Tuesday 2 October 2012

You Know Your DM is Ex-Military When.....


  1. The orc hordes you encounter have sergeants and medics.
  2. Healing potions also restore tattoos.
  3. Your Horse won't run until you do a full safety inspection.
  4. The dungeons are patrolled by MP's that keep asking 'Who started this fight?'
  5. If you don't state that your character is performing scheduled weapons and armor maintenance after each combat, they rust to powder in about a day.
  6. Elves give directions with using mils rather than degrees or directions.'
  7. You learn to retreat from any monster with a "Who Dares Win" tattoo.
  8. The curses attached to some treasures include KP Duty and Full Kit Inspection.
  9. You can't stop for a night without submitting a complete "stag-list" for the characters in camp.
  10. New players joining after the adventure starts show up with Transfer Orders.
  11. The kingdom has a number of trolls, minotaurs and giants caged in silos on the border. The thread of MAD (Monster Assured Destruction) seems to keep the peace.
  12. No matter what sort of area you adventure in, or what background culture dwells there, or what the dominant race of the surroundings is, every town, keep, village, city or fish camp you enter has at least one bar, two brothels, three pawn shops, a tattoo parlor and a barber shop.
  13. The Healing Cleric always makes you wait for two hours before trying to send you away with a pair of toadstools and forced fluids.
  14. After the goblins pass by, all the dungeons have a fresh coat of paint
  15. A mysterious figure, the Arseesem, appears every time you make a mistake. Don't make mistakes. Just don't.
  16. Saying 'we tie him up' always starts a 20 minute discussion of knots, with 4 skill rolls.
  17. Guard Dogs are not just hit points that bark...they're chain saws with fur.
  18. If captured by the monsters, your character always gets put to work digging latrines. Even if held by ethereal beings that don't use them.
  19. Magic Users have to account for every ounce of equipment or supplies they carry, in careful attention to the rules for burdens. Blooded warriors can put 'One Piano' on their character sheet and it's just assumed they can 'handle the load.'
  20. Every advancement to a new class level involves a trip to a tattoo parlor. 
If anyone knows who originally came up with this, please drop me a line so that I can properly attribute it. I found it on my PC and have no idea who wrote it. It certainly wasn't me. I do remember modifying some of the entries so that they related more to the British military experience though.