[Cerek the Barbaric]

One of my favorite PnP moments came in the first campaign I ever played in. Our DM was a good friend of mine and had taught my college roommate, me, and a couple of others how to play AD&D. He ran a "closed campaign" set in Hyborea (Conan the Barbarian's homeworld). The "closed campaign" part meant that he could pick and choose which rules applied in his world (for instance, there was NO weapon specialization allowed [img]graemlins/verysad.gif[/img] ).

Anyway, our characters were around level 9-10. I played a ranger who was the party leader. We had gone to investigate "strange happenings" around an ancient tomb. This meant we were dealing with a LOT of undead beasties. We entered the tomb by going down a long staircase (it was a biiiiig tomb). As soon as we got to the bottom, the staircase collapsed behind us and we were swarmed by various undead (wights, wraiths, and one ghost). For some reason, our clerics entered combat mode and started attacking the undead rather than trying to turn them.....then the ghost showed up. My character and the mage both blew our roles big time and were scared out of our wits. The mage turned and tried to climb the rubble of the staircase. My ranger decided that was stupid because there was no way to get out doing that....but there was a hallway leading AWAY from this room - so he took off at max speed down the hallway.

He ran around a corner, only to come face-to-face with a vampire. He was almost as surprised as I was, because - even though he could hear the sounds of battle - he wasn't expecting anybody to come his way this quickly. So here is my ranger who is now literally frozen stiff with fear and the vampire gets a "free shot" at me. Of all the incredible luck, the DM rolls a ONE! and the vampire misses me completely.

The DM looked at me and said "OK, it's your initiative. What do you do?"

I thought about it for a moment, then my character grabbed the vampire by the lapel of his coat, jerked him forward until they were nose to nose and screamed...

"RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! IT'S RIGHT BEHIND ME!"

It took the whole group several minutes before they could quit laughing long enough to continue the game. And yes, I DID get away from the vampire, because I took off running again and left him behind.