Geeks Next Door – Spot Check
This is a guest post from Geeks Next Door. They agreed to write D&D-related strips for Dungeon Mastering and share their thoughts on their creative process, as well as their Dungeons and Dragons adventures. Enjoy!
Thoughts from the Geeks Next Door
The GND crew agreed to give their thoughts and comments on the strips they write for Dungeon Mastering. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment. I hope you enjoyed the webcomic.
JESSI – Things were getting pretty epic – then a failed Spot check ruined everything. It’s totally my fault for being short… …and by that I mean it was totally Maggie’s fault for not looking where she was walking. Embarassing things can happen so easily when dice are involved. What’s the most embarrassing thing that your character had to endure? What were the other characters’ reactions? Did your friends laugh and point at you more than they usually do?
MATT – Oh, players. What would I do for entertainment without your critical failures? ……..well, besides watching even more MST3K and suchlike. The dice are a fickle mistress,though, and will inevitably turn on us all in the end. But still we return, in the hopes of regaining their favor, and cursing like badly-wounded pirates when we don’t. And apparently I’m getting badly poetic — a good sign I should wrap up this little ramble. And so I shall.
MAGGIE – I trip over Jessica all the time in real life, because I’m just that super-tall. I also wanna say that my outfit is baller. I look seven different kinds of awesome. Good thing I have armor, because I walk into things all of the time; I should have armor in real life. Flicking people off is one of my trademarks. Sometimes I use it as a greeting – most of the time, it’s not.
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The most embarassing situation a character ever got in my game is definitely that tieffling rogue who messed with the wrong guy. He tried killing another PC, a dwarf fighter, that didn’t like it. He gave the rogue over to a forest ranger after he had been taken care of, and the ranger gave him to a bunch of pixies. Pixies have the mental capacity of a five year old when given the opportunity to laugh at someone, and they had much fun annoying the tieffling. They tied him to their magical tree (it had magic roots that bound him to the ground) and they kept throwing stuff at him, laughing and dancing around him.
Then, a bunch of dark elves came in. They were also enemies of the rogue and they didn’t like him at all after a cheap shot he did to them. Then they found him, tied to a tree, naked and covered with paint (the pixies had taken his clothes off to paint him in flashy colors). After making a little deal with the pixies, the drows ”bought” the rogue from them and brought him further in the forest to make him pay for what he had did to them. But the rogue was able to escape the drows and ran like hell! The two drow monks ran after him, and that was the most embarassing moment ever : running in the woods naked, covered with body paintings, chased by two monks that ran faster than him whatever he did. He lasted about two minutes, which is twenty rounds! He was amazingly lucky!
You should give Dark Heresy or WFPR a try – characters often have less then 50% chance at succeeding at tasks. Depends on how cruel your GM is though (ie how often he makes you do checks and how much he lets you add to the roll).
Worst of all, if you ever roll 100, you are almost guaranteed certain and immediate death as whatever you do goes fatally wrong.
I just played Dark Heresy for the first time. I must admit that with all the different hit and failure tables, there’s a lot of inspiration for DMs who want to make players feel great or poorly about themselves.
Personally, my worst moment involved Hold Person and a lady goblin…
I had a Dwarven vampire/psionicist, during a 3e campaign. We had just entered a tower and were confronted by a gelatinous cube. My character noticed a ring in the cube and used detonation on the ring. I rolled my power score, but did not know the ring was magical. I succeeded in destroying the gelatinous cube, but destroyed the tower, and my entire party, in the process. We had just started playing, and this was on the first turn of the game. Not counting character creation (I was new to the group, everyone else had been playing their characters for a while) the game lasted all of 3 minutes…
@Josh: That’s hilarious (and a little mean on the DM’s part!)
XD Jessi you are so hilarious!!! XDDD I love how Maggie kicks such awesome but while Barry is such a wuss! ^_^ A cuddly but cowardly wuss ^+^ Though, Jessi you get epic win for your bubbles! ^_^ I think it’d be hilarious if Barry’s girlfriend played with you guys XDDD And then turned out to be like REALLY good at it!
