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It could be insane, silly, terrifying or just weird, but what is the one thing where you just need to mention it once to get a huge negative reaction from your players?
My was in a grim dark homebrew. I had a black haired 14 year old with freckles named Isaac. When the party was heading to the BBEG,a fort, he asked if he could join them, because hia mother was kidnapped. He was very helpful, sneaking along ledges and generally being that kid trope of helping just when they're needed. I even had a quickly made character sheet for him, making him almost as much a part of the party as everyone else. Everyone loved him. When they got near the end of th dungeon, the BBEG had them fight a black knight mini boss. The knight was hard to kill and hit like a truck, but rarely made rolls, like a certian wizard from the oots series. The paladin then deals the killig blow, cutting through the magic shoulder armor and, guess who, Isaac's shoulder. My words were as followed "The wizard (BBEG) laughs like he heard a hiliarious joke, and Isaac mumbles, more to himself than anyone 'I just wanted my mother...'"
Later, when the party happened across a pile of corpses, I said "You noticed one of them looks familiar, a teenager, with soot black hair and blazing freckles, a massive slice runs from his shoulder-" I stopped there because half the party was crying
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr.Epic
I don't feel like going into all the details, but it involved a goat.
And now I simply MUST know.
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Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Once in a solo game with my SO, I introduced a crippled, old, and very obese halfling woman, who immediately began to hit on the player in a very disturbing way. Respectfully, he declined. She was a recurring character who appeared several more times to hit on him again.
At the end, he's rushing into a vault to find the magic tool to repair the city's energy core to stop it from falling (it was a vaguely Bastion-inspired setting), and finds the halfling woman there, with the tool. He asks her to hand it over, to which she responds "Come and get it, big boy." Dropping it into her panties in the process.
After the ordeal was over, he said "Let's never do that again."
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Once in an evil Pathfinder game our DM had the villainous warlord we served punish us for our destructiveness (when it didn't suit him) by escorting a manure caravan across his lands. That was humiliating.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
I'm running Expedititon to Castle Ravenloft, with the twist that all the characters were brought to Barovia from various universes. One player, who was playing a Healer from Eberron that had been snatched from his wife and two young daughters, had to drop, and so I killed the character off in the boss fight that they were about to face. Before he fell he was infected with the zombie virus, and so 1d4 rounds later he arose as a zombie. Cue two rounds of trying to destroy the zombie with positive energy so as to spare his corpse from mutilation (the characters and the players had grown fond of him).
Then, before they can kill him, he's teleported away, and they can briefly see the destination: the inn room where his wife and daughters are sleeping!
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
The Big Bad and matriarch of the Orcs - Herzog Gawrok had sold her soul to a demon in exchange for power and committed to move the horde to fight in the demon's war.
The Player - the Orc "chosen one" Drodush wanted nothing more than to kill her and take over the island. When he finally got to the the room where he was to have his climactic battle the demon stood outside and explained that it didn't matter who was in charge he would always have the the soul of the leading orc so if Drodush won he'd come calling.
And that's how I got a player to sell his character's soul.
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Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Raped a PC. It was my first campaign and I never really figured out why I did it. The player is still bitter though and I can't say I blame him.
On a lighter note, the most scarring thing I did to my PCs was Lucien. He was a noble's charming idiot son, who had a little capital and a lot of get rich quick schemes. He got the players all hyped up to work with him and then promptly died. When the player's went through his gear they found a log of Lucien's Outstanding debts, which logged which criminals he'd borrowed money from and how badly he'd get reamed if he didn't pay up. Oh and that those people would hold the PCs responsible for Lucien's debts.
Naturally the players tried to resurrect Lucien so they could kill him, raise him again, turn him in, and be on their way, but the bastard stayed dead. Turned out he'd already been resurrected elsewhere, having given a cleric a large sum of money, a piece of his thumb, and instructions to try and resurrect the thumb on a weekly basis. Nearly two years of campaign followed, fueled by their hatred of Lucien.
The game ended with the players taking a break from their main plot so they could capture Lucien, teleport to the Fugue plain, and personally offer him to Kelemvor.
