Tales From the Dicebag-The Larry Principle

NOTE: CHANGED FROM THE GARY PRINCIPLE TO AVOID BELIEF THAT I WOULD INSULT GARY GYGAX-I WOULD NOT.

Tight shot of The Dicekeeper's hand holding two D10s, percentile. Dicekeeper's hand shakes and then rolls the dice into his dice boot. Off-camera still, we here him say "AHHH"

Medium shot of Dicekeeper.

"Hello there, kiddies. Welcome to Tales from the Dicebag. I'm your ol' pal, the Dicekeeper. I've seen every game at your table. I've seen every game really. I've seen it ALL. I was there back in the 70s when geeks were wondering why they had to reference the rulebook from Chainmail to get rules for horse barding in D&D. Just a pointer- barding isn't what your character does with his lute while everyone else is busy actually fighting."

"I was there when people asked why the Buck Rogers RPG was a thing. I was there when the first jerk thought it would rule to be a sexy elf babe rogue/magic user/ cleric and just sexy there way through the whole game trying to make everyone do everything for them because they were so sexy. I was there when your 9th generation Tremere who had, like maxed celerity and thaumaturgy achieved Golconda and became the prince of Staines."

"I figured the time had come to stop watching all the dice roll and start sharing the stories that went with 'wm. Tonight I want to tell you about Larry. Larry's a bloke that every gamer who has earned their stripes has had to deal with. If you haven't, you're either fibbing about your experience points of you rolled a crit on your luck check."

"Now, Larry ain't always a bloke; sometimes Larry is really Sally the Liberal Arts Major who has Musicology with Ted the DM and wanted to check out this role-playing stuff. The point is, we've played with Larry. Larry always wanders off from the group, does stupid things, refuses to listen to advice and generally creates The Larry Principle: which is thus: any group playing with Larry is considered to be at a negative modifier to their overall effectiveness, to be precise, it's as if Larry were working directly against the group, or not even calculated in the group's strength due to his not being with them so much of the time."

I remember a time when a group had a Larry, and he'd been with 'em foreva. He was other player's ride, and he'd been friends with founding members of the group for years. This Larry wasn't ever going to leave. He'd argue pointless BS. He'd refuse to think about areas-of-effect and marching order and well, generally didn't think of the welfare of his mates.
He killed more characters, including his own, than any NPC villain ever."

"So, what's a DM to do? You can either have a character be designated Larry's character's keeper, or you can just flat out not allow him to do the stupid crap he's going to do. Or you can get creative. I'll leave that to you, though kiddies."

The Dicekeeper pushes his dice boot to the side and leans forward.

"Remember kiddies, Fireball is a privilege, not a right."

Well, I think that's enough for this time. Tune in again, and I'll tell you about Bossco and the Skunk of Atonement.

Dicekeeper opens a book, then looks up.

"Tale's done. Get outta here."