On the subject of tone, especially the amount of humor "in game" how many campaigns out there include running gags that JUST WON'T DIE?
I've got a few that immediately spring to mind...
"Meep"-A very old one, originally my invention to denote the plight of a poisoned/paralyzed ranger. I told him all he could manage was a pitiful "meep". He turned that into a one word language by altering his tone and inflection. Since then it's become a short hand distress call (and I've seen people hold entire conversations with just that one word).
A ghoul rages through the group, leaving several characters paralyzed, and they begin discussing strategy...
"Meep?"
"Meep" affirmative grunt.
"Meeeep" plaintive wail.
"Meep" soothing tone
(these conversations can last for quite awhile :) )
"And that's not a euphemism"-Something that if added to a phrase almost automatically turns it into a double entendre.
(sounds weird I know, but try it sometime)
Wizard, "I may need to recharge my staff of power"
group chorus "And that's not a..."
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"And that's not a euphemism"-Something that if added to a phrase almost automatically turns it into a double entendre.
(sounds weird I know, but try it sometime)
Yep! And I'm usually the wiseguy who forces the statement to be made. One of my favorites so far has been using it a ranger who said something about 'Hunting the Dark Creeper". "Oh, is that what the kids are calling it these days?"
Year (and years and years) ago I was in a group and a subplot was an assassination attempt against a characters loved one. The assassin was a gnoll archer (you can probably see where this is going...). The first time he tried anything he was camoflauged with a leaves and vines and other plant matter. He took his shot (and missed) and someone NPC called out "The shot was fired from that grassy gnoll!" The DM, a Xanth fan of dangerous proportions always worked it so the gnoll got away to take a potshot another day. The shot was also fires be a gassy gnoll, brassy gnoll, glassy gnoll, with an appropriately horrid set-up to each event. It still makes me shudder.
Sounds like something I might do, although I don't think I'm creative enough to keep it up quite that long.
The big thing in a group I used to play with was the incessant EverQuest references. About half the group, including the DM, played EQ. I understood what "conning" an opponent mean long before I finally broke down and bought the game. Oddly enough, the DM cancelled that game because, at least in part, it was cutting into his EQ time. LOL!
The current gag in the game I run got it's beginning with Crazy Jared of Adventure Path fame. In Dungeon #102 the party asked the nutty bard about the the kuo-toan (though in my game they are troglodytes) temple of Bhal-Hamatagn to which he promply cast comprehend languages and said what amounts to "'evil fish place' though my troglodyte is a bit rusty."
While traversing the underdark to get there they ran across the wild mage, Random (Random Encountra - yes, I know but it was their first "random encounter of the campaign and it was a silly night). Anyway they ask him if he knows the way. That sounded like a dungeoneering roll all he had was arcana and knowledge of the Draconic tongue (troglodytes remember) -roll-clatter- natch 20! "Evil fish place? My trog's a bit rusty. I have heard of it, but I have never been nor would like to go there."
They eventually get there - and temple actually looks like an "evil fish."
<Side Note: I played this bit straight out of 'Apocalpyse Now!' right down to the crazy Dennis-Hopper-y bard. Dennis: "Bring it in!" PC: "We ain't comin' in there. Those trogs attacked us!" Dennis: "Zap 'em with a flare spell! Zap 'em with a flare!" Dennis: "Oh, the heads you're looking at the heads. Sometimes the high priest goes to far - he's the first one to admit it.">
Since then there has not been one person (they went home and talked to their families and mentors about what they had been up to and everyone of them either speaks draconic or had some slight knowledge of the place. Adventurer: "Then we went to Bhal-Hamatugn to rescue this dwar-." Person they are talking to reacts to the name in shocked silence. PC: "Yes, evil fish place." Person I thought that was what you said but -" PC: "Your troglodyte is a little rusty, right?"
-GGG
In every campaign I've DM'ed since first edition, I have had the party come across the same NPC - a faerie dragon named Mortimer. :D
Typically, Morty plays a few pranks on the PCs, then eventually feels sorry for them and befriends them. He'll typically offer some key piece of information in whatever quest they're currently on.
In my most recent campaign, one of his pranks was to turn the dwarven ranger's armor pink. :D
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When our group played through the Sunless Citadel, we had killed one of the gardeners in the arboretum. Shortly afterwards, we met a group of Goblins and decided to talk us through them. For some strange reason, it was our half-orc monk of Ilmater (!) who took the word; he was really eloquent but not too bright, so our DM refused to let the gobbos be convinced by his speech. Some 15 minutes later our totally despaired monk lost his patience, cried :" Enough talking!" and hit one of the goblins. He hit critical and since he forgot to do nonlethal damage, the goblin literally bursted. The other goblins, totally shocked by this cruel action, asked who we were, and the monk's answer was quite simple: "I'm the new gardener!"
