Trigger warning for homophobia and discussion of sexual violence.
Transcription:
A series of 4chan posts. The first contains an image of Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and comes with the title “An entire party of That Guys”. Each post is posted by a user named “The HypnoJew” on 08/09/13(Fri) between 16:32 and 16:39, and is a reply to the previous post.
Well, /tg/, I think I wandered into an entire party of That Guys [blanked out]
This is a story that I’m not proud of where I lose my temper and utterly wreck a game, but I think it’s a share-worthy story nontheless.
First time with this specific Pathfinder group, I found an ad for them somewhere which I won’t reveal for the sake of their privacy. I went there because I figured it’d be a fun experience since almost all the games I’d played for like five years had been online in some way rather than in-person. I brought a couple boxes of cheap pizza with me as my contribution to the snack table and we get down to business.
The GM: A big grizzly bear of a man. I’m a pretty tall guy, and he made me feel short. He was nice enough and fairly good humored, but he was a tad gruff and hamfisted in some of this tactics for “coaxing” players through things. I’m probably being critical though all things considered… His game was basically Pathfinder with 3.5’s Epic level progression rules and a lot of 3.5 fluff. He also had a neat houserule about permenancy applying to any spell/psionic effect for a standardized ammount of gold for the spell’s level, although they could be dispelled or disrupted as usual. I cringed when I heard that the story proper was going to be riddled with psionics, which I am far from a fan of, but I thought I’d grit my teeth and bear with it despite my prejudice against them. The plot was basically that Magic was slowly falling out of use as more and more people spontaneously developed psionic powers, and the rest is the plot of the X-men movies. I think that the GM didn’t want to allow players to use psionics… but to be honest, I couldn’t really tell because that went out the window way before the session even began. We were level 20, supposedly the best of the best, and were supposedly going to be facing epic-level challenges.
cont.
Nancy No-Chin: A scrawny little guy with what appeared to be a missing chin. He was quiet and out of the way, and he never really did much OOCly, so I can’t comment too much on his real character. He played a Monk/Psionic Fist/Soul Fist variant who was basically the stereotypical zen, master-of-self, I-only-want-peace-but-will-kill-you guy of the party. The character was so bland, I don’t evenremember anything else about him.
The Fish Face: She wasn’t ugly, but she was bug-eyed and looked like she had silicone injections in her lips. [A full sentence blacked out.] So, I couldn’t help but superimpose a big carp over her every time I looked at her. It’s probably for the best, because I was too distracted by this mental image to really pay attention to a lot of the stupid shit she said. she was at most times trying to drag politics or religion into debate where it was nonsequitor or a red herring altogether. Her character was an annoying as shit Wilder who was the typical “fiery tempered” Mary Sue. She geared up to be the nuke of the party. Also, it was a fucking Drow with trite, WASP ethics. Yeeeaaah…
The Only Decent Player (not me): A really big guy and not at all fun to look at, but he was mostly pleasant and seemed to know his stuff. He wanted to play a bard, but the GM convinced him to play something else through the same means he convinced me to not be a UMD focused rogue [blanked out], and he ended up going for a Magus. It was kind of interesting because he played him like a tribal warrior-shaman whose tribe was in deep shit because of the developments in the more developed parts of the world and was attempting to save his people from being disturbed by the recent events. He was also really creative in combat. All in all, I think he was the only one who put real effort into the game.
[Transcriber’s note: I will be using “[f-slur]” to represent the homophobic slur beginning with f which can also mean a “bundle of sticks”. I’ll keep any conjugations of it outside the square brackets.]
That [F-slur]: This guy gives a bad name to [f-slur]s everywhere. He had no concept of personal space and no concept of “I’m not gay.” Thankfully, he did have a concept of “If you touch me there again, I’m going to pummel you and file a sexual misconduct suit.” I suppose I’d be flattered if it was a woman, but god damn, this guy was a fucking creeper. It didn’t help that his character was what I called OOCly “The Date Rape Psion.” Seriously, That [F-slur] would probably turn people homophobic if they’d never met a normal gay guy before.
Me: I was making high charisma, Trapmaking/disabling and UMD focused rogue, but I was flatout told, in so many words, that I needed to make a minmaxed, powergamey character or I wasn’t going to get to play. I took offence, so I made a Wizard, stereotypical in dress from the conical hat to the robes and tiny glasses. I wanted to give him a beard, but apparently in his setting, elves can’t have facial hair, so I said his eyebrows grew down to his belt. It was an old fossil of an elf from back when magic was the milk and honey of the world and was going to recruit anyone he saw with even a modicrum of magical talent in an ill-advised attempt to save the practice of magic in a world of pervasive psionics by showing up on random people’s doorsteps, telling their children that they were wizards, and spiriting them a way to a permanent greater demiplane with a castle where his cohort would teach them magic. If you get the joke, you’re smarter than most of this group. Most of my feats were item creation ones so that I could have the wands and staves that I loved to have in my arsenal.
It wasn’t a good start. I was already being an asshat because I got sand in my cunt over being told to minmax or gtfo, and Fish-face and That [F-slur] were annoying as fuck too, which was adding to my ire.
We finally start the session. We congeal off the walls of a high-end tavern in some urban area. some plot, and then we go wandering about, I spellcraft and detect magic every apprentice-aged kid I see and try to discretely determine if they have any talent. The GM blocks this at every turn for understandable reasons; I mean, it would derail things. Yet, at the same time the Date Rape Psion was dragging NPCs off all the time and attempting to describe all the terrible things he was doing to them. I told him to knock it off more than the GM did, and the GM sent me a few warning glances about it, but seriously, I don’t need to hear about the Date Rape Psion unleashing all his fetishes on villagers. The Date Rape Psion also harrassed my character ICly, but I slapped a Protection from Evil on myself and he couldn’t physically touch me for a while. I ended up making it permanent later because I knew the little fucker was counting down for the spell to expire so he could get on with touching my wizard inappropriately. Thankfully I packed a lot of diamond dust with me for some of my more powerful magic and so I could see what I could do with the GM’s very generous permanency house rules.