Your Favourite Quotation in a RPG Book?

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

There are a lot of great jokes in GURPS:Illuminati. It's hard to pick a favorite. I love the Honest Man Detector.

Maybe this one:

"In this office, Adelman, we close with: "We anticipate your future compliance with the subject regulation(s)," not "Tremble and obey!" Where did you work before?"

Hans

One from the same book that I've used elsewhere:

"The power to cloud men's minds is WASTED fighting crime! I'm going to become a TV anchorman!"

For pullquotes, I love the use of the Back to the Future quote in the Technology and Artifacts chapter of Basic Set, Vol. 2:

"Are you telling me that you built a time machine ... out of a DeLorean?"
"The way I see it, if you're going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?"

For non-pullquotes, the one I reference the most may be from the Old West chapter of Toon Tales, under the sidebar Who is Steve Austin? (as in the Texas hero). I'm away from the books but as I recall, it ran somewhat like this:

Who is Steve Austin? If you said 'A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him,' close this book and hit yourself over the head with it. On second thought, use another book, we don't want you ruining the binding on this one.

[GrimGent]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Sounds like they didn't verify their pullquotes.

Hmm. It could be some sort of an absent-minded mix-up with the "I had not thought death had undone so many" line.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by GrimGent

Hmm. It could be some sort of an absent-minded mix-up with the "I had not thought death had undone so many" line.

I was expecting it to be by one of the war poets, Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen, for example. It reminded me of Owen's lines

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Though there's always e. e. cummings:

. . . what could be more beaut
iful than those heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of Liberty be mute?
he spoke; and drank rapidly a glass of water

Bill Stoddard

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

There are a lot of great jokes in GURPS:Illuminati. It's hard to pick a favorite. I love the Honest Man Detector.

Maybe this one:

"In this office, Adelman, we close with: "We anticipate your future compliance with the subject regulation(s)," not "Tremble and obey!" Where did you work before?"

Hans

That's how I used to end all of my memos back when I was the Senior Junior Assistant to the Director of Junior Senior Assistants back in the Department of Redundancy Department at IOU.

[zorg]

I love the made-up quotes in Nobilis, especially those which make little sense.

"Congratulations," said Nilaia. "You have corrupted your first soul; you have won a victory for the Fallen. How does it feel?"
"... It hurts." said Forchas, after a pause.
"Of course it hurts," Nilaia answered. "It always hurts. It hurts terribly. This is Hell."

Once, a man was so well-loved that he set the fields ablaze and the peasants didn't mind.
He killed all the animals, and gave his folk dust to eat, and they didn't mind.
He dirtied the water with blood from his wars, and they didn't mind.
Then they tortured him slowly to death on the Stone Wheel, and when his heirs asked the peasants why, they said, "We thought he liked that sort of thing."

[GrimGent]

Originally Posted by zorg

I love the made-up quotes in Nobilis, especially those which make little sense.

Yup. The only reason why I didn't bring up those flores right away was that the OP appeared to be looking for genuine epigraphs rather than game fiction or quotes from RPGs.

Some of my favourite fake citations in Nobilis actually come from The Game of Powers, the LARP supplement:

"Truth crawls by the roadside, a broken, feeble thing. 'Help!' it cries. 'Help!'

'Keep on driving,' Janice tells me. 'We don't have time for metaphors.'"
--from "Sonnet and the Sea" by Alex Dec

"This is the life of Amelie Tout.

After waking up each day, Amelie Tout goes to her mailbox and takes out a thin, folded letter written on blue paper. It always says, 'Today, you live well.' Sometimes, it says other things, like, 'Expect a visit from your son,' or 'Rain between 2:17 and 5:59pm -- don't go out without an umbrella!'

Today, however, the letter does not say, 'Today, you live well.' It says, 'Today, you die horribly.' So Amelie Tout tidies up her house, reviews her will, eats all those tempting chocolates that go straight to her hips, and goes outside to sit in the sun. It's a pale blue ogre, its skin folding like paper, that comes for her. It takes her in its great clawed hands and pulls her apart, lovingly, bit by bit.

