True, add a mix of people together and surpising things can happen, but sometimes the dice sometimes can inspire us to really jump off the track. A not too quick example from a Runequest campaign Jeff Kyer ran years ago.
We were in Duck Point, the lunars were building a new temple, as part of a forum. I was playing a brother and sister Orlanthi rebel types, one of the other players was running a power mad sorceror's apprentice. The player was either incredibly lucky, or had loaded dice (we never did figure out which). The sister was determined to muck up the dedication of the temple, and didn't mind blowing up a souless sorceror in the process. We'd encountered a type of fungus that we'd been informed had chaotic properties under the light of the full red moon, and after various acts of deviousness she'd aquired some, and sprinkled its spores over the high altar shortly before the dedication ceremony. She'd also helped the sorceror aquire some goodies to boost his summoning of the mondo power spirit that he wanted to bind, and had convinced him that doing his summoning in one of the construction shacks near the temple, during the dedication ceremony, when all that magic would be flowing, would be a good idea. (all of this arrangements took place in the background over several scenarios). Her reasoning was if he succeeded, he'd be indebted to her and she could use his power against the lunars. If he blew himself up, well, one less souless sorceror in the world. And hopefully the chaotic spores would do something fun to the high priest that would show the world how chaotic the red moon really was, and maybe it would even disrupt the ceremony. (by the way, suitably awful things happened to her later on for her presumption, but she always was somewhat doomed).
So the sorceror roles a critical on his summon role. Back in Runequest, that meant that you get something, but maybe something much bigger than what you were looking for, that may or may not even be of the same type.
I'm sure Jeff had something planned. But he sat there for a few seconds with this odd look on his face, then described events something like this:
"You feel something, something huge, try and come through your summons. You get a feeling of a thought "hmmm, too small. But what is that there?" Then you hear screams from the temple. Then you see tentacles throwing bodies over the top of the forum. One lands near you, it looks like it used to be one of the "Immortals" (the crack lunar troops in town)." Later, we found that an aspect of cacodaemon had manifested itself in the priest (who was also the son of the local lunar bigwig). I don't think Jeff had _all_that_ planned ahead of time.
The whole scenario was driven by my ideas as a player, and were not at all part of the main story arc of the campaign as Jeff had planned it. But the real, "Oh my god what just happened!" came because of the die role. The dice basically gave him permission to go way beyond the bounds of reasonable. Whatever he had planned would have been exciting, no doubt. What happened ended up being memorable in a whole other way.
(looking back, I can sure say that our understanding of Glorantha has changed a lot since then!)
Regards;
Bryan
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