Back when I didn’t have a computer I rolled a lot of dice. And I mean a lot. 2-4 times a week for a few hours at a time. I even had a weekly game at a special booth at a Pizza Hut in the next town over. I would go to work at Wendy’s until Tobril would get off work and pick every one up and then we would all drive over to Hoe Town.

That was its simi-official nickname, Hoe Town. I didn’t give it the name, but I will agree it was full of hoes and whores. 🙂 Hmm tasty… the pizza! I am talking about the pizza. Not the 20 something easy riders, I swear!

So I would buy the Pizza, Tobril would drive and Jack would chip in when he could. Aka, free load.

I don’t think I have ever told the story of Jack. Believe me when I tell you he is a special guy, that and he almost always played some kind of wizard.

Anyway we would head up to the hut and game. We played there a lot as it allowed our friend Justin to play some as he worked. This was our core group. Well at least for a long while.

So I Dmed most of the time, being the guy with the most dnd time. And I did a lot of Dming from the seat of my pants. Some people are not set of the pants guys. You have to do a lot of thinking on your feet and getting the group to bend and flow like you want is hard. But I didn’t have time or money for a lot of published modules and it was the dark ages of the Internet. Took you minutes to download a dirty pic. I would hate to see how long it would take to get a sexy video, days?

One of the most popular themes we used, was what I called the “magic shop”. You the PC were kidnapped by a strange man/wizard/robot and would fine yourself stripped in a small closet. Looking a round you would find a gold coin and a slot in which to “buy” your way into the game and opening the doors and allowing you to step into the shop.

Pcs were greeted by your “kidnaper” you were explained the general rules. You would go from “level/world/plain” find a magical portal defeat what ever guardian/s was trying to stop you from entering said portal. After X number of completions you would be turned and give the choice of worlds to defend and players would test your defenses. To aid you, you where give to 3 items from the vast supply of items found in the shop. allowing the player/s to cherry pick an items powers to fit their character’s needs. And i normally didn’t worry about power creep, as the dm i could add weird side effects when ever it was needed.

For example, Jack once asked for a Swiss army sword. The sword granted its owner proficiency with the weapon no mater what form of the weapon.

If he wanted the sword to be in sword mode it could be a long/short/great/or any other kind of sword. He made it in to mace/hammers/etc but the form he used the most was chainsaw mode.

Once I had a player get a few more arms and hands. And became a muiti arm monster.

The Original Tobril ended up putting on some black dragon armor that bonded to him and became his skin and slowly started to turn him into a dragon. I wonder why he hasn’t gotten his DDO Tobril any black dragon armor….

Anyway a quick story mostly to have a point of the post. I hate to burn this one already but this is one of the best pnp stories. And Tobril and I still joke about this to this day.

Jack and Tobril were making their way through a maze in a mountain knowing that they had to get to the far side to complete the stage. It had many levels and was moving a lot slower then I had wanted. So around one bend they found small room. All that was in this room was a small box with a hole in it. And a rod that clearly went into the hole. With a little playing they discovered that putting the rod in the hole and tilting the up the door closed and the hole room moved up very fast. They found a magic elevator, that ran all the way up to the top of the mountain. But it was a high mountain and the air was thin and they had to go back down quickly before passing out. So they returned the lever to level and found themselves back where they started.

So with a quick estimate of how high the mountain was and some careful math Jack developed a plan to use all of his first level spells slots on feather fall and glide down. Jack and Tobril go to the top of the mountain. Jack counts to 3 and jumps off. And Tobril turns and looks to me and says “I didn’t jump.”

The look of shear terror on jacks face, so great. All of his careful math was done on a bad estimate of the height of the mountain and he miss used his feather fall spells. He was saved by an npc at the last moment. But the look remained for a long time.

Tobril rode the elevator back to the start. And then tried moving the rod down and found himself at the foot of the mountain not long after Jack made it to the bottom.

A purple dragon was waiting at the foot of the elevator, awakened by the elevator’s use. And a wonderful fight broke out. But if I didn’t let the group lead the way they might still be in that mountain and we never would have had this story to hold over good old jack.

❤