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This one happened a few months ago. The 5 of us (a sorcerer, myself, an archer, a thief, a rogue, and a dwarven fighter) were investigating inside a military fortress regarding some new laws outlawing dwarves from a city. We found the captain's office, and he caught us going through his desk. We slowly backed out of the room, wishing to avoid a fight with the obviously more powerful man.
Within a few moments, however, several guards and the guard captain had showed up, and we seriously feared for our lives. The fight started. While our archer killed one guard close-range, I prepared my touch of disruption spell. Knowing I couldn't kill the guard captain behind me, I decided to incapacitate him to the best of my abilities, to be dealt with later. I spun, dropped to the ground, and grabbed his crotch, trying to damage him. Nothing happened (a chainmail codpiece...Just my luck). He quickly proceeded to cut off my hand. Being a low-level, sorcerer, I was very near death. I managed to tourniquet my wound, however, and slowed my death a bit. On my next turn, I was ready for something drastic. With the cry of a dying man, I lunged forward and head-butted the guard captain. Amazingly, I have no idea how I managed to roll a total of 254, and I did enough damage to seriously injure the captain, putting him into a near-comatose state.
Yes! I still had a few rounds before I would die. What happened, next, however, was insane beyond all reason. Our archer had made a comment as to the GM's physical...prowess, and he ended up being defecated on by a guard, and he would soon suffocate. Having nothing to lose, I gripped my staff securely with my good arm and charged the guard. My aim was true, and the staff traveled through the guard's chest and stopped his heart! We still laugh about this fight even now, and I showed them that sorcerers aren't *totally* useless.
We just started a short Spacemaster campaign and our small party has a small ship of which my character is the captain. While the others are one Human, one Falanar, and one Tulgar (Fox) he is an Oort, so pretty small and thus not taken too serious by the rest. (By the way, this is a story about how nasty players/characters can be and how important skills can be!)
Now, our ship is a small transporter which is almost falling apart and I am merely the captain because I own the ship and I am the only one to get the contracts with new customers. Unfortunately however my character has absolutely no idea about the technical details of the ship, not a glimpse. Unusual for an Oort you say, well hilariously uncomfortable for me as a player I say!
The standard ship of our type has a cloaking device which in our case the party sold to get some equipment like robot parts (the hobby of the Tulgar-engineer), weaponry (for the Human-gunslinger), and better interfaces (for the Falanar-pilot). Because they knew that the captain would never have agreed to that they sold it without his knowing and still keep him in the belief that they have it installed.
So, every time I order them to cloak the ship, they flick a switch, a small light in the screen indicates that it is turned on and an even smaller device creates the humming sound we all know from Star Trek and I can't get a good enough Lie Perception roll to notice it!
It's so unfair! (And I just hope that one day we get blown out of the sky because of that!)
It was not the best day for Yurian the Dwarven fighter. Sergeant Soeander was trying to recover from a stunning blow and Jes the Healer had just fallen with a broken leg. Yurian looked over at the diminutive Dabbler, Hazard. Hazard was even smaller than Yurian, some odd whim of the gods had made the Human Dabbler a midget. A warrior and a midget against two iron skeletons. It was definitely not going to be a good day.
"Get out!" Yurian yelled at Hazard. The Dabbler didn't need to be told twice. His crossbow was not very effective against skeletons. Hazard joined the gravely wounded Healer in the hallway outside the room. To one side was the way out, to the other was a pit, which Darwin the Rogue had fallen into. Darwin was probably the safest member of the expedition.
Yurian hefted his bastard sword and continued his assault against the skeletons. One of them managed to get past the Dwarf and was headed out of the room. Catching the movement out of the corner of his eye, Yurian could only hope that Hazard or Jes could stop it. His blade rang against the ironbound bones of his opponent. He was wearing the creature down, but the monster's counterattack smashed into his chest and suddenly Yurian could not breathe. He could only cough up blood. His world swam as he fell to the ground. From his prone position, he could barely feel the second mace strike hitting him.
Through the haze of red, Yurian could see Hazard trying to hold lead skeleton back with his dagger. Another attempt at breathing failed, Yurian knew he was dead but he was not going to go alone. Summoning every ounce of resolve in his compact frame, he stood and took the three faltering steps to the back of the lead skeleton. Hazard howled as the skeleton's mace smacked into him, snapping a rib.
