Silliest Things Your Players Have Ever Done

[Uncle Twitchy]

When the first edition of ADRPG came out, I bought and read it immediately and ran a campaign from January of '92 to July of '93. Lots of mistakes were made, lots of fun was had, and the people who played in that game still list it as their favorite campaign they ever played. It certainly changed everyone's style of gaming forever.

Anyway, I recently compiled all the game logs, character diaries, my notes, every Trump drawing I had, and all other effluvia from that campaign into a book for those players. Lots of nostalgia, lots of fun times, and I thought I'd share some of the sillier moments from that campaign with you all.

The PCs were being plagued by a Shadow sorceror who was a puppet of one of the Missing Eight of Oberon's children (Mariette, who could give Fiona and Brand a run for their money in Psyche, who'd been exiled by Oberon along with her brother Latimer for killing another one of the Missing Eight). They decided to split up into Shadow to gather armies to assault this Shadow sorceror's stronghold.

So the character who was ranked 2nd in Warfare in the group -- the sole female, Jasmine, daughter (she thought) of Dierdre (though she was actually Moire's daughter by Corwin and claimed by Dierdre when she was taken to Amber to hide her parentage during Eric's reign) -- went out into Shadow to gather her army. Now, the player wasn't very imaginative -- I really should have made her Gérard's daughter -- and was having trouble with the idea of going into Shadow to gather an army. I explained that anything she could imagine, she could find eventually, but she should restrict herself to things that would be effective in a fantasy setting since that was the technology level of the Shadow they were assaulting.

"Anything I can imagine?" she asked.
"Yes."
"So I could go to, say, Xanth and get Xanth ogres?"
"Yes," I said, inwardly rolling my eyes at her choice. So she did. And then her eyes lit up and she said, "Okay, next I'm going to Endor and get Ewoks."

I blinked a bit. Some of the other players groaned. She insisted. Then she went after the Care Bears.

Ultimately, her army consisted of all these cloyingly cute, annoying creatures that made everyone else cringe and groan. And, because she was ranked 2nd in Warfare, I had to make them effective in the fight.

I'm pretty sure she did it just to make us all ill.

---

In the same scenario, another, rather unimaginative player -- Vincent, son of Fiona, a Trump Artist ranked first in Psyche and Endurance who had not yet walked the Pattern -- decided to go to Middle Earth, one of his personal Shadows (so he had a Trump of it) and lead the elves of Lothlorien against this Shadow sorceror. But he hadn't done his Trump drawing character contribution that week, so he was into Bad Stuff and the elves wouldn't listen to his plea for aid. Fed up, he said, "Screw it. I'll go get the One Ring and command them to follow me."

One of the other players asked him, "Now, this is a Shadow of Tolkien's Middle Earth, right? So the Ring isn't going to, like, try to corrupt you, too?"

"No," Vincent said, "This is the One Ring. I want to make sure it works right."

This, of course, is exactly the kind of thing a GM wants to hear, so when it came time for them to assault the sorceror, said sorceror (who was essentially the Sauron-equivalent in his Shadow and recognized the Ring for what it represented) made Vincent an offer, and Vincent found it quite, quite reasonable...

It resulted in Vincent allowing the sorceror to possess him and then walk the Pattern so that the sorceror could, theoretically, use the Pattern to give him more Substance. Now, Vincent did not pay for Pattern Imprint at all, and when it came time to fill out their Experience Wish Lists, he didn't even list Pattern Imprint on it.

So he went, in one game, from a 4 pt. Good Stuff character to a 46 pt. Bad Stuff character...

---

In another campaign, I had another player do almost the exact same thing -- he found a new Power source, imprinted himself on it, and didn't put it on his Wish List, going from a 10 pt. Good Stuff character to a 30 pt. Bad Stuff character... and this was after he'd heard and laughed at the Vincent story.

Ah, players.

So what notable silliness have some of your players done?

[Trevelyan]

Not one of my players, but another player in a game I was in once tried to block a bullet with a Trump because someone (mentioning no names) had led hi to believe that Trump cards were indestructable. There's a thread or two about that topic around here somewhere. Needless to say, the GM wasn't impressed, the charcter only had Chaos rank warefare for a start.

I was playing in another game where the story was focused on a variant of the Spikards. In this game there were around 20 of them, with varying levels of power such that the top 5 were highly saught after, but everyone of substance likely had one of the weaker editions. Needless to say, much effort was being expended by the likes of Despil of Sawall and various ne'er-do-wells to obtain the more pawerful artifacts. My character at the time had lost his arm in a fight as his opponant found an interesting way to rob me of my ring (number 2 or 3 IIRC). One of the other PCs lent me a lesser ring and being a sorcerous type, I managed to form a replacement limb from energy drawn through the ring (think Wormtail in Goblet of Fire if you are familiar with the book/film, although this was in the mid 1990's) so that I could continue to wield my sword.

