Best one-liner that made the whole table laugh?


Gamer Life General Discussion

101 to 150 of 1,885 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | next > last >>

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber

Over the decades I have had to wipe the tears from my eyes on many occasions, however Shackled City led to some of the best one liners I can recall in a long time, including:

1/2 Orc fighter, upon hearing that there may be a couple of demon princes in their future - "Guys, if we're going up against two demon princes, I'm going to need a bigger sword."

Same 1/2 orc, as the party explore the Demonscar - "Come on guys - who's trap the second door?"

The party's cleric, just before they head to Occipitus - "So. We're going where demons fear to tread."

And my all time favourite, the cleric once again as the party plan their journey into Kurran Kural - "Well, if we're talking half-arsed plans that haven't got any chance of success, how about this one?"

Reggie.


10 people marked this as a favorite.

So, we're currently in Tian Xia and the only ones that can speak the language are whoever has Tongues activated, usually the sorcerer with his gigantic bluff score and the rogue, who has high diplomacy.
One time, after infiltrating a ninja stronghold we find a small prison filled mostly with peasants and at least one cleric (we needed healing). The sorcerer, still invisible from the fight, decided to impress the peasants buy summoning a horse and talking as if the horse was talking. Roll bluff, natural 20. The peasants decide that "the minor forest god of horses" has come to save them. The sorcerer then decides to reappear and declare himself "The mighty rider of the minor forest god of horses". Bluff again, natural 20 AGAIN. The DM then says:
"After you let them go, the peasants spread the word of how 'the mighty rider of the minor forest god of horses' and his minions saved them. Together with the clerics you converted, now a small region of Tian Xia worships you. You gain a god point. Get twenty and you become a god"

Writing it out it just sounds weird, but at the table we couldn't stop laughing.


8 people marked this as a favorite.

I was DMing for a group that included my teenage son and some of his friends. The party had been exploring a temple and were moving from room to room as quietly and quickly as they could. They realized that they had been discovered and so made plans to make a stand in a large sleeping room with a small closet for clerical robes. Their plan was to have everyone hide under beds, and my son, a halfling ranger with a magical fire damage bow, hid in the closet.

When the evil, lizardfolk clerics came into the room my son announced
"I come out of the closet with my flaming bow"

(When you say that out loud there is more than one way to take the last word, if you know what I mean.)

The session had to be ended before we fought the battle, no one could stop laughing.


15 people marked this as a favorite.

So, last night. The PC's are coming downstairs to meet with the innkeepers daughter in order to learn what she knows about the strange goings-on in town. Middle of the night, they head out into the common room, and hear the sounds of a struggle, and a muffled cry from the back of the inn.

Bursting into the back yard of the inn, they find the girl, dead. Throat ripped open, blood everywhere, a stab wound in her belly. The chickens in the coop nearby are in a tizzy.

The Gnome Alchemist (who acts like a 1950's TV Science Teacher) says with a firm conviction:

"One of these chickens is a MURDERER!"


16 people marked this as a favorite.

After capturing the indestructable BBEG (champs game) we struggled what to do with him.
Toxic: "Put him in the sun."
GM (laughing): "he's not a vampire, putting him in the sun won't kill him."
Toxic: "Not the sunlight. In THE sun" and pointed overhead.


6 people marked this as a favorite.

Just last session:

Shackled City, at the beginning of Foundation of Flame when the PCs meet the nobles to determine what's best for the city and maybe a new form of government. One player has, for months now, been actively working up their reputation and has been working at hobnobbing with all the nobles for a while (and, due to a successful business, is well on his way to becoming a Merchant Noble of Cauldron himself).

As the PCs enter the City Hall meeting, out of the blue said player:
- puts on "The Imperial March"
- announces "I am dissolving your puny senate."

Everyone's on the floor.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

#1 - Traveller: The New Era

The party has landed on a planet in the hopes of a cold recovery mission, winding up in collusion with not only one, but two enemy groups (both Virus and the Guild) and would up misstarting a fusion reactor that lead to the planet, otherwise a treasure trove of lost technology, being turned into a burnt out cinder.

After a narrow escape, there is a long pause, as the party contemplates everything that went wrong. Finally, the self-appointed captain speaks up:

Captain: Erase the logs. We were never here.

This being Traveller, it became something of a refrain whenever the party would end up in a potentially morally compromising situation.

#2 - Changeling

Character A and Character B have an on-again, off-again romance. Character B, in order to get 'vital information,' seduces an NPC.

