Comparing Players to Artificial Intelligences

AI in games tends to be bad. Not necessarily because the AI isn't working from a programming stand point, but because of game rules that the AI seems to not realized are in effect. The numbskulls in Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 are a perfect example of this travesty. The AI has no conception of Attacks of Opportunity so it runs willy nilly across the battlefield trying to get into position to flank or defend the player's character (if you forgot to turn that option off you neener head) causing them to take lots of unnecessary damage.
I bring this up because there's always those players who don't get the rules and I'd like you to feel better about them. I'm not talking about the new players who haven't picked up the rules after one play session. I'm talking about the players who have been playing the same edition of the same game for the past several years and still don't have a grasp on the game concepts or what they're supposed to roll. For these players I suggest a little trick I learned from one of my high school teachers. Take a two by four. Write the words "Board of Education" on it. Hit said player with it when they fail to learn. Maybe you'll knock some sense into them.

LooneyDM up up and away!

On Comedy Gaming

I considered typing this post and putting it all in wingdings to make the title appropriate but I couldn't be arsed. This week I'm going to give a run down of all the comedy style games I can think of that I'd like to run or have run for me because lists are awesome. At the end I'm going to make a point about comedy games in general so read on dear reader if you feel this post needs pointedness. Otherwise read the list and hit the eject button to your left. You can't miss it, it's bright red with the words "Push Me" on it.

Call of Cthulu comedy game: Not your usual CoC game, I'd send the players off planet in a very Arthur Dent-ish traipse around the universe where they discover that the creatures from beyond aren't that mess up, it's just their method of getting here from their anti universe completely translates them wrong. IE the players fail to stop the cultist, are sucked into the unknown and find themselves to be the san loss inducing horrors once they've crossed over. I doubt this sort of chicanry would go over well so I'd save it for a one shot of some sort. Plus it mostly depends on the 'twist' and we all know how well that works for M. Night Shamalamadingdong.

The Alice in Wonderland: I'd want to start this one off with telling the players to make characters without telling them what sort of game it is. That should give me an excellent stable of randomness mess. Then they bond together and go on very basic quests dressed up in the window dressing of the world.

The Shrek: The fantasy world turned on its ear. I haven't decided if I'd warn the players or not but I'd definitely ask for them to make 'unlikely' heroes. Expect copious references to all sorts of fairy tales and mythology

Super Chibi Squad: Classic saturday morning cartoon super heroes in the vein of Darkwing Duck and Power puff girls. Rock. I'd warn the players before hand so they don't bring any of those icky dark and brooding anti heroes to the game table. I will throw popsicle sticks at them if they arrive with one of those.

The Princess Bride: A magnum opus I hope to run some day. A seemingly ordinary tale (setting yet unknown) well told with an entirely comedic bent.

Look out! Here comes the point of the post! Don't get impaled!
Comedy is like a spice. It works best when added to other themes instead of being an end for itself. You could possibly make a whole meal out of it but you're better off not trying. There point. Now munch on it and discuss as needed. Call me in the morning if your fever persists, oh wait, wrong blog.

LooneyDM

Geekdom

Yes, that is a Darth Vader head hot air balloon. Yes, it is real. Yes, it does appear to be from Italy. I wants I wants I wants I wants! Even if it's just for one ride. Even though I'm perversely afraid of heights and would probably hide in the basket the whole time. Geeks are everywhere. Someday the world will have to accept that. If it doesn't, well we've got physics on our side.

No idea where I found this. GIS for Darth Vader Balloon will likely retrieve it for you.

Looney

When your players use anime logic...

Only players who have been watching anime recently will come up with the train of logic that insists that the best way to fight giant monsters is to build a giant robot. This one is part of a Sequential Art comic. Again by the incomparable JollyJack. There are times I entirely want to find a mecha laying around so I can curb stomp the entirely ridiculous monsters you face down in a D&D game. Giant ladybugs are the least of my worries!

LooneyDM

I'm running out of game quotes!

The quotes are running thin for I've been running in the historical ones and now we've caught up. I must admit to the sad fact that we're not crazy enough to fill pages and pages of rp quotes just from one session alone. This of course means next week you get my incomparable comedy stylings instead of random humor from my D&D groups so beware. Your sides are at risk next week.

Clementine rolls: 1d20 search! => 20
Clementine: (( I find their souls! ))
Clementine: (( I keeps them in a bottle. ))

* Steely Dan yells "YE CAN TAKE ME LIFE, BUT YE CANNAE TAKE ME TROUSERS!" and charges!
LooneyDM: (( careful, they could burn the trousers right off you ))
Steely Dan: (( little do they know, our hero doesn't WEAR trousers ))

Clementine: (( Steely Dan smells funny. ))
Klo: "Women!"
Steely Dan: (( I did get a forced bath recently though ))
Atargatis: "Dan isn't a woman."
Klo: "He's wearing a skirt no?"
Atargatis: "...I suppose that's true."
* Klo smirks
* Atargatis leans up against a wall and relaxes
Klo: "i'll stay by the entrance"
Steely Dan: "It's a KILT, bigjob!"
Clementine: "Still a skirt, my friend."
Atargatis:"On second thought, I'll rest where someone entering a room can't see me immediately."
Steely Dan:"I like it fer th' extra breeze round me privates"
Klo:"All better the target"

Corbinus: I believe the correct stategy is to have Steely eaten by it until we kill it.
Steely Dan: it's an evil bubble and it's poisoning me

Steely Dan: "I backstab the book!" "you can't backstab a book" "it has a spine, doesn't it?"

