All you never wanted to know about Gnomes -- Part 2 (really...REALLY Never wanted to know)

If you haven’t read part one of this series click here to catch up!  Our campaign started, as many low-level D&D campaigns do, with our characters investigating and fighting back an encroachment of Orcs, Ogres, Drow Elves, and the like.  At one point it turns out that Trolls have been recruited to cause trouble, and our characters have to face off against a horde of the things.  As I told you, this campaign was being run under D&D 3.5 rules, but I was raised on 1^st edition AD&D and even though I’ve been playing 3.5 for nearly 8 years now I still think in old school gaming terms.

As many of you may know, Trolls regenerate.  Even when they have been knocked unconscious and are dying they can pop back up and start attacking you at any time!  Even though we had managed to take several of the Trolls down I voiced my concern that they would be popping back up and we would be fighting a war of attrition we were destined to lose.

I asked my comrades what we could do and they informed me that we just needed to Coup de Grace the unconscious ones.  "Coup de Grace?", I asked.  This was a 3rd edition manuever my 1st edition mentality wasn't aware of.  Apparently you could kill an unconscious opponent in one round.

I asked, "How is that possible if the creature can just regenerate?"

They told me, "You basically just defile the body and it can't regenerate."

Well, this is what my barbarian set out to do.  I informed the GM of my intended actions in what became my most infamous Toddism to date, "I drop a Gnome Loaf where his throat used to be."

I had simply intended this to be my defiling the Troll to a point where it could not regenerate, but my fellow players took it as much more than this.  The comment took on a life of its own, and since I couldn't fight it, I embraced it.  The dropping of the Gnome Loaf became a finishing maneuver of the Gnome Barbarian.  One of our players, Marty, even named it the Poop de Grace.  I nicknamed it the "Keoghan Steamer" (after the notorious Cleveland Steamer.)

It wasn't long before my Barbarian-In-Training, the Ogre Smashskull, decided to attempt a Coup de Grace of his own.  The Ogre was being played at the moment by Doug, even though he was technically an NPC.  When Smashskull knocked out an enemy Doug announced to the GM, "I rip off his head and drop and Ogre Loaf down his neck."

The GM was a bit beside himself to see that his well devised campaign had descended into coprophilic madness.  The GM had Rory, the 12 year old boy who had asked to be trained as a Barbarian after hero worshiping my Gnome, suddenly appear.  He had apparently sneaked away from home and followed us to this point only to witness the battle descend into 2 Barbarians 1 Esophagus.  Poor Rory screamed out, "What are you doing?!?" and then ran off into the woods crying.

The GM explained that he wanted to hold up a mirror to what we had become.  While I took his point, I maintain that I had never intended all this madness--ever.  My little one-off comment had grown and taken on a life of its own, and I had merely gone along for the ride.  However, at this point I couldn't back off.

I marched over to the crying boy and dressed him down for not being a man-- for being unable to handle the horrors of war.  I stripped him of his gnome hat, dropped a Gnome Loaf into it, and handed it back to him.  I told him that he was dead to me and that if I ever saw him again he'd rue the day!

To the GM's credit, despite my hijacking his Forgotten Realms campaign  into Fecal Realms, he did award me bonus experience points for properly role-playing my character's Barbarian reactions to the boy being such a wuss!

Nobody light a match!

This weekend our current game was put on hold as the GM was out.  Instead we played a one shot game using the Savage Worlds system.  We were playing characters (that were supposed to be) similar to those from the TV show Burn Notice.  Our characters had just returned from Afghanistan, but upon arriving home we found that our home had been burnt to the ground.  Our investigations led to our finding out that the Chief of the local Fire Department was actually a member of the cult of Cthugha.  Our characters went to his house and broke in.  My character went in the back door, Doug's character went in through the front door and Todd's character went in through the second story window.  The Fire Chief/Cthulhu Cultist was on the first floor and our character's quickly filled him full of lead.  Meanwhile, Todd (on the second floor) searched the upper bedrooms to make sure there were no other foes to surprise us.  He heard a noise coming from the closet... his first response, "I shoot through the door."
"Really?" asked the GM.
"No... I open the door."  Inside Todd found the Fire Chief's young daughter.  He went to help the young girl and she pulled out a squirt gun-- Todd's character was soon drenched in gasoline and the little girl was approaching with a lit lighter.  Todd ran.

Our character's heard him come barreling down the stairs.  We saw a small girl at the top of the steps and I asked, "Do our characters have any reason to suspect she would be a threat?"

The GM said, "No."

Immediately Todd's character screamed out:
   "Shoot her!  She's got gas!"

Putting the "HERO" in Superhero

Awhile back I was running a Mutants and Masterminds campaign.  One of our players--Todd (famous for his Toddisms)-- was playing a superhero similar to Ghost Rider.  For Todd that's about as close to Captain Marvel as you are likely to get.  In Fantasy campaigns Todd almost always plays the Thief.  Sorry, that's my 1st Edition roots showing through-- Rogue.  To shake things up he might play an Assassin.  In our D&D games there is another Alignment on the Alignment Wheel somewhere between Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Evil . . . that alignment is Todd:

Well, some important person like the Mayor's Daughter or something had been kidnapped and taken off down the highway in the villain's speeding car.  Todd's Superhero gave chase, trying to head off the villains or cause them pull over.  Instead, his pursuit caused the Villain's to lose control of their car and flip it over on the highway.  As Todd pulled up he saw that all the Villains and the Mayor's daughter were lying unconscious in a pool of blood.  I asked Todd the standard GM question, "What do you do?"  His response led to the Toddism that best sums up Todd's average character's response to many situations: "There's nothing I can do... I drive on by."

