Tales from srentiln

[Srentiln]

Because I have nothing better to do and there's nothing I'm interested in watching on right now, I decided that I'm going to start posting some of my memories of gaming that I find fun/funny. Let's start with a Runescape war clan moment:

Starting with some background, I was a quester/skiller in the game for a very long time before I decided to give the pvp end of the game a serious shot. I found a clan named Tunescape (TS) ran by a couple of people who were in their local orchestra. Having been a band geek myself, I felt more of a draw towards them than other clans. After having been a member for a while, I read the noticeboard and find that we are going to be fighting clan CK. I had a little laugh to myself, as my screenname at the time was Iamck (i am CK, my main account was not my first because I had decided to put perma-death rules on myself my first account...which lasted 2 days).

Here we are deep in the wilderness, standing in the typical death-dot that made it take longer to target an individual. After out typical barrage of "J00 wanna sum Toona?" (still don't get why that was our thing...) they come charging in and start making their calls.

"ck on baja!"

while we start making our calls, I decide to have some fun with it with things like, "but ck on his team!" As with the standard tactics of the time, both sides lost their lowest-leveled players pretty fast. Having been playing for as long as I had, I had a combat level over 100, which made me one of the last targets. Finally, the call came out:

"ck on ck!"

It was now my turn to tank it, which is probably the most fun part of a clan war at the time considering you were actually doing something more often. I'm using the typical tactics of hugging trees and getting people trapped on the other side of obstacles for the first few moments, and they are continuing the call. I get a bit bored and decide to have some fun again.

"ck on ck!"
"I'm trying! I just can't catch up with myself!"

wish I could remember a bit more, but I do remember that we all had fun with the coincidence. I didn't get to tank for too long (I was a balanced-stats 100, not a defense pure), so I lost a set of armor. However, that was definitely the most fun I had in a RS clan war.

 

[Srentiln]

Now for a tale from my first tabletop RPG campaign.

System: SpaceMaster 2
Setting: Far future. Humanity has united under a single empire and colonized the cosmos. The empire has sole control of the production of Andrium, a substance that allows for faster than light travel and has a shelf-life of 100-days (no matter how you store it, after 100 days it goes inert).
Intro story: After years of prosperous trading through the warp gate (a bridge between galaxies), the link is suddenly severed. The last message that made it through the gate, "Gideon E is lost!" Immediately, a generation ship is sent out (basic idea of a generation ship is that the crew and their offspring ad-infinitum continue to travel to the destination until it is reached) to build a new gate so the meaning of the message can be learned. It is 50 years later, and the gate is back online. The military is recruiting Merchant Marines, merchants under the employ of the military who can only sell to the military. The mission of the Merchant Marines is to go through the gate, investigate what happened, and salvage whatever scrap metals they can find. In exchange for volunteering, each crew is provided a ship from the military boneyards. Each ship is the bare minimum of what can be called space-worthy.

I came into the group after they had reached the other side of the gate and learned that it is under permanent quarantine until this side is deemed safe. (in order to make my addition more logical, I made my character a member of a family that the group "convinced" to become their business partners). During our adventures, we visited Gideon E, the trading-hub of this galaxy in order to learn what happened. We found a planet littered with radioactive hotspots, the ruins of vast cities that once held large populations, and a deep trench carved into the planet from pole to pole. This tale takes place after we find this.

To give a better understanding of the reasoning of the decisions of the group, I have to tell you about the stats in this system. More specifically, the fact that one of the stats is empathy. Just so there is no misinterpretation of it, empathy is "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another." Stats in the SpaceMaster 2 system are percentile-based, and you are allowed to re-roll anything below a certain number. Of the entire party, I had the highest empathy with a resounding 38 (which could increase to a max of 42 after several levels). That brings us to the actual events.

