D&D: THAT person in the group

[kickyourass]

Well my group doesn't really have a 'That guy' we're more a 'that group'. It's mostly because our DM actively encourages us to try silly crap (If you try something crazy and it works you'll probably get something cool out of it), people have thrown trees as ranged weapons (they missed the monster and hit ME), people have been pulled in half, one guy got his soul eaten and came back by exploding out of the guy's stomache.
This kind of stuff is more the rule then the exception, a week actually stands out if some variety of nonsense DOESN'T happen.

 

[SmileyBat]

I have 2 moments like that:

Spoiler: Roleplaying Shenanigans

I've been that guy before. I don't even mean to, it just kinda happens sometimes. There was one game where I was playing the rogue (as usual) and was being introduced to the party. The group barbarian was currently in a fistfight with a caravan guard to negotiate a free ride (not sure how that came about) and as part of the rules of the fistfight, the barbarian had to take off all his magic gear. Me, playing the rogue who was not QUITE yet affiliated with the party, decided that I was going to steal the barbarian's magic axe.

You see, the PLAN was that the barb wasn't going to leave town without his best weapon in tow, and as a result the party would eventually hunt me down (it was a small town, it wouldn't have taken long even with a lot of successful hide checks on my part), give me a slap on the wrist, and I'd offer my services as a sneaky bastard in return for not getting my face cleaved in by an angry barbarian.

What HAPPENED was I figured I'd need a proper distraction to ensure the actual guards wouldn't be paying attention to me, and so used my flint and steel to discreetly light a small fire beside a house. The DM made a few rolls, and then the house caught fire. Then another one. And another. Soon about a fourth of the town is in flames, the barbarian has landed a crit while his opponent was distracted by shouts of "fire! Fire!" and accidentally caved his skull in, and the guards have caught me red handed when I made my move for the axe and I'm currently running like hell in the exact opposite direction the DM intended for us to go. The group hears about me from the guard's shouting, and splits up to help catch my dumb ass.

5 minutes into the game, and I completely derailed the campaign. All because I wanted to roleplay my class.

Spoiler: The Tale of Bittles The Gnome

Another "That Guy" moment comes from a friend of mine. Granted, this particular moment was awesome as all hell in the end and created a true hero of legend in the mythos of our D&D campaign. You see, our friend wanted to be a particularly special character, and with the DM's consent and help created a Gnome. To be more specific, a Gnome who had been permanently shrunk to about 5 inches in height thanks to wayward spells. This Gnome's name was Bittles. Bittles was too small and weak to wield anything more threatening than a toothpick, and so opted to be a skill-roll based character instead.

To survive in the campaign, our action figure sized gnome took up permanent residence in our barbarians backpack. For fights, he would contribute by rummaging around the barbarians backpack, rigging up some harebrained fire-and-forget weapon, and popping up and throwing/firing/launching said weapon over the barbarians shoulder. Bittles was not expected to live much longer than the second or third session.

He survived the entire campaign.

At first he was like a novelty, but as he gained experience and levels by virtue of being with the group, his skill roll modifiers started to outpace the penalties associated with trying to build improvised weapons mid-combat. The barbarian had the foresight to realize that she basically had an autoturret living in her backpack at this point, and would spend her excess gold on building materials for Bittles. All while traveling, Bittles would be either be putting the arrogant wizard in his place with a verbal beatdown or whipping up some throwing weapons/improvised weapons in advance. Thanks to his size plus being wholly concealed most of the time, Bittles was also incredibly difficult for enemies to actually hit. The DM would have our foes realize that a barbarian that would be brutalizing whatever was close to her while a tiny gnome popped out of her bag and blew whatever was behind her or even far away from her to smithereens with some terrifying contraption that launched homemade alchemists fire or flaming bolas or nets was kind of a big goddamn threat. Thus, enemies would frequently charge the barbarian in the hopes of taking her down and eliminating the surprisingly effective team the two made.

However, our group had actually grown quite fond of Bittles and his ability to provide minor artillery for the group if the wizard or druid happened to be low on spells or otherwise out of commision, and so we would go out of our way to specifically ensure that the barbarian, and thus Bittles, would make it through fights relatively healthy. Thus, Bittles eventually went on to be the group scientist, eventually outfitting everyone with some kind of James Bond style gadget and outfitting his barbarian "mount" with a shoulder-mounted repeating crossbow that he aimed through a periscope, fired from inside the barbarians backpack, and reloaded with a separate mechanism.

Bittles is freaking epic. Very nicely done.

