The Bonsai of Death - RPG War Stories 

Players screwing around is often more deadly than anything the villain could plot

"dude you popped your murder cherry with a bonsai tree!" that really is such a player thing to happen and say.

In fairness to Seth, shouldn't the gifted Bonzai tree be sourced only from a mall kiosk?

If you ever want to do a deep dive, retrospective on this campaign I'd be here to watch it. It sounds very interesting and I'd like to know how it progressed and finally ended.

That story is actually relatable, cos as a kid I threw a potato, over my shoulder, from the 4th story balcony, and hit a person right in a head, thank god everything went fine, no crit damage

Ah, Todd, always pushing the edges of the universe to be bigger.

Now we know why Mr. Miyagi liked Bonsai trees so much. It wasn't a peaceful hobby; he was manufacturing weapons of war. 😅

You’ve talked about your gutter punk game before but any chance you could do a write up about it like a module? I know a lot of it would be based on the actions of the characters and grows from there but I’m thinking more how you deal with chargen, how often their stats get raised and by how much. Some advice on how to get the most out of using a small section of the city, etc. If that makes any sense 😂

I usually don't take time to comment, but I love your channel and have followed it about three years now. I've read (listened to) several of your books as well You are among my favourite youtube creators. Thanks for all your content!

My own version of this story is the CRITICAL MOOSE (caps required). I was running one of my earliest Pathfinder campaigns, back when virtual tabletops were only just becoming a thing and I had no idea how to make digital maps, so I used a map I found online. That map had a dead, half-eaten moose on the ground around a camp, so I included it in the description of the goblin camp the PCs were attacking. A couple of rounds into a fight with a particularly annoying goblin shaman, one of the players decided they'd had enough, picked up the moose corpse (I figured that since most of the meat had been cut out it'd be at least movable), and pile-drove the whole thing horns-first into the goblin shaman. I asked for an attack roll, they rolled a crit, so I decided I'd let them use the moose's gore attack instead of an improvised weapon, in addition to the crit damage. I don't remember the exact damage they dealt, but I do remember that it was enough to kill the goblin from full twice over. To this day, the CRITICAL MOOSE is remembered and venerated in my discord server.

I love how the hook horror is deep Seth lore.

Love it. The War Stories are always great. Hell, all of Seth's videos are great

The Bonsai of Death? I hear that this tale used to be bigger; but Seth cut it short.

They're back, love it! Your war stories are the really gems of this channel, so much entertainment and inspiration! By the way, you got me at "this story had a moral to it" not being "don't kill kids" but rather "act intuitevly".

You should definetly do a series of videos about this campaign. Probably the coolest adventure idea I've ever heard of.

