Monday, December 14, 2009

Incompetence and Ignorance Can Be Fun

Rarely did Rob and I have a chance to adventure together. Rob was usually the GM while Dwayne and I tore up or got tore up in his Majestic Wilderlands. This time Dwayne decided to give it a go. We were playing GURPS so no alignments were needed, but Rob and I played a pair of nasty SOBs. I played an unlucky mercenary named Del-Goth who was not all that tough, always got into trouble and he never thought any of it was his fault. Rob played pretty much the exact same type of character except he was a dwarf and I was human. I referred to him as my 'little brother' because we were constantly getting into one mess or another. Neither were that smart and we played their incompetence to the hilt. It was a blast.

One of the first adventures we had was when I was fired from a job for no fault of my own. Little Brother was fired due to his association with me. So we concocted the fantastic idea of mugging thieves' guild members. We figured thieves steal for a living so they have money. We knew of one place where the thieves went so we set up an ambush. Little Brother with his crossbow and me with my sword. First guy comes to the door we are staking out so Little Brother tries to plunk him off is a shot to the top of the head. He had to point down so much that the bolt fell off the crossbow and onto the street. Alerting our mark and he disappeared. Crap.

Onto the next plan. We figured we were big bad mercenaries and they were just thieves so should just kick down the door crack some skulls and take the money. We needed money bad because we had none. So we go into the door we were staking out and went into the den of thieves. At first we did well. Kicked some asses and feeling good about ourselves. We were plucking the bodies clean like a pair of starving vultures when Little Brother got his with a knife. Then another. I grabbed Little Brother and tried to get out, but they had surrounded us. Crap.

I managed to get out by beating one little thief to the side and running out the door. On the way out running through the streets trying to lose the pickpocket boys we ran into our old boss. He didn't see us so we had a few healing potions got back up to snuff and came up with our next brilliant idea. Steal the money from the mercenary group. We knew the people, knew the layout, and knew where the gold was. Why hadn't we thought of that before? This plan lasted all of fifteen minutes. Del-Goth tried to convince one of the other mercenaries to let him in on the premise he'd forgotten something. I got in, apparently the guard was a bit more incompetent that us, and we went directly to the treasury and looted as much as we could carry. What we didn't figure on was how to get out. It's difficult to sneak by people when you jingle. The gig was up when we were spotted coming out of the treasury with sacks full of payroll. An alarm was raised and we were on the run again. Crap.

So we ran and ran until we ducked into a temple in the middle of the city. The priest was kind enough to offer us sanctuary. They fed us, were kind to us and when we woke in the morning all the gold we looted was gone. The priest explained it was the price of staying. Just when me and Little Brother were about shish ka bob a couple of priests I noticed outside a small crowd of mercenaries was camped and in the alley ways a crowd of thieves waited. Crap.

It took some time but Del-Goth and Little Brother escaped by getting shipped out inside barrels. At least we were fed and in good condition even if was a brief. We were shipped to this tavern at a crossroads and here is where Del-Goth and Little Brother's story ends. Again, we were out of money so a tavern seemed like as good as any place to rob. What I didn't know is the tavern was protected by an iron golem. After a short fight that saw Little Brother killed by a small mob of patrons. Del-Goth fell into a water trough and held underwater by the iron golem until he died.

We died they way we lived, unremarkable and wasteful. But there was a charm to playing them. It was one of my favorite pairings. The campaign did not last long, but I will always remember the adventures of the two most incompetent adventurers to strap on boots.

1 comment:

  1. Awesome! Some of the best adventures (and characters) are those which are not laden with super-heroism. One of my favorite characters of all time was a half-orc with very low intelligence, the comic relief he supplied was fantastic!

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