Once there was this roleplayer. He was a bit of a smart type, who didn’t quite respect the rules, men instead did what he could to keep his character alive. The way he did it would often benefit his fellow players, so usually they would not be too loud about it.
The way he did was typically that he would offer the game master his assistance in moving minis and setting up terrain for combats. When he then was moving the models around, a goblin would be placed just out of range, so its attack failed, or a troll would disappear from the horde of monsters. With a bit of trickery the mini was removed from the table.
“Didn’t I have another orc?” or “Wasn’t my goblin archer just within range?” the GM would wonder, but always the player being charming and convincing told the GM, that the monster was gone or somewhere else. When it wasn’t around miniatures the distraction was being created, it was with the GM’s numbers and calculations the player created confusion. Hit Points and Health Levels were being miscalculated, initiative values displaced and so forth.
His success with manipulating his game masters game went to his head, and he began seeing himself as the superior player of the two. That he would be far better as both a player and a game master than his regular GM was.
To prove this he decided, that he would run one of his GM’s adventures for himself. So one day he stole one of the GM’s adventures and sat down to play it by himself.
What he wasn’t aware of was, that all the monsters, he had cheated his game master for, were still around. Hidden in rooms and cellars, in the deep woods and in dark alleys. Monsters that had never been killed or driven off, but instead lay in wait for a vulnerable adventurer to pass by.
So when he sat down to play, one monster after the other came out of the shadows. The orc he had hidden from GM, the troll he had stolen off the battlefield, the goblins hidden behind an elven regimen was still present in GM’s notes, and now they came rushing out, as the player sat down to play. What should have been a harmless journey to the local dungeon became a nightmare, and he ended up watching his character defeated.
To the surprise of the other players and the game master the next time they played, they found his character’s head on a pike outside the local dungeon.
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These stories are chosen and translated from a Danish Advent Calender (“julekalender”) for roleplayers. They are small, independent stories from the major Advent Calender story arc. In Denmark there is a long running tradition for Advent Calender stories (in the shape of radio plays, tv-series, written stories, candles – but also as blogs with 24 daily blog posts counting down to Christmas) in 24 episodes running from the 1st of December til Christmas on the 24th of December (yes, Danes celebrates Christmas on the 24th).
Roles, Dice and Fun 