half a million up after half an hour.

Then the stakes are raised and there is four million at the table, they put down their hand, it was a good hand, the heroes they have won for the second time tonight. Then Larry places his hand, a full house. The bastard hustled us, he runs out the back. Another large man enters the bar. A man known only 'The Baptist comes in from the front as Larry leaves. He says to our heroes �You better pay up quick, or I will drown you and your mums.� Four million down and without that kind of cash, you realise that 'The Boss' was actually Larry, he has escaped already. It must have been a fall guy you taken down.

A group of mobsters bust into the bar. 2 with tommy guns, the other 4 with clubs. Patches grabs the man behind the bar and tries to take the properties of a barman, due to a poor roll all he gets is learning a variety of cocktails. The group proceeds to take some drinks from the bar, turning the barman hostile.

Gunman grabs a stool and attempts to turn it into a firearm, he fails and it falls apart in his hands. Goth turns into a tommy gun and Gunman attempts to make up for the stool, he fires into the crowd of mobsters. gaining a hit on all of them. His next shot missed. Fortunately the whole spray struck the bartender, taking him out.

Mold then turned back to human form, he attempted to transform into a bat so that one of his allies could wield him against the attackers. He failed and turned into a pillow with a wooden club inside. Patches attacked with him anyway, landing a successful hit. Mold then turned into a bottle of alcohol, which Patches drank from, then hit someone with, breaking his brother in the process.

Shifter attempted to turn his finger nails to titanium to stab a guy, it failed. Instead turning his nails to gold and giving some poor fellow heavy metal poisoning, taking down one of the men wielding Tommy Guns. Three of the melee mobsters dive behind the bar.

The remaining Tommy Gun Mobster fires on Gunman, scoring a hit. Gunman responds by pulling a lantern off the wall, transforming it into a flame thrower and setting him ablaze. Meanwhile the fire continues with Shifter heating his own body up and attempting to fire up the bar, it hit the wood but not the alcohol. Two of the three escaped the blaze. One attempted to jump the bar but failed and slammed face first into the fire. One made it but his ankle was caught in the fire. The last one successfully jumped the bar and kicked Shifter in the face.

As for Mold and Patcher, the bottling continued. Mold repaired his broken bottle form Patches threw it at the one remaining mobster, due to a better transformation the alcohol Mold became was a bit more ptent and will give that mobster a very horrible hangover come morning. (If he survived the bar burning down)

As for the mobster with his ankle of fire, he patted it out and was ready to resume fighting. Shifter turned into something akin to a giant middle finger and gunman prepared to transform him into a middle finger machine gun. It failed, creating a potent (yet inferior) pink finger launcher. Giving the guy a doctor evil style death.

The group finds a note that must have dropped from Barry's pocket, listing a nearby warehouse. Deciding that this must be where 'The Boss' is hiding, the group heads outside the burning bar. heading out back onto the streets, a group of low key mobsters were waiting outside along with small time villain Streak, the traffic comes to a stop and people begin evacuating their cars as Streak begins taunting you. The Baptist and the boss are already gone.

Streak: You can't take down the boss! He's the king of this neighbourhood! Get em boys!

Gunman grabs a trashcan and turns it into a mortar launcher, firing trash debris at the criminals across the street. The trash explodes on impact, taking out half the crew. Mold turns into a motorbike which shoots fire, which Shifter attempts to ride. Instead crashing into a car just infront of them. Shifter collects himself and heads across the street, turning his hands to metal, cutting open a cars gastank and ignite it, detonating the car and nearby mobsters. It fails, instead he excretes a more fuel efficient fuel. The mobsters attempt to collect it, but slip and fall into the puddle of slick oil.

Streak runs across the street and attacks the other side of the group. His super speed aiding him a bit. Gunman dumps the empty trash can and grabs another. This time it's aimed directly for Streak, the shotgun blast of trash carries him into the distance. Meanwhile Mold and Patches, picking up on Shifter's firey plans attempt the motorbike again. Driving across the street and ramming the collapsed mobsters. They not only fly away Team Rocket style but set on fire.

The street clear of enemies, they head on.

There is little resistance outside the warehouse, on the inside is where all the business was taking place. Filled with wooden crates and cardboard boxes, it's a treasure chest of illegal guns and drugs. And 'The Boss' is in. You arrive unnoticed by the residents.

You notice Barry the Baptist, the mob's torture technician, an angry man who drowns people in his spare time. You owe him 4 million dollars. He is spouting a rather stupid plan about going to the news about the gambling debts and defacing the heroes.

