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

[davywavy]

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.}

Comments

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Werewolf stories are the best.

We were all going to ... [insert story here] ... and then we ripped it limb from limb. Hooray!

Werewolf stories are even better because you are meant to tell the stories in character. Indeed I once told a story sooo long that people never let me tell a story again.

Generally I only have a policy of retelling roleplaying tales where people were involved in the game somehow - these things only matter if you have an emotional stake in them. When you tell someone about your character you don't have any time to create an emotional stake in that character's story - and therefore it is unutterably dull.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That's the thing - it's a shared experience thing, so I can talk about things like hurrah for St Custards with the people who were there. The people who weren't simply are not - and never will be - interested in hearing about raggedy_man falling to his knees and shouting "Not in the face!"

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Werewolf stories are the best.

No. Really. I once had to share a train home for hours from some northern event with a werewolf player and in the end, when the train stopped at Grantham I said "This is my stop" and got off. It cost me an extra fifty quid for the extra ticket to actually get home, and it was worth every penny.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

I can't play this game, because my favourite Cam story is still the one about the looks on everyone else's faces in that Spider/Cassidy scene, and you were there for that.

[danfossydan.livejournal.com]

I was trying to do X, and then Bob who I hate, cheated and did Y. Bob sucks.

Thats a typical story from Cam isn't it?

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

Oh, I remember that story well.

[chrisvenus]

I think I am inclined to agree. Though I think general descriptions of games can be more interesting than specific moments of games (eg describing a cool setting). One of the coolest settings I played in will have lost its impact now. The game started out as sci-fi-ish but thigns started happening that clearly broke all the laws of physics. We were bamboozled until such time as we foudn out that we were all in a giant computer system that created our reality for us and that the bad guys pursuing us were programs in the computers... It would be an interesting setting to describe but then the matrix came along afterwards and the game can be summed up as "A bit like the matrix but without the genocidal AIs."

I'm always interested in character stories if they actually generally do something interesting and come with enough context to understand. The problem is that usually you don't have that context because you haven't played the game and maybe don't even know the setting.

Thinking about it its probably not dissimilar to describing a cool bit in a film you've seen that somebody else hasn't. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...

In general though I'd be incliend to agree. (failing to cut a long story short there).

And I decline your challenge since I don't think I could entertain with an RP story. Though given your writing style I reckon you could. I think you should try at least. :)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Was that the tonsil-hockey moment?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it its probably not dissimilar to describing a cool bit in a film you've seen that somebody else hasn't. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...

That's exactly right. I had someone describing an exciting action scene in a film they'd seen to me the other day, and eventually I slumped to the floor, numbed into unconsciousness. It was just like someone telling me about the time they rolled two natural twenties in a row.

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

I think a number of issues come into play. Firstly, that being a roleplayer (or GM, DM or ST) does not make you an entertaining *storyteller*. Many of these 'hilarious' tales might actually be entertaining if told with the wit of a reasonable stand-up "so there we were at the gates of Mordor" isn't much different from "So the bouncer shows up and I'm still holding the inflatable sheep".

Unfortunately, you usually really *do* have to be there during my games and the hilarity tends to be largely ooc, such as Toby apparently losing the ability to speak, move or think after sampling robinbloke's 'get well' gin, or the previous session's suggestion that the plot must have been inspired by hard narcotics.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

I have an icon for this!

As a general rule, if you can tell an RPing story in one breath, please, go ahead. Otherwise, don't bother.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

Yes, the day you chopped the famous "no touching" rule up into tiny pieces. I don't know if they expected me to hit you or what.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That's really a rather good icon.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I wrote the rules, I got to break 'em :)

And the expression on *your* face was a picture as well. Oh, for a camera.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

I wasn't expecting that. At least I could carry that expression off as an IC reaction. :)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

You forgot "And I want to lodge a formal complaint. I'll be ringing you about it, David".

My sister pointed out to me that I have my 'Camarilla voice', which sounds serious, caring and attentive that I used to use when talking on the phone. She could tell when I was talking about Camstuff as I'd use it every time.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I got a photo of that some months ago, but forgot to post it up here. I thought it hilarious.

[danfossydan.livejournal.com]

Still I should try seriously.

I had quite good fun playing DnD, where upon our ship being crashed upon the shore, attacked by a mighty cracken, I took careful attention to ensure that the survivng crew and other players were reasonably safe, and then strode into the bowels of the ship, seeking out the monster. It was all good and wonderful heroic opertunity for death. i was very happy with this. Sadly one of the other players decided they were just as heroic, but were not quite expecting the same horrible death that shortly followed for both our characters. I felt quite bad for them.

I think its a tale about how foolish one of my friends was, to trust that his character wouldn't die, even though it was an obvious and likely outcome to the rest of the group, rather than an entertaining romp about what we got up to...

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

I think that's becasue of all the old White Wolf games, werewolf is the most inpenetrable. It has the weirdest language and the biggest changes from established folklore. Changeling had some similar issues, but enough of the words were in common folklore usage to make an easier translation. I once stopped and listened to a werewolf game going on and realised how much of the language was in really arcane code. It makes it hard to bring new plauyers in and makes the stories really dull to anyone who wasn't there.

[godzuki.livejournal.com]

I think they key is that rp stories only sound interesting if you keep them to 1 sentence at most and not some rambling story in which you must describe the socio-political situation between the dwarves and elves, and how King Ballsaq's daughter was involved, along with her entire back story and how cool a shotgun you used to bugger her, which you got from that adventure in the mountains of ...

Well you see what I mean.

Even so, its never ever going to be as funny as it was at the time. At the end of the day, RP stories seem to be what people do when they have no other conversation ability or real life stories to tell...always [Deleted for security purposes]

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

The royal trifecta for me is when they're having their little epic (the Tolkien kind where they have to describe the verdant rolling hills of Arghbargia a lot) about characters that I don't care about, pottering around a world I don't know anything about, with everything's run under a system that I don't play: "And our party entered the Throne Room of Depressing Clichés and slew an oogle boogle thing that was 40th level! Not ten, not twenty, but a real life 40th level oogle boogle thing, with a two-and-a-half dot damage reduction die modifier rating level trait! Oh lordy it was so grand!"

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

The "it's a gazebo" story was fairly entertaining, but, yet. Few match that. I'll give mine a try.

Back in university, I was in a game where we were 15th century knights. One of the characters (I'll call him "Bob," mostly because it's short) had a chance to search for some points building thing or other and went merrily on to do so.

GM: So you're riding out in full armor in 90 degree weather? [32C] Roll a 20 sided.
Bob: [rolls] Do I see it?
GM: Nope. Do you want to keep looking?
Bob: Yep!
GM: Roll the 20. Sure you don't want to do anything else?
Bob: [rolls] No, I keep on looking?
[this repeats for about 5 minutes]
GM: Yeah, so you just fainted from heat stroke. Roll again to see how much damage you took coming off the horse.

Which may or may not be funny to someone who wasn't there, but it does show something of what it's like to have a military history major for a GM.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

and makes the stories really dull to anyone who wasn't there.

Ding!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the solid hour of bragging how the made-up superpowers of his Werewolf character made it tougher than the made-up superpowers of my Vampire character.

I look back now and realise this bragging may have been occasioned by the fact I had a girlfriend and he didn't.

There was this time ...

[(Anonymous)]

our party were being chased by orcs, and to impede their pursuit, we polymorphed David's character into a cotton wool elephant and set it on fire. Man, it was fricking hilarious! You had to be there! Oh, wait, you were

H