B [beginning to seethe]: Can I cast {curse} on {the NPC}?

ST: Sure.

Character B crits. ST says nothing. Character A returns, smiling, with the information. About ten minutes pass.

B: Uh, what about my curse? Did nothing happen? I got a critical success?

ST: Oh, you'll find out...in about 9 months.

Shadow Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

"Be Careful...don't step in the Dwarf"

After a battle where a Dwarf NPC companion was killed by the acid spittle of a giant slug.

Shadow Lodge

4 people marked this as a favorite.

The party is sitting around the table at the tavern when the rival adventuring group arrives to mock the upstart group that has muscled into their territory.

After some back and forth insults, the leader brags about having exterminated the local kobold warren. The party paladin laughs and launches into a scathing tirade back at them, starting off with this gem.

"Oh, kobolds! Terrifying creatures, seven of them could easily gnaw your kneecap off!"

Liberty's Edge

10 people marked this as a favorite.

A *long* time ago I was playing in an DnD 2nd Ed game where the DM let me create my own god for my character to be a cleric to. So, my character became the cleric to the "God of Jesters". In the course of adventuring my character did some things that while they weren't technically one liners, were nevertheless things that I thought was funny. Our characters were all rather low level.

1) The party was in a city when a large beast of burden lost it and just started running around berserk. It was a high enough level animal that it was a threat to the party, as well as to the innocent people who just happened to be in the area at the time. The fighter tried to hit it with his battleaxe and missed. My character walked up to it and hit it with the touch spell, "Feign Death". The beast collapsed. My character said, "See, that's how it's done."

2) While traveling through the countryside we stopped at an inn. The serving girl comes up to my character and asks if I would like to order anything. My character replies, "No thanks, I brought my own." He then went on to create enough food and drink to feed several people.

3) We spent the night at the inn. During the night the party was attacked by rats. It wasn't a serious encounter and we bested the rats easily. But it was an annoying encounter of the sort the party felt they shouldn't have had to deal with. Come the morning the party went downstairs to berate the innkeeper and demand their money back because of the rats they had to kill. The dead rats were brought along as proof of our complaint. The Innkeeper refused to pay us back and obviously didn't intend to budge on the issue.

My character said, "Ok, I'll bring the rats back to life then." My character then lays the rats out on a table and starts making weird mystical signs on the table using a piece of chalk. The DM says to me, "Your character can't resurrect the dead." My out of character response to the DM was, "You know that, I know that, but the Innkeeper doesn't know that." The party got its money back.

4) Last one, I swear. :-) The party had stopped for the night at another inn, and my character had got royally drunk. Come the morning he was abysmally hung over. And the rooster in the barnyard started crowing. My character's response was to get up, stagger to the window, cast "silence" on the rooster and then collapse back into bed. The DM then did an impression of the rooster trying to do his morning crowing routine without making any noise and getting confused. The entire table cracked up.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

My RotRL party had just captured a minor villain and were interrogating their prisoner. He mentioned not fearing death for his love would raise him from the dead should he fall so the party could do their worst, but his lips would remained sealed. Trying to convince the man to talk the group's sorcerer inquired: "What if you misunderstood what she meant, and should you fail she will raise you as an undead monstrosity, something I'm given to understand evil priestess favor doing?" The resident barbarian princess (loosely based off of Xena) followed up with the comment: "Yeah! And you don't want to be made into an undead do you? Then your junk would fall off!" Looking her straight in the eye their overconfidant captive casual asked: "Is that what happened to yours?"

Then he ate a fist.

Having gained 8 levels since then, the joke still persists in the party.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Back in an AD&D game our group just had our a**es thoroughly handed to us. We won, but only because of our Cleric/Mages copious use of healing magic which consisted primarily of touch spells. Our fighter type who had more than half his hit points due to the aforementioned copious healing. Fighter started berating the Cleric because he felt he should be healed further "just in case."

Cleric looked him dead in the eye and said, "sure. Cmon over and I'll take care of it."

Fighter comes over. Cleric/Mage casts a spell and touches the Fighter. Cleric/Mage player says Take 20 points of damage.

Fighter asks "What did you do?"

Cleric/Mage, "Shocking grasp. You want some more?"

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
KenderKin wrote:

Back in 2ed, our group was drugged by an evil inn-keeper. We each awoke bound in leather shackles to the bed both hands and feet.

A guiteen was set above each of us, and in our hand was a cord, there were cords all over the place. A note said that we could pull the rope or let go of the rope, one action would release the shackles the other would drop the blade.....

