PDA

View Full Version : Running Gags At Your Table



AtopTheMountain
2010-02-18, 07:15 PM
Running gags are a staple of pretty much every series that has comedy. Face it, you all have them in your D&D groups. And they can be hilarious. Share them on this thread.

In my 4E group, one running gag / joke is that the party wizard's nickname is Pikachu. Why? The Thunderwave power. It never gets old shouting "Pikachu, use Thunderwave!" whenever he uses that spell. Except for him. :smalltongue:
EDIT: Of course, it'll have to become Raichu once we hit Epic...

Another one is that that same wizard deliberately includes allies in his area attacks, even though he hasn't done it since the paladin attacked him for it. Although there was the time when he kept trying to keep us from killing the lich in the hopes that the lich would teach him how to become a lich... Also, he calls his character Lawful Good.

TheCountAlucard
2010-02-18, 07:28 PM
Our Exalted group keeps cracking jokes about this one Abyssal - he has a Charm that gives him a snake tongue while he's doing social-fu, so we jokingly called him "Cobra." Was pretty funny the first time around, but now we can't remember his name half the time.

drengnikrafe
2010-02-18, 07:31 PM
The Stubby. Statted as a riding dog, minus the being able to be ridable. Or combat ready. Great fun for traps.

Swordgleam
2010-02-18, 07:32 PM
The first few times the ranger crit fumbled, the fighter was always in the way. The first few times either the cleric or pally crit fumbled, the other was in the way. So now it's a running joke whenever one of those three fumbles that it's always going to hit the corresponding character.

Demons_eye
2010-02-18, 07:38 PM
Utility corpse. First game we played I killed a kobold with a crit while the paladin was talking to him so we used the corpse to check for traps and the like throwing it every place we could fit it. Also puns, lots and lots of puns..... and after the 12th pun you get a pun punch.

Siosilvar
2010-02-18, 07:41 PM
Utility corpse. First game we played I killed a kobold with a crit while the paladin was talking to him so we used the corpse to check for traps and the like throwing it every place we could fit it. Also puns, lots and lots of puns..... and after the 12th pun you get a pun punch.

Just thought I'd point this out.

oxybe
2010-02-18, 07:42 PM
we turned our party's dwarf's name into a verb:

Shag
-to throw one's self into the enemy's (litteral) maw. while on fire.

this happened at least 4 times, all of which were surprisingly successful ventures for the dwarf.

Piedmon_Sama
2010-02-18, 07:45 PM
-Every NPC assumes the Killoren Duskblade is "some kind of satyr."

-Every NPC assumes the human fighter is a man, because of her height and figure-concealing full plate. Those who hear her speak assume she is a eunuch bodyguard to the Cleric.

-The elf monk has had an elven wizard kept prisoner inside a chest, inside her bag of holding literally for years. No one has noticed the plight of this poor fellow or come to his rescue.

-The Gnomish Bard consistently mocks Dwarves at every opportunity. Since he is the only one familiar with Dwarven culture, the jokes are virtually never understood.

-The Killoren is the third best Duskblade in the entire Realm of the Immortals/Eldar Races; only the elven Master of Duskblades and his wife are higher level. The fact that some untermensche Killoren bested all his precious elven students has made the Duskblade Master pretty much resent the Killoren's entire existence.

-Druids are traditionally considered bloodthirsty savages in Imperial culture, but there is a subculture of "wannabe" Druids who dress in leather and braid their mustaches and talk about the old days and honoring the Sacred Groves, mostly found on university campuses.

-All the prayers of Zenithaar I make up use consistently proto-capitalist language like "the Invisible Hand," "unfettered exchange," "the right to capital," and whatnot.

-The Cleric's barbarian cohort has volunteered to go undercover disguised in a dress twice. Why he owns a carefully maintaned gala dress is unclear.

-Gnomes love acronyms. The closest thing they have to an official ruling body is the G.E.C.C.O (Gnomish Economic Coordination Central Office). The S.P.R.E.E (Strictly Provisional Regulatory Enforcement Edifice) enforces weapons trading restrictions. Their sense of humor comes out in pretty much everything they name, from their home-region ("Peace Valley," because of the huge artillery guns guarding it) to their weapons and social unions.

That's probably enough, but (sadly) I think I could go on.

Anxe
2010-02-18, 07:47 PM
"Captain, They've adapted." -Worf. We just stole that one from Star Trek and use it all the time now. Basically used whenever a spell or attack of the players fails.

We've also taken to calling someone who gets taken out by a fantastically inferior enemy as a Stanton. The original Stanton was a 3rd level Halfling Rogue that got taken out by a pre-teen Orc while the Orc was hiding under a mattress.

Another one we've got is more recent. Stevie the Wonder Wagon. They cast Animate Construct on an iron wagon with 4 arms grafted to it instead of the things that attach to the horsies. Stevie has very low mental states, so we pretend he has down syndrome. He's a Barbarian.

The Dark Fiddler
2010-02-18, 07:47 PM
Rolling a nat 20 when you were rolling for nothing, and then attaching it to something random. For example: "I crit my do nothing check!"

Or rolling a nat 20 on a skill check.
Player: "I crit my listen check!"
DM: "Your head explodes as you hear the entire universe at the same time."

Also, any character my friend Tristan makes, from the fake-Arabic Barbarian who guards doors, to the gold obsessed Barbarian who invented the stock market and is always trying to convince people to invest in his inventions, to his Paladin/Blackguard who was serving as Squire to another character, and the character not realizing his Squire had turned evil despite his summoning a fiendish horse (named Rainbow Sprinklebutt. No, we're not a very serious group. Why do you ask?) He's always making us laugh.

And my friend Steven always making fail characters; the Fighter that died twice in the same campaign and the ranged-focused Ranger with a gun with crap Dex and HP.

Ooh, and always rolling Discover Fourth Wall checks and putting ranks in Knowledge: Fourth Wall to justify our meta-gaming!

And my obsessive, irrational hatred of 4e and Pathfinder (they ruined everything!). I don't even hate them anymore, I just keep it for the lulz. :smallbiggrin:

Myou
2010-02-18, 07:52 PM
we turned our party's dwarf's name into a verb:

Shag
-to throw one's self into the enemy's (litteral) maw. while on fire.

this happened at least 4 times, all of which were surprisingly successful ventures for the dwarf.

Shag already means something quite different. :smallbiggrin:

The Glyphstone
2010-02-18, 08:00 PM
Shag already means something quite different. :smallbiggrin:

I was going to say, his group must not be British.:smallsmile:


My group hasn't been playing long enough to develop running gags, but there's one gag NPC I plan to include. The party was travelling to their adventure site when they met a troll standing in the middle of the road. He knew that standing on a bridge and demanding a toll to pass worked for trolls, but was more than a bit fuzzy on what counted as a bridge.

The Dark Fiddler
2010-02-18, 08:01 PM
Shag already means something quite different. :smallbiggrin:

I dunno, I wouldn't say they're that different... (http://xkcd.com/414/) :smalltongue:

Masaioh
2010-02-18, 08:05 PM
Our druid's animal companion was named Mr. Expendable the (number)th, because we basically used it as a living/dead minesweeper.

Also, any time I make my players start/wake up in an inn as the DM, they will become paranoid and start tearing the place down in fear of it imploding.

We also had "the worst ranger in the world", because he always rolled a natural 1 on skill checks. Here's an example:

"Ranger, where are we?"

*Ranger rolls a natural 1*

"We're on Faerun."

DarknessLord
2010-02-18, 08:08 PM
Our druid's animal companion was named Mr. Expendable the (number)th, because we basically used it as a living/dead minesweeper.

