Top 10 Things You Don't Want...
To Hear Your Mage Say
Perhaps mages are as well known for their great power as they are for, well, their mess ups...
10. "Is it virgin's tears and dragon's blood, or dragon's tears and virgin's blood? Maybe the dragon was a virgin..."
9. "Hmm... is this the recipe for a Potion of Healing, or for Chile Con Carne?"
8. "Oh, oh, oh, oh! That wand of cold balls -didn't- do what I expected."
7. "By any chance, have you seen a summoned 9th order fire elemental wandering around? No? Oh... Tell me if you do."
6. "It's supposed to have five points?"
5. "My familiar will take care of that dragon! Sic 'em, Fifi!"
4. "What kind of cheap, wussyarse excuse for a djinn only gives one wish? Oh, he's still here..."
3. "Eennie, meenie, miny, moe... Which end points toward the foe?"
2. "Damn. I knew I should have used Energizers in this thing."
1. "Oops..."
Top 10 Things You Would Never...Hear Your Barbarian Say
Some might say they find their bearings or origins in the words of Robert E. Howard and his magnificent creations like Conan, Red Sonja and Kull, but barbarians can be some of the most vicious people you would ever meet, well, usually...
- If this wasn't such a nice inn, I'd kick your @$$.
2. Do these boots go with this tunic?
3. Sometimes, I just want to be held.
4. Couldn't we just talk this over? Violence never solved anything.
5. Swords and alcohol don't mix.
6. Gee, I'd like to help you guys hunt down that rogue dragon, but Lance and I are going shopping for curtains this weekend.
7. Thank you (as well as "please", "excuse me", and "so sorry, I would appear to have stabbed you in the stomach with my broad sword").
8. I think mages are the coolest.
9. Wait a minute guys. Maybe we should think this over first.
10. Ewwwww! Blood!
Top 10 Downsides...Of Being a Wizard
Though they possess mighty powers of prestidigitation, there are many drawbacks to the wizard's life. Here are just a sampling of the drawbacks...
10. Long expeditions in dungeons make even umber hulks look sexy.
9. Constantly have to explain you are wearing a robe and NOT a dress!
8. Always losing games, lackluster fans, haven`t made the playoffs in over 10 years, overshadowed by Michael Jordan's presence. Oh, I'm sorry, that's Top 10 Downsides of being a Washington Wizard.
7. Have the least amount of hit points out of all of your friends.
6. Chicks dig swords, not wands.
5. Prismatic light spell attracts moths.
4. Crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women, gets old after a while.
3. Insensitive taunts of "Rasputin."
2. Can cast fireball and lightning bolt spells, but still can't impress Britney Spears.
1. When telepathic powers let you see people's impure thoughts of Wolf Blitzer.
Top Ten Signs You Just Met the Main Bad Guy
Your assassin henchman just wet his pants.
The ancient red dragon you had just been fighting says "Shit! I'm out of here!" and flies away.
The bad guy just laughed evilly, and seven birds fell dead out of the sky.
The DM chuckles, and says, "I spent seven hours rolling this guy up".
The bad guy burps, and a human toe flies out of his mouth.
The DM plays a tape of scary organ music, and starts talking like Boris Karloff.
The bad guy is dressed all in black, but has one of those little yellow smiley face buttons (DMs can be sooo sarcastic).
You point your wand of fire at him, and it melts.
The bad guy keeps Elminster in a cage, and occasionally pokes him with a fork.
After the battle, the only Player Character to survive is the one that stayed back in town with the flu.
Top Ten Signs You Pissed Off the Villagers
The "interesting new stew" you've been served at the inn smells suspiciously like sewage.
One ripe apple at the market place costs more than your last spell book.
They're building a gallows outside of your room at the inn. They try to tell you that it's "modern art".
One of them asks you for a donation for the "Hire Some Thugs to Kill the Adventurers" fund.
Someone glued a spike to your saddle.
At bed time, your goose-down pillow explodes. The innkeeper says that the pillow was made from the feathers of very angry geese.
People keep providing you with gifts of horses, and maps out of town.
The mayor declares a special "Murder of Foreigners is No Longer Illegal" day, in your honor.
Arrows keep appearing in the dirt at your feet. Local villagers shake their head, and claim that they are fast-growing weeds.
The villagers hire a band of trolls to rid their town of adventurers.
Top Ten Spells That Never Made It
Berman's Death-to-the-Caster.
Power word, fart.
Gelatinous Shell (immediately surrounds the caster in a gelatinous cube).
Safe fall (like feather fall, but makes you weigh as much as a 12 ton bank vault).
Polymorph Udder (a highly specialized spell which only affects female cattle).
Stinking Klaus (summons a fat, smelly German businessman, who chases your enemies while eating an Oktoberfest sausage and belching).
Magnetskin (a variation of stoneskin - makes the caster's skin magnetic, giving all metallic weapons a +10 bonus to hit).
Meatier Swarm (large chunks of ground chuck rain to the ground).
