[Roleplaying] So, let me tell you...

Looking back through the mists of history, you might think I'd find it difficult to identify my least favourite thing about the time I spent running the CamUK. Would it be the slowly dawning realisation that Monty had sold me a pup when he talked me into the job? Or maybe the evenings spent trying to mediate in disputes between people which could easily have been solved by them acting like grownups, buying each other a drink and shaking hands? Or maybe it was watching people treat a four-star hotel like a Youth Hostel and then (literally) screaming when asked not to?
So many choices.

However, it was none of those things. It was the quiet moments when I'd got a few minutes to myself and was sitting, quietly contemplating the world, when I'd see someone heading at me with a purposeful gait and a familiar gleam in their eye and I'd think: Ah, crap. They want to tell me about their character.
The thing about roleplaying is that it is a hobby of shared experience, and that results in people wanting to share their experiences with others who weren't there at the time. And that leads to the problem: There are many great moments to be had when gaming with a group of like-minded friends, and not one of those moments will be even slightly entertaining when told to the people who weren't there. I could tell you about the game I was at shortly after I had surgery in 2005 when I laughed so hard my stitches came open and I had to go back to hospital (try explaining that one to a nurse), or about Hurrah for St Custards during which I laughed so hard I actually stopped breathing. But I won't tell you about those things, because if you weren't there than the stories would be quite risibly dull - and the problem is that after creating stories, gamers tend to want to share them. And nobody in their right mind wants to hear them. I remember meeting Gary Gygax back in 2000, and as I wandered over to him he took on a wary expression that I was later to come to realise well. He was terrified that the conversation he was about to have with me would feature the words "Hard Dwarf".

Knights of the Dinner Table actually has a column titled "Tales from the table" in which they invite readers to tell their entertaining gaming stories, and I think it's a move of marketing genius to engage with their audience in this way. It's still far and away the most tedious and dull part of the magazine, though. My sister and I entertain each other by reading the stories out in redneck and Midwestern accents and saying "Hyuk hyuk hyuk" a lot during them.

And with this in mind I have a challenge for all the gamers reading - and I know there are a few of you. Tell me an *entertaining* story about your character. I don't believe it is actually possible - certainly I've never seen anyone do it, and I've sat through a hell of a lot of brain-numbing tales of just how cool people's characters are. Some of them were Werewolf: The Apocalypse players, and I speak as a connoisseur of awful character stories that theirs are the most tedious of the bunch*.

So. Go ahead. Entertaining RP stories. The floor is yours.

^{*Really. Really. Jesus, but stories about werewolf characters are so ****ing dull.}