Pathfinder is great for telling stories you spend time and effort into creating, but I tend to have the most fun (as a DM and as a player) when things go completely off-track and you're required to "just roll with it". If you have any good stories of such sessions then this is the thread to share them in.
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My favorite one:
We were looking for the helm to an ancient set of magical armor (for overarching story purposes) and found it sitting at the centerpiece to a large and popular museum. We needed that helm, so we went to the front desk asking to meet with the curator of the museum. We (Myself the CG Summoner, a NG Human Rogue, and a NG Catfolk Ninja) proceeded to enter his office at the arranged time to negotiate for the helm. It wasn't going very well. While the ninja and rogue continued to
reason with him, my chaoticness kicked in and sent the entire dungeon spirialing into something even the GM didn't anticipate.
I moved out of the office and shuffled into the crowd that surrounded the helm, which itself was surrounded by a few guards. I summoned my monster eidolon and panic ensued. In the chaos I threw my (returning) earthbreaker and shattered the glass case and attempted to use Mage Hand. It didn't work. The guards rushed at my eidolon but he was already at the helm. When he tried to grab it, a weakened form of the Binding spell activated and trapped him in magic constraints. I immediately desummoned him and ran out of the museum and out of the city.
Afterward when we were all at the airship (Did I mention we had an airship? We had an airship.) and the Ninja and Rogue were pissed, I had another great idea to make up for the first. Let's tie me up and bring me to the curator as if my "friends" turning me in for being a chaotic moron and them playing the "lawful good" guys. We roughed me up good, wrapped me in a few "bloodied" bandages, "bound" my arms, and took me back to the museum.
Once in the curator's office we were unable to begin our plan before they sent someone to inform the authorities of my capture. We had to act quick, so with readied actions we bullrushed him into the wall, knocked him unconscious, and tied him up with the bandages I was previously wearing. The Ninja used his Hat of Disguise to play the role of the curator as he toured the rogue as repayment for my capture. He (the ninja in disguise as the curator) told the secretary that the ninja had stayed behind to make sure I couldn't escape.
They proceeded to approach the Helm which was now under close guard. He tried (mostly convincingly) to get access to the helm in a private room. As it turns out, the "real" helm was kept underground and the curator was the only one with the key.
Meanwhile, the authorities arrived and tried to enter the curator's office office to arrest me. I grabbed the curator and jumped through the window into the streets below. My summoner is now a wanted man being chased by the militia who is carrying an unconscious hostage as he runs down the streets playing it cool by screaming "this man needs a doctor!". (He was tied up with my "bloodied" bandages.)
The rogue and ninja then went back to his office to get the key he "forgot in his other coat". When they returned the summoner and the curator are gone, the window is broken, but by chance the key was still in his office. They quickly returned to the guards and asked them to guard the door while they descended below to the storage room. Once down there, they found themselves in a large room with rows and rows of stacked shelves full of artifacts. To make matters worse, there were numerous traps spread around that made it impossible to navigate for anyone who didn't know their location. Impossible for anyone but a Ninja and Rogue.
They climbed the nearest shelves and began to long jump from one shelf to another, barely avoiding the fall into hidden traps. They reached the back wall where a large statue stood, donning the Helm of our quest.
The Ninja jumps onto it and the DM says "roll initiative". The "statue" then proceeded to grab the ninja and slam him into the wall, into another 15 foot fall which he somehow landed. Seven lives left. They took turns full-round sneak attacking him until he collapsed. The Rogue then put the helm into his Bag of Holding.
Meanwhile, I was sneaking from alley to alley trying to get out of the city and to the airship. I was making good progress until one of the authorities approached me. I somehow passed the bluff check and the soldier quickly rushed the curator to the hospital.
The rogue and ninja then headed back passed all the traps and up the stairs into the main hall. They were in the clear until they reached the main lobby. Outside the doors stood over a dozen militia and one very angry looking curator. They bolted towards the curator's office and had no choice but jump right out the window. Luckily for them, I passed my intelligence check and I was waiting up above piloting the airship, and had dropped ropes off the sides in preperation. They somehow passed their checks to grab the ropes and we, quite literally, flew off into the sunset.
And that was supposed to be a quick 30 minute session where we go in, use diplomacy, and get the helm.
