LARP and pen and paper Lulz

I have had many, MANY MANY MANY lulz happening in my tables and in the few LARPs I was in... So I wanted to share some of them with you.

During one particular LARP, there was a Masquerade violation, and the Brujah PC went to cover it up. He approached the group of humans, and began a speech in the lines of "hello, I sell toothbrushes !" and he actually DID take out of his jacket a bunch of toothbrushes. What's worse is that he managed to succeed in all his tests, so the damn thing worked. The humans stepped away (without having bought toothbrushes, sadly), the other players were completely shocked..

First vampire I ever made... oh my god. It died in the most hilarious fashion, due to my GMs sense of humor and a horrendous botch, and a full soak on my character's part. End prelude to laughter.

My GM had allowed me to make a Gangrel Abomination (of which we had no real idea how it would work, because he'd never found the rules at that time, so cobbled something together for me.) The prince of the city was a Ventrue with incredible amounts of Potence, and upon finding out the true nature of my character through various spies scattered throughout his city, called him on it and challenged my poor little John Talbain to a duel. It commenced to John essentially dodging, bobbing and weaving about the bastard sword being swung like a rapier with deadly efficiency before finally double-botching a dodge. He was impaled, and lifted overhead, but the damage was actually minimal, as he'd taken only taken a net total of 1 damage. (This damage was being taken every turn as my GM had treated the soak as having sealed fully around the wound, and in turn around the sword. I'd some fortitude, but for the life of me (I just woke up) can't remember if Gangrel typically have the discipline. Regardless, this one did, and now he was being waved around over a 7 foot Ventrue's head in almost comical fashion for 11 turns.. yes... ELEVEN turns while swatting at the Blue Blood with first his sword then his talons to virtually no lasting effect until finally, he was thrown off in a crumpled heap.

The Ventrue Prince, in his frustration finally called for the M32 with White Phosphorous grenade rounds and said, "Enough! Now you die!"and fires a botched shot that lobbed far to the side. John, seeing fire for itself, and having been in the military knew that it didn't look like normal fire, and the beast's typical fear of things that kill it outright, fell into Rotschrek and ran, to no avail, for 3 hours to yet again, more horrible dice rolling, until the sun had begun to rise, and he was stuck in a distant arboretum in the outskirts of LA. After all the trials and travails of the night, he finally broke, gave up, scrawled out his final thoughts on paper, nailed them to a tree, then unloaded his last shell to morbid, self-terminating effect.

The prince had chased him until almost that point, finally breaking off and realizing the time. They were so far out that he had to rely on the tint of the windows to get him back to his haven, and even sleep in the bloody car.

But yeah, such is the wild experience of my first character. You might have needed to be there, but there was the most lulz I've had in a character in almost 15 years of playing.

I was introduced to Vampire: the Masquerade through the LARP. The setting was a few buildings on the campus of one of the universities in Houston, and it fit the game perfectly. I remember one of the first few sessions, where we found some scraps of paper with mysterious writing. My Gangrel teamed up with a few others to break the code in those fragments, and we had to join forces with another team, who had parts of the puzzle that we lacked. I will say in all modesty that my experience with logic and encryption puzzles was a key factor in deciphering the message. I felt very important in that game.

The message turned out to be directions, leading to some destination. We followed the clues, and managed to reach the end of the trail... where it was revealed that the cryptic messages were all a Malkavian prank... a snipe hunt on a grand scale. We were embarrassed, to say the least. But who could we complain to, without looking even more foolish? Warning everyone else would be admitting that we were fooled by the Malkavians. We didn't know who might have witnessed us finding the final 'prize', either. So we replaced the final message for others to find, and handed our scraps of coded message to other players who were searching for them. At least that way, we could save a little face by saying that we were in on the joke.

A disappointment, to be sure. But a valuable lesson in the world of VtM. If something falls into your lap too easily, chances are it's a ruse, meant to waste your time and resources. Even if you have to work for something, that doesn't mean that someone else isn't setting you up. And when things seem to click together perfectly, and the answer is revealed with blazing clarity... that means you have fallen for someone else's trap, and should immediately be suspicious.

Ahhh the Malkie prank, always awesome !

I will not say the LARP lulz I had back when I was playing Claudia because there are huge story secrets behind most lulz..
Oh, there is one I can tell. Most new PC were either Brujah, Gangrel or Malkavian. Lyle stepped outside Elyseum to find the Gangrel (he was looking for The Venerable), and one of the PC kind of went for "this is a Gangrel-only gathering" type of talk. Lyle dominated the poor PC into barking and running into circles for a good half an hour while he discussed "important matters" with the Venerable.
(of course this was duly reported to Elyseum by the Nossies gossip ; if the Tremere Regent wants to talk to someone, step aside)

This poor sod still was lucky, that it didn't happen in an english speaking country. There the harpies would have told him time and again, that he was barking mad