A whimsical glimpse into gaming sessions past

Ever have one of those moments where all synaptic activity ceases, wherein you fire a magic missile at...nothing?

Well gather 'round while I lay it down, and show you my stupidity...

During a memorable session back in '97, after smoking a truly obscene amount of pot and eating half my body weight in Doritos, our party got in a farcical encounter with...assassin vines and a lone beholder. This combo was undoubtedly fueled by the fact the DM was so stoned you could've blindfolded him with dental floss. We were high enough level that we should have survived the encounter and made of with some pimpin treasure. But nooooooooooooo.

Kenny the DM, we'll call him Captain Trips at this point, made us all roll saving throws versus, well, stupid shit to be honest. As fate would have it my beloved 11th lvl monk failed miserably, a straight up 1 critical failure no less, and spent the rest of the encounter fumbling around. See, at some point a vine had taken the shirt off my character and I was equally dazed and confused, a state endused by the afore mentioned marijuana, and I had failed my save so I thought it perfectly reasonable to have my monk chase aimlessly after his shirt while the rest of the party was mercilessly pummeled by our whimsical foes.

As you all know beholders are maybe the most feared monster in the D&D universe and are often party killers. They cast as 18th lvl magic users, usually are accompanied by big brutish henchmen, and are insanely difficult to hit. When faced with the site of a beholder one's initial reaction is to immediately obtain a blank character sheet and start rolling anew.

Just picture a wayward monk more concerned with obtaining his dignity than reinforcing a party of 10-12th lvl characters who are slowly dying one by one. So my monk grabbed his shirt, donned the garment, stood, and looked around to find his entire party annihilated, and a lone beholder smirking. If I remember correctly certain party members were actually smoldering, an evocative image to say the least.

So there my monk stood, face to face with floating death. He failed yet another saving throw and wet his pants, much to Captain Trips' ammusement. Now admittedly, our merry flock had softened the thing up a bit, by half hp at least.

The battle was joined. My monk instantly went invisible and hid behind a nearby tree...or so I thought. This enterprising scamp saw my footy prints and deduced my location. Vines swarmed all around so my monk climbed the tree like a monkey. I knew that any attack would make my character visible so he stealthily made his way across the canopy of branches, all the while Mr Beholder searched in vain as I had made my move silent checks. There I stood, high in a tree waiting for the rascal to move beneath me. Then lo, there he was. My monk pounced with cat-like control, and missed his target. My monk was face down with a beholder right on top. with no other alternative, and because I won initiative and because I had the slow fall feat, Monk boy spun, kicked, and rolled. With a perfect 20 on my attack roll, coupled with a critical failure of his save versus system shock (remember a 11th lvl monk deals 2d8 damage x2 for a crit) the beholder was then utterly defeated.

My fellow party members looked on with anger as I reaped the pimpin treasure and buckoo xp. But our benevolent DM let them roll brand new 10th lvl characters as compensation for their humiliating defeat. As reward for my glorious victory I recieved a mirror of soul stealing, ring of water breathing, and a obsidian staff of +5 to attack that had a myriade of cool magical effects. And I forever retained bragging rights over our lil' tribe.

Moral of this tryst...never try to retrieve a P.O.S. tunic in the middle of battle. Just dumb.

You have failed your saving throw versus...

This is SHINEY!

Fav Gaming Moments

Written in no particular order of funniness...


1. Back in the townhome...after a long night of drinking and gaming...we had finished up the gaming session and were packing up to call it a night. Nathan had been drinking most of the night and had passed out cold somewhere in the middle of the gaming session. While we were gathering character sheets and sorting through dice...Nathan sits straight up, grabs two d10s, rolls them and proclaims, "I make my saving throw versus coldness". And then promptly crashes his head back on the table.


2. Once we had a fabulous idea to create an entire group of "Jersey Gnomes". And thus they were written, approved and we started on our first mission. For the life of me, I can't remember what the mission was...but yes we all spoke with the "Jersey" accent. We were one day out of the Gnome Homecity when we came across a clearing with a huge plant and several dead gnomes beneath it. Hmmm. Clearly our level 1 gnomes could take this on! One by one the plant pwned all of us and sucked out our brains...save for one - Jason Kuykendoll's gnome. JK was nice enough to leave a sign by the road before he left to return to the Gnome Homecity which said, "Beware of plant. Don't be that guy".


3. After the aforementioned disaster...we started on the 2nd round of "Jersey Gnomes". We actually made it several days out of the city before we came across a destroyed caravan. Dead gnomes were everywhere. As we searched through the wreckage for whatever we could find...JAP motions with his foot (IRL) and says, "Hey, I knew this frickin' guy over here. He was a good guy" (in the best Jersey accent he could muster...love you Jason!). The current DM ruled that JAPs character actually kicked at the dead gnome's head...and we were spontaneously inundated with gnome zombies. I think we all pretty much died in that encounter too. The Jersey Gnomes have not been resurrected since.


4. JAP wrote a rogue character and modeled it after some Forgotten Realms book. He thus titled his character, The Crimson Shadow. Punchline to his character title is this - he kept almost dying in every encounter we had. So much to the point we renamed his character, The Crimson Stain. Hahahaha.


