Sometimes we would get tired, or our usual DM, my brother, did not want to run a game that weekend.

We all still wanted to play, so we would have a “what if …” scenario where one player would fight another to the death, so see who was toughest. None of it had any real effect on the campaign.

That was when we still were more towards the scale of “Monty Haul” with lots of magic items, etc.

My character, Kad Staglar, was a halfling fighter/thief with a girdle of storm giant strength a +2 longsword and a ring of regeneration. When we were in a dungeon, he would just run through the lower half of doors to open them.

Another player’s character had managed to beat everyone else. I believe he was an assassin or something with a poison weapon. My halfling was doing a lot of damage, but he went down. Just as Bret was sure he had won, my halfling got back on his feet and rejoined the fight. Bret soon remembered the ring, and when Kad went down again, Brett’s character removed the ring.

Has any other player group done that?

In college we had a group that had a competition that would have characters plopped down on an island. We had a million experience points and a certain amount of gold to prepare our characters. This was still 1e AD&D. The choice was either assassin for the quick kill potential, or fighter for the ability to take a hit, but there were a few who chose M-Us. I do not remember actually playing this out. I think my choice of assassin did not last as long as I’d hoped.