One time My pcs were in the middle of nowhere (in lastwall, on theirntoes about orcs) and they saw a damaged fort with the gate open and horses nearby. Inside we're a couple void zombies. When they entered a room inside, three half orcs (the rival party I had planned) attempt to bull rush/ overrun their way through, to scared to fight cus scared of zombies
I had originally intended for the orcs to escape and not attack the party to provide some sort of confusion in my party
Instead, it turned into a pretty funny Mexican. Stand off that ultimately ended with the half Orc witch npc cut in half, and the other two half orcs escaping on horseback.
I put a lot of thought in that witch...
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The moment when my party went and bypassed a whole dungeon with a Insistent Doorknocker...
My friend created this funhouse of a dungeon, run by a Gnome trickster. It was laden with traps and illusions of all kinds. Because the Gnome had commited some crimes and was causing trouble, the town sent us adventurers in to get him out/kill him if need be.
Before they even get inside, the party becomes annoyed by the front-lawn traps/illusions and decides that THEY SHOULD JUST BURN THE WHOLE PLACE DOWN TO GET HIM TO COME OUT. A few alchemist's fires and some torches later, the DM's awesome dungeon was circumvented, and I believe he left the room in disgust.
While we have vowed never to "burn down a mansion" again, it gets brought up every now and again. I personally make my dungeons fireproof when I run that group as well, just in case.
Several years ago, after spending months fine tuning it, I ran a homebrew rules Star Trek game. I had the whole thing set up where the crew would have to rescue the members of a missing expedition from their hostile captors. Their base was underground, so transporters wouldn't work. I expected a lot of action and heroics. Alas, my brother, playing the captain, ordered a phaser strike on the base. This opened a hole in their otherwise secure structure and the missing crew was beamed out.
20 minutes. The whole game lasted 20 minutes.
I spent two weeks building a flying dungeon. In truth, it was a dwarven airship that had been taken over by undead and some necromancers. I concocted a way for two other airships- each carrying separate members of the party- to crash into each other, and forcing the whole party to bail out onto the flying dungeon.
The dungeon was awesome; it had three levels, lots of skeletons, magic infused zombies, and a small cult of necromancers. The party, however, got into only little creepy fight on the deck, decided it was "waaaaay to creepy for them" and jumped off (those that could not fly had talisman's of feather fall).
Two weeks of work, and they jumped off. Bastards.
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In the first campaign I ever DMed I had my players go through a sewer system to deal with a rat problem (there was a were-rat at the end who was anger about being shunned, very original I know) with them not having Darkvision and for some reason brought no torches they used the light cantrip throughout the whole thing casting it on the Paladin so he was the light source. Then there was a drop that was dark at the bottom and they thought the paladin should not jump to an uncertain high they wanted to throw something to the bottom with light cast on it so they can see it. But being stingy adventures they did not want to throw any valuables they had so they looked for something and what they thought of was a dead rat from the swarm they just killed. I found this a bit disturbing but the decision was made and they started chucking dead glowing rats down pit and even picked up a few ore for later use. This became a thing that any time they need a light they look for dead rats. I have tried using a druid to tell them the error of their ways but they are persistent bunch of killers.
Another campaign after I learned the rules a bit more started with their town being attacked by undead lead by a vampire monk. The players reached the exit and a small showdown with the monk; he hit them once or twice but did not do that much once he was swarmed and forced into gaseous form. This was a smaller moment and expected them to look into the attack or something but instead it caused a personal vendetta against all vampires and they quickly all agreed that the new mission was to be vampire hunters. After a trip to the capitol city markets and a few crated of garlic, holy symbols, silver, and stakes the group began hunting them down. I wanted them to be scared of the vampires and talk to the temple about it, maybe do some missions then unravel a secret plot in the temple the vampire attack was more or less a push in the direction I was looking for but a new campaign has spawned and they are driven toward the common goal of vampiric genocide (while lighting their holy path with dead rodents.)
In the first campaign I ever DMed I had my players go through a sewer system to deal with a rat problem (there was a were-rat at the end who was anger about being shunned, very original I know) with them not having Darkvision and for some reason brought no torches they used the light cantrip throughout the whole thing casting it on the Paladin so he was the light source. Then there was a drop that was dark at the bottom and they thought the paladin should not jump to an uncertain high they wanted to throw something to the bottom with light cast on it so they can see it. But being stingy adventures they did not want to throw any valuables they had so they looked for something and what they thought of was a dead rat from the swarm they just killed. I found this a bit disturbing but the decision was made and they started chucking dead glowing rats down pit and even picked up a few ore for later use. This became a thing that any time they need a light they look for dead rats. I have tried using a druid to tell them the error of their ways but they are persistent bunch of killers.
