Tales from the darkside

[kellri]

Since it seems most of us here have been gaming for at least a decade, let's have your tales of the oddest experience you've had while gaming. I'm still composing my own anecdote, but lets hear from everybody. No names needed of course but don't leave out the juicy bits!

One short one to get it going...

My Giant Rat Phobia Exposed!

A couple years ago I was playing Fallout on the PC, and on one particular day, after slaying a pack of giant rats-got up to get a coffee downstairs, when I heard my neighbors yelling and making a big ruckus out in the alley. So, I open the gate, look out to see these 2 Vietnamese guys swinging a 2x4 at a pretty big rat. I step back to put my coffee down and the thing ran into my house. To make a long story short, the 2 neighbors ended up beating it to death on my dining room floor. Well...I thought no way there's any coincidental Fallout connection.... until a few months later I go over to a friends place to play some Warhammer Quest- basically a big dungeon crawl sorta-boardgame, in which Giant Rats feature prominently. On my way home, walking down the street, you guessed it...a giant rat headed straight for me out of the storm drain. Ran right over my foot, even left footprints. That was the last straw, no more giant rats in my games. ;D

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Background:

I need to start this with the full story of the origin of my username.

As some of you know, I'm a living history enthusiast. I'm a member of a Dark Age re-enactment group, and I spend some of my weekends dressed as a Norman knight or Viking warrior, alternating between various authentic activities that we demonstrate to the public, and combat displays which consist of up to a couple hundred people a side fighting with steel weapons.

(These are competitive fights, but there are strict safety standards, including requirements for the construction of your weapon - no sharp points or edges, minimum grade of steel, axe-heads securely affixed etc. imposed by the Society's Master-at-Arms, and also requirements for personal competency with any weapon you wish to carry by passing tests imposed by the Society's National Training Officer.)

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I spend a fair few days a year dressed up in full dark age gear, and surrounded by other people who are similarly dressed.

Now, by its nature, our society attracts a lot of roleplayers. Every member of my own gaming group is also in this Living History society, or has been in the past. Furthermore, we all have "characters" that we play - so for example, when I'm being a Viking, I'm Lief Ragnarrson, and I'm usually to be found next to our display talking to the public (I'm the one charged with fielding the questions, partly because I know a lot of the answers, but mostly because I'm totally useless at any of the actual crafts); and when I'm being a Norman, I'm Raymond of Toulouse, but otherwise doing the same thing. My wife's usually Thirri Yngvarsdottir the weaver or Emma of Toulouse the cook.

One evening, after all the public had gone, we decided to play a roleplaying game on the campsite. By the flickering firelight, we got out the best gaming equipment we could find. I had some clay dice (d6's, which the Vikings and Normans were known to have had) and we borrowed writing materials from the Society's scribe, in the form of wax tablets and styluses.

I couldn't resist it. In homage to the DMG cartoon, I said, "Let's invent a new roleplaying game! We can pretend we're workers and students in an industrialised and technological society!"

So we did. And it worked. Everyone was still roleplaying their Living History character, who was in turn roleplaying a 21st Century character in a RPG, but we were using Dark Age materials (and a bastardised Traveller system) to do it.

The oddest experience:

While we were playing this strange inverted RPG, our Papers And Paychecks characters started to play D&D.

So we were roleplaying Dark Age people who were roleplaying 21st Century people who were, themselves, roleplaying. After about ten minutes of this, my brain started to turn to cream cheese and I had to go for a walk.