Since then if any of our characters is asked who he is, the background choir begins to sing :)
P.S. Ilmater was not too happy with the deeds of his servant who had sworn never to take anyones life ;)
Hmm running gags eh?
Well if any of you have played final fantasy you know there are certain recurring names for small characters. (CID, Biggs, and Wedge) well in ym games there are always a pair of characters named Locke and Stock. They are usually a pair of town guards, or some npcs. Its funyn because they'lkl always be very different. In one game they were two grizzled town guards, in another they were a warforged and a dwarf. They're usualy fun to throw in.
In one game we had a dragonmarked character who could use make whole a few times per day and one of our players thought it was make HOLE! and would always tell the dragonmark heir to make hole and get them out of here. We finnaly gave in and told the player what make whole really was.
I also have an issue where soemtimes I forget to name very important npcsor I name them and then forget their names. This has led to the group giving them very funny names. They were terrorized last campaign by an evil Lich named Won' Die. They also had a cleric cohort named NU GUY. Also one player couldn't come up with a name for his scythe-wielding warforged paladin, so he earned several nicknames like walking Stick, Pocket, Mug, and Grim.
We can eb serious too though. I think.
I was running in a Dwarven City that had 7 different clans based on the kind of work they did. The group's favorite were the Grommit Clan, who were extremely hairy, and served as Masons and stonecutters. This was because of their desire to swing and hang from dangerous, high places more than anything artistic.
The city had five levels, and getting to the bottom from the top had an easy way (using the chain lift), or the "Grommit Way," which involved jumping down a chute with a heated updraft. Even though you were slowed from the high wind, you took 2d6 damage anyway when you hit the bottom. Plus, you had to roll away quickly to avoid the twenty sweaty Grommit warriors on their way down to crush you. . .
My group loved it, and now, every time they decide to kick down a door, jump off of a high place to save time, or generally avoid common sense decisions, they refer to it as "Doin' it the Grommit way!"
Explosive bathrooms...... Fireballs in garbage dumps..... Torching things and then blaming it on 'firebreathing Rocs'.....
I have a pain in the rear goblin named NB Wiggins who stumbled across a dragons hoard of non-lethal weapons and magic items, he keeps attacking the PC's and then getting away, typically leaving them stuck to the floor, wall, or ceiling, or stuck in non-breaking bubbles, odd things like that.
My most memorable running gag was an individual named Charles, a rather dim individual we all knew in real life and who somehow ended up in our game, always in the middle of some momentous happening. Bymy count he died at least six times and circumnavigated the world twice.
Thanks Taricus! Use away. . . I don't have 3rd edition stats, it must have been ten years ago since I ran the dwarven city campaign. Grommit were the most memorable of the 7 clans, definitely.... they were extermely built in the upper body, and had lost of bushy hair on the chest, armpits and back. . . all of which they carried around on short, reedy little legs.
I thought of another reoccurance too. . .
Remember the Shady Dragon Inn suppliment/module? We always had a "Shady" in town. It was always, "We head to the Shady," or "There's got to be a Shady around here somewhere." We finally made Boris Bonesnapper into a Patron God of Barkeeps, and I even ran a brief campaign using a interdimensional time traveling Tiefling - who owned a vast chain of Shadys around the Multiuniverse.
Oh yeah, the sign in front said:
Shady Dragon Inn
"Billions and billions served"
I may have inadvertently created a running gag in my group's most recent session.
One of my players, after his character's second death (a monk who kept on trying to go "mano a half-orco" against monsters with reach) decided to make up someone new rather then get him raised again. Rather then start over a first I said he could do the average party level, and this gave him enough to start off with a character with a prestige class.
His experience as a melee fighter type a little sobering he decided to go for an archer, and made himself an Order of the Bow Initiate.
I looked over the character sheet, and noticed the class and level abbreviation, "OBI 1".
"You're an OBI 1?" I asked.
"Yup." he said, blank faced.
"If you call yourself Kenobi I'm going to smack you..."
His face lit up, and for the rest of the session it was "These are not the orcs you're looking for" or "If you strike me down I...".
self-inflicted "pun" ishment... :)
WerePlatypus, you ought to appreciate this one.
About a year ago, our party was inflitrating a goblin stronghold; I can't remember why. Bashing down the door took a little time and effort, and alerted the denizens to our presence. Waiting for us inside the front door was a box with a note on it that read, "DeaR HumiNz. THis iz nOt a tRap. It iz a PrezInT. PLeeZ open it."
