Another post in the blog d100 series, the challenge came from Buster over on 19 Sided Die and the table comes from d4 Caltrops. As always, if you make a blog post based on this challenge or even just that table, please let me know in the comments! I would love to link other blogs in the OSR sphere.
Rolled 16: Do you have any stories from games that players cannot stop talking about?
In short, yes, plenty of them. I've played with mostly the same group of people for decades now. There are stories they remember vividly. All the ones they talk about the most come from having someone join our group and totally miss the memo on the tone. I'll give you one of my favorites below, it's a long one, fair warning.
The Fall of Steve Galaxy
This was a superhero game. I told everyone involved that this was supposed to be a superhero game. This was repeated often as we rolled out our characters using palladium's Heroes Unlimited. So a player rolls up a guy with some space and gravity themed powers, he could make holographic projections of his memory, he could turn into a void of stars, tractor beams, a couple other small things. His character is named Steve Galaxy, I didn't know at the time it was a lazy mimic of Steven Universe. His character showed up in a space suit with helmet and everything. He did a hero machine portrait with a bunch of buckles hanging off the suit and a helmet full of stars. It looked pretty good.
Other important characters are Grimsby, a rat man made using the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rules who was super fast and had super hearing. Also, Hex, a witch who was the mystic study hero category, basically a wizard similar to Dr Strange or Dr Fate. Hex was a returning character and had some history in the setting.
The setting of this game was a city that had been bottled, like Kandor. The villains in the city greatly outnumbered the heroes and quickly cut up the city into territories. The police and heroes maintained control of only a single sector of the city, unable to push too much further.
The session when Galaxy first started to show signs of madness began with the PCs having just defeated a villain, his slice of the city unprotected. This villain was also the wizard category, he had been drawing power from his entire territory by skimming a little bit of mana off the top of every person in it every day. With so many people he was really powerful, The previous session faced the players with no choice but to kill him, knowing that he had a backup body somewhere else and killing him would only remove him for now.
The Heroes decided that the people in this part of the city needed to be moved to a safer part. They made a deal with a villain named Glimmer, who owned another part. He would take in these people... but Galaxy realized that he wasn't getting a reward for this. He demanded Glimmer give him something in exchange for all these people. Grimsby protested briefly but was pinned to the wall with a tractor beam, Hex was not present, she was looking for other heroes in the city to help with the move. So Glimmer offered Galaxy a house, a really nice one with all the bells and whistles. This seemed to make the hero happy and he accepted.
The plan was for Galaxy to use his powers to make the people think he was the messiah figure in their worship of the villain that used to protect them, and lead them on a pilgrimage to safer lands, the promised lands. This was accomplished easily when he used his powers to mimic the wizard they defeated.
Hex, out in the city was able to find a crime fighter she knew well, a vigilante named Slayer, and his team of crime fighters. He was horrified that the Heroes were handing over all these people to Glimmer and said he would protect that section of the city with his team, not to hand over the people to a villain.
Hex agreed and called Galaxy and Grimsby on the radio, she explained that Slayer was a hero, that he would protect the people, that she had known him for years, that he could be trusted, and that the people shouldn't be placed in a villain's hands.
Galaxy's player looked across the table to Grimsby's player. What passed between them in their minds in this moment I'll never know. Galaxy's player simply said "do you wanna trail of tears this shit?" and Grimsby's player agreed. While the rest of us were reeling from the horrific choice of description from their plan they started to lay out how they told everyone that "Slayer is coming to kill you, leave your stuff and run!" working everyone into a mass panic and starting their panicked rush into Glimmer's slice of the city.
We rolled some dice and a few people were trampled in the panic. I described this to them and they shrugged, "the price of protecting my subjects" Galaxy's player said.
Slayer himself went to the hospital first, to ensure that anyone who couldn't be transported was safe and not left behind. He took his team with him to deal with looters and sent his right hand man, Copperhead, to go talk to Galaxy who he assumed didn't get the message.
Copperhead catches up on his motorcycle and flags down Galaxy who is flying overhead. Copperhead explains that there are people to protect this area now, no one needs to be sold to a villain. Galaxy explains that he is not going to do that, he has a house waiting for him. Copperhead takes out his gun, a small automatic, and aims it up in the air at Galaxy.
Out of game, Galaxy's player knows that automatics in this system are dangerous, even to superheroes. He knows that if Copperhead empties the magazine he has a real chance of losing half his hit points.
Galaxy lowers himself into the crowd, using them as shields, "I'm their god now Copperhead, They will follow me." Is all he says.
