"Alright roll your stats." Said the game master. Tonight all five of them had gotten together, a break from the busy life of studying, for a game night. And tonight it would be something special.
"Aww, I only rolled 3 for int." His large ears lowered as he looked back down at the dices, three ones.
"Don't worry, you can be a fighter. Don't need more than 3 for witty one liners perk."
"But I want to be an engineer!"
"We already got three of those, not everyone can build planet exploding toasters. Need a boarding force as well!" The game master chimed in. Hoping that they could avoid having an all engineer party, again.
"Actually the potato cannon gives us infinitive ammunition that does unlimited personnel damage. Don't need any boarding party." Said one of the engineers, with his nose deep into one of the rule books.
"Then how are you supposed to save the princess? Blow her up as well?" Countered the game master with an annoying tone in his voice. This time not every problem would get solved with a potato cannon.
"Are you sure about this whole princess thing?" Said another engineer, as he waved his hand trying to get a rule book passed to him.
"Of course, haven't you read the extensions? Plenty of captured princesses in those." He made a gentle movement towards the stack of extensions sitting next to him. The carefulness was well founded, the sheer height of them was threatening the game table with complete chaos, should a non gentle movement disturb them.
"Yea but weren't those for time travelling parties?" Said one of the engineers, that was actually paying attention since he had momentarily given up his rule book.
"You're all time travelers, forward in time! Also I believe the engineer have a perk that lets them travel through time if they have a toaster equipped. The princess was probably brought here by one of those malfunctioning." If you couldn't use toasters to explain away plot holes, what good were they?
"What, and then captured again?"
"It's my understanding that that is was human females from that time period do. Look they even have specialization for it, 'Screaming for help'." He helpfully pointed at the relevant section in the book.
"Doesn't seem right."
"Look it just to get the time period right. See, for modern specialization it's 'Badass Female Makes Aliens scream for help'." It was just underneath the first one, the register was a complete mess in this book.
"So how do we meet?" Said one of the players, with some annoyance in his voice, wanting to get this game started before it dissolved into another discussion about some arcane rule.
The game master happily obliged. "You're in a tavern drinking ethanol and breathing fire, when some of the taverns inhabitants decide that you need some roughing up!"
"Why?" Curiosity, now? He could have used some of that in the detective adventure. Then it was just shoot that, shoot this, bha players.
"Ehm, you looked at them funny." Nailed it! "Now they have claws and level 4 armor, what do you do?"
"Are there any toasters nearby?" Wondered one of the engineers.
"No." Give an engineer an toaster once, and you will never get a hold of the plot line again.
"I charge forward!" Said the fighter, his ears having recovered from their lowered stance and were now in full swing.
"With no weapon?" He did not want the only non engineer player to die first. As it was guaranteed to transform him into another engineer.
"Yea, easier that way. Gripping is far deadlier than hitting when you have martial arts specialization." That... couldn't be right. The player however was prepared with the right page opened.
"Let me look at that." He said and took a quick look at the page. "FIVE DICES IN DAMAGE?" He looked up at the player who had prepared the book, a big smile covered his face.
"So I need to succeed on a grappling attempt first. Level 4 armor, that's a minus 10 penalty." The dice hit the table, landing on a 13. "Ha, that's above zero, success! Time to do some damage." They players eye flashed ominously as his ear movements reached speeds that would make helicopters envious. Had he inadvertently created a bigger monster than the engineers?
"This can't be right, what kind of nonsense make you do more damage throwing them than shooting them with a gun?"
"Hey I don't make the rules." Five dices rolled down the table, bouncing along their way. Quick thinking and a swift hand saved them from the floor, as they were stopped at the edge. "Oh high roll, 19. Did I get him?" Oh, come on.
"He has 8 health!"
"Oh then that means overkill, I get to do a second attack!" Of course he does.
'sigh' "Just get it over with."
An hour later, and with many destroyed bars behind them, the faced of against the final boss. An evil empires flagship, that had captured the princess.
"Alright, now remember. You cannot throw the black hole generator into the ship, that would kill the princess, that is bad. Are we all clear on that?" Civilian casualties had been high after they had found the toaster storage. In hindsight, giving them access to what was in practice an infinite number of black hole generators had been a mistake. He had tried to rely on possible civilian casualties as a limiter... yea, no.