Faced with that, our party's reaction was to check it for traps. A natural 1 convinced our party rogue (my wife) that the box was clean. Still sensing something was not right, my paladin rolled a Sense Motive check, just to provide some in-game pretext for not opening the box. Another natural one, and we all felt pretty happy and honored to be offered such a generous housewarming gift from the goblins. Of course, the box contained an explosive rune of some sort that set my wife's character on fire. Good times!
Since then, since our PCs usually do their own rolling, even for Spot and Disable checks, when they roll a natural 1, and I say, "The door looks clean," someone always pipes up, "Dear Humans: This is not a trap..."
A campaign I played in several years ago had a rather overworked DM, who lost track of things, such as the death of the party's only cleric in the middle of a long quest. From that point on, whenever anyone needed healing, we just claimed that "the Dead Cleric" healed us.
The Dead Cleric was able to support the party in this way for about 12 months before the DM realised what had happened.
To this day, whenever there is something really bad that needs to be done, or someone is in need of desperate healing, there are cries of "It's ok, the Dead Cleric does it..."
Right Chairborne . . . I haven't even gotten to the current group I play with yet! "Dear Humaz indeed!"
Here's one that I'd rather avoid, from my curent group: We had a priest it the party named Doogan, but he left on other business (a.k.a took over DMing duties for awhile). However, in his benevolence, he left a stack of cure potions to replace his sorely missed healing ability. My character, in a state of "no brains," pipes up, "Yeah, but those potions still don't taste like Doogan."
Do I have to explain the rest?
Yes, please do. :devil:
Here's another one the WerePlatypus ought to remember:
I was playing a CG elven ranger named Aramil. He was my first character, and I was fresh out of the Army, so he was dressed to the right and covered down, foul-mouthed and aggressive. He would take on foes with relentless aggression, regardless of whether it was the smart thing to do, because I wasn't 100% on the rules back then (hell, I'm still probably only 50% now).
At any rate, one day Aramil and the party were ambushed by a wizard who neutralized the sentry with a sleep spell before taking most of our stuff. Aramil took off after him, doing a sort of Aragorn-on-the-plains-of-Rohan number, until I blundered headlong into a second ambush. I was only 3rd level, so when the wizard cast Melf's Acid Arrow, the spell made a mess of things. The paladin in his heavy armor caught up a few minutes later to find Aramil in dire straits, at -8 HP. "Hey, guys," he called out, "I just slipped in something."
"What was it?" asked the monk.
Brian came back, "I think it's the ranger."
"I just slipped in a puddle and I think it's the (party member)" is the standard warning now that the party gets when one of their number is discovered clobbered away from the main group.
more of a gag that the fates play on me. every time i toss in a random NPC with a little bit of flavor my players find something to do to them. some of these game groups dont even know eachother.
but for now, the story of the one gag my players have pulled off.
Random NPC fisherman offers to teach a curious dwarf how to fish. she ran off and hid, while the fisherman found the other dwarf in the party and started asking if he saw the theif, or his pole. after a short dialouge the player revealed dwarves do mean things when you dont offer them ale. when he saw the fishermans surprise he stepped out of character and asked "can i slap him?" now im not saying the fisherman had wizards robes or anything, but immagine gimli vs gandalf. where gandalf gets knocked out in one "Dwarf slap" now every time there is a fist hit against a high armored enemy, big monster, or the end to a long battle, the party is said to have "dwarf slapped" whatever it was they were doing.
One thing I always have problems with is continuity, reminding my players about the important events in earlier adventures. Sometimes this could be an important NPC or a critical bit of forshadowing so sometimes I go the extra mile to make sure they remember.
In one campaign I used a really awful bard as a way of ensuring some continuity. He would make up songs (to the tune of old sit com themes) about their earlier adventures and, since everyone in the campaign except my group loved his work, these would follow them everywhere. Whenever I wanted to remind them of something they'd hear a peasant singing a reworked version of the intro the Cheers, or All in the Family, or Gilligan's Island (boy did they hate that one :) ).
They started keeping very detailed notes...
Of course, the fact that I my singing voice makes the croaking of frogs sound pleasant didn't help...
I also once introduced a xorn as a NPC, modeled upon Scooby Doo. They could get him to do just about anything if they offered a "Xorny Snack".
I even included a doppelganger villain who "would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling adventurers."
In one campaign I was running at college, a player's roommate wanted to try her hand at D&D. Aside from myself, only two other players in the group were thoroughly familiar with the rules, so one of them, Dave, had her play his character while he coached her so I could continue to straighten things out for the other two novice players we had. The new player decided she like the game and Dave said she could just keep his old character, a fighter, if he could make a new character. I agreed and the next week the party met up with his new character, a half-Drow sorceror.
