Forums of the Megaverse®

A wandering merchant named Karva. He had a bad habit of leaving important facts out of his discussions, not because of any malice, but because he'd forget until it was waaaay too late.

Hey, I know this shortcut around the mountain!

...a few hours later down the shortcut...

Hmm, did I mention this mountain is haunted by Zombie Trolls?

...after the inevitable battle with Zombie Trolls...

We really should have worn green tabards. Those trolls never attack anyone who looks like the Queen's personal guards.

Mine is "Matt." There is a store in almost all of my campaigns. Depending on the setting the name changes but it's always *something* 4U *something* 4U (i.e. in Rifts it would be Weapons 4U Robots 4U or Tanks 4U Spells 4U). If there is anything in the books that I allow (or the players convince me to allow) it is at this store. Whether they can afford it...a different story. But this guy, Matt is always the shop keeper. Doesn't matter if you're in Lazlo, Lone Star or Liepzeig, he's always the clerk. Matt is a very nice guy. Like the classic bar tender, he's there not only to sell his product but an ear to listen and wise council.
With all the neat stuff in the shop and only one clerk who through appearance, psionic scans, and everything else they tried seemed completely 100% unagumented human, the players, thinking I was trying to give them cool stuff decided that they wanted to rob the store. They went in late at night when nobody was around, armed to the teeth and shoved a plasma rifle in his face. They demanded a laundry list of equipment, vehicles and of course, all the credits he had. Matt tells them it's against company policy to negotiate with terrorists and if they didn't leave company policy would also authorized deadly force. One guy held him at gun point while the others started looting. "Hey, you guys, stop. You have to pay for that." His kind friendly attitude got on their nerves and they shot him in the face. It was blown away and grew back in about 5 seconds. He reached under the counter and pulled out an old winchester lever-gun. In 1 melee action (yes, I know, defying all rules) he shot them all. The shots depleted their armour's MDC to zero. Next action, he shot all of their guns. Destroyed. Then, "You boys want to continue this?" They developed some respect and began to apologize while slowly backing out the door. "Come back any time, boys, but try to be nice, eh?" They never robbed a X4u X4u ever again, and he's still quite friendly.

I loved that place, the best part is they never asked questions about where we got the money to pay them.

I finally found some gamers in the area again so W4U is open for business again!

Those poor souls, is the group as liberal with their morals as us?

Not sure. I initally got a lot of yes and now I have a 2 no's, a buddy with PCS orders and one maybe...They're Marines so hopefully they will be like you guys...sure wish we had a subber here though...nothing says crazy like a subber.

We prefer sanity challanged. Hope the game goes well. Let me know if you ever come back out here.

We had one guy...can't remember his name but the guy that played him was named Bill. The guy had 2 distinct personalities. Personality 1 was kind and helpful, very afraid of combat, timid, had a slight stutter...personality 2 was a jerk. Loud mouthed, crude, violent and no-nonsense. Though a full-fledged spellcaster, personality 1 could not cast offensive spells and 2 could not cast defensive spells...and you better not even mention the name of the other personality in front of the other. If you said 2's name in front of 1, he'd go into an anxiety attack and possibly wet himself. If you said 1's name in front of 2, he'd almost kill you for associating with him and demand his whereabouts. You see 1 had some kind of book that 2 wanted. 1 would have a player hide it for him so 2 didn't get it. To this day I don't know why 2 wanted the book.
And the way Bill played him out...to die for. He would random have someone at the table roll percentage dice. 01-50, 1 was there, 50-00, 2 was there. When the personality changed, Bill changed. His voice would go from timid pipsqueak to gruff beast, even when out of character (unless interacting with another NPC). Depending on the circumstances it wasn't always a 50/50 chance, but it's cool. I loved those 2 characters...that character...whatever.

A long time ago, I was playing in a Shadowrun campaign. I was a magic-user, as were the rest of the party (it was an all-magic campaign). So, this character was always looking for really old stuff, namely musical instruments and sheet music. Why, I don't know. He just was. Anyhow, he was on a current personal quest to find the sheet music to Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall Part 1". He wasn't able to find it, however, before his untimely demise at the hands of a supernatural entity. His soul, according to the GM at the time, was trapped on Earth, forever trying to complete his last quest.

I now use his spirit in every campaign I've run since then. The party will, at some point, see a wandering spirit dressed in whatever clothes are appropriate for the campaign, wailing to himself that he needs to find Floyd's sheet music. And he can't be interacted with in any way. The PCs can see him, but they can't affect him. They can only watch as he wanders by, around the next corner, and out of sight. I love having them see him multiple times in a campaign so they'll think he has some significance (which he doesn't - he's only there to mess with the PCs).