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Tales From the Table

This week I'd like to the topic to be kind of stem from this week's Tuesday Tip of the Week, which is character death. Have you ever had a character die in a game? I have many, many times. In fact the first module I ever played with the first character I ever made, my character died at the end.

We had made it through this large castle, if memory serves, and in the final room of the castle we came to a room full of planum statues. Now I was young and new the statues were vaulable, but it wasn't til much later did I truely understand how much. Anyway, the roof of the room was lit bright by what looked to be a great magical portal. I had the NPC range who was with us fire an arrow up in to the light to see what would happen. The did fall, immediately. so I used a spell and hovered up and in to the light to see what laid beyond. Well just as I was passing in to the light, I saw the arrow fall and it was glimmering. Unable to stop my action, however, I passed in to the light. My character was transformed in to a platnum statue and I fell to the floor and broke. Thus was my first, and very memorable, character deaths.

Share a character death with us!

Tales From the Table

This weeks tale involves my problems with the classic Shadowrun Role-playing system. I am not a huge fan of rolling huge pools of dice for successes then to have my target roll their pool of dice against me to stage down what I've done. I really find the system, and systems like this, to be kind of bullshit. I can roll to shoot someone with my high powered rifle and score a great hit, and they can roll their armor against me and stage it down to a graze or, worse yet, no damage at all. What a load of shit. And what makes things worse is when another player shoots the same target with their far inferior weapon and the defending target fails to roll enough successes and they take a critical wound. What the fuck ever.

Now people can argue that my shot critically wounded the armor allowing my friend's shot to get through. Well that would be valid if on my next shot the target got less dice to defend with, but they don't. They can just roll the same amount of dice and block again. It's like everything in the Shadowrun universe is bi-polar and only works when its happy and not when its sad.

This truely sucks because I really like the world of Shadowrun, and think it's one of the more overlooked games when it comes to things like expanding the concept over to video games or even movies and television. It would make an outstanding anime or mmorpg. Well that's my little rant. Share your Tale From the Table in the comments section!

Tales From the Table!

This week I'd like to tell you the tale of a rather tragic Paladin. Many moons ago I played a Paladin in a first time GM's game. The game wasn't bad, for being a new GM, and we had a good sized group of people playing. The game was set in a world where this massive orc army was ravaging the noble lands, and there were few, if any, nobles left to lead.

Enter, ME! The GM had decided that my Paladin should be something special and therefor be of noble birth. So when I arrived at the first town and they saw who I was, they made me the new King! There was a feast and presents, and a huge party despite the fact that I warned them of the impending Orc army heading their way. They said they had guards posted and that they should be well defended. They were wrong. Their town burned and most if not all the people were killed and our little party of adventurers barely escaped with their lives.

We made it to the next city, they too recognized me as a noble, and my title of King. They wanted to celebrate my arrival. I wanted them to hunker down and fortify! I demanded it! I ordered it! They were epic fails, and their city burned too.

This cycle of death continued multiple times! I wanted to avoid people and cities. Eventually, I just offered my soul to the dark evil forces driving the orc horde, because playing the character was like playing the shadow of death. I figured he'd be of more use to the other side.

Tales From the Table

It's day five of Nerd Awareness Week and time for us to let our true colors shine by telling our stories from the old gaming table!

Nothing sets the tone of the game like a good name. Long ago, we were playing Heroes Unlimited and I made a character with Vibration control. So naturally, you can already hear it I'm sure, my character's name was Captain Vibrator!

The game sessions were littered with cheesy and perverse and one liners.

The other heroes in the team would say they were leaving to face a threat and naturally I'd say, "I'll cum with you..."

Yes I was "penetrating deep to the heart of the matter" and bringing situations to their "Ultimate climax!"

It was bad, but we laughed hard and often. It was a good time.

Tales From the Table

It's Thursday and time for Tales From the Table! It's your chance to share a role-playing game story from one of your sessions, and I'll share one of mine.

For today's tale I have decided to tell you all "The end is near!"

I was playing in a game and running a priestess, who was less than morally bound. The party and I had been asked to undertake a task in the capital city, that went not at all as planned. Needless to say we attracted the attention of the city guard and were on the run. We decided to try and hide out in an abandoned building in the poor section of town. As we were waiting it out quietly, our scout alerted us that an old woman was walking through the streets opening doors and shouting out to anyone she saw, "You there, the end is near!" To make matters worse, the city guard was in the neighborhood.

It was the consensus of the party that if she opened the door, saw us, and shouted, "The end is near!" She would be giving the guards a heads up people were in this building. In the midst of our frustrations of whether to wait it out or risk escape I made the declaration that if she opened the door, I was going to kill her!

Right on cue, the old woman opened the door, and shouted those all too familiar words. True to my word, and throwing any form of caution right out the window, I marched out in to the street and clubbed her to death with my mace. The GM then proceeded to act out her final moments saying with each of my blows she continued shouting, "The end is near! The end is near! The end is near!" and finally ending with, "THE END IS HERE!". and died.

Then the town folks came out and surrounded me, none too happy with my actions, and a man asked me. "Why have you killed our Oracle?!"

I immediately answered. "I was fulfilling a prophecy."

Laughter ensued at the table, the GM included. The people then became impressed by me and saw me as their new Oracle. I went along with it, why not, it got us safety from the guards because I convinced my subjects the guards were corrupt. So the moral of the story is this, at least it is for me, if you can make the GM laugh you just might live to tell the tale.

It's Thursday, time for a Tales From the Table!

Hello one and all, this is Coarey, and I'd like to introduce you to our new weekly segment. Tales From the Table will be a chance for the people in the role-playing community to share stories from their gaming sessions.

I'll kick off this week telling you a very old story from early on. Way back in the 80's there was a cartoon called Dungeons & Dragons. For those who have no idea what it is, I'll give you a brief description. A mix-matched group of kids, aged from pre-teen to teen ager, got transported to the realm of Dungeons & Dragons by riding a amusement park ride of the same name. Each week their efforts were focused on trying to find a way back home and it took them on many adventures.

In one such adventure, they encountered a beholder that lives in a desolate wasteland. In the episode a cowardly night, was aiding them and at one point had been given a flower that he wore on his vest. Well during the climax of the show, the coawrdly night is being draw in towards the beholder, when it suddenly sees the flower. The overwhelming "beauty" of the flower drove back the "beast" and I think destroyed it.

Fast forward a couple of years. I am playing D&D and encounter my first beholder. I ask the GM if there are any flowers around. He says, quite confused, yes. I let him know that I run over and grab one and walk right up to the beast and show it to it. At this point I am disintigrate by one of the beholder's eyes. So the moral of the story is, if you plan on using player knowledge, check your sources. The Dungeons & Dragons cartoon (still one of my childhood favorites) is not the most reliable source of credible knowledge on the topic of slaying just about anything in the actual role-playing game.

That's all for now. Please feel free to leave your own story in our comments section, and check back tomorrow for our second podcast Crocodile Tears and Kobold Poets!