Down in the Dungeons

From: ANDOVER_at_delphi.com
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 1997 04:08:55 -0500 (EST)

                  Down in the Dungeons, by James D. Chapin

(True lines from role-playing)

Player: "Send my fire elemental cautiously into the room!" GM: "where does he go?"
Player: "into the middle of the room."
GM (laughing insanely) "Suddenly, a chute opens in the middle of the floor, and the elemental vanishes!"
Player: "Oh, shit!"
Second player: "Can an elemental fall down a hole?" GM: "Sure! (Argument follows)


GM: "The dragon comes back and finds out that some of his treasure is missing! He is VERY angry!"
Player: "But there's so much treasure there! How would he miss just a few pieces?"
GM: "Dragons are very good at counting treasure!" Player: "But there must be SOME chance that he wouldn't miss it!" GM: "OK! I feel generous! There's a ONE per cent chance that he won't see it and you'll get away with no trouble!"
Second player: "Thanks a lot! What do I need? A one on a Die 100?" GM: "Yeah!"
Player (rolls dice) "There! a ONE!"
GM: "Holy shit!"

Player: "A group of heavily armed Black Fang assassins just HAPPEN to be waiting at the bottom of a mountain in the middle of the wilds of Prax for us to come down and then kills my best character with the FIRST shot? WHY are they there?" GM: (Thinks) "Beats me! I just rolled them up on the random events table!"
(Says) "Well, there's a reason they are there, but I can't tell you what it
is."

GM: "A wind begins to blow. Everything falls silent. You see a funnel of air approaching and suddenly, a few hundred feet away, dozens of skeletons and ghosts fall out of the funnel! There are dragon skeletons, broo skeletons, dragonsnail skeletons, human skeletons, all approaching! There's also a giant thirty-foot-tall slavering broo leaping toward you twenty feet at a bound uttering chaotic screams! His name, by the way, is the Avatar of Chaos: he used to serve the evil God Ragnaglar! You're all demoralized unless you can roll POW versus POW! And his POW is 35!"
First player: "I TOLD you he wanted to kill us all!" Second player: "We're all going to die!" Third player: Oh, shut up! You always say that!" GM: "They're all twenty feet closer! What are you going to do?"

GM: "As the ogre rune priest falls down, he invokes his divine intervention!" First player: "What's his chance?"
GM: "Only ten percent. He coming to the Chaos Holy Ground to sacrifice some victims for a better chance to summon Cacodemon." (rolls dice) "An eight! He succeeds! Suddenly a vast flying shape begins to appear above the caravan!" Second player: "We're all going to die!" First player: "You always say that! (to GM) "You're trying to kill us all! GM: "No, I'm not! Gondo Holst just got lucky!" Second player: "You're always lucky! We're all going to die!" GM: "What are you going to do?"
First player: "Myrdal has finished winding his crossbow!" He casts Multimissile on it (rolls dice), succeeds, and shoots!" GM: " Wait a minute! Cacodemon has to finish appearing! Here are his characteristics for this appearance: (reads long list of unpleasant appearance and mighty powers of the ogre god) and concludes with "he bounces all spells up to eight points and has twenty-point skin!" Second player: "We're all going to die!" GM: "OK! Now you can take your actions!" First player (rolls dice) "a THREE! Myrdal's crossbow bolt impales Cacodemon in the (rolls dice again) HEAD for (rolls several dice) thirty-five points of damage!"
GM: "I don't believe it! Cacodemon falls from the sky unconscious! And you say I'M lucky!"
Second player: Let's finish off the rest of the ogres and Cacodemon too while he's unconscious!"
GM: "We're all going to die!"

End of Glorantha Digest V4 #161

WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html

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