I have a pretty interesting, recent RPG experience that might apply to this topic, but as I am typing it I am starting to realize that it is going to be a long post, or a series of multiple posts and don't want to derail the thread with TLDR.

Note: Sorry, this is going to be a long one, I will put the separate sessions into spoiler tags...

Well I am going to use this thread to rant a little because I feel that the current game I joined might apply, and I am fairly certain it will turn pretty laughable in the near future.

In a roundabout way, I recently came back into contact with some old co-workers of mine from about 6 years back after a good friend moved in with them. A little back story is needed to put some things into perspective. These guys are actually a lot of fun to hang around with, they are really quite intelligent and I do not mean to talk badly about these people directly. However, they definitely have their quirks, they are all old school gamers (table top and video games), they are quite a lot older than me being in their 40's and want nothing more out of life than to play their games, they are the epitome of old nerd sages. Not necessarily the lifestyle I would choose at their age but more power to them, they make it all sound like tons of fun when they talk about their old gaming exploits whether it be old Everquest days or old D&D campaigns.

There are currently five of them living together in a four bedroom apartment with a loft, one of them being my old friend who couldn't look more out of place living there. When you walk in to apartment the first thing you see is four PC rigs all with 30-40 inch HDMI TVs talking the place of monitors, with fantasy elven desktops. Star wars/video game posters on the wall, magic cards, RPG books, collector's edition video games, Marvel statues, miniatures and boxes of this stuff everywhere.

Anyways, a couple of weeks ago, I went out to eat with a couple of them to catch up. They mentioned that they are starting a tabletop game and wondered if I wanted to join. The system is Rifts, and if I recall Aeonic did a rant on Palladium in a thread a couple months ago, and I immediately thought of this when they mentioned Rifts. I remember enough about the system that if it was my decision I would choose a different system. Seeing the books in comic book stores when I was a teenager and having been bored enough to flip through them. I specifically remember the setting being pretty flimsy, almost like a 14 year old decided to shove every single mythology, fantasy and sci-fi setting into one world before covering it in an 80's B movie sheen.

Years ago, I recall one of these guys telling me about an Atlantean themed Rifts game they played way past any semblance of normal RPG gaming where their characters where all Galactus sized demi gods floating around in space traveling back in fourth in time to prevent each other's births and other nonsense ad nauseum. This game apparently went on for years before it turned into this free for all PK god killing death match. This is sort of gaming is of course utterly ridiculous, but the point is I knew this going in and sort of said I would play out of some sort of sick fascination. Maybe that is a bad reason to join a gaming group but I don't care.

Also, the guy that is DMing the game mentioned that he was also going to play a character along with the rest of us. He stated that the character would be used as a power barometer for the parties power, meaning it would be significantly more powerful than the rest of the party and I suspect, would be used to railroad the party into plot points.

Session 1:
[SPOILER:d84ea2f949]Last Sunday was the first session. I showed up to their apartment with some energy drinks and my laptop and start making my character. I am flipping through the books looking for a class to choose asking the DM what the other two players picked. One guy picked a Rogue-Scientist/Ape-Man with a monkey familiar that I was told was basically just a skill bot with little combat proficiency. The other player, a female, is playing a Mystic with a bunch of healy, doctor skills. So I figured I would pick a Human Headhunter, as it has combat proficiency and comes with some guns and armor.

So as I start making my guy, the DM starts running the campaign for the other two players. They start out on a California highway (which for the record, the DM ruled that California still exists in the Rifts setting) and they're on their way to the ocean for some reason. I ask the DM if he has notes or anything written out for this campaign, his response was that it is all in his head. As I am making my character I am listening in to the session and it becomes pretty apparent that the other two players spent little to know time actually making their characters, as they do not know how much money they have or what skills they possess. There is a lot of looking things up in the books ect. as they attempt to do all sorts of banal shit like fishing, bathing, making food(and soap), hunting ect., which I figured was kinda important at the start of a long journey to the ocean, so whatever.
Also, it might be important to note that the other two players decided against taking a auto and instead decided to pick horses as transportation, their reason being that they don't want their (free) vehicle stolen. So as they make their way down the highway at a snail's pace, they stop and camp every night, where the "interesting" stuff starts to happen. The female PC is psi sensitive and has weird dreams about the area being filled with large blue floating bubbles that are naked to the eye before they are both awoken by skunks which they fail to kill for food and get sprayed. This of course prompts the two players to bathe again for a large part of the next day and make more soap.

At the same time, trying to not be a huge interrupting newb, I attempt to ask some questions about my character during pauses in the game play. I am having a little trouble figuring out my character as it is starting to seem a little overpowered to me in the equipment area. I get to pick five guns and ask the DM which guns I can pick from, he doesn't seem to care so I get a variety of weapons; A Laser Rifle, Laser Pistol, Vibro sword, grenade launcher and some grenades. But looking at the cost of these weapons I get for free I am getting a little concerned. But with DM approval my guy ends up being a powerhouse armed to the teeth with fuck loads of guns, a bunch of bionics, a shoulder mounted missile launcher wearing two layers of armor, including a flying Power armor that travels 200 Miles an hour. To gimp him a little I make him a "Lawful Good" paranoid schizophrenic that is scared of magic. I name him Castle, he has 300 credits in his pocket and could never dream of buying extra ammo for his guns in the foreseeable future.

