Now we see the violence inherent in the system...

[Rick]

I'm just curious.

Has anyone destroyed the world, slaughtered their gaming group, fallen prey to the spiral of death, or had any other catastrophe predicted to occur upon engaging in a TROS game?  If so what happened?  Were there any close calls, and if so, how were they resolved? In general, stories along thoses lines would be of great intrinsic value to me, if no one else.

My curiosity is purely for my own, er, edification, and your time and input is greatly appreciated.

later,

Rick

[Tash]

No death spirals but one of my players learned in the first adventure that charging into a situation without scouting it when you have ample chance to do so is a really bad idea.  

The party was sent on a scouting mission (the campaign is a millitary/mercenary setting) to a small village.  They had two goals: find out what type of supplies were being stored in the warehouses there, and destroy them if possible.

The party split up to recon the town (mistake #1).  The two stealthy types went for the warehouses, the fighters went for the stables to try and cause a distraction and steal mounts.  One of the sneakers checked his warehouse in detail, found a small window into a hayloft, and got in undetected.

The other went straight for the door guarded by two sentries, killed one with a thrown dagger and then tried to drop the other before he could alert the rest of the garrison.  He failed.  Fortuneately for him the first player managed to light a cache of lamp oil stored inside the first warehouse, which distracted the rest of the gaurds.  The second player managed a well executed counter (L3 wound to the face) agaisnt the remaining guard, who subsequently failed his konckdown roll.  Wisely both scouts beat a hasty retreat.

The fighters did much better.  One grabbed a bunch of horses and lit out for the rendevous point, the other played rear-guard and met two guards running to investigate the alarm.  He pulled off a great series of terrain rolls and kept from getting flanked, dropped the first with a perfect counter that severed his opponents foot, then ran the other guard through and split.

It was a dramatic and well played session, but was a narrow escape for the party and far more close than I'd intended, but it got everybody hooked :)

Lessons learned:  Keep the players where they cna support each other, don't charge when you can sneak, and always look for the back door :)

[Jake Norwood]

In what is probably my only real character death (unintended by the player, that is), we had about 4 PCs and 2 or 3 NPCs ambush a war party of about 24 Golen. Although 1 NPC and 1 PC were slightly wounded at the outset, they actually managed to cream all two dozen. Near the end of the fighting one of the PCs broke from the plan, figuring that most of the baddies were down and he was feeling invincible. He took on two at once. As he mortally wounded one, the other took one of his legs off at the knee. He fell and managed to swing at the legs of his attacker once on the ground, removing his legs and then killing him.

The next game this same PC took part in a large-scale battle (with a peg leg and a seatbelt). He rode against an opponent that somewhat outmatched him, took a hit, and the "death spiral" began, but mostly because he refused to retreat. His army was routed and he decided to take a stand (so to speak), where he was hacked into 0 CP (but still alive). He slid from his horse and bled to death on the battlefield, abandoned.

Jake