This is a story of some gaming I had in the late 80s.  I trot it out every once in a while so people can be amused.  Maybe Thanksgiving is an appropriate time of year to relate it.  After reading it, you'll probably be thankful for whatever game you're playing.  Enjoy!
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Years ago, there was a game store named Travellers in Time run by a guy named Gary.  Each weekend, Gary would run a game called Wanderers.  Anyone who wanted to show up could play.

Wanderers was pre-GURPS and Gary ran it on a heavily houseruled version of Fantasy Trip (when GURPS came out, the game was adapted to use the new rules).  The setting was a kitchen sink space opera setting with superheroes.  Players made their characters with a point based system, but then they would be unpredictably mutated to gain their true abilities.  Something about superpowers interfered with technology, so characters couldn't use laser guns or have a powersuit, or anything of that nature.

My character was Lynx.  I imagined him as a sort of a super agile martial artist.  I tried to hint that I wanted catlike powers of agility, maybe with some stealth and recon powers.  I picked a few skills around that idea, and started to picture the character as a super powered duelist with rapiers.

When my character was exposed to the stuff which empowered him, he didn't get anything like that.  Instead, Lynx was turned into a slow, lumbering Gargoyle with wings.  More or less, his skills had all been rendered useless because his Dex had been cut by 2/3rds.  His strength wasn't boosted to compensate either, as it was barely above that of an average man.

The one sole benefit was that Lynx could fly.  Only, he really couldn't.  In fact, the wings were largely for show, and all Lynx was capable of was gliding if he launched himself from a great height.  Of course, the bad news is that every adventure I partook in involved being in tight corridors where my superhuman ability to glide was never even an option.

This was in a party where the core characters had the powers of the veteran Fantastic Four.  A character very much like Sunfire was around as well, and other newbies to the game at least got Spider-Man level abilities.

But, I got a guy whose Dexterity was so low that he needed help getting out of bed in the morning, with the ability to GLIDE!

Anyway, I was young and stupid then, and I tried to make the best of it.  At least Lynx didn't start off naked in a cell.  Most of the time, Lynx was predictably useless, but I kept at it.  I learned to hide in the back of combats so that I didn't die, and I identified the group hotshots and kill stealers and hung around them.  That way, when I missed in combat (I never hit) they would suddenly jump to the occasion and kill my opponent before it could harm me.

The high point of playing Lynx came when we were investigating a space station which had become overrun by Gremlins.  This was the only time I was ever able to use any of the skills I had chosen to be a recon man.  While I couldn't be stealthy in any way, I could make Int checks really well.  Then we found THE ROOM.

THE ROOM was packed wall to wall with little flesh eating gremlins.  Needless to say, combat ensued, and I was once again worthless.  The combat monster of the group named Thing (and patterned unsurprisingly off of The Thing from Fantastic Four) strode into the room and the bloodbath started.  I had Lynx stay close to Thing, because it was a fairly safe place, but the Gremlins were beginning to overrun the party.  That was when Thing said "Fuck This" and declared he was grabbing my character Lynx to use as a flyswatter to kill Gremlins.  Yes, my character became a melee weapon.

This worked for a couple of rounds.  Lynx's wings let a wide swath of gremlins be killed with a single swing.  The bad news was that the piddly body armor I had wasn't protecting me from being pummelled to death by Thing's efforts.  Now, the guy who played Thing was honestly enough a decent guy, and he didn't want to kill my character.  That was when the Mr. Fantastic in the group declared he would shapechange into a giant flyswatter and Thing could use that.  It also turned out that Mr. Fantastic had enough body armor to withstand the pounding without damage.

Yes, that's right.  My character wasn't even a good melee weapon.  The highlight of my time playing this game was having my character used by another as a shitty improvised melee weapon.

Later in the session, it seemed like the core players respected me more.  Lynx got some first aid done to him and I was able to participate and have a voice in the discussion which followed about what to do with a station overrun by alien predators.  

A couple of weeks later, Gary told me that he'd have something special for my character in that night's adventure.  The game that evening had started at 5PM and my "special scene" never came up.  After about 5 hours of sitting at a game table with nothing to do along with 16 other loudly talking people, I developed a headache and went to the other game room (where there was a couch) to lie down.  Round about midnight, someone came in and told me that my scene had come up.  I responded that my head hurt too much and I didn't feel like playing it.  I'd just lie on the couch and wait until my friend I came in with was done playing so I could go home.

The next week, I was told second hand that Gary had requested I not play in the next Wanderers game.  According to the story, I didn't ever "contribute."  I learned later it was because my friend who was giving me a ride to the game just didn't want to be transportation any more (which I don't really blame him for, but I wish he had just said so).  In any event, I never played Wanderers again.  Not too long after, the game shop was forced to close down.

