Story Thread

[Gabriel]

I enjoyed a couple of stories I recently read in the Cyberpunk 2077 topic. I thought it might be nice to have a topic just for any random gaming stories anyone wants to share.

The Cyberpunk/Shadowrun stories I read were about dick players being handled well by other players. My story I'd like to share isn't a good one like that about situations dealt with well. Instead, it's a story of complete social failure.

----

I was running Rifts. A good chunk of this story is on me. It's definitely not my finest GMing moment.

Rifts was still fairly new at this time in history. I think the corebook, first sourcebook, and Vampire Kingdoms were all that existed for the game at this point. That explains why when everyone made characters, they all made characters from the corebook. We had Palladium fairly down by this point, having played Robotech for about 3 years by then, so character creation didn't take too long. Oh, I was early 20s at this point. The players were all over 18. So there's no excuse for any of this stuff.

One player made an Operator. He told me he had an idea of scavenging and improving equipment like a post apocalyptic mad scientist. He got enough combat in Robotech, so he wanted to play a support character. OK.

The next player played a Cyber Knight. He told me he felt the code of honor thing for the Cyber Knights was stupid, so he was ignoring it. I don't think he even named this character.

The next player played a Juicer. He told me he wanted to be the best at combat and he didn't care about role playing at all. I informed him that since he was a Juicer that meant he was a walking dead man. He prophetically replied, "It won't matter, this game won't last that long anyway."

All the warnings were right there. I saw them. I chose to pretend they didn't exist.

Anyway, I gave them a refurbished Coalition APC from the corebook. I said it had been a wreck which the Operator had restored. Now they wandered the wasteland in search of adventure. I thought of the setup as like Ark II or Damnation Alley. I also had a Dragon Hatchling tag along because I thought it would be fun.

(There was probably more than a little bit of GMPC in that Dragon Hatchling, as I often misremember this story as a game I played where I was playing said Hatchling.)

To start off, I said they had been travelling a while, and there was an odd rattling or knocking sound coming from the APC's engine. It probably would be a good idea to stop and have the Operator check it. My idea was that the Operator would get to test out his skills, tweak the APC a bit with a few ideas he already had, and the two combat characters would go scout the area, and find a scene of a battle thus kicking off the scenario.

Instead, what happened was the Operator started working, and the other two characters just hung around literally comparing the sizes of their guns.

At this point I should mention that the Juicer player had some kind of recently formed animosity towards the Operator player. I don't know why. They had been cordial just the week before. From my perspective, just suddenly they had issues with each other. Well, Juicer player decides he's going to bring this dispute in game.

I would imagine most people have seen this kind of thing happen, where someone gets so passive aggressive that they start doing shit in game, and then say they're not being disruptive because it's just in the game. This Juicer player was doing this in spades. I don't recall exactly what he was doing, but he was harrassing the Operator player hard. This was getting the Operator player pissed off. An in-game fight started.

The fight was quick. As GM, I told them to either play the game or go outside. The Cyber Knight player was interested at this point and was having his character observe. I guess I was hoping the Cyber Knight might jump in and be a force of justice or something. That definitely wasn't his intent, but I foolishly didn't recognize it at that point. Anyway, the Operator kept on trying to work. The Juicer was asking odd questions like if the APC ran on gas, or what they used to cook with, generally asking questions surrounding the idea of ignitable fuel.

I don't recall the exact details. The Juicer declared he subdued the Operator and set him on fire. This started a lot of screaming.

I told the Juicer to quit his shit. He replied that he was just screwing around and wasn't serious. I told him to get out if he just wanted to fight, and he said he really wanted to play. He was done screwing around, honestly.

Yeah...

We started up again. Then the Juicer started saying the Operator had been healed after being burned and now he was nude and hairless with fresh baby pink skin. Yes, those were nearly his exact words and he really dwelt on these details. The Operator declared he was attacking the Juicer, and things got stupid again.

Still being an idiot and behaving like this was an in-game issue, I had the Dragon Hatchling grab the Operator and try to fly him away to take him somewhere safe. The Operator player didn't like this, so he shot the Dragon. It didn't inflict any considerable damage, but the Dragon felt it and dropped him.

That was when the Juicer and Cyber Knight both declared they were using the Operator for target practice as he fell.

Now the Cyber Knight player was talking about how the Operator was nothing more than bloody burning mist splattering on the ground. Then the two started talking about killing the "chicken" (the Dragon).

I had the Dragon fly away in fear. If these two had so coldly murdered their "friend" then the dragon wanted no part of them and was scared by them. The Cyber Knight and the Juicer went back to trying to figure out what to do. The Operator player just sat there and fumed.

Frustrated that this game had been completely destroyed and I had allowed it to happen, I declared they heard mechanized units approaching. The Juicer and CyberKnight decided to hop back in the APC and drive out of there. However, it wouldn't start. I reminded them they had been having engine troubles, and allowing the Operator to work on fixing the problem had been the entire reason they stopped.

