(by Keith Done)
At the October Club meeting I decided to start running a role playing group, made up primarily of some of our younger members with a couple of adults acting as mentors. During the day quite a few very funny situations arose and it reminded me of all those great moments that have occurred over the past 30 years when running various RPG campaigns. I thought I would share one each week on the site.

The Dog and the Stick
In the 80’s and early 90’s I ran quite a few RPG tournament games at conventions in Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra. One of these was titled “Tharlen Manor”, which was later published as an Auran d20 game as “Sanctuary”. The premise of this tournament is that the player characters find themselves knocked out by a sleeping gas and locked up in the tower of a derelict castle once owned by the noble family, Tharlen.

Tharlen Manor stands on a rocky outcrop in a fjord, connected to the mainland cliffs by a drawbridge. The drawbridge is up and the portcullis is down and the gatehouse is near impossible to break into. The players awake to find themselves chained to the castle walls and all their possessions have been removed. Most groups manage to free themselves by various means. Some of the circumstances surrounding that part of the game have had very funny outcomes (and I’ll feature some of those stories in another article).

Once the players are free, they stealthily check out the castle and usually are confronted by six big guard dogs that are running free. Now most players think, “Dogs. How tough can they be” and rush to attack them. However, try taking on 6x War-Dogs when you are 3rd Level and have no armour and your weapons consist of a few pieces of wood and a dagger! In many cases, the players engaged the dogs for a few rounds and then beat a hasty retreat to the manor house.

In one memorable game, the cleric in the party ran for the steps that led to the battlements to escape combat with the dogs. From his initial viewpoint, he couldn’t see where the battlements went to; they seemed to lead to the rear of the manor complex and the good cleric figured that he could probably find a way into the safety of the manor house by following the battlements. While his comrades battled the dogs the cleric sped up the stairs and along the front battlements. One of the dogs pursued him. He made it to the battlements that ran along the right hand side of the castle, the ravenous dog gaining ground. Half-way along this part of the walls, he was confronted by the fact that the walls on this side of the castle had collapsed into the fjord long ago and the battlement ended abruptly with a 100’ drop into the sea and rocks.

Skidding to a stop, our hero peered into the fjord. He briefly thought about jumping into the courtyard but noticed his friends had beat a hasty retreat into the manor, leaving the dogs there barking at the doors to the great hall. Turning, he saw the dog that had followed him bounding along the battlements to attack. He had seconds to act! Without hesitation, he asked me (as GM) if there were any sticks or stones on the battlement close by. Thinking he was looking for some kind of makeshift weapon, I said that there were some pieces of broken masonry and some small branches that were deadfalls from a tree in the courtyard; but nothing that would make a serviceable club.

Not to be deterred, the cleric picked up a stick and, as the dog prepared to leap at him, he threw the stick out into the air, above the sea and cast a Command Spell, crying out “Fetch!” As GM, I had to convince myself would this work. A Command Spell assumes that the target understands the Command and most creatures would be unaffected….however, a trained war-dog. Now that was a bit different, so I assigned a DC 15 score for the cleric to roll, to see if the dog did understand the concept of ‘Fetch”. The cleric was successful with the roll, the stick sailed seaward and the dog leapt past the cleric, falling to its death on the rocks below. A great Hollywood moment!

For those of you worried about the fate of our hero, the cleric later escaped into the manor via a side door, having jumped into the courtyard while his comrades distracted the dogs with meat they had found in the kitchens of the manor.

Next week: The Tale of the Paladin Saviour (or how to stage mange a hero)