Having not been spotted yet, the group rumages through the crates, it's a drug and gun warehouse. The front this place is pulling makes it look like a toy warehouse, filled with defective and cheap toys. The group finds an Optimus Prime action figure, Mold attempts to turn into Optimus Prime, succeeding. Patches tries to take the properties from him, failing and turning into an oversized Optimus Prime toy. Gunman takes it to create an Optimus Prime Launcher.

Meanwhile Shifter attempts to create a diversion. Turning himself into a beautiful woman, it fails and he becomes incredibly ugly, he still climbs atop the warehouse shelves and grabs everyones attention. Luckily the boss and Barry find her/him attractive. Shifter attempts to roll for beauty, instead backfiring and becoming uglier. This does act as a distraction though. The group attempt to lie and claim they are there for a 'toy convention'. It doesn't work. One of the mobsters is so struck by how ugly Shifter is that he collapses into a nearby body of water (Barry's drowning pit) and drowns himself. One of his friends attempts to save him, it is futile.

Patches begins the fight by charging and hitting a thug. It hits, unfortunately he is still an optimus prime toy, as in, he is made of light plastic. The two ninjas in the warehouse climb up to Shifter and attack. Gunman runs to the body of water and transforms his Optimus Prime gun into a high pressure water jet and fires it at Barry. It sends him flying across the room, along with four of his goons, two of his mooks are crushed by a toppling forklift that was in their flight path. One of the survivors spends the rest of the fight mourning his fallen allies.

Patches, still a plastic toy, is attacked by a thug, one of his legs is knocked off. Another mobster attempts to shoot Patches. Missing and shooting his friend in the back instead. Patches transformed back into a human and has a plan for the ninjas, he cups some water from the pit and hopes to transfer the properties of water onto a ninja, making him a liquid. It fails and just ends up hydrating his enemy. Patches then grabs the ninja and Shifter and transfers their properties to him. Shifter becomes ultra acrobatic for a period, he turns his feet into metal and does a spinning kick, he actually rotates 1080 degrees and sends the ninjas flying across the warehouse, they splatter into the walls.

Meanwhile, a thug finds a shotgun and fires on Gunman, it misses. Mold himself transforms into a fully automatic shotgun and Gunman wields him. Not only killing the mobster, decapitating him, making his head and body fly across the room, land on Barry. The head reconnects with the body for a split second and the mobster utters some final words of respect before dying.

Barry is now heading back into the fight. Mold returns to human form. Barry grabs him and begins to drown him in water. Rendering him helpless. Patches transfers his alcohol that he drank earlier into Barry, making him drunk. Then attempts to turn him into wood by holding the nearby table, it just makes him tougher. Meanwhile 'The Boss' jumps into the fight. picking up the fork lift and attempting to throw it. It fails. Gunman turns his attention to him after failing to kill a mook with his high pressure water gun.

Shifter still has sights on Barry. Deciding to dive above him, turn to stone and crush him on the way down. It fails as he becomes a light stone that bounces off Barry's (now wooden) head. Mold turns into an electric eel and attempts to shock Barry, but since he is now made of wood it is all for naught. Instead Shifter attempts something else. He sets the wooden, alcohol filled Barry on fire, the explosion this causes kills the surrounding mobsters and nearly killed Barry. In a drunken stumble Barry collapses into his own pool of water.

Meanwhile Gunman has picked up a table and made it into a firearm, a harpoon launcher with table legs. He lands a hit. The Boss responds by picking him up and throwing him across the room, being seven feet tall and with muscles three feet wide, this is painful. Gunman just gets up and tries to fire again. The Boss picks him up and throws him again. This time he throws him through the skylight, he flies up a whole mile. Before landing in the body of water with the barely alive Barry. Patches runs up and heals Gunman. Who gets back to work by firing his last harpoon at Barry, scoring a headshot, Barry is finally down.

Back on land. Shifter turns his arms to gun powder and punches a thug. Unfortunately the blast sends them both recoiling, the thug is dead, Shifter is not. Meanwhile Mold is rumaging through crates for something he can turn into, finding a Magic 8 ball he decides to run at 'The Boss' jump at him and turn into a spiked ball mid flight. Due to him imitating the low grade 8-balls (filled with mercury formilate) he explodes on impact. Mold reforms and finds another thing. A stick of dynamite, he transforms into that and Gunman picks it up, upgrading it himself into a cluster bomb, which is also thrown at the boss. The boss is now weak and on low health. Patches grabs a toy doll and transfers his properties onto 'The Boss' which causes him to gain plastic detachable limbs like that of the doll. With him being the only remaining opponent. They decide that instead of killing him they will donate him as a toy to a nearby orphanage.