Then a Coalition Patrol came out of the woods, and blasted the APC to atoms.

The Operator started laughing at them, and talking shit to the Juicer player. Then the Juicer player said something like "you're a faggot" or something like that. The Operator player dove at the Juicer player and they were in a real fight. I grabbed my books and left as they fought. The Cyber Knight player stayed and was laughing and cheering them as they broke the coffee table and I walked out the door.

--
Addendum:
This was at someone's apartment. The apartment was pre-furnished and the coffee table being destroyed was just one of many things that flushed the renter's deposit down the drain. None of the players I mention in my story were the guy who lived at the apartment. I don't recall the apartment renter actually playing this particular session or even being present. I don't know why we were all there but the guy who lived there wasn't. Maybe he was in the game and I just don't remember. It has been close to 30 years now.

 

[tenbones]

So there I was... I'd been GMing my own CP2020 tournament I'd written (80-pages!!) and I found myself at 1am standing around, just having finished my first 6-hr session. It was only the end of day one. A friend of mine was with me, and out of nowhere this geeky stork of a guy (that could have been Dwight Schrute's brother) comes up to me and says "Hey we're running an AD&D game trying to promote this new setting and we're testing it out."

And I'm like... "So?"

He responds, a little offput by me. "Wellll we could use some players. Come check it out."

I looked at him unconvinced, "What is it? What are you running?"

"It's called Spelljammer! It's D&D in spac..."

I cut him off, "SPELLJAMMER??? That dumb shit? Didn't that come out last year? Dude I dunno, it looked pretty dumb. It's been sitting on my shelf this whole time."

He says "Look, just come try it. You'll like it! What else have you got going on?"

I looked at my friend, who nodded and shrugged. So I said... what the hell? Why not? And off we went.

When we got to the room - I noticed there was a small crowd outside. No unusual for OrcCon at 1am... lots of weird shit went on in the late hours back then. But it seemed like they were rubber-necking into the room. The Stork was walking up and down the halls calling for more players, and I just rolled my eyes thinking "Jesus... what have I gotten myself into?"

So I sit down and I'm looking around the tables, these other guys were cracking jokes - they apparently all knew one another. First thing I noticed was no one had any books. Not book in sight. Then the GM sat down - it was the Stork. He smiled and rolled out a battle map. That's when I noticed everyone at the table was wearing retailer or staff badges (myself included) - and the Stork's name was "Skip Williams".

I did a quick look around "Bill Slavicek", and a few other names I remembered from Dragon Magazine. And I was like... holy fuck, the Sage himself is my GM??? Holy fuck!?!?!? Some guy started patrolling the group, as we played, with a camera.

Skip brought a few things with him. His battlemat, and a BIG felt bag full of plastic toys, minis, and rubber insects. Inside was his dice and a marker. That's IT. He started handing out pre-gens and quickly drawing on the map, and just dove in. No reference material, no books, no nothing.

Let me just interject something here. This is circa 1989. I was no rookie GM, or player. I'd spent *years* in the saddle, multiple times a week GMing - sometimes multiple times a DAY. I knew what I was doing. Skip made me feel like I'd just started over. I learned more in that one session that I'd learned in the last half-decade. EFFORTLESS. He kept everything contextual. Everything just flowed naturally.

I was given a... /glance at the character sheet - "Wesley Elkstomper - Dwarven Berserker". Oh yeeaaahhh! So I just dove in. And play like a glorious berserker I did! Then I started rolling natural 1's back to back to back... my final roll being a charging attack into a group of Neogi and Umberhulks... and I rolled 1.

I got so pissed I snatched up the d20 and hurled it out of the room and hit some bystander in the head. Everyone was dying laughing. And they took a picture while it was happening and put it in Polyhedron.

All said - I became a Spelljammer superfan after that convention. Shout out to Skip Williams too... dude was amazing.

 

[The Butcher]

One player made an Operator. He told me he had an idea of scavenging and improving equipment like a post apocalyptic mad scientist. He got enough combat in Robotech, so he wanted to play a support character. OK.

I feel sorry for this guy already.

The next player played a Cyber Knight. He told me he felt the code of honor thing for the Cyber Knights was stupid, so he was ignoring it. I don't think he even named this character.

The next player played a Juicer. He told me he wanted to be the best at combat and he didn't care about role playing at all. I informed him that since he was a Juicer that meant he was a walking dead man. He prophetically replied, "It won't matter, this game won't last that long anyway."

I told the Juicer to quit his shit.

Then a Coalition Patrol came out of the woods, and blasted the APC to atoms.

The Operator started laughing at them, and talking shit to the Juicer player. Then the Juicer player said something like "you're a faggot" or something like that. The Operator player dove at the Juicer player and they were in a real fight. I grabbed my books and left as they fought. The Cyber Knight player stayed and was laughing and cheering them as they broke the coffee table and I walked out the door.