 

[Malyc]

I've been that guy before... Werewolf ranger who convinced (accidentally, I might add, because I was thinking about something else) an entire continent that lycanthropes were weak to platinum rather than silver. High level cleric failed the hell out of the sense motive check, and we managed to convince him to tell his friends. Currency ensued, until the Greek Pantheon decided to intervene before we broke the economy.

Other party members were an elven warlock, Cpt George Carson (he had a level in damn near everything...), A human fighter, and a half orc (or full orc, can't remember) druid. This was a campaign that was a break between serious campaigns, so only the rule of cool applied. Oddly enough, werewolves also make very good anti-ship ballista bolt in a pinch... particularly when equipped with flint and steel... and the target ship uses cannons.

 

[Hasido]

my group is 75% comprised of "That Person" (i'm one of them)

its a good thing we all agree on what is an entertaining kind of crazy, or the games would probably devolve into troll/counter troll/counter counter troll etc.

my favorite character i built uses a guisarme and abuses the fuck out of tripping

another person is a monk/tattooed monk/some-weird-psionic-monk-thing that is so over-powered that to make a boss fight not be unsatisfying he decided to start making a sand castle and running laps around the room.

another player one started out as a villain character, but eventually joined the rest of the PCs. His character is a mildly insane Human Chameleon (using homebrew rules that make it a basic class) who was given immortality by a god of Chaos for as long as he upheld the tenants of chaos (which is to say: be as crazy as you want to be). To balance the whole "immortality" thing, any time he uses a magical or supernatural ability, there is a chance of a rod of wonder effect being added on to or replacing what he intended to do. He was introduced as a leader of what was obviously an underground criminal organization. As it turns out, he wasn't doing anything illegal, unless you count giving free candy to all of the children in the country.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

On one of the few occasions I ever played D&D I made my character a rapist halfling with his special weapon being a blonde wig named "Bessie" which he put on people before raping them.

My DM was nice and/or crazy enough to actually devise a mechanic to determine whether I successfully raped my target or not.

 

[hawkeye52]

Generally I'm pretty on the level. Out of the 5 campaigns I have been in I think there is one where I have been a bit of an ass and that was Warhammer fantasy Role Play. Basically I was doing things that although weren't directly detrimental to the army or my own wellbeing knew that they could be and going ahead.

One of them being releasing a crazy chained up people into a volatile situation. However there were times where I just played for teh lulz and did stupid things from a metagame sense but were plausible in game. Such as persisting to help a captain out of a basement despite the fact that it was kneedeep in chaos infestation. Also after getting swamped full of chaos ichor after failing hard against it going to a sigmarite priest and asking if their might be anyway to cleanse it out of me. He asked me to drink holy water and I did. The holy water promptly began to burn the blood (ichor infested blood) in my body to ash and I sought the help of priests of shallier (or however you pronounce/spell their name). They said get in a caravan. Next thing I see is a general and a sigmarite priest enter a tent with several bodyguards. At this point I let my blunderbus loose and promptly died to severe hacking and 27 wound critical hit. Oh I also tried to take an orc warboss on at one point.

 

[Oro44]

Ok, so. Star Wars game. "That guy" was the GM. He had this force-sensitive Imperial agent millionaire playboy with....wait for it...the starship from Tenchi Muyo. And he was, quite simply, better than you at everything.

The game was basically about him with us as supporting characters. Yeah that lasted all of two games.

Had a similar situation with another GM who had made this incredibly intricate plot of political intrigue that none of us understood. We spent the game watching him roleplay medieval political discourse with himself. Looking back, I think he had just read Game of Thrones.

 

[Xanthious]

Yeah I'm totally THAT guy. . . or I used to be before our D&D group moved onto MMOs. I typically either ran evil characters or characters that weren't what you'd typically find in a run of the mill adventuring party and spent a good deal of my time conversing with the DM through passed notes.

Never killed party members if I could avoid it though. In one instance though towards the end of a two year campaign my DM thought it would be hilarious to have my halfling assassin ordered to take a hit on a much higher level wizard that was in our party as his amulet was a matter of some contention among my guild.

If you are ever in a group and want to keep your fellow players on their toes I highly recommend passing the occasional to the GM that simply says "could you please have someone roll a D20 for no damn good reason". Good fun that!

 

[artanis_neravar]

So I've come to realize in all of my time in playing Dungeons and Dragons, that there is always a person in the group that does something ridiculous. Whether it be someone trying to make a ridiculous character out of non-basic races, someone who tries to break the rules, or anything of that sort.. So I'm wondering Escapist. Who is THAT person in your group, and what do they do?

