Tales from the Table

Hi, and welcome to the first chapter of Tales from the Table, my little neck of the RPG woods. In these blog type thingies, I will have stories of past games, tips and tricks for both players and GMs alike, as well as little bits of humor and ra nts...mostly rants. I'm going to try to do this weekly, but I'm a lazy sod so I wouldn't count on it. Mostly, this is going to deal with 1st to 3rd edition D&D, because I hate 4th and haven't played 5th, and with a few other games thrown in for color

So, lets get right into our first topic: I hate Inuyasha. I never really liked anime to begin with, but I don't have a problem with it. Except for Inuyasha. I don't hate the show, just the character. I have never seen an episode, but I hate that fox-eared demon or whatever the hell he is with a passion normally reserved for the most vile, despicable people that ever lived. I could not have hated him more if he killed my puppy in front of me. I know I am going to catch flack from all the Inuyasha superfans, but you only have one of your own to blame for this hatred, so hear me out.

Several years ago, I was in the middle of one of my GM burnout phases, and wanted to play a PC. My brother told me about this guy who was running a 2E D&D campaign and needed a few players. 2E had a lot of good memories for me, so I was pretty happy to join.

When I walked into the guy's apartment, it became pretty obvious that he was an anime fan, but it didn't really bother me so much. I introduced myself to the other players and set about making a character. Since he had not started his campaign, we were all making level one characters. Usually, when I require this, it's because I plan on tailoring the campaign around the players, and thought he was going to do the same.

The characters were the typical hodgepodge mix that you get when you throw a group of people that don't know each other together. We had my character Kargol, a human fighter who fought for glory, Muldan, the quiet elf wizard in search of knowledge, the brave dwarven warrior Grimm Stoneflayer, and then we had Walter, a smart mouthed half elf bard that played one game and never returned, Eric, a plain old fighter with no personality played by a guy named Eric who had even less personality, and Sneeker McMillan, the human thief who stole from anyone and everyone until we told him we would pay a high level wizard to turn him into a mouse and feed him to Grath, Muldan's viper familiar. Characters laid out in front of us, we set off for a night of fun and adventure.

Or so we thought.

We receive a quest from the king of the country we were in to spy on a cult operating in a forest in the middle of the kingdom. If you usually play with a regular group, you will notice we have no cleric, so why the king chose us is anyone's guess. Maybe he thought it was a nothing quest, and since we had to pay twenty gold each for a charter, he'd throw us a bone.

Physically restraining Sneeker from stealing everything in sight, we accepted the quest and headed out. The king had thoughtfully rented us out horses, so the trip was quick, and since a well traveled and patrolled road led directly to the forest for some reason, it was uneventful.

The we stepped into the forest.

Not three feet into the forest, we get attacked by ten death knights. Not one, not two, but ten. At first level. First encounter and we are staring down the barrel of a TPK. In full view of the guards on the road, who were oblivious to what was happening. Not that they could have saved us anyway, but we would have at least lived long enough to hear the guards attempt to help us.

Suddenly, a blur of motion jumps out in front of us. Before we can say “Hey”, the death knights' bodies lie at the feet of our savior.

As the GM describes our bold and courageous hero, I notice the fella looks a lot like the dude on the anime poster behind him. When we ask him his name, sure enough, it's Inuyasha. OK cool, so maybe this isn't gonna be the typical boring 1st level adventure. And who knows, maybe the anime link will add a flavor I'm not used to. While restraining Sneeker from stealing from a guy that just filleted nearly a dozen death knights in mere seconds, we thank him and go on our way.

Several days passed by with no interaction with any creature bigger than a gnat. I started to think I could have more fun watching a knitting instructional video when the GM starts talking in that ominous tone all GMs use when something is about to happen.

We found the cult's secret hideout, and for some reason, every single damn cultist is outside, watching us stumble into the clearing. And we aren't talking a few misunderstood people who just want to worship in peace. This cult is HUGE. It could rival most organized religions. And they are all looking at us.

Just as they are about to attack, they look behind us, eyes wide with fear. Knowing that anything that could scare the crap out of hundreds of bloodthirsty cultists could make short work of us, we hit the ground. Over us flies a gigantic creature. I look up and see a familiar figure riding a golden dragon. Inuyasha has come to save our hides again. A few fiery breaths later, the cultists resemble fried pork skins and we are restraining Sneeker and thanking Inuyasha again.

As the cult is destroyed, there is no reason for us to be here, and we decide to head back to the king and tell him what happened. It takes us several days to get back, and the moment we step out of the forest we run into our third encounter.

A dragon. But not just any dragon. A red dragon. A huge red dragon. And guess who comes to save our butts again.

If you said anyone besides Inuyasha, you haven't been paying attention, and I want you to go to the front of the class and write “I will pay attention in class,” 100 times on the board. Go on... we aren't going to continue until you are done.

Yep, Inuyasha comes and slays the dragon. Three encounters into the campaign, we have not only faced challenges way above our level, but I have yet to roll the dice. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the GM described Inuyasha's battles in detail, almost as if he had wrote it out beforehand, so we are about three hours into the game now. Three hours of him showing off his homebrew superhero GMPC.

Turns out, he just wanted to play out his crappy Inuyasha fan fiction, and we were just given minor parts. Some of us had put thought into our characters, but it turns out Eric had the right idea with his generic fighter.

So that is why I hate Inuyasha to this day. Recently, my girlfriend and her son have been watching Inuyasha on Netflix, and still I refuse to watch it. But from what I hear when I am in earshot, I feel my hate for him is justified.

He's a mouthy little bastard.