Your 4th level Neutral cleric is too powerful!

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Back in my gaming heyday, we would play as much as possible on the weekends and maybe even squeeze in some weeknight action. Ah, the carefree days of high school and college! My group has always been strictly a D&D group. I don't know why, but we never seriously considered giving any other genres or systems a whirl.

So one day, one of my high school buddies (also a gamer) approaches me and says that his group has an opening at their table, and would I like to join them? Of course I jump at the chance to play more D&D when my main group is not gaming. Mikey (my friend, not my brother) mentions that his group plays other games in addition to D&D, just so I know ahead of time. Hey, no problem. I wouldn't mind playing other games too, so tell them I'm in!

Group #2 seems like a decent bunch of fellas. There was that somewhat awkward feeling-out period where we all get to know each other, but once they see that I actually know how to play D&D, I seem to fit right in.

As Mikey had previously warned me, Group #2 enjoys a wide variety of games in addition to the ongoing D&D campaigns. Turns out he wasn't kidding: Traveller, Star Wars, Star Trek, Micro Armour, Nuclear Risk, Diplomacy, Nuclear War (the card game), and I'm sure there had to be a couple others as well that I'm forgetting about.

It was really cool to give all these other systems and genres a try. Micro Armour, in particular, really struck a chord in me. Little lead tanks, I'm sure, had NOTHING to do with it. Well, maybe a little bit. But I've always been a student of WWII history and a model builder, so Micro Armour wasn't a tough sell for me at all. Many a memorable battle was fought, and I even built my own Styrofoam battle boards at home. And yes, I still have all my GHQ tanks from back then. I'll need to dig them out and line them up for a photo shoot one of these days.

Back to D&D with Group #2. I had been playing with them for several months now - exactly how long, I'm not sure - and all was well. Or so I thought. One session, we set up and get ready to play. The DM mapped out "Fort Blood" on the gaming table. Fort Blood used to be an orc stronghold, but the party had long since routed the former owners and now we used it as our base. The DM has us set up our miniatures in the dining hall, and I'm thinking we're going to get jumped by something pretty nasty here. Boy, was I ever right!

We get jumped, all right. Or more specifically, I got jumped. My 4th level Neutral cleric (his name escapes me at the moment) is attacked and killed at the dinner table by his fellow adventurers. WTF? I recall being stunned for a bit, before turning to the two or three players who did the attacking and asking why. Their answer? "Because you were getting too powerful."

Too powerful? What, did they think I was going to take control of the party and lead everyone on prayer raids or host endless Tupperware-style holy symbol parties? Sure, some of the guys around the table were fairly chaotic (read: spazzes in real life), but that seemed like a shitty thing to do. Needless to say, my time with Group #2 ended soon after that, if not the same day.

I wonder what I did to piss them off? Drink someone's Mt. Dew? Heal some other character instead of theirs? Do or say something offensive? For the life of me, I can't think of anything I said or did that may have led them to ganking my poor cleric like they did. Looking back, I can laugh about it now, and I kind of doubt any of them would even remember why they did it. Sometimes I wonder why I still remember in such gory detail, but then again, my mind is chock full of useless info like that.

In my main group, back when one of my neighbors was our first DM, there were times when he would pit the party members against each other to stir things up. Of course, he was the kind of DM who enjoyed killing characters, destroying magic items, and fostering party dissent. I'm glad we finally ditched him. We've been rolling along just fine ever since then.

I've even toyed with the notion of setting up a Gladiator-style arena, just so everyone could have at each other. Of course it would be just for fun, because no one wants to get killed multiple times all in the name of seeing who could kick ass and take names. More of a fun diversion, really.

So "WTF TK!" indeed.

(For those of you not fluent in leet speak, TK = Team Kill. Fratricide. Friendly Fire. Fragging.)