With a two handed grip on his bastard sword, Yurian sliced the skeleton's legs out from under him. At last, the skeleton crashed to the floor in a heap of bones. Yurian heard the sounds of Soeander's armored frame falling behind him and he knew that at least Hazard and Jes would have a chance to escape. The dwarf then fell, heart and lungs that were destroyed a minute ago finally betraying the Dwarf.
(Postscript: Hazard and Darwin did survive, but Jes' leg injury had severed an important artery and Soeander was killed just as Yurian was breathing his last. Yurian had made a double open-ended roll to be able to maneuver while "Dead In 6 Rounds".)
Earlier this year I started playing Rolemaster with some friends. (I started gaming back in the 80’s and just recently restarted. My first session was with 2 people I knew, one was the GM (engaged to the one playing my character’s sister) & 2 I had never met before this session, a married couple.
The Party:
Azryal (Me): Brash Half-elf Dabbler with sticky-fingers
on a quest to find his human father/heritage.
Gizelle: Full Elf. Sister of Azryal; she took him as a
devotion flaw (protect him from harm).
Darrin: High-man Male Justicar, played to the hilt.
Aldaria: Human Female Healer who seems to always roll open
ended healing skills.
Borin: NPC Dwarf fighter.
This is a low-magic world, and magic use and users are not very welcome.
So my character sets off with a reluctant sister to search for his father. I soon discover the joys of Rolemaster failures, and my character gets a nickname: Clueless Boy. It seems whenever I needed to make an Awareness/Alertness roll, I botched. Badly.
Example—Gizelle sees the remains of a caravan ambush; I see the pretty flowers in the field. “Sooo pretty. Gosh, pretty flowers. I could just sit & look at them.” I did until “sis” would realize I am not following her. “Hey where’s my brother?”
So eventually we get to the city where we’ll meet, in an Inn of course, those who would round out our merry party. Our first encounter with each other went like this.
Darrin sees Azryal, described as having an unearthly beauty (110 appearance), fails HIS roll and assumes Azryal’s unnatural beauty comes from being an “evil power.” With a great cry he begins spell casting to fry my character, only to botch it, and fries himself instead!
The good people in the Inn were already at their wits’ end—two elves show up in the podunk town, a fight starts and it seems a big armored fighter has just been struck down by one of them who didn’t even lift a finger. Most the patrons have fled by the time the “fight” started and finished.
Azryal proudly taunts the human “That’s what you get for messing with Elves!”
Zoom. Everyone left is gone. (City watch is on its way though).
I decide to help myself to any coins Darrin may have had, after all, he attacked me andis unconscious. Azryal pretends to help him up, but I fail the pickpocket roll & the scene is described to Gizelle—“You see your brother mugging and attempting to loot the human. He’s doing a really bad job of it too.”
"What do you think you're doing Azryal?" "Sis"
asks.
"Umm.... helping him up? Right?"
“New rule Azryal: you don’t steal. Period. He'd better
not be missing anything either.”
So that’s how it began, I kept blowing my awareness rolls. Clueless boy indeed.
BTW: A little later Darrin blew a detect lie roll (open ended), when arguing with Gizelle, to put himself in another stupor.
Hi there I´m Gregory from germany, playing RM for abut ten years now, and we had a few good moments one of which I´d like to share with you. This is dated in the early nineties in a long long term campaign consisting of Starkad the Faun (GM character and therefore always the ultimate solution to anything). Ukpyr the Half-Troll Bashkar (the first solution to anything approaching us in a suspicious way, i.e. approaching us), a deranged she-priest we carried around more than she walked, a mentalist, a thief, my little swordsman and Fizban "Lightning-Ball" AAHz (that's his name.)
As it happened (once again) we were down in a dungeon of some sort and as it happens to be underground, it was very, very dark. As some of us couldn´t see very well, our Archmage Fizban was so kind to cast "Projected Light". That is, he wanted to be so kind, because he started rolling downwards and downwards till he ended up with an 375ESF. But he didn't die, it was much worse. Imagine a party, cautiously and wary taking their feeble steps through the darkness one by one, a muttering of powerful and ancient words in a language the normal brain can never understand short sound of internal pain, coma, and a Lvl 12 Archmage emitting light from EVERY opening of his precious elven body. Geez there was laughter... but here it comes: What you guess did his friendly and loyal comrades do?We sold him at the marketplace as a sophisticated Lantern. We're still laughing our brains out!
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