Sorry I was off yesterday.

August 29: Most Memorable Encounter.

(Bear with me on this one, family. I’m getting on in years and memory does not serve as well as it once did.)

There was a kid that played a fighter in my D&D 3.5 campaign that pulled off some hilariously spectacular stuff, much of which happened in the same session. While camping, my wife’s witch character set up a series of protective orbs around the campsite. The fighter was on watch when he sensed the camp was about to be attacked by the undead that were still out of sight for a human, in the woods, a long ways out yet. I let him roll because I thought it would be entertaining…

The fighter proceeds to kick one of the orbs, about the size of a volleyball toward one of the wights. He rolled a Nat 20. The orb went off, lit up the whole area, and stopped the wights cold in their tracks with a Circle of Protection type of effect. The camp was awakened by the alarm effect of the orb along with the bright light and moaning of the undead. Our entire table of players erupted into a combination of raucous laughter and disbelief over what had happened.

That particular fighter was a source of amusement throughout the campaign. The player was a huge Inu Yasha fan and wanted his character to have Sango’s Giant Boomerang. I figured out a way to make it work as one of the group already had a blade based on the Tetsusaiga. The boomerang plan wasn’t without a few drawbacks, however.

See, back in the days of Exotic Weapon Proficiencies, one had to be trained in order to use such weapons in my campaign. At the time he found the boomerang, the fighter had no idea how to successfully catch the thing or much of anything other than to use it as a big shield. I had written a whole new set of rules regarding throwing and more importantly catching the Giant Boomerang.

As you might have guessed, the first time the fighter threw this thing turned out to be hilariously too effective. It hit the intended targets, knocking them down, but then it did what boomerangs are supposed to do. Sure, it was magical. It wasn’t attuned, proficiency trained, and didn’t say “Returning” anywhere in the item description. To make things even funnier, the poor guy rolled a Nat 1 on his roll to catch it and failed the save not to get clobbered by it. The rest of the party got out of the way as the fighter got nailed and sent flying 20’ by his own weapon.

We got the boomerang figured out after that and refined the return rules a bit so they weren’t quite as painful. We all, including myself as the DM, looked upon that boomerang with a sense of dread and high comedy forever onward. I love creating items like the Giant Boomerang that technically aren’t cursed but manage to make a mess of things.

August 30: Obscure RPG I’ve Played.

LOL! What haven’t I somehow ended up with? I’ve done a lot of off-the-back-wall TTRPGs over the years. I also own a giant heap of obscure games that I would love to try. I’ve helped crash-test a number of games at conventions that I don’t rightly remember the names of.

I’m also not sure what qualifies as “obscure” at this point. Newer gamers probably don’t recognize much outside of good old Dungeons & Dragons. Older gamers may have heard of everything in my collection for all I know.

Off the top of my head, I was really into a game called Marauder 2107 for a long time. I even swapped emails with the author back in the very early days of the Internet. Marauder 2107 was a mecha/anime game set in a near-post apocalyptic setting. The characters were part of a mobile strike force that was part police, part military. It was meant to resemble the great Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed.

The setting had a unique twist in that the Earth had become contaminated with a group of mutant spawning aliens known as Breeders. We had cyborgs and mech pilots running around with cannons blasting mutants like crazy. I was all about it. My group was not. I think we had about three quarters of the first session before everyone kinda gave up on it. The other quarter of the session was character creation and setting background.

It’s fun to introduce new games. Sometimes you just have to put it all out there and hope it flies. In this particular case, it really didn’t. I want to give that style of game another try if I ever find a good group, only maybe convert the whole thing to a different system such as FATE or Cypher.

Thanks for stopping by today. Onlyone more day of August to go. I’ve had a lot of fun with these prompts. Next month might be Swordtember or Super September depending. I’ve also considered Snoopy September where I just post pictures of my cats. (Part of me really wants to take a breather after the RPGSuperstar contest left me feeling a lot depressed.)

I appreciate you so very much. You’re a great audience if I don’t mention it enough. Thank you!