My druid promptly turned into a monkey and went to rescue the fighter type. Not bothering to change form he starts towards the fighter, who blurts out....

"Hey don't monkey with that!"

I remember it being funnier...... ;)

You DM must have visited Port Blacksand at some point. ;-)

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

This past sunday, our bard was hit with a Disintegrate spell. Surviving he stands and casts Haste on his next action. This brings some more unpleasant attention from the bad guys mooks. As he falls he says, "5 hitpoints is no time to start chanting"


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Three Greater Fire Elementals and an Efretti surround me(the paladin) and the barbarian. The cleric of Sarenrae asks. "If I cast a Fireball, will it just make things worse?" We died laughing (okay we managed to survive).

Liberty's Edge

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Oh [player name]'s not gonna be here for a few minute's. No worries, he's stoned anyway.

He was petrified the last game and there will be some time before it can be removed.


Was running Against the Giants in the Fire Giant main hall where the party was attempting diplomacy with Snurre.
After pondering, Snurre says to the party, "I have to see what the stones have to say." (re: divination stones)
His shrewish wife says, "YOUR STONES HAVEN'T SPOKEN IN YEARS!"
All my players had to throw up their hands to signal "Out of Character" as they burst into laughter.
(Laughing in character would have been very, very messy.)
The King & Queen proceeded to have a 'Honeymooners' style argument (making issues more volatile, but also more hilarious) and none of the players could maintain themselves enough to act in character and bring peace to the situation.
The players had to call 'Time Out'.
Good times...
JMK


8 people marked this as a favorite.

My players were dismayed at fighting an ancient white dragon. They were afraid of ending up in its "Blizzard-lizard wizard gizzard."

Sczarni RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

14 people marked this as a favorite.

After killing a dragon, a barbarian ripped out its heart and took a huge bite from it.

"I feel its strength flowing through my pores!"

"I am pretty sure that is salmonella you are feeling, not power."


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Evil Lincoln wrote:
My players were dismayed at fighting an ancient white dragon. They were afraid of ending up in its "Blizzard-lizard wizard gizzard."

Evidently my friend had made a parallel joke pertaining to Skyrim, which lead to me being able to utter the sentence:

"Your joke was about a blizzard-wizard's lizard gizzard. Mine was about a blizzard-lizard's wizard gizzard. Totally different."

It's a strange week that can generate that particular rhyme scheme twice in two totally different scenarios.

The Exchange

3 people marked this as a favorite.

I have a player who flaunts his characters bisexuality to an almost disturbing degree. When he was absent one week I jokingly informed the players that he had found a couple of guards that he thought he could have a good time with and would catch up with everyone later.

In the next session when he was present, a cook, making a fairly substandard cooking check on his roll, served up something that I described as 'Not entirely enticing.'

The player of the bisexual character informed me that he didn't care about the quality.

The other players and I tried to tell him that the food probably wasn't going to be all too great.

He replied with 'Yeah, well, its better than what those guards were feeding me last night.'

Laughter ensued.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Another one from the mod as the one above.

(As a note, this situation was all my fault)

Tomb of the Iron Medusa:

The cleric had been dusted (destruction failed the save), the paladin (me) had been flanked, grappled, and impaled by Barbed Devils, then failed a fort save and turned to stone after getting free (by waiting until the other party members had killed the devils after failing to break the grapple). One of our archers had been caught behind a blade barrier with the barbarian, the fighter, and me, and had failed a fort save and was turned to stone. The barbarian was flying and raging right in the face the medusa we were fighting and had failed a will save and was now confused.

The remaining archer and the fighter were getting ready to book it and we had a 1 in 4 chance of even having a prayer of surviving the encounter.

The Dice Gods smiled on us as the GM rolled the d% and the barbarian got to act normally.

"I want you to remember these two words!" the barbarian prepares to roll for a power attack. Standing tall, proud, defiant, even.

The GM smiles at him and says.
"Fort save."

The barbarian falters and proceeds to roll a nat 1 on the save.

He missed it by one.

So he turns to stone and crashes into the pool below. Needless to say that was the crowning moment of the night.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

In a Shadowrun game.

Trog : Troll Street Ganger
Everyone Else : Street Smurai, Rigger, Rigger, (one drone, one vehicle), physical adept, mage

The crew are hiding out in an old gas station, protecting a ganger friend of Trog's from a rival gang. It's outside either gangs territory, so they feel relatively safe.

2AM, the drone rigger see's a bunch of gangers pulling up on motorcycles a block away. A firefight ensues with the front of the building getting shot to H***. Halfway through the fight, Trog starts thinking.

