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Dungeon Master
Welcome to Dungeon Master, PC Gamer’s regular RPG column, where Online Editor Fraser Brown delves into PC gaming’s most beloved and enduring genre. Grab a seat in our badly-lit tavern and please ignore the goblin puke.
CRPGs like Disco Elysium, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Esoteric Ebb love to get weird, but no videogame can truly compare to the oddities that a good tabletop session can spit out. Throw a bunch of flesh and blood humans around a table and there’s a good chance chaos will ensue.
I started tabletop roleplaying pretty late in life, but over the last 15 or so years my brain has become full of silly anecdotes. In one adventure, my companion puked all over himself and blamed it on the “Vomit Bandit”, and I spent one evening carrying a massive table because I thought it looked nice (it also served as an excellent battering ram).
So, my fellow TTRPGers, I want to know about the times things got weird around your table. And if you just play TTRPGs remotely, I want your strange stories too! To get the ball rolling, here are a few of my favourite moments from my own misadventures:
The earthquake
About 15 years ago, I was part of a remote tabletop crew hosted by a friend from New Zealand, who also served as our GM. We were mucking around in his homebrew setting—a fictional West African city full of steampunk vibes—and it was a pretty normal evening. That was until my friend’s screen started shaking. Then stuff started falling off the bookcase, followed by his then-partner rushing down the stairs behind him in a panic. It was an earthquake. If I recall correctly, we took a wee break to let nature finish having a fit, and then we got back to the game. We don’t get ‘quakes in Scotland, so I found the whole thing bizarre and a bit thrilling. Luckily it was a pretty minor one.
The betrayal
In a Mothership session hosted by former senior editor Robin Valentine, I found myself infected with an alien virus. I only discovered this when Robin started sending me chilling DMs, telling me what messed up stuff was happening to me. Paranoia took over and I tried to run back to our spaceship. Our former guides editor then shot me in the leg, my head popped off and grew tentacles, and then I ate her face. Please don’t tell HR.
The other betrayal
In Call of Cthulhu, I was driven mad after witnessing a ghost (a very spooky ghost, I should add), leading to me shooting a fellow player with an elephant gun, effectively disintegrating them. I then jumped in a taxi to flee the scene of the crime. Unfortunately, I’d developed echolalia, so I could only repeat the last thing the taxi driver said to me. Honestly, I feel more sympathy for the taxi driver than the guy I shot.
I have others that I would love to share but they are not for public consumption. Anyway! What about you lot? Give me your weird anecdotes, your silly arguments and your stories of terrible GMs.
