The time D&D almost got me arrested

[Ruslan]

Please share stories of how D&D got you in trouble, or almost got you in trouble. Here's mine:

I was in a D&D group with a DM who liked messing with the PCs. At some point, my PC picked up a cursed axe and got, well, cursed. The DM passed me a note to that effect, which I read, grumbled over slightly, folded and put in my pocket. The session ended shortly after, and the next day I had to fly to Vancouver for work.

So I'm in the airport, standing in the TSA line. I remove my shoes and belt, put my wallet and cellphone in the little bin, I get in front of the agent, he asks "anything in your pockets?". Mechanically, I thrust my hand in my pocket, and it comes out clutching a small piece of paper. At that point, I realize I'm standing in front of a TSA agent holding a note which says:

You think it's really cool to kill people. You want to kill as many people as you can.

Cliche as it may be, my entire life flashed in front of my eyes, from birth to the inevitable suicide in prison. Somehow, I found the presence of mind to recall there was a trashcan behind me. Without breaking eye contact with the agent, I took two steps backwards, reached out, dropped the paper in the trashcan and stepped back to the agent. How was I able to keep a neutral facial expression all that time, I don't know, but I did. I was allowed on the flight with no further misadventures.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Obligatory link to That Lanky Bugger (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?23784-I-think-I-just-dealt-with-the-worst-gaming-session).

[Altair_the_Vexed]

We used to regularly play on late into the night, even on week days - being a bunch of unemployed, and students, and shiftworkers - so it became an also regular event to be stopped by the police while walking home.

You can't blame them really - a solitary bloke in combats and biker jacket with a hold-all walking along at 3am.

"Do you mind answering a few questions, son?"

"Not at all mate - my name's Altair, and I've been playing D&D over at {address} and I'm heading home now. Here are my books and dice in the bag."

"Oh, right. Fair enough... Do you get stopped a lot, then?"

[Slipperychicken]

Thanks Ruslan, I needed a good solid laugh this week. Your story came through for me.


Can I include shadowrun in this? Great, because my story involves shadowrun.

My group was in college playing probably our second or third session with the system. Our characters were instructed to abduct a woman from a party, so we got really into it, planning things out, putting big maps everywhere, and so on. Of course, we were in a classroom late at night, where we technically weren't supposed to be allowed in the building, in a room whose windows we couldn't easily shut. So anyone walking home from class saw and heard us laughing our asses off about how we were going to forcibly abduct a young woman from a party next Friday, next to a whiteboard with a map and words like "drug?" and "sniper" written on it. Eventually a pair of police officers came in asking what we were doing, and I had to hold up a d20 (not sure why I had my d20 out in SR) and say "we're playing a game" before they left us alone. Nevertheless I was scared senseless, and vowed to never play shadowrun (or any TRPG set in anything resembling the real world) in public, ever ever ever again.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Not mine. Blatantly stealing this example from RPGnet:


This is a bit long but...

I guess I will just have to mention my brief GMing to the brazilian police death squad.

Everything begun at my local gameclub (by local I mean the only one in a 4,000,000 people city) some five years ago. This club was run by a fellow hobbyist on weekends, was located at a big avenue and had a large 'Camelot' plaque hanging over the door with the picture of a knight. Needlessly to say it attracted a lot of curious people. Well, at the end of a saturday afternoon of particularly intense WEG Star Wars playing I was approached by this timid skinny guy in his late twenties. He had been watching the entire session and was almost apologetic about coming forward to talk to me. Anyway he lived just 3 blocks away and he loved "games", so he wanted someone to GM a game for him and his "work colleagues". They had never roleplayed before. He seemed a nice, clean, eager-to-play guy, so I invited him and his buddies for a AD&D game in the club, the following night.

Nothing would have prepared me and the other player (the club owner) for the cast of foul characters arriving at the club the next night. Just to contextualize the many non-brazilian readers in this thread, there are two kinds of police in Brazil: the semi-illiterate oppressive superviolent military police, and the corrupt immoral wiseguy detective/mobster types from the civilian police. These guys were the second type.

These four men (the skinny guy only showed up later) were villain prototypes and had intimidation skill points worth entire 20th level characters. Even when they nicely said hello they had menace written all over their foreheads. It was night, but they were dressed like beach tourists, wearing soccer team t-shirts and sandals. There were so much male jewelry as to make Mr. T look like a girl playing child´s bijouterie. All of them had pistols attached at strategic holsters in their bodies, at least one of them had knives, and all of them were anxious to play the nice "game of dice".