Polymorph any Omelet.
Fireballs (sets the target's testicles on fire - very effective, but a bit too kinky for TSR).
Top Ten Signs You Play Too Much ADnD
Someone says, "Why do you have all those numbers tattooed on your hand?", and you reply, “Those aren't tattoos, they're die imprints."
Your Elven fighter has had sex within the last six years - and you haven't.
You decide to play a zombie, just so you and your character can have the same skin color.
You've been surviving so long on Doritos, Coke, and pizza that your body now contains more plastic than your dice.
You can recite, verbatim, every single rule from the DMG…. but you can't remember how many kids you have.
You sign personal correspondences with your character's name.
After months of work, you have made up the entire Dwarven language - words, rules of vocabulary, the whole lot. You are bilingual, and can now speak fluid Dwarven. Your friends stare at you strangely, and no one will sit on the same side of the table as you.
Drug addict and alcoholic friends of yours often stop you to say, "Dude, get a grip".
Your "If I won the lottery" plans involve creating: (a) a really cool AD&D room, or (b) hiring actors to play monsters so that you and your friends can play AD&D for real.
You'd rather get a natural 18 when rolling character statistics than win the lottery.
Top Ten Signs Your DM is Too Easy
The red dragon suddenly develops a chest cold, and cannot use its breath weapon.
Your party sneaks into the lich's secret dungeons. Luckily for them, the lich has been born-again, and sent all his undead minions off to do charity work for the poor.
The phrase, "Oh geez, what do I need with another +5 vorpal long sword" is used during game play.
Your cleric is on a first name basis with his god, because of all the times the god has had to pop in to save the cleric's butt.
Any major city has at least one "Ressurect-a-matic" on every street corner.
All the city's guards are first level, and are easily spooked by the flame-finger cantrip.
Bubba the Mighty, the most powerful and evil mage in the world, has a soft spot for fast-talking halflings. Instead of casting meteor swarm and annihilating the party, he decides to teleport away.
The party is dividing treasure. The fighter says, "Ok, who wants the staff of the magi? Anybody? Anyone at all? Ok, we leave it leaning against a tree stump."
The DM uses a four sider to roll monster attacks.
The gods in your campaign worship the player characters.
Top Ten Signs Your DM is Too Hard
You've been playing for 3 weeks, and have 76 dead characters.
You're playing in DarksunÔ, but still only use Method I to roll characters.
Your fighter gets a bit tipsy, and pinches the barmaid's bottom. The barmaid pulls out her bow and her arrow of fighter slaying.
Your 15th level thief just had the snot kicked out of him by an eight-year-old girl.
There are lethal traps on every latrine door.
Most peasants have 20 hit dice, and many know the power word, kill spell.
Somehow you've done it. Your party has slain Emberburn, the most fearsome and powerful Red Dragon the DM has ever created. The DM stares at you in shock, still staring down at the "1" he rolled on the dragon's last attack. After poking him in the arm for five minutes, chanting "horde, horde, horde…." over and over, he looks up at you. The look of surprise fades, and an evil grin replaces it. "As it happens," the DM says with glee, "the dragon had cast project image just before the party entered the cavern….".
Your mage has an argument with a local spice merchant. Finally, annoyed to the breaking point, he casts charm on the merchant. Sadly, the merchant is a retired 22nd level Elven mage. Shaking your head, you reach for the statistic rolling dice once again…
Trees can, and often do, explode in huge, 20d6 hit die fireballs. No explanation is ever offered.
Regular rabbits are gone. They have been replaced by the killer-rabbit from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".
McKenzie's List
Harry McKenzie is one of those gifted role-players who enjoy wrapping his imagination around really warped ideals. He is a delight to run a game for, no matter the game, and his tastes are varied enough without being diluted that he brings a great deal of pizazz to the game table, and a great deal of humor, as well. He sent me this list not too long ago, and had me laughing so hard I snorted cola onto my keyboard. I wasn't there for #232, but I heard about how that one went -- and I second that ruling! Harry might not have been the first to make this list, but he's by far the best.250 things Mister McKenzie can no longer do during a role-playing game:
