"That Guy" must have his sword.

Today I'm going to share a tale of my GMing days.

 

I was at high school at the time, and had a little three person group of players that used to gather pretty often to play something or the other. It was my "experimentation phase", we started with AD&D, jumped onto GURPS, played a little with WoD, and also played a lot of systems from our own country, like Invasão (it was kind of a mix between X-Files, with aliens rulling the world behind the stages, and Call of Cthulhu, where finding the truth was bad for you in so many ways).

 

So often while in class I found myself imagining scenarios, rules and even whole campaigns for us to play, and I also tried to think outside the box to spice our game up. So it was this thursday, or friday, i came up with something we haven't done before: A true horror adventure.

Mind you we had play something on the horror side before, but it was more like a survival horror and not something like "It Follows" or "Babadock" you know, where there's no hope and all this edgy stuff. So I took my notebook and started to design some outlines of the adventure and, above all (and this is important to the story here) the death scenes. I thought about every horror movie cliche, and every medieval impulse the players had and designed an insta-death around it. So if you would separate from the group you would die, if you touched that strange substance oozing from the walls just to "investigate"you would lose a hand... it was sadistic, the kind of mentality that the producers of Until Dawn had.

Of course i wasn't just going to murder them for my amusement, as soon as i got home i gathered them and told about my plans. Little pause here to introduce ours heroes:

 

James: My classmate and the first one to give me a thumbs up on the project.

Mike: You know that guy that is always a little slow to catch on things, gets made fun of very often but has the biggest heart ever?

Son: He was four years younger than the rest of us (about twelve when this tale happened) but was a very smart and also had lost his dad recently, so we used to hang with him or else he would be stuck at home with his two sisters and two grandmas.

 

So I go on like this:

-Guys, I'm thinking about we play something different tonight.

-What and how different?

-I'm thinking about something Silent Hill inspired...

-Ok, we've played things inspired in games before.

-Not like this. The setting will be like Silent Hill, cursed town and all, but the mechanics will be different. I've made some homebrew GURPS ruleset that focus on killing the players.

-What?! That's not cool!!!

-Just hear me out. You will only die IF you act like you're playing a game. If you follow your real life instincts you will survive for sure.

 

And I started to explain to them how to basically avoid their gaming instincts and all. So we rolled our toons real quick (the system was over simplified in that aspect, since the characters were suposed to be disposable) and I rolled a GMPC (because SOMEONE would die that night, even if it was me) and everybody went home to get theirs things together before returning to my place where the game would happen.

James and Son arrived and we started to set the table near the front gate and then my bane presents itself. Mike arrive with someone I had a little interaction previously and the result wasn't very positive.

This guy, gonna call him Vic, was "That Guy" even OOC. He was cringy, and weeb, and the model of the edgy teenager. First time we met I was playing Final Fantasy 7, fresh new game because I already had beaten it before, so Mike and this guy walk into my house and he is all like:

-Watchu playin?

-Final Fantasy 7...

-You haven't beaten it yet?! Woah, you're such a noob!!!

 

I shot Mike with an ugly look but the guy is SO slow he didn't notice anything wrong. Sure thing I told Mike a few days later that guy was rude and to never bring him over again... of course he brought him over again. We are all sitting down to play and mike asks:

-Hey, can Vic play with us? He plays RPGs too!!!

-Why not... it's not like I hate the guy and he'll spend his whole time trying to be a pain in the ass. Does everyone agrees? -s

-Yeah. - Sure.

-I hate you all... ok, Vic, come here. This is your character sheet, fill it up like this.

I may have took some liberties with the dialog but you get the jist of the thing. He sat down and starts to channel his inner "That Guy" to rain destruction on our heads.

He goes:

-I want 18 STR!!

-You can't. You're all normal people, you can have between 8 and 11, and only one 11.

-But i don't want the other attributes, i just need STR to fight.

 

His logic being that if the player is smart the character can just be smart by proxy and don't need points in IQ.

 

-You won't need to fight, let me explain to you how this game works.

And I proceed to tell him the game would be about four (now five) teenagers, going on a trip and ending on a cursed town where everything goes to s#$t and they have to escape. They would be normal teens, based on themselves, with normal skills, and depending on their wits to survive. There wouldn't be any weapons per se, just improvised ones, and def NO GUNS. Also combat would be rare, and would depend on things other than high stats.

-Now you choose three skills, their values are pre assigned so you just fill this here with three things your character knows how to do.

He proceeds to write sword

-You... you can't know how to "sword". Choose a skill you could have, be realistic!

-You can know how to use a sword! My cousin knows it, he take classes!!!

-Ok, let me repeat it: THERE WON'T BE ANY WEAPONS IN GAME!!! THIS IS NOT A COMBAT ORIENTED GAME!!!!

-I can have a sword if I want.

At that moment I got an out of body experience into a parallel dimension where the player was the one that decided how the game would work. I quickly got back into my furious heavy body.

-Vic, SPOILER ALERT, there won't be any swords!!!!!

-My character has a katana in his room! You can't say he doesn't have one!!! And i use it every day, so i got very proficient with it.

-SPOILER Fing ALERT AGAIN: You will lose all you have at the start of the adventure because it's a survival game, it's not about going in heavy and armed!!!

-I don't care. I have a katana, it's on my character sheet!

So i let him, everyone at the table heard my warnings, Mike pulled him aside and tried to dissuade him but it was in vain. We started the game and in the first minutes they crashed their car, blacked out and woke up inside a hotel room somewhere in the cursed town with nothing but their clothes.

-Reeeeeee... my sword!!!!!

-I told you so.

The game progresses and everybody gets super into the story and they progress just like I expected, even better since no one died yet, and I was already thinking of a good spot to of the GMPC just to raise the tension when they get to a section of the street that just colapsed (yes, just like in the Silent Hill games) and Vic has the brilliant idea of climb down the hole. Let me picture it for you, it was a giant hole, no clear borders besides the one they're standing, nothing on the other side, nothing at the bottom, but this guy thinks the best course of action is to climb into the unknown to scape a place filled with monsters...

I took my notes, flipped till the part where I described this exact death, handed it to James and told him to read out loud. James, being the kind of guy that have a nack for drama, starts to act out and describe with details everything that happened to Vic. I take back my notes, look at Vic and say "You're dead." take his character sheet and rip it in front of him (i was sixteen!!! don't judge me!!!!). Vic stays there, paralized with his mouth hanging open trying to come up with anything to say. Son starts laughing like crazy, Mike is just there silent. I continue to narrate and we keep moving, few moments latter Vic gets up walks to the gate and says "I have to go" and just leaves. A little momento of silence ensues, i think to myself "VICTORY! Never will he again try to ruin another game in his life" Mike looks at me and says

-That was mean... you didn't had to do it with him. What has he done wrong?

We all just stare at him... I don't even...

 

This is a story where I've learned nothing. I, to this day, don't know how I could dissuade such player of his insane ideas, nor was I vindictive or cruel in his death, it would have happened to anyone. Sorry for the long text, but I kind of hate multi parts stories that leave you waiting for the next chapter. Ty all.

 

PS: This time without "itens"