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!"