As for me, it's the first that I listed. In my group, we have a person who apparently has a love affair with Gnolls. And every character he has ever tried creating has been as such. So much to the point, that he refuses to even play if he can't be the race. So we finally compromised and said he could be a Gnoll....on the grounds that he roleplayed as such. Gnolls, being Chaotic Evil, are always hated my society and would never be accepted. His Gnoll was Chaotic Good, and was rejected by his clan, but still isn't accepted by society, except for our small group. Eventually he gave up and left the group because it was "unfair" for him to be treated that way.

I had my dread necromancer planned out from the beginning of a 3 year (real time) campaign. I hid my true nature from the other players (I claimed that I was learning necromancy as a means to better combat evil). Over the course of the years I invited two other players into my plan and worked, in secret from the rest of the group, to turn one into a vampire lord, and one into a werewolf lord. After a long series of quests (we were almost level 40 and I had taken levels in Dread Pirate, and something that provided leadership bonuses and was secretly a Lich by this point) we were each given our own kingdoms. Now there were seven of us, and my vampire and werewolf lord associates and I decided we wanted the other kingdoms too. So we revealed what we truly were and took their kingdoms killing each of our old quest mates. They were not amused

 

[cjspyres]

So I've come to realize in all of my time in playing Dungeons and Dragons, that there is always a person in the group that does something ridiculous. Whether it be someone trying to make a ridiculous character out of non-basic races, someone who tries to break the rules, or anything of that sort.. So I'm wondering Escapist. Who is THAT person in your group, and what do they do?

As for me, it's the first that I listed. In my group, we have a person who apparently has a love affair with Gnolls. And every character he has ever tried creating has been as such. So much to the point, that he refuses to even play if he can't be the race. So we finally compromised and said he could be a Gnoll....on the grounds that he roleplayed as such. Gnolls, being Chaotic Evil, are always hated my society and would never be accepted. His Gnoll was Chaotic Good, and was rejected by his clan, but still isn't accepted by society, except for our small group. Eventually he gave up and left the group because it was "unfair" for him to be treated that way.

I had my dread necromancer planned out from the beginning of a 3 year (real time) campaign. I hid my true nature from the other players (I claimed that I was learning necromancy as a means to better combat evil). Over the course of the years I invited two other players into my plan and worked, in secret from the rest of the group, to turn one into a vampire lord, and one into a werewolf lord. After a long series of quests (we were almost level 40 and I had taken levels in Dread Pirate, and something that provided leadership bonuses and was secretly a Lich by this point) we were each given our own kingdoms. Now there were seven of us, and my vampire and werewolf lord associates and I decided we wanted the other kingdoms too. So we revealed what we truly were and took their kingdoms killing each of our old quest mates. They were not amused

Actually, I wouldn't even consider this to be irritating or ridiculous. The only thing ridiculous about this is how good of roleplaying it sounds. Congrats on the awesome character.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

My group was pretty much made up of people like that. One notable moment involved someone lighting themselves on fire (because they had a racial resistance to it, I think) and trying to hug the opponent.

Oh, and using "Knowledge: Religion" on EVERY DAMN THING WE FIND. My brother did that a LOT. Really annoying.

Oh, and one of my players asked about what Hold Person would allow him to do. Yeah. Like that.

Ehhhhuuchh

 

[gordonsinext]

Before I started DMing I think I was THAT guy. I played an elf rogue (god I love rogues) and while I didn't try to break the game or be entirely too ridiculous I did try to keep the game interesting. Our first quest involved ridding the lands of a goblin infestation for a bounty, most of the party were first timers so they took the anything that wasn't combat agonizingly slowly and cautiously, anyway once we had killed the goblins I had the bright idea of cutting of the goblin chieftains head as a trophy, taking the rest of the bodys back to the city, trading the bodies to a necromancer so he would reanimate the head. I then proceeded to use it as a distraction so I could pickpocket my way to about 5 times the amount of gold we got for the bounty.

 

[Strain42]

I admit it, it's usually me. Most D&D groups I've been involved with have been more about relaxing and having fun rather than going through a serious story campaign.

To give one example from my last game, I was a Raggamuffyn Sorcerer named Castor, and my Familiar was a living Chess Knight named Pollux.

Now, in our campaign, we were helping the mayor of a small town as she tried to fend off a horde of incoming baddies. However, when our DM announced that the mayor came out to greet us adjourned in full armor, my mind instantly jumped to someone like Hilde from Soul Calibur IV and I yelled out "I ask her to marry me!" and just rolled my d20. Since it actually did land on 20, my DM said "she thinks about it, battle first."