Trog : Hey, I look out the back window.
GM (ME) : There's no back window where you are, you're in the parts supply room, nothing but cinderblock walls.
Trog : Ok, I punch a hole in the wall and look outside.
GM : You punch a hole in the wall, looking out, you see two orc gangers getting ready to toss a dwarf ganger over the back fence.
Trog : *Shoving his automatic grenade launcher through the hole* PULL!


3 people marked this as a favorite.

End of my weekly game session, less than five hours ago. Low level group, just having spent an evening battling their way through the kobolds of the lower levels in The Crown of the Kobold King Module. They've literally fought the kobolds down to the last of the myrmidons, as a DM I've got one chance to at least go down with dignity as they have been butchering my kobolds left and right through out this entire adventure. So, I stand up from my seat, put on the drama voice, and announce that my final warrior, surveying the room, his fallen comrades, the advancing party of adventurers, would not beg, nor would he run. He proudly puffed up his chest, took one last breath, steeled his jaw...and rolled a 1.....yeah...crowning moment, everything else was forgotten from the entire evening, thought my players were going to piss themselves laughing at my big bad kobold and his final act of defiance...didn't help matters that the paladin rolled a natural 20 to finish off my defiant little lizard...ah well, sometimes the dice love ya, sometimes they just want to amuse.


AdamWarnock wrote:

The barbarian falters and proceeds to roll a nat 1 on the save.

He missed it by one.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a natural 1 a failure on a save regardless of the actual result?

Shadow Lodge

Well, if he passes his saves on a two, he still missed it by one. :)

Dark Archive

From our gnome bard with two broken legs as his friends are fleeing a boulder falling down stairs . Indiana Jones sty;e . "I 'll save you with my mouth" Everyone just looked at him and burst out laughing.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Back in the days of 3.5, I was playing a dwarven ranger who enjoyed guns and explosives. During a harrowing battle, he drew twin flintlock pistols and shot at one of the bad guys a short distance away. The DM narrated the event thusly, "Phaeban's hot iron balls fly through the -" [cut off by roars of laughter]


10 people marked this as a favorite.

I was running a Star Wars game. Using GURPS for it, since at the time d20 SW hadn't come out, and d6 was out of print. Worked pretty well actually.

So it was set during the movie periods (episodes 3/4/5). The players were told they could play whatever they wanted, they decided they wanted to be smuggler types.

I had the following :
1 Jedi Battlemaster type human
1 overmuscled and underbrained Togrian
1 Force Using Albino Jawa (he wore a white robe instead of orange)
1 Force Using crystal in an android body

So of the four players, 3 decided to be force users. Then, they proceeded to go from planet to planet in Imperial territory and use their force powers as often as they could. The Jawa would use his to drive the vehicles they rented on every planet. The Battlemaster would use them to fight 'evil doers'. And the crystal would use them to access information nets.

About 3 months into the game (meeting every week) they got hired by this guy to take him and some exotic animals and his 15yo daughter from one planet to another, he was helping supply a zoo there.

In deep space, the guy tried to assassinate the Togrian using force powers, really tore his leg up bad, and almost killed him before the Battlemaster managed to kill him. They turned on the girl and she burst into tears, telling them how she'd been his slave for years, he'd killed her parents when she was 10, and had used her as his cover ever since, making her help him set up one group of force users after another.

The PCs were feeling pretty rotten about roughing her up at this point. They started talking amongst themselves, she'd been cooking for about 2 gaming sessions, and was doing a great job, better than any of them did (funny, nobody took cooking as a skill). So they offered her a job to stay and cook. She cried a bunch and took the job, but begged them not to kill the animals. So they agreed to find pet shops and zoos for them. She wanted to keep two as pets, and they gave in on it and let her keep two, she picked a six-legged monkeycat and a four eared four eyed bunny thing.

So, they continue on, for about 4 more months of games, and I pull the battlemaster into another room. We are gone for about an hour, and then come back and I mention to the Jawa that the port is saying that their docking fee's are being rejected by the bank. When they investigate, they find that the Battlemaster's access code was used to access the bank account, and 50K credits are gone, leaving them with a dozen credits in the account. They turn the ship upside down, but the battlemaster and all his belongings are long gone.

The other players give the player a bunch of grief over stealing all their money and running off, and all he does is shrug and say it was nothing personal, just something his character had to do. He makes a new character and they continue on. But their bad luck continues, customs inspections and being on the run from Imperial troops over and over again.