I should see the size of the problem when a huge black man put two bottles of smuggled whisky on top of the table we would play. He seriously asked me if that was booze enough for all of us (two bottles for 7 people). I replied I didn´t drink. He said he would freeze the liquid for me to eat it and his mouth opened in a big smile filled with golden teeth.

Anyway the quarreling began when I showed them the pre-gen characters. All of them "wanted to be the master". There were also quarreling about who would get which character (they were choosing by the pictures). But that was mild quarreling and they calmed down as their heavy drinking and joint smoking ensued. Oh, and they also loved the dice.

The game finally began at the tavern where I had planned the characters to meet and the players to familiarize themselves with the blessed and (to them) newly-perceived freedom a player has in a RPG. They caught on fast enough with IC dialogue, and besides the incessant joint passing and abusive drinking the players were concentrated, with cellphones turned off and all.

That´s when the prostitutes arrived.

Unknowingly to me and the club owner, skinny guy had arranged for two prostitutes, old acquaintances of these guys, to meet at my friend´s gaming club. Things went downhill from there, with the women disrupting the game and the telling of IC mixed with OOC murder stories. By this point my friend made the second mistake of the evening, trying to stop the game by telling me he was late and had to close the club and stuff. The murderous cops didn´t take his intentions well, and started to get all serious and quiet, trying to intimidate my friend. After all, he wasn´t being a nice host, since they had brought the booze, the girls, the drugs and the guns, and they were not going to leave before knowing "who won" anyway, since everyone of them had (of course) bet 50 bucks his character would "win".

So I wrapped things up by having an all-out combat between the characters, while a detective banged one of the girls against a wall 4 feet away. The winner got 200 bucks and a knuckle-duster, they all had a blast and left me and my shaking buddy glad we were left alive . We never saw any of them again, not even skinny guy.

Maybe not too creepy, but then again my experience is limited.

[hymer]

Playing d20 modern, one of my friends got a rather worried reaction from a colleague to him photocopying pages with weapon specs with pictures of the guns. We're from Denmark where guns imply crime, and these days terrorism.
One guy I used to play with was a priest in the state church, and he'd get stopped enough by the police to be angry about it. The wise-man beard does get a different connotation when wearing a leather jacket, though that wouldn't be for D&D reasons. More Cyberpunk 2020.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Not mine. Blatantly stealing this example from RPGnet:
I think this wins the scary cop DnD prize. :0

[Socratov]

I think this wins the scary cop DnD prize. :0

Well, I don't know, the stories of that lanky bugger are a real contender as well...

[hymer]

Well, I don't know, the stories of that lanky bugger are a real contender as well...

The offending character wasn't a cop in that one, though. As I recall, the police were actually quite helpful.

[Alent]

My own tale seems pretty boring in comparison to everyone else's.

Some friends invited me to play D&D with them, at the time I'd never played. I'd played in multiple play by post freeform RPs over the years, and sat in on someone else's 2nd edition campaign, so I thought it'd be fun. Of course, I would end up working late that day, and warned everyone, they said come on over anyway.

When I finished up work for the day, I called 'em to get directions, they guided me to the apartment complex parking lot and said to come on back. It's one of those big apartment complexes with multiple parking lots and multiple buildings, they try to guide me to the back most one... at which point I ask them if there's another way around.

The exchange went something like this:

Friend: "What? No, there's only one way in, just come on back."
Me: "When was the last time you looked out a window?"
Friend: "What do you mean?"
Me: "Look out your window."
Friend: "I don't... Woah, what are all the police doing here?"
Me: "I don't know, but they've blocked off the entire back quarter of the complex."
Friend: "Oh... just park in the trailer park behind us and jump the fence."
Me: "... Uh... No."

Around this time, the police got uncomfortable with my presence and waved at me to turn around, I rolled the window down to ask them what was going on and they wouldn't say, but since I didn't live there I needed to get OUT, immediately, because they were still trying to find their suspect. The guys were all forced to stay overnight, afterwards they learned what happened. It turned out that someone upstairs from them was shot. My friends were so engrossed in their play session they didn't hear someone empty an entire clip less than 60 feet away.

[Cealocanth]

So I'm on a college campus where they monitor internet activity. This is how I found out that was the case.