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Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Oooo i made them kill kids. I had a faerie homebrew that charmed the kids of the town to fight for him but he cast an illusion that made them look like other faeries. Then dispelled the illusion. Heh, the paladin nearly committed seppukku
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Ability Scores:
Strength-14
Dexterity-11
Constitution-16
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-12
Charisma-16
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Quote:
Originally Posted by valadil
Raped a PC. It was my first campaign and I never really figured out why I did it. The player is still bitter though and I can't say I blame him.
On a lighter note, the most scarring thing I did to my PCs was Lucien. He was a noble's charming idiot son, who had a little capital and a lot of get rich quick schemes. He got the players all hyped up to work with him and then promptly died. When the player's went through his gear they found a log of Lucien's Outstanding debts, which logged which criminals he'd borrowed money from and how badly he'd get reamed if he didn't pay up. Oh and that those people would hold the PCs responsible for Lucien's debts.
Naturally the players tried to resurrect Lucien so they could kill him, raise him again, turn him in, and be on their way, but the bastard stayed dead. Turned out he'd already been resurrected elsewhere, having given a cleric a large sum of money, a piece of his thumb, and instructions to try and resurrect the thumb on a weekly basis. Nearly two years of campaign followed, fueled by their hatred of Lucien.
The game ended with the players taking a break from their main plot so they could capture Lucien, teleport to the Fugue plain, and personally offer him to Kelemvor.
Hahah! thats evil!
...the Lucien thing.
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I Am A:Neutral Good Human Bard/Sorcerer (2nd/1st Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-14
Dexterity-11
Constitution-16
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-12
Charisma-16
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
I am probably a monster for saying this but...nothing there fazed me in the least. I don't think I have ever felt bad about something done to my character, only to me as a player, but those aren't really game constructs.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
I didn't do this; it was actually one of the players.
The female player - whose character is a gay half-elf rogue who used to work at a male brothel - offering to pay for her passage upriver by doing "services" to the barge crew.
The looks on everyone else's faces every time she said she rolls Diplomacy... and then Stamina...
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
I don't know but I have some stories of horrid things I've done to different groups.
Terry found out from a book documenting his life, that his mother hates him and is secretly being drugged by a government conspiracy to keep her with his dad whose a mad scientist that works with the M.I.B
A different group; meet Agatha. She is a 70+ human with minor magical talents, has in her possession the familiar of the Lord of Autumn, makes a incense which is psychedelic, and sells various nick knacks.
She talked in a high shrill voice. Claimed to be the wife of a Archmage. Acidently drugged half the party. Beat a pig to death with a wooden spoon, well the party were suffering from said drugs. Wore a cat on her head. She terrified them from day 1 with her manic frantic and almost crazed manner.
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Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Miscast_Mage
You're a frickin' ninja below me, too!? You got mad skills, Vknight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arbane
Rogue vs. Dog. (The new Cat vs. Commoner, only not amusing!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay R
You are making the assumption of rational planning. After 37 years of dungeon crawling, I still have zero evidence that the average dungeon was designed by the sane.
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Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
I was running a game for my brother... he's playing a wizard, trying to discover this magical ruin thing before a rival team, it's not really important. Anyway, he gets there just as the enemy leader slips inside. He duels the lieutenant while other baddies keep going inside and never coming out again. Then there are screams. He beats the lieutenant, she staggers back against the doors, and a giant red arm reaches out and snatches her inside. Cue scream, shower of blood, etc.
He goes in. There's a big, classic demon inside. He rolls a knowledge check, I tell him how big it is. He asks "how do I kill it?" I instantly replay "you don't, you die," then elaborate how it can be defeated with a challenge of threes.
My brother succeeds on a riddle. He challenges the demon to a magic stunt it pulls off easily. Then the demon tells him to close his eyes, raise his chin and turn his head to the side. Just for a minute. I make my brother do the same in real life.