So yeah, it's usually not just me, as me and most of my friends play the game pretty casually to start with, but we do usually try to follow the rules as close we can.

Oh, and anyone wondering how that story ends. My character got blown up in the final fight, and a statue was made in my memory. I did have a lovely wedding before going off to die in battle, though

 

[Quazimofo]

In the one game I played, me and one of the other players had a competition to see who could preform the craziest kill. The results were entertaining. I killed a goblin with a frozen chicken, and he killed another one by crushing it with a door. I think we were both that guy.

ah that reminds me, i was playing call of Cthulhu once. as is expected, we found ourselves in an asylum. in this instance we were trying to investigate a half-fishman by the name of charlie, whilst simultaneously freeing our psychiatrist's sister (an npc), who was, unfortunately, cellmates with a vampire (who resurrected every time she died by anyone other than a hellsing's hand, because our DM likes making up rules or altering them. usually a good thing, especially since the group members and i get a say for whats just fucking stupid or unfair.
this vampire however, was no ordinary vampire (other than the reasons listed above). no, this vampire was a female sadistic, hedonistic, rapist, necrophile, who literally coined the phrase "i'll rip your head off and fuck the stump", as it was her preferred method of execution.

luckily, thanks to a 20 on a strength roll, i managed to rip off the reinforced steel cell door i was locked behind, and smashed her like a bug. "knock knock" indeed.

so yeah, basically our entire group is "That guy", though as of late our dm's control freak nature has been getting in the way of our ability to have fun with the game, as well as his absolutely insane characters (across dungeons and dragons, AND call of Cthulhu). but we still had some fun times.

OH! and just a side note, the vampire respawned so fast the blood on my shoes wasn't even dry before she came back, and we killed her again (horay for high-caliber military-grade hunting rifles!)

 

[Therumancer]

It was in Call of Cthulhu Masks of Nyarlathotep. We enter a room and there's this big, creepy throne in the middle of the room. So our "special player" says "I go over and sit on the throne." My first thought was, "He didn't just say he was going to sit on the throne, did he?" My second thought was, "Maybe if we pretend nothing happened the DM won't have heard what he said." I saw the other other players kind of tunelessly whistling and looking down at the floor. But the DM had heard. "So, you sit on the throne!" As Narly took over the player character's gibbering body, I actually made the first san roll. Even successfully making the roll, I still lost 25 san. Nobody else was left standing to make the second roll.

Well to be fair if your not familiar with CoC it's hard to really "get it", sitting in an unoccupied throne is a typical way to proceed in many adventures, and frankly even when in CoC it uses a lot of pulpesque trappings. The game has such a crazy high body count because it can be very hard to know exactly what the right way to proceed is in some cases, and I've actually seen groups paralyzed with indesician because everyone was concerned about doing anything.

For example in CoC it can sometime be tricky to decide who is going to read a book to figure out how to proceed, because most books come with SAN losses, sometimes quite high, and sometimes can even screw with things like your POW rating, and it gets worse if you need to cast spells from inside one of those books.

It can be a hard game to run because people trying to keep their characters alive and sane can be indesicive, but ones who really start to "get into it" will oftentimes effectively be Kamikazes when they realize death is inevitable and try for the most awesome deaths possible while moving the plot along.

You can easily move from extremes where nobody does anything, to ones where everyone sort of does anything and a lot of the foreboding goes out of it because nobody cares anymore.

It's awesome when players are horrified when someone's eyes are turned into ever bleeding sockets from reading a book and getting some really mind blowingly bad roles. But then a couple of sessions later whenever someone reads a book you start getting suggestions from the players about how their PC should bite it, and actually kind of hoping they will fail the roll...

Of course my problem might be that I wind up GMing too many horror games, and so people wind up getting kind of jaded to my style.

 

[Therumancer]

Ok, so. Star Wars game. "That guy" was the GM. He had this force-sensitive Imperial agent millionaire playboy with....wait for it...the starship from Tenchi Muyo. And he was, quite simply, better than you at everything.

The game was basically about him with us as supporting characters. Yeah that lasted all of two games.

Had a similar situation with another GM who had made this incredibly intricate plot of political intrigue that none of us understood. We spent the game watching him roleplay medieval political discourse with himself. Looking back, I think he had just read Game of Thrones.

