Thursday, February 23, 2012

It's Out of My Hands

No matter what the DM has in mind, campaigns are defined by the players.

On Tuesday evening, we wrapped up a nostalgic Tunnels & Trolls adventure that had been running for several months. It ended with one of those moments that will live forever in group memory.

The characters--a dwarf warrior and a leprechaun accompanied by a hapless NPC fighter and a bedraggled wererat--had tracked a villainous witch to the lower level of her dungeon. Eventually they found themselves at the entrance to an underground gnome village guarded by gnomes riding giant shrews. The heroes realized that the village was an alternate exit from the dungeon when the guards admitted that they brought in supplies from the outside world--"seafood, wine, mail, things like that." The dwarf snorted derisively at the idea of gnomes receiving mail, and the gnomes bristled at the insult. They were proud of both the reliability of their postal service and the quantity of mail it carried. The mail service of dwarves was a joke by comparison.

Before that argument could go further, the witch arrived with her orc bodyguards and the fight was on. The heroes slew the witch, her bodyguards, and all but one of her gnome allies. Cornered by the blood-spattered dwarf, the remaining gnome asked, "can't we just let bygones be bygones?"

The dwarf raised his axe and shouted, "You've got mail, motherf*****!" and split the gnome's skull.

Long after the witch's name is forgotten, I'm sure this adventure will be remembered for that tagline alone.

Steve

1 comment:

  1. HaHh I love it! You can never have enough Gnome/Dwarf rivalry :)

    That sounds like a really great game, exactly what I imagine when I think about Tunnels and Trolls (I've only got the little paper back sized copy though so I might have a slightly skewed view of the system).

    I never really get to do dungeons in my games, one of my players HATES dungeons and will violently oppose any attempts to get him to enter a subterranean ecology :(

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