Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

In another thread*, Bunshichi's question had me wondering: Do you storyteller types remember any PC that made an impression in one of your games? What characters amuse you the most? Who did you hate to the point of dropping a tarrasque on their heads?

I do have a duo in mind to answer Bunshichi but please, share your horror stories!


*http://yafgc.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=108&p=24500#p24500

Barring the Rules Lawyers who are pretty much a gimme, most Power Gamers (likewise) and the out and out psychos, I've only had two I wanted to drop a small planetoid on.

Me being me, I did, but that's another story.

Frog was a 'hero' in an M&M game I guest GMed for when the main guy went down with mono. This is one of the people you don't let near point build without adult supervision and a cattle prod. He had max skill ranks in things like 'Guitar Hero shredding' and 'Dodge annoying ex-girlfriend', but barely had enough points in superpowers to qualify as a metahuman. And any time the campaign's Power Level went up, he got more irrelevant trash.

Needless to say, he got schooled regularly by mob thugs and the corner pushers.

The other schmuck was a half-elf who thought he was a bladedancer (remember that old kit?) in AD&D2E. At the time he made the character, I thought he was just doing his usual inconsequential background fluff that would be completely ignored after the first mention in game. Boy was I wrong. It ended when he started a campaign to find a way to blackmail every elf encountered (including fellow PCs) to get the leverage to be admitted to a school of which I had already told him (repeatedly and at great length) didn't exist.

One of the most interesting characters to come up in one of my games was Cuisinart Girl.

Back when I was in college, a friend was a huge fan of the Lone Wolf fantasy gamebooks, so we worked up the Kai Warrior class for 1st ed. AD&D. In the next campaign that we ran, a couple of people decided to try them out. "Emily" decided that she wanted her character to use a longsword in each hand. Not wanting her to do it, but not wanting to simply say "no," I told her that she would have to use two proficiency slots to do it. Given that Kai Warriors only started with two, I figured she wouldn't want to forgo the use of another weapon. Silly me.

So Emily's Kai went into fights with a longsword in each hand, and got two attacks a round, with the second being at a significant penalty. But an interesting thing happened the first time the character got into a fight. She wasn't doing all that well until she was hit for damage. On her next round, she hit with both attacks, and did enough damage to kill her attacker.

She then wound up establishing this bizarre pattern. She fought about as well as you would expect a first level character to - until she took damage. Then, on her next attack, she'd kill the opposition. No matter what it took. If it meant hitting with both attacks, she would, regardless of how many modifiers were stacked against her. If it meant rolling three Natural 20s in a row, the dice did as they were told. It was amazing - and once she was in "Cuisinart mode," she was unstoppable. In one encounter she mowed down 4 horsemen in 5 rounds, managing to pull of 7 critical hits in that timeframe. Everyone quickly forgot the character's real name, and just started calling her Cuisinart Girl.

Wow. This was scary. I bet that for some strange reason, she was not attacked a lot after that .
In DnD, i had two players who somehow managed to become one another's nemesis without intenting to. The guy, Chan, is a barbarian from a mongolian like culture who treats women as cattle. Though he understood that in the land where he now roams things are different, his oppinion on women has not changed. The girl, Iseldra, is generally diplomatic and compassionate but both she (and her player) are very short fused. There was a lot of tension between them, with him being helpful but insulting and her alternating between understanding and genuinely pissed. And somehow, whenever they were fighting side by side, they rolled 1s and managed to hit each other to the point of slaughtering each other twice by freaking mistake.
The scene i remember more vividly is Chan being killed by Iseldra's botched dice roll and then being resurrected: I used his death as a spiritual journey towards his totem animal, one that was also full of clues. So what does he do? He gets up after that elaborate scene, and before thanking the shaman or taking a first breath he walks up to Iseldra and slaps her as hard as he could declaring her to be an idiot.
Does anyone else smell an incoming love story ?

I had one player that was a bit "hard of thinking" and loved the idea of knife-throwing into combat, but he just didn't feel like allocating the skill resources to be good at it (he had too many other rabbits to chase). In games with random miss rules, "friendly fire" was common. In one particular game (AD&D), he only seemed to hit the fighter in full plate when this happened, constantly ringing them off the fighters helmet. Eventually though, he manage to fumble-critical and kill the fellow, who then promptly killed the knife thrower upon his resurrection (Saying "Hey GM? I would like to register an alignment shift!").