Also, any time I make my players start/wake up in an inn as the DM, they will become paranoid and start tearing the place down in fear of it imploding.

We also had "the worst ranger in the world", because he always rolled a natural 1 on skill checks. Here's an example:

"Ranger, where are we?"

*Ranger rolls a natural 1*

"We're on Faerun."
Please tell me you were playing Eberron. XD

alisbin
2010-02-18, 08:10 PM
our fighter has developed a love/hate affair with pits (trap or otherwise) so far he has; (note we're only 4th level and this campaign has been going for at most 4 months now, weekly)
1: gotten hit by a fear spell (permanently attached to an old statue), ran out the door into an unexplored room where he promptly fell into a pit trap.
2: immediately after defeating a gnoll skeleton, was tripped up by a temp players stupid idea (backpack full of rocks attached to a rope, thrown at the gnoll skeleton despite the fighter being in the way) and fallen into a small gorge that they fighting above.
3: charged a goblin shaman and his guards and fell into a well concealed pit trap.
4: walked over to inspect some skeletal rats to see if they needed to be crushed and fell into YET ANOTHER pit trap.
5: tried to walk across a thin spur of land over a valley full of thorns in a super high wind and fallen ass over teakettle into the burr-bushes.

its gone so far that now we're doing extremely serious searching for a ring of featherfall and the DM gave him an item that has +1 to climb so he can get out of the pits easier :)


lets see, our cleric is beholden to the god chaos and madness, so pretty much anything out of his mouth is hilarious, especially when it makes sense. my character (a telepath/super diplomancer) constantly makes bets about the parties current situation and once even managed to completely derail a bandit attack purely by getting the bandits to join in the betting (amazing what a natural 20, total of 15 diplomacy check will do eh?). we also have an in character ongoing joke about giant snails and flying chariots.

oxybe
2010-02-18, 08:11 PM
Shag already means something quite different. :smallbiggrin:

which is why the term "I'm going to Shag the [horrible fanged thing from the far realm or beyond]" makes us all giggle that much more.

Masaioh
2010-02-18, 08:12 PM
Please tell me you were playing Eberron. XD

No, we were playing Faerun. Kind of. (Normally Faerun doesn't have a character named Rick Astley)

Grommen
2010-02-18, 08:16 PM
The Flying Elf rule:

Simply states. Elves are not meant to fly, yet they do so with little provocation. This provokes the wrath of the gods, and they send their righteous archers to send vengeance over the offending elf. All available bad guys will drop everything in order to shoot at the offending pointie eared offender. This normally results in at least one critical hit (or in the case of more modern game settings, a violet Anti-Air Strike). Should the offending elf live, the process will repeat until the offender lands, or dies in a most violent manor.

This is as true a law as gravity, taxes, and the BBEG divulging his master plan just before attempting to kill the party.

Door opening Clergy:

So our party cleric, a Cleric of Helm (Division of Grapple, yes apparently he is the founder), has taken it upon himself to open every closed door. In our entire realm. This is regardless of checking for traps, or what might be behind the door.

I get half!

Words uttered by the party bard (ok she was a con women and a thief). Over used by myself so often that the entire group would utter the words before I could whenever we found loot.

In it's final rendition the bard became Magistrate of the famed Bloodstone Lands in northern Faeurn. On their official Tax forms it reads:

How much did you make?
Send us half :smallcool:

Boci
2010-02-18, 08:17 PM
Ever session I ask my DM if I can use something broken. Locate city bomb, pun-pun, candle of invocation, santum spell to gain gold and XP for crafting, extraordinary spell aim + antimagic-fielt, ect. I do not manage to ask one every session but I try. The main reason this became a running gag is that no one else at the table knows much material aisde core, and the DM always always asks me to explain exactly why I want to take such options.

In a 4E game, the players usually take initative on the result of a check when a natural 1 is rolled. Examples include,
"Ah, the walls disapeared!" (Perception) Alternativly "You see a what looks like your own hands"
"You hear a rumour that they are sometimes big" (Knowledge on a dragon we were about to fight)
Ect.

AtopTheMountain
2010-02-18, 08:21 PM
Ah, I knew this would catch on fast.

Anyways, yet another running gag involving that wizard is his afore-mentioned "Lawful Good" alignment. Whenever one of us calls him out after he does something non-lawful-good (such as deliberately catching us in his bursts), he replies with something along the lines of "I'm lawful good because I'm smiting the evil." Then we call him out because none of our characters are evil. "You do things that are against my character's religion." Said religion happens to be the one that the player made up as a satire of organized religion. Great laughs all around, and happens at least once per session.

Also, his tendency to name his characters after obscure Star Wars trivia. I can't remember any specifics off the top of my head, since I'm not that into SW, but...

Also also, the last time I said the "Pikachu, use thunderwave" line, he said he was changing the name of the power. Again, great laughs all around.


An unrelated gag from when we still played 3.5 was my characters' absolutely abysmal spot checks. Whenever I roll poorly on one, everyone else notices it, while I go "Look, a bunny!". For example, Once I was playing a divine caster with a 9 wisdom (he was a gnome Shugenja, so it works out) and I rolled a 2 on my Spot check to notice the imp flying away after spying on us. Everyone else started chasing after it, and I said "Look, a bunny!". This happens a lot.

Toric
2010-02-18, 08:26 PM
Our group has only two players with consistent characters, so most of the running gags center on those two.

1. The well-endowed nymph occasonally must make a Dex check to pass through doorways or other small passages. She generally fails miserably and requires a team Strength check to get unstuck.

2. The dwarf has absolutely no understanding of innuendo (which, given the other long-term party member and the character turnover rate, frequently comes up), and often cites his copy of A Young Dwarf's Guide to Courtship, 36th Edition.

3. Whenever the dwarf takes fire damage, his beard will be at least partially burned off. This means he gets to figure out a beard style that won't look ridiculous with what's left. This has become less common now that he has 5 Fire resistance.

4. The trapsmith/meatshield of a dwarf lets the hot-headed members of the team run ahead if when they get impatient with the pace. Every time. Even if said hot-head is a warlock/sorcerer in leather armor. It ends about as well as you'd think.

subject42
2010-02-18, 08:29 PM
"Critical Funk".

No one at the table is allowed to play a Warforged Battledancer anymore after that little escapade.

alisbin
2010-02-18, 08:36 PM
oooh, i forgot one;
our DM tends to ask us "can you make an X (save, attack roll or the like)?", we respond "i can try..." and then, a moment later when we inevitably get less then a 10, "no, i really can't..."
he's a smart guy but he keeps asking us to MAKE the check, instead of ROLLING one :) ah well we enjoy it.

One Step Two
2010-02-18, 08:36 PM
Whenever we explain about familiars, there's one example that always surfaces itself. Spoiler'd for size.


Derek: Okay, you use the personality over-ride spike, and the defective custodian is now your personal weapon mech.
David: Awesome, I command it to tell me what happend to it.
Derek: It got stuck... then fell down.
David: Okay... what happend before that.
Derek: ...It got stuck... then fell down.

Many gaming sessions later.

Jason: So, whats the deal with his personal mech?
Derek & Chris: It got stuck... then fell down.
David: I hate you both.

Many sessions and a new campaign later...

Brent: So what kind of familiars can I have?
David: Anything. For example my character I have a pair of crows, whos eyes I can see out of.
Chris: As opposed to the mech.
Derek: Which got stuck... then fell down.
David: ...I hate you both.

Many more sessions, campaigns, and a new player.

Sam: "So, what can I get with a familiar, is it just like a helper monkey or something?"
Chris: "No, it can be anything. Like David's old familiar."
David: "Don't you-"
Chris: "He had this magic cat that had the ability to appear wherever it wanted to when no-one was looking."
David: "Yeah."
Chris: "And he also had a mech. It got stuck... then fell down."
David: "Ugh stop that! I'm the Storyteller now and I will dock you experience points for that!"