Several PCs didn't trust the guy with dark skin and pointy ears, so they made sense motive checks agianst his affirmation that he was indeed on this island to assist the Ke'Blar elves in somehow lifting the embargos that the Evil Midget Empire had placed on their cookie exports (the campaign idea came to me one night while I was drinking, and it was filled with lame jokes). He was telling the truth and most of the PCs were satisfied of this. That is except for our groups second fighter, a less than completely stable elven Lasher. She rolled a 1. In my group the DM, usually myself or Dave, often chooses to enforce a house rule that any natural roll of 1 for anything automatically fails spectacularly; the nature of this blazing blunder is entirely at the DM's discretion. In this case I was behind on some notes preparing for the next planned encounter and handling no less than four sheets of notes while the party roleplayed played the the meeting with little need for supervision until the Sense Motive checks, so the best ridiculous thing I could come up with from the top of my head was "You think he's lying and that he's really an evil whale in disguise who wants to somehow destroy this island for more swimming room." The player, whom I do believe was either drinking, heavily medicated, or both, did a great job of actually looking at Dave really suspiciouslyducking behind another player, pointing and yelling "He's a whale!"
Now any time a NPC or occasionally a newly introduced PC seems in the slightest way suspicious somebody invariably yells, accusingly, "He's a whale!"
Really, it was funny at the time.
"Burn it" is our biggest running gag at the moment.
The story...
One of my players is playing a grouchy dwarf. The party was assigned the job of scouting an enemy keep in a near by, slightly hostile kingdom. The enemy of the keep would really be an enemy of both kingdoms, but the government of the kingdom where the keep was located didn't know about the keep.
Anyway, it was under the control of an army of Orcs and so the player party was very careful about approaching the keep. Seeing that the army had left days before, they decided to search the keep proper. Come to find out, a tribe of Kobalds had taken over the keep, since their enslavers had gone.
Toward the end of an agrivating play session of chasing Kobalds and not catching them, while they constantly plagued the characters with minor attacks, the player playing the dwarf decided to burn down the keep.
What the players didn't realize was the keep rested on a cave system that contained numerous wights. Burning the keep down released the wights and will eventually cause the dwarf to be plagued by the ghosts of those who were killed by the wights.
But because of the player wanting to burn down the keep and due to other game sessions where he threatened to burn up things, "Burn it!" has become a running gag.
Skunk
Last night I think I created a new running gag. My character, a Warmage, just recently (ie, last night's session) came into the services of a Kobold warlock cohort. He's loyal, he makes a decent addition to combat, and he's not actually stupid, but he is a bit umm, twitchy. For some reason Kobold + warlock came out to equal one strange little dude (at least in my head when I was coming up with his personality), so he acts a lot like a sixth grader on a wicked sugar high. Anytime we cleared out a dungeon room and started looking for loot, he'd immediately invoke his detect magic ability. The first time he found something (a scroll), he got excited and pointed, yelling "Magicky!" Players chuckled, quickly getting used to the mannerisms of this character (for other reasons from the same scroll, the cleric has been paranoid about explosive runes). It wasn't long until, if I forgot to point out that he was detecting magic in such a situation, somebody would say "Hey, aren't you looking for magicky?" He even did a little happy dance (which I felt obliged to demonstrate myself) upon his greatest discovery of "magicky-ness," a Rod of Wonder...upon learning what such an item was capable of, the rogue player first gave a sigh of relief that only "detect thoughts" occurred when he tested it by pointing at her, then proceeded to yell at the DM (her boyfriend) "You dip****! Did you give that thing to the crazy Kobold on purpose?!? You did, didn't you?" He did, so at least we know who to blame for the inevitable magicky chaos.
Since beginning 3rd Ed. play, my group's longest running gag (amongst many) is that either the most obvious double entendre of the night, or the single best player or character quote, will become the title of that week's synopsis that I email out to everyone.
The weekly synopsis started out as a tool to keep anyone who missed the session up to speed on events, but it evolved into a serial narrative based on the last session. I'm posting them in the Campaign Journals section, but I'm only on the first two - so no titles, yet.
By far, the best episode in the series is "The Butt-Plug Gambit" - the session where the group takes on Triel (Adven. Path, "Flood Season") and her trapped door...
...read it, you'll understand why it's called that.
Marc
Well, there is in my campaign, it's about the monk. My DM decided that everytime he rolled a 1, and missed his reflex, he canned himself. Of course, everytime he rolled a 1 (quite often), he would fail. Well one day he made three reflex saves in a row, so the DM decided to make it so that he would never can himself agian by putting a mental block in his brain. His arms can now never go around his . . . area.
The running gag? "Hey man, can you scratch this for me?"