Bad GMs, but I will say that the approach the former one was using can work if done right, and it isn't quite as silly (the anime Starship part... I'm guessing this is the one that's actually a rabbit). It's generally having a patron, and it works as long as the super character stays in the backround and doesn't really do all that much. Sort of like how if you play the old Doctor Who game (Time Lord or whatever it was called) the GM usually controls the Time Lord who is actually the party patron, they don't generally operate as teams, you generally wind up acting as his collected team sent on missions for him, sort of like what the Companions do, but more functional... I guess Torchwood would be an analogy though this was before that. Another example would be say playing Star Trek, where your on the enterprise, Kirk or Picard (depending on era) might be there, but in general they send you on missions as away teams and such, as opposed to basically running around doing everything while you look on in awe.

It depends on the right game construction, and the right group. Some players can enjoy that kind of thing, others don't. Typically the "patron" character works best when working with some kind of concept where by definition there has to be one, powerful, central character that would be unfair to give control of to one of the PCs. The top commanding officer in a military campaign for example should rarely if ever be a PC, because such a character by definition can overrule everyone else, and requires a sort of decorum towards the character for RP purposes which can get annoying. Similar to the above example where if your say playing "Doctor Who" it's kind of unfair to decide one person gets to be The Doctor and everyone else gets to be one of his cheerleaders (or the equivilent).

I generally try to steer away from those type of games though. As bizzare as this sounds after much experimentation I've come to the conclusion that if I for some reason want "my" voice to be in the game, rather than an NPC I'll tend to have the party find a talking magical item, or AI equipped database computer or something like that. After much experimentation I've come to the concluson that it's too difficult for things to get out of hand (best interests aside) when the GM winds up becoming what amounts to a player in their own game. It's easier to avoid any confusion or "conflict of interests" (or accusations there of) if the magic mirror might occasionally offer advice (doing little else) or whatever to help steer the game, rather than some adventurer I threw in.

 

[tacotrainwreck]

I love running low-powered games. Everyone starts at first level, money is short, anything that even hints at being magical is extremely rare. In my opinion, it helps to bring the group together and encourages the team to play as a unit with a mutual goal (Often survival). Everyone I've played with has always found my world to be pretty entertaining.

Except for this one jackass. When I was in Iraq, a few of us began considering starting up a D&D game (A few core books were always easy to carry around.) and try to make play time when we all could. Some were absolute rookies, and others were vets, and they all worked together well and we had a great time. Except for one jackass. He was the one who wouldn't stop talking about how it was done in this game he played and that game. He'd always second-guess rules and any calls I made. He often refused to go along with any plan agreed by the rest of the group because 'that's not how you do it!' I think I had enough of him when he wanted to create his own bizarre prestige class in my world and start leveling in it. He was pissed that I wouldn't just give it to him... it didn't make sense for the environment or their current location for him to just up and become something else.

In a nutshell, I never liked the inflexible douchebag D&D veteran. The funny part was that he'd always show up to play despite how miserable of a time he was having. Everyone needs a critic, I guess.

 

[Therumancer]

One of the reasons I could never really get into D&D was because of the fairly strict race/class restrictions that the game imposed.
Want to play a ranger, Elves or Half Elves report to the lobby, Want to play a theif? Halflings queue up to the left. Barbarian more your cup of tea? Well the Half Orcs can be found just down the hallway.

It's boring.

I had more fun playing that game was my half Elf Barbarian or my Halfling Fighter than I ever did playing "which LotR character with a different name do you want to play this time?"

Well, to be fair a lot depends on the GM. A lot of GMs like to stick to the stereotypes for game balance reasons and to keep the world and adventures as normal for the genere as possible. Oddness begets oddness and too many bizzare characters can really screw up a game beyond recognition. I don't go for this myself, but I understand the point.

It's important to understand also that the GM has a hard job, the streotypes lets him play encounters more easily, and that is also why a lot of GMs don't like variant rules.

In D&D as a whole though, going back to say 2E there were tons of races and classes for just about anything you can think of. If anything I think the sheer number of options is intimidating and why so many GMs impose strict limits.

For example when it comes to elf "Barbarians" there are actually wild elves (like wood elves but more tribal and primitive) that gravitate towards that profession and have stats that are designed around it.

Halfling fighters can actually be pretty good in certain situations, and they do have their sheriffs, mailmen, and other sorts that are supposed to be pretty tough in fights and are reinforced with the lore. 2E and 3E included a few kids and prestige classes just for small folk fighters. I think the problem is that the visuals don't nessicarly work for a lot of people, given that halflings are generally under 4' tall. It's fine visually when they are fighting normal things, but when you start trying to visualize some 4' dude doing damage and taking down some of the bigger monsters and such, it can bring some absurd pictures to mind. You can see how some 7' barbarian can do damage to say a giant when he comes up to it's waist, but some halfling that might come up to it's knee... suspension of disbelief can be an issue.

