The God of Flaming Haycarts

The Power!

A friend of mine drew this for me in high school:

The Power!
The Power!

 

The other two are pretty self-explanatory, but the “flaming haycarts”?

In high school, I ran an AD&D game for three lovely ladies interested in RPGs that was an absolute ton of fun. I was still high on the enthusiasm of my first year of GMing, and they found AD&D totally different than anything else they’d ever done. We had a blast for a few months, but after incessant cajoling another (male) friend of mine wore me down and I let him join the group.

At the very first session, I was worried I had made a mistake. We were an established group, with our own dynamic and way of doing things, and my friend as the new player just trampled everyone else. He was pushy, talked over ideas he didn’t like, and even more annoyingly seemed to think that since the other players were “just girls” it was his job to teach them how AD&D was played.

I eventually took him aside and tried to subtly suggest he tone things down a little bit, give the other players some room at the table, remember that the group is a group and not a one-man show.

Didn’t work.

After a few more minutes I repeated the conversation, a little more sternly, and told him he was wrecking the fun for everyone else. “Oh, sorry, sorry,” he said. “I got it. No problem.”

By this time the party in-game was well into the dungeon they were exploring, far beneath the earth and many hours from civilization. The new guy still, still, just wasn’t getting it, and continuing his macho struggle for control of the group.

“You hear a deep rumbling sound from the corridor before you,” I said. “Roll a saving throw.”

He failed.

“A flaming haycart rolls down the corridor and slams into you,” I continued as I rolled some dice and handed him a butt-load of damage.

He looked at me wide-eyed, mouth agape, but this was the ’80s — GM’s word was law. We shared a silent look about the ludicrousness of my impromptu “punishment” as the girls giggled to themselves. He marked the damage on his sheet, we continued on with the game — and never had a problem again.

That’s how I became the Keeper of the Flaming Haycarts.

 

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