I once had a running gag with an aged horse named "Humphrey". One of the players, in a hurry to join up with the rest of the party who'd already left town rushed into the first horse dealer's establishment he found and demanded to buy their best riding horse. The enterprising merchant sensing an easy sale, turned to his assistant and shouted "This gentleman wants the best we have! Bring out Humphrey". The PC inspected the horse, and although maybe a little bit older than he would have liked, appeared to be a sound mount. After quickly negotiating a saddle, tack and harness into the deal, the PC paid the merchant while the assistant readied the horse. Deal completed, the PC and Humphrey raced out of town to catch up to the rest of the group.
Half a days ride later, having caught up with the party, the group continued toward their destination. A short time later, the procession was brought to a halt when Humphrey suddenly quit walking and simply stood in the road looking unhappy. The PC who had purchased the horse proudly exclaimed to the rest of the party "Aha! I bet Humphrey has an extraordinary listen skill! He must hear something." All the PC's make listen checks and much to their disgust the only sound they hear is a loud groaning and rumbling coming from Humphrey's stomach. "Ugh, I think your horse is hungry." one of the other PCs says. Greatly annoyed and somewhat embarrassed, Humphrey's owner dismounts and begins removing the bit and bridle from Humphrey's mouth. At this time he discovers that Humphrey doesn't have a tooth in his mouth (a result of an abusive previous owner). He leads Humphrey over to a patch of grass to feed, but Humphrey just stands there looking at the PCs sadly. "I don't think he can chew the grass" the halfling PC pipes up. Cursing, the PC who owns Humphrey gets back on him and the party continues on, although now, hungry, Humphrey will only move at half movement rate no matter how much "encouragement" the PC's give him.
At the next town, Humphrey's owner tries selling him, but all potential buyers are savvy enough to check the horse's mouth first. As the group is fairly low level, the PCs investment in Humphrey was the better part of his savings so he can't afford to replace him. The party later discovers that Humphrey can only eat oatmeal or gruel which becomes an inconvenience while traveling.
Later mishaps reveal that if the party hasn't stopped and prepared a hot meal of gruel or oatmeal for Humphrey at least once a day he drops to half movement and obnoxious sounds emanate from his belly (hey, he's old).
After all this inconvenience and having their location given away to enemies by the horse's digestive system on more than one occasion, Humphrey eventually gets abandoned by the roadside.
Humphrey, as any good running gag does, appears at various times throughout the party's adventures. Sometimes he's the mount of an NPC, sometimes he's stabled at an inn the group stays at, sometimes he's the source of strange sounds coming from the woods.
One day, to get me back, one of the player characters purchased Humphrey from his current owner at something like double the price the original PC bought him for. He then immediately led poor old Humphrey to a butcher shop and donated the horse to the butcher for free. He stuck around until he was sure that the butcher had "processed" Humphrey.
Humphrey had his final revenge when unknowingly the PC's were served "Humphrey meat" as they dined at the finest inn in town. The waiter, while clearing away their plates says "So, did you enjoy your meal of the finest steed? ... er.. I mean steer"
Funniest moment in recent years in my D&D campaign:
Arn, the half-ogre with an INT of 5 was finally convinced to take the knocker off the door he carried as a shield because he could never run more than a few dozen feet with the shield in his hand because he had to stop and yell: "Who is it?"
Another time (in 1982) I ran a game where the novice players all decided that iron rations were too expensive and they purchased about 2 dozen live chickens to take with them into the dungeon. Unable to afford cages, they tied the chickens in a line and pulled them along, squawking and clucking as they went.
The first combat was predictively chaotic, with squawking panicked chickens getting underfoot, feathers everywhere, etc.
The worst thing was the spawn of very bad puns that plagued that particular campaign from that point forward. We had a rule that bad puns could be punished with the offender being hit with thrown dice, a practice that subsided greatly after the first d30's came out.
Two dozen live chickens? As DM I'd be way too tempted to have some random NPC or monster fry them all at once with a breath weapon, fireball spell, etc. Or something else horribly ridiculous.
And I have been threatened by others with the throwing of dice, but I normally just remind them that I have a reflexive tendency to return any assaults in kind while hefting my d20 that is the size of a baseball. This usually results in a few comments about the point (or lack thereof) of having such a die or about how I actually spent five bucks on it.
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Ok, here's mine!
1)
In one session one of the pcs desperately wanted a magical armor, because she had a BAD AC!
After five sessions she managed to find a merchant on a caravan to a big city and she asked if he had some armor, maybe a magic one.
The merchant (well, me the DM actually), grinning, said:
"Uhhh, yes, I have a platemail +sex, wich I could sell to you!" It took her a couple of minutes to understand what he just had said and why the other players where grinning as well... (OK, in germany the number six, and the word sex is equally pronounced...)