The old "Halfling Berserker" joke also doesn't help, there used to be contests on things like Fidonet for seeing how bad you could break the game using halflings to do damage statistically at a given level. Mostly just a way for nerds to show off their game knowlege by being munchkins for laugh, and spelling it out. You'd typicallty have people come up with something like Tiamat and or a divine avatar and then give the minimum stats you think you'd need to one shot it using a halfling. You know like... well at 4th level my halfling with a 20 dex, bracers of haste, and a girdle of giant strength, and quadruple dart mastery can throw 32 darts per round in one round and hit tiamat on a roll of 10 or higher with all these strike bonuses, assuming 16 hit and each dart is coated with type XX dragonbane neurotoxins my hobbit can overkill her three times over with mimimal luck.

All this nerdism aside, I understand your point, standard characters do get boring after a while, especially if you've played them a lot.

 

[Atlas13]

I've never experienced "That Guy" before, however I have stumbled across the most amazing "That Guy" story in all of existence. Ladies and Gentlemen: Old Man Henderson

Spoiler: Old Man Henderson: The Prologue

Waffle House Millionaire 07/06/10(Tue)06:26 No 10966503

I hate de-railing a thread on accident. Who wants to hear the Tale of Old Man Henderson, the character who 'won' Call of Cthulhu?

Anonymous 07/06/10(Tue)06 27 No.10966512

I do

Alright then, I'd like to start by saying that the GM was a bastard that had it coming. Bullshit tactics to make everyone go crazy like a d6 with only 5 sides. No story, no reason; lose 10 sanity. The others continued to allow this faggotry. We were playing a modem day setting, with the other players being a college professor who found a couple of stray pages of a copy of the Necronomicon and wanted to find out just what the hell it was, a detective who was investigating a missing persons case connected to the local cult and a local athlete (I think it was football) trying to find out why some of his friends seemed so distant lately. And then... there was Old Man Henderson, who was never given a first name.

Old Man Henderson was already a little crazy, and blamed his life's misfortunes on Vietnam.
He never went to Vietnam, he was 12 in 74. (And I will be fucking amazed if anyone gets that reference.)
Old Man Henderson wore combat boots, cargo shorts, and an open-front Hawaiian shirt with a wife-beater underneath.
He was dyslexic, and had a lesser case of Schizophrenia. allowing him to assume that the reason he saw crazy shit was because he WAS a little bit crazy.
He had a grizzly adams beard and wore his hair in a mohawk.
He never took off his aviator shades, for any reason.
He had a stuffed parrot on his shoulder named Rupert that he constantly asked for advice, while ignoring the other party members as convenient, assuming they were hallucinations.
He had a Automatic combat shot-gun he knew how to use.
He also had MEMORIZED the anarchist's cookbook. He started the game with a pre-existing hatred of religion, cutlery, and books.
His motivation was that he thought that the cult had stole his lawngnomes; while he had actually donated them to a charity auction, got high, and forgot about it.
Most importantly, he had a 320 page backstory that justified EVERYTHING, from his casual knowledge of physics to his ability to speak Portuguese flawlessly.
You can just imagine the sort of Shenanigans that character was involved in.

The point to having such a long backstory was three-fold.

1. to ensure the GM would never actually read it and
2. Since he would never read it except for in excerpts I pointed out to justify things, I could re-write and change things around completely at random without anyone noticing and MOST IMPORTANTLY
3. Convince everyone that I was serious about this character, and that it wasn't simply the game wrecking bullshit that it was.

Dickish yes, but he really did have it coming.

First outing of the group. The Detective was spying on the building of the cultists with a camera. The Jock was parked nearby, waiting for the group to let out so he could snoop it out The Professor had joined the cult to try and gain information.
Old Man Henderson very calmly parked his car, got out holding the shotgun in clear view of anyone who happened to be looking (in this case, the detective and the Jock), strolled up to the front door and kicked it in.
While everyone just kind of stopped in shocked silence for a moment, he leveled his shotgun on the lead priest/cultist guy and yelled "MUCKLE DAMRED CULTI 'AIR EH NAMBLIES BE KEEPIN' ME WEE MEN!?!?"

