Wicked Die #2

The Player’s Guide to Keeping your Character from Being Eaten Whole By a GlargleBeast

You’re all serious, hardcore gamers, right? Yeah, right. Gaming is about having fun with friends and getting to interact with a pretty neat story. Most gaming sessions feature a game being played, but also include some kind of junk food, the incredible dice-stacking phenomena, and a good amount of goofing off. These are all good things (except the dice thing). All of you players must be warned, however, that there is a very sinister beast lurking around your gaming table. A creature no sword can cut. A foe no spell can vanquish. A monstrosity no bard can&uhhh&sing to. It’s the GlargleBeast, and your gamemaster is considering mercilessly feeding your characters to it.

Chances are, you’ve already had a character devoured by the GlargleBeast. Remember that time your character perished from the effects of a spell or poison without even getting so much as a saving throw? Maybe your hero set off a measly trap and was killed in a very gruesome manner, in the prime of his adventuring career. World of Darkness players, that sunglasses commercial had to have painfully reminded you of your centuries-old hellraiser unfairly reduced to a pile of ash. Cthulhu players&well, your characters are doomed from the beginning, so this is all standard for you. As you’ve seen, even the most tender, nurturing gamemaster has a breaking point where they can just snap and deal quick, wicked death to your innocent character. You as a player may have done nothing more than splatter a piece of pizza across his precious GM screen. Is this fair? No, not really. Does it happen often? Oh yeah. Here’s some tips that will save your character from a fate worse than being wadded up and tossed into the trash.

You Wanted to Be a Berserker&So BE One! A wise man (okay&a professional wrestler) once said, ”Know your Role!” In gaming terms, this would be interpreted as “Be your character”*. Say what he or she says. Act appropriately in whatever situation your character ends up in. It’s a very basic part of roleplaying, but it does get neglected. A tough GM has little pity for a character whose player doesn’t seem to care. So, when there’s a tense moment, speak with a tinge of nervousness. Maybe your character spits out wisecracks to interrupt the intensity. Even facial expressions can make a character more vivid. The point is, any effort you put forth to breathe life into your character will not go unnoticed. A good gamemaster will see how much you enjoy playing that role. He may even go out of his way to make sure that character survives a particularly harrowing experience. Sometimes it’s tough for newcomers to get the hang of this, but you seasoned roleplayers can help them out by interacting more with them until they’re comfortable playing a role. As a player, you have the option of letting your character sit on the table as a marked up piece of paper, or slipping into the role of a wild-eyed, slobbering, demented, axe-swinging berserker bent on total monster annihilation! Or&whatever else strikes you as fun to play.

Yes, Balancing a d20 On Top of a d4 IS an Amazing Feat, BUT&Your gamemaster, believe it or not, probably has a life outside of pouring over endless manuals, guides, and sourcebooks. Creating an adventure, or even more so a campaign, takes a lot of time and effort (A GM somewhere just said “Testify!”). There are always maps to plan, traps to design, monsters stats to find, fiendish villains to give the spark of life&and that’s just the major details! Even prewritten module adventures take a good amount of preparation. As a player, you may be asking, “What does that have to do with me?” Well, imagine how irritated your GM gets when he or she is continually interrupted with bickering over snacks, paper planes made from licensed franchise game products, or the all-too-familiar sound of a dice replica of the Tower of Babel clattering onto the table and across the floor. A gamemaster works hard to create every aspect of your character’s environment and the mood surrounding it, but any one player can quite easily disrupt all of that. Do it enough times, and that player’s character may find what its like to be digested. Your character will be safe (read: as safe as a player character can get) if you’re attentive and at least somewhat considerate. Yeah, some outbursts are uncontrollable, and that’s no big deal. Some are even appropriate, like making fun of a dim-witted NPC. If it doesn’t contribute something worthwhile to the game, though (i.e. dashing three rooms away because you think you saw a breast on the living room TV), your GM might start making wicked plans for the rest of the group to face an undead foe that looks a lot like your (former) character.
Then again, maybe your gamemaster doesn’t have a life and he’s crowding in front of you to try to catch a glimpse of nipple.

Put the Rulebook Down, Peabody, I’m Running This Game! Remember Mr. Peabody, the time-traveling dog from the “Peabody’s Improbable History” cartoon? Hopefully you do, or else this analogy is screwed. If you don’t, he’s that little white dog with glasses that knew everything and spoke very matter-of-factly to his not-so-bright human pal Sherman. There are more than a handful of gamers that are just like that dog in that they know Everything. Reminding a gamemaster of a forgettable encumbrance rule or specialization bonus isn’t a bad thing, but no jury will convict a GM for slaughtering a player’s character if that person repeatedly disrupts a game to go over endless and unnecessary details. Heck, an unjust and horrendous demise would be worth it just to teach the valuable lesson that rules aren’t everything. Another particularly nasty thing a Know-It-All player can do is read up on all of a campaign setting’s surprises and spoil them for the everybody. This, above everything else already mentioned in this Player’s Guide, is the most heinous infraction against a GM (and the other players) possible. May the GlargleBeast crunch on your bones for a hundred years if you ever commit this sin against fun. Everyone just once wanted to see Sherman give Peabody a swift kick. A GM’s retribution might be no less shocking.

My Character is as Dead as Fried Chicken, Isn’t He? No, your character will be just fine. Most gamemasters would not be so cruel as to send the character you put your heart and soul into off to take The Long Nap (at least not without a saving throw or dodge: then its all good and fair). As was mentioned above, gaming is a hobby based around having a good time, and any GM worth his or her weight in first edition rulebooks knows there won’t be any players around to enjoy those well-crafted scenarios if he/she keeps killing their characters. This Guide is intended to warn (and frighten) players of the dangers awaiting their characters should they pick away too often at a gamemaster’s last nerves. It isn’t fair, and it definitely isn’t pretty, but the GlargleBeast loves the sound of toppling dice&

*Be your character, but please do it only while you’re actually playing the game. Being a sword-swinging, guns-a-blazin’ badass at school or work gives gaming a bad name