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We're going to gather the group again tonight to finally continue playing, and since its April 1st I thought I could pull a little april fools on the players.
I remember a few years ago our GM did that to our party when I was a player. He described us in a dungeon room ahead a large, bulky stone statue. While doing so he had the Monster Manual page of the stone golem lying open in front of him (subtly for us to see which page it was).
So we all assumed that there was a stone golem waiting for us (we were still too low level to deal with such a thing).
Only after a long discussion how to get around it, someone remembered that it was 1st of April and the large statue was in fact nothing more than a large statue.
I need some ideas on what to do today. I hope I can get some ideas before the game starts in approximately 6 hours.
So give me some ideas what could a GM do to fool his players, or what did you do to your players or your GM do to you?
EDIT: Ah sorry, I think this should go to the Gamer Life subforum. If a mod would be so kind to move it, I would be most grateful.
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Whatever you do, don't April Fools the party and tell them the game isn't happening. That tends to backfire.
In the vein of the monster manual idea, give the party a few potions of things they'd like to use. Stuff like haste, greater invisibility, greater heroism, oil of greater magic weapon. Then, lose your book. Get up with it, walk around, read it by the fridge and leave it there "by accident." When someone drinks the potion, ask them to give you their book-- wait, nevermind, can you just look up the poisons section for me?
When they try to continue, insist the poison section is important. What's the DC of Hemlock? Oh, yeah. I know the onset time, just checking. By the way, what's your con score?
And then never bring it up again.
Another good April Fools would be to give the party a Broom of Animated Attack. If you'd never heard of it, look it up. Then, present them with a challenge that'd be solved easily by flight. Like... "You come across a sheer rock wall as you near the end of the path to the temple. It's about thirty feet up the sheer cliff to the temple entrance, which you can see is carved into the rock wall..." and then remind them about the Broom and how easy it might be to get up there and how little time it'd take. The broom's a good joke cursed item, since it's not dangerous or a huge let down... like giving them a +5 holy speed adamantium greatsword and having it turn out to be a -5 unholy slow wooden cursed greatsword that's Chaotic Evil and can cast veil, dominate person and magic aura on itself once per day.
But different strokes for different folks.
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"You open the door to discover a hallway that is 100 feet long, the ceiling is 20 feet above you decorated with ornate tile-work. The walls are covered with depictions of dancing elves. What do you do?"
The second someone steps into the room tell them:
"You fall into a bottomless pit. Roll up your new character."
When they cry foul say:
"I didn't say anything about the floor did I?"
When finally they get really annoyed, pull out the "April Fools"
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My GM did this, once, although I don't remember if it was as an April's Fools joke or not:
We were playing in Ravenloft, and the GM made it extra hard. So much that, character after character, the whole party was wiped out. When the last one fell, the GM told us that our characters were rudely awakened and thrown out of the inn because of the disturbance.
Uh?
Turns out that the characters dreamed this adventure, to the point of yelling when they "died", and throwing spells around in their sleep. Oh, and they awakened with enough experience to reach next level.
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Have 4th Edition version of their characters ready for them, and tell them that you are switching the campaign to 4th.
See how many get up and want to leave.
<ROFL>
Have 4th Edition version of their characters ready for them, and tell them that you are switching the campaign to 4th.
See how many get up and want to leave.
<ROFL>
You, sir, are way too cruel for this world.
Have 4th Edition version of their characters ready for them, and tell them that you are switching the campaign to 4th.
See how many get up and want to leave.
<ROFL>
That's really mean, but only one of my players even knows what 4th Edition is.
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Have 4th Edition version of their characters ready for them, and tell them that you are switching the campaign to 4th.
See how many get up and want to leave.
<ROFL>
We have a winner!
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Here's an idea. Are they in a dungeon? Have them come accross a very ominous looking door. Large double stone or metal doors, heavily decorated, possibly locked or guarded. They'll probably think it's the treasury or a boss room (most probably the latest, double doors and all) and prepare accordingly, buffing to the max. When they actually get through... the room turns out to be a food reserve, stocked full of magically preserved fish.
Hey, at least they got free food out of the deal!
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<= casts animate dead on the magically preserved fish
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Here's an idea. Are they in a dungeon? Have them come accross a very ominous looking door. Large double stone or metal doors, heavily decorated, possibly locked or guarded. They'll probably think it's the treasury or a boss room (most probably the latest, double doors and all) and prepare accordingly, buffing to the max. When they actually get through... the room turns out to be a food reserve, stocked full of magically preserved fish.
Hey, at least they got free food out of the deal!
Or, as they open the door (towards them) nothing but a blank wall is behind it. (or an illusion of the wall)
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Due to some magical force from another dimension, have them all switch bodies . . . and I don't mean just switch PCs. Mix up the character sheets and hand them out randomly, and tell them they each need to roleplay their character in another character's body.
Or have eac member of the party inflicted with different combinations of blindess/deafness/invisibility.
Of jump them forward in time to D20 Modern.
Or just turn them into pixies. Or smurfs.
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This thread has a few good in-world suggestions. Warning: Potential Kingmaker spoilers.
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Due to some magical force from another dimension, have them all switch bodies . . . and I don't mean just switch PCs. Mix up the character sheets and hand them out randomly, and tell them they each need to roleplay their character in another character's body.
Or have eac member of the party inflicted with different combinations of blindess/deafness/invisibility.
Of jump them forward in time to D20 Modern.
Or just turn them into pixies. Or smurfs.
How is your avatar a smurf? Can you import outside pictures, or is this one in the avatar picture list? In both case, I did'nt see the option... O_o
*EDIT* Ooooohh.... Neat.