The Jawa begins to act even surlier than usual, and b%*$* about all the repairs and no money and no respect what with him keeping the bucket of bolts all together. They spend another 2-3 months on the run, things keep snowballing until they've all got 100K bounties on their heads.

Then, they finally get in touch with a rebel contact who's going to help them escape out to the rim and join the rebellion, which has just had a big victory destroying a major Imperial base called a Death Star.

They land, meet the contact while the Jawa keeps the ship hot and ready to fly away. As soon as they meet the contact, hundreds of storm troopers descend on them. As the players are looking at me with slack jaws, the Jawa's player pulls out his iPod and plugs it into a small speaker. Then Darth Vader's theme begins to play out of it as he describes the ship slowly taking off, with a Tie-Fighter escort. He stands up, strikes a pose, and looks at the other players. "You will learn to respect my Authority! For I am Darth Kenny!"

Only time I've had a game end with all the PC's utterly hosed where nobody complained a bit. Turns out the Battlemaster had been dead the whole time, they find out. The 15yo girl was actually a Sith Apprentice, and the 'kidnapper' was just some schlub force user her master had tortured into a convenient puppet to give her a cover story while she proved herself and passed from apprentice to Master.

Her new Apprentice? The Jawa. Her master? The 6 legged monkeycat which was actually an alien sith force user. :)


15 people marked this as a favorite.

This quote happened tonight. The party was trying to rescue a group of slaves, and one of the players came up with a plan.

Player: "Will the halfling fit inside the bear suit with me?"

After I answered yes, the player uttered my favorite quote of the campaign:

"Alright guys, things are gonna get weird."

Silver Crusade

4 people marked this as a favorite.

Druid: "I throw my badger at her."

Do you really need the context?


I have been imagining my players uttering these assorted phrases, and it has given no end of delight and amusement.

For many of them, one or two players spring to mind as being most likely to utter one of these, but THIS one...

UltimaGabe wrote:
"Alright guys, thing are gonna get weird."

I can imagine any of my players saying that, and it's hilarious any which way I imagine it.

This thread is superawesome.


We were attempting to pass ourselves off as minor nobles attending the opera in Taldor. My sorcerer and a couple of others were dressed as nobility while others in the party were our "servants".

I was giving the druid in our group a hard time about being my "handmaiden". It was ruffling her feathers, as it were, so she was ignoring me and asked the DM if she could get her animal companion into the opera.

The DM suggested she hide it under her cloak, though it may make a noticeable "bulge".

So I immediately started to refer to her as my hunchbacked handmaiden. :-D


13 people marked this as a favorite.

At character creation, i had a guy who created a half elf, and another who created a half orc. without them knowing it, they both put down sandpoint as their birth place, and that their mom was a whore who put out to whomever had coin. So at the next meeting i said:

guys, meet your half brother

hence, the half orc and half elf are brothers?!?!?!?!


5 people marked this as a favorite.

Dewn mou'tain, that is gold!

Fellow player: sorry I'm late, I'm dating this deaf chick.

Group seems puzzled, but I knew about it.

Me: have you asked her if she is interested in gaming?

Fellow: yeah she might fit in with this party actually. She kills online, she doesn't give a s%+#, Cold. The online gamers cry and plead when she plays.

Me: so you're saying, she is deaf to their pleas for mercy?

Fellow: *pause* That's right. *Laughter*


1 person marked this as a favorite.

We were playing a PFS scenario where we had to attend an opera. As we're sitting there watching, I roll a d20 and casually mention that my fighter failed his will save to stay awake.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Rise of the Runelords, the party are trying to escape the goblin stronghold. The cleric of the drunk god, has got drunk in a boat. Very drunk, passed out drunk, blessed be!

We carry the boat across a bridge, high up above the beach.

The bridge breaks. Boat falls, shatters on the shore, cleric lands hard, impaled, rolls into the water and expires.

Cleric player: what no reflex save?
DM: you were drunk and unconscious.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

From Saturday's session:

The Alchemist remains our source of game-stopping humor (remember, he's playing a Gnome version of a 1950's Black and White Monster Movie Scientist type - Father-figurely, pipe-smoking, prim and proper):

"So... what you're saying is..." *pokes at the corpse* "Is that he's dead?"

(Later)

"Ah, fire. Is there anything it can't burn?" (Party member says "Well, it can't burn itself!")

"Well, you'd like to THINK that, wouldn't you? BUT NO!"