--
Addendum:
This was at someone's apartment. The apartment was pre-furnished and the coffee table being destroyed was just one of many things that flushed the renter's deposit down the drain. None of the players I mention in my story were the guy who lived at the apartment. I don't recall the apartment renter actually playing this particular session or even being present. I don't know why we were all there but the guy who lived there wasn't. Maybe he was in the game and I just don't remember. It has been close to 30 years now.

What a magnificent clusterfuck. Thank you for sharing. Ah, to be young and daft... do tell us what happened to these people.

 

[Gabriel]

No, I was not even worthy of the cardboard viking helmet.

What a magnificent clusterfuck. Thank you for sharing. Ah, to be young and daft... do tell us what happened to these people.

Cyberknight is the same guy who GMed Robotech for the crew and then told us he only played with us because we were such losers and it made him feel superior. After college he went on to have transient job after job. Every place he worked for seemed to start doing layoffs shortly after he would get there, and he was always laid off in the first round. I think he's a teacher now.

I don't know what happened to the Juicer player. He was our Shadowrun GM. He was responsible for throwing a lot of wild parties at the time. He was a total nerd like all of us, but he found his path to social acceptance by throwing big parties full of booze, drugs, and debauchery at this home. He moved away, never kept touch with anyone, and I never had the inclination to look him up.

The Operator player... I've heard from him. I won't go into anything other than he never really found his way in life. That's my perception anyway.

 

[Edgewise]

I have a minor disaster story from a couple of years ago.

I managed to wrangle a group of disparate players from various groups of friends to play online; I would be running Tower of the Stargazer, a classic LotFP adventure. One of the players was a total newbie and the rest were varying degrees of experienced. Without much problem, the group made their way into the tower and found one of the hidden trapdoors to the basement from the first room.

In the basement, one of the rooms has a bunch of treasure chests that are mostly filled with garbage (this is Lamentations, of course). One interesting trinket from one of the chests is a small glass globe with a miniature demonic idol inside. As they discover this, one of the experienced players says "OK, nobody break the glass globe."

The newbie player picked up the glass globe and threw it on the ground.

​

After a brief battle in which the party easily dispatched the demon that materialized, they were forced to double back and take a new path. They came then to a door blocked by several iron bars. One of the party members got to work on this with his crowbar.

While this was happening, the player who warned everyone not to break the globe sent me an anonymous chat: "I get in position behind [the newbie]."

OK, I thought, it looked like he was going to pick his pocket or something. I chortled to myself; low-key in-party conflict can be amusing. The key phrase being "low-key."

Well, experienced player had something else in mind. The next chat said "I stab him in the kidneys with my dagger."

I blinked wildly, but it felt too late to intervene. OK, I rolled the dice and the experienced PC managed to inflict a non-lethal wound on the newbie. The newbie drew his own dagger and a full-on in-party fight broke out. I chuckled for a round or two, but it quickly became apparent that the experienced player was not just teaching a lesson - he wanted to take out the "weak link." He wasn't backing down.

After a couple rounds of nobody dying but coming close, the player working on the door smoothly pivoted around and chucked the crowbar at the experienced PC. He rolled the dice - a hit for max damage! The would-be party-killer was incapacitated by the blow and went to the ground. Without pausing, the crowbar-chucker walked over to his prone form and started rooting through his belonging to take possession of all his healing potions.

The player of the now-unconscious character lost his shit. After yelling a bit about how the backstab should have succeeded and being told he was lucky to still be alive, he unceremoniously logged off the chat. My first virtual table flip.

Later, I found out this friend had real anger issues. It's a long story, but I hadn't seen him for a while and he'd gone full internet rager, joining the MRA movement and Gamergate and all that lovely stuff. Strangely enough, he expected to return for the next session - mind you, this was the first session, and he didn't know any of the other players. I had to let him know that it wasn't going to work.

 

[The Butcher]

No, I was not even worthy of the cardboard viking helmet.

Cyberknight is the same guy who GMed Robotech for the crew and then told us he only played with us because we were such losers and it made him feel superior. After college he went on to have transient job after job. Every place he worked for seemed to start doing layoffs shortly after he would get there, and he was always laid off in the first round. I think he's a teacher now.

I don't know what happened to the Juicer player. He was our Shadowrun GM. He was responsible for throwing a lot of wild parties at the time. He was a total nerd like all of us, but he found his path to social acceptance by throwing big parties full of booze, drugs, and debauchery at this home. He moved away, never kept touch with anyone, and I never had the inclination to look him up.

The Operator player... I've heard from him. I won't go into anything other than he never really found his way in life. That's my perception anyway.

Suspected as much. I should be disheartened to confirm my hypothesis that your players were probably responding to or attempting to sorting out Real Life Shit™ but it'd be hypocritical of me to deny that my enjoyment of your story has been slightly boosted. Thank you for your feedback and by God I hope you've had better players since then.