Oracle_Hunter
2010-02-18, 08:44 PM
In a 4e Eberron Game, when our Changeling Psion uses Sending to convey information, we always respond with a question - knowing full well that he has to wait 5 minutes to send a response. We plan on getting him a T-Shirt that says "Sending allows you to answer my question, but not for me to answer yours" :smalltongue:

In the same game, a corrupt Sharn Watch officer (Sergeant Grimaldi) set us up for a near TPK (as part of the DM's clever object lesson on the hazards of metagaming). Ever since, we have devoted our free time to plotting his demise. To date, this has largely resulted in spreading wild rumors in word and in print ("Sergeant Grimaldi: Shame of the Nation") and doing our level best to find a reason for every violent criminal to want him dead. He is also constantly blamed whenever an unknown force thwarts our plans (such as bad die rolls).

Also, in all of my games we have the "Green River Trading Company." In its first incarnation it was a minor plot-piece in a complicated murder-conspiracy plotline; for whatever reason, the players took an inordinate interest in the GRTC and were convinced they were behind everything bad that has happened (they weren't). Consequently, the GRTC is now always a greedy, manipulative and often murderous organization that is behind all that is wrong in the world :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: In another 4E game, the Tiefling Warlock used the excuse "It is an ancient Dragonborn tradition" whenever the Dragonborn Paladin did something odd. Due to the backstory of the campaign, the "Dragonborn" was actually a polymorphed human from Earth who had no idea about Dragonborn culture - and neither did the Tiefling. Thereafter, players would cite increasingly outrageous practices to "ancient Dragonborn traditions" much to the chagrin of the Paladin.

Grommen
2010-02-18, 08:46 PM
Our druid's animal companion was named Mr. Expendable the (number)th, because we basically used it as a living/dead minesweeper.

Also, any time I make my players start/wake up in an inn as the DM, they will become paranoid and start tearing the place down in fear of it imploding.

We also had "the worst ranger in the world", because he always rolled a natural 1 on skill checks. Here's an example:

"Ranger, where are we?"

*Ranger rolls a natural 1*

"We're on Faerun."

Ours failed a tracking check and landed us in Ravenloft :smalleek: It's just fog my $##!

Superglucose
2010-02-18, 08:47 PM
There was a great one, "Blackjack!" It started when one guy started saying "blackjack!" on a total of 21, and then he started saying it on anything higher than 21 even though it was a bust. So I started it in a different group.

It ended when the token 6th grader ruined it for everyone by turning it into some kind of lame competition to who could say it faster.

Every character is female, bar none. You want to play a big, tough fighter? Female is better. You want to play a dwarf? Female. You want to play the King of France? Female.

Walking is illegal so you must jog everywhere.

"Why is all the rum always gone?" "Jason."

Speaking of Jason, guess who manages to roll poor stats for every single character? 13 12 12 8 12 11 on 5d6b3!

IonDragon is sorcerors and I am wizards. Also we don't give a rat's ass what level the game starts at or what you're playing. In fact, just HEARING about your "super epic" druid-rogue (because it synergizes sneak attack to... produce flame!) (this is an actual explanation given to me for this build) makes us even more likely to play Sorcs and Wizards.

Doubled up by the fact that the ONE TIME I play a melee character, I'm tempbanned from the table for having a character that's too good. LOL!

BEES!

Volkov
2010-02-18, 08:55 PM
Whenever there is a disaster, a flaming pixie will run by the players screaming "OH GODS HELP ME I'M ON FIRE!!!!!!!" With an very strong scottish accent, a kilt, and a bagpipe. Even if the disaster was a flood, there would be a flaming pixie.

Lin Bayaseda
2010-02-18, 08:55 PM
All the Wizards and Sorcerers in our group have Toad familiars. Always. It became almost prohibited to roll up an arcane spellcaster without a toad. Whenever they run into an NPC arcane spellcaster they seem genuinely surprised to find out he has a raven, a viper, a pseudodragon or whatnot.

AtopTheMountain
2010-02-18, 08:55 PM
Yes, me again.

Another one I remembered: When I was playing a Dragonborn Barbarian, one of my character traits was that I eat people, but with certain stipulations. I only eat dead people; I only eat people that I killed in combat; I don't eat undead, abberations, pretty much any non-humanoids, or other dragonborn (because that would be cannibalism :smallwink:); and I don't eat anything else. It got to the point that I made a table of all the common races to show how they tasted to me. I was allergic to half-orcs.
Also, I had to keep it a secret from the group paladin. One memorable example was when we killed some people in a dungeon. We left the room, but I decided to stay back and eat them. Unfortunately, the paladin came back to give them a "proper burial". It went like this:
"Where are the bodies?!"
"Uh... They ran away."
"...You mean they were undead?"
"No, they just left."
"What's that behind your back then?"
"...A goblin leg."
"Why are you holding a goblin leg behind your back?"
"It... left it behind, and I wanted to save it... so you could... give it... a proper burial."

Yeah, my groups rarely take anything seriously.

Admiral Squish
2010-02-18, 09:02 PM
Yes, me again.

Another one I remembered: When I was playing a Dragonborn Barbarian, one of my character traits was that I eat people, but with certain stipulations. I only eat dead people; I only eat people that I killed in combat; I don't eat undead, abberations, pretty much any non-humanoids, or other dragonborn (because that would be cannibalism :smallwink:); and I don't eat anything else. It got to the point that I made a table of all the common races to show how they tasted to me. I was allergic to half-orcs.
Also, I had to keep it a secret from the group paladin. One memorable example was when we killed some people in a dungeon. We left the room, but I decided to stay back and eat them. Unfortunately, the paladin came back to give them a "proper burial". It went like this:
"Where are the bodies?!"
"Uh... They ran away."
"...You mean they were undead?"
"No, they just left."
"What's that behind your back then?"
"...A goblin leg."
"Why are you holding a goblin leg behind your back?"
"It... left it behind, and I wanted to save it... so you could... give it... a proper burial."

Yeah, my groups rarely take anything seriously.

Oh god, I can't stop laughing! This is GOLD.

dentrag2
2010-02-18, 09:06 PM
Giant bees.
No, really. One of our players DM's occasionally (When i'm not doing it) and in any campaign, no matter where set, he would include giant bees. He would have them enter the field while yelling GIANT BEEEEEEEEEESSSS, and shaking the dice for initiative. In fact, it doesn't really matter what level the campaign was. In our highest level campaign (We made it to 15, we were level 14 at the time) he sent A THOUSAND giant bees after us.

Volkov
2010-02-18, 09:09 PM
Also, living side by side with the D&D orcs, there would be warhammer orks. And the latter would always beat up the former for not being orky. "Waaaagh ya can't call yourzelfz Orkz! Ya ain't half az orky az da ORKZ! Ya juzt a bunch a dumb gitz!"
Fighting ensues and the Orks soundly pummel the orcs into submission.

Superglucose
2010-02-18, 09:13 PM
His bees are not my bees.

FishAreWet
2010-02-18, 09:15 PM
Everyone has a Russian accent. Everyone.

AtopTheMountain
2010-02-18, 09:24 PM
One more: In regards to the afore-mentioned Dragonborn Barbarian who is definitely not a cannibal (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BerserkButton)... I was feeling rather... shall we say, silly at the time of his creation. (As I said, nobody in my group takes anything seriously.) So the rest of his character traits and equipment:
Scottish accent.
Hide armor kilt... and no other clothing. Yes, it provides the same amount of protection.
"Electric" guitar and "ranks" in "perform: heavy metal" (4E)
Really hates undead (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BerserkButton) (worships Melora)
Charges at every opportunity. No, literally every opportunity.
Is incapable of feeling pain, except caused by powers that use it as an effect.