Then the demon begins to threaten him. Easy stuff at first, but working up to nastier and nastier threats. I get up and start pacing around my brother, leaning in close, occasionally scratching his neck lightly as I continue to threaten. My brother squirms, starts asking if it's been a minute yet. Finally, after I start running out of nasty-talk, I have the demon congratulate him on his bravery and depart.
My brother took a LONG time to fall asleep after that.
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Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
I didn't get a negative reaction from the players, they thought it was horrifyingly entertaining, but:
I had a (Star Wars Saga) crime boss, to whom one of the PCs is in debt, give the PC a large hourglass as a present. The hourglass was filled with the ashes of the PC's uncle (and prior debt holder) whom the crime lord had incinerated himself. It came with a warning about being prompt with payments.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Not something I did, but one of my players did in my current game...
After brutally slaughtering an entire keep worth of soldiers in a single night, he crafted a tree out of the corpses of the slain in the keeps courtyard.
My players have also grown wary of pillars... Did you ever realize how many pillars seem to deal damage in published modules? Especially in 4th edition...
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Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by TimeWizard
Jade Phoenix Mages have the coolest capstone ability ever. They explode. Low on health? explode. Surrounded? expolde. Outsiders? explode. Explode? explode. Come back a few rounds later with all your hp.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Mage
After brutally slaughtering an entire keep worth of soldiers in a single night, he crafted a tree out of the corpses of the slain in the keeps courtyard.
Like this?
Spoiler
In terms of disrespecting the dead, it's not much worse than stripping a still-warm corpse bare, tossing every salable item in a sack, then shaking down a pawn broker five hours later because he won't pay you full market price for the barely-usable dagger you stole from a dead man.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy
By level 20 though, you aren't capturing a wizard. A character lives to level 20 by being the most ruthless, lucky, capable, and paranoid bastard around. A wizard is throwing around a 30+ Int score and has, entirely in character, planned contingencies for his contingencies. He may well be running around with flat out total immunity to harm, he does not walk outside without an entire bevy of defensive magics around him and enough magic items to buy himself a nation.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slipperychicken
Like this?
Spoiler
In terms of disrespecting the dead, it's not much worse than stripping a still-warm corpse bare, tossing every salable item in a sack, then shaking down a pawn broker five hours later because he won't pay you full market price for the barely-usable dagger you stole from a dead man.
Exactly like that. Except there was about 120 corpses. And the party was only 4th or 5th level. And they used the heads as fruit hanging from the branches.
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Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by TimeWizard
Jade Phoenix Mages have the coolest capstone ability ever. They explode. Low on health? explode. Surrounded? expolde. Outsiders? explode. Explode? explode. Come back a few rounds later with all your hp.
Avatar by: Rex Idiotarum
R.I.P. Gary Gygax
Last edited by Black Mage : 11-09-2012 at 04:17 PM.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Spoilered for length.
Spoiler
It's d20 modern, no magic. The players are caught up in the beginnings of a zombie apocalypse, and one of the first symptoms of the disease is hallucinations. One PC has a little brother NPC with him that he loves dearly, and after a week surviving inside a city that is quickly becoming zombified by hiding in a panic room in another PC's neighbor's house, they get news that another evacuation attempt is coming. They manage to fight their way to the evacuation area, but it is there that they learn that the zombie condition can be spread through so much as contact, but that very few people have a resistance, so that they only turn if bitten, or if they die of something other than head trauma after contact with a zombie.
They've all had contact with zombies at some point or another, but a blood test reveals that the NPC kid brother is resistant, the only resistant person to make it to the evacuation center so far. The soldiers have orders
And a horde of zombies is charging towards the evacuation.
The PCs offer to fight off the horde to let the brother make it to a helicopter and get away. All but one, who is a selfish bugger and only wants out, believing that she can find someone with a cure to treat her.
So the other four PCs fight off the zombies, dying one by one, until the older brother PC, wounded and losing ground, is forced to retreat back to the helicopters, which haven't taken off yet for some odd reason. He's hallucinating at this point, corpses are moving, zombies that aren't there attack him, his recently dead mother calls out from just around the corner. He gets to the helicopter, and all he sees inside is corpses of soldiers, shot instead of bitten. And then a zombie lunges at him from inside the heli, and he shoots it in the gut.