1. Cannot base characters off the Ash from the Evil Dead movies.
2. A one man band is not an appropriate bard instrument.
3. There is no Dwarven god of heavy artillery.
4. My 7th Sea character Boudreaux is not the 'Southern' Montaigne.
5. Not allowed to blow all my skill points on 1pt professional skills.
6. Synchronized panicking is not a proper battle plan.
7. Nor is "Kill them all and let God sort them out"
8. Not allowed to use psychic powers to do the dishes.
9. How to serve Dragons is not a cookbook.
10. My monk's lips must be in sync.
11. Just because my character and I can speak German, doesn't mean the GM can.
13. Not allowed to berserk for the hell of it, especially during royal masquerades.
13. Must learn at least one offensive or defensive spell if I'm the sorcerer.
14. Must not murder canon NPCs in their sleep, no matter how cliche they are.
15. Ogres are not kosher.
16. Plan B is not automatically twice as much explosives as Plan A.
17. I will not beat Tomb of Horrors in less than 10 minutes from memory.
18. Collateral Damage Man is not an appropriate name for a super hero.
19. When surrendering I am to hand the sword over HILT first.
20. Drow are not good eating.
21. Polka is not appropriate marching music.
22. No longer allowed to recreate the Death Star Trench Run out of genre.
23. There is no such thing as a Gnomish Pygmy War Rhino.
24. Any character who has a sensitivity training center named after him will be taken away.
25. Even if the rules allow it, I am not allowed to summon 50,000 Blue Whales.
26. The green elf does not need food badly.
27. Valley speak has no place in a fantasy setting. Especially if you're the paladin.
28. I am not to shoot every corpse in the head to make sure they aren't a zombie in Twilight 2000.
29. The Goddess' of Marriage chosen weapon is not the whip.
30. I cannot have any gun that requires me to continue the damage code on back.
31. I am not to kill off all the vampires in the LARP, even if they are terminally stupid.
32. The backup trap handler is not whoever has the most HP at the time.
33. I cannot buy any animal in groups of 100 or over.
34. There is no such skill as 'improvised cooking'
35. I am not allowed to base any Droid off any character played by Joe Pesci.
36. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to play R2 units.
37. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to sit on the same side of the table.
38. They do not make black market illegal cyberweapons for rodents.
39. When investigating evil cultists not allowed to just torch the decrepit mansion from the outside.
40. Dwarves do not have the racial ability 'can lick their eyebrows'
41. Dwarves do not have the racial ability to hold their breath for 10 minutes.
42. Dwarves do not have the racial ability 'impromptu kickstand'
43. Having a big nose adds nothing to my seduction check.
44. No longer allowed to set nazi propaganda music to a snappy disco beat.
45. Not allowed to spend all 100 character points on 100 1pt skills.
46. My character names are not allowed to be double entendres.
47. Sliver rhymes with silver because the computer frelling says so.
48. They do not make Nair in wookie sizes.
49. The elf is restricted to decaf for the rest of the adventure.
50. Not allowed to blow up the Death Star before that snotty farm kid gets his shot.
51. Not allowed to use thermodynamic science to asphyxiate the orcs' cave instead of exploring it first.
52. No longer allowed to use the time machine for booty calls.
53. My bard does not know how to play Inna Godda Davida on marachas.
54. Not allowed to start a drow character weighing more than a quarter ton.
55. Cannot pimp out other party members.
56. Before facing the dragon, not allowed to glaze the elf.
57. No matter how well I roll, a squirrel cannot carry a horse and rider at full sprint.
58. In the middle of a black op I cannot ask a guard to validate parking.
59. Expended ammunition is not a business expense.
60. Not allowed to pose the Netrunner in embarrassing positions when he's on a run.
61. Not allowed to short sheet the bedroll of impotent dieties.
62. Can only taunt the ranger about his lack of swimming after my USCG E8 saves him.
63. I am not allowed to do anything I saw Han Solo do once.
64. No, I cannot buy 10,000 marbles even if I say please.
65. My paladin's battle cry is not "Good for the Good God"
66. There is no Summon Bimbo spell.
67. Not allowed to start a character that speaks every language except ones the party speaks.
68. There is no Kung Fu manuever "McGuire Swings For Bleachers"
69. Bring him back intact includes redundant organs.
70. There is more to wizardry than magic missile. Even if I can do 200 damage automatic with no save.
71. Not allowed to cook up nerve gas in the sink even if the target number is 5.
72. There is no 'annoy' setting on a phaser
73. Not allowed to start a character who is over 100 years old unless he's an elf or dwarf. Humans are right out.
74. Not allowed to name my cudgel Ceremonial Whoopass Stick.
75. My thief's battle cry is not "Run And Live"
76. Nor is it "You take care of the orcs, I take care of the traps"
77. I am not allowed any artistic license while translating.
78. I did not get my super powers from James T. Kirk.
79. Not allowed to commission a pistol that costs more than a sedan.
80. I am not liquid metal.
81. When accepting a challenge for a duel, I must allow the other guy time to find a pistol.
82. A picture of my ex-wife is not an acceptable backup weapon.
83. Victory laps after killing the dragon with my 1d2 bow is considered in poor taste.
84. My gnome does not like big butts and he cannot lie.
85. Not allowed to talk my fellow inquisitors into buying a 220lb pull crossbow.
86. Not allowed to talk my fellow inquisitors into buying an industrial strength flamethrower.
87. Not allowed to make a superhero with a 99% chance of dodging even after the -10 penalty for a successful called shot.
88. There is no such thing as a dwarven katana.
89. My bard does not get a bonus to perform if she is obviously not wearing anything under her tabard.
90. The elf's name is not Legolam.
91. My swashbuckling fop cannot take the flaw Dark Secret: Not Gay