Copperhead understands this and knows he can't handle this alone, he gets on his motorcycle and leaves. Galaxy's player declares that he waits until copperhead gets up to speed and tries to tractor beam the motorcycle out from under him, openly declaring he wants to kill Copperhead. Fortunately he misses and Copperhead gets away to report to Slayer.
For a brief moment Galaxy has clarity, he actually stops the crowd and the player is thinking about what he's doing. Then Grimsby empties the magazine of his weapon into the ground and starts the stampede again.
Not long later Slayer makes his appearance, in his own way. Somewhere in the distance the pair hear a gunshot and a bullet ricochets off Galaxy into Grimsby's leg. They ask where the shot came from, the players angrily demand to know exactly where the sound came from... in an open field with an echo. Grimsby's player reminds me that he has super hearing. I tell him that is important as the second shot rings out and hits his leg after bouncing off Galaxy, now that he knows to listen for it he is able to tell the direction. I tell him it is coming from behind them, near a bridge they just passed over. This doesn't quite track because Galaxy is being hit in the front. The players never communicate with each other about this. Galaxy simply flies in the direction of the sound while bullets continue to bounce off him and into Grimsby.
Eventually Grimsby's resolve breaks, he picks a random direction and runs. We roll it, I laugh and show my notes to another player. He randomly chose the direction Slayer was in. So Grimsby comes face to face with the vigilante. The rat has super speed but Slayer is significantly higher level and has quickdraw. Slayer wins initiative and quick draws a tranqu gun, pumping Grimsby full of enough sedatives to knock out a horse. Grimsby's world goes dark.
Meanwhile Galaxy has found the source of the gunfire, or at least the decoy Slayer placed. He finds a 9mm glock that has a device attached to it and is loaded with blanks. He quickly gathers that every time Slayer pulls the trigger on his presumably silent weapon, this thing fires a blank to direct attention away from him. He decides he is going to fly in the opposite direction of the remote gun, guessing (correctly) that Slayer is in that direction.
Grimsby comes to and his legs are bandaged. Slayer explains that he's not a medic and Grimsby shouldn't move too much or his bandages might come undone. Shortly after this, Hex arrives with the rest of Slayer's team of crime fighters. Grimsby figures he's beat for now and waits, quietly getting his rat hands out of the zip cuffs that aren't meant to contain someone like him.
Then Galaxy arrives. He assesses the situation and immediately declares that he is going to try to kill everyone. He says he is going to create a vacuum bubble around them and declares that everyone dies instantly in a vacuum. The more experienced players at the table remind him that this is a game with rules, his power actually takes 1 minute to knock someone out, 5 minutes to kill, as the rules say. The people below, a mixture of PCs and heroic NPCs start to react and Galaxy flies away at his best speed.
This is Grimsby's moment. He snags a flashbang grenade from one of the PC's a military style hero, and pulls the pin, dropping it at his own feet. This buys Galaxy enough time to get a lead. Grimsby recovers slowly, his super hearing causing his ears to suffer incredible damage, but he breaks his bandages and crawls into a sewer. Slayer sends most of his team after Grimsby. Hex grabs Slayer, puts him on the back of her broom, and flies after Galaxy. Galaxy has a lead and they have the same flight speed but Slayer has a gun.
Shots ring out and Galaxy is injured, losing control of his Void form and falling from the sky. Specifically, Slayer targeted Galaxy's arms, not wanting to kill the lunatic. Galaxy plummets and says he's going to tractor beam the ground. With both his arms being shattered and flapping like wet noodles. He somehow manages to land the attack roll, landing safely on the ground and running into the woods, bleeding profusely.
Hex and Slayer land. The pair puts together all of their shared skills as hunters, detectives, and crime fighters to track down this man who is bleeding profusely as he runs through the woods, while the player is loudly saying he shouldn't be able to be tracked. They follow the blood trail and find that it leads directly to a prostitute... alone in the woods. It's obvious to Hex and Slayer that this is Galaxy using his holographic projection power to change his appearance.
Slayer growls, "you could have been anything." and it feels like this old vigilante might not be talking about just what Galaxy could have turned into.
As Slayer takes out the tranquilizer gun Galaxy nods his surrender, unable to raise his arms, "gotta know when you're beat." he says slowly.
When the trigger is pulled he rolls a d20 and declares dodge, shouting, "but that shouldn't stop you from trying!"
He fails to dodge and his world goes dark and the tranquilizers put him under.
There is a part two in this story where Galaxy makes some... Interesting choices in custody but this is already feeling a little too long. If this gets some interest I'll follow up with the other half, maybe tales from past games will become a regular thing here.
As always, here are the links to others who have been running the Blog d100 or replying to the original post:
Buster on 19 Sided Die gave us "I'll run it one day"
Over on Mythscribe we got "What are four legendary treasures one might search for in your game?"
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