Your Favourite Quotation in a RPG Book?

[ajardoor]

By quotation, I mean like in GURPS Basic Set Campaigns, page 423, just as they're giving you the crippling injury, mortal wounds and death rules.

The quotation? Part of the King Arthur and the Black Knight exchange from Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

[GrimGent]

Originally Posted by ajardoor

By quotation, I mean like in GURPS Basic Set Campaigns, page 423, just as they're giving you the crippling injury, mortal wounds and death rules.

Along the same lines... Paranoia, the second edition, the beginning of the combat rules: "It's not that they die, but that they die like sheep." --T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"

[Rendu]

Not a specific quotation, but the original Mage: the Ascension pulled quotes from everything from the Book of Ecclesiates to Darkwing Duck.

[Gardensnake]

Deadlands 1st edition the rulebook had a chapter dealing with the bestial nature of pc's that became undead called Bestiallity. The first sentence was " Get your hands off your horse, that's not what we're talking about". I loved that.

William

[mook]

"If the weapon was a laser, blaster, or flamethrower, you are also on fire -- GURPS (3rd) Firearm Critical Miss Table"

Dunno - just always makes me chuckle.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by mook

"If the weapon was a laser, blaster, or flamethrower, you are also on fire -- GURPS (3rd) Firearm Critical Miss Table"

Dunno - just always makes me chuckle.

This might not be quite what the OP was referring to, but it's one of my all time favorite lines from any RPG product: " You trip over an unseen imaginary deceased turtle. You are very confused.” From MERP.

I broke out laughing just typing that.

There were some hilarious lines in the old Shadowrun from the 'on-line discussion' sections.

[doulos05]

Sadly not from an RPG book, but from the advanced rules book for the board game for Battletech/Mechwarrior, they describe helicoptors which fail their control rolls and impact terrain features as engaging in "deconstructive lithobraking." Not in the fluff, that's the actual rules terms. Similarly from the forums over there, they have a quote regarding a PBI who survived a near miss from a Gauss Rifle (firing a hyper sonic ferro-nickel slug) "It just missed you, you are now deaf... and airborne."

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by Rendu

Not a specific quotation, but the original Mage: the Ascension pulled quotes from everything from the Book of Ecclesiates to Darkwing Duck.

I think it was second edition that had the best use of quotations I saw. Quoting Paul Simon's lines from THE SOUND OF A TRAIN IN THE DISTANCE:

"What is the point of this story?
What information pertains?
The thought that life could be better
Is woven, indelibly, into our hearts
And our brains."

Which is, in a way, what the game is all about.

[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

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by GrimGent

Along the same lines... Paranoia, the second edition, the beginning of the combat rules: "It's not that they die, but that they die like sheep." --T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"

It's definitely not in "The Wasteland": I just scanned through the whole text, and also searched for "sheep" and came up with 0. A quick search shows that Vachel Lindsay's poem "The Leaden-Eyed" has nearly the same line: Not that they die, but that they die like sheep. (Which both scans better, without the initial "It's," and is a more forceful phrasing.) Sounds like they didn't verify their pullquotes.

Bill Stoddard