Comments on: Win Gemstone Dice – Tell Us Your Gaming Anecdotes

By: Dice Contest Winners Announced « Jonathan Drain’s D20 Source: Dungeons & Dragons Blog

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:19:37 +0000

[...] dice contest received twenty-four entries, and picking winners was especially tough. First and second place each [...]

By: HJT

HJT — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:34:13 +0000

Once upon a time… we, a group of D&D3.5 Adventurers around the 7th or so level were stumblin’ throught a half flooded city. I played then a sorcerer, and one of my most powerful spells was greater invisibility. Ehrsam Immertreu, called Eri, our rouge, was, after i got that spell, my best friend, as she ALWAYS pleaded me to make her invisible. We found the main base of the evil monsters in that city, and, after another discussion, i made Eri invisible. The fight startet, and at some point all the bad guys stood perfect for a fireball. I swung my hands in some strange gestures, muttered some words and a tiny globe of fire sprang into life and whizzled towards the bad Guys. BAAAAM! and everything o’er there burnt.
The fight ended soon, and, of course, we won. But.. where’s Eri, we started to ask us. Then, with that her body appeared in the middle of the Battlefield, right there were all the bad guys stood. And… nearly burnt to ashes. From a previous encounter we got a Staff of Healing or something alike, and we ressurected her.

Point was, when i casted that fireball, she made her reflex save, and… guess what, she rolled a 1. As we have Hero Points for such situations, she spent one and rolled again, and, well, rolled again a 1.

After the next visit in a town, she gave me some scrolls of see invisibility for free. But… well, i have not yet any used ;)

By: Stuart

Stuart — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:38:29 +0000

We had just started to play MERPS (Middle Earth). It’s a game with a LOT of tables and dice rolls to work out every little detail. It can end up a lot of fun sometimes with a lot of things happening that you didn’t want to happen.

I decided to play as a fighter for a change while the other 2 players rolled rangers, one human and one elf.

Our first encounter with a thief who wanted to demand money for us to pass and then attacked us when we refused. As a mighty fighter i took a swing at him with my sword only to have it get stuck in a tree branch.

Our second encounter was a couple of orcs in a ruin tower hiding from the rain, so we set ourselves up to ambush them.

The elven ranger climbed a tree while the human ranger hid in bushes and the brave strong fighter was to run in and draw the orcs into the open to be picked off.

Well in i went and got their attention and then ran out far enough for the arrows to hit them. However one orc decided to come around the other way and saw the ranger in the bushes and started to head for him.

Meanwhile the other one followed me out and started the comedy of errors that followed.

The orc following me went to hit me but the DM rolled badly so the orc missed, spinning himself around 360. I then took a swing only to roll badly, miss and fall down in the mud. The ranger in the tree then missed the orc with his arrow, nearly missing me. The orc’s next turn was another swing at me only to fail and slip and fall next to me. Thankfully the elf then hit the orc, while i tried to hit the orc while laying down. The orc tried to stand and failed slipping over again.
The elf then went to fire off another arrow and failed his roll which resulted in his nice expensive bow to snap in half.

Meanwhile the human ranger had disposed of his orc and came to our rescue. I think his dice were rigged as he rolled without a problem killing the orc.

By: Goatelope

Goatelope — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:29:29 +0000

OK one other one from a ways back. our group was a traveling performing troupe and each had our own wagon/cart. I was a middle eastern type snake charmer/firebreather. We also had a tinker gnome and a kender/halfling. The two of them were arguing about something and taking forever to get on our way to the rest of the adventure, so I grabbed one of my empty snake baskets, snatched up the kender in it and threw him into the tinker gnomes wagon to occupy them both, and let us get on our way.

By: Goatelope

Goatelope — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:59:19 +0000

Well, our buddy Mike always makes the games interesting, no matter how many +1s he tries to invent or add to his roll, his antics always make his presence worth it.
Playing in our friend Jim’s homebrew world, there are these magical swrods, the Moonblades. The most epic swords known in the world. Mind you Jim runs a bit of a low magic setting, so remember that, but these are the peak weapons. Eventually we actually get several of them. While my rogueish (sp) character sneaks into a keep to try to steal something or save someone, that part doesn’t matter, the rest of the aprty outside starts to get antsy. worried about what may have happened to me, Mike and 2 other characters make their way in as well. Mind you the walls of the keep are littered with archers. Well we all start making our way out the rooftop route, which is my natural route, being as i can hide, Mike gets spotted and figures he can distract their attention with his mighty magic sword and fend them off while we escape. Mind you he has no ranged weapon, and the outer wall for the most part was 50 yds away. He taunts, they fire a massive volley on his swordweilding butt… “I strat deflecting the arrows with my sword”. At least a couple were 20s and numerous other hits, and he takes a fall from the wall, after only deflecting one. Mike stands up and says “I said I was using the magic swrod to deflect arrows.” Jim replied, I know you deflected one.”
“What kind of F’in magic sword doesn’t magically deflect arrows?!?!” Of the few minor magical effects they had, Jim never once said or implied it could deflect arrows. To this day we joke about having arrow deflecting swords.

