Tales from the Gazebo – WTF

WTF
By Cape Rust

I hope you have spent the last week wondering, “WTF? Why would Cape name his weekly article Tales from the Gazebo?” There is a small number who might have gotten this semi-obscure reference but for the vast majority, I will explain. I must warn you, there is a gaming story or two involved so if you hate gaming stories, humor me. The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo is the tabletop equivalent of World of Warcraft’s “Leroy Jenkins.” While not as popular, it serves as a great example of some of the “traps” role-players can fall into and why a weekly article should be named in honor of it.

This “Gazebo” madness actually started in the early seventies and was shared with the world by Richard Aronson. This game involved a rather methodical player who happened upon a gazebo. Yes, the kind of gazebo you would find in most people’s backyards. The Dungeon Master clearly meant for it to be a set piece and nothing more. Enter Eric, who was playing a Neutral Paladin. Eric had no idea what a gazebo was and assumed it was a creature. Eric proceeded to call out to the gazebo, which didn’t answer. Eric then asked The DM a series of questions about the gazebo and decided that his best course of action would be to attack the Gazebo with a +3 arrow. As you can guess, the +3 arrow had no effect on this “dangerous” gazebo. The DM then let Eric know that if he really wanted to, he could chop up the Gazebo with an axe or burn it down. Eric had neither capability so he did that rare thing that players often forget to do. He ran. The completely frustrated DM had only one option left. He let poor Eric know that it was too late, he had awakened the Gazebo and it had caught and eaten his character. Eric’s classic response was this: “Maybe I’ll  roll up a fire mage to avenge my Paladin.”

You can’t make stuff like that up. I first encountered a version of this story published in a Knights of the Dinner Table collection and it resonated with me. After I stopped laughing, I shared the story with my current gaming group. As I retold the story, it made me think about the different types of players I had gamed with and how I must appear to them. Had I turned into “that” guy and if I had, what could I do to change it? There comes that point where every gamer has to look at themselves and figure out if they should play their ninth rogue in a row named Rook or if there might be something different out there. Why stop there? What about other systems, other worlds? Is there life beyond the dungeon crawl? Yes, all of those questions from a comic based on an early 70’s gaming story.

This was a big turning point for me. I started buying battered copies of different systems or systems I hadn’t played in years at the local used book store. I started to take that trip down memory lane that all “old fart” gamers take. Sadly, some fogies never seem to get off of that lane and spend half of their current game sessions talking about the good ol’ days. Screw that! What I learned on this voyage of self discovery was that the good ol’ days were not as good as I thought and I missed out on some good systems because I let myself fall into a rut. I played games because that was what my group played. We didn’t deviate because we got comfortable. I’ve learned that high levels of comfort are not what games are about. We play RPGs to escape, to be something we are not. When we start playing the same thing the same way every single time, what we were not becomes what we are and that’s not the point.

Part of our personalities will bleed into our characters. There is no way to stop that, thus me playing lots of Bards (For the record, I am a really bad singer). But when we play other classes or archetypes, we can break the pattern and rekindle our love of the game.  Oh wait, we were talking about Gazebos and I did threaten, I mean promise, a gaming story, so here it goes.

In the current D&D 3.5 game I’m involved in, our characters were involved in a dungeon crawl. Josh, our DM, decided to have us jump into a crawl almost right off to get a feel for our characters’ abilities. Even though I like to have the long drawn out character creation sessions, I was kind of excited. As we entered this dungeon, which was actually a contest called the Cube (think running man in an extra dimensional space), Josh told me he had a trap I was going to love, if we made it that far. Well, that was enough. I was determined to experience this trap instead of having him tell me about it later! Our party made good choices, got lucky a few times, and Josh was rolling badly so much, we made it to the trap room Josh had teased me with.

We stepped through the door of a safe room we were in to find ourselves on a gazebo. Yes, a gazebo! There was a lightly forested area with a gravel path leading away from the gazebo to a wide stream, followed by an identical forested area with another gravel path leading to another gazebo.  Our rogue, Arline, checked for traps. She rolled high and could tell something was not right. We then spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes trying to guess what kind of trap this was and formulated at least five different courses of action we should take (sounds like Eric’s Paladin!) The only thing we could agree on was not to take the path. Matt, or Battle Sorcerer, decided to take action. He jumped as far as he could into the woods and was told to make a fortitude check. He failed and passed out. We figured out that the trees let off a toxic gas that made us go nighty nights.  After daring rescues, shocking streams, and no one stepping on the path, Matt and our Fighter/Knight Brad made it to the Gazebo on the other side of the trapped area.

I was nervous. I knew about gazebos and even if the one we were standing on wasn’t the dread gazebo that Eric ran into those many years ago, it was still a gazebo. The worst part was that there wasn’t just one gazebo, but two! When Matt and Brad finally made their way to the second gazebo, they reported that there was a chest with 6 locks. We had collected 6 keys during the course of the Cube, so we were sure this was the place to use them. We managed to get Arline the rogue over to the second Gazebo to check for traps. She rolled well and Josh let us know that she didn’t find any visible traps. The chest wouldn’t move so our only course of action was to unlock the chest using all of the keys. I was still suffering from gazebo anxiety and was on the first gazebo with Jason, our Healer. Arline, Brad, and Matt decided to insert all of the keys and turn them at the same time.

They turned the keys and the Gazebo imploded! Jason and I managed to rapidly make our way over to the rest of the group to stabilize them and we went on to complete the Cube. I knew it! Never trust a Gazebo. Josh had lived up to his promise in spades and completely convinced me that gazebos were, in fact, evil aligned. Even as evil as those gazebos are, they have had an impact on my gaming career and so as I ventured into this article, there was no way I could not call it “Tales from the Gazebo”.