Just Dumb Things (Vampire: The Masquerade Edition)

So i haven’t done one of these in a while, and the recent appearance of the Vampire: The Masquerade 20 year edition showing up on Humble Bundle brought up a wonderful horror story of how things got screwed up playing Vampire, that one time in college.  Now this story does end with a werewolf getting pinwheel kicked into a silver chandelier by a demonically possessed Pope, but that’s much closer to the end of the story than the beginning, and we generally try to start at the beginning of the story.  There are two interesting Gaming Issues we’re going to tackle with this one, the misunderstood expectations, and the dreaded  GMPC.  So Buckle up and hear the story of who we got trapped in Oklahoma City, as an unsuspecting group of neonate vampires.  

Just Dumb Things (D & D 3.5 part 1 of many)

We’re back with another episode of Just Dumb Things, where i tell you a gaming horror story and attempt to show some errors in games so that you can in fact avoid making similar mistakes in your own games.  You can learn from our examples, or you can make them yourself.  It’s entirely up to you and how you want to run your life.  Today we’re going to start with another fine example of things that you probably shouldn’t do when you set up your game.  We’re playing 3.5 edition Dungeons and Dragons, near the end of its life.  We’ve got access to most of the books and we’re running an assortment of crazy dumb things.  

Just Dumb Things (Oriental Adventures edition)

Hey Game Fans, we’re back with another article in this fun series about gamer horror stories and what happens when things go terribly sideways.  Today’s article is all about the Oriental adventures book for Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition.  (For those of you keeping score at home, this is the version that uses Legend of the Five Rings Rokugan as its core setting).  There’s a bunch of stories that i could mine for this article, but today we’re going to talk about how the game died in a most violently splendid fashion.  

Just Dumb Things #5 (Shadowrun edition)

As it happens in college, a friend of mine says to our college gaming club, "Let's Play Shadowrun you fucks"  The kid had never run Shadowrun before, and I tried to explain the complexity of the game, but he was insistent.  I said sure, and so did 7 other people.  So we've got a new GM running a game for a group of players with a mix of skill level and experience with the game.  I volunteered to be the Decker, so that no one else had to try to interact with that particularly interesting subsystem.  Because of the edition, I also picked up the rigger job description and made sure that I had an idea of what I was doing.  My friends decided to make a mish mash of wonderful character concepts and tropes, and we ended up with the following

Just Dumb Things Intermission part 1

Haven't posted in this topic in a while, but wanted to keep you guys in the loop. 

Just Dumb Things Episode 4

We’re back with another episode of our long running show, Just Dumb Things.  The Premise of our show is that our host will recount gamer horror stories for the amusement and laughter of the people watching at home.  Today’s episode features one of our favorite games in the universe (I realize we use that term a lot, but we had a lot of games that we really enjoyed at various points in our lifetime), Spycraft, from Alderac Entertainment Group.  

Just Dumb Things, Episode 2

So we’re back with another one of our gamer horror story moments.  Today’s trainwreck is brought to you by Catalyst Game Labs, and one of  their flagships, Battletech.  I’ve run this game several times for a variety of groups, and the constant players that crop up are delightfully hard to manage.  I’ll give you some brief highlights before digging into this particularly epic storytime.
 

Just Dumb Things, Episode 1?

So this is a quick hit/gamer story about the time we lost an entire party of adventurers because our Dungeon Master didn’t think things through very well.