From that moment on, one of the pcs is always searching (no matter which campaign we are playing) a magic +6(sex) magic item...
And just for the ROLEplayers out there: NO, we normally NEVER talk in character about pluses of any magic item. But it was fun to do it here.
This one just started but it leaves me with that terrible foreboding of an evolving running gag.
In a recent game, after a number of arduous sessions battling their way up through a tower filled with dire bat riding derro slavers ("the flappers") and assorted minions the party finally came face to face with the leader of the group, an acid themed savant named Causticus. They were having a bad time of it, and it was starting to look like one of them might actually end up back at the temple in town as the latest contestent on "raise that body".
But then the paladin decided to summon his "war lizard" (don't ask...) "Jonesy" (seriously, don't ask...). Since Causticus was up on a balcony, enjoying cover and cheerfully conjuring mobile acid pits to chase them around the room he wanted Jonesy to appear on the wall above Causticus and engage him in melee to cut down on the spells. Jonesy has a climb speed, but the DC of the wall was high enough that he still had to make his check (taking 10 is all well and good if 10 +your climb skill exceeds the DC of the check :)), which he promptly blew. Jonesy fell, on top of Causticus, and the excited paladin just started yelling, "He lies on him! Passive resistance, go limp! He lies on him!"
This took Causticus out of the fight and prompted the mystic theurge to say "it's raining lizards" (to which everbody else in the relieved party chorused "Halleliuiah").
:)
I fear the lizard dive bomb could become a common tactic in the game...
I fear the lizard dive bomb could become a common tactic in the game...
I had a Player who's PC Wizard (Summoner) would always summon his creatures at a point above his foes and hope for falling damage.
"Dude. You just dropped a celestial Black Bear on the Orc Shaman."
"Yeah, from 60 feet up, you should have seen the slpatter radius"
ASEO out
Hey WerePlatypus,
What about when you were playing the little scholarly wizard character and I decided it would be a good idea for your family to give you a servant to follow you around just to keep you out of trouble. The time that stands out most was when you were attempting to engage a member of the opposite sex in some ummmm negotiations, and Halpert your man servant comes running up to you saying rather loudly, "Sir, its time for your movement, you know how upset your tummy gets when you havn't had a proper movement." (that last phrase was spoken in a very bad british accent)
Nice to be remembered here though..thanks for the honors. "Nothing tastes like Doogan. hehehe"
Hey WerePlatypus,
What about when you were playing the little scholarly wizard character and I decided it would be a good idea for your family to give you a servant to follow you around just to keep you out of trouble. The time that stands out most was when you were attempting to engage a member of the opposite sex in some ummmm negotiations, and Halpert your man servant comes running up to you saying rather loudly, "Sir, its time for your movement, you know how upset your tummy gets when you havn't had a proper movement." (that last phrase was spoken in a very bad british accent)
Nice to be remembered here though..thanks for the honors. "Nothing tastes like Doogan. hehehe"
Dooogaann!!!!
What's up, buddy? Nice to see you on the boards! Chairborne Ranger left you a homage as well, as the "Dear Humaz" note was YOUR idea as well.
Here's one from Doogan, back when he lived in Indy.
I, the DM, set up this cute little conspiracy story, set in a little town with goblins and elves preparing for war? Doogan, surveys the scene, realizes that hell is about to break loose and decides to say "the heck with it. Let's go East."
They leave behind my entire adventure and traipse thorugh the wilderness six days to the North-South trade road in search of adventure, and I was on the fly . Now, whenever our party does something to thwart the plans of the Dm, we say "We going East."
Nice to see you on the boards. My new e-mail adress is weaslfish@yahoo.com. Send me something so I have yours.
Hey that whole "We go east" thing back fired on me when I took over the game on several occasions. I just remember how frustrated you where when you would say, "Ok you have been traveling for three days through these wheat fields and have found nothing. What do you do?" We would then look through our packs and see how much food we had and then when we saw that we had pleanty we woudl all chime in and say, "We go east some more!" And even when you threw in a group of bad guys to try to warn us back, what did we do? Will killed them becasue they were blocking the road East!....good times.... hehe,
Nice to hear fom you too man, And thanks to Chairbourne for the "DEER HUMANZ" props... My e-mail is kerrick@insightbb.com
I have, in my current campaign, a player with a compulsive liar character. The character also has a very low(negative bonus) wisdom score. He "believes" he's a polymorphed red dragon, but forgot how to return to form. The character prays to Tiamat sometimes, and sometimes I do stuff with it(flam spurt from the ground 1d4)sometimes not. Once he told other PC's that an empty room he'd explored had invisible potions in it... Needless to say, I put invisible potions there when the others went to look.
