[PnP] Slow list, group sayings and customs

[Wout Broere]

At 19:59 07/12/2005, Burton wrote:
>2) "going to hell for a brass bit a day"
>In my early years of gaming P&P, when ever the players had some
>hirelings I didn't put very much effort in giving the NPC's any sort of
>personality, or nature...they were pretty much meat-robots that the

- We used to have a lot of these unnamed hirelings as well, except 
for the fact they were never unnamed. One of these hirelings was 
named Harry to give him some character. The name stuck and after that 
all hirelings were named Harry. At times we had several hirelings, 
Harry 1 to Harry 6. They were expected to obey without question. That 
led to one of the best remembered conversations in our group:

The players are on a pirate ship somewhere out on the ocean.
Player 1: Are there sharks here?
Player 2: Harry, do jump overboard.
GM: Harry draws his axe.
Player 2: Harry, don't be such a boar.

The phrase "Harry, don't be such a boar." still gets used out of context.


-  Another occasion we were dungeon crawling through a puzzle maze 
and ended up in a room with five doors from which to choose an exit. 
Tension was high, because it was unknown what danger or puzzle might 
lie beyond those doors. By unspoken agreement it was decided to split 
the group and test several doors at the same time. Splitting the 
group in a dungeon was something that invariably drove our GM nuts, 
as he would have to keep track of two or three groups and split time 
and attention between the groups.

As soon as we made clear that we would split, something along the 
lines of 'Oh no, not again' was muttered, the GM took a piece of 
paper and asked around who would form a group together and which door 
they would pick as a group. There were seven players at the time and 
the first two opted to form a group and take the 'middle door'. Two 
others opted to form a group and take 'the third door from the 
right'. At that point one of the first two players announced that he 
would change groups and go with the second group instead of taking 
the 'middle door'. Then one of the undeclared players would announce 
to join the lone player that was going through the 'middle door' and 
the remainder of the players would take the 'third door from the left'.

As soon as this was noted down, one more player would change groups, 
leading to more scribbling and the switching of groups went on for 
almost a full hour, driving the GM completely nuts.

Then, when we could hardly control our laughter any more, he suddenly 
realized: 'Oh, it is the same door.' and we all burst out laughing.

Since then if there is an uneven number of exits from a room, some of 
us take the middle door and other take the n-th door from the right or left.



Wout Broere		broere at powersandperils.org
P&P Website:		http://www.powersandperils.org/