- Joined
- Jan 16, 2017
The idea that campaigns shouldn't include content that players aren't comfortable with is a perfectly good one. We've all had that experience where the DM wants you to visit his Magical Realm, or the player that thinks that rape jokes are the height of humour and makes one every time he fucking speaks. I just find it obnoxious, but then I've never been raped and someone who has may find it worse than that. But the X card is THE dumbest way to deal with that issue. Whatever the fuck happened to talking to your DM during Session Zero and setting boundaries ahead of time so that nobody has to sperg out in the middle of a session? In fact, as a DM, I tell my players what I consider acceptable or not acceptable in a session zero or even earlier - like in the initial emails I sent to people describing the campaign for people who might be interested. If you don't like that, don't join my campaign. Simple.
They were good times. Most of those stories are no more interesting in depth than they are as a one-sentence summary, but the IRL Blood Bowl match was entertaining and I was actually spectating the game when it happened so I can describe it in detail.
The two combatants were guys I knew really well, both of them ... interesting characters. They had history prior to this incident. First up was Graham. Graham was a massively tall, skinnyfat Geordie Linux dork with strong opinions and a quick temper. He loved painting models and got really attached to his work. Across the table was Tim, a skinny weeb and C++ programmer with no social skills. Tim was an infuriating min-maxing powergamer at everything he played, but insisted he was in fact a master roleplayer and everyone else was having fun wrong. His own idea of fun was to try to break people's campaigns by stacking bonuses until he was an invincible killing machine. Tim had in fact played in one of Graham's D&D campaigns, where his paladin stayed at the back of the party and shot enemies with a crossbow from behind a tower shield because his dex bonus was better than his strength bonus, even though paladins of Pelor are supposed to be, you know, brave? Graham had an NPC knight him as "Sir Bertrand the Circumspect" which made him so angry he stormed out and wasn't seen for another two sessions.
This was quite an old edition of Blood Bowl. Can't remember which one offhand (it was about 2001-2003-ish), but it had some severe balancing issues that made actually trying to play football a massively inferior strategy to just beating the opposition's players senseless until they couldn't stop you walking the ball to the endzone. Graham had a (beautifully painted, of course) Vampire Counts team. One quirk of the Vampire Counts in that edition of BB is that they got one Vampire Lord who was absurdly overpowered, but couldn't be replaced if he died. There were a few other vampires on the team, and one would take over if the Lord was dead, but they didn't get the absurd stat buffs of the original Lord, rendering the team at a permanent and severe disadvantage (the rest of the team was human thralls who were basically cannon fodder). Graham had spent weeks painting his Vampire Lord and it was a beautiful model, one of the best in the whole club.
Tim, being Tim, had spent a similar amount of time trying to come up with the most broken team build possible, and by God he succeeded. He played Undead (this was before Warhammer and Blood Bowl split undead into Egyptian and Gothic themed armies, so it was all in one minus vampires) and built his team 100% for violence and injuring other players. I don't think he even bothered to paint most of the models. The idea behind the Undead was to have fast ghouls who could actually play the game, mummies to hold the line and crump people, and skeletons to get in the way. That's not how Tim played them.
That edition of Blood Bowl allowed you to foul a downed player. You rolled 2d6, and if you beat the player's armour rating you injured them. For the injury roll, you rolled 2d6 again to see the severity of the injury, from an impressive scar that actually improved your stats at 2, to death at 12. Now in that edition, you could get bonuses to the armour and injury roll from having more of your players surrounding the player getting crumped. If you managed to surround the player completely before fouling them, you could get +7 to both the armour and injury roll. Tim had a skeleton called "RIP" who had a special ability that gave it an extra +1 to both rolls, and a set of knuckle dusters for an additional +2. In other words, if Tim managed to surround your player with skeletons and got RIP to foul them, he got +10 to both the armour and injury rolls. No model in the game had an armour rating anywhere near 12, so Tim was guaranteed to injure your player every time he fouled them with enough skeletons, and then killed them on a roll of 4 or above on 2d6.
Guess what happened to Graham's Vampire Lord?
