If you want to talk about BattleTech RPG, I'll tell you the time I was getting into the main spaceport in Solaris City, on the Solaris VII Game World.
There was a multi-party game run by Herb Beas at GenCon when it was still in Milwaukee. It was started when 3rd Edition came out and it became a staple for a number of years. In that game I played a Capellan Death Commando (some of the best SpecOps guys in the game). I wasn't sneaking into the spaceport, rather I was traveling quietly trying to get into the city. As it turned out, members of the other parties in the group started some trouble. When security at the spaceport started locking things down I wanted nothing to do with that. I figured the best way to get out of there was to use the skills I trained and developed.
Did I tell you I was trained to cause pain, death, and destruction?
I ended up meeting with the other member in my party, another Capellan. The character was a Maskrovka agent, the secret police/traditional spy counterpart to my commando character. After finding a quiet room to change into my armor and gear up we started making our way over to the diplomatic wing. We changed our goal of making it out of the spaceport over to making it to the diplomatic mission located on the spaceport. As we made it around the now-deserted spaceport we ended up making contact with a couple of security guards. More than rent-a-cops, but less than full-on MPs. We decided to swing around close and take them on at very close range. This would allow us to maintain the element of surprise, giving us a chance to neutralize them before they could get on their radios. And just to sweeten the pot a little bit more we could see the signage to the entrance of the diplomatic wing. It was time to adjust our plan, to go from maximum speed to maximum damage and shock them into submission (note that we considered death to be submission).
I plastered myself against a rather large column and inched my way around to see if I could see the guards. Sadly, they saw me and proceeded to plaster themselves around the same column. So I motioned to my partner that I wanted her to take her two microgrenades and pitch them around the column, so I could follow up with my pistols.
*click* *click*
*toss* *toss*
*boom* *boom*
What, you were expecting a *BOOM* or even a *ka-BOOM*? These were microgrenades, and we were in a rather open area. These were going to damage, I was going to finish off.
So I swung around the column, drew from my cross-draw holsters, pointed my pistols at each of the two guards and declared to Herb that I was going to shoot each of them. He totaled up the modifiers and then asked me what my pistols skill was. I looked at my sheet.
I looked over my sheet again.
I studied my sheet for 30-45 seconds.
"I don't have the pistol skill."
"What do you mean, you don't have the pistol skill? You're a Death Commando, it should be there."
So we pause to grab the book and go over the Life Paths for a minute to find the skill that I obviously overlooked. And to our surprise...Capellan commandos don't learn how to use a pistol. Nor is it taught in boot. Nor AIT. If you want to be a Death Commando and be able to use a pistol you have to learn it on your old time.
So now I faced a choice: take the penalty for untrained skill use, or do something dramatic. Being a gamer I went with dramatic. My action for the rest of the turn was to drop my pistols and move to my backup weapon, a vibrosword. But I was told that I would have to wait to the next turn to get it ready. Not a big deal I thought, so I went along with it. Of course being told that by the GM meant I was going to have to go along with it.
Next turn rolls around and I announce I'm going to try to use a draw cut on the guy in front of me, and continue the motion to attack the guy to the side of him. I get the modifiers, this time I do have the skill so I make my two rolls. A success on the first one with some open-ended rolling gave me a great damage roll, enough to permanently cripple his right hand (also known as his gun hand). The other guy...at least I didn't crit fail the attack roll. His response was three quick pulls of the trigger, close enough that he would have to be Helbie to miss.
Herb is not Helbie.
I took a bullet to my sword arm, another one to the opposite leg, and one to the belly. The limb hits were penetrating hits, each of which fractured a bone in the limbs struck. My armor stopped the third shot, but it still hurt like a bitch. My partner came around and using the hand cannon they favored (a Sternshot pistol for those of you playing from home) she proceeded to have her character inspect each of the brain pans with a lead probe. She then grabbed a people mover cart, threw my gear on the seat next to her, threw my broken body on the rear bench, and drove *through* the gate in the diplomatic section and up to the Capellan mission. She picked up my gear bag with one hand, threw me over her opposite shoulder, and walked to the front of the line at the desk. I was rather unceremonously flopped onto the top of the counter so I could look the now shocked woman manning that desk in the eyes. I locked eyes with her and said: "You need to get the senior diplomat out of whatever meeting he's in and into his office, where he will meet with my partner and me. You will then call whatever passes as a medic in this facilty to that same office so he can plug up the holes in me." When the first thing to come out of her mouth was shocked blubbering I asked to have my bag put on her desk, then with my good arm opened it to show the rather impressive sniper rifle I had with me. The model is a Minolta 9000, the signature weapon of the Death Commandos. That shocked her out of her stupor and got me what I wanted.
Still one of my favorite gaming cock-ups, and always a great story to tell. Too bad I can't show you how I tell the story in person, it's always fun to replay the movements to a small audience.