Hello Seth, Lime, and today I have A departure from my ongoing tale to give you a similar incident. The time my players started a Civil War with Garden Furniture, or "When There's Gnomore Room in hell." This was in my Cyber-Fantasy game in one of my houseruled to hell and back systems (think Shadowrun; but then immediately stop, and think of Cyberpunk if it took place in a typical fantasy world.) My players were essentially the state-approved Mafia, meant to corral the seedier parts of the city of Dragonhawk, because the Big Bosses in the Capital figured 'if we can't beat the gangs; we might as well join them' and started using certain gangs, including the players' gang (The Dragonhawk Eastside Spoon Bandits... long story. Yes there is a Westside Spoon Bandits; and an Eastside Spoon Bandits from a different city.) To make less-than-legal moves to support the common citizenry (and of course, in return gave them 'salvage rights' on the other Gangs.) So the Spoon Bandits are invited to a party at the Mayor's house, but Senator Pelpiper, their main benefactor, gives one of them a job to find a tiny hidden safe full of incriminating evidence on the Mayor. While everyone else is enjoying the party, Networking, Slandering old nemeses, running side hustles on the other partygoers and generally just having a good time, that player sneaks out the back door towards the Mayor's pool, where he's hidden the Safe in the Filter. Unfortunately, that player gets caught by prominent Gnome Businessman Tomathy Mayne. Tomathy Mayne is incorruptible to anything that she can offer; (in fairness her attempts to buy or bully Tomathy were... pathetic. Terrible pitch, Worse Rolls.) So, since they were disarmed at the door she reaches for the nearest thing that can be used as a weapon and tries to use it to knock Tomathy out. She grabs a Lawn chair and Unfortunately, because she was an 8ft tall Elf with tons of cybernetic muscle enhancements and rolled a crit to the head, she did so much damage that Tomathy was instantly killed, his skull splattered on this cheap folding lawn chair and his body launched into the pool. Out comes his wife, Marble Mayne, looking for him, She runs into the Player Character, Diplomacy fails and She once again tries to improvise a weapon. This time it was a little fountain water feature, and once again the Dice condemn the Mayne family. Crit number 2. Marble Mayne has a much lower HP pool than her husband, and it's similar damage, She's utterly obliterated like a Fly on a windshield. Rather than try to slip back into the party and back *to* the party, she hops his fence and splits with the damning evidence in hand. The rest of the party didn't want to get caught being anywhere near this issue when the mayor invited them, so they decide to split too when the Maynes are discovered. And since this was after the Mr Brightside Incident, (different story, maybe next time) we had the 'Sessions since we last started a War' counter, and I reset it to 0 as soon as they left that party. The Gnome population of Dragonhawk were so angry that a prominent pair of Gnomes were killed by *Lawn Furniture* ('An offensive allusion to Garden Gnomes') at a party with a *corrupt* mayor where they should have been safe. There are mass strikes and Riots from Gnomes, Halflings and Dwarves across the city, then the Goblins join in, and it becomes a Civil War on the streets, with the Gnomes and their other allies going into Open Rebellion against the City Government. In order to Scapegoat the Corrupt Mayor and protect themselves from suspicion in the Mayne's deaths, they join this revolution, and the Federal Government decides to cut Dragonhawk's losses and help the rebels oust the current City Government.

Nice work on those scream sheets, they look fantastic (Also, nice acting from Tod. The way his face did a 180 from glee to shock after the results were determined was spot on)

One must be careful in how they asked for delivery of a shrubbery. Ni!

Refereed my first Cyberpunk 2020 game 2 days ago and it was awesome. Everyone had a blast! Never would have gotten into it if it wasn't for your videos, like this one, providing inspiration. So thank you! Keep em coming

But did Hot Sauce get renamed to Bonsai?

Is the Cloverdale Mallplex ad in an official book or is that of your own creation? I'd love to get some of these maps and posters for my own upcoming Cyberpunk game with my players.

RIP bonzai plant, we little knew ye. Spent half a year going through the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e Starter Set, and every couple sessions I'd give the players time to go off and set up contacts and pursue their own goals, occasionally joining each other on little self-made adventures. Including: smuggling wine and fighting off the grape marshals, swindling a hammered noble at cards, recovering a wrecked ship from a troll cave, and eventually gping on a six month realtime trek to rescue a noble's missing syrup-trader son.

Seth I’d be happy to listen to you go on and in about this campaign for hours because it sounds awesome. I hope we hear more from this campaign.

I love your war stories. I love hearing people talk about their games, but you really enhance the experience with the dramatic recreations :-)

Yeah that’s a pretty believable consequence of throwing a potted plant off a 4th story balcony

This was absolutely awesome! Especially the scream sheets. Just amazing! You know, what is really interesting that this is very close to what the lead designer of the "Deus Ex" franchise said he wanted to do for years. Make an RPG within a neighborhood and just that neighborhood. I am pretty sure the Yakuza series has been doing for years now but it is awesome to see in a TTRPG

Man, not the hook horror 😭this guy's gonna die in a hospice before getting his tree.

Justin Bieber released from Sing Sing............LOL...Brilliant.

Found your channel the other day (picked up CoC as my first game to gm) and bienged all of your table top war stories yesterday, lamenting that A) there were so few and B) the last one was almost a year ago. I mustve succeeded my luck roll this morning lol

