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Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 4:21 pm
by Oregon
I thought it might be interesting to hear about amusing experiences you have had at your table while playing The One
Ring. This could be anything from crazy dice results to funny OOC observations and outbursts. I know that when we play TOR, we tend to be fairly immersive, but surely you must have a few mirthful tales to tell...
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 5:37 pm
by mirkwoodfalcon
One tale that comes to mind is from my party's experience in
Tales from Wilderland, specifically the
Crossings of Celduin adventure. At the outset, they had arrived in Dale during a festive time; so festive, in fact, that no inns in town had any room for them, and they would be forced to find lodging in meager tents outside the city walls if they could not discover a vacancy. They visited The Drunkenstone Inn, as outlined in the supplement, and were told by the innkeeper that if they were interested in some under-handed work, they could possibly find suitable housing there...
Now, as their LM, I suspected they would refuse the offer. After all, they were a fairly lawful-good party consisting of a Dunedain, a High Elf, a profoundly respectable Hobbit, etc. Additionally, they were extremely adverse to gaining Shadow-- especially the Hobbit. So it surprised me greatly when little ol' Hana Goodbody, well-to-do halfling hailing from distant lands, piped up that she would be willing to take the man up on his offer of thievery.
At this point, the innkeeper smiled wickedly and told them that a wealthy merchant by the name of Lockmand was staying in a fine, royal, expensive tent on a small hill outside the gates in the midst of the tent-dwelling populace. It was rumored that he had brought with him a great many treasures, among them countless gold coins which he intended to reward to victors of various festival games. Long story short, my fellowship stole fireworks from the merchant's district, lit half the tents on fire, nearly assaulted some of the guards, lied, sabotaged, and backstabbed their way to the treasure, accruing massive piles of Shadow points. The capstone of the entire event saw a thunderous chase through the streets of Dale, where our Woodman player sought to capture a huge treasure chest being born away to safety by hired guards, employed by Lockmand. To cause chaos, he lit a large firecracker and dropped it into a crowd!
That night... did not go as I intended. It's a scary thing when normally-good players stray so far off the straight-and-narrow...
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 10:43 pm
by zedturtle
That does sound very fun, mirkwoodfalcon!
Let's see:
I enjoyed the resolution of Egil's story in the game that I ran for mirkwoodfalcon and others last year at Gen Con. In another game at the convention; the hobbit and the dwarf managed to both sneak into an enemy camp and remain hidden while their allies attacked. The plan was for them to spring the trap at the right moment. Turns out that when they decided to pop out of their hiding space, everyone was really low on Endurance. So Rally Comrades was the chosen action of the two and we had the surprise singing and dancing dwarf and hobbit duo.
The PbP games I've run have made me laugh at times as well, usually due to antics from one of the usual suspects (most all of the Beornsvagers post here).
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 11:49 pm
by Kullervo
We've had amusing things come up on our adventures but they weren't quite top tier hilarity - more like fun little running jokes. Our origional company was 2 Woodsmen, one from Mountain Hall, other from Woodsmentown, a Dwarf of Erebor, and an Elf of Mirkwood.
So, established truth about each characters:
The Woodsman from Mountain Hall (used to) have a tendency to charge anything that threatened us first, with no plan. Now he spends his time pretending to be an old man and contemplating shaving his beard while being yelled at to marry someone already by an NPC friend.
The Woodsman from Woodsmentown got relentlessly made fun of because, as part of their introduction, they told the company of each other, and the one from Mountain Hall told us about the girl from Woodsmantown got so hungry she refused to wait until a potato was cooked and ate it raw. She also notoriously hates spiders, and the LM delights in throwing them at us, much to the delight of the dwarf because...
...The Dwarf's thing is making hot sauce out of spider venom, because the reasoning was 'if snake venom is a spice why not spider venom?' He was the cook of the company, and a result, he and the Woodsmentown girl have gotten into many arguments. Nobody else complained.
The Elf had a thing for songs, as elves tend to be, but every time when it counted, his rolls included a Sauron and plenty of tengwars, so he passed, but kept giving us Hunt Threshold. So, LM and us decided he was just fond of singing dirges. Beautiful, but way too sad to lift people's spirits. It was even offered to do a 'Great Failure' if you got Sauron+Tengwar but in the end, was overruled.
An entertaining isolated incident I recall was when I swapped from the Dwarf to the Beorning, and we encountered the River-maiden. Only the Beorning saw her, and the LM said, to him, she looked elf-like and beautiful. So, the Beorning, who only really saw one elf for a long time (the female Noldor Elf that replaced the Mirkwood one), proceeded to tell others the River Maiden looked kind of like the Noldor, and that she was very pretty. The conversation afterward was pretty amusing; the Elf thought Beorning was hitting on her, and told him she appreciated it but she was married. He laughed, incredulous she thought that was what he did, and told her no, he was taken as well, it was just observation. He then launched into more explanations about why he said what he said, but was stopped by the Mountain Hall Woodsman: "Boy, you ever sat in a ditch before? Cus yer diggin one real deep into this boat." Elf coughed uncomfortably and Radagast interrupted our banter. The Woodsman girl from Woodsmantown noted (OOCly) that the Beorning shouldnt go down Beren's path and she'd 'just cut this arm off', 'for his own good.'
