Jump to content
News Ticker
  • Welcome to 2021, let's hope it is better than 2020.
  • gazebo!


    Phelix
     Share

    Recommended Posts

    Ladies and gents, for your ultimate amusement, I hereby give you the full tale of Eric and the Gazebo!

    =============================================

     

    Let us cast our minds back to the early days of Fantasy Role Playing, back when ye Dread Gygax was loose upon the land. Funny how humor and horror can start out so alike. Let us go still earlier (yes, it is permitted to breathe sighs of relief) to the days before Gygax (and the courts) thought that he owned FRP. In the early seventies, Ed Whitchurch ran "his game," and one of the participants was Eric Sorenson, a veritable giant of a man. This story is essentially true: I know both Ed and Eric, and neither denies it (although Eric, for reasons that will become apparent, never repeats it either). If my telling of it does not match the actual events precisely, it is because I've heard it many different ways depending on how much of what type of intoxicants Ed had taken recently.

     

    The gist of it is that Eric, well, you need a bit more about Eric, or else I won't fill quota. Eric comes quite close to being a computer. When he games, he methodically considers each possibility before choosing his preferred option. If given time, he will invariably pick the optimum solution. It has been known to take weeks. He is otherwise in all respects a superior gamer, and I've spent many happy hours competing with and against him, as long as he is given enough time.

     

    So, Eric was playing a Neutral Paladin (why should only Lawful Good religions get to have holy warriors was the thinking) in Ed's game. He even had a holy sword, which fought well, and did all those things holy swords are supposed to do, including detect good (random die roll; it could have detected evil). He was on some lord's lands when the following exchange occurred:

     

    ED: You see a well groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you see a gazebo.

     

    ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?

     

    ED: (Pause) It's white, Eric.

     

    ERIC: How far away is it?

     

    ED: About fifty yards.

     

    ERIC: How big is it?

     

    ED: (Pause) It's about thirty feet across, fifteen feet high, with a pointed top.

     

    ERIC: I use my sword to detect good on it.

     

    ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo!

     

    ERIC: (Pause) I call out to it.

     

    ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo!

     

    ERIC: (Pause) I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any way?

     

    ED: No, Eric, it's a gazebo!

     

    ERIC: I shoot it with my bow (roll to hit). What happened?

     

    ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.

     

    ERIC: (Pause) Wasn't it wounded?

     

    ED: Of course not, Eric! It's a gazebo!

     

    ERIC: (Whimper) But that was a plus three arrow!

     

    ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a gazebo! If you really want to try to destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try. It's a *)@#! gazebo!

     

    ERIC: (Long pause. He has no axe or fire spells.) I run away.

     

    ED: (Thoroughly frustrated) It's too late. You've woken up the gazebo, and it catches you and eats you.

     

    ERIC: (Reaching for his dice) Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so I can avenge my Paladin.

     

    At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a modicum of order by explaining what a gazebo is. It is solely an afterthought, of course, but Eric is doubly lucky that the gazebo was not situated on a grassy gnoll...

     

    =============================================

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Join the conversation

    You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
    Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

    Guest
    Reply to this topic...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

     Share

    ×
    ×
    • Create New...