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		TMGiffy's Coca-Cola Quest
		One-Shot Game - A one-shot game is just a game that was played once. So it wasn't a campaign. Sometimes these are called pick-up games as well. Read on to hear about this exciting one! Hello, everyone. My name's Giffy, and back in January I hosted a game with my Boy Scout troop on a weekend campout. The character's were (though I'm not perfectly sure, I've slept since then): Blake: An Elven Ranger Matt: A Giant Martial Artist Paul: An Elven Black Mage Todd: A Human Champion After we got the characters rolled up, we started playing, but realized: Oh, crud! We don't have any figures or a game board! So after searching the cabin we were staying in, we borrowed a few games to use pieces from. Mainly, this was a Coca-Cola Christmas chess set. So now, the characters were: Blake: An Elven "Coke Polar Bear" Matt: A Giant Santa Clause (Ho, ho, freakin' ho.) Paul: An Elven Coke Machine Todd: A Human Coke Bottle So (in lieu of a cheesy joke), A Polar bear, Coke Machine, Coke Bottle, and Santa Clase walk into a bar (about 40 miles north of the WOV citadel). They do the standard "Ask the Barkeep for a quest" trick and, after buying some alcohol for later, get re-directed to an item shop in another town a few miles further north. Being early in the day, they get there around noon and walk in to find a spastic gnomish (or, in this case 'bottle cap-ish') shopkeep with MASSIVE glasses running around, panicked. (The Coke Machine, annoyed beyond belief, heads down the street to a nearby magic shop with the Bottle in close pursuit.) After a few minutes of trying to buy stuff, they soon find out that the guy has nothing to sell except a few trashed-up swords and a shield or two at flagrantly expensive prices. Santa, being too big to fit in the door, takes the surly approach, threatening to trash up the shop if the botte cap doesn't talk. The thing freaks, squealing and running around even more frantically. After the Polar Bear knocks him senseless, the coke gnome calms down and says that his suppliers (3 total, one from near the WOV citadel, one from the Sabre Lake, and the Wizards Guild) mysteriously cut off their shipments to him without prior warning. Any attempts to try and get to them to explain themselves get curt responses of "We send you our stuff all the time, quit complaining." The bottle cap said that if the team could figure out what was holding back the shipments, he would be more than happy to lower his prices and give them a few things for free. After more of Santa Clause threatening to do a little more than slide down the chimney, the gnome agreed to loan them gear up-front from his reserve supplies. He gives them some decent armor and a few bronze helms, telling them seemingly pointless tips like "share those helmet, they aren't just for you two," or "I want that all back when you return." He then gave them vague directions to all three suppliers, so that they could retrace the caravans to their starting points. The party, after re-uniting and "spreading the wealth" so to speak, chose to head out toward the Great Sabre Lake first. They hiked for about 3 days before they arrived at the first "marker" on the caravan trail: A group of rocky and cavernous foothills that became gradually more forested as they went further on. At about three in the afternoon, they finally got into their first battle: A trio of giant dragonflies had been trailing them as they had entered the forest. (Why? I needed to spice things up a bit for the players. ;-) ) Since giant dragonflies have indecently high agilities for level 1-3 monsters, the party wasn't having much luck nailing direct hits on these bad boys. Until, that is, Santa got an idea. He ripped a small tree up from the ground and threw it at one of the dragonflies like a giant javelin. I gave him a 40% chance of success (for both ripping out the tree and scoring the hit), and he rolled just barely enough to get the tree in his posession. Because his next roll wasn't high enough, however, it wasn't an instant kill. No, no. It was an instant maiming. Santa's "special delivery" managed to knock the abdomen off the dragonfly, leaving it as something like a flying head. The thing was TICKED, and ended up landing and trying to pull a melee on the Polar Bear, who stepped on it and squished it's head clean open. The other two ended up getting wings ripped off by arrows or legs frozen off by the Coke Machine's spells. The only one who didn't really end up doing much combatively was the Coke Bottle, who had too low an intelligence to cast spells, and got the worst rolls of the entire party. (I think he only scored one auto-hit the entire game.) After the dragonflies had been slain, the party