41 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

We were playing in my friend's comedic setting, and a new girl joined as a halfling sorcerer. The GM was using the random encounter table, and he had a knack for rolling a vampire encounter during the day. He doesn't ever reroll encounters if they aren't too high of a CR for the party, he goes with it and accepts the natural consequences. The first time, he said a vampire jumps from the bushes... and immediately explodes because it's daytime, end of encounter. We all laughed hard. The second time, we got a chuckle, but the third time, he states a vampire jumps from the bushes, and we said, "yeah yeah, and he explodes." He corrects us, "no, make fort saves, those who fail are blinded for 1d4 rounds by his radiant sparkling caused by the sun." He points to the nearest girl, a fighter, "he professes his love for you, but says you must stay away from him because he is a horrible monster. Pass a will save or become angsty!"

A Twilight vampire.

So the new girl looks through her spell list, checks the Core Rulebook, grins, and says, "I cast erase!"

The GM says, "OK. Why?"

She points to the rulebook and says,"It says here that it removes mundane writing!"

We all roflmao'ed and the GM ruled in her favor, killing the vampire.


DungeonmasterCal wrote:

This was in a d20 Call of Cthulhu game set in the days just before the entry of Great Britain into World War II. The PCs were trapped on a freighter where the entire crew had been slaughtered by ravaging reptile creatures. We (the PCs) had been herded toward the bow of the boat, and it was looking like we either fight or jump when a German U-boat surfaced. One of the PC's shouted, "It's the Nazis! We're saved!"

Good times

And did the Germans pick up the party? In the war they often helped those they sunk. No joke.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Josh M. wrote:
R. Doyle wrote:

So we ran away.

From mist.

And the DM took a pile of papers from behind his screen and promptly threw them over his shoulder.

I've been this DM more times than I care to remember. If the players aren't interested in the adventure/plot hook presented they can say so. Running screaming away from something the DM took time to craft especially for the players is bad play, and borderline insulting. I've ended campaigns over similar circumstances.

at the risk of making someone out there angry

i dont see it as bad play, nor insulting. i see it as a PC exercising their ability to "do anything". It keeps me on my toes because, yes i do design the adventures, but i dont railroad the PC's on anything. If they want to run from an encounter, fine. i can easily adapt it for another day. Or i can adapt the circumstances to have long ranging consequences. Right now i have a group that decided to skip investigating the country side where people are dying, and instead went to Magnimar and got on a ship for hollow mountain. Depending on how long they are away, they may come back to sandpoint a ruin, brought upon by the ghouls they failed to capture and erradicate. I didnt end the campaign, i dont find it insulting, if anything, i found it great because the group is deciding to explore some of their background stories/quests.
I know, to each their own, but from my POV, any and all RPG's are designed around the concept of players having free reign over their actions, including avoiding an encounter.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
DEWN MOU'TAIN wrote:
Josh M. wrote:
R. Doyle wrote:

So we ran away.

From mist.

And the DM took a pile of papers from behind his screen and promptly threw them over his shoulder.

I've been this DM more times than I care to remember. If the players aren't interested in the adventure/plot hook presented they can say so. Running screaming away from something the DM took time to craft especially for the players is bad play, and borderline insulting. I've ended campaigns over similar circumstances.

at the risk of making someone out there angry

i dont see it as bad play, nor insulting. i see it as a PC exercising their ability to "do anything". It keeps me on my toes because, yes i do design the adventures, but i dont railroad the PC's on anything. If they want to run from an encounter, fine. i can easily adapt it for another day. Or i can adapt the circumstances to have long ranging consequences. Right now i have a group that decided to skip investigating the country side where people are dying, and instead went to Magnimar and got on a ship for hollow mountain. Depending on how long they are away, they may come back to sandpoint a ruin, brought upon by the ghouls they failed to capture and erradicate. I didnt end the campaign, i dont find it insulting, if anything, i found it great because the group is deciding to explore some of their background stories/quests.
I know, to each their own, but from my POV, any and all RPG's are designed around the concept of players having free reign over their actions, including avoiding an encounter.

I tend to agree. The free form nature of the world and character's actions are one of the reasons to play RPGs instead of video games. The players don't have to do anything. But I also like the idea of consequences for skipping one course of action over another.


We are in so much agreement fromper and dewn, it is not funny.

Some dms find this strange, I just go with it as a dm. The bending willow, the calm cup of tea untroubled by the world. Give them options, move, adapt. The counter opinion, the railroader actually usually are the dms that prepare the most. It just has to go the way they prepare. They know the story, the outcomes, where everything is. I prefer some prep and a whole lot of possibility.