Please don't murder me for linking you to TV Tropes.

Dust
2010-02-18, 09:25 PM
Oh lawd, we have so many.

The Dump Tackle was created from a D&D session with a new GM who, as we discovered, swore by RAW and refused to deviate from it for any reason. About three sessions in this became incredibly tedious and we were about done with the game, and one of our players announced that for his combat maneuver, he was going to 'Dump Tackle' his opponent.
In case you don't know what that is, don't worry. You're not alone - the GM didn't either. The gist was that he wished up both grapple and bull rush his foe at the same time, and the game..and indeed, the CAMPAIGN....ended after the GM spent a whopping two hours flipping through his books trying to determine if this was possible.
To this day, a player declares he's 'Dump Tackling' when he rushes at a foe with the intent to charge as much harm to his opponent and the campaign plotline as possible. Recently, a player Dump Tackled the Pope in a Hunter: The Reckoning campaign.

dentrag2
2010-02-18, 09:40 PM
His bees are not my bees.


You have bees too?
BEEEEEEEESSSS

sofawall
2010-02-18, 09:43 PM
You have bees too?
BEEEEEEEESSSS

I have boars.

There is a player that has been defeated by one (dire) boar and seriously wounded by another, so any boar he sees causes panic. Especially since the party laughs at him for losing to an animal like that. In the words of the Wizard, "It's a pig."

Superglucose
2010-02-18, 09:43 PM
You have bees too?
BEEEEEEEESSSS
In Bioshock, there was a plasmid that let your hand shoot bees. So in a system we made, our goal was to make someone who's method of combat was to shoot bees.

Long story short, 3,000 bees with an int of 19 swarm on you each dealing 1 damage. At level 1.

Short story even shorter, *extends the palm of his hand* BEES!!!

Short story long, anything by Charles Dickens.

dentrag2
2010-02-18, 09:47 PM
Oh.
My.
God.


DO WANT. WHERE IS LINK, BABY MAN?

... Now i need a druid to make them giant.

AtopTheMountain
2010-02-18, 09:47 PM
Yet another running gag involving the "Lawful Good" wizard: He is a changeling. Last session, we were fighting wererats. He hid in a bush at the start of the encounter, then came out disguised as a wererat. Luckily, we all made our Perception checks to recognize him.

But. Later. We're fighting some people and there happens to be a huge group of human rabble to kill. So he disguises himself as one of them and leads them all into a rush on the paladin for some unspecified reason. We didn't make our Perception checks. Then, my Avenger (my favorite class ever!) uses a power that creates a burst, which hits the wizard. Needless to say, he is not pleased, and comes out of his disguise to actually be useful. Great laughs all around.

Superglucose
2010-02-18, 09:53 PM
DO WANT. WHERE IS LINK, BABY MAN?

Link to the forums is in my sig. It's abusing a rule where the author literally wrote, "Orliss creatures cost 0 money so long as they are grown on a planet which can support them." 0 cost creatures I could personally design, kept in a small box and catapult system slung to a body pocket kept in my arm. We tried explaining that the rule was stupid, but he didn't believe us. 3,000,000 bees in shipping crates and 3,000 bees to the face later, he just GM fiated us rather than changing his own rules to make sense.

This is why we don't play with him anymore: "playtest" is code word for "I don't want to run real campaigns."

World Eater
2010-02-18, 09:54 PM
Before my group got together, me and the DM are friends, he was drawing up a dungeon that he'd use in for the first time he'd DM. I took a look and told him to explain it to me. In one room, there were 3 cages the kobolds had, and in each there were 1d4 wolves. This was a first level dungeon. I point out that was a possibility of 12 wolves. A first level party would not be able to take down twelve entire wolves. He said it was a possibility of twelve, but I kept telling him, TWELVE WOLVES. What if that happened? We'd die. He told me he'd fix it, but ever since then, I kept reminding him of the twelve wolves and how absurd that was.

A few months later when we got a group together and went through the dungeon, we killed the kobold before it opened the cages and bypassed any wolf fights.

Yet the legend of TWELVE WOLVES lives on, and everything that goes wrong or is absurd is compared to them.
Seriously Duncan, what were you thinking. TWELVE. WOLVES.

Admiral Squish
2010-02-18, 09:56 PM
I could totally go for a bee-launcher...

'O course, bees freakin' terrify me, so it would be moderately less effective.

Let's just say there was a bad experience, and they had to get an exterminator before the building was usable again.

CockroachTeaParty
2010-02-18, 10:06 PM
In an Eberron game I was running, a great deal of the action happened in Sharn, the City of Towers. As the PCs fought through action-packed, high-flying encounters on the highest towers and bridges, a running gag began to develop.

Whenever an enemy fell, or an airship/skycab crashed, or a projectile weapon missed, etc., it would plummet to the lower sections of the towers.

For some reason, a very unlucky orphan boy had the bad luck of being near these falling things. He would step out of the house and get splattered with gore as some gnoll's corpse exploded on the pavement in front of him, or a falling chunk of stone would smash his belongings/friends/head. Whenever something fell, it always landed on or near the orphan, and as the campaign went on, we had to describe in detail what happened to this nameless orphan whenever something fell.

By the end of the campaign, we determined that the orphan had gained several levels in the Survivor prestige class. We even joked around that he would become the final enemy of the campaign, returning to destroy the PCs for revenge. In every Eberron game thereafter, whenever something falls in Sharn, it hits the orphan. That poor kid...

Things that fell on the orphan:

Dragon blood. A lich's head. A skybridge. Several chamber pots' worth of filth. A custard pie. A spider eater's legs. The Lord of Blades.

Dienekes
2010-02-18, 10:10 PM
"Dammit where's Nolan?"

Exclaimed whenever it looks like the group of PCs are losing a fight.

It started on their second mission, first major arc bit, and they're trying to survive an armed invasion of their city and they were tasked with going and finding the Duchess and her baby by the badass Duke, and bringing her safely out of the city to go warn about the invasion. Well along the way they meet an NPC guard, originally nameless, who was tasked with protecting the Duchess, who was 2 levels below the party. Originally he was going to die off at the first battle. When the battle came around, he crited twice times in a row and was only nicked. The party took a liking to how I was playing the character so the next time we gamed he was named Nolan and was going to help the party along as they survived in the conquered city and eventually to find a way to warn others.

The luck he had that first fight stayed with him, forever. It got so bad that I eventually gave all his rolls to one of the players who was having terrible rolls all game. He crits. I groaned and gave him to another, 18, not a crit but still.

The players thought he was great, referred to him as the fourth party member and "Sir Nolan the Great." Eventually they reached the next city and, though I had become rather attached to him, had him join the city guard so he didn't become a DMPC. We found out that no matter who was rolling for him, he only once rolled below a 10. Was always 2-3 levels below the party and pulled his weight.

So now whenever the party is losing someone always asks where Nolan is, or why isn't Nolan helping them.

Pandaren
2010-02-18, 10:15 PM
Call of Cthlhu/D20 modern.


Due to a series of events we can no longer remember, all henceforth news pieces, newspapers, tv news or whatnot will always add

"...was racism involved?" in a neccesary ridiculous accent.

At the the end, which leads to interesting situations depending on DM.

Ranging from "Man killed brutally in downtown El Centro...is racism involed?" to "Girl Scouts cookie sales crumbling...is racism involed?

Also, any allusions to "lube" or "goo" will lead to bouts of laughter.