kept going and set up camp in an area that was known for having an immense number of caves dotting the countryside. The group could notice a few signs of a struggle, and saw some wagon tracks in the road nearby. They figured to camp the night and start searching the area in the morning. (Hehe, I had other plans). After Santa and the Coke Bottle decided to get completely wasted, the party went to sleep leaving the Coke Machine on watch. He was starting to wake up Blake (the Polar Bear) when he heard some low growling from the treeline. The Coke Bear (using Talk to Mammals) figured out that the 'things' were trying to figure out if they could take the group or not. There were only two of them at the start, but it seemed like a third voice chimed in about halfway through the conversation. Since it was midnight, the party couldn't see jack diddle in the trees. After a small hushed conversation, the Coke Machine cast Roll (which he bought at the magic shop), onto a pile of logs a few feet from where they suspected the 'things' were. The bottom log scooched about 6 feet, letting the rest follow suit and rampage into the unsuspecting asassins. Now that at least one of them was buried under about 50 pounds of lumber, the Polar Bear charged, screaming at the drunks to wake up and fight. For the record, Santa was just as random and deadly with a hangover as he was without one. The party charges through the trees to see two gnolls (or, in this case, two bottle caps) trying to pull a third out from the pile of logs. Santa grabbed a log from the pile and kicked it at another gnoll/bottle cap, pinning it's leg to the ground. He tried to pull off another one, but got hit before he could try it. About 3 Ice Spells and 6 Shuriken later, the gnolls lay slain in the trees, and Santa was less than happy about that lucky shot the bottle cap took on him. The party picked up some new gear that seemed a little rich for gnollish blood, such as an amultet that contained some sort of green goo. After dipping a shuriken in it, the shuriken turned bright green and glowed for about 4 hours. The party went back to sleep, deciding to say "heck with it" until the next morning when they all were sober. That morning, they burned the bodies and the polar bear back-tracked the bottle caps down a thin hunting trail hidden behind their campsite. After walking for about 5 hours, they found a sparsely planted clearing littered with bones and debris. They continued on and found the gnoll den, which contained another 8 or 9 gnolls scurrying about, trying to sort the loot they took from a broken-down wagon parked outside their dug-in burrow. This, my friends, is where it gets interesting. The Polar Bear threw the "green shuriken" he had made the night before, and the force of the impact actually threw back and pinned one of the gnolls to the dirt wall of the cave, a good foot off the ground. Every gnoll (again, coke bottle caps for imagery) did a slow pan out to the clearing to see a Polar Bear, Coke Machine, Coke Bottle, and the Santa Clause of Death armed to the teeth and ready to attack them. Santa fired an arrow and, lo and behold, rolled double sixes, pinning yet another of the gnolls to the wall. Now they ALL go for the weapons pile, grabbing anything pointy they can get their hands on, and ran like madmen for the mouth of the cave. Santa Clause kicks the busted-up wagon at the cave entrance, temporarily sealing it off. The Gnolls, whilst hacking and gnawing through the giang pile of scrap blocking their home (this was represented by 8 red bottle caps lined up behind a pile of white bottle caps, with the exception of two bottle caps lain next to the extra coke machine piece), were repeatedly shot and cast upon by the group through holes developing in the barricade. By the time the bottle cap gnolls broke through, only four were in decent shape, and the entire party dinged level two by literally hacking them to pieces. The two gnolls in the cave had bled to death, and their carcasses were hanging from the wall. (Picture one of those belts with the bottle caps screwed into it, and you'll have an idea of what it looked like on the chess board.) The party recovered about 95% of the lost goods, and were granted 1000 gold each and a free suit of armor by the shopkeeper, who was now only half as eccentric as when they first met him. (No real Coca-Cola mascots were harmed in the playing of this WOV game.) (Coca-Cola and the Coke Santa, Polar Bear, etc. are just coincidental, and blah, blah, blah. . . not official sponsors, yadda, yadda, yadda. . . trademarks, etc. etc. etc.) Bottom line, the game went well, and could have gone on longer, had it not been for the end of the camping trip. I'll let you know if we ever pick it up where we left off.