There's other stuff... but it's too late to write more...
later
In my currently suspended Age of Worms game, Moose the gnome Wizard recently acquired the spell Explosive Runes. So the party contrived to carry around a note with explosive runes cast on it that said," WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME CHECK YES OR NO." So far, no takers. Poor fellas.
In a previous Eberron campaign where we were running through "Shadows of the Last War", my friend Sean's warforged barbarian with a 9 Intelligence and 6 Charisma decided to try his luck at Gathering Information in Rhukaan Draal while looking for Failin. Basicially, he walked around the marketplace shouting,"FAILIN! FAILIN!" because he had no ranks in the skill. He rolled really high, though, so one of the goblins tapped him on the shoulder and pointed him in the right direction. After that, he was known as "Padlock"; like Matlock, only metal.
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This is more of a running gag in my group more than any campain.
Basically during one of the first adventures I ran with my group, one of the party's rangers managed to obtain a mithral shirt. One of the other players made the comment
"You look real good in that Gay shiny Shirt" And so mithral shirts have been stuck with the moniker of gay shiny shirt ever since.
A couple of others.
"The Miget zaps you for (insert random offence by a stupid player here)"
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OK where do I begin? OK recent running gags first:-
The pyromaniac wizard in our party likes throughing fireballs around. Thankfully after a nasty miss aimed fireball incident he calls out "Broken Arrow!" before lobbing one down a corridor. Yeah named after the movie of the same name.
"Ah! Cobras!" from the Simpson epsiode is a common catch cry but ius usually changed to "Ah! Ninjas!" or "Ah! Vampires!" or "Ah! Dragons!"
We used to have a player who would cry out "Roll for it!" and roll a d20 the moment I described treasure found after defeating monsters. Didn't matter if all the items were better off in the hands of other party members, he always had to get something magical out of the treasure. After he retired from gaming the players would discuss who would get what item. Funny that.
My current game has a human fighter and a half-elf rogue in it. Her character is a city girl, and she was following the fighter one day thru the forest as he was heading for his "special place." She rolled massively crappy on her Move Silently check. (Lucky for her he rolled even worse on his listen check.) So, with the movie Crocadile Dundee in mind, I had her muttering as she stumbled through the bush after a whistling, totally oblivious fighter; "Damn, I hate the bush!" For some reason we found this hilarious and now all I have to do is mention "I hate the bush." and everyone looks at her and gets the giggles.
Our Running gags are "My monocle!" and "just like Steve."
Story: My friend and I both DM with a group of people. I DM one group where he's a player, and he DMs a different group. One day, I went to his house to find them playing D&D. He invited me to join, and gave me one of his characters from another campaign: A vain, slightly insane halfling rogue named Eldon.
In a tavern, Eldon decided two things: he wanted to rob some people and he hated that table of goblins. One natural one later, a barfight is on. Rather than be sane about this, Eldon decides to "take care of" a table of mercs that hadn't even moved yet. He flung a bottle of high proof alcohol at a torch on the wall next to them. Two mercs were set on fire by this deranged move. However, another merc, who had had about five too many, took the resulting confusion to attempt to strangle another merc that he had argued with earlier that day.
Eldon, seizing an opportunity, ran tha drunkard through, and helped up the other merc, announcing "They've gone mad, stick with me and we'll get out of this safe and rich." Natural 20. Eldon now had a 3rd level cohort, named Steve. Eldon proceeded to convince everyone on the upper story that orcs had attacked, and set the tavern on fire, and that they needed to jump out to safety. The last guy seemed skeptical, so Eldon had Steve push him out the window. Where he landed on a half-orc. Carrying a sword. One riot later, we left the town carrying stolen goods, including a diamond quote "the size of a halfling's eye." Eldon announced that he would have the diamond cut into a monocle, to help his 'dashing figure'.
Eldon was later examining a map while being carried 100 ft in the air by a pheolarch (phoenix man) with wings of flying:
P:OK, now which way is it to the dragon's lair?
E: Well, we only need to fly another 3 hours in a southwe-MY MONOCLE! (fumbles hand gestures like catching something) Oh, whoa, that was lucky.
Later, the fight versus the Blue Dragon was in full swing, with even Steve, now 5th level despite Eldon's many attempts to needlessly sacrifice him, fighting well, when.
DM: "A natural 1, Eldon? Well, your attack goes wild, cutting your new monocle chain, sending it spinning across the room, into the dragon's mouth."
E: "I follow it."
DM: (confused) "You..."
E: "I climb down the dragon's throat. Is that a grapple check?"
DM: "Umm, sure."