Sorry, no love story here.

Mike. Mike, Mike, Mike. I can say that, because he's on the forum occasionally. He comes up with the best plans EVER. And what's worse is that his dice rolls usually make them work, despite all best odds and the laws of physics.

Like the time in FVLMINATA when he figured out where the enemy army was going to camp, buried himself in the middle of that space in a carefully constructed pit, then rose up out of the earth in the middle of the night once they'd camped around him, in order to find and kill his target...

He also ended up killing his own commander, iirc, but that was by accident. And no-one ever did find out who did it.

Buried himself in... yes, i can see why the DM would not see that coming. Usually PCs have a sense of self preservation.

For me the best characters i had to tackle were the PCs in a Vampire Masquerade: Victorian game i run for 6 years. The one i liked best was a Ventrue dandy, completely debauched and bratty but also vindictive and slimy. He had a great (and somehow archetypal) backstory, and he got himself into some interesting feuds, not to mention lusting after a virginal heroine (played by a beefy guy, but that is another story ).
Now, this paragon of gothic villains finds himself low on willpower (a necessary stat) at some point. In order to replenish that, according to the rules, he had to indulge his nature in a way that was new to him. Since he had picked sexual deviant as his nature, and he had by that point engaged in most common kinks, the only thing left was bestiality.
He went to a hellfire club and asked for a tiger. At 3 am in the morning, in Victorian London.
The only think they had was a goat.
The dark and villainous villain checked his (lower than his morals by now) willpower, and accepted the offer.
His aristocratic Ventrue did it with a goat, and we never allowed the player to live it down since then.

Other way around, actually. Anything less than three-to-one odds, and she'd puree the lot of them by round 5, at the very latest. Only a human (or goblin) wave attack would bring her down. But the Orcs kept their distance. The party couldn't figure out why until they found the shrine to the new Orc "goddess of death and dismemberment." Hobgoblins died in droves, as they insisted on single combat for the glory of dispatching her. But, of course, she had the rest of the part for backup, so those enemies that tried to mob her tended to find their unguarded flanks being attacked. I'd worked up stats for a two-handed flail - it did a d12 of damage, and the party's cleric had a high enough strength to receive a damage bonus, so she was sometimes able to one-punch 2 and 3 hit die monsters. She'd go around whacking anyone who dared ignore her upside the head.

When the group was second level, they were jumped by an ogre, who took down the party's front-line fighter in the surprise round. Cuisinart Girl and the cleric both got good initiative rolls for the first normal round and killed it before it had a chance to attack them.

When I had just started GMing, I was entirely biased towards one of my players. The group I had been with up until that point were very interested in the uh... mechanics of games. That is to say, they were not great at characterisation. We generally took turns running sessions and crushing skulls, fun but not fulfilling.

But then one day a new player (henceforth "X") joined us just as I started a new game. Most of our campaigns lasted two to three sessions at best so I didn't think much of this game's chances.
X had other ideas, thank god, he was an avid roleplayer and a devious bastard, and managed to completely ruin my half-baked world.
It was love.
For a time I went along with most of his suggestions, he was running the game as much as I was. It took me quite some time to realise just how much weight I was giving his comments and complaints, especially when it came to useful magic items or next steps in their quest. He manipulated people out of game as well as he did in game...

In a good or bad way?

Somehow I am having a Glinda and Dorothy flashback, when you ask that question.

Wrost set up for a porno ever...

Somehow I think it would be a best seller.

I think i have a new favorite.
I do not know if the player will pull it off, but i now have a cleric of Tempus in my campaign with the best DnD background i have heard (do not tell my other players).
This guy comes from WoD games, so he was surprised at how casually death is treated in DnD. I explained that this (the resurrection spells and knowing exactly what the afterlife is) is what allows for so many heroes in DnD. So his next character is a Theskian noble who had his fortune told, and he learns that he will die before he turns 36.
So he makes a decision: he will start adventuring so that a) either he will have a full life, rich in experiences and sights before passing away or b) he will be so important and he will involve himself in such missions that if he dies while in action, the Gods will have to bring him back (like they do when you are on an important mission).

He has played this character for one session but i was again surprised at how hearty and bigger than life he made the cleric -i was expecting a grim guy since he is a cleric of war with a death edict over his head but no cliches were used.

So wish him luck!