What's the record for most number of botches rolled in a row by a single player? Just curious.
MJ did at least two botches in a row in Mary Piper Shattered Earth with the airships. It showcases one of the botch problems...do something that gets you in a lot of trouble, and you're liable to try something desperate to get you out as MJ pointed out. Thus second botch comes a lot easier.
I've had a couple other players who did two botches real close to each other.
Since the longer you play and the more skills you attempt, the more you will botch, that's not really a useful question. Probably the person with the most botches also has the most successes. So you must mean "most botches" in some sort of context.
One convention player whose name I do not recall (maybe Harry remembers him) gave us a great memory, although it was not all botches. He had versed into Tropical Island and several other characters were already gathering, but I'd dropped him near the crater (I start people on the beaches, but as the island fills I work my way inland). He decided to walk over the lose rock to look into the crater, and failed an agility check when he got there and started to fall. He attempted a martial arts dive maneuver to escape, rolled 00, and went into the crater.
He was the first verse-out from that group, so I slapped him into Quest for the Vorgo (one of the four worlds I use coming out of Tropical Island at convention demos, the other three being Prisoner of Zenda, Starship Destiny, and Haunted House). He got himself oriented, was persuaded to help the indigs with their problem, and insisted that the wizard teach him the (rather difficult) fire burst spell. Having been taught and taking the requisite ruby in hand, he then rolled 00 again, and destroyed the entire mott and bailey castle.
Chris Jones is famous for his botches, but even more so for his "wrong successes". The teleporting spaceships story is great for this, but that's more that I can address right now and I'm sure I've told it here before somewhere. (It was featured on Dice Tales when that site was still around, but it's been long gone.)
The Architect's claim to fame is that he usually verses out by botching. He'll find ways to survive and defeat the toughest of adversaries, but when he's alone with no pressure he starts trying to figure out how to do more complicated and dangerous skills, and botches trying to learn them.
--M. J. Young
Yeah I remember that guy... He blew a hole in the continent with the botch on that spell roll. Something like a quarter-mile double-obliterative?
I dunno, but if you like that, you should read the end of B Movie Monster World, in the archived thread John II Is Not At Home.