Following my mad 'attack', Stev tried to follow me down to help. He went down the dragon's windpipe, and was incinerated by lightning. I rescued the monocle, and we all left richer and more amused
Started SCAP recently and one of the players had to show up late. So we started without him.
* S P O I L E R S*
The adventure began with the obligatory cry for help, the Paladin of the Silver Flame steps into the alley and yells: "Cease and Desist at once!" Followed closely by the halfling on the other side of the alley saying: "Cease and desist that!"
Sure enough this is funny enough. The Paladin crits (first attack of the game btw), cleaving the thug in twain, and says: "I warned you to cease and desist."
Adventure continues and the last player shows up, and introduces himself with: "Greetings fleshbags, I am Cornelius, Warforged Artificer."
Adventure continues and the PCs discover the elevator with hobgobs in who are about to pull the lever to go down, and with no prior knowledge the Warforged yells: "Cease and Desist at once!" Again the many LOLs.
When the party encounters the Ogre below the Archivist gets a brilliant plan, she casts command: "Cease and Desist Fleshbag!" She yells. Informing her she can only give a one word command she looks crestfallen. She perks up when she realises the Ogre is flanked and she yells: "Flee!"
Diced Ogre.
The PCs are doing their best to be Good Aligned or at least talk first and fight later, but the only thing they are capable of thinking of to make people stop being naughty is: "Cease and Desist!"
*/ S P O I L E R S*
In the recently started campaign which I DM, we have already managed to come up with several Running Gags.
The over-cautious rogue, upon encountering anything which could possibly contain a trap, will stop, take 20 on Search, Spot, knowledge (every single knowledge category), before proceeding to tap it with a ten-foot pole. He will then ask me whether he finds anything.
"James!" I will reply, "It's a friggin' door! The other patrons of the inn are looking at you with expressions ranging from pity to bewilderment as you frantically tap the front door with your ten-foot pole." He will then say: "Fine, I open the door." It is at this point that I will say that he either:
a) Is killed by a poison trap, or
b) Steps through into another dimension which is haunted by the ghosts of all the monsters he's killed over the course of the adventure, or finally
c) All of the above.
(For those out there who think I'm a horrible DM, both a), b)and c) are jokes and don't actually happen. Otherwise I'd have to look for a new group of players to DM).
The other thing which happens also involves this penny-pinching (or should it be copper piece-pinching?) rogue. Upon entering any room which could feasibly contain anything remotely bearing the slightest resemblance to treasure (I.E: any room) he will proceed to take multiple Search checks (he also has maxed out his Search skill). After each roll he will ask me whether he has found anything, just like this:
*ROLL*
Rogue: 23! Do I find anything!
DM: No.
*ROLL*
Rogue: 30! C'mon I must have found something by now!
DM: No.
*ROLL*
Rogue: 32! Hah!
DM: James, for DM's sake! You find a little crappy copper piece that will require cleaning before being accepted as currency, and even then most shopkeepers will be offput by the Goblin swearwords which cover one side!
Rogue: Cool! (Carefully writes down "1 CP- requires cleaning" on his character sheet).
a game i played in back in the (mumble mumbles a decade name) had a very strange DM whose style i considered kind of hit or miss, more often than not. We were using the Greyhawk world campaign map, but i was never sure if he ever read any of the Greyhawk materials. We were in Greyhawk City, and a considerable amount of mischief ended up with a building collapsing after several incidents involving paint, raw eggs, and beer being poured in various combinations over members of the party. So the dust from the collapsing building forms a powder on top of the assorted oddments we are coated in, and at this point, the town guard rounds a corner.
Two of us, still caught up in the silliness that led to all the destruction, pointed up the street and yelled, "They went that way, if you hurry you can catch them!"
This was second edition, no diplomacy skills in place in this campaign, but the DM assigned some sort of calculation on our ability to bluff our way through this one, and the guards believed our sketchy description of a red clad gnome with eight midget mooses pulling his cart through the city streets, blasting with a wand of wonder at random buildings.
To cover our tracks, we spread word of the madman Santa Gnome in every town we went to from that point until we started hearing other legends being spread in addition to our own stories.
In the very first game I ever ran, we played the Sunless Citadel, I fleshed out the little hamlet and added some more rounded npc's for the players to interact with.
One npc was the typical blonde haired-blue eyed busty barmaid cliché every campaign has to have and her name was 'Dawn'. The Uthgardt barbarian had his way with her in the barn.
To this day the players often mention having to 'get up at the crack of dawn' or umpteen other things involving risque use of the word 'dawn', apparently it never-ever gets old either... ;)
That barbarian is level 20 now, and a few years have passed in game-time. Maybe Dawn should come looking for him and show up with the triplets?