LooneyDM out

Porn (it's not what you think)

There's always that one guy whose character portraits look like he pulled them straight out of Succubus Illustrated. You know him. He's a hair "off". He looks at people in a creepy way. He leers. All his female characters are lesbians. If it's creepy he does it. Maybe it's for attention, maybe he doesn't get it. Don't be that guy.

LooneyDM

No Trespassing (Adventure!)

Search your heart, you know it to be true. No trespassing always means you take that route. Especially in RPGs. Player characters are always reading between the lines like that. I need to start running a comedy game to use all these little ideas a have for random comical flavor. Either that or get better at ramming random comic flavor into the games I am running.

Picture by snowdrak on deviant art
Original Art : http://snowdrak.deviantart.com/art/Trespassing-140419434

LooneyDM

Quotes from the game I don't DM

I have to say the idea of a comedy game intrigues me, but I'm failing so badly to form coherent thoughts about it that I'm going to skip the inane mental bumblings and simply give you another taste of the humor inherent in my gaming situation. To shorten, here are more quotes from the games I play in. If the quote is labelled from DM and not LooneyDM it's a DM who is not me. Likewise, if a quote is just labelled Looney then I wasn't DMing that game.

Real life game. I don't DM this which explains why it's avoided catastrophe so far

Cecilia: I'm a badass on paper.

Looney: I flank the door. (note, I'm playing a rogue)

We found an illusion of a woman sitting on a throne. After inspecting it and determining it was of no harm and we couldn't take it with us we proceeded to explore the rest of the dungeon.
DM: The other room...
Vissar: ...holds the projector.

(On sneak attacking skeletons in 4e) Looney: I steal their bones one by one.

(On her turn) Cecilia: I love this turn!

We found some scented candles and our fighter decided they would look awesome on top of the horns on his minotaur skull helmet.
Later we decided that we needed to enchant said minotaur helmet to moo

Tirah: Whose side are you on?
Vimach: The side that doesn't get me hit!

DM: Give me perception checks
Tirah: 15
Looney: 21
Rynasia: 22
Vissar: What are we doing?

Tirah: Intimidate. There's nothing quite like the evil mom stink eye

Tirah: You are the black hearted son of a wolf bitch and carrion crow

Vissar: He takes a double shot of espresso

(While fighting a wraith) Vimach: Bad touch, bad touch!

(Singing) DM: Mummy cat, mummy cat, oh oh oh, mummy cat

DNR - Do not resurrect

Ceclia: That was a hard battle.
DM: It was hard for me to watch.

(Vimach is a goliath fighter and he dropped a nat 20 on his steath check) Vimach: I'm stealthy, I'm stealthy.

(Cecilia is a tiefling avenger) Cecilia: You're my oath of emnity *blows a rasberry at the enemy*

DM: *hums a little tune while deciding what to do with the monsters on their turn*
Cecilia: Are they going to move or just sing?

(Vissar is a Longtooth shifter warden) Vissar: I'm going to use Nature's Abundance.
Looney: Hippie.
Tirah: Flower power!

(Cecilia's diety is Xan Yae, goddess of secrets, shadows and balance) Cecilia: Does my diety prohibit drinking? I can't find it anywhere in the Player's Handbook.
Looney: Well, Xan Yae wouldn't approve if you got drunk because you'd lose your balance.

DM: What country are you from?
Tirah: Kansas!

(Running Tirah) Cecilia: She has some weird feat I just noticed.
Vissar: Are they webbed?

(Dice roll knocks Tirah's miniature over) DM: Tirah, a giant boulder rolls through the wall and kills you.

Vissar: I have a negative intelligence modifier.
Looney: I do as well.
Vissar: Team dumb unite!

(speaking about a purse a dead npc had) DM: He has a pouch on his body.
Vissar: I would love to touch his pouch.

That's all for this week's looniness. Next week we'll delve into the depths of the game I run.

LooneyDM Zanzibar

Point Buy Systems

If you've every played a point buy system, you've seen characters that may as well be snails with massive gunnery. "If I increase my max range, I won't need to move quickly!" It's still Monday where I am for another hour. I'm not late and I didn't forget, I swear on the half a baked potato I had for supper tonight! Mmmm, potato. See you Wednesday for more looney musings. I don't know where I got this picture. Probably google image search for snail.

LooneyDM out.

Crossovers

In the vein of Goofy as Thor, we have Iron Man as Peter Pan. I'd only want to see it as one of those silly fan made movies, definitely not anything official. Either way it's a silly awesome idea. It even got mentioned at Archon by Luke Ski who does geek spoofs and music. At least that's what I'd call it. You might call it something else.
Art by someone on deviant art that I can't find now. My notes say their deviant name was enjuhneer but that's not turning anything up. BIZARRE!