He stares for a moment, clears his head, and realizes he just shot his brother dead, and that the other PC who sneaked off is trying to get the helicopter to take off, and doesn't know how.
Figuring there's nothing left to lose, the older brother helps her get the heli off the ground, and they take off towards the safe zone, all the corpses still in the back, and the both of them sweating profusely and hallucinating now and again. It's just as they get over Chicago, the nearest safe city, that they hear a small child growling from the back seat...
And then there was the time they had to kill a crippled little girl's dad in front of her because a Balor had possessed him (he was an innocent man, but he had been wounded with a demonic blade). A few minutes later, they learned that most of the village had been wounded by the blade, and had to kill the villagers off one by one as they were possessed and no attempt to safely exorcise them worked. They try to explain things to the little girl, but she runs off and they never find her.
Years later, an entire country is being ravaged by demons and disease, and the PCs have to confront the source of it all-the little girl, all grown up, her missing arm replaced with a skeletal graft, sitting in a throne suspended over a volcano, staring hatefully at them through her one good eye while she ignores the burns the heat is causing her and summons one certain Balor...
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Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
I've screwed with my players before, but this one time...
Spoiler
The party were evil assassins living in a major port city. They'd had a bunch of adventures already (found and killed an ancient lich, torched the docks, and led an elf mob into battle), and had secured the love and adoration of the local Elf mafia after a major boss battle against their common foe. And then they got smashed on scrumpy and experienced a little "Hangover" adventure.
Except for the Sorceress, who woke up after the celebration in the Mage's College. She was greeted by a kindly old man named Hieronymus XVI, the Archmage of the College (the party knew about him because they fought his ancestor, a powerful Lich called Hieronymus I). He started off very nice, very sweet... and then he asked, "Where is my book?"
See, Hieronymus the Vile had a magic spellbook that detailed how one can transfer their soul into another body. And he wanted it back, because he still needs it to work the spell as a focus. The lich they had killed before was like a sentry spell, explaining how it was so easily killed.
The Sorceress' Player wasn't very experienced, so she mostly just answered him truthfully when he asked. "I think my friend has it," (the Druid in the party). When Hieronymus asked where he was, the Sorceress caved. She told him about the elves.
The rest of the Party was furious. Her player, as said, is immature for her age, and didn't quite grasp that she should have kept quiet (it was hinted that Hieronymus wouldn't have hurt her, and she would get ample opportunity to escape).
So later, once the party re-united, they were all set to head to the Elves and start building an army to take down Hieronymus (in an E6 game, he's by far the most powerful thing they've seen around) when they noticed a fire burning in that direction. When they got there, every single elf was dead. Their homes were flattened and their corpses were crucified throughout the district on any wall that survived, and a few on pavement. At the center of the Market Square, their favorite little elf, a young elf maiden who led her people in the city and who had won the Player's trust and admiration as a kind, just and compassionate ruler, was eviscerated, completely turned inside out. And her blood had been used to scrawl a single message on the ground:
"I want my Book!"
We had to stop for a few minutes so everyone could collect themselves. We barely got any further in the game because the Sorceress was so distraught and the other players were yelling and screaming about whose fault it was.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Spoiler
I was recently in a game where I somehow managed to freak out the other player and the GM. It was essentially a slightly Steampunk world in which we were hunting down a mechanical machine that seemed to include human body parts. The other player was playing a police detective and I was playing a civilian attached to the police, mostly to take photographs of crime scenes with a fancy camera. I should stress at this point that the game was one which rewarded players for playing to a particular genre, and my genre was comedy. I took this as a license to act in a slightly wackier way than I normally do (NB: this doesn't mean that this is funny, just that I wasn't being very serious).