Brennan
2010-02-18, 10:30 PM
In my group, my players were wounded after narrowly escaping from a band of savage, powerful orcs and treading through the snow of the mountains where the orcs were based, so they decided to take refuge in a cave. I decided that after resting, they would be attacked by a zombie or two, but rolled some % dice to see what type of zombie it would be. My group got a zombie bear attack, so I exclaimed "Your party is attacked by sudden zombie bears!"

Now, whenever I make a % roll, they exclaim, "OH NO! ZOMBIE BEARS!"


Also, the random name I had for a half-orc ally of their's, "Gretta Go'Rosh" has my group constantly making "GAWRSH (imagine "gosh" said by Goofy of Mickey Mouse fame), GRETTA" jokes.

Iceforge
2010-02-18, 10:54 PM
In my current campaign, we got 2 running gags.

1 is that we make conspiracies about how the parties mule (named "Mogens", which is not so funny to you English speakers as to those off us from Denmark) is secretly insane overpowered, like if my players are confused about something, they joke about how they suspect Mogens to be the evil mastermind behind this confusion.

The other is the parties Paladin, who is extremely trigger happy with Detect Evil, which has become a running gag so whenever someone in the party does something remotely questionable, detect evil is immediately shouted from him (the elf wakes him so he can take his guard shift, only for the elf to go and prepare spells, thus staying awake herself, so he just looks at the elf's player and shouts "DETECT EVIL!")

Me: You hear a noise from the bushes to your right
Paladin: DETECT EVIL!
Me: A little squirrel comes out from underneath the bushes, and stops in it's tracks as it spots you and..
Paladin: I said DETECT EVIL!!!!
Me: You sense no evil aura from the squirrel
Paladin: Damn, he got non-detection!
Me: It's a squirrel
Paladin: You are not fooling me!

It's gotten to the point where I might end up re-inforcing his paranoia by making the first thing he doesn't detect evil on into an evil creature in disguise, or at least feel very tempted to do that, but I proparly won't.

So far, almos all NPC's encountered, the entire party, the parties mule and all animals/beasts/monsters encountered has been under his detection (and usually not getting an evil aura means they most likely got "non-detection" on them by his rational)

Jallorn
2010-02-18, 10:55 PM
-snip-
Also, in all of my games we have the "Green River Trading Company." In its first incarnation it was a minor plot-piece in a complicated murder-conspiracy plotline; for whatever reason, the players took an inordinate interest in the GRTC and were convinced they were behind everything bad that has happened (they weren't). Consequently, the GRTC is now always a greedy, manipulative and often murderous organization that is behind all that is wrong in the world :smallbiggrin:
-snip-

You should subvert this someday and have the GRTC be a very altruistic non-profit or similar type organization... but not tell someone so they investigate it as a front for evil.

Superglucose
2010-02-18, 11:01 PM
You should subvert this someday and have the GRTC be a very altruistic non-profit or similar type organization... but not tell someone so they investigate it as a front for evil.
That would be so funny...

"They're feeding orphaned kittens? What's their angle?"

Infernum
2010-02-18, 11:17 PM
In every game we've run for the past three years, our group has had a "Thomas" in the game.

"Thomas" is the name of at least up to 1 and a max of six different npcs through out the entirety of the game. Each one of them either dies horribly or is beset by horrible things that make him go insane, face nasty beasties that eat him or cursed to be in untold amounts of pain and agony.

The latest incarnation of "Thomas" is a horse guard that I hired to make sure our horses stop getting either eaten or stolen. Not sure how long he will live though.

KnightOfV
2010-02-19, 12:06 AM
I started this one but the rest of my group has picked it up now. Every time a player rolls a one on a Sense motive check...

Wizard (male) PC: "I try to find out if the archmage is lying to me. Sense motive" Proceeds to roll a one.
DM: "No idea if he's telling the truth, but you are getting a vibe that he wants to sleep with you."
Wizard PC: "What?!! The old wrinkled elf guy???? EEEEWWWW.":smalleek:

It works with any NPC, and bonus points if its different race or same gender. :smallamused:

Same thing if they roll a one with Bluff or Diplomacy, except NPC becomes convinced that the character wants them. Hilarity ensues.

Admiral Squish
2010-02-19, 12:11 AM
I started this one but the rest of my group has picked it up now. Every time a player rolls a one on a Sense motive check...

Wizard (male) PC: "I try to find out if the archmage is lying to me. Sense motive" Proceeds to roll a one.
DM: "No idea if he's telling the truth, but you are getting a vibe that he wants to sleep with you."
Wizard PC: "What?!! The old wrinkled elf guy???? EEEEWWWW.":smalleek:

It works with any NPC, and bonus points if its different race or same gender. :smallamused:

Same thing if they roll a one with Bluff or Diplomacy, except NPC becomes convinced that the character wants them. Hilarity ensues.

Related story, my drow scout rolled a 20 on intimidate to get info out of a gnoll captive, and a 1 on sense motive.

'The gnoll looks away in a way that suggests you've kindled his inner passions as he begins to speak':smalleek:. She decided she would do her interrogations with a knife on hand from that point on.

Pandaren
2010-02-19, 12:16 AM
That would be so funny...

"They're feeding orphaned kittens? What's their angle?"

"It must be a plot to create ravenous beasts for their plot to rule the world!! We must stop them at once!"

*proceeds to skewer kittens*


Also, probably going to use that detect evil bit when our group finally starts playing D&D again...

dragonfan6490
2010-02-19, 01:00 AM
Goat and Co. In our boyscout troop, during one campaign, the party was going to split up, but they couldn't decide who would take the goat, who had become the party mascot. Because of this, the party stayed together.

Also: Flags. Just ask Eddie Izzard.

And: Stolen shamelessly from OotS, Explosive Runes.

Mattarias, King.
2010-02-19, 01:00 AM
My current paladin always has to ANNOUNCE HIMSELF IN A MIGHTY VOICE whenever he is about to do something. It started off as a slip-up, but is currently an ongoing thing. :smalltongue: Once he reaches level 3/5, he's also going to be ANNOUNCING HIS MIGHTY SPECIAL ATTACK whenever he executes it. :smallbiggrin: Flying Kick is an awesome feat.

Also, his "favorite" thing, according to this group, is DOING HIS LAUNDRY! ..Which, of course, means tossing his armor into a washing machine and standing in top of it heroically in his boxers while it makes the most horrible loud noises.

The MIGHTY VAN DARKSPLITTER, everyone.

Carden
2010-02-19, 01:26 AM
Currently, our running gag is my Kobold Bluff-amancer. Due to completely optimizing his bluff skill, my DM decided he was SO good at bluffing, he believed it as well. So far, this has led the poor little guy into believing dirt is delicious, one eats soup with arrows instead of firing them, and that the party orc is Neeville, Basket Golem God of Destruction, among other things. You know, getting out of an enemy occupied city is hard work...

kentma57
2010-02-19, 01:46 AM
WOD- Never accept food/drink from vampires they keep trying to form blood bonds(magical slavery) with my human character. I gave them three warnings about this:
1: If there is a loop hole in any order you give me, I will find it.
2: All it takes is one passed save and I can ignore you orders.
3: I always carry incendiary rounds.

