Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-27614308-20160117232300/@comment-4715955-20160118081857

I've written a few forum thread posts about amusing crap that happened during a session of D&D and similar games.

My new group started a campaign using the Stars Without Number system, which is really fun and allows for free exploration of entire galaxies and endless opportunities for (mis)adventure. It helps that our DM encourages us to push the plot forward, rather than holding our hands or leading us on leashes, and also allows us to play unusual characters. Generally in SWON you play a warrior who excels at fighting, an expert who excels at non-combat skills, or a psionic freak who engages in psychic buffoonery.

I don't like combat in RPG's. Even a brief skirmish slows the game to a crawl, and I just don't find it engaging even if it's an unusual fight. That's why I favor characters who excel outside of combat scenarios: for this campaign my character was a medical droid named Hermes, who served as the ship doctor. He was two feet tall, shaped like a trash can, and talked like a really drunk George Takei. He could only use one arm at a time, out of the four he stored internally.

Hermes might be my all-time favorite character, out of all the weird characters I've played over the years. He often makes awkward and borderline obscene use of his little mechanical arm, or his flagella-like data jack which he uses to interface with computers (and which has been castrated on more than one occasion, leaving him depressed and insecure). He gets used as a footstool, a crutch, and a variety of other household items. He runs on an outdated AI that still feels obligated to follow its nanny-like ship doctor protocols no matter how disgusted or annoyed he is with his crew. He does have a sense of self-preservation though: when his crew was about to be arrested in their hotel room by the local police, he pretended to be a cleaning droid and waltzed right out of the building. Hermes's first noteworthy action was almost getting pickpocketed by a street urchin, who was immediately scared off by the robot's Shoostin' Arm, which was equipped with a big-ass revolver.

Hermes mainly has the gun as a joke, and as a last resort. Like I said, I'm not a combat player, and Hermes is NOT a combat-oriented character: he remains in the background as a support unit while everyone ELSE gets their dumb asses killed. Because of this, Hermes has, to date, singlehandedly saved the entire party twice. Once he sweet-talked a crazy female AI out of crashing the party's ship into the ocean for a massive TPK; the other time was when he purged the ship of an alien parasite infestation. Basically while everyone else was busy fighting and losing to the monsters, Hermes was casually running around the ship making homemade alien repellant. He flooded the ship with this junk and killed the aliens, then played nanny to all the injured party members while we flew to another, hopefully better star system.

Two sessions ago Hermes was eaten by a giant landshark -- down to his last two hit points -- and spent two weeks getting put back together and de-fragging his hard drive. Then we went to Planet Tumblr, where the femnazis altered his voice so it wouldn't trigger the locals: he talked like a southern belle for the rest of the session (and yes, so did I). So far every time he's tried to change his voice back, he's botched the roll and changed it to something else: a gruff Australian, a hillbilly soldier, Michael Caine...