Another campaign after I learned the rules a bit more started with their town being attacked by undead lead by a vampire monk. The players reached the exit and a small showdown with the monk; he hit them once or twice but did not do that much once he was swarmed and forced into gaseous form. This was a smaller moment and expected them to look into the attack or something but instead it caused a personal vendetta against all vampires and they quickly all agreed that the new mission was to be vampire hunters. After a trip to the capitol city markets and a few crated of garlic, holy symbols, silver, and stakes the group began hunting them down. I wanted them to be scared of the vampires and talk to the temple about it, maybe do some missions then unravel a secret plot in the temple the vampire attack was more or less a push in the direction I was looking for but a new campaign has spawned and they are driven toward the common goal of...
That is just plain awesome.
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It was a tough fight all around. Elena almost died due to inadvisedly trying to bite a fire elemental, and Perry got hit with a Bestow Curse that made 50% of his actions fail, permanently.
This is really odd, because I was running a campaign where my bard obtained a panther amulet that was enchanted so that 60% of the time, his actions worked every time.
Not my story at all, but this one always makes me cackle. ;D
I actually ran a whole campaign on this. It was actually my favorite campaign ever and basically came down to D20 Modern with improvised homebrew superpowers. I basically planned almost nothing, improvised all the enemies, their superpowers, the mechanics, the plot and everything else on the fly with a hefty dose of humor. The only thing that was actually thought out through-and-through were the superpowers of the PCs.
I just let the PCs do what they wanted, gave a few random red herrings that spontaneously developed into full plots when they looked into them and ran with it.
Best example was the 'origin story'. Basically the PCs, none of whom knew each other, were sitting in a diner on the corner of a busy intersection when a passing truck was struck by a meteorite. Dozens died in the explosion but the PCs somehow survived and got special power through the combination of the meteorite's radiation and the chemicals from the truck. I mentioned that the truck bore the logo of a major military contractor chemical company and after screwing around for a few days the PCs started 'investigating' the company. Of course, investigating meant breaking into the heavily fortified facility, fighting their way through mundane security guards, combat robots, supersoldiers and superpowered opponents. Finally they arrived in the main biotech facility where volunteers were being experimented upon to give them superpowers. The PCs slaughtered their ways to the head scientist and cornered him.
Imagine this scene: a trembling scrawny scientist scared out of his mind and surrounded by three mass-murdering superhumans, one of which continuously shapes into various animal hybrid forms, another that had been teleporting about and teleported armed grenades into opponents and the last one of which a sabre-wielding madman who kept dying and coming back in a blaze of hellfire. The trembling scientist stuttered out the question: "wha-wha-wha-what do you want? why are you doing this??!?".
The PCs looked at one-another, hesitated and demanded: "Why are we like this?! Why did you give us powers?! How could you do this to us?!"
The scientist gave them a perplexed look and answered "I have no clue who you are! I haven't seen you before in my life!"
Queue the PCs looking at one-another, being at a loss for worrds and realizing they forgot that they got their powers in an accident and had just now murdered their way through dozens of innocents for absolutely no reason. Their reaction: "uh.. oh.. right, yeah... sorry about this..." and walking out of the building through the blood and dismembered corpses of three-quarters of the company's employees.
Of course the campaign ended when the PC with shapeshifting powers took the identity of a US Navy supreme commander to bypass the security measures on the nuclear missile controls of a hyperadvanced mobile naval fortress and started firing nukes at random targets. When I asked him afterwards why he destroyed the world and ended the campaign he really had no answer to that whatsoever.
I have to say my favourite derailing moment (we derail a lot of our DM's best laid plans, bless his cotton socks) was when we were trapped on board a ship in a cargo hold heading into harbour. He had planned several decks of action with traps and bad guys and exposition etc.
However rather than go the obvious route through a trapdoor we used a bull that was in the cargo hold to barge through a locked door giving us access to a stair well. (I think he was having to improvise fairly soon after this). So we headed down into the bowels of the ship when off the top of his head he said the engines were powered by massive electric eels. We decided to chuck some enemies who he had placed in the engine room into the electric eel container causing the eels to get excited and produce more power leading us to crash into the harbour.
The DM at this point wanted to capture us and bring us before the lord of the town to try to get us severely back on track but we devised some ingenious plan to avoid everyone much to his exasperation. We dived overboard and snuck into the city and escaped whatever he had planned for us in the next adventure he was writing as well as the vast majority of the stuff he had written for that adventure.
I have to say it was one of the most fun sessions we had had in quite some time.
