Welcome to another exciting issue of RPG Triumph…and Defeat, the weekly feature where we tell the great stories from RPG campaigns, both the amazing and the downright humiliating.
These are the stories, our legends, that we tell all our friends, even if they don’t play.
Today you’ll find a new category of stories: FM – Funny Moments. These are the stories that are just funny, but are neither moments of triumph or defeat.
As always, feel free to contact us if you wish to have your stories featured in the next issues!
Rough Parenting (DMS)
My Role: GM
System: World of Warcraft RPG
Relevant Rules: Pyroblast is a spell that deals 15d8 points of Fire Damage (Avg. 60). Felsworn is a Prestige Class that gives characters demonic traits.
One of the players, the Paladin/Mage decided that in his backstory his Father, an Archmage of the Kirin Tor, had joined the Burning Legion and killed his mother and that the character knew all about it. As a GM I changed the story a bit to make it surprising and enjoyable for him, using his proposed backstory as a premise.
When the character was in Felwood at some point (they visited the place quite often because I love it), they came across a hulking red-skinned creature. They quickly identified it as a Felsworn, a servant of the Legion. It didn’t take much for the character to realise this was his father. In anger he lashed out and threw a spell at his demon-father, against all common sense and the warnings of all NPCs around him.
The spell did very little to his father, but it was enough to anger him and make the demon Archmage cast Pyroblast on the character, knocking him out instantly, lowering him to negative hitpoints. The Archmage recognized him too and just taught him a lesson in respecting your elders, no matter how monstrous they looked.
It wouldn’t be the last facepalm moment involving that character…or Felwood.
High Rollin’ on the High Seas! (FM)
My Role: GM
System: World of Warcraft RPG
Relevant Information: Phlogiston is a volatile gas in the World of Warcraft and explosions of it are massive and highly damaging. Refinde Phlogiston is used as a power source. Each material has a hardness value, which reduces all damage by a specific amount. Adamantine has one of the highest hardness values and can bypass some hardness. Dark-Iron is a fire-immune (read explosion resistant) material.
When my original party needed to hit the seas, they debated for a long time what to do, if charter a boat, buy a ship or had it made. After about 2 hours of arguing about it, they decided on hiring Ratchet Goblins build them a warship: high-tech, and armed to infinity.
They needed money and a lot of it because what they were asking was in the tens of thousands of gold. So they started taking mercenary jobs, and extremely dangerous ones, with one of their member taking care of negotiations and always managing to scrounge up more money.
After a few months of hard work, they managed to acquire the funds from job payments and by looting everything that wasn’t permanently attached to a surface (because nailed, plastered and magically attached wasn’t enough to discourage them from ripping them off) and fencing them.
The only thing I asked as a requirement was a detailed plan for what they wanted to build. And that’s what they did, and presented me the “blueprint” for The Mayhem:
- 60 phlogiston-powered dark-iron cannons on each broadside.
- 1 Phlogiston-powered (instead of black powder) GARGANTUAN (Dragon Sized) DARK IRON CANNON on the bow, dubbed “BIG BERTHA”. In-game, the cannon dealt 20d20 damage. Each of the massive cannonballs was made of Adamantine so they ignored 20 points of hardness, meaning a shot went through almost ANYTHING.
- 10 Dragon-guns (fire-guns) on each side.
- 4 steam-engine life-boats.
- Steam-powered engine with condenser to recycle its water. This thing didn’t have sails.
- Full Adamantine Hull, making it virtually invulnerable.
- Cargo capacity beyond the realms of reason.
The thing was a behemoth, unstoppable and completely illogical, but they paid for and bought it. You’d think that after paying for that monstrosity they’d be penniless, but nope, they’d acquired enough money (and were cheap enough) to buy enough daily rations (read dried and canned food) to serve them for a 2-year trip…and they were going for just 2 months.
In the end, they just spent the journey writing “Captain’s Logs” about how they had to throw food overboard because it was just too much!
And of course, some ridiculous and puny pirates decided to attack them, so my party managed to line them up neatly and kill them all with one Big Bertha shot!
When the party dissolved, they were planning to add a flying machine and a submarine to the ships “attachments.”
Just a light snack! (DMS)
My Role: GM
System: World of Warcraft RPG
Relevant Rules: Sabertoothed tigers are available as a mounts, especially for Night Elves. Other mounts include horses.
Investigating a series of Night Elven ruins the party arrived at the site in their mounts, one of them being a Sabercat. Not knowing how long it would take, they made camp and left enough provisions for their mounts, confident the Sabercat and the Warhorses could defend themselves against the local predators.
Except they failed to take into account that the Sabercat WAS A PREDATOR! I made it fair and decided it would be chance-based, a low percentage that the hungry tiger would forgo his ‘rations’ and instead go for the very juicy horses.
I rolled the dice and they lost a horse to the Sabercat and the other one got the hell out ASAP.
The players complained, but then realised they’d been very dumb. When they came back to the ruins after restocking, they didn’t bring any mounts and hired people to take them there.
And yes, I can be evil.
Should have brought a can of Whiskers to keep the Sabrecat’s tum full.
Hahahahah, so true!