By: Ted Willingham

Ted Willingham — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:52:57 +0000

One of my favorite game stories took place purely by chance. Our ill-fated level 3 elf swashbuckler was sneaking around a church of Pelor, when he came across a hallway with lots of locked doors. Being the 6 wisdom he was, he kicked down one of the doors to see what was behind.

There was a priest sleeping behind the door in a private bedroom, who awoke white a cry of “WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?!?!?”
“I FELL!” Our smooth talking swashbuckler instantly retorted, with a beautiful bluff roll of one.
“Yeah, sure, you’re in big troub–”
“NO SERIOUSLY!” He gloriously stammered out.

He rolled a natural 20 with that bluff.

Naturally, our DM wanted to keep some realism but at the same time reward such a fantastic roll.
“It’s up to his sense motive.”

He rolled a one.

It was amazing, and from now on, when ever a bluff roll is failed, “NO SERIOUSLY!” is yelled out and a d20 flung at random.

We have yet to see another 20 vs 1.

By: Talon

Talon — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:22:30 +0000

We decided to spy on rivals so we sent in our rouge and pixie. They’re good at stealth right? The rouge gets caught and tied up. The pixie, who has been redecorating, drops by says in an understanding voice “Oh, kinky” and flies off.

It all worked out in the end but we never used the pixie for infiltration again.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:34:01 +0000

Back in our early days of gaming, we played only AD&D and Superworld. We really got into it with dark lighting and sometimes funky music or movies playing in the background. Near the end of one D&D campaign, we were getting tired of the adventure (it lasted several weeks and it was approaching 5:00 a.m.). I mentioned that we should move on to Superworld next week, and everyone thought that would be a good idea. What I failed to hear, what the others swore they agreed upon, was that we should do the last battle of D&D at the start of the next session, and THEN move on to Superworld.

So, next week I come to run will all of my supervillains made and ready. They were all badass, decked out with power packs, gleaming armors, cool suits, and awesome powers. However, I was running a little late. So when I got there, I wanted to jump right in with a major battle to set the tone of the Super Campaign. I drew a quick map of the area (more like chicken scratch) and off we went.

I was so excited (and surprised) when I acted first, killing two players in the first round with my flying villain and another with fire bursts. They were practically jumping up and down screaming at me for being such a cheater, that no monster from the Monster Manual could fight like that blah-blah-blah! I swear I said these exact words, “Monster Manual… what, wait, huh???�?

By: Paxcpo

Paxcpo — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:25:04 +0000

This happened just last night and was too good not to share.
The party’s three rogues and a fighter who are being paid to evict a series of monsters from the woods surrounding a small village. They’ve just defeated a harpy and, because they’re big on trophies, have taken her wings.
They come up to a cave said to be full of bugbears and send their drow scout in to recon. Seeing a couple of guards, the guy playing the drow asks the DM if he can throw his voice to convince the bugbears he’s somewhere behind them. The DM figures this’ll be all right and allows it. In short order the entire group of bugbears is standing outside their hole, absolutely convinced that God is speaking to them (it wasn’t really what the drow was going for, but he ran with it).
The rest of the party overhears some of this, sends a second scout (who reports back) and decides that they’ll send the two remaining rogues out so that the four party members form an X with the bugbears in the middle. Then the party leader will fire his crossbow and everyone can attack the distracted baddies.
The drow, of course, has no clue this is going on and continues his God act, and is starting to really terrify the poor bugbears. The party leader, carrying the harpy wings, replans – he spreads lamp oil on a patch of grass in front of him and stuffs his arms through the harpy wings like sleeves. He then lights the grass, attracting the attention of the terrified bugbears, and walks through the low flames screaming, “I am the Dread Pirate Roberts. Leave now or I will devour your souls!”
Two of the bugbears drop dead from fright, and two more are taken out as the other party members figure this is as good a time as any to begin the attack. After the drow pops up from a few feet away, the remaining baddies head for the hills, presumably to begin the Cult of the Dread Pirate Roberts.

By: Berman

Berman — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:19:43 +0000

So this took place back in the days of 3.0 D&D. My dwarf fighter, Hamus had picked up a real hatred of all things magical. He just kept getting sucker punched with pretty much every spell the party faced. So he went Forsaker (unable to use magic items but gain a stat bump every level). Eventually we ended up facing some large Gargoyles in a cavern that was 70ft tall, just enough so I couldn’t see them perching up in the roof. Hamus steps out leading the party as the token meat wall. Down come the Gargoyles swooping in to nab our Halfling caster and taking him back up near the roof to drop him. My dwarf sees this and readies his axe to strike the next Gargoyle to swoop down. I do so, and the blow totally bounces as its not a magic weapon. The Gargoyle then grabs hold of poor old Hamus and begins to beat his wings to take off.

I look right at the DM and ask what the strength score is of the Gargoyles is, then I remind him since Hamus is acting as the party pack mule while we work our way down the tunnel (because no one else is strong enough or dwarf enough to carry more than their combat gear) and that I way with all my gear well over 700lbs. He looks down, looks at me.

“The Gargoyle has a hernia trying to lift you off the ground.�?

Let it never be said that being in your median encumbrance as a dwarf is a bad thing.