-10 HP.

[gridlore]

Gary Gygax has failed his last saving throw.

For those of us of a certain age, D&D was, if not the first, one of our early gaming experiences. Yes, the man could be an opinionated bastard, but he was a creative, generous, opinionated bastard. And that makes the difference.

So, as we gather at the tavern to wait for the inevitable adventure hook to walk through the door, relate you favorite D&D tale. In character, table talk, odd events with dice.. whatever.

You enter a 10x10 room, an orc is guarding a chest...

Comments

No shit, there I was...

[isomeme.livejournal.com]

This scene was actually run in one or another version of our insane C&S/D&D/RavingLunacy homebrew systems, but it's a D&D story whatever the rules system might have been at the time.

My fast-talking magician Franz Aritt was on a particularly ambitious dungeon raid with his usual comrades. A combination of poor strategy, bad luck, and pure DM evil led to the party being scattered, lost in ones and twos in various relatively nearby parts of the dungeon -- though of course none of us knew how near we were to each other at the time.

Franz ended up alone. He was, to put it delicately, no Gandalf; he could throw a magic missile without injuring himself or a friend about three times out of four. He had all kinds of sometimes impressive yet ultimately pathetic tricks he could do with water. And that was about it for his magic skills. At the moment in question, he was exhausted, had virtually no magical energy left, and was armed with a rusty kitchen knife nicknamed "Hamsbane".

He barely had time to collect his thoughts before a bugbear came trundling down the corridor, roaring with pleasure at the prospect of a nice magic-using afternoon snack. Franz looked around quickly; he was cornered. There were seconds to act, too few to get off a spell, not that he had one that would do much good. So he pulled Hamsbane from his belt, took a defensive stance, and when the creature got close enough, stabbed wildly, expecting to die in the next split second.

[Cut to the players and DM at the table looking stunned, as I toss off a series of perfect to-hits and maxed-out critical damage rolls, each less believable than the last...]

The bugbear howled, staggered forward, and died, blood gushing from its punctured heart. Franz was thrown to the ground by its collapsing weight. And just then his barbarian companion Gorp came racing down the corridor, saw the huge form falling on Franz, and with a shriek of battle lust jumped onto the dead bugbear's back and stabbed it straight through the chest with his sword.

Neither Gorp nor anyone else in the party would ever believe Franz's wild story that he had killed the damn thing himself. Franz sulked about this for the remainder of the campaign.