Enjoyable Failure

mcbobbo · October 17, 2012, 01:10:46 PM

Along the lines of the 'bonehead moves' thread, I thought I might share a story of a failure of mine that was a lot of fun.

Please, share yours as well...

Spoiler

We were playing MERP and I had an animist who belonged to some kind of a church of war. I was being added to an ongoing campaign, and wanted to make an impression on the rest of the party. But first I stopped by my temple. For whatever reason, I pissed them off, and they beat me up and threw me out, saying something along the lines of 'come back when you no longer suck'.

I wandered over to the local tavern, and made my 'splash'. Turns out the captain of the guard thought I was a troublemaker, and tried to stare me down. Already carrying a bruised ego from the last encounter, I wasn't about to lose face in front of the party, so I challenged him to a duel in the street.

Two hits later, I was maimed and wouldn't survive a third. On a whim, I ran away. The entire guard joined chase, due to my dishoner, and a few twisted streets later had me facing the temple I was just tossed out of earlier that day.

I burst through the door, and was immediately greeted by the 'hey, we told you not to come back', and the guard followed right behind me. I simply yelled 'GET THEM', and ducked under the pews.

I got away, and the party agreed to let me join them, for my courage if not for my intelligence.

When we returned from the barrow we were investigating, we learned that the brawl I had started actually wound up razing the town...

Failure, failure, failure, and we never ever laughed so hard and had so much fun.

taustin · October 17, 2012, 03:00:20 PM

Golly, so many war stories. I recall a Top Secret game in which we were all playing KGB characters in the late 50s. We were being briefed on a mission in to West Germany to assassinate a war criminal, and told that he'd killed xxx thousands of of Russians during the Great War. Colin, being Colin, replied, "We kill more than that ourselves ever week." (Which was true, at that point, historically, and the characters had reason to know it.) Deadpan as can be, the gamemaster told him, "Your briefing officer pushes a button on his desk. A sergeant comes in, and the officer nods to you. The seargeant escorts you out of the office, down the stairs, in to the plaza outside, and shoots you in the back of the head. Roll up a new character."

Colin had more fun getting characters killed than most of us would conquering the world and becoming gods (and was laughing harder than the rest of us).

And there was the time Bob's character was sent back to us by the Thieves' guild rolled up in a carpet, but that was only enjoyable for everyone else.

RPGPundit · October 18, 2012, 07:51:07 PM

Well, last night in our Arrows of Indra playtest the Vanara (monkey-man) Thief died an ignominious death through boneheaded reasons. He'd stolen some magic pearls quite some time back, which (unbeknownst to him) the owner was hunting for quite a while now. When he tried to get them identified he was tracked down, and the sage who he'd hired was killed by the owner's agents in their attempt to get the pearls back.

When the Vanara found out about this, instead of fessing up everything he knew to the party (he'd told them nothing until then), he chose to be evasive about it. Then he decided his best move was to stay apart from the rest of the group, sleeping in a place that was difficult to access; that he could get to because of his thief skills.

Apparently, he thought that no one in the universe but him could possibly have thief skills... like for example, the assassin who'd already murdered the sage and got away with it.

RPGPundit

Enjoyable Failure

mcbobbo

taustin

RPGPundit