That was the life of Amelie Tout."
--from "Seasons" by Alex Dec

"At a typical high school there are one or two individuals who can utter the phrase, 'You do not exist,' and thereby make it true. For all practical, social purposes, anyway. What distinguished Claudia Bean was her ability to say the opposite -- 'You exist' -- to any hypothetical student and have it become every bit as true. To her dream boyfriend: 'You exist.' To the seven-armed starfish student from Altair: 'You exist.' (And he helped her with her homework.) Even to God Himself: 'You exist.' And these things became true, or at least true until she graduated; then her boyfriend, the starfish, and God the Creator dissipated in a puff of smoke."
--from "Measures and Consequences" by Michael Kay

"Ian became convinced his liver was plotting against him. He complained so much, the doctors agreed to cut him open and examine the nefarious organ.

When he awoke, the doctors smiled and informed him that his liver was perfectly healthy, that there were no signs of either disease or conspiracy, and that he should relax and forget about it all.

He lay there staring at the ceiling for a moment.

'You know what happened,' said his elbow. 'That bastard got to them first.'"
--from "Oversights" by the Regnant Anatomica

"They sit in a dirty hall at the mountain's heart: the four kings in the west, who by their words and presence carved their names into the book of the world. Their eyes are open, but they sleep: held still, held back from bloody reign by the sign carved into the mountain. Washington, whose touch dissolves the lies that keep a soul alive, whose hair burns as white as the snow on the dragon's back, whose axe cut down the tree of living hearts. Jefferson, shatterer of faiths, breaker of nations, who from time to time sups on the blood of patriots and tyrants. Lincoln, who turns brother against brother and strikes off the shackles of the bound. Last, and worst, Roosevelt: warrior, destroyer of trusts, and 'steward of the people' in the dark forces' name. These are the kings that sit under the mountain; invoke not their names, lest their sleeping minds destroy you."
--from "Fasciculus Temporum" by Ossian Walthew

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

There are a lot of great jokes in GURPS:Illuminati. It's hard to pick a favorite. I love the Honest Man Detector.

Maybe this one:

"In this office, Adelman, we close with: "We anticipate your future compliance with the subject regulation(s)," not "Tremble and obey!" Where did you work before?"

Hans

Without actually verifying the quote, I'm very sure this and Rocket Man's first quote below are from the wonderful cartoons of Alexis Gilliland.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

I've always loved this one, from one of White Wolf's 2nd ed VtM books (I want to say the Player's Guide or Player's Guide to the Sabbat, but IDHMBWM):

"There's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight." --Lon Cheney, Jr.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by zorg

I love the made-up quotes in Nobilis, especially those which make little sense.

"Congratulations," said Nilaia. "You have corrupted your first soul; you have won a victory for the Fallen. How does it feel?"
"... It hurts." said Forchas, after a pause.
"Of course it hurts," Nilaia answered. "It always hurts. It hurts terribly. This is Hell."

Once, a man was so well-loved that he set the fields ablaze and the peasants didn't mind.
He killed all the animals, and gave his folk dust to eat, and they didn't mind.
He dirtied the water with blood from his wars, and they didn't mind.
Then they tortured him slowly to death on the Stone Wheel, and when his heirs asked the peasants why, they said, "We thought he liked that sort of thing."

I spent a week putting fun Nobilis quotes on Google+. One of my favorite has to be in the new edition: "Killing people won't make you happy." This actually has mechanical weight, and there are rules you can use to get around it (so, in fact, killing people will make you happy.)

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Without actually verifying the quote, I'm very sure this and Rocket Man's first quote below are from the wonderful cartoons of Alexis Gilliland.

Yes, indeed, they are -- those cartoons were one of the best parts of that edition of GURPS Illuminati.