Did I mention that he had a nigh-incomprehensible Scottish accent that came and went as he drank and/or as amused me?
The leader couldn't understand my simple request to return my lawn gnomes (literally, you think what I typed is hard to understand? imagine it being slurred at you by a drunken Scotsman), he assumed I was trying to cast a spell at him in an elder tongue and summoned a shoggoth by murdering one of his fellows.
One Molotov And about 20 rounds later, the Shoggoth is dead, as is the cult leader, the Professor (he made the mistake of trying to make peace-maker mid murderous rampage) and about 10 assorted cultists.
Old Man Henderson then pissed on the Shoggoth's corpse, got back in his battered '92 Buick Century, and went home. The whole event was over in about ten minutes game time and nobody thought to get the Buick's plates.
The building burned down shortly, along with about half the written plot, and every lead either of the other surviving players had. The GM called a break then to figure out how to fix and/or work around what I just did.
It only got crazier from there.

Anonymous 07/06/10(Tue)07.36 No.10967215

I must have more, good sir!

Waffle House Millionaire 07/06/10(Tue)07 37 No 10967237

Typing up the full exploits of Old Man Henderson would take too long, can I just give you the highlights reel?

Anonymous 07/06/10(Tue)07.38 No.10967240

I will settle for that

Waffle House Millionaire 07/06/10(Tue)07 47 No 10967295

All Right-ey then
Some of his finer moments include:

* Dropping a Yacht onto a penthouse suite owned by Cthulhu Cultists.
* The stealing of said Yacht from cultists of Hastur, thereby starting a cultist gang-war.
* The Tanker truck incident,
* and my personal favorite: Hell on Ice.

Which one do you want to hear about first?

dashingbastard 07/06/10(Tue)07.48 No.10967307

Dropping the Yacht.
Lets take it from the top.

Spoiler: Old Man Henderson: Dropping The Yacht

Old Man Henderson, with his erstwhile companion Jimmy (the Jock) and his Friends William Brocklaw, a once humble bartender (The now dead Detective's player. Old Man Henderson burned down his bar on accident and blamed it on the cultists. One bluff check later and he in the Posse.), and Simon Breckenridge, British Spy (the Professor's player, now six characters in. And yes, they were more or less all killed by Old Man Henderson).
Old Man Henderson had discovered that there was not one cult to the Elder Gods, but several. This complicated his search for his gnomes/crusade. He decided to enlist help in making the problem solve itself.
Using his contacts, Simon discovered that a Influential Cultist of Hastur was coming to town to try and figure out how an Avatar of his god was killed. (More on this in the tanker truck incident.) He also located the exact dock on which he would be landing his boat.
Jimmy, meanwhile discovered the home of the head of the local Cthulhu cults was at a penthouse suite downtown. A plan was hatched.

Old Man Henderson used all of his cunning to steal a Military Cargo Helicopter (read: Shoruyken'd the pilot and flew off), and hid it in an abandoned warehouse.
Jimmy, and Will set up a VERY EXPENSIVE surround sound speaker system at the docks, while Simon made and planted a lot of smoke bombs.
That night, the Yacht pulled in, and we made our move.
Right as Simon maneuvered the Helicopter over the docks, we set off the Smoke bombs and activated the Speakers.
On one side: A fifty piece marching band playing 'God Save the Queen' at max volume, and on the other the audio from the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan.
Imagine, for a moment what being on the dock would have been like.
Utter. Fucking. CHAOS.

I jumped down from the Helicopter onto the boat, and rigged it to lilt out of there. During the course of which I ran into the cultist guy and Ninja Kicked him in the head, knocking him tail-over-teakettle and off the boat. I later learned that he broke his neck in the fall.
Damned convenient, otherwise he might have have been able to ID me. We then lilted the boat out of there, switched to out secondary audio on all sides (My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion. I was in a vengeful mood, gnome stealing bastards.) So when the cultists finally got the smoke to clear their Yacht was gone, their leader dead. And Celine Dion was stuck in their heads. Not the best of days.
Then we went across tow, in a stolen Military Cargo chopper, carrying a 40 foot yacht, and 'parked' the helicopter above the penthouse, with the yacht about 80 feet above it. Then we cut the line, jumped out with our parachutes, and watched the yacht ruin a dinner party while placing bets on whether the military would save the chopper, blow it up, or if it would just hover there until it ran out of fuel.