You're right about the screamsheets. I have written several newspaper / screamsheets for my shadowrun sessions from 2019 on. It was always a nice addition to tell the players the meta story for what happened, or how their behavior impacted the whole story. Also the reduction of the players 'freedom' to a few blocks or a neighbourhood gives them a lot of memorable moments. in one of my campaigns, they were asked to help a priest from a catholic church to protect some kids, that were threatened to drift down on the whole drug adict road. so i had them come up with some ideas, and one of the guys then had them run a youth basketball team in game. and so i had to give them the news on how those basketball kids fared between adventures/session and what other teams they've beaten and stuff. first they were bad... and then they went to train them... then the first victories... it kind of became a running gag to ask what the score was at the start of a session/new adventure, since now they were invested. the kids didn't make it to the top spot in the 'neiighbourhood league' by the end of the campaign but they were not last any more . a few years later in the next campaign (after playing some dnd and star wars) 2 players had become professionals on the cities team, just as memberberries - was a nice addition and a good remember that we played in a persistend universe where their actions had consequences, so i never had to deal with any murder hobos

"I could go on for hours and hours about this campaign" please do!

Few things add to a campaign like an in-game news report that players can read and possess tbh. It's an excellent way of giving life, plot hooks and so on to the game world, and makes your players' PCs feel part of it when their escapades are reported on.

I spy with my little eye a Blade Runner RPG starter Kit on the 'esteem' level shelf (you know, the one at the top on the left that started with only CoC books 6 years ago, but then got Cyberpunk Red and the Alien RPG starter sets added too...). @SSkorkowsky Will we be seeing a Blade Runner RPG review sometime soon? I hope it being given such a esteemed location makes that a likely outcome. My group and I had a lot of fun with it.

Your Cyberpunk 2020 stories are the BEST!

I love this kind of video. Makes me wanna play cyberpunk using a format like that. I'll pitch it to my gaming group. WIll use realtors and bonsai kiosks.

Reminds me of agroing every cop in prague by throwing a printer out of a window in Deus Ex

God I'd love to hear a recap of tbis entire campaing it sounds so cool

I am a simple man. I see a Skorkowsky Story, I rejoice

That moral ending reminded me of an 80s cartoon.

Lmao. Great story. Does this mean there's a new T-shirt in the making? Hahaha.

Anyone else pause and enlarge the video every time a scream sheet pops up so they can read it?

_Every_ time you do one of these, I forget that you're even playing the other three (hell, my brain doesn't even recognise GM Seth as a separate character too) Suffice to say, I bloody love this series

It had been long enough I had forgotten the “do not drink coffee while watching a War Story video” lesson… 😂 These remind me so much of the best times with my old gaming group from 20-30 years ago… amazing. 🎉

The very first mention of this setting lit a fire under me - I went out and got Cyberpunk 2012. I really would love the notes for this coampaign... I wanna run it too lol

Your Screamsheets are awesome! "Scott Brown Petitions For Stricter Squatting Laws" 🤣 I have "news crawls" along the bottom of a screen (as in, I have Tickr running on my machine and it will pull from a text file I created and display it where I want it) - but my PCs have yet to have their antics make the crawl...

Before watching this I just want to say: Bonsai of Death sounds like an 80s movie title or a cool band name.

Few things give me more joy than your Cyberpunk 2020/RED warstories, thanks to you I have the 2020 corebook and the Night City Sourcebook for my gaming group

I'm taking that screamsheet idea for my post session summaries. There are official resources for screamsheets available now too.

Lol. So, very first session we EVER played in Eberron, my wife was a changeling soulknife spec'd toward stealth. Essentially a psionic thief. So we get on an airship to go "do the thing" (i don't even remember what "the thing" was anymore, lol, this was 2006) and the GM asks the deadly question "so, everyone is settling in for the night, what are you doing" lol. Of course, she goes snooping around and found the captain's quarters. Well, turns out someone had killed the captain (this was supposed to be part of our hook) and she found his body. Instead of alerting the guards, she started poking around his room and found a chest. The GM was OBVIOUSLY not expecting this, but she was like "is it locked?" "Yes, the lock looks pretty sturdy (DC30 lock)" "ok. Does he have the key on him?" "No, it strikes you as odd, but you assume it might have been what the killer took, but you interupted" "ok. I want to try and pick it. I have a 5 in lockpicking (or whatever the 3.5 skill was)" "sure, make the roll" "i want to spend an action point, that gives me a d6 to add right?" "Yep" "20 and 6" "you got a 31? At level 1?" "Yep, did i open it?" "Lol, yeah, yeah you did" Turns out that the captain had been involved with the Emerald Claw but wanted out. We had his journal, plus his Wheel of Wind and Water (let us pilot the airship without the Mark of Storms). She took the captain's face, dumped his body overboard, and we had an airship at level 1, lol. She ended up keeping that persona for the whole game, visiting his wife and kids, fighting off assassins and debt collectors, omg. It was hilarious

I sometimes forget it is one man playing all these characters.