Seeing this, the other PC, who still had one of the top rings but lacked a serious warefare rank, decided that he could be invincible in a fight. He waded into the melee and started receiving cuts all over the place. His hand came off and he replaced it with a replica. His leg was badly injured so he brought forth a magical replacement, and so on. This guy was in realy bad shape before he finally admitted that he was outclassed and withdrew.

After we Trumped out to join another player in a place of relative safety we decided to get some rest. The GM said to me somthing along the lines of "Keeping that artifical limb formed has left you feeling exhausted. As you settle down to sleep and your concentration relaxes the artificial arm shimmers slightly and vanishes." The look on the face of the other player, who by this time was sporting two magical legs, one magical arm and a chunk of magical flesh (preventing serious blood loss) above his hip was priceless. We managed to get him to a hospital before he passed out from exhaustion, but thereafter we referred to him as stumpy.

[Croaker]

Taking me for a fool.

I was running a PBEM throne war with mostly new players, and this guy comes, little time after the game had started, all "I love amber, read the books, and, although I'm an experienced roleplayer, I don't know Amber RPG".
No problem for me, although, as I discovered later through some slips-up from him, it was a lie, he very well knew the RPG...

He came all sweet, saying "I don't wanna bother with the rules, so what if I describe you my character, asking you what I want, and you flesh out the numbers for me?"
Well, why not? Sure, no problem.

And then, he comes with this description where his character, Adrien, is oberon's favourite son, very gifted in psyche and warfare (IIRC, he described himself as being of comparable ranking as the first players in these attributes...), very lucky and charming, having been trained by dworkin himself in the ways of advanced pattern, advanced trump, sorcery...
Oh, and he also had this personnal shadow full of loyal soldiers, fearsome abominations, and dirigeables able to sift and fly through Shadow... with extensive depictions of their abilities, a little too tied to C&A depictions for my lacking (like "my abominations are about as strong as an amberite, with an hide tough enough to stop even bullets...")

I tried to explain him he could'nt get all this for his points, but that we could settle for a lesser version of the same character, or drop some things, like having the shadow and creatures being not tied to him.
Of course, he vehemently objected, like "this is my character, don't cripple him! I don't want it any other way".

Sure. No problem.
He specified nothing about Strength and Warfare, so I dropped these to human rank.
Oh, and his abominations? Strong, sure. Tough, sure. With no combat training or intelligence? Sure! And... totally berserk? Why not? He specified nothing about them aside from their "abominable" side.
Oh, he still had about 50 more points than any other player, but well...

And then, he entered the game.
So sure was he of his superiority that he send a message to castle Amber, saying to every other PC "I'm the legitimate king. I'll come to amber with my army in 2 weeks. Submit or die". O_O

Well... Let's say the other PCs put aside their strugglings to deal with this interloper. One of them contacted him, telling him she surrendered, that he was too powerfull... And the guy took it all!!! She learned his plans, his shadow's location...
Meanwhile, the others prepared amber's defense.

He make sure a place trump (which was trapped) reached eoghann, Amber's general (another PC), with a letter from an unknown woman saying "I have information for you. Use this trump to come to this place and wait for me. Bring a lot of money". The general beware of this, and didn't used the trump.

When Adrien attacked Amber, the others knew where he lived, and followed the march of his army through Shadow. When he came to Arden, he was easily crushed by the sole forces of Eoghann.
He also attacked by sea with submarines, theorising that the passages in Amber's castle lead to undersea grottos. Why not? So, I said "Ok, there are passages, and you're lucky, there's a phosphorescent fungus, so you see something. But it seems like a labyrinth, and too little for your submarines to pass. What do you do?"

In the end, he couldn't beleive his perfect plans failed, there was clearly cheating at work, and he disappeared.

What he never discovered is that the other players, guided by the traitor, had came to his shadow and used advanced pattern to remodelate it for his return, where he was supposed to find monuments dedicated to Oberon copulating with a she-goat, which every inhabitant would worship as his mother...

[Eniko]

My character, half amberite, used the pattern to teleport to a stark raving mad Dara inside an asylum. She then freed her, because she was her mother, and Dara shifted my character back into her womb, thereby allowing her to walk the pattern and gain it's power, my character thinking the pattern would purify her madness and thus save her.

It actually ended well, but it was still really quite stupid and I don't think she was ever allowed back into Rebma after that.

--------

I don't remember the circumstances, but I know we needed to trump Brand for some reason. There were malevolent entities created by the hatred of Amberites and Chaosites alike trying to destroy the multiverse.

Just so happened Brand was fighting them off when we trumped him. This made him lose his concentration and he died. Woops? Well, we at least defeated the notorious Brand, only problem was that he was just a harmless mad scientist in this particular game.

[Sargon]

you certainly pulled a few doosies eniko, but the winner was probably in my first campaign ever.  I don't remember why but I ran amber as dark and wicked and nasty as I could and the player took I believe it was THIRTY badstuff to cover his excessive psyche bid.

i was probably overly viscious, but lets just say that he was the manservant of his abusive mother with no official recognition as amberite royalty and his first meeting with the pc's came just after he spilled a chamberpot all over himself.  Then there were thsoe gaps of missing time... ;>