A dm I talked to in person last year ended the game because the players didn't go to the dungeon. They wanted to fap about in town and pursue individual objectives and a bit of fun. That is just a bit sad.

The lack of choice is why computer games never quite match up as storytelling devices, as good as they are in some areas. I am reminded of a moment in dragon age, where my leader character was challenged for leadership by the party barb equivalent. You couldn't say, sure buddy, you seem like Conan, you lead. Got some good ideas, I'm just some wayfarer swordsman. No, you had to beat the s$!@ out of the party member, and if you didn't, he killed you. No joke.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Evil PCs, one is an elf sorceror, level 6. He starts hitting o a bar maid, next we know they're going upstairs. At the end of the encounter, the sorceror fired a lightning bolt out of his "Wand". The lady was killed, and a hole got blasted through the floor so everyone could see. Fighter looks at the sorceror dead in the eyes, completely serious, and says "so I guess there was a spark?". It took a while for play to resume.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

This one just happened.

So, we are playing a Star Wars game and got sent to find a Jedi holocrom in an old set of ruins. Trying toget through a web filled hallway by burning through it with his lightsaber. Needless to say we are soon trying to survive a flood of burning spider, each the size of dinner plates.

Two rounds after failing to use a fire extinguisher and the Jedi taking a turn to get ready to grab it from me, I succeed on the roll to use it(just to spite him, I said). I look at the player with a straight face.

"Normal person mind trick."


*off-topic rant*

Spoiler:

DEWN MOU'TAIN wrote:
Josh M. wrote:
R. Doyle wrote:

So we ran away.

From mist.

And the DM took a pile of papers from behind his screen and promptly threw them over his shoulder.

I've been this DM more times than I care to remember. If the players aren't interested in the adventure/plot hook presented they can say so. Running screaming away from something the DM took time to craft especially for the players is bad play, and borderline insulting. I've ended campaigns over similar circumstances.

at the risk of making someone out there angry

i dont see it as bad play, nor insulting. i see it as a PC exercising their ability to "do anything". It keeps me on my toes because, yes i do design the adventures, but i dont railroad the PC's on anything. If they want to run from an encounter, fine. i can easily adapt it for another day. Or i can adapt the circumstances to have long ranging consequences. Right now i have a group that decided to skip investigating the country side where people are dying, and instead went to Magnimar and got on a ship for hollow mountain. Depending on how long they are away, they may come back to sandpoint a ruin, brought upon by the ghouls they failed to capture and erradicate. I didnt end the campaign, i dont find it insulting, if anything, i found it great because the group is deciding to explore some of their background stories/quests.
I know, to each their own, but from my POV, any and all RPG's are designed around the concept of players having free reign over their actions, including avoiding an encounter.

That's fine, avoiding an encounter, taking an alternate route, shifting direction of the campaign, all perfectly fine. Players should have the right to play their characters as they see fit.

But, that's not what I was talking about. I didn't make it clear enough, my apologies. I was talking about players who habitually, even intentionally, avoid doing anything I as a DM put together for the game session. Adventures, plot hook, story, etc. If there was something else they'd rather do, fine, I can work with that. But these same players would go completely out of their way to avoid doing anything I wrote up, but then stand around clueless as to finding somehting else in game to do. They'd give me zero input as to what they actually wanted to do in game, but shot down everything I would work on and present to them. It was like the whole avoiding adventure bit had become the game. Let's see how we can "challenge" the DM this week!

If you don't want to play the adventure I've brought to the table, that's fine. But all I'm asking is at least give me some idea of what you actually WOULD like to play. I ended the campaigns in those cases because it got to the point where we weren't even gaming. They would stand around in town and do nothing.

Stop trying to make me out as some evil, selfish, railroading DM; all I did was supply some adventures and plot hooks to my players, which they'd throw in my face.

And by the way why the necro? This post was way old, took me a minute to get back in my headspace as to what I said back then.


josh m:
ahhh... greater detail begits greater clarity. now i understand your stance on what you said, your issue was from not a one time thing, but a multitude of idiotic PCs who dont like what you prep. I can totally get your stance now. I too would do the same thing, if they, the PC, dont like what i wrote/bought for adventure, then they need to tell me what they are looking for.

why the necro, cuz im a crazy necromancer! LOL. Sorry, couldnt resist. It wasnt until after i had made the posting that i saw the date stamp, and then truely realized how old this posting is. So, i apologize for the jumping all over you for something said 6 months ago.


