My unfortunate choice of words

The following true story about a Dungeons & Dragons campaign might be offensive to sensitive readers.  Thus, reader discretion is advised.

 

This event happened while playing Dungeons & Dragons, with a group of students at the University of Minnesota, Duluth Gaming Club.  Another student was our game master.  Our D&D party was exploring the ruins of a dwarf foundry, in an abandoned dwarf city.  It seems our game master had a populated or abandoned dwarf city in each and every kingdom.

 

Hidden behind a wooden desk, my character found an eight inch by eight inch leather bag, secured by a drawstring.  Inside this bag was twelve, one inch diameter - round steel balls.  Our mage cast the spell Detect Magic on these balls, along with other odd equipment that our player characters had found.  When the balls glowed, I assumed that I had found some wonderful weapon – a flying ball that attacked my enemies I thought.

 

The first “enemy encounter” our party had was a robot maid who was keeping the foundry clean for centuries.  (That’s a well-constructed machine for any species to make.)  The robot didn’t see my party, but our leader was concerned that it might attack us.

 

I took two of the balls out of the bag, put them onto my flat palm, then in a soft voice said to these balls, “Balls, do your stuff.”

 

Every player and our game master broke out laughing.  Our game master said, “We’re really getting into it now!”  And then I started laughing as well, when I realized the meaning of what I said.  I had intended to command these balls to attack the robot maid.  Instead, my fellow players assumed I was talking about an essential liquid of the male reproductive system.

 

We evaded being seen by the robot maid, along with the most dangerous enemies.  (We learned the hard way that our player characters don’t have to fight every enemy we find.)  We returned to a large port city, where we had our party headquarters - within an abandoned copper mine.  The big caverns gave us plenty of room to build apartments, workshops, stables (you don’t stable a griffon near a horse), a brewery, and a large library with meeting rooms.

 

Our group then travelled to a populated dwarf city.  We found a master dwarf smith, who told my group that the steel balls are plus one, slingshot ammunition.