Ok, first of all, what's the pink shirt? Well, it's a figurative item my old D&D group came up with for when one of the characters in the group was acting rather cowardly or too overly cautious for his class/level/personality/etc. Now I've always pictured the shirt looking as follow: Bright Neon Pink, Guys' cut, Always 1 size too big for whatever character earned it, and with the words I R COWARD written in Big Black Letters.

Now, I have to admit that a few of my characters had earned the pink shirt from time to time, especially when I was first starting out playing. For the most part, I always found myself playing a monk or monk gestalt and found I liked to use Spring Attack a bit too often, like going up against a monster 2 levels below me and after stepping up and crit'ing him or tripping him and hitting him, I'd bounce back like he had just bit my hand.

So, I'm curious to hear about some of those characters you have come across that would have earned the pink shirt. They can be our characters, characters in the same campaign as you or from just about anywhere else. Simply let us know the settings and why you think they would have earned the pink shirt.

Of course I always play the coward character on purpose.

I once built a cleric (she's made small appearances on this site), who grew up completly sheltered and was terrified of violence. To the point that the first time I ever used her on the battle field she ended up crawling around on her hands and knees to get to fallen patriots. When I used her model for Tek's game she fainted during the first encounter. What was great was that on the table top game I had given her every vow I could that would protect her from being touched, when the orc did try to hit her his weapon simply shattered, so she had no real reason to be so terrified, but she was.

And my latest character, Amber, froze and peed herself when Olan threw the first batch of zombies at us.

But hey... I look good in pink, although I prefer a soft baby pink to the hot shocking pink, works better with my hair I feel

M.

Yeah, our D&D group hasn't had a girl in it for a while now. It's never a good thing having people dating/married playing together in a game and then having something bad happen to their relationship. I've seen it ruin many a campaign.

But anyways, the reason for the shocking pink and wording was to make sure it wasn't plain enough or girly enough for a female character to want it lol.

it was actually a girl in the group that started handing out the pink shirt. before that we said neon yellow.

she was playing a succubus fighter and got tired of strike's character hanging back and not helping(in her opinion). she made fun of his manhood (even though he was half-dragon/elf i think) and then said you should be wearing a pink shirt instead.

one of the other group members ended up dating her for awhile (in RL) and if he wasn't brave and manly (in game) he got a pink shirt from her. another funny thing was their initials for their first names were D & D.

I find it sad that you haven't had good experiences with couples in your games. My husband and I have been playing together for years, he actually got me started on my first game.

We have a few married couples here at the Inn...

And while it doesn't always work out great sometimes it can.

I'll admit once or twice over those years we've had little tiffs over a game, but honestly they have been nothing compared to the arguments that the guys have had with each other game play. But then I suppose it comes down to the people involved, some people can make it work, some can't.

((and you know now that I think of it we've only had one time when our characters were involved with each other romantically, most of the time we either have unattached characters or they are hooked up with other players or NPC's... never been an issue though))

M.

...some of the best experiences I've had in RPing (tabletop, online, or otherwise) have been with groups in which there were one or more real life "couples." I can really only remember one incident where a "marital spat" had any impact on a game and that was only because whatever tiff they had was bad enough that one of them decided they just weren't coming to the game that night.

She got NPC'd, came back the next week, and everything was copacetic... *shrugs*... guess it just comes down to keeping the two things separate, so to speak... Game time is game time and real life is real life.

Marriage ain't for sissies But as for gaming - my husband is my DM, and we've been gaming for 25 years and been married for 19 (coming up on Sep 21, in fact).

My character Willow, in Rocinante is a coward, and plays as such, as she's the non-combatant like Kaylee from Firefly.

Dapple, on the other hand, isn't a coward, but as a thief, she has a finely developed instinct for survival. She's not gonna run into battle when the odds are against her, so I'm sure the heroes in the game would want to give "the young lad" in the party a pink shirt.

Yeah, I guess it would have made a bigger difference in the groups had the couples actually been married at the time. However, they were only dating and we only know how it can go if the relationship ends badly there.

Back to the pink shirt, I'm glad to see many people on here that understands the idea of it. I'm thinking about adding it as a cursed item to the first campaign I run on here. I'm sure there will surely be shenanigans that follow any other receive the shirt (unwillingly most likely) lol.

My daughter has to be the ultimate pink shirt gamer. Every single time we tabletop, her character is always the one ready to run at the drop of a hat.

Me: "Your legion of elite shock troops stumbles across two drunken kobolds. One has a sharp stick."

Emily: "My character runs in the other direction!"

Okay, I may be slightly exaggerating... but it's almost this bad.

That's why I like magic wielders.

Just this week I was playing my cleric in the 4e game my husband is running. I was experiencing some of the delightful aches and pains of pregnancy so I refused to get off the couch to look at the map and move my character around the board, so my line of the night was:

'I have a range of 5 for this spell, someone put me where I can hit something evil with it but as far as possible from it's reach, thank you.'



M.

Waaaaaaaay long ago, maybe when I was 14 or so, there was a member in our table top group that was always a rogue/assassin type. He always managed some way to get the ability to hide while observed, and almost never stopped using it.

"You encounter a wandering merchant"
"I hide, and begin observing him for a death attack"
"He's a merchant..."
"I don't trust him, he's clearly a spy."

He even did this to other PCs. If they split up he always figured it was a plot by his partner to kill him while he was by himself, and almost always launched a pre-emptive strike and fled the scene.

He wasn't even just being in character, he was literally positive the group was going to kill him.

Ok, that last post still has me laughing. I'm glad none of my groups have encountered the paranoid type yet. I have played with one member several times and he has almost always managed to build himself a swashbuckler and would always pick up the feats so he could go first and likely strike every attack. However, he had nothing to back up his character either physically or damage output wise. So we'd watch him take off first, run into the mobs and then be the first to have to run away. I think we even started handing the pink shirt out for that as he did it too often for us not to make some type of joke(s) about it.

BTW, glad to see such good posts so far. I was worried there for a lil that I had derailed my own post into a debate over couples playing together lol. Hopefully we'll get more people on here to post. Though I hope to avoid any *facelick* action in here lol