So I'm building a character for a modern Savage Worlds game with my brother, and the group has decided that we're going to be doing a secret agent/spy sort of game. Knowing my brother, this means layer upon layer of intricate plot upon plot, with no piece of information given out without effort on the part of the players, and no place for a pacifist character. Cue my attempting to build a combination hacker/assassin. It's in a modern game, set in the current year (2015 at the time), and so I start to do some research into the specifics and operations of the modern assassins. I'm often commended on the amount of research I put into characters, and I wasn't about to make this one any different. I looked up information on how to access the Deep Web and how to make efficient use of it. Took a 2 week course on programming and researched how to hack past major databases. Compiled a list of major poisons, how they act, how they're administered, and where to access them. Took down information on weapons and drug dealers in our area and how to find more. I even did some in-depth research on modern interrogation techniques, how to properly perform them, and what to expect as a result. I was going to make the most realistic modern assassin/hacker character I could.

I now know there is such a thing as too much research. I sit down at my computer on a Tuesday evening with my headphones on and start to play the game. 20 minutes in, all our characters have met up and we have started to be shown our main organization and our base of operations when I get up to grab some water. Then I notice, when I take off my headphones, that the on-campus police were parked outside the building, talking to one of the RAs. It's an unusual thing, generally, but when the police show up at your building, best not to get in the way of the officers and let them do their job. I got my drink of water, went to the bathroom, sat back down to my game, when there's a knock on my dorm room door. Guess who.

So I explained to the police that I'm an RPGer and was researching information on how to build a character so I could play it realistically. The policeman who was at the door didn't understand what that meant exactly, giving me a look like one would give a cultist. As this man was armed, and thought me dangerous, I figured it was better to give him a bit of a white lie than try to explain D&D to him. It would probably work out better, especially if he turns out to be one of those "D&D is Devil worship" types. I told him that I'm a mystery writer and that I'm doing research for one of my characters. He asked to see the book, and so I showed him my notes.

"You're not a verg good writer." he says.

"It's just a draft." I respond.

"Mhmm. You do know your internet activity is monitored on campus, right? Maybe next time you decide to research a character, do it at Starbucks or something."

"Okay." I say.

He leaves. This was probably a breach of his protocol or something for him to do this, or maybe it was just a slow night. It makes me wonder, though, how many writers and gamers get policemen talking to them because of character research they're doing on monitored internet connections.

[The Glyphstone]

He leaves. This was probably a breach of his protocol or something for him to do this, or maybe it was just a slow night. It makes me wonder, though, how many writers and gamers get policemen talking to them because of character research they're doing on monitored internet connections.

I remember reading somewhere that the Navy had some pointed questions to ask Tom Clancy after he wrote Hunt For Red October, because he was so technically accurate that they were convinced someone had passed him classified materials.

Steve Jackson Games also got infamously raided by the CIA during the writing of GURPS Cyberpunk because it was deemed a 'manual for hackers'.

[holywhippet]

Not D&D related, but I had a kind of similar near miss a few years back. I was taking an overseas vacation and had already traveled on one plane to get to the international airport. As I was lining up to get my boarding pass for my next flight I noticed people filling out the form you have over to emigration before getting on your flight. So I thought to myself "I really should have brought a pen". Then I thought "It's a pity my Swiss army knife doesn't have a pen". Then a few seconds later I thought "Holy crap, I still have my Swiss army knife." I had it in my bumbag (fannypack in some countries) as usual and had completely forgotten about it. I'd even gone through security to get on the first flight and they hadn't noticed it. I really didn't want to take the risk of trying to get through security with it again but my main luggage had been checked in for the entire trip so I had no where to stow it. I considered just tossing it in a bin, but then I recalled passing a post office a short while back in the airport. So I left the line, mailed the knife to my home address and bought a pen while I was at it.

[DrewID]

Steve Jackson Games also got infamously raided by the CIA during the writing of GURPS Cyberpunk because it was deemed a 'manual for hackers'.

It was the Secret Service (http://www.sjgames.com/SS/) (at that point, still an arm of the U.S. Treasury), not the CIA. It was one of the earliest cases for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation#Early_cases).

Closest we ever got to trouble was an extensive discussion in a Denny's about how many cases of grenades we had brought with us. When we started getting odd looks, we paid our bill and adjourned to somebody's place.

DrewID

[Lorsa]

So I'm on a college campus where they monitor internet activity. This is how I found out that was the case.

Uh. That is kind of scary. What sort of 1984-inspired campus do you live in? Shouldn't you be free to look at whatever you want?

[hymer]

Uh. That is kind of scary. What sort of 1984-inspired campus do you live in? Shouldn't you be free to look at whatever you want?

Pretty much all internet access is logged these days. I assume the campus computers are part of the college system, and the college would log who did what with their computers. Looking things up that seem terror related is going to get your activity flagged, and someone will take a look at that log. That someone will then (I assume) look at your profile and what you're supposed to be studying, and if it makes sense you were looking at what you did, maybe nothing more will happen.
Isn't this how they do it in Sweden? I don't think the methods differ considerably, except in Scandinavia they might be more hesistant to call the cops, and maybe have more conversations themselves. Though that cop didn't exactly do a thorough job of it, though maybe the idea was mostly to scare Cealocanth.