At one point in the story we were attacked by a huge pack of large sewer rats, which we managed to kill without too much difficulty with explosives. My character promptly went about collecting the rats up, hoping to sell them for some kind of profit to make up for the loss on the explosives. I wasn't sure what I was going to sell them for but I wanted to give it a go. On closer inspection, my character discovered that the rats were incredibly acidic, and so he immediately proceeded to acquire acid-proof gloves and an acid-proof sack to fill with the rats. The rats were useful for a variety of purposes, from burning through locks to fending off thugs that were attempting to assault the other PC. At one point the character decided to throw one of the rats at a thug that he thought was about to rape the other PC, reasoning that it wasn't any worse than shooting the man - something the other PC had already done in the campaign. The rat horribly burned the man and killed him, and from that point on the sack of rats was mainly used as a blunt object (until I decided that it could be used to a) melt the big bad cyborg we eventually found, and b) dissolve the stairs when running away from said cyborg so that we could make an effective escape).
To this day I can't mention 'acid rats' without getting a negative reaction. I didn't think it was particularly horrifying, but it's the biggest negative reaction I've ever managed to provoke during roleplaying.
Actually, that may not be strictly true. In a game of Geist that I'm currently playing in, my character has the Stillness Shroud ability that allows him to turn invisible and combines this with a canister of mace. When an interview with a vampiric businesswoman went awry my character (who was invisible at the time) maced her bodyguard, Steve, and proceeded to steal his keys and walk right past him to help out the other PC against the vampire. Later we returned and somehow managed to persuade the vampire to reveal important information so that we would never return: this was going well until the other player apparently decided to deliberately provoke the vampire by waving a lighter right in her face. Combat ensued once again: the vampire and the other PC fought whilst I locked the door to keep Steve out of the fight. When Steve eventually broke the door down, my character froze for a second before smiling widely, shouting "Happy birthday!" and disappearing into thin air, leaving him with the chaotic scene of his employer tearing open the other PC with her fangs. A few seconds later, he once again got maced and eventually had a bit of a breakdown regarding invisible and baffling foes. 'Happy birthday' now has a bit of a negative connotation as well.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
My one players character had a mentor for 30 years before he went adventuring on his own. When the mentor started to feel old age he began looking for a remove curse, but was poor, an Ogre Bard offered up the money but it was refused, so the Ogre gave it to the student, who offered to pay for his masters remove curse while he got a remove blindness. Here's how it went:
Remove Blindness.
First thing you see: Remove curse, master turns into a woman, and throws the belt of gender changing into the fireplace.
Second thing: The Ogre Bard slaps her behind, welcoming her back as the Warrior.
Third: The Warrior throws the Bard into the fireplace.
What everyone missed: The Rogue taking the belt out of the fire.
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Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
The party druid once insisted on getting totally blacked-out drunk in one of my early campaigns. So, he woke up the next morning wearing only a spiked leather collar in a kennel with a bunch of traumatized-looking female dogs.
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Somehow I've never managed to scar anyone but I've been scarred by my players and DM more than once.
As DM:
One of my players playing an awakened rabbit decided it was a good idea to pass water on a drow matriarch.
In a different 3 barbarian campaign where only one person could read, they found a quest to help out a wizard. The other two ask the barbarian that could read what the paper said to which he replied: "we have to kill a wizard". They then proceeded to accidentally terrorize a village, giving an old woman a heart attack, reviving her via CPR, tried to kill the wizard, convinced an injured miner that he was poisoned (rat bites on his feet) and the only way to cure him was to break his knees and breaking everything in sight while checking for traps by throwing their horses down the hallway...
As a player:
I was playing a wizard with leadership, all his followers, his cohort and he rode camels. His cohort was killed in battle by a yakfolk, his followers were trampled by said yakfolk when it ran out and right before he decided to end his career as an adventurer he was in possession of 4 cursed books.
The first was made by a mad dragon and permanently drained 1 wisdom per day. The second was a book containing a sealed demon that used to wreak havoc in the material plane until he was sealed and made constant attempts to possess the holder of the book and generally gave him an unresistable desire to kill everyone in sight. The other two were 2 artifacts meant as decoys for grave robbers and made him want to go hide in the mountains until he died and the other one made him want to kill everyone on his way to hiding inside a cave until the end of his life.
