Weasel | 17 Dec 2016 8:25 a.m. PST |
What are the strangest, most creative, wildest or plain /weird/ scenarios you ever played in? Caveat for the thread: It MUST be a scenario you played, NOT one you set up. |
Bill McHarg | 17 Dec 2016 9:38 a.m. PST |
I played in a WWII General Quarters game one time. I had 2 Italian destroyers loaded to the max with fuel and supplies for Rommel, running across the Med at night. My opponent had one British destroyer with radar. I had to keep going straight until I sighted something. Then both destroyers exploded from torpedo hits. Never saw anything, never shot anything, just boom! Rob admitted it was more of an experiment than a real scenario. :) |
T Callahan | 17 Dec 2016 9:52 a.m. PST |
20 years ago I participated in a WWII East Front scenario at a a convention. The GM announced that we would be using his own rules but he hadn't had a chance to play test them before the con. We rolled a bucket of dice and everyone died on the other side. The other team rolled a bucket of dice and all our troops died. Three turns (20 minutes) in and everyone was dead. So he allowed us to spawn our squads again and again and we all died over and over. Terry |
Stryderg | 17 Dec 2016 10:19 a.m. PST |
Didn't get to play, but watched…Star Wars battle in a small desert town, players rushed towards the pre-placed gun emplacements, got mowed down by the other side, and re-spawned next turn. Had 20-ish players and played like a first person shooter. Seems like everyone had fun. Played one of Ed's experimental games many years ago. Everyone got a small squad of characters and grunts, each with a back story. Movement was from area to area (kind of weird in a wargame), combat was handled as expected but if your character was killed then you had to come up with a story as to why he didn't actually die. Gamers are pretty clever and came up with some pretty good short stories off the cuff. |
Badgers | 17 Dec 2016 10:30 a.m. PST |
I recently played a roleplaying game at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London – we were the wooden firemen from Trumpton, investigating weird goings-on at Windy Miller's place… The GM was playing Burn the Witch by Radiohead on his laptop to give us the right vibe… YouTube link |
boy wundyr x | 17 Dec 2016 10:31 a.m. PST |
Red Dawn with Soviets vs pop culture heroes backed up with troops. I had the A-Team, including the van. Crockett and Tubbs and Rambo were there too. Was with one of your rule sets, too. |
thorr666 | 17 Dec 2016 11:04 a.m. PST |
Stryderg, so charge of the lightsaber brigade? |
robert piepenbrink | 17 Dec 2016 11:11 a.m. PST |
I once took part in an 1806 invasion of Naples with a Swedish army. It was billed as a historical game, too. My entire army was loaded on a single Disney Mickey Mouse pirate ship with massive firepower--which sank the first time a coastal battery fired. (My troops were already off. No one was shown the host's rules for such things, but you could see that one coming.) |
Lascaris | 17 Dec 2016 11:27 a.m. PST |
Played an AWI game earlier this year. My Americans advanced on the British, took a shot killing no one but inducing a morale check. The unit failed which caused a cascading series of morale checks, and failures, which resulted in the entire British army running from the field without having taken a casualty. We just had to laugh. |
Saber6 | 17 Dec 2016 11:44 a.m. PST |
All I can remember was it was a Mexican Jack Squint production at Historicon in Lancaster |
Ed the Two Hour Wargames guy | 17 Dec 2016 2:05 p.m. PST |
Stryderg – I remember that game. Some guy left his small kid to play in the game and then walked off. Had to switch to area movement as the little kid wouldn't do well measuring distances. |
gamertom | 17 Dec 2016 3:10 p.m. PST |
A game of Desperado set in the graveyard of an old town with opposing gangs out to get the treasure that had been buried there. Midway though the game aa non-player character got shot and killed. Next thing both sides knew was the dead coming to life and both sides being attacked by zombies. And the gangs kept shooting at each other until they absolutely had to shoot the zombies! |
Schogun | 17 Dec 2016 3:17 p.m. PST |
A modern, Hunt for Bin Laden type game, with cave and "underground" corridors. All went accordingly until 4 Predators appeared and started hunting everybody. Totally unexpected and fun…although a few of the more historical players didn't think so. |
Ottoathome | 17 Dec 2016 3:59 p.m. PST |