[hifidelity2]

I can think of 2 - although neither was to me it was to close friends

I have a friend to pays LARP / re-enactment and makes his own chain mail. Normally in early spring he start to wear it a bit (under his coat) to get used to the weight again. He also being a student lived in a rough area. One evening (late) when going home he was stopped by the police and then had to explain why we was walking around in chain


Another mate used to live at the edge of the drugs / red light area of town. We used to play on a Thursday and he would then drive home around midnight. His car was old and in a poorish state of repair. He used to get stopped by the police quite regularly to see if he was curb crawling of carrying drugs and then would have to explain why he had loads of books on “devil worship” etc)

[darkrose50]

I have been playing D&D and RPGs since I was 10 (for 33-years). Often people just figured I was studying something complicated due to the number and size of the books.

Sometimes when playing a LARP at a local community center we rented out some folks would ask questions.

[Cealocanth]

Uh. That is kind of scary. What sort of 1984-inspired campus do you live in? Shouldn't you be free to look at whatever you want?

There's a big difference between what should be and what is. That said, on American college campuses there are school shootings often enough that if the school can do anything to prevent potential terror attacks, then the school will see the loss of privacy as worth the potential saved lives. I called a lot of attention to myself. This is dangerously close to real world politics, though, so I'm going to stop there.

[Slipperychicken]

Pretty much all internet access is logged these days. I assume the campus computers are part of the college system, and the college would log who did what with their computers. Looking things up that seem terror related is going to get your activity flagged, and someone will take a look at that log. That someone will then (I assume) look at your profile and what you're supposed to be studying, and if it makes sense you were looking at what you did, maybe nothing more will happen.
Isn't this how they do it in Sweden? I don't think the methods differ considerably, except in Scandinavia they might be more hesistant to call the cops, and maybe have more conversations themselves. Though that cop didn't exactly do a thorough job of it, though maybe the idea was mostly to scare Cealocanth.

I attended a rather large US college that made a policy of not tracking students' internet usage. It depends a lot on who's in charge and what their priorities are.

They probably figure that, even if someone's researching weapons and making worrisome social media posts, it's not like they're going to do anything about it. Their systems and budgets are already strained just providing internet for the tens of thousands of devices on campus, so it's doubtful they could afford to monitor all of them if they even wanted to.

[golentan]

Thanks Ruslan, I needed a good solid laugh this week. Your story came through for me.


Can I include shadowrun in this? Great, because my story involves shadowrun.

My group was in college playing probably our second or third session with the system. Our characters were instructed to abduct a woman from a party, so we got really into it, planning things out, putting big maps everywhere, and so on. Of course, we were in a classroom late at night, where we technically weren't supposed to be allowed in the building, in a room whose windows we couldn't easily shut. So anyone walking home from class saw and heard us laughing our asses off about how we were going to forcibly abduct a young woman from a party next Friday, next to a whiteboard with a map and words like "drug?" and "sniper" written on it. Eventually a pair of police officers came in asking what we were doing, and I had to hold up a d20 (not sure why I had my d20 out in SR) and say "we're playing a game" before they left us alone. Nevertheless I was scared senseless, and vowed to never play shadowrun (or any TRPG set in anything resembling the real world) in public, ever ever ever again.

Obligatory self plug:
http://orig00.deviantart.net/0bc5/f/2015/106/a/1/shadowrun_by_golentan-d8pwrim.jpg

(of course, the real judgment error in my demotivator is that BMW is owned by Saeder Krupp)

[Khedrac]

Then there was the time at Uni that a Larp-er wore his mailshirt on the way home from a session (easiest way to carry it). A junior police officer did detain him for carrying an "offensive weapon". When they got to the police station the desk sergeant told him to take it off - so he did (unassisted) while the officers watched. Five or more minutes later once he finally got the mailshirt off the sergeant hefted it and then turned to the junior officer and said "now it's an offensive weapon" - and they let the Larper go un-charged.
I think it was the same guy that someone tried threatening with a stanley knife (this being a chap who used to play American Football before his knees packed up). When the idiot tried to stab him the knife snapped on the mail he had under his jacket...

[Bohandas]

Uh. That is kind of scary. What sort of 1984-inspired campus do you live in? Shouldn't you be free to look at whatever you want?

In post 9/11 America, computer keeps files on you