I am glad to know that I'm not the only one who does stuff for my TTRPG campaigns while at work

so much for the theory of guns being the most dangerous weapon in Night City, don't think even Smasher himself could take 24 damage to the dome and walk away from it. (would serve him right for what he did to the gun goblin). side note about hilarious head shots my brother ran a BGC campaign (still R Talsorian game) and there was this villain he made just for my melee focused character heck when he popped his wolvers I was all "alright lets do this" he won init, and hit himself.... in the head...with a blade that came out of his fore arm.... for freaking 4x damage....my girl actually felt bad for him,

I would love to run one of those kid-themed campaigns. For the adventures, did you take inspiration from any sources in particular? Great video as always.

On the surface, a Cyberpunk game were everyone has to play a 12 yr old sounds boring and lame. But I got to admit, watching this video kinda made me turn a corner on that opinion.......just before I got hit in the face with a potted plant 😢

That was really a sad story to start with, and kinda was all the way through. Young kids growin up into gang life. Killed a guy before he was even 18 ya know. Good story though, I like your stories Seth.

I used to skate quite a lot and the number of injuries that happen when you decide to give it just one more try is unreal. Admittedly none of them are usually bonsai related but it seems going for just one more hour can do the same!

Yeah, that's how a quick one hour game turns into a late night. I hope that one day Seth does a game diary of his Cyberpunk campaign.

You say you could go on and on about this campaign? Please do! I would love to have more details about the whole thing. It sounds so fun and I would love to try and run something similar myself.

I would watch endless episodes detailing every part of this gutterpunk campaign

Stumbled across this again and I still love it. Letting the players take the lead can be so much fun!

One of these days he's really gonna finish that Hook Horror. Then the characters are screwed!!

Dear God please place the link of these sheets

Wow. I wish I had a group that’d use maps, handouts, and minis. To me it seems like it’d be so cool.

Wow a new lighting!!! Love it I was just rewatching old war stories today for the 10th time and didn't even realise this is a new video. What a great surprise

So a bonsai tree, something people trim to maintain its small size, was used to cut a teenager's life short. I'm not sure if this is actual irony or that Alanis Morissette brand of irony that's just a bad thing happening that you weren't expecting.

Stories might have morals, but players usually don't!

Story time with Uncle Seth, yay!

Thank you for the video. Commenting for the Algorithm.

Incredible. In fairness you have to post the once and future scream sheets where your audience can peruse them!

And that’s why hit locations should be in your game system.

This is such an intriguing concept for a campaign and if you decided to do like a War Stories series on the highlights of it and tips for running something like that I’m here for it. I don’t think it gets any more cyberpunk then that

Always a good day when Seth posts a new video

And I could listen to your campaign setting for hours too! Ever thought about doing a longer video about it? The whole gang environment yiu guys cragted sounds super interesting!

So weird.... I contemplated starting a bonsai just this morning.

My Cthulhu by Gaslight investigators saved the life of a journalist working the "Crime Beat" in 1890 London. After each session, I started writing up the newspaper articles describing their investigations. The paper had dubbed one of the investigators "The Ghost Doctor", regularly publishing wildly inaccurate accounts of their adventures. The doctor wanted nothing to do with this publicity, and was constantly infuriated by the writer's sensationalistic exaggerations.

Awesome 😅🌴😓

Seriously considering using your campaign idea here for my players for our next campaign in CP Red. Any other advice you can throw our way on running a "kids growing up in Night City" campaign?

Coffe and a seth video, what a good day to start a day. 😄

Nice. I've written for journals of all the games I've run or played in since 1990. Since I've recorded all my games since 2008, they've gotten quite involved. I've also been doing newspaper front pages for the Down Darker Trails Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh games.