Spoiler: Old Man Henderson: The Tanker Truck Incident

Now, time for what will forever be known as 'The tanker truck incident'. Notice 'The' is capitalized. This is because no matter what incidents in the future may involve tanker trucks, this is the definitive one.
It started out innocently enough, Old Man Henderson left the stakeout in a van outside the evil cult's meeting place to go get some hooch. The only people now there are the Detective, and James Fink (the professor's second character). Jimmy was gone because it was a school night (Old Man Henderson was a bad influence, but damned if he didn't have the kid's best interests at heat.)
The cultists see me leaving had a very distinct appearance, after all. (VERY USEFUL in scoring TPKs.), and discover my friends spying on them. The detective gets a pretty GAR death, and James dies like a *****. But not yet.
I'm on my way back, walking along. The Detective and James had been brought inside as part of a ritual to give Hastur an avatar in our world (he had been banished, and the only way he could come here is via a loophole). He could only use people who knew he existed and had thwarted him thrice as a host, and then he had to make them drink the life-blood of their closest friend to make the binding permanent. In case you're wondering, permanent binding = GAME OVER.

The first part of the ritual was completed, but before Hastur could take control, the detective broke James' shackles and he tried to run.
He made it as far as the street, when the detective (now Hastur) caught up with him, part demon-form.
Now where this church (for lack of a better term) was located, was at the end of the road on a T shaped intersection. There was a gas-station about three blocks away, which is where Old Man Henderson was while this was going down.
Old Man Henderson sees the shit hit the fan, and steals a half-full tanker truck that WAS refilling the station's holding tank.
While I bring the truck up to ramming speed, I toss a 12 lb block of C4 in the passenger seat and rig the detonator to the airbags.

Old Man Henderson then took a bracing shot of whiskey, jammed a knife through the gas pedal, then jumped of of the truck onto his heelies. Yes, he modified his combat boots to have heelies. I swear to god I had not planned this to happen, the heelies just sounded like something fucking ridiculous and in character.
He watched the truck ram the detective into the church, the blew him and all the cultists to Kingdom Come. The truck also killed James by running him over.
That's when the back-trail ignited, fire going all the way back to the gas-station and destroying it; continuing my streak of accidentally destroying anything that might lead people back to Old Man Henderson.
I took a moment to call Jimmy.
"Henderson here. Figured out what the nasties are weak against."
"What's that, Mr. Henderson?"
"Point blank annihilation."
'click'

Spoiler: Old Man Henderson: Hell on Ice

Waffle House Millionaire 07/06/10(Tue)09:04 No.10968068

Does anyone care If I throw up Hell on ice? It's my favorite of the bunch, but if nobody cares I'll save it for later.
Almost forgot to mention, there was a bar right next to the gas station called 'the Homble Revelation', which was the one that Will had owned.

Anonymous 07/06/10(Tue)09 08 No.109681 18

fuckin' do it you crazy son of a *****

Anonymous 07/06/10(Tue)09 09 No.10968126

For the love of god MORE.

Okie-doke. We were in the endgame, with zombies and shoggoths chasing us I managed to get Jimmy disappeared, so it was Old Man Henderson, Simon and Will going to the final strong-point we had an abandoned hockey stadium.
On the way there, we had rammed through a small home-and-garden store in our truck. And when we arrived, we started barring the doors and windows, when I noticed something. Our trip through the store had netted us a passenger- a single lawn gnome.
Somehow, I knew right then that this was it. No lucky turn of fate, no Deus Ex Machina... Old Man Henderson was going to die. But I'd be damned if it wouldn't be the best fucking last stand ever.

I then revealed to the GM that Henderson was a world champion figure skater, hockey player, and golfer.
The Backstory of Doom got one final use.
We had got almost all of the doors barricaded, but the zombie/shoggoth army kicked in the last door and got Simon, Will was pulled off the Zamboni after he manage to throw the Crate onto the ice.
The crate full of exploding hockey pucks.
Lasted a couple of minutes while blasting Bust A Move (Young MC) before the situation resolved into totally fucked I switched to the next track as I yelled "HASTUR HASTUR HASTUR!" The next track came on, it was the Canadian national anthem, which Old Man Henderson began to sing proudly, at the top of his lungs.
I then threw out the three pieces of knowledge that marked Old Man Henderson's Blaze Of Glory.

1. Calling Hastur's name 3 times will summon him, but only if the one who is truest foe at the time calls it. (Guess who.)
2. When an elder god is summoned from beyond, they suffer a sort of summoning sickness. They're still unbelievably strong, but can be killed FOREVER if you hit them hard enough.
3. The building had enough explosives wired to make Michal Bay blush.

And that my friends, is the tale of how Old Man Henderson won Call of Cthulhu.

 

[Malyc]

@Atlas: Officially THE best character I have heard of.

Almost makes me wish the bullshit campaign I was involved in lasted long enough to TRULY make a mark on the history of D&D, as there were 3 characters involved that would have (and actually succeeded, to some extent...) pulled shit like that. I can tell you of the greatest naval battle in D&D history, if you would like.