We decide to check another planet in the old charts, correcting for stellar drift etc. We find a planet where ships have been stripped of their reactors in order to provide power because, without access to Andrium, inter-planetary travel would take hundreds of years. After getting a better understanding of what's happened over the past 50 years on this planet, our party's first thought is to trade limited supplies of half-dead Andrium in exchange for two large cargo ships after their reactors are re-installed, a huge markup on the base price, and a percentage of all trade profits related to the use of said Andrium. All this while knowing that the central trade hub of this galaxy is beyond dead. In order to speed up the acquisition of our cargo ships, myself and another player stay on the planet to oversee the installation while the others go to fill up on valuable scrap in orbit around Gideon E before negotiating a discount on Andrium that is nearly dead because "it's just sitting here going to waste". While they are returning, I notice that some trade ships are taking off. I ask about their destination, which of course is Gideon E. After some internal debate on whether a 38% empathy character would re-direct them to the colony founded by the generation ship or just get our ships and cut our losses, I decide to remain in silence. By the time both my crewmates get back, the merchant ships are almost back as well...with reports of the conditions on Gideon E. We have 1 cargo ship in working order, and the government official wanted a word with the people with whom he struck the deal with (thankfully, I was not in that discussion). Realizing what was about to happen as those two went to meet with him (thinking that a special personal shield is going to get them out of it), I signaled to the others that now would be a good time to cut our losses. We take our original ship, and the one functioning cargo ship, and get into orbit.

Now, on a 38% empathy, I'm not quite so emotionally detached that I will just abandon my compatriots, so when the others propose that we get them back, I don't hesitate to agree. We track them to an armored prison transport, reunite in our smaller craft, and race to it. We use our magnetic grapples (intended for bringing the orbital scrap on board) to flip the transport, land, and start our rescue mission. I have a velocity shield, which gives me good protection against ballistic weapons such as my medium assault rifle. However, the guards are using energy rifles, which are best handled my crew mates in full power armor (they had quite the adventure before I joined the game...). I'm standing in front of the truck, keeping an eye on the driver while the others deal with the guards in the back. They dispatch the civil servants, free our friends, and as I'm trying to coax the driver out (because I want to take his weapon, but I play it as wanting to use him to block attempts at reporting our actions), one of the two former prisoners jumps in our ship, and starts powering up the ship-board plasma weapons. At this point, I'm actually a little shocked and am trying to convince the guy out of character that we should take a prisoner. He wasn't having any of it. I give the driver one last chance by pointing up at the cannon before booking it out of the line of fire.

We leave the planet, and the game session ends with our Gm telling us he now has no idea what kind of game we want to play (apparently, the adventure shifted a number of times before I joined). The only thing that was going to prevent us from becoming labeled as pirates was the fact that the roll to make contact with the officer we report to failed and there was an event that would be unfolding the next play session that would prevent further attempts.

I think it's kind of funny when you accidentally derail the entire plot line because you were playing to your stats XD.

 

[Srentiln]

New tale, same group I played spacemaster with.

System: D20 Modern, Urban Arcana
Setting: After learning about the shadow layer of our reality (basically, all mythic creatures are real, just from another universe. Sometimes they slip into ours. You can only see their true selves either if you are in a shadow pocket or are aware of their existence), we were recruited to a group that deals with the more dangerous creatures. We were sent to investigate a disturbance at the warehouse district and found an utterly bloody mess and a collar pointing us to a bio-research institute. After a questionable interaction with a scientist, we find ourselves locked inside the lab...with a velociraptor that has been brought out of stasis to deal with us.

We're talking Jurassic Park style, not the feathered predator more modernly known. We're all trying to fight this thing, and getting low on hp. For whatever reason, I go f' it and decide that I'm going to try to ride the thing to give my teammates a chance to hit it while it's distracted with me. Instead, I end up against the opposite wall with next to no hp as the others finally start hitting. After we've dealt with one, we find out that there are three more.

Later, we track the other three into the sewers. Remembering how difficult the one was to fight, we take no chances. We stock up on grenades and C4, and one of the guys gets an anti-vehicle sniper rifle. We set up the C4 for an ambush, our sniper is prone on the ground aiming from between my legs as we start to see the raptors approach. We draw them closer by firing at them until they are within the trap. The C4 is set off, the street above collapses down on top of them. Our commander is NOT happy with us (this is supposed to be a secret organization and we just took out a huge section of the road with explosives). The group leader just calmly replies to the ranting and raving, "Well, you sent out your newest recruits to deal with raptors on their own."

Probably not as fun without the experience of being in the moment, but it was great at the time.

 

[Srentiln]

This one isn't really a gaming one, more of the birth of a really fun game. 2 out of 3 participants really enjoy it XD

One day, my mom, sister, and myself were walking out of a store. My mom was between my sister and I as we started heading for the car. I looked over to my sister, got a big grin, and said, "mom pong!" Thus, the game of Mom Pong was born. All the way to the car, she got bounced between the two of us while saying how rotten we were for picking on our mother like this