Quote from: GabrielNot too long after, the game shop was forced to close down.

So in the end, you got the last laugh.

Seriously, though, I pale to recall the number of games that I suffered through that were apparently being run by the GM for the benefit of maybe 20% of the people at the table.

!i!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaSo in the end, you got the last laugh.

Not really.  I liked that shop.  Gary and his wife Tara were both really nice to me.  I'll never forget them.

God knows I was probably a catpissboy during those years.

I met Tara again a couple of years after the shop closed.  The financial strain of the failed business had destroyed their marriage and she was living alone.  She invited me to join a GURPS Horseclans game which she was running for the guy who played Thing (sad that I remember him by his character) and some other people who had played Wanderers.  But, since Horseclans didn't interest me, and my own group's awesome Robotech game which would eventually last 10 years had just started, I passed on her offer.  I lost touch with her and never saw her again.

I saw Gary a few years ago.  He was definitely the right person.  He looked almost exactly the same except he had put on some weight (he was pretty damn skinny when he ran the shop), but he had no recollection of me at all.  I guess I was just one of the people who came through the doors every week.

Well, if you want shitty game stories, I guess I can contribute, though mine pale in comparison to that. Then again my tolerance for 'favorites' is exceptionally low.

I had a longish running Shadowrun character (mid nineties, sorry I have few stories that date back to the eighties for gaming... curse my amnesia!) who was being constantly haraguined into games... in other words the GM liked him too much to let me make another character. This guy was pretty simple, a Brooklyn 'cabdriver', who was really a Mafia hitman who had quit, driven to seattle to avoid the retirement package, and took up freelance work. Did I mention his driving skill sucked?

Anyway, one of the guys was... well, I've got a catagory for the player but since it's from a relatively narrow slice of the gaming community I'll leave it alone and talk about his character.

This character was the elite, katana weilding ninja commando from the Native American Nations. Yeah, I'm not sure what he was saying either. Anyway, he nominated himself 'Fearless Leader' and told us 'the plan' for our big old shadowrun.  Basically, we were breaking and entering into an office building in the middle of the night. He was going to hang glide from some unspecified source to the building across the street, set up a sniper position (with that 50cal BFG sniper rifle that was hot shit back then) on the roof watching the lobby of the building we were assualting. Did I mention both buildings were tall office blocks? Across the street?

That was the extent of his plan. The rest of us were on our own. I didn't complain, mind you... what little his plan consisted of was frankly idiotic, and I was happier not dealing with a wannabe Indian Ninja Commando. Not that my Wannabe Mafia Hitman Cabdriver was all that spectacular either.

The rest of us broke in through the back door, convienently propped open for a smoke by some thoughtless security guard.   That was our only break. Needless to say, we tripped over our own two feet, set off the alarms and had to fight it out.

I took on the 'guard bunker' in the middle of the first floor while the others kept a running gun battle going through the halls.  Meanwhile ninja boy, whose character has been peering through the scope for hours realizes...

he can't see a god damn thing except the front lobby of the building, and that guard ran off as soon as the alarm hit. He stays still, waiting for his shot.

Meanwhile I got a flying drone in a locked room unloading twin machineguns on me at point blank range while the guy running it hides in an armored egg in the corner, and my partners are running out of health and bullets in the hallways. Fun stuff.

Long story short, I kill the drone, then ponder the eggshell for a long moment before blowing the powerbox apart as we finish up the guards. the Run is shot, but we want some compensation. Meanwhile, Ninjaboy abseils down teh face of his sniper's nest building and calmly strides through the now empty lobby.

The emergency routines pop the Egg open and I apprehend the guard for some nebulous idea of interrogating him for info for what is left of the run. Being the honorable mafioso tough guy I pop him in the jaw for hiding in an egg while I took bullets to the face (ok, chest, but still)... and immedeatly wind up with a katana to my neck from ninja boy, whose ill defined code of honor was just violated.

Mmmm... diakoted cuts-a-tank-in-half Shadowrun katana... Did I mention I was 'Serioiusly' injured, which put my character pretty close to death?  He didn't actually attack me, just threatened me mightily. I called it a night to cool down from this, and when I brought it up a few days later I was universally condemned for 'violating his sense of honor' by him, the other players and the GM.  I quit playing for a while shortly after, fed up with the cliquishness (did I mention the GM later started sleeping with the guy?)


Now, leaving aside the inherent silliness of a good Shadowrun game (silliness that must be taken 'Seriously' by all involved to work... ), and the oddities of Indian Ninja Commando's with strange, ill defined codes of honor...

you just don't pull shit like that and expect to keep freinds with someone. That sort of bickering bullshit infighting is, to me, disfunctional...bad... gaming, and I won't do that outside of games like Paranoia and Amber, where it is expected. And if the people take it to serious in those games, I won't play them with them...

Meh.