D&D: I will do unexpected things...
-usualy because you have insulted someone or something I like(chaotic alignments make me react in odd ways)
-my pesonal code requiers it(DM's can forget how important personal codes are to some people)

absolmorph
2010-02-19, 01:50 AM
The closest thing either of the games I'm in has to a running gag started with our druid's inventory.
She has nasal spray.
As the rogue's player enjoys pointing out, it's FROM THE FUTURE.
When my paladin got shot with a gun (while said rogue was drunkenly puking his guts out)? FROM THE FUTURE.
Anything that's out of place in a medieval society? FROM THE FUTURE.
When I started DMing and the orc barbarian had He-Man boxers? FROM THE FUTURE.
No, we aren't very serious when we're out-of-character. It's pretty serious in character.
Oh, and the same player's fighter (in the campaign I run) has become the party face. And he's awful at it.
They wondered why they let him do the talking, since he just ends up pissing people off (he insulted an orc ranger, which I decided gave the ranger a surprise round because he was SO DANG ANGRY. But not as angry as the barbarian.)

The Dark Fiddler
2010-02-19, 06:27 AM
Ooh, one more! (As if the ones I already posted and edited in weren't enough...)

The bad roleplaying of our friend Rowan who only played one or two sessions with us and is no longer playing (because of schedule conflicts, not because we were jerks or anything :smalltongue:).

He made his Rogue named Silva, and whenever he did anything, he would state what he did in a flat monotone.

Attacking? "I stab it."

Lying? "I bluff it."

Jumping? "I jump."

It's become a running gag, and when our characters from our current campaign met with our old characters from our first campaign (long-ish story), Silva was one of them. Needless to say, we told the DM he was ruining the character he was ruining the character because he was roleplaying too well. So whenever Silva did anything, the DM switched to using Rowan's flat monotone "I ____" style. Great fun.:smallbiggrin:

Ranis
2010-02-19, 10:19 AM
I have been playing a bard in the same campaign for 4 years. He is a noble of the magocracy in the major empire that the campaign started in, and as such, he is very oriented with how he looks. Whenever we go to town, rest stop, etc, he is either having his clothes tailored or patching him up himself on the road.

In our very first adventure, this character hadn't decided what would complete his "adventuring look" yet, and we we ended up clearing out some pirates from a castle on a small island in a lake. On the dead pirate captain, we found a GIANT pirate hat. So large, that sometimes it is difficult to walk through doorways and is probably the first thing people notice when they see the party walking through town.

Our party fighter has taken it upon himself to torment my bard about this hat constantly. He is continually taking it when the bard isn't looking, holding it out of reach like you would hold something you just took out of your kid brother's hand. More recently, he has been looking diligently for a bottle of sovereign glue, which our DM has thankfully not given him. I believe he will be doing unkind things with my poor bard's hat if/when he ever finds some.

Ormagoden
2010-02-19, 11:28 AM
Owlbears go "HOOOOOOOOOOOOT" very loud and angrily.

Goblins are always awesome, always talk in a cute voice despite being hideous. Everyone loves them and feels bad when they have to kill them.

"Shut the door" Is the response to seeing any enemy larger than a Volkswagen. (No matter the setting or even if there is a door available to shut)

"I'm nine!" Is the battle cry of charging warrior's and valiant knights alike.
This stems from a rather effective nine year old boy armed with a short sword fighting off goblins on horseback.

"Go to sleep" is said and usually accompanied by a headlock gesture.
After a sleeper hold was placed on a wild boar rather effectively.

Whenever an enemy throws a javelin or spear at your character and hits you point to your thigh and go "AHH!" If they hit again you point to your other thigh and go "AHHH!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEmklTvAkbM) This also works with bullet wounds to the chest for some reason. Actually it pretty much works any time you take damage.

Bastard swords make the "Cha chack" sound that pump action shotguns make.

The of course there is "that doesn't happen, Standard position" or just shouting "standard position!"

While playing Shadowrun one time, the group was having some down time at an inn/brothel one of the players took advantage of the services at the establishment and went up to a room. A few minutes later a band of gangers breaks the door down and starts shooting.

Player: "That doesn't happen, I'm in standard position."
Quizzically I ask, (GM) "What is standard position?"
Player: "Doggy style, machine pistols drawn, facing the door, smoking a cigar."
I'm stunned into silence
Player: "What, that's standard position."

Everyone laughs and needless to say the story of the naked street samurai became something of an urban legend.

Years later (over 10) I meet up with the same player again and start a DnD campagin.
As one might expect with a similar group downtime was spent in a similar way.
At one point I decide it would be fun to get the same player with the same trick.

So brigands bust down the door daggers drawn and attack!

Player: "No, no, I'm in standard position."
GM (Me) "There are no guns in Dnd Danny"
Player: "I know, Doggy style, hand crossbows drawn, facing the door smoking a pipe. Oh, I have my +3 ring of protection on too."
GM: "I...uh..."
Player: "Standard position man, standard position!"

Eorran
2010-02-19, 11:53 AM
1. Inconspicuous = naked.
My friend's 2e halfling psionicist/thief intended to get off the boat we were on and snoop around in a city. He started down the ramp, then someone pointed out he was decked up in full battle gear. He replied by saying something like "I change into street clothes to be inconspicuous." I pointed out that by this point he was standing in the middle of a busy street. The nearby guard wondered what this little lunatic was doing.

2. Innocent also = naked. The same group had rendered a city guardsman unconscious on a late-night foray somewhere. two sets of arguements arose about what to do with the body, resulting in cross-conversation. One person suggested robbing the guard, at the same time someone else jokingly suggested taking his clothes. The first person finished his own argument saying "It'd make it look innocent" at just the wrong time.

3. One group of decidedly roguish bent had been splashed with mud by an arrogant nobleman's carriage early in their campaign. They retailated by making the man's life hell in a series of robberies. After taking most of his valuables, they started taking stuff just to induce paranoia, including his front door (frame and all, cut away from the house and hung on a bridge in the middle of the city), and his four-poster bed while he was sleeping in it. He woke up on the floor, all traces of his bed vanished. The group makes sure to wait long enough between robberies that he can't afford the extra guards.

9mm
2010-02-19, 12:01 PM
less a running joke than a statement of fact but:

"*DM's name*, You're retarded."

and

"We aren't taking a boat" yes pirates were involved, no the group has never beaten them once.

Tiki Snakes
2010-02-19, 12:11 PM
Okay, so a few that I remember;

An old one -
Near the end of a long-running campaign, one player who had been playing an intelligently-evil warlock was railroaded into having her leave the party.

His replacement character was to be a Warforged of some sort.

In the one session he got to play before the DM moved, the party ended up attending some kind of royal-ball. Highlights included the DM forgetting the gender of my elf, and having him inadvertantly create a bi-curious NPC by having a nobleman ask Min, Elven Barbarian for a dance.

Later on, Min, (my easy-going elf) as well as the party's Bard and the Warforged we had recently met ended up involved in something of an orgy. The girls trying to get the tin-man's attention had to be dissapointed, however, because;
"I'm sorry but I don't have that attatchment."

A new one-

Having talked me into allowing his Dwarven air-pirate to have a pig as a mascot and constant companion, 'Fats Bosgrunt' made the rather understandable mistake of leaving 'Curly' behind on his own airship whilst he investigated an abandoned Spelljammer.

The ships were both breifly exposed to energies of the Far-Realm. The party, safely on the spelljammer, were protected by it's powerful wardings, merely getting explosive nosebleeds and migraines.

The pig, however... Well, I posted a thread here and let you guys pick his fate. There was a conclusive decision, too. The internet had decided that Curly the Pig would exibit random behaviour and phenomina as if he was a rod of wonder.

To date, he has farted butterflies, exploded violently (crittically hitting the Dwarven captain who was carrying him at the time and embedding sizzling pork into the dwarfs face and armpit), vomited gemstones, been repeatedly found inexplicably stuck in sock drawers of all manner, and most recently grown to the size of a hippopotamus.

However,
"The Pig Seems Fine."

Ichneumon
2010-02-19, 12:12 PM
"A droplet falls on your head..."