Edit: It's a page from a webcomic http://www.enjuhneer.com/?p=485 . The creator was so very nice to find me, so go read her comic. It's quite amusing.

LooneyDM

RPG quotes

Today I shall entertain you will various and sundry quotes from RP groups I've DM'd and played with over the past however long it's been. All names are in character to protect the guilty, except quotes from me because I stand proudly by my guilt.

From a city based D&D campaign involving the characters all being part of the same traveling performing group:

Nessa: "sooo, you want to get him drunk?"
Prosepon: "I want to get ME drunk. We've been working in the wine capital of the world for weeks now, and I haven't gotten drunk ONCE yet."

LooneyDM: (Fiera has reds and oranges, Ganut Raum blues and purples, Aleath greens and sky blue)
Ber: (I'm adhering to ALL the houses' colors)

Nessa: (back goes with everything, baby!)

LooneyDM (as guard): "Who are you all?"
Ber: (looks at his skill set)
Ber: (looks at MY skill set. Can't see his)

Short context for this one. Ber is a gnomish beguiler. He's also the only little person in a group of all humans. This makes for very interesting chase scenes, especially when other characters have to carry him for him to keep up.

* Ber rides.
Onala: (I refuse to make horse noises XD )

From a greek themed game with a rotating cast and a rules light system:

How do we fight a hydra? Well when you've got a shiny codpiece you hump it to death.

Britomeda: "Is that the same storm as before?"
Britomeda: "Everyone on tentacle alert!"

Andreas: "Miredos please don't flirt with the sea monsters"
herpicles: "I have it! they're aquatic golddiggers!"

herpicles: "we should totally take watches"
* Miredos takes herpicles' watch

Andreas: "you and your wang!"
* Herscus shushes Andreas with his wang

Andreas: (can andreas hit herscus? or maybe later)
LooneyGM: roll 2d6
dicechan: LooneyGM rolled : 2d6 --> [ 2d6=10 ]{10}
Herscus: (I'm typing while lying down, long day)
Herscus: (Typings a bit off )
LooneyGM: (if you don't want to do damage you can punch him for free)
Andreas: (okay)
* Herpicles attempts to dodge it athletically and keep it out of reach by sticking his iron bar at it
* Andreas punches Herscus for the sandal incident
Herpicles: (16)
* Herscus backflips again
Herpicles: (I keep rolling at least one 6)
Herscus: roll 2d6+4
dicechan: Herscus rolled : 2d6+4 --> [ 2d6=5 ]{9}
Andreas: (you can't roll to dodge my punch)
Herscus: (Like fuck I cant, this is RP ho!)
LooneyGM: (herpicles gets out of the way easily)
Andreas: (YOU HAVE BEEN PUNCHED)
Andreas: (FINE)
Andreas: roll 2d6+100 PUNCH OF DOOM
dicechan: Andreas rolled : 2d6+100 PUNCH OF DOOM --> [ 2d6=8 ]{108}
LooneyGM: The next goes after the singing Miredos
Andreas: (BAM)
Herscus: (Disqualified)
LooneyGM: roll 2d6
dicechan: LooneyGM rolled : 2d6 --> [ 2d6=8 ]{8}
Herscus: (I win)
Herscus: (You take 2 damage)
LooneyGM: (*headdesks*)

That's all for this week folks. Next time around I'll break out the stuff from my current campaigns.

Looney away!

Conventions

Conventions attract all sorts of people. People who make you proud to be geeky. People who leave you in awe. Ordinary people out for a fun time. People who you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. See, ten foot poles have real life applications! I went to Archon this weekend. I will start with the bad, move to the good and silly.
The Bad:
I signed up for a spaghetti western game to try out a new system. Everyone was an iteration of Clint Eastwood. I haven't seen a single Clint Eastwood movie in its entirety for years. Second. I was scheduled to have another game the next day in the morning. The DM never showed up. The masquerade had a few meh entries.
The Good:
I still had fun playing in the spaghetti western game and ended up buying the system. For the game that the DM didn't show another one of the players grabbed Pandemic and those of us that stayed had a grand time playing that game. I purchased Tome of battle, a 3.5 D&D book I've wanted for a while. The masquerade was sweet. One of the sets of costumes was the entire doll cast of 9. I'm pretty sure they won. There was also Silent Hill cosplay, which turned into a dance number featuring thriller. I met quite a few artists and had a goodly time. I'm looking forward to it next year.

Looney DM

Familiars Part 2

How many of us have seen players get a familiar and then completely forget about it except for the bonus it grants them? I'm sure there's at least one in each group for each game played. So do your job as a good DM and make them earn those minor skill bonuses by having them clean their familiar with a fine tooth comb-err toothbrush! This post is coming to you on Thursday night because I'm going to be gone to Archon this weekend. I defy my own schedule! Take that self tyranny! Anyways I hope to return with crazy stories of mad adventure and chasing game developers around the hall with a mop and duct tape while screaming about their insufficiencies (just imagine how insane I'd be if I got drunk!)

Looney out!