"Yea, yea, yea. But it does have support ships, right?" Said one of the engineers, zooming in on the possible kills, with the dice in hand.
'sigh' "Yes, it does have three support ships." If he didn't give them something, then princess or no princess, that flagship would be mashed potatoes.
"And we have three engineers with toasters, what a coincidence." Ha, ha. ha.
Three black holes and some potatoes later.
"Alright, you have now destroyed the support ships and the guns, shields, engine and most of the armor of the flagship." Give a player a potato gun, and he will shoot anything and everything. Next time he would have the ships be nanoswarms or something. Might complicate the princess storage but at least the potato canon wouldn't just completely cripple it in five shots. "How are you actually going to save the princess?" Potato gun or no potato gun, there were no saving potatoes.
"Is it my turn yet?" Said the poor fighter, who had barely destroyed any of the bars, and was feeling left out just sitting around in the space battle. Although he had punched a ship in a previous encounter, stunning it for one turn... this system was just weird.
"Ehm, yes. But you're stuck on the ship unless you have some kind of boarding ship." He had hinted that they would need one throughout the entire campaign. Even offered one FOR FREE, with heavy hints that this might be important later. They had said that they had toasters, what else did they need? Damn players, ruining the adventure.
"Oh, I can hold my breath for several minutes so I don't need that. Just bring the ship closer and I will jump into it."
"...without an exo suit?" Also 'not needed, even for free'.
"I have 'enduring damage' perk, it will take hours before I die from vacuum damage." Who in the hell had designed this system? It was as balanced as a toaster.
"Fine." At least the traps inside would finally get a chance, he had spent hours on making them an interesting and fun challenge.
After parking the ship close to the crippled flagship and having the fighter dive into one of the holes. The fighter found himself with two possible paths.
"Now, there are two doors on either side of you. The one on the right-"
"I punch the wall!"
"What?"
"I punch it, do I get through?"
"You cannot punch through walls!"
"Actually he can." One of the engineers shimmed in. "We built him an exo skeleton from the material in the last bar. Remember? It was in the downtime after we-"
"Right, right fine. You punch through the wall." At least two traps gone, but hey, couldn't avoid many more of them. Could they?
Much much punching of walls later, and many more traps avoided.
"Yes yes, you punch the wall. Now what?" He thought the toasters were overpowered and so had design all the traps with that in mind. But he was starting to see that the traps he had designed, could all be solved by punching the walls and walking around them.
"I should be where the princess is, right?"
"Huh, what do you mean?"
"The old man told us she was in the middle of the ship, the safest spot. We should be there by now, presuming the walls are at least one meter apart each."
Fair enough, if he let the wall punching continue for much longer, he would go insane. Now time for the final boss! "You punch through a final wall, and as you enter you see the dark lord standing before you. With an exo skeleton of his own! He sees you and cackle, 'My my little human how-"
"Shouldn't he take vacuum damage?" One of the engineers piped up.
"Yea, we punched all the way from space. It should be a vacuum inside." Anther one chimed in.
He hadn't thought of that, worse the boss did not have 'enduring damage' perk. He would choke and die within five turns, and one of those was already spent on monologuing.
"What about the princess, doesn't she die as well?" The third engineer added at last. Oh great, killing the final boss and the princess at the same time. Only fitting that this clusterfuck of campaign should end like that.
"That's fine, I can take damage for here with 'bleeding for others' perk." Said the fighter.
"How many perks do you have?" One of the engineers asked, they themselves had picked zero of them.
"When you don't spend all your XP on maxing out the toaster manipulation skill, you have a lot of XP over." Said the miffed fighter, who still hadn't forgiven them for pushing him to be a fighter.
"Whatever, the evil boss dies and you save the princess. The End!" It was over, finally.
"Don't forget to punch your way outside through the other side."
"Why? It's over."
"Cooler!"
"Oh, and once the princess is outside. We blow up the ship with one of the modified toasters!"
"Yea, yea, of course." Nanoswarms, next time, all the nanoswarms!