Shnezz
2010-02-19, 12:31 PM
(In a 4E group, for clarification)

-Making diplomacy checks to convince fire to stop burning you.
-Yelling "I got a 4" every time it comes up, regardless of when we roll it.
-Every minor action that has no use will be turned into muttering angrily in primordial (Or substitute language besides common)
-Filling party member's inventory with 100+ lbs of rocks.

Volkov
2010-02-19, 12:58 PM
One party I dmed had no one who could teleport, so they'd track down my old level 172 blackscale lizardfolk fighter (by then level 185) and ask him to throw them to their destinations. The party would scream various things out of terror while flying at enormous velocities. Examples.

Female grey elf transmuter: This is not what I meant by flying first claaaaaaaasssssss!
Nymph druid: But I don't want to fly like a draggoooooon!
Dwarf Cleric of Moradin: This is tha' fooking reason I fooking hate flyiiiiiiiiing!
Kobold rogue: Can I reconsider thiiiiiis?!
Human fighter: Mommyyyyyyy!!
Xvart psion: Fracking hells why meeeeee?!
Female human paladin: I having second thoughts aiiieeeeee!!
Female high elf bard: But I don't want you to throw me, I'll ourace my own voiiiiiiceee!
Male poison dusk lizardfolk ranger: Oh good gods nooooooo!!
Male high elf knight: Oh...craaaaaaaap!
Male lizardfolk cleric: I don't want to see my house from heeeerreee!

Now he is called Xical Dragonfang, tosser of Player Characters.

Glass Mouse
2010-02-19, 01:39 PM
Wow, we actually have a lot. But, well, what can you expect after almost two years of play?
Spoilered for length.


Using Prestidigitation to upstage the bard. It has been used enough in our group for Prestidigitation to be actually appreciated for what it's supposed to be. Also, enough for my bard to get pretty competitive around the sorcerer.

Same sorcerer fireballing the entire team. He did it once. We expect him to do it again. Only question is "when".

Very intern one: The good ship Emma. During some LARP (where a few from the group where present), they played the pirate rebels on board Emma, fighting the tyrannic rum corporation. One day in D&D, we tried to buy some rum, found a random sailer, and he led us to his ship... gasp... Emma! Selling rum!
We've encountered it a few times since, and the LARPers groan every time.

The wonderful animal "gnuma". It's a mix between llama and gnu (and mule, I think), and we players metagame-created it when the GM needed a random animal. We haven't seen the animal for months, but it's still our password for... well, everything.

Every tailor is gay. Every one.

"The Yawning Dragon" is a chain, and we'll find it in every city, town or inhabited mudhole - if there's an inn, that's it.

Getting the monk drunk. Even more funny now that we have a new party member who seems to find a lot of reasons to do this.

Buying silly things. Whenever we meet random salesmen, our characters buy something. Right now I'm carrying around an ananas, and we're transporting a (delicious) pig on Tenser's Floating Disc. I'm pretty sure the sorcerer is plotting to get a hat.

Edit: Oh, and never pressure our GM into naming too many unimportant NPCs. If we push him, people end up named "Sven" or "Bent" (funnier in Danish, I admit). Every time.

Smeggedoff
2010-02-19, 02:02 PM
"Warning shot"

In a Gestalt game I played in last year our party entered a forest on a diplomatic mission, the elves were somewhat on edge due to events were were yet to find out about.

As we walked through the trees an elven ranger decloaked in the trees and with a cry of "halt!" fired a warning shot at our Swordsage//Bard and proceeded to crit, roll max damage and kill him in one shot.

Silence fell over the table.

Ever since, whenever someone shoots a bow a cry of "Warning Shot!" can be heard as we try to invoke the magic.

Pandaren
2010-02-19, 02:23 PM
Recalled another:

Playing a d20 CoC campaign with new players, and when I say new, I mean just about no idea how to play game. As in constantly saying things like "I go out to work and bust a drug gang", (he's a police officer) to which me and the other experienced player in the group laugh, and how we laugh, of course it gets tiresome.

The real source of the humour was in one of the character's back story's, something about a rouge cop and something-or-other, the character had to kill his partner. Shortly afterwards, the first mention of his current partner, one player decided to yell "NO DON'T SHOOT HER!!", to which we all busted up laughing. It has become a running gag, much to the chagrin of the player.


Another player, his first time playing a non-D&D campaign, decided to try his luck with some female NPC's, he rolls his Charisma check, and rolls a 1. DM makes something up, we laugh, but that's not all. He proceeds to try again, and again, and again, and consistently rolls below 5. He has not tried to do anything of the sort ever again.
Unfortunately for another player, he tried to do the same thing, with a particularly hard-ass DM, who proceed to force him to roleplay through the whole encounter. He stumbled through some poor pickup lines and responses while the other players fell to the floor laughing.

saltythetrain
2010-02-19, 02:24 PM
-One player was absolutely convinced that Use Rope was the greatest of skills, and used it in every possible situation. Barbarians attack: Use Rope.

-Our wizards insisted everyone refer to him as The Great and Powerful Zardoz, Favored of the Gods, Born of Three Thunders, Slayer of Elemental Evil. The full name, every time. He even took Thematic Spell: Lightning and Skulls and Heavy Metal Riffs. Our druid had significantly more charisma than Zardoz and would generally spread rumors about him, in addition to constantly getting his name wrong.

-all kobolds are Tucker's kobolds.

-We currently have a wizard prostitute specializing in blue magic, named Linda 2: Electric Bugaloo. The first Linda was a street prostitute. We killed the city pimp and renamed all prostitutes Linda "for simpler paperwork".

-elaborately constructing bag of holding/portable hole "bombs"

-a chaotic evil sorceror would mass-mail explosive runes to his enemies and strangers. Every once in a while the DM would award him XP for killing someone.

Xallace
2010-02-19, 02:43 PM
"Wolverine"
A buddy of mine played a druid with a wolverine animal companion, and this companion hated him. He would always play up how it outright attack him if he so much as looked at it funny.

Well, his druid died, and the wolverine took to living in the ventilation ducts of the party airship. A few sessions after introducing this guy's new character, someone mentioned the wolverine... which promptly burst from an air duct and savaged the new character.

So now, when anyone says "Wolverine" in character while playing with this guy, a savage wolverine erupts from somewhere nearby and attacks his character.

"The Wail of a Thousand Tortured Souls"
The party once fought a living Blasphemy spell. Then they fought it again, as they hadn't killed it the first time. Then they fought it a third time sometime later, after (once again) failing to kill it. Each time, it was introduced with the players hearing the "Wailing as though of a thousand tortured souls." Now they all turn stark white at the mention of that line.

"The Genasi Slow Clap"
Genasi invented the slow clap. It is culturally significant. You can't use it, because it's their clap.

"Made of Meadle"
We had a guy once play a warforged paladin. One day he couldn't make it to the game, so the character sheet was handed to another player. The sheet, by all accounts, was completely illegible, save for the sole statement: "Made of meadle."

Meadle is now what all warforged are made of.

"Art Thou Ready For This?"
All good-aligned churches are associated with breakdancing and dance parties. All good-aligned gods are excellent dancers. In contrast, Hextor and his clergy are not known to dance, but their music sounds suspiciously like the band Aqua.

"Wizard McWizard of Wizardington"
During a one-shot game, the DM accidentally referred to an enemy wizard as having "ranks in wizard." Later, the same wizard was referred to as being "half-wizard," by which the DM meant he was gish, but we took as racially. Later, "Wizard Paragon" got added into the mix, so we had a half-wizard wizard paragon with max ranks in wizard.

Quoth the party bard, "We never stood a chance!"

But since then, any wizard NPC will be referred to as "having ranks in wizard," "being half-wizard," or "being a wizard paragon," depending on the nature of his wizardry (read: there's no rhyme or reason).

