"Silly things in games" Topic

Time to lighten up a bit:

Give us examples of rules situations that are pretty silly.
No axe-grinding, preferably from games you like but can find silly bits with.

Try to avoid really fringe dice luck cases (that one game where you rolled all 1's to hit for an hour straight or whatever).

A few of my favourites: (all from games I love)

In Stargrunt 2, a typical tank in 15mm is about 30-40 meters long due to the ground scale.

In Epic 40.000, a single stand of gretchin, surrounded by 10 rhinos will always defeat them in a fire fight (the gretchin have 1 firepower, the rhinos have 0, despite having a pair of boltguns)

In Laserburn, shooting at a target 20 meters away is a long range shot with a significant penalty to hit… using a futuristic rifle that is described to have virtually no recoil.
(again ground scale, but a lot funnier, because the in-game distances are given in meters, not inches)

Warhammer 40.000 Rogue Trader. A power fist can tear through pretty much any armour… but the original rulebook never discusses how (and if) infantry can assault tanks at all.

Warhammer 40K in general: A weapons Armour Piercing ability usually has no impact whatsoever on it's ability to attack armoured vehicles.
(silly wording).

In Warzone second edition, machine guns are a close quarters weapon while assault rifles are the better weapon for long range shooting. (Presumably, they wanted to show that the machine guns were literally fired as the miniatures are posed, from the hip, but still..)

Share your own!

In Classic Traveller, it is possible for your character to die while still being generated.

SPI's Campaign for North Africa required Italian troops to spend an additional water point a day for cooking pasta!

In Flames of War, stands on opposite wing tips of a glider are out of pistol range of each other. SMG range too.
Von der Heydt can raise the dead, like a 10th level necromancer. Or the Nights King in Game of Thrones.

And don't get me started on the "Land Battleship" rules for my T35s.

In "Wargames du Temps de Napoleon" by Candler, you rolled two dice when firing on an enemy unit. The red die was multiplied by the number firing and then divided by a constant. The green die was divided into the number firing and gave wounded. Therefore you had the ability, if you rolled a 1 to wound one man for every man firing. It yielded wild results.

In Avalon Hill's "Dune" as the Harkonen player you could kill your own leaders and toss them into the tanks for spice.

I can't remember the name of the rule set, but in devising your forces Orks were -1 each, (that's minus one) which meant you could have a theoretically infinite number of them.

in Legends of the Old West, a tumbleweed will deflect a bullet.

In Beneath the Lily banners, the basic rules say a unit from a different brigade is more important to the morale of a unit than one from its own brigade!!! (The Support rule!)

In D&D, you could make a decent profit buying a 10ft ladder, kicking it apart and selling the rails as two 10ft poles.

The rungs were a bonus.
Use 'em for firewood or chuck them at hobbits for a laugh.

In General de Brigade it is possible for the CinC to break his watch.

Quite a few RPG's had suggested wages for urban laborers that would not permit them to buy food on a daily basis.

In TSATF, a native running on foot across open country, can catch up and outrun an English soldier, on a wagon being pulled by four galloping horses on a road…..

Some vehicles in 40K are getting so big that you can't actually fire past them with a pistol :-)

Classic Traveller: A barbarian with a broadsword has a pretty good chance of chopping up an imperial marine in full battle dress. (8+ on 2D6, assuming no stat modifiers)

More classic Traveller: Firing at medium range, with 1 skill level (basic training) against a target in ballistic cloth armour, a full auto gauss rifle requires a -1 or better on 2D6 to hit.
The futuristic battlefield is TOUGH :-)

In classic LBB Traveller, hull hits to a ship essentially do no damage other than letting atmosphere out the first time. After that, it's just so many holes, no matter how many hits you take! We once fought a running starship escape where our Free-Trader's hull got absolutely drilled, shot after shot after shot, but the weapons, drives and avionics were completely untouched… so we went into Jump with a ship with more holes in her than a screen door. At the time, we joked we had an engine, a turret, and two guys in vacc suits hanging on to the spars for dear life. (In retrospect, not sure how we survived the length of the jump other than the Referee thought it was funny…)

In the super-detailed firefight game "Phoenix Command" from the late 80s the most deadly weapon was a swung chair.

Basic Impetus (a really good game) has a cohesion test. You take hits during a turn, you roll a die. If your number is higher than the number of hits you are in trouble. If you roll a 1, no matter how many hits you take you pass, no effect. If you fail a cohesion test while flanked you rout.

My buddy Tom flanked a barbarian heavy infantry unit and the skirmishers that screened ahead of it with his Hun noble cavalry. He scored a hit on each. I managed one back. One would think both my units would rout. I rolled a 1 for each of them, ignoring his flank attack. He rolled a 6 for his one hit and the nobles routed. He wasn't pleased. I managed not to laugh.

In BLOOD BOWL, when a team tries to pass the ball, the opposing coach may roll for an interception BEFORE the actual roll to pass the ball. If the interception attempt fails, THEN the thrower rolls and can fumble the ball.

I forget the name of the game now, but in one post-apocalyptic pseudo-fantasy RPG, flame throwers were unable to do any damage if you were wearing armour.

A leather jacket provided 1 point of armour :-)

Mago – Just reminded me that in Warhammer, you roll for Toughness before you roll for Armour. Way way back, we reversed it because we figured the armour would kick in before the shot had a chance to bounce off your space marine muscles, or whatever.

Twillight 2000 (last GDW version)- Full auto hits are based purely on the number of rounds fired and unaffected by firing skill.

Incidentally, I did the same thing for reaction fire in Clash on the Fringe :)

In Napoleon's Battles 2d Edition, you could wheel a unit 359 degrees forward, but you were forbidden from wheeling backwards.

Ah, I forgot! – in original 'Retinue', the best way to hit a man at long range was to shoot at someone else, there was more chance of hitting the original target that way!

In the Civil War game Johnny Reb II (I think) there were the civil war rocket rules. Which were, the firing play takes a single 6 sided die, turns his back to the playing area (table, floor, whatever) throws the die over his left shoulder while staring straight ahead (strangely specific rule). Whatever troop was closest tot he landed die suffered a morale check with a minus of whatever was on the die.

I had a friend who practiced throwing dice over his shoulder to use this rule.

magokiron: I don't think that rule is that out-of-control. It's axiomatic in American football that when you pass there are 5 possible outcomes and 4 of them are bad.

Terrement, that reminds me of another silly AD&D rule: if you're temporarily invisible, you can't attack anyone or anything. But monsters that are permanently invisible can attack you all they want.

Yeah, we had the mother of all loophole hunts about that.