I started playing RPGs in the early 1990s, so I have many stories from the tabletop under my belt. Here’s some of my most oft-repeated tales which have become part of gaming lore among myself and my circle of friends.

• A Contract with Mind Flayers: Can illithids be trusted with legalese?
• Curse Your Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal!: No, it turns out illithids cannot be trusted with legalese.
• Dancing Half-Fiends and the Glory of Infinite Choices: Silliness abounds in RPGs, and that makes them spectacular.
• Escape from Zanzer’s Dungeon: The starter set that made me a role-playing fanatic.
• The Evil Tree Spirit: Tragedy happened when a dryad turned her back on the party.
• The Evolution of Claude the Clydesdale: From mount to epic hero in one campaign.
• Hubris and the Deck of Many Things: Want to challenge high-level characters? Offer them an opportunity to get everything they want.
• The Ignominious Death of Machiavelli: One of my friends was introduced to D&D via a brutal death for his first character.
• I Put the Dragon in a Sack: A recollection of my first-ever dragon encounter in D&D.
• Pick a Card: Could you trick a beholder into drawing from a deck of many things?
• Pirates of the Astral Sea: Put the wrong thing into a bag of holding, and suddenly the campaign winds up in another plane.
• Plastic Explosives in the Mattress: That time I had a very wrong interpretation of some refereeing advice in Cyberpunk 2020.
• Ride of the SS Stupid: When my group decided to ditch the campaign and take a suicide trip to another dimension.
• Rise and Fall of the Red Mage: The story of the best villain I’ve ever created for an RPG.

_{Featured Image: Leslie Atcheson, CC BY-NC 2.0, cropped and resized}