He was then beaten up by the party barbarian who burned the books and put the demonic book back on the sealing pedestal. When he came to he retired and became a camel breeder. Never played a wizard since.
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"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time." (Good Omens - Terry Pratchett)
Re: Most scarring thing you've done to your players
Here we go. I'll post this again because my players still tell me that one of them is still creeped out by packages of meat at the grocery store and still has dreams about this campaign.
Spoiler
So I'd been without gaming for a little while and I had a solo player. No big deal, I've had solo players before, and he was still good for it, so I had him made a d20 Modern character, ex-SEAL, did tours in Iraq, pretty standard stuff for that character archetype. Anyway. He got involved with some pretty bad stuff, a few civilians killed, a court martial, he got home and discovered his wife left him. He's free on the wind and takes the bus out to Arizona.
So he wakes up in a room, a rusty, blood-stained room in a small chair. There's a lot of stuff on the walls: charcoal and chalk drawings, blood, little symbols. This guy, dear as he was, noted everything down that he could until a man in a nice suit enters the room. The guy turns and pulls his pistol, and the guy asks “Are you sorry?”
After a brief exchange, the guy only manages to get questions out of the guy, like “Are you sorry?” and “Do you cry?” and eventually shoots him and the dead man bleeds orange. He escapes, finds some stairs to the surface, and discovers he's in a small town called “Irokis,” somewhere in upstate New York. The place is busted down, a shambles, there's a few burned buildings.
He explores a bit, discovers there are snake statues that whisper things, some of them right in the front of doorways that he can't move (he eventually resorts to busting the wall next to one so he can get into the house because the statues are even blocking the windows). The statues all say the same thing: “I am here because of what was once done. Are you sorry?” All the houses blocked by statues all have the same sort of scrawling that the room did.
I'm keeping track of starvation rules. By day two the guy's trying to steal from the stores just to get food. He leaves town a couple of times, of course, but he finds out that if he goes to sleep, he wakes back up in the “chair room.” No corpse of the suited man, but there is a statue there now, that same cemetery snake statue. It says the same thing when he gets up and starts repeating it. “I am here because of what was once done. Are you sorry?” He's at the point where he just about ignores them. This one has a deep voice. After a bit of trying to engage it in conversation, he leaves.
The player is honestly starting to get a little creeped out and tells me so, but he has two friends he wants to bring in because apparently “you guys -have- to play this.” So he brings them by. Before they get their characters really done they watch a little and ex-SEAL guy makes his way into the good graces of the cut lady who runs the local bed and breakfast and is going to get a room in exchange for some handyman work. He goes through a few rather nice, calm days with nothing untoward happening. Well, you know, except for a few statues here and there, and there isn't much food. Still taking nonlethal, of course, but getting the DCs dropped here and there because he's eating sometimes (using D&D's nonlethal rules as opposed to d20 Modern's).
Things are actually going ok. Then he wakes up in his room with two other people. They get into some arguments, there are a few shots fired, but they do the Player Character thing and decide to team up to figure out what's going on. One is a cute blonde cop from New York City struggling with her sexual identity and coming up short and the other is a college student who's trying to figure out his major, since his dad wants him to go into business and he wants to get into a science career.
Science guy has all kinds of tests to run. They leave town, they hop a train, they drive to a nearby city, they always end up, now, back in the bed and breakfast and nobody remembers them leaving. They ask around about the statues and try to chip them. Nobody else can hear them, says “they've always been there” and they can certainly be pulverized. They come back the instant someone isn't looking at them.
By day 7 it starts to rain. Fatigue rolls on top of starvation rolls now. Day 9 they trade the cop's gun for food. They discover there's a woman on the north end of town who claims she can make elixirs that fend off the starvation, and they discover she has a sort of cult going , and is trading real food for drugs that just make you feel full. They decide to kill her. Science guy is killed in the ensuing fire, but wakes up the next day in the bed and breakfast room (with some more nonlethal damage). They're walking around with maybe 10% of their health left and Fatigued. At this point they're all trying to steal food.