You know, killing a kid was a *key* moment in Critical Role Campaign 1 (pre-stream). Makes me wonder how many characters have accidentally killed a kid in an rpg. Worst I ever did (accidentally) was fireball a butterfly. (It had a sphere of darkness cast on it so I thought it was a drider.)

The accidental death of a bystander during a prank gone bad reminds me of the beginning of 1996 "Sleepers". Great movie about unforeseen consequences.

That wire-heading PSA at 9:50 got tome. Spider Robinsons novel Mindkiller had a portion about the main character finding a wire-head victim. Yuck. What a horrible addiction that would be.

The screamsheets makes me think of something I did for a star wars game where prior to session I'd write up a summary of things that happened the previous week and present it like the intro announcer for the Clone Wars show. Occasionally I'd pass it to a player for them to do the bit.

RPG War Stories are the absolute best. I've been looking forward to another one of these and this was very much worth the wait. Thanks for the creative and fun storytelling!

You'll be dead in....ONE....TWO....TREE!

I love these. Thanks for posting.

My version is "River of Lava". I played warlock in Paladium game, where we were planing to defend the village from invaders, my side was one with main part of troop, lots of them comming from up the hill, not far from our village. I said - no problem, will take care of them - MG was kind of suprised, but said - sure, my team, well was checking me out, but - ok, do it!. I went there, stood on the point where I should see them marching, at least 50.. then said, so I cast my new spell - river of lava... MG said "What, what? How does it work?" Well as the name said - it was lava, some meterer long and wide, based on level - enough to get them all in one clean swoop. MG was not happy... Lava did flew down, so I had to skip my location quick, but that was it... :). MG was trying to undermine the spell, but rulebook stated clearly, even up to this day I remember him saying "small stream of lava'ish stuff", but it worked - so we laughed. My side was saved, others had much easier stuff do defend, although most of them run seeing my lovely river!

In my head cannon that plant dropped from the 4th floor and vanished into the void. It phased back into existence and smashed through a plus 1 shield just as a crazed barbarian stuck out whilst screaming "FOR THOR!!!". In a flash of godly power it vanished once more and appeared a few feet above the head of a calm and sober larp'er. After striking this guy on the bonce he become convinced his name was THE BONESAW!! And on that day, he vowed to find the PEANUT HEAD!!! Thus you see all things are linked in the Sethverse!!

Oh god. Mass Effect tabletop, at the time on Omega. Players have been given a job to clear some Vorcha out of a low level of the station as they seem to be causing power fluctuations - or whatever. Players go in and are looking around this badly lit and partially salvaged level, when the Krogan biotic sees a shadow on a wall of a small figure running. And biotically charged through the wall. I asked "Are you sure?" He was. I checked to make sure you could biotically charge through walls. You can. I asked him to roll damage, he nearly maxed out. So that player had the wonderful description of roaring, charging through the wall to see the far wall of the coridor spattered with a huge smear of red blood, amid which was a still twitching child sized human hand. He'd biotically charged the child NPC who had useful info they needed to understand the actual threat that was down there. Players, if we ask "Are you sure?" YOU ARE NOT SURE.

Such a cool story. 100% agree that the most memorable moments are those that are unplanned for. My most recent was the players entering a building in "Treasure Island" (our name for the Night City CBD post-blast) to find it occupied by cannibal cyber pirates. From one of the balconies are partially deconstructed full borgs hanging from chains to deter intruders. The players asked if any of the 'borgs were still operational. I went with it, and they eventually hacked into its comms suite to gather information. As the were exfiltrating they decided to bring the 'borg with them, and began the process of rebuilding them with help from an NPC. In summary, the best part of a proper RPG is when the narrative overcomes the mechanics to allow for interesting and unexpected plot twists. Looking forward to more of these 2020 war stories!

Reading over some of the stories from the scream sheets... wild. Arasaka had to compensate an island in the Philippines for 30 years of food production due to a misfired nuke and Justin Bieber apparently wound up a convicted murderer after killing a prostitute/fan named 'Butter Lips Jackson' while high on 'jade ice'. Also, the 'Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline.' add is very well-made and gave me a good laugh.