The other players looked on stunned. "You don't perform CPR?"... "You don't pick her up and rush her to the hospital?"... "You don't even hold a mirror in front of her mouth to see if she's breathing?"

Todd's response, "Like I said, there's nothing I could do."

In many future games Todd's various characters' typical lack of compassion often leads to some player remarking "Just drive on by".  It may not be the most humorous  quote on it's own... but it is perfect shorthand for summing up a situation and the memory of Todd's "Superhero" making such a choice was priceless.  For Todd, it was the least he could do . . . and never let it be said Todd didn't do the least he could do!

All you never wanted to know about Gnomes -- Part 1

Gnomes. They come in many shapes and sizes. I happen to be playing a Gnome in our current weekly RPG. It wasn't exactly my choice, though I embraced it full force. Our current campaign is using the D&D 3.5 system. Our DM decided to run a campaign where we all play Gestalt Characters. Since we had never really played this type of D&D campaign before he pre-generated enough characters that each member of our group could play one and then allowed us to choose. The oddest character was the Barbarian/Wilder Gnome. Everyone in our group felt that I should play the oddest character, so I jumped on board and chose him. I decided that to make this bizarre combination even more radical I would take the stereotypical picture of the Gnome as typified by the Travelocity Gnome (pictured above) as my template for appearance. I named him Keoghan after Phil Keoghan, host of The Amazing Race that is sponsored by Travelocity. Here is the picture I drew of my character:

I declared that the Pointy Red Hat (which is so obviously impractical to adventure in, especially for a fighter) is the customary cultural dress of the Gnome Barbarian, much like red shuka of the Maasai Warrior or the sash of the Klingon Warrior.

Well, it just so happens that during our adventures one of the other characters rescued an Ogre from a horde of our enemies that had enslaved him. He named him Smashskull, and took him on as an NPC, hoping to train him. Unfortunately, during a boring night in the local tavern Keoghan challenged Smashskull to an arm wrestling competition to prove the superiority of the Gnome Barbarian. The DM had us make Strength Checks. I rolled a 20 and Smashskull rolled a 1. Needless to say the Ogre (and everyone else in the bar) was quite impressed to see the Gnome arm slam an Ogre. The Ogre took this as a sign that he could learn much from the Gnome in terms of the ways of battle. He began hero worshiping the Gnome. The Gnome was--at first-- annoyed by all the attention of the Ogre, but he soon decided to take the Ogre under his wing and train him as a Barbarian. The first thing Keoghan did was to present Smashskull with his very own Pointy Red Hat, which he wears proudly... confusing everyone who sees the Ogre in a Pointy Red Gnome Hat... and woe to any who laugh at him.

A little later our party freed an oppressed village from the tyranny of some evil doers that had taken over. One 12 year old boy--Rory-- who had seen our battle to defeat the bad guys decided he too wanted to become a Gnome Barbarian. Thus, he was given a Pointy Red Hat and Joined Koeghan's posse. More on him and what it means to be a Gnome next time...

The Nazi Clown Car

Why is this blog named Nazi Clown Car? Simple. The phrase was suggested by my wife as the best descriptor of our most bizarre adventure to date. The odd thing is that our group's Role Playing campaigns are not meant to be comic, humorous or bizarre. The games that I and the other GMs run are (for the most part) meant to be straight adventures. However things often take a strange turn or we are brought to tears laughing at the strangest phrases uttered by one player or another. This particular game is one in which I was a player, not the GM. It was played using the Octane system. It went something like this:

We were playing normals-- human beings with abilities only slightly above those of average people. The game was set in the modern era. We were working as investigators when we stumbled upon a circus that was being used as the front for a strange cattle rustling operation. As we were busy investigating a Clown Car plastered with a Swastika drove up and a horde of Nazi Clowns poured out of the tiny auto and began attacking us. This led to one of the all time classic Toddisms.

A Toddism is what I call a hilarious line or phrase uttered during a game that cracks up everybody. They are--more often than not-- uttered by Todd, one of our regular gamers... but could come from anyone. This will often lead to the expression "I never thought I'd hear the words such & such and so & so uttered together in the same sentence", usually uttered by Doug.

Well, the Nazi Clowns, having come pouring out of their Nazi Clown Car (in fact I seem to recall it may have been a Nazi Clown Car Tank?!? Didn't it have a gun and turret on the front? Maybe not...), began attacking us. One method of attack was to fire themselves as human cannonballs at our characters. This near-fatal attack on Todd's character brought the classic Toddism line, "I took a midget to the chest and nearly died!"

Eventually we defeated the Nazi clowns and midgets and began poking around. We discovered that occult ritual sacrifices were being performed. Humans were being sacrificed and having their souls put into cows. These cows were loaded onto train cars and shipped to New York. We stripped the Swastikas off the Clown Car Tank and took it with us to New York. There we found the cows being off loaded from the train and there was a cattle drive towards Ellis Island.

When we arrived at Ellis Island there was a giant Drive-in Movie Screen set up where all the cows were being shown being slaughtered. This released all the human souls and created enough Occult Energy to open a Time Portal to 1939 Germany where the Nazis were enacting their master plan. Their plan was to bring all of their planes and bombs and other 70 year old technology to the U.S.A. in the present where they could strike at the Americans and win the war before we even entered it. Luckily our characters were there to stop this crafty plan. We jumped through the Time Portal and killed the Nazi in charge of the operation and his henchman and shut down the Time Portal. Thus ended the adventure of the "Time Travelling-Occult-Nazi-Cattle Rustling-Midget Clowns!"