That sidebar about the vampire cultists in Runelords reminded me a bit of two events that happened in my own Runelords game...
1) During Burnt Offerings, before the PCs got to the kidnapping of Ameiko, they were looking for clues about how the goblins were able to infiltrate the city. They asked about Sandpoint's sewer system, and I said that it didn't have one, but they correctly surmised that the goblins were using some kind of tunnel to enter the town. I don't exactly remember why, but in asking a series of questions that I was answering on the fly. One of them asked one of the town NPCs about the Old Light. I responded something to the effect of, "Well, a few kids got killed tryin' to explore the place before Late Unpleasantness, but they never came back, so no one goes there any more!" The PCs concluded that the goblins had to be sneaking around Junk Beach, and using tunnels connected to the Old Light to come up into the city, and that they must have killed those kids all those years ago. So the PCs launched a full exploration of the Old Light... which has next-to-zero write-up in the module!
Well, who am I to say "No" to player initiative? I had them find an opening on the seaside wall of the tower, about 20 feet below the cliff top, but 30 feet above the surf. They ended up climbing up inside the tower, lowering a rope, and scaling down. I winged a whole lot of description in what they found: essentially a big room with a partially-collapsed floor 15 feet below the opening. It reeked of a very foul odor, but the PC rolled a 2 on Knowledge (nature) and didn't recognize the bat guano. Because the place wad FULL of bats! As soon as they entered the chamber, they stirred up both a bat swarm AND a centipede swarm (both CR-appropriate for their level). After they dealt with the swarms, I had them find a few vague clues about Thassilon, and the name "Alaznist". They also ended up fighting some giant spiders and dealt with some green slime. But this exploration turned into a full session's worth of adventuring, and I had them recover some Thassilonian coins... which were worth ten times face value due to their age and rarity.
Another session that got derailed in a good way was when the PCs made it to Magnimar. They decided that they wanted to get a feel for the city before they started their investigations, and wanted to play tourist! So, they went to the Aquaretum, and then a museum, and then they spent the afternoon at the zoo. We played nearly two hours of pure role-playing at the Lord-Mayor's Menagerie, buying food and trinkets from vendors, and just talking with NPCs. We had so much fun, that it became a running joke for the rest of the campaign: Whenever the game turned dark and/or deadly, one of the players would say, "This sucks! Can we go back to the zoo?"
Dotting for future laughs...
Oh another one when I was running a Cthulhu Invictus game. The players were investigating some cult just outside of Rome and one of the things that the cult did was castrate the male members.
Now as a throwaway moment there was a chest of testicles in the surgeons room. The game I was using didn't say what the purpose was but it was just a throw away sanity check. My players obviously thought there was something important about the chest and decided that not only would they use them to interrogate the surgeon but they would then cart the chest around with them for most of the rest of the adventure. They kept up the belief that they were needed for some occult ritual right up until the point when I had to explain that they were carrying around a chest of rotting testicles through the countryside and that people were now avoiding them due to the smell that exuded from them.
Not a massive derail but it amused me how they had taken one chest and built it up in their heads into some huge plot device, when really all it was was a chest of testicles.
Once, I ran "Expedition to the Demonweb Pits". Oh boy...
The module starts with a drow encounter, that is intended to bring the players on track and into the adventure. The leader carries a note about stuff and a nearby portal (guarded), which leads to Sigil. From there it's a short way to the overly-ominous Rule-of-Three and his quest (which IMHO is handled rather poorly, as it is assumed that the players take everything at face value and not be suspicious at all). I tweaked and modified everything in Sigil to make it a bit more dynamic and believeable, but my players had... well, different ideas.
The initial party consisted of three characters: a tiefling bard/rogue/jaunter, a human cleric, and a goliath duskblade (yes, really). The jaunter was a planar traveler, the cleric was aware of planar stuff, only the duskblade was somewhat oblivious to the whole concept of planes, which created some hilarious RP moments.
The encounter with the drow was pretty intense, and the players employed clever tactics to turn a dire situation into a win, even though most of them were unfamiliar with higher-level D&D abilities. They found the note and were immediately interested after the jaunter explained the whole "Sigil is the city of all cities" thing. So they followed tracks to the portal, which was in a cave, ambushed the guardians with spells of invisibility and silence, and formulated some plans about how to proceed once they entered Sigil:
"We don't know anyone in Sigil, and this seems to be a rather widespread plot. We should keep a very low profile."
"Sigil is dangerous, there are all kinds of monsters who will slaughter you if provoced."
"We should also try to hide our abilities to not complicate anything by attracting 3rd parties."