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When they are in town or out in the country near the town have a red dragon show up. Make sure its a least a category higher (go for that feeling of imminent doom) than appropriatte for them to be fighting.
Once they have either defeated it, or are near death the dragon fades out of existance...
A few entertainers walk up and ask the PC's to either join their performance or grumble they ruined the rehearsal. (Just a bunch of commoners/low level bards using a bunch of minor illuision creating magical items and practicing to get all the fine details for their show.)
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Due to some magical force from another dimension, have them all switch bodies . . . and I don't mean just switch PCs. Mix up the character sheets and hand them out randomly, and tell them they each need to roleplay their character in another character's body.
Or have eac member of the party inflicted with different combinations of blindess/deafness/invisibility.
Of jump them forward in time to D20 Modern.
Or just turn them into pixies. Or smurfs.
How is your avatar a smurf? Can you import outside pictures, or is this one in the avatar picture list? In both case, I did'nt see the option... O_o
*EDIT* Ooooohh.... Neat.
It happens whenever the ¨S¨ words appears in your post.
Humbly,
Yawar
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In all sorts of ways, too.
O_o
Except this one, apparently.
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Here's a great April Fool's gag to play on your players:
** spoiler omitted **
That only works if you dont use it at other times. There was a point where my players were afraid of libraries.
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But be prepared to have it backfire if any player seems keen on the idea (I know I would) :)Have 4th Edition version of their characters ready for them, and tell them that you are switching the campaign to 4th.
See how many get up and want to leave.
<ROFL>
That's when you tell them that they're still welcome in your house... APRIL FOOLS!
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Thanks for all the suggestions. The session's over and I couldnt really squeeze anything in anywhere. The session was short and not very smooth running either. On top of that only 3 of 6 players showed up.
Oh and just to see if it works after an edit too: smurf
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I did this to my payers 2 or 3 weeks ago. There was a ghost who just wanted his skull buried. So off my payers go to fight this sorcerer, run past these traps, and make a bunch of noise. The noise attracts a t-rex. They fight the dinosaur and win. Then a dragon shows up, one character gets a bit smart assed with it and gets hit for 70 ish acid damage, which killed him after the fight with the dino. My players are out of healing and just want to head back to finish the quest. The skull was placed back with the body when suddenly the ghost turned into a 12 foot tall demonthat said his power is now complete. They all say in stunned silence until one went "What?" And that is when the ghost turned back into normal and told them he was just puking their leg and passed on.
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The smurf thing itself feels like an April Fools joke. Does it work every day?
Yep. It's April Fools every day at Paizo.
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Just run Tomb of Horrors... Only fill it with Rust Monsters.
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"You stand upon a five-foot wide walkway of brick, cloudy blue sky above and distant verdant mountains beyond. A floating block hangs in the air before you, with a longer row of blocks floating behind it with yet another singular floating block above that. Some of these blocks are made of brick, some made of stone adorned with the arcane mark of mystery. Beyond the blocks, a large green metallic pipe juts from the walkway, blocking your path.
A strange mushroom-like creature slowly approaches you, malicious intent clear in its inhuman eyes. What do you do?"
One year, for April Fool's day, at the start of the session I had everyone pass their character sheet to the player on their left.
For that session, they all played each others characters. It was a laugh riot watching everyone basically play overblown caricature's of each others characters.
at the end, I revealed it was all a dream.. just so there was no lasting consequences
Just run Tomb of Horrors... Only fill it with Rust Monsters.
Three words:
Rust. Monster. Template.
The next city they arrive in, the NPCs are repeating themselves, like they only know two or three different lines.
There's a couple of guys outside the city gates, slaughtering wildlife and counting incrementally. Every so often, one of them yells "ding!"
Some of the people in the city have these strange yellow exclamation marks hovering over their heads...
The closest we ever came was not so much an April Fool gag than a post-campaign humorous compilation game.
The characters stumble upon a beach resort where all our old enemies and NPCs suddenly find themselves working there.
Be it the evil cultist working at the ice cream stand, the king turned bar owner or the that black knight (still in armor) tanning on the beach.
The plot was that in several locations a murder occurred. At first, the murder weapon was a dagger, then a hanging. Once we hit the wrench and lead pipe, we realized we were in a Clue game.
In the end, we fought the masterminds behind the murders: evil cereal monsters! A Tony the Tiger rakshasa, a Lucky Charms leprechaun; a Honeycomb stone giant (because Honeycomb's big, yeah yeah yeah!); a Count Chocula vampire; etc.
Myself, I'm planning a post-campaign fight for my Jade Regent AP where the PCs will fight their most ancient enemy that they've never met. The goblins from "We Be Goblins!", who happens to be a sort of prequel to the AP. After all, the PCs did destroy their village while these goblins were away. The goblins' level will be adjusted for an appropriately silly encounter.
What, no mythic Flumph!?Throw this guy at your PCs.
** spoiler omitted **...
They were all hunted down and killed off long ago. They tried to be friendly but kept accidentally cloudkilling everyone they approached.
Three words:
Rust. Monster. Template.
Oh, nice. This is for real, starting now.
One April Fools Day, I sent out a long email explaining that I was getting out gaming completely and that I wished my friends a long happy life.
Potions that do what they are supposed to do, but also things like make the characters skin pink or green or change the ears into donkey ears etc. are always fun.
This is a good time to use Mimics. They're the prank of monsters after all
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Is it even legal, by RAW, to cast Animate Dead on the same target more than once?