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2016 2:18 pm
by Adhemar
While playing ‘Those Who Tarry No Longer' the company had made its way up to Beorn’s Hall to warn the Beorning’s of Valter the Bloody’s innominate attack on Stonyford. Our elf from Mirkwood, Galion, in a vain attempt to gain advancement points, decided to inspire the Beorning’s mustering for the march south. Galion had three points in Song. He managed to roll at total of 4 including an ‘eye of Sauron’. Thus the poor elf sung about the benefits of oral hygiene and the joys of excessive bathing to the hardened warriors in the hall. From that point on, every Beorning gave the elf a wide berth. In fact, when the elf exited the hall, I described the scene like Moses parting the Red Sea.
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2016 3:34 pm
by Artaxastra
One of my players is an Elf of Mirkwood who has four dice in song -- he aspires to be a great bard. However, inevitably, every single time it counts he rolls the Eye. I don't know how it's possible to roll as many critical failures as he does. It's become a running joke that he's the worst bard in Mirkwood!
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 3:01 pm
by Rich H
I can't think of any in-game moments off hand but a recurring funny* element of my campaign is if, when a player is getting ready to roll his dice, I ever say "just don't get a Sauron". The amount of times it does, is weirdly often. I blame my Amber ranked Psyche and Pattern probability manipulation skills but my players have simply banned me from saying it.
* From a LM's perspective at least.
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 10:18 pm
by Majestic
Apologies for all of the thread necromancy.
One time
Angelalex was able to join my FTF group for a session. He'd created a proud and powerful HIgh Elf that was quite impressive, but that all came into question when the group encountered a pair of Basilisks.
His Elf threw his powerful spear at the beast, and he crapped out his roll, I believe also getting an Eye of Sauron. It might have been his second attempt, with another disastrous failure, that I had his spear hit the reptile and vault over it, making him have to go pick it up again. Needless to say the proud Elf was determined to show his prowess with his weapon, so he repeated things. With the same result. The others (especially both Mirkwood Elves) ended up joking and chiding him, "Doesn't Lord Elrond give you High Elves any training with that weapon?", making the Elf more determined than ever.
Angelalex was a good sport about it, but it just wasn't a good showing for that Elf and his spear that day!
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 11:23 am
by mica
Let's see:
Following red-herrings resulting in running through the smith and torching Stonyford.
Barding stole ancient blade from Thranduil's vaults (while a guest). Then later pissed Thranduil off by asking for the hand in marriage of an elf. Finally got locked up after returning the sword with newly pimped out hilt he forged and a blundered attempt to impress Thranduil and get him to change his mind. Definitely no half-elves on the horizon.
Running through a bunch of Rohirrim after swearing to defend Lamas to the death (lesson about being more careful in your choice of companions).
Defeating the wight without a scratch but almost dying due to hanging around grovelling in the dirt for treasure as the entire barrow collapses in on itself.
Re: Harkening to Mirthwood: share your amusing experiences
Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 8:43 pm
by mirdanis
Some great stories on this thread! The most recent bout of in-game hilarity we had involved our Hobbit Alistair, of course. The party (Woodman, Barding, Dwarf and Hobbit) had visited Isengard at the invitation of Saruman, who had heard about their discovery of the Chain in the Dwimmerhorn from his agent Arciryas. While in Isengard, Alistair discovered a manuscript in the library that had been penned by Arciryas: "Medicinal and Edible Mushrooms of Fangorn Forest". He read an entry about a small, bright yellow mushroom that was described as both delicious and hallucinatory...
While on their way back to Rhosgobel, they passed through the edge of Fangorn, and Alistair happened upon a small patch of bright yellow mushrooms while searching for firewood. At that point, I commenced a text-message conversation with Alistair's player, describing what he was experiencing while the rest of the party went searching for their missing Hobbit. He ended up being kidnapped by some Wild Men of Fangorn, who took him to their evil Huorn master. The rest of the party, utterly ignorant of what had happened, had to track him down, then fight the Huorn and its slaves to get their tripping Hobbit back. The Huorn dropped him from about 10 feet up after the party set it on fire, whereupon he was picked up by the dwarf scholar and slung over her shoulder for the run back to their campsite. I rolled a Feat die and it came up with an Eye - meaning that the Hobbit vomited right down the back of the Dwarf's brand-new, custom-made Rohirric riding trousers.