Thank you Seth. Absolutely loved it! Hm, I am thinking, on a different topic, would you consider doing a video about "relationship bombs"? The term is from Kult but it doesn't have to be about Kult. Also the term is a bit confusing, I prefer moral dilemmas. For ex, if you save your buddy, the child across the street might die, or you need money to do something good but right now your only option is robbing this sweet old lady. Be well and take care Seth! Always looking forward to the next! Sincerely, Alicia Antoniadis.

This reminds me of a similar situation during a D&D 5e game I was in about 3 years ago. My DM has a homebrew rule that if you roll a 20, you can only confirm the crit if you roll again to see if you beat their AC, if you roll a 20 on the confirmation roll you instantly kill the target (with the exception of important NPC's who just take double crit damage). Well in session 1 one of the players who was playing a barbarian was joking around with a wizard played by another and was lightheartedly bullying them in a joking manner by shoving them around, in a sort of "jock vs nerd" scenario. Well the barbarian took it took far and actually wanted to declare a hit, his intention was to knock the wizard out so he could continue the gag by leaving him in a funny spot to wake up from. Well the DM asked him to roll and he got a 20, and already the wizard is sweating because he's level 1 and has less than 10 hp, so a crit from a Barbarian with 18 strength will deal 10 damage automatically and since the wizard doesn't have the shield spell up his AC is only 12 so the confirmation is incredibly likely... Well the barbarian confirmed alright... With another 20. The room was silent as the DM explained how in his drunken stupor the barbarian misdudged his own strength and put everything he had into that punch, resulting in the wizard having his skull cave in like a ripe melon, drenching the room in blood, brain and bone chips, an eyeball landing in someone's bowl of stew. After a beat the wizard started to laugh uproariously followed by the DM and the rest of the table and quickly began to roll a new character while the barbarian kept apologising. In my experience at least, that's the quickest death in any game I've been in, hour 1 of session 1! The wizard player rolled up a similar wizard with a different race so he could salvage the backstory of his original somewhat and the DM was kind enough to even give him a cloak of protection for free as a sort acknowledgement for being a good sport about it.

The equivalent for my group is "That Damned Cat". It happened in 7th Sea 1st edition, at the end of a four months (real time) long chase. The PCs had cornered their nemesis, but to make sure that she couldn't get away, they went extra careful. One PCs found her carriage, ready to leave and decided to knock out the coachman. Unfortunately, he was wary and had a loaded crossbow at hand. The Player asked me what was around that he could use to distract the coachman and I blurted out: "Some cobblestones, some potted plants, a stray cat..." I should have been more careful. The PCs grabbed the stray cat and tossed the poor thing in the face of the coachman. He rolled terribly and they coachman was barely inconvenienced, but then I decided that the cat would claw and cause a little bit of damage trying to escape... and I rolled to insanity. The cat caused something in the neighbour of 25-30 damage, which is insane, basically clawing out the carotid of the poor bugger. In a way you can say it worked perfectly but, to this day, I'm still afraid of letting my players handle animals in some circumstances.

I have a similar experience of a murder cherry. My stepsiblings and I decided to sit down and play some D&D, with me being the DM. We start out in a tavern, everything’s going good, when suddenly a bandit bursts through the door, walks right up to the bartender, and tries to extort money from them. My stepsiblings then break a bottle over the bandit’s head, shove a rat up his nose, scoop his eye out, and promptly beat him to death on the tavern floor with the nearest blunt object they can find. They caused some grade A mischief (and homicide)

My work laptop has a copy of all the PDF’s I have picked up from Drive Through RPG. I May have printed some of the pages at work as well. Hey, printer ink and all that. I could run my Call of Cthulhu campaign from here. But always keep the original in a personal computer.

Nice to see Seth following the Yakuza philosophy of world building.

It has indeed been way too long, though I can understand why, gotta get the best ones! Side-note, you've played 2d20 system games, Kult.... have you played Mutant Chronicles? I know that's an older game but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Had an AD&D 2e game where two brothers played dwarfs and got us captured due them messing around and charging in head first. The next session they kept blaming me out character it was my fault because I played a barbarian. The GM was pretty upset with them because of their attitude and lack of respect. I got that whole next session to focus on my character busting everyone out of the dungeon with just my rage and bare hands lol. He gave the brothers the opportunity but with some difficult DC modifiers. I don’t we played with them every again after that.

Thanks again for another war story. These show how fun games can be!