Eventually SEALguy sends Science Guy off to get something for them to eat and maybe try to track down some animals or something. He's good at that. I run a side thing where Science Guy almost dies and even recovers some food. I mix in some dinner table conversation with the lady who runs the bed and breakfast and have her flirt with Blondiecop a little. They end up sleeping together and Science Guy comes back with more food. I manage to not have to make bed and breakfast lady react because she's with Blondiecop in her room and wants the other two to watch.
The three of them eat. I make some notes and attack the bed and breakfast with some kids wearing plastic Captain Kirk masks and get some numbers thrown around in the air involving some diseases to cover for the fact that I haven't adjusted the starvation Con check. Blondiecop is killed and wakes back up in the bed and breakfast room.
The players, down to around 5% of their health, go ballistic. They move out into town the next day and kill the convenience store clerk. They steal everything in his store and go back to the bed and breakfast. Next day, the convenience store is run down and covered with ARE YOU SORRY and snake statues. They break every snake statue they can find. They start stabbing people in the street. DO YOU CRY
ARE YOU SORRY
DO YOU CRY
It's everywhere. The only person spared from their wrath is bed and breakfast lady, who is getting more sexually aggressive the whole time. She's slept with all three and had them all watch. Never all three at once. Just one at a time, one a night.
The rain gets worse.
YOU NEVER CRY starts appearing in the signs. YOU DON'T CARE. SEALguy finds pictures of the people he killed in Iraq lying around. Blondiecop's parents come in on the bus and start hunting her down to talk to her and force her to fellate random men at gunpoint. She kills them a lot. Science Guy's dad is stalking all three of them with the ability to seemingly make people follow him just by showing them the inside of a briefcase.
They team up and kill him, mostly by luring him close to a big statue and pushing it over. They traded their guns and armor for food already. The statue breaks open and a giant snake that breathes poison gas emerges. They spend two days tracking it and killing it.
They find the dead kids from Iraq inside.
SEALguy has a breakdown. The player literally starts crying. Finds himself on an empty road, haggard, tired, and halfway between Colorado and Arizona. He hitches a ride. Nobody pays any attention to Science Guy and Blondiecop. He arrives in Arizona, and they spend a few days hanging around, paranoid about everything, and SEALguy is eventually jumped by cops and dragged off to an asylum.
He spends time in the asylum. Blondiecop and Science Guy are actually free to come and go. Nobody stops them. They never have to check in at security. They have trouble talking to him or interacting with things when he's taken his meds, you see. Eventually he figures this out and gets off his meds and plans a breakout. He does break out when Science Guy drives a car through the wall. They get about thirty miles before SEALguy is suddenly back in his room at the asylum and getting injected.
He starts taking his meds, I start focusing the game entirely on him.
Up until he's released and he meets this college kid and an ex-detective from New York and the three of them discover that the asylum is performing illegal anti-psychotic research and get SEALguy (and most of the other inmates) released by the courts and some licenses revoked.
That's not the end of the campaign. That's just where I started, mind you. The level 3-7 adventure.
L5R, not spooky: My group was assigned to build a road between Unicorn and Lion lands, and while scouting, encountered a village that, at night, was filled with people and had perfectly normal buildings, but was burned down and ruined during the day. They thought this was odd and stayed in town for a few days with a painter who didn't disappear during the day, until they recognized someone the Dragon shugenja knew, but who was dead. After some investigation, they discover that these are all people who could not find their way to Meido, and they remain stuck in Ningen-do, vanishing as the sun rises. They determine that the way to do this is to have someone as a guide take them along the trail created by the moon. So, they ask for volunteers, and one of the ronin they hired to help with the road volunteers, despite having a son. They used a favor with the Scorpion to get him adopted and get permission for him to commit seppuku. I described the adoption ceremony and the sunset and subsequent full moon in high detail, read a death-poem and played this while a horde of ghost peasants followed him on a silver trail into the valleys. One of the players broke down. Half the group actually still cries when I play that piece.
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Most scarring thing you've done to your players
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