So they entered Sigil, were accordingly amazed by it, bought a guide to get a rough idea of the general layout and the quarters, and bought rooms in an unassuming inn miles away from the Styx Oarsmen, the inn mentioned in the drow's note. They spied a little in that place and the guests, and decided that they needed more information before meeting Rule-of-Three. This all happens within one day.
Evening is close, and everyone agrees to spend some money and party afterwards, quests about the multiverse and ominous notes be damned. This is where things went off trail. In fact, this is where we left EttDP for three sessions to to... things. Things that I had to improvise on the spot, without having any real knowledge about Planescape or Sigil.
They bought new equipment. Not just that, they raced back and forth between vendors to compare prices and find out if anyone had exotic enchantments (I ruled that all 3.5 materials were allowed, but new spells and items were harder to get). To make things more interesting, I invented three very different merchants, which immediately created a subplot since the group wanted to free the slaves one of the merchants used as staff, and sabotage another one for personal reasons. Then they decided that walking all the way to the Town Hall for partying was way too far, especially with all these people, creatures, and things flying around. But you have to fly in style, no? They sought out the one merchant selling boats in Sigil (don't ask - they wanted it, I provided) and made a deal for a huge boat to be enchanted with flying and fitted with luxurious divans and chains of light in all colors of the rainbow. This however took some time, so they decided to get drunk and go back to their inn.
The next day was filled with exploring the inn the players were staying in, which was a smithery run by a tiefling who got his supplies (cold iron, abyssal steel, etc) by his own little hellish portal in the backyard. After commissioning some custom weapons, they went back to the main bazar, only to find themselves in another luxurious inn run by gnomes. Since it provided elemental-fueled hot baths, they switched places and took an extended bath with booze and female company. Afterwards, the jaunter, who was also a Xaositect, insisted on going to the Hive to see if anything interesting was going on. Since it wasn't, he instigated a protest march in the slums - without anyone really knowing what was going on or what they were marching for. It started with some Bluff checks, followed by playing drums, handing said drums over to a fellow Xaositect, and leaving the crowd to visit the spectacle from a rooftop. I tried to get back to the actual adventure here with a swarm of cranium rats (from the module), but my players just used them to increase thew chaos he had just created. It was a beautiful mess, especially when several self-proclaimed law enforcers came to investigate.
Afterwards, they picked up their boat (I ignored rules-as-written for item creation to not lose momentum), invited random people from the street to join their party yacht and floated 10m above one of the main streets towards the Town Hall. The jaunter played music, the dusklabde created additional dancing lights, and the cleric casted some spells as well. It was quite the spectacle, especially after some celestials joined them. At the Town Hall, they ignored all clues and plothooks I gave them to party hard, start brawls, play games of chance, and find female company. The jaunter started making advances to one of the adventure's original NPCs, a not-so-subtle dominatrix, so I rolled with it. The cleric's player, while interested in following his friend's footsteps, was a bit shy both IC and OOC, so I had some "girls" point fingers and make giggly advances at him. The jaunter immediately started singing songs about his friend's divine potency, which caused on of the "girls", a beautiful dryad, to come over (the dryad was the result of me looking at my custom random encounter table for the first part of the adventure, in case the drow encounter went somehow wrong). When asked where her tree was, I studdered something about a curse that prevented her from dying after her forest burned down (htey really caught me flat-footed there) - to my surprise this spawned a second subplot since all players were immediately sympathetic to her and wanted to help her get back to nature, despite me playing her with some serious sign of mental instability. The cleric and the dryad ended up having "a bath" at the gnomish inn... And the duskblade? He went after a group of giants, and sweet-talked two of the females into joining him, which left me kinda flabbergasted as I had never ever seen this player act out like that - but it was too awesome to turn him down.
The next morning everyone woke up covered with bruises (duskblade), scratches (jaunter), or leaves (cleric), and a huge hangover on top of that (they botched their Fort-saves pretty hard). The day saw some new shenanigans, but I finally managed to get them somehow involved with the original plot again - not that I complained, but roleplaying three different kinds of female companions had left me a little bit distressed, despite the laughs we had.
It was only here that they did remember the initial plan to keep a low profile, but at this point I could justify pretty much anyone in Sigil being alerted to their presence, so it worked out pretty well from here. They even brought the dryad to the portal they had used to enter Sigil, and the off-hand comment of the jaunter's player about releasing mentally unstable fey creatures into an unsuspecting rural area would have created another subplot, had they ever returned to that place.