5. A few years back, several of us were engaged in a box campaign called "The Night Below". Nathan & I wrote up brother & sister dwarf clerics of Clanggeddin Silverbeard. Through the course of this campaign we became rather powerful and had oodles of magic items. And we invented our own sport, Bowling for Kobolds. Bowling for Kobolds involved Nathan's Dwarf using his boots of speed and my Dwarf using her boots of levitation...and running head first into a patch of kobolds. :) Uber fun.


6. My final entry for now...and I don't think many of you know about it. I started gaming in '98 while living in Oklahoma. One of my more memorable characters was Bethany a High Elf Fire Mage who was very snotty as high elves are supposed to be... One of my friends, Bob, wrote up Tune a non-high elf bard/magic user whom Bethany enjoyed insulting, arguing with and basically making her life miserable. One day I was right in the middle of an argument with Tune (which was escalating greatly) when I stood up, pounded my fists on the table and said, "I WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!!!". Erm...oops. *sigh* So much for being righteous.

The perfect character

As a professed geek I find my mind’s eye drifting into a nether region of chaos and whimsy. So, in my effort to enlighten, and because I’m bored out of my freaking mind, I decided to create the perfect character for my beloved D&D.

T’was not an easy task, as one must balance ability scores, race, class, skills, and spells to peak deadly efficiency. So here’s my template, though admittedly not as funny as a gnome tinkerer with missing fingers.

Race: Half-drow
Class: Bard
Int: 11
Str:7
Dex: 25
Con:25
Char:2
Wis: 4
Weapon specialization: rubber band, table napkin, spoon, bucket
Armor: tasteful leather thong, Johnson piece of +5 to turn undead, +10 if the wind is blowing
Character flaws: Afraid of the dark, serial masturbator (dex of 25, remember), feeble, alcoholic, necrophilia (remember his piece)
Traits: hard of hearing, tone deaf, abrasive, can’t read music, horny
Worships Tim, the god of pastry
Spells: yeah, right
Skills: totally bereft of any skill, a veritable dearth of skillage, the antithesis of skillful
Feats: can summon a dire gnat once a day, craft ping-pong paddle, rapid shot (facilitated by his serial masturbation), two weapon fighting (can wield rubber band and bucket with deadly precision), rapid reload (see serial masturbation), shot on the run, point blank shot, far shot
HP-120
AC-20
Attacks-rubber band 1-2, napkin 1, spoon 3, bucket 4-8
Special attacks-semen of revulsion…target must make saving throw -5 for vomiting, if target fails he is immediately possessed by the bukkake god

Favorite moments...Shrubbery style

Here are my favorite moments…
1. The imagery of Duditz drunken dwarf slipping down the slime chute into…the Taint Room. (is Emi red faced yet)
2. Swanny trying to shoot a peeing monkey high atop the jungle canopy
3. My minotaur monk, or as Emi said, bouncing Tigger Monk.
4. The hawk flying at mach 2 into Rob’s sword, only to be unceremoniously turned into bird vapor.
5. From back in the day of 2nd Edition…my DM Kenny in utter bemusement, “You’re gonna do what?”
6. Same Kenny, “Please don’t…I beg you, please don’t”
7. “You’re naked, chained to a wall…”
8. S*** Pit (hint: both words rhyme)
9. Ahhhh, the joy of cold pizza, Coke that's lost its fizz, and Doritos.
10. True story...Back in 97-99, I lived in Greeley and gamed quite a bit. This one session every character got anihilated, except my Thri-Kreen mantis warrior/ranger. The only recourse to save a bunch of 8-9th level characters was to indiscriminately feed potions to the fallen. One dwarf was turned to stone, complete with Int. 2; my monk was turned into a leemur; a gnome was turned into cat; a human wizard turned blind. After the transformation the idiot stone dwarf, St. 25, developed a fondness for fuzzy woodland creatures and loved to hug the leemur monk, usually at the cost of 15hp. To this day I hate that dwarf.
11. Putting a Bag of Holding over that dwarf's head.

My Favorite Gaming Moments

1. My DM session where I had the party find a deck of many things.

2. Any time we made Emi blush redder than a tainted bread ball

3. Were-rat poontang!!

4. The first time my wizard gnome actually killed something - even if it was just a kobald.

Your favorite gamming moment

In an attempt to give this blog some direction since no one has given me any ideas for art work is this. I would like anyone one and every one to write about there most fond gamming memories. It could be anything your favorite character your favorite death your favorite gamming session anything. Just write it down and share. I will not share mine until everyone else has put in there two cents then I will tell you my fellow... (what the h*** are we anyway).

The Call

You must kneel and sacrifice to the gaming alter before you may enter your favorite d20, you know the one (the one that rolls way more twenties than it should). Rise up and hear the clarion call that whispers in your ear, "Please gaming gods, give me the strength to go on a 14 hour gaming binge on nothing but Mountain Dew and Cheetos!" To stand united against a DM that knows not that toil you have gone through to create the perfect character and then kills it the minute you question his parentage. So come one come all and sacrifice at the alter of the holiest of holies and be counted among the greatest gaming geeks of all time!

It's official...

This edifice to geekdom, this shrine to dorkism, this sepulcher of nerdness, this alter of the wholly inscrutable and unproductive is up and running. Submit your ideas pronto so Duditz can work on our character portraits. Game on!

1st edition rules!

someone had to vote for the 1st edition the greatest game of all time! D&D box set represent yo! You all know that the 2nd edition sucks! 3.0 is worse!