So after my character is finished and the other players get to a point where it is safe to catch my character up for introduction, the two other players start playing MMORPGs and the DM starts a one on one session with me. To make this long story shorter than it has to be, I start looking for mercenary work in small towns along the highway hoping to run into the other party members. After failing to find some grumpy shop keepers horse for 500 credits I fly into a strange bubble of reality where the world looks like it did in our current time except the pavement road is metallic sounding when my power armor walks on it. After failing to find any work in and around town after hanging around for a couple days I start to meta game a little after the DM tells me I have moved 200 miles or so in the wrong direction from the two other players. I just want to get the game rolling.

After finally meeting up with the two other players, and from my experience in knowing the roads a little better than they do they agree to take me along. Comically, I start hovering at a leisurely pace in my fancy flying power armor, with weapons strapped to every part of my body, 50 yards behind these two PCs on horses that look like they walked off the set of Lord of the Rings, and Planet of the Apes.

They then spend the next hour of real game time attempting to get the horses they brought from shitting themselves to death after drinking toxic water as I stand guard. Then after rolling dice for what seems like too long for the interest of fun to fish for food (for what amount and what weight of fish we caught), then another 15 minutes preserving the food with rolls before we finally come across the bubble anomaly.

I tell the party that I safely travelled through the bubble twice before, coming through and back this way after visiting the small town on the other side. The psi sensitive female can detect no evil, and no danger from the disturbance, and the DM is strongly hinting that there is no danger in entering the thing. Despite this the Monkey Man is skeptical, so he decides to rip a tree branch off and prod at it, it just dematerializes as he moves it in and out of the bubble (and does not break). My character keeps attempting to get them to just go through the damn bubble to the town on the other side, after some arguing they decide to walk around the perimeter of the bubble. To do this I make the decision to pull my vibro sword out stick it into it and start walking, to gauge the location of the invisible bubble. A few feet later the DM states that my vibro sword is busted, cut in half at the place it entered into the anomaly. A little miffed I say "Wait What?, The tree branch was just fine entering in and out of this thing, I travelled through this twice before?" The DMs response is that it "doesn't like inorganic things", making no sense what so ever having flown through the thing wearing two layers of high tech armor, bionics, and all my weapons (this sword included), I still don't get his logic. In the end he just sort of hints openly that he wants to get rid of some of my gear...

Whatever...

I have no real problem with this if logic was involved, but this is sort of why I asked him multiple times what equipment I was allowed in the first place. This becomes even more ironic when his character is introduced.

Now I am even more paranoid than the others in entering the thing but the DM eventually just says "everyone just go through it, it's okay none of your stuff will break." I shake my head as we pass through it to the other side. We wrap up the session by rolling for more fishing, food making tent pitching activities and go to sleep for the night.

After a 7 hour session, we end it...

I am a little worried that Rifts to these people is about rolling for insignificant things, eating, sleeping, and poop jokes. Actually. I started to notice that the DM was getting a little annoyed at the other two players as they seem to be more concerned with how hungry or tired their characters and horses are and when they need to take another bath in the river.
[/SPOILER:d84ea2f949]

Session 2:
[SPOILER:d84ea2f949]I arrive at the apartment for the second session yesterday and everyone starts to set up, the DM meanwhile starts rolling his OP characters stats. He has me come over and see that he really did roll 3 6's twice on 4 D6, although I suspect that the dice were turned before I checked them. I don't care anyways...

He spends an hour creating his character. He had already planned out this character and basically used a few different Palladium supplements to break the game, and create a Min/Maxed monster PC. A female (because of bonuses for being a female), Atlantean, Undead Hunter thingy that uses tattoo magic or some shit. By the time he was done, he had a 7 foot 5 inch beauty queen, that had stats in the low to high 20's at level one (10 points over any of our characters), that could fly naturally, and although the character is basically naked, can do some Fuck tons of mega damage with a simple punch. Oh also, it has a natural fear aura that causes everything to approach it to have to pass a check or run away in horror.

Anyways, he finishes his PC and we start of where we left off. Our characters had just gotten to sleep, but sometime in the night a hobo tries to steal some shit from us before we give the poor guy some food and send him on his way for alignment reasons. The next day we wake up to the hobo bugging us for some more for food. We scare him off before the other two PCs decided to do what they do best, spend too much time worrying about food and bathing. I decide to bathe too, at which point the DM asks me if my character is interested in "Sexing up" the female PC, awkwardly I answer in the negative which then prompts him to question my characters sexuality. I tell him that I decide not to bathe...

As we finally set out to the town down the road. The hobo from the night before begins to trial us. Getting pretty annoyed with the guy I decide that I would try and knock him unconscious with the butt of one of my guns. The DM tells me to roll for restrained punch damage, forgetting that I am wearing power armor, the DM tells me that I do 3 Mega Damage to the guys head, popping it off, he then tells me to be careful in that my alignment could be affected.

