It’s a Gazebo!

This is a bit of Roleplaying lore that’s been kicking around the Internet for as long as I can remember.

I found it going through my old documents in the loft as I was sorting out something for a campaign soon to start 🙂

So I will put it here verbatum, copied from the original punched print out.

Eric and the Gazebo

by Richard Aronson

Let us cast our minds back to the early days of fantasy role-playing… In the early ’70s Ed Whitechurch ran “his game” and one of the participants was Eric Sorenson, a veritable giant of a man.
 
This story is essentially true: I knew both Ed and Eric, and neither denies it (although Eric, for reasons that will become apparent, never repeats it).
 
The gist of it is that Eric… well, you need a bit more about Eric.
 
Eric comes quite close to being a computer. When he chooses a game, he methodically considers each possibility before choosing his preferred option. If given time, he will invariably choose the optimum solution. It has been known to take weeks. He is otherwise in all respects a superior gamer, and I’ve spent many happy hours competing with and against him, as long as he is given enough time.
 
So… Eric was playing a neutral paladin (why should only lawful, good religions get to have holy warriors? was the rationale) in Ed’s game. He even had a holy sword, which fought well and did all those things holy swords are supposed to do, including good and evil (by random die roll). He was on some lord’s land when the following exchange occured:
 
 
ED: You see a well-groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you see a gazebo.
ERIC: A gazebo? What colour is it?
ED: (Pause) It’s white, Eric.
ERIC: How far away is it?
ED About 50 yards.
ERIC: How big is it?
ED: (Pause) It’s about 30 feet across, 15 feet high, with a pointed top.
ERIC: I use my sword to detect whether it’s good.
ED: It’s not good, Eric. It’s a gazebo!
ERIC: (Pause) I call out to it.
ED: It won’t answer. It’s a gazebo!
ERIC: (Pause) I sheath my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any way?
ED: No, Eric. It’s a gazebo!
ERIC: I shoot it with my bow (rolls to hit). What happened?
ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
ERIC: (Pause) Wasn’t it wounded?
ED: Of course not, Eric! It’s a gazebo!
ERIC: (Whimper) But that was a plus-three arrow!
ED: It’s a gazebo, Eric, a gazebo! If you really want to try to destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you could try to burn it, but I don’t know why anybody would want to try. It’s a @#%$*& gazebo!
ERIC: (Long pause – he has no axe or fire spells) I run away.
ED: (Thoroughly frustrated) It’s too late. You’ve awakened the gazebo, and it catches you and eats you.
ERIC: (Reaching for his dice) Maybe I’ll roll up a fire-using mage so I can avenge my paladin…

At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a modicum of order by explaining what a gazebo is. This is solely and afterthought, of course, but Eric is doubly lucky that the gazebo was not situated on a grassy knoll.