The entire board went silent. Graham turned puce. After an awkward pause, Graham picked up the entire board and threw it at Tim. Tim just about had enough time to call Graham a "fucking baby" before Graham's forehead connected with his nose, making it almost as much of a mangled pulp as Graham's Vampire Lord.
The Police were not involved, and the doctors managed to straighten Tim's nose out without too much difficulty. Tim learned exactly nothing from his experiences, and wherever he is now, you can be sure that he's stacking his bonuses as much as possible in order to "role play properly".
They were good times. Most of those stories are no more interesting in depth than they are as a one-sentence summary, but the IRL Blood Bowl match was entertaining and I was actually spectating the game when it happened so I can describe it in detail.
The two combatants were guys I knew really well, both of them ... interesting characters. They had history prior to this incident. First up was Graham. Graham was a massively tall, skinnyfat Geordie Linux dork with strong opinions and a quick temper. He loved painting models and got really attached to his work. Across the table was Tim, a skinny weeb and C++ programmer with no social skills. Tim was an infuriating min-maxing powergamer at everything he played, but insisted he was in fact a master roleplayer and everyone else was having fun wrong. His own idea of fun was to try to break people's campaigns by stacking bonuses until he was an invincible killing machine. Tim had in fact played in one of Graham's D&D campaigns, where his paladin stayed at the back of the party and shot enemies with a crossbow from behind a tower shield because his dex bonus was better than his strength bonus, even though paladins of Pelor are supposed to be, you know, brave? Graham had an NPC knight him as "Sir Bertrand the Circumspect" which made him so angry he stormed out and wasn't seen for another two sessions.
This was quite an old edition of Blood Bowl. Can't remember which one offhand (it was about 2001-2003-ish), but it had some severe balancing issues that made actually trying to play football a massively inferior strategy to just beating the opposition's players senseless until they couldn't stop you walking the ball to the endzone. Graham had a (beautifully painted, of course) Vampire Counts team. One quirk of the Vampire Counts in that edition of BB is that they got one Vampire Lord who was absurdly overpowered, but couldn't be replaced if he died. There were a few other vampires on the team, and one would take over if the Lord was dead, but they didn't get the absurd stat buffs of the original Lord, rendering the team at a permanent and severe disadvantage (the rest of the team was human thralls who were basically cannon fodder). Graham had spent weeks painting his Vampire Lord and it was a beautiful model, one of the best in the whole club.
Tim, being Tim, had spent a similar amount of time trying to come up with the most broken team build possible, and by God he succeeded. He played Undead (this was before Warhammer and Blood Bowl split undead into Egyptian and Gothic themed armies, so it was all in one minus vampires) and built his team 100% for violence and injuring other players. I don't think he even bothered to paint most of the models. The idea behind the Undead was to have fast ghouls who could actually play the game, mummies to hold the line and crump people, and skeletons to get in the way. That's not how Tim played them.
That edition of Blood Bowl allowed you to foul a downed player. You rolled 2d6, and if you beat the player's armour rating you injured them. For the injury roll, you rolled 2d6 again to see the severity of the injury, from an impressive scar that actually improved your stats at 2, to death at 12. Now in that edition, you could get bonuses to the armour and injury roll from having more of your players surrounding the player getting crumped. If you managed to surround the player completely before fouling them, you could get +7 to both the armour and injury roll. Tim had a skeleton called "RIP" who had a special ability that gave it an extra +1 to both rolls, and a set of knuckle dusters for an additional +2. In other words, if Tim managed to surround your player with skeletons and got RIP to foul them, he got +10 to both the armour and injury rolls. No model in the game had an armour rating anywhere near 12, so Tim was guaranteed to injure your player every time he fouled them with enough skeletons, and then killed them on a roll of 4 or above on 2d6.
Guess what happened to Graham's Vampire Lord?
The entire board went silent. Graham turned puce. After an awkward pause, Graham picked up the entire board and threw it at Tim. Tim just about had enough time to call Graham a "fucking baby" before Graham's forehead connected with his nose, making it almost as much of a mangled pulp as Graham's Vampire Lord.
The Police were not involved, and the doctors managed to straighten Tim's nose out without too much difficulty. Tim learned exactly nothing from his experiences, and wherever he is now, you can be sure that he's stacking his bonuses as much as possible in order to "role play properly".