Now, I don't want to be a dick, but I pretty clearly communicated that I did not want to kill him, and being a new RPGer, was pretty careful to not kill him and asked the proper steps to prevent this from happening. But the DM stated after checking the Rifts books that my power armor could do no less than 1 Mega Damage on even a restrained punch and that that was more than enough to obliterate the poor hobos head.

I should also note that the DM decided that the hobo was trailing us after spending a bunch of time searching through the Vampire book looking for a NPC for us to kill. After failing to find the one he wanted and having note prepared any sort of NPCs ahead of time for the game at all he just backpedaled to the "hobo is following you again", apologizing for him not having been prepared. Also, I found it hard to believe a vampire would be stalking us at 10 AM on a hot sunny day and he agreed...

Whatever. We eventually make it into town and the other two players decide to do some shopping. I decide to stand guard outside and at this point am paranoid to even take off my flying power armor to leave it parked out of the store in fear that the DM would have it GTA'd. I even went so far to ask him if the armor could be safely parked and secured from theft. Basically the answer was no because the rule book had no information on this...

So I am standing outside awkwardly guarding the horses, as the anti technology towns folk give me the evil eye as they pass. I am hassled by what I could only describe as Pokemon's Team Rocket a few minutes later after the DM forgot the proper name of this group of people after looking for it in the rule books for a few minutes for it.

The other two players take over at this point as they are "shopping" at the general store. This is where things get really, really painful. They spend literally half an hour of real time asking the shop keeper what sorts of food he has in stock. It goes something like this:

Player: "Does he have any peanuts"

DM: "Yes, a 2 pound bag costs 10 credits"

Player: "I'll give you 8 credits and do you have any salt"

DM: "Yes he has both rock salt, and um "normal" kind of salt, also roll a D20"

Player: " What's the difference?"

Other Player: interrupting, "Does he have any candy"

DM: "No, candy is really, really rare, it's used as a currency in Rifts"

Player: "Does he have any potatoes?

DM: "yes 10 credits for a dozen, hey are you keeping track of this"

Player: "No, how much money have I spent?"

Other Player: interrupting "Does he have any watermelons, wait those are too big anyways, does he have any pears"

DM: "No that was all-ready asked for..."

Again, this goes on for about half an hour. Being bored out of my mind start playing Diablo III as they shop, my character standing guard in the hot sun. The DM is visibly annoyed with the other players increasing strange fascination with eating and acquiring food.

Of course after they are done, the decided to hit up the bar to eat...

I play along and my character, paranoid about leaving his power armor outside fumbles through the saloon door in full gear, the other players being paranoid that their horses will now get stolen. My character however, being a mercenary is hoping to find some work and wants to chat up the patrons in a chance we might actually get to do something besides eating, sleeping and bathing.

However, the DM decides this is where he wants to introduce his PC. He spends far too long describing how beautiful she is and that everyone in the bar is staring at her half naked form in awe. He then mentions that if we approach her we have to make fear checks because of her fear aura. My character just sits at the bar and talks up the bartender for work while on the other side of the room the two other PCs fail the fear checks and run in horror from the bar (the Ape Man's monkey familiar makes the roll and gets to stay inside).

I mention that this is a little ridiculous, as I want to get to progressing the story along and that this fear check thing could be a problem if he expects us to be friends. You can tell the DM gets off on how awesome it is his character has this ability and then states that her beauty has a similar effect. After finally making a check to approach her after a ridiculous amount of effort, running in an out of the bar in full power armor for reasons unclear to my character, I manage to sit down next to the PC and begin to question her regarding strange anomalies in the area, she agrees to let use come along with her after convincing her that we are worthy and the DM prompts us to do any last shopping before the store closes for the night and we find a place to stay for the night...

End of session 2.
[/SPOILER:d84ea2f949]

Nah, this is an ongoing game. The next session is next Sunday or Wednesday, not sure when.

Yeah,

It's kinda fun actually, just for the wrong reasons. I feel guilty for going at this point, but when I go I am not going to the sessions to mock them or their game, I will continue to attempt and get the game going in a sensible direction, at least from the stand point of my character. Given the first couple sessions though, I doubt this game will "normalize" anytime soon.

I also plan to draw their characters. I am starting with my own and then moving to theirs after I get a clearer understanding of them, which could take a few sessions...

However the DM even stated that most of the games he starts don't tend to make it very far...

Fighter_McWarrior wrote:

Soooo, Muppet. Whatever happened with this? This shit is fascinating. Mostly because it's so stupid.

We played one other session after what was posted, however not much happened besides more of the same old shopping for food, making food action. I decided not to post an update until something more interesting came up.

Unfortunatly The game has been postponed the last two weeks due to them moving apartments. We were actually supposed to have the game again this past Wednesday but it didnt happen for a third week for reasons related to them moving.

Not too sure when it will happen again, as I am certain I will probably make the choice next week to not attend due to Diablo III coming out.