Why do they have noses?
They only have noses when they’re playing D&D for some reason!
Our old gnome bard was forced to marry an (ugly) ogre to break a curse on a village.
Best story I have is of a friend. He rolled up a ninja and all throughout the first adventure, every time he tried to do something acrobatic, it was a total failure. Finally, in combat, he rolls a 20 on a tumble check to get on the other side of an ogre. The only problem, he was invisible at the time so nobody got to see him succeed. The rest of the night was him bragging about said feat of acrobatic skill, and everybody else calling him a liar.
@ninjaguineapig: Check Page 5 of the comic for more on that. :P
I’m usually the butt of my group’s gaming jokes because I’m kind of “out there” and I don’t really think before I do or say something in game. In a comic book RPG called Mutants and Masterminds, we were taking on a perverted, evil, mentalist. I play a water-controller (the name is Atlantica) who has Mystique power as well (the ability to look like someone else), and I go to the villain’s book signing (he’s a PhD. the book was entitled “How to Love Yourself”) in the guise of a skinny, busty, super tan California beach blonde in a business suit. So, he asks me out on a date. Technically I was only supposed to follow him home after the book signing because we didn’t know where he lived and then just head home, but I thought it would be interesting to get more information. My group decided to give me a name to match my new body and called her “Bambi Smith” (so dumb), the Delta Alliance (our group’s name) publicity representative. Well, I failed to realize that the villain was a MENTALIST!!! So he was reading my thoughts all throughout dinner! In the middle of the restaurant the guy up and tells me that he knows me to be a member of the Delta Alliance, and I try to bluff my way out of it and failed miserably. I began to stutter all over myself. It was so sad. Fortunately, various members of the Delta Alliance attended dinner secretly and came to my rescue. This happened over a year ago (almost two years now) and we’re still playing our original characters. To this day they mention that incident. “Please don’t flippity-flop like a floppy Atlantean fish.” They don’t let me go on any reconnaissance missions by myself anymore either. :(
That villain is currently a brain in a jar, just in case anyone wanted to know the overall ending. :)
my best d&d story involves a very naive elf. I had rolled an elven ranger, and we were camping just off a main road, our dm had us roll a listen check, i got an 18 and subsequently got up to the sound of people on the road, to find out who they were i decided to “light a torch” was seen by bandits, and then killed. That line “light a torch” is now mentioned whenever any of my d&d friends does something stupid. :D
I hardly ever play :( but in my latest attempt at starting a campaign I was playing an elvish ranger. I was technically one of the strongest players so the DM attacked me more often, plus I’m a noob at campaigning so it was too easy. The last battle I got into a giant bee was flying outside the town where I was waiting on our newly formed group to meet-up. Being a good guy I attack it. I hit it with my bow and do 1 damage, the bee decides to ignore me and flies off. Our campaign died off after that session, the universe is out to prevent me from playing, but that was officially the most embarrassing thing to happen to me. Except the gay bartender hitting on me then forcing me to sleep in the chicken coop when I turned him down :D
my worst moment was in a tower being attacked by orcs, goblens, and an oger. the badys were trying to break down the door to the tower to get to and kill us while we were raining arrows and spells on them. the fighter and barbi were bracing the door and my elf cleric was in the upper floors. we had a plan set in motion that was failing awesomely. in hopes of saving the plan and letting the ‘smash things hard’ guys rush in to finsh their end of the deal, i hang a grappling hook on the window of my floor and grabe the rope it’s attached to and my sword.
then i jump
I had planed to swing out into the middle of the throng and make a rukus, so the DM had me make some rolls i was passing all of them, and then it came down to the one i was best at. 1
DM: you slam into a wall and take…(rolls some dice) 45 damge and fall 30 feet to the ground for…(rolls some more dice)…30 more.
me:…dead
hey, if it wasent for that one, it would haved worked!