It was at a convention back when Fall-In was at Gettysburg. It was a WWII battle between Americans and Japanese in the Phillipenes. I was one of the three commanders on the Americna side. There were four commanders on the Japanese side. The tabletop had our entry point at one end, and the objective, a small town, on the other end of the tabletop. We were fighting on the long side, was to take that town. The GM deployed the Japanese. He deployed them in the Jungle on each side of the road. The Japanese were "hidden" and we couldn't fire on them unless they fired on us first. However… We noted that NONE of the Japanese could see the road, and in fact, their weapons could not even REACH the road. So we piled our men into their trucks and jeeps and raced down the road and in three turns took the village. We didn't fire a shot. The Japanese didn't fire a shot. We expected the road was mined but it wasn't. The Japanese couldn't move fast enough to get to the road. We Won. The game master said "But you didn't find or kill any of the Japanese!!!" We looked at the hand out and it said "But it doesn't say that, you only say we had to get to the village. It says nothing about killing Japanese1" That's understandable, a bit of grand scenario design flummoxing. What was truly weird was a Napoleonic War Game I was in once. I was the Prussians and across the way were the French. Whenever the French player moved his troops nothing was said. When I moved there were always caveats from the GM about that it wasn't realistic, or it wasn't what the Prussians would do. Many times moves were disallowed. But what the heck I played on. Well my move ended and then it was the French turn. The French player calmly retreated two units from MY line two moves back and brought his Cuirassiers down on the now expose FLANK of two more of my units. When I asked "What are you doing?" the GM said, that the French used their superior agility and speed to come in on the flank of the Prussian units while they were in the act of moving. "But the whole line was marching together with each unit covering the others flank!" I protested ."Oh Prussians didn't have the discipline to do that and their line would have become disarranged."The GM calmly said. I looked at my fellow gamers and they all either looked away or gave me anxious looks. One of them whispered to me. "Don't get John mad. Just let him do what he wants, Phil (the French Player) is his friend and he always lets him win. |
Coyotepunc and Hatshepsuut | 17 Dec 2016 5:20 p.m. PST |
A game of Vor: the Maelstrom. A random terrain effect annihilated both armies at the beginning of the second turn. |
JSchutt | 17 Dec 2016 6:33 p.m. PST |
I concede. I was however in a Convention "Pulp" adventure scenario where my Chinese pirates were tasked with capturing an armed freighter. My Chinese in their rickety boat hailed the crew and convinced them their freighter was on fire and that we would assist in their evacuation. We esentially traded ships without a shot being fired. Needless to say I spent the next couple hours watching what the other players were up to. |
Frederick | 17 Dec 2016 8:30 p.m. PST |
Not all that weird but Eat Hitler is a sort of an off the wall game |
etotheipi | 18 Dec 2016 5:15 a.m. PST |
Many moons ago, SOM (a teenager) set up and ran a three-side, nine-team modern game. The three sides had obvious roles (terrorists, civilians, liberators). He had taken a blank deck of cards and written the victory conditions explanation two or three words at a time per card. Each round, one additional card was turned over. |
Durban Gamer | 18 Dec 2016 5:19 a.m. PST |
Recently had a DBA game in which my first FIVE pip rolls were ones! We decided my Parthian general was drunk. Kind of worked for me since the first 1 rendered the ploughed fields mud, thus slowing the opposing Roman legions to a crawl. They crawled towards me and my cavalry army sat there doing almost nothing. It was still a hugely enjoyable game trying to make the best of it and I was very pleased in the end to lose only 4 to 3! |
dwight shrute | 18 Dec 2016 6:20 a.m. PST |
Daleks vs Confederates using brother against brother rules . Thank God for canister . :-( |
ochoin | 18 Dec 2016 7:03 a.m. PST |
An AZW scenario where a vainglorious British brevet general had to chase down Cetasweyo. He refused to take Gatlings with him or wait for support. As one of the British players (a drunken Irish major), I was separated & given the job of storming the quiet Kraal whilst other players advanced from different compass points. The Zulus were umpire-controlled. Thousands of Zulus erupted & overwhelmed us. We all "died", cursing each other for lack of support & our "general" for being a fool. That's when the Umpire revealed the name of the river meandering through the battlefield: Little Big Horn. Yes, it was Custer transferred to South Africa & none of us picked it up. |
It is good to be King | 18 Dec 2016 9:08 a.m. PST |
Years ago, I played in a Vietnam game at Gencon. On about turn 3 some rather large aircraft showed up on the edge of the board. They turned out to be B52 Bombers. The game ended with a bang! |
Narratio | 19 Dec 2016 12:55 a.m. PST |