Traktraktraktraktraktrak

Dotrak is a proto-god from the Dragonmech campaign setting. His divine quasi-will sometimes randomly animates pieces of junk into monsters called "Trak-Traks," due to the noise they make.

The worshippers of Dotrak (mostly warforged in our games) pray by repeating the word "trak" incessantly.

Condos Everywhere!
Sebastian D'Leone is a sullen, awkward youth who works for the Johnson & Johnson Brothers Contracting Service as a surveyor. Various parties across various campaigns have found Sebastian far out in the wilderness, adjusting his sextant, and surveying for places to erect condos.

Sebastian has been found on stormy mountain tops, in wasteland hills, and ancient jungle ruins- basically, anywhere that it took PCs days of hard, dangerous travel to get to, there he'd be.

Octopus Jack
2010-02-19, 03:20 PM
We've had a few such as my very fickle luck cleric, every single feat he took was a luck feat from Complete Scoundrel, so he could pretty much reroll anything, but due to his nature he rarely helped the party. One encounter involved them being attacked by a fire elemental, instead of aiding them in attacking he proceeded to throw magic oil on it, making it bigger, and use Good Karma to take some of the damage the party were doing to it, while healing himself. The rest of the players weren't happy and now look suspiciously at me everytime i take a luck feat.
The DM in a recent campaign liked his villians to monologue...alot. Though interesting at first we didn't really want to know every evil guys back story, so in the middle of speaking my character would yell "Suprise Round!" and make an attack before anyone knew what was going on.
The same character was armed with a humanbane spear he always failed his attack rolls against humans, always!

kaiguy
2010-02-19, 03:22 PM
Okay, "Art Thou Ready for This" just made it into my campaign. I'm going to see if I get get the paladin to unwittingly join an order, and become "Defender of the Faith, Protector of the Funk."

:smalltongue:

Admiral Squish
2010-02-19, 03:33 PM
I played a game of D&D with a couple younger players once. It was pretty good, but it devolved into silliness a few times. At one point, they decided to play 'bed the barmaid', the rules being the first one to sleep with the barmaid paid for the prior night's drinks. So, charisma checks were rolled. Nobody got above a six if memory serves. They all ended up in the same bed with a kobold in a wig.

In a different game, with different players, the party decided to spend the night reveling and get some tail. Charisma checks. The half-demon fighter rolled a three. The halfling swashbuckler? Natural 20. The swashbuckler woke up the next morning in a bed with three ladies, an elf, a human, and a half-elf, all three of them whining and pleading for him to stay as he dressed. The fighter woke up with a half-ogress. He actually started dating her, and I was forced to come up with details about her on the fly.

Calimehter
2010-02-19, 03:35 PM
"There *are* no mind flayers"

Many years ago, we ended a high-level campaign with the PCs foiling an attempt by illithids to take over a large empire. They succeeded, but of course it was difficult to tell for sure if all the illithids had been rooted out. This led to speculation that the illithids had, in fact, won the battle and simply charmed everyone into thinking that they had been defeated. So now, in subsequent campaigns in the same setting, it has become a running gag to have 'thought police' or even the illithids themselves jump out from behind a corner monotoning various versions of "there are no mind flayers" anytime one of the players mentions them, and various faux-metagaming statements such as "well, it can't be the mind flayers, because there *are* no mind flayers".

This gag has even gone as far as leaving unsolicited answering machine messages IRL with "public service announcements" promoting the absence of mind flayers and leaving numbers to call in the event that should suddenly stop realizing that there *are* no mind flayers.

absolmorph
2010-02-19, 03:39 PM
Traktraktraktraktraktrak

Dotrak is a proto-god from the Dragonmech campaign setting. His divine quasi-will sometimes randomly animates pieces of junk into monsters called "Trak-Traks," due to the noise they make.

The worshippers of Dotrak (mostly warforged in our games) pray by repeating the word "trak" incessantly.
Note to self: Don't put liquid in my mouth while reading this thread.
I spewed milk from my cereal all over the screen and keyboard of my laptop when I read this.

BlckDv
2010-02-19, 03:45 PM
I'll give you two for now, may add more later.

Longest running:

"Baynar Felf" A player who has played in over 80% of my campaigns is valued for his very shrewd tactics, but feared for his almost random boredom with his PC. At unpredicable moments he will decide he is tired of of his PC and have a suicidal fit... jump through a trapped maze, fly into the demon army, etc. At some point the player fixated on the name Baynar Felf, and now uses it for almost all of his PCs. Afer a while, the party learns that whenever he dies, they should ask around the next friendly town they come for for anyone named "Baynar Felf" and just accept as fate that he is destined to join them.

Newest:

"XX Drakes!" A vain and pompous half elf who was very proud of his looks was, by happenstance, wickedly wounded by assorted drakes in each of his first three adventures. He developed a paranoia of Drakes, and anytime something seemed to threaten his good looks, he would claim it was caused by drakes... up to and including claiming that "Burrowing Rock Drakes" were infesting a rock slide trap that had immobilized him, leading to him panicking and begging for help most of the fight. (The player is careful to make sure this does not translate into not helping the party).

subject42
2010-02-19, 03:52 PM
The other is the parties Paladin, who is extremely trigger happy with Detect Evil, which has become a running gag so whenever someone in the party does something remotely questionable, detect evil is immediately shouted from him (the elf wakes him so he can take his guard shift, only for the elf to go and prepare spells, thus staying awake herself, so he just looks at the elf's player and shouts "DETECT EVIL!")

Me: You hear a noise from the bushes to your right
Paladin: DETECT EVIL!
Me: A little squirrel comes out from underneath the bushes, and stops in it's tracks as it spots you and..
Paladin: I said DETECT EVIL!!!!
Me: You sense no evil aura from the squirrel
Paladin: Damn, he got non-detection!
Me: It's a squirrel
Paladin: You are not fooling me!


Our Paladin player is the same way. Here's an excerpt from brief conversation between her and the DM from a few weeks ago.

DM: The Dwarf Hands you a sandwich.
Paladin: Is it evil?
DM: The Dwarf or the sandwich?
Paladin: The Dwarf.
DM: Not Evil.
Paladin: What about the sandwich?
DM: It's a sandwich.
Paladin: So, not evil, then?

Sipex
2010-02-19, 03:56 PM
Our wizard (half-elf) uses eyebite and it fails fantastically, everytime.

The party also has an affinity for cross dressing as disguises.

rayne_dragon
2010-02-19, 04:00 PM
We have a number in our 4e Dragonlance game

"Minotaur Diplomacy" is really intimidate. This came about because most of our party has the Diplomacy skill, but never actually use it - every time we try to our DM points our we're trying intimidate or bluff.

Our male elven avenger is constantly referred to as a she, even by her his player (who is male).

My wizard's standard attack is to "set the room on fire".

My shaman (we each have an alternate character for plot reasons) is referred to as the "creepy little girl" by other players.

"No, we cannot stuff the knight in the bag of holding to hide him"

Sipex
2010-02-19, 04:07 PM
Oh, that reminds me of other things:

Our rogue's biggest social skill is bluff, in fact, it's his only trained social skill.

So he always rolls it, for everything.

Intimidate? I try to convince the man that he's scared of me.

Diplomacy? I lie, I tell the man that we already explained all this with him before and that he accepted the terms. He also owes me 100gp.

JonestheSpy
2010-02-19, 04:09 PM
In a newish modern fantasy campaign I'm running, one character has a pronounced habit of throwing foes out windows - twice in different encounters in the same apartment, so same window. I'm starting to refer to him as the Defenestrator, we'll see if he keeps the