It's cool. Gets hard for me to convey everything without either being an unreadable wall o' text or coming off more abrasive than need be. I've told that story a few times, so retelling it I forget some details.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

best one liner from my AD&D days, actually, my first session. This needs a lead in...

i was playing an Anti-paladin to Raistlin and was with a couple of fellow evil guys, a cleric of Raistlin and a Drow Mage-follower of Raistlin. We were in Daggerdale in the Realms, and we had been charged by Raistlin himself to erradicate a cathedral of some god whose name i forget, while at the same time doing some sacrilegious act to profane the holy ground. We settled on slaughtering all the clerics and acolytes with raistlins name on our lips. (wicked, yes). Unfortunetly, we hit a snag. the only way into the cathedral, when religious services werent offered, was through a side door that the clerics used, and the only way to get in was, as we observed, placing the right hand onto a stone with a worn handprint in it from years of use.
So we figured out that we would kidnap a follower and then force them to press their hand on the door, letting us in. unfortunetly, snag #2, my anti-paladin, in an effort to force the guy to cooperate, kills him from a backhand.
so then we decided to carry him, but this would draw too much attention to us, so the Cleric decides to don the holy garments of this priest, and cuts off the guys right hand, holding it in his own.
well, we sneak up to the building and the cleric presses the hand into the spot, but instead of a door opening, we suddenly hear magical howls, and the footsoldiers appear to apprehend us.
The cleric steps up to confront the soldiers, raises his hands and says
wait! Im one of you!
it is at that moment he realizes that he is still holding the cut off limb in his hand.


Let's see, plenty of things to pull from, mostly because one of our players was rather... interesting. I'll just try to pull out the high points.

My witch in our kingmaker party had a smarmy cat named Antonio. Antonio was a galumphing sexist who really enjoyed making his witch do things. The witch was a busty red-head with a decently high charisma. I took the weather change hex, requires an hour of 'Ritual' dancing. The cat declared that the 'ritual' was pole dancing. She was pole dancing in some emergencies to create hurricanes when armies were marching down on their position, fun times.

The best recent thing I can think of was durning the Serpent's Skull campaign I ran. The party had previously defeated a giant croc so when another giant croc (undead this time) was in the adventure 5 levels later, half the party went "Whatever..." and sat down. That was when the croc won initative and ...

Spoiler:
Breathed spider swarms all over everyone causing massive damage. The entire party went "ACK! SPIDERS!" and an awesome battle ensued. "Suddenry Spiders. (Kim Jong Il accent required)" still makes people laugh.

We also have players who occasionally can't add numbers. IE: 1d4+6d6+14 damage is being rolled. GM asks for damage and the player declares "Only did 13 damage." GM replies, "Did you add all the modifiers?" Player replies that they did. GM blinks and says, "Well, ok!" and moves on. (I suspect this happens in most groups, there's always gotta be one, right?)

The best thing I can add to this list requires some setup. We were in a homebrew world and one of the players had a earth genasi as a character. He was also a prince, hunted in the land we were traveling, so he covered his face with veil, all moonlight knight style. He manages to botch an encounter with some healers/scholars after telling them he was diseased, then cursed, then something else, when they offer assistance for his malady. Well, we get the idea that he needs a disguise. We met again the next week and the whole rest of the group chatted before the player got there, the GM offered us each 1,000 bonus XP if we got that player to agree to be turned into a Female Centaur, knowing that it was a nearly impossible task. (his character is macho, eh macho wannabe) So my wife orcestrates this brilliant plan to keep the prince away from his handlers, (the other party members who would have told him no) and convinces him that not only does he need to do centaur because it's strong, but female because nobody would recognize him. He readily declared that it was a good plan, not because it was a good plan, but because she did her best to sound innocent and logical. My character UMD's a scroll and poof, he's a busty blonde Centaur. GM declared a busty blonde centaur in heat, but I digress. The prince returns in his new disguise, the entire rest of the party mocks his foolishness and cracks up. The samurai, with tears of mirth rolling down his cheeks declares, "I'm writing this down, because it will still be funny in a hundred years." The prince freaks out and gets upset, but we laughed harder at that. The GM wouldn't let him "Take it back." like the player likes to do with his bad decisions. He still blames me for UMDing the scroll, but whatever, it'll still be funny in a hundred years...

Oh yeah, we got our bonus XP!

-Tundra

(wow, reading over that makes our group sound like a bunch of 12 year olds, we're all over 30...)

101 to 150 of 1,885 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Gamer Life / General Discussion / Best one-liner that made the whole table laugh? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.