1980's, a demo game variant on "The Creature that Ate Sheboygan", at some games convention in England. Much is a blur, we ran it as a continuous fight. As soon as one beast was put down we'd spawn another. The audience/participants could change from police to military to monster at each respawn. I remember these two kids who were playing the authority side of things got into a sort of street race between police cars and the military, ignoring the rampaging dinosaur. So the rampaging dinosaur got its victory objective and won… and we respawned another monster, a giant octopus as I recall, which then turned into a 4 sided fight. Luckily we had enough monsters and military & police vehicles. (After about 4 hours of this the original gamers had all stepped back, grabbed sandwiches, beer (it was a differnt world then) and went on to a heated discussion about the use of anti-tanks guns on the Russian front in WW2. The game, now totally run and played by walk in's went on until 8.00pm). Not sure about strange but certainly odd. |
basileus66 | 19 Dec 2016 3:48 a.m. PST |
The strangest scenario I've gamed was in the house of a friend. He had started to collect a GEnestealer Cult and wanted to try it. Problem is that none of us had W40K figures, so we ended playing a game where an alliance of High Elven, Dwarfs and Napoleonic French (swear!) tried to defeat the unholy horde of our friend 'Stealers. It was great fun, by the way. |
Mike Target | 19 Dec 2016 5:55 a.m. PST |
One of the most enjoyable to play was "Avenge the Thunderchild!" at Gamecon- Where the Royal Navy takes the fight to the Martians, Ironclad V Martian. Loved that… I'm not sure where this one fits, but it was certainly a game that stood out, was a large game of 40k fought in a GW store many years ago- it was being run by the area manager chap who seemed to think it was a marketing tool to sell more Space Marines and weighted the scenario accordingly- a couple of companies of the Imperial Guard were tasked with holding a defensive position across a valley against the better part of a chapter of Marines backed up by all manner of xenos scum. The Guard amounted to a mere 3000 points. The Marine/Xenos forces started off at around 7000 points which was supposed to take the position by a frontal assault. After a few hours of playing it had simply run out of steam and the unpire decided the Marine/xenos force could recycle its casualties and bring them on firstly on the Guards flanks, and then later, in the Guards rear. The game lasted all day, by which point the assaulting forces must have been looking at 17000 points in the rearview mirror, but despite being attacked from all sides the Guard still held the damn line! From the point of myself and the other Guard players it was one of the most epic games ever played- we were put to the test managing our forces to make sure approaches were covered, gaps were plugged and our dwindling resources were carefully husbanded and deployed to maximum effect. For our opponents it was a horrendously dull meatgrinder with nothing to do other than slog forward into the relentless hail of lasgun fire and remove casualties with a dustpan and brush. For the Umpire it seems to have been an attempt to engineer a garaunteed Marine Victory, presumably in order to sell Marines by demonstrating their prowess, which somewhat backfired. Thing is, as Marines always outsold everything anyway I'm not sure why he thought it was neccessary… |
wminsing | 19 Dec 2016 10:39 a.m. PST |
Not all THAT weird, but I recall a Harpoon scenario were it turns out the Russian ship was trying to defect and the actual victory conditions were if NATO forces shot it we lost! -Will |
Norrins | 19 Dec 2016 12:09 p.m. PST |
Two games of Pulp Alley spring to mind:- 1) Scooby Doo vs The Big Bang Theory & 2) Steampunk Avengers vs Defenders of Arendale (AKA Frozen). |
COL Scott ret | 19 Dec 2016 10:18 p.m. PST |
Had one game that was only weird because the other players on my side refused to listen to either the GM or me. An ACW battle that was part of a campaign, 4-5 players per side JR3 on a table 8x12 feet spilt down the mid line. This was my first game with that group and first game of JR3. The GM told the Union team that their commander (not there that day) had gotten pushed off the planed battlefield by campaign maneuvers and that as a result the Union armies could start on the roads 12 inches from the mid-line. That happened to be where a major ridgeline was and all we would have had to do was have our brigades column left or right and be in position to wait on the Rebs. The other Union players started 12 inches in from our edge, effectively meaning that we would have to fight for a ridge we should have been able to fortify. Our planned defense became a meeting engagement. I was told by my buddy who went back for the second day of battle (I went to the hospital with my wife to have our 3rd son), that my division was the last Union unit to be defeated. Nice bragging points but first among a losing army is still a loss. This reminded me to always do a back brief over starting and victory conditions. |
leidang | 20 Dec 2016 2:12 p.m. PST |
I played in the 40k based skirmish game that took place on a low tech planet infested with a genestealer cult. The low tech populace was medieval Normans. So a space marine squad vs a small genestealer cult with hordes of Norman followers. |