Upon leaving the warehouse. They are greeted by an adoring crowd. One would wonder why they adore them.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2012 07:21

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

Tollymain posted:

There are far too many words and far too little grammar in that transcript there. Mind translating?

Ouch

Our DM typed that in a bit of a hurry last night, apologies for the :words:

Here's the summary:

* Four superheroes go to a tavern and gamble away four million dollars. They were swindled by the guy they thought they caught earlier that night.
* The Loan Shark, Barry The Baptist, tells them to cough up the money and sets his goons on him.
* A lot of fight scenes, and then victory.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2012 18:39

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

Just ran an improv session that went amazingly well and silly. It was about the players all being one thing.

Ducks.

Not any special ducks, just ducks in a park. The first challenge was competing for bread, and as this was going on the players would create the map on Roll 20, a big collaborative effort and actually kept it quite simple...save for the Robot Tank that one of the ducks intimidated. As communication went on I said something I never thought I'd say in my life:

"To do this you have to communicate through the medium of Duck."

After divebombing a football hooligan and staring down an elderly woman who hated ducks because they killed her husband, the ducks form a companionship with the park owner whose wive had just divorced them. The ducks ventured down towards the muddy football pitch (This was set in Yorkshire, Northern England) and there the ducks were challenged to a football match by Wayne Rooney. The players response to this was perfect.

"WE'RE loving DUCKS!"

Nonetheless, a large crowd gathered and the human team was trounced. The Ducks celebrated their victory with bread and the human footballers shot themselves in shame. The score was 3-0.

It was fantastic.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2013 01:53

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

My current group is playing Savage Worlds at the moment, in a homebrew campaign that's turning out to be a lot of fun. The setting is post-apocalyptic (Several hundred years afterwards so humanity is beginning to recover) after The Clockwork Virus hits, turning people who have mechanical parts in them like amputees into unstoppable killing machines. The main city, Carcer City is divided up into lots of small blocks of groups, each lead by a different leader and of course working up in the pecking order is important for survival.

I'm playing a gunslinger-diplomat kinda guy (I seem to be in the habit of this actually) named Cain Artorias. There is also Zed Meyer, a thief who wants to really steal everything that's not nailed down, including our current gang boss' kitchen. Caius Estihiem is the assassin of the group, and general all-purpose guy. And there's Jak Brixton, the damage sponge.

We had been taking on different missions under a gang leader, such as protecting his chief weapons guy during a deal that went sour due to outside forces and shaking down local punks. Our latest task had involved checking the security of the wall in our sector, and one compound was most certainly not secure, the guys outside the compound weren't friendlies and we needed to get in. Zed decides to climb the roof but none of us had the foresight to bring rope so we needed to deal with the guys outside. Zed sees something in the compound's grounds and after we dispatch the guards he calls out that zombies are inside under a necromancer's control.

They would need fresh meat to be distracted.

So it was body-tossing time! Jak and Zed spent a lot of time throwing bodies over the roof (Literally, from the ground level, at least two stories high and smack dab in the middle of the horde) while the rest of us are just stunned at this display in madness.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2014 22:03

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:42

Temascos: Sep 3, 2011

In my group we've just completed our sixth Savage Worlds session that pretty much ended the first story arc in an unexpected way.

The gang leader we were working under and plotting to overthrow from the beginning got killed in a raid by an enemy we thought dead. It was during a party held in celebration in conquering the rival's territory, and the first mobsters charged through the kitchens. We held them off but then a massive explosion in the main hall gave way to the gang leader and several mages armed with shotguns charging in and all shooting at our leader. He got wounded extremely badly and taken out of combat, and his likeable second in command had his eye shot out.

Our GM had made the encounter pretty difficult, but he forgot that I procured a grenade and in one move took out nearly the whole attacking squad. The attack was foiled but the rival was still fighting so one of the players, who is the big tough guy, goes over to our leader: He picks him up and THROWS HIM AT THE RIVAL, killing them both

We are now having to figure out the burdens of commanding the remains of the gang and occupying the territory. This is certainly a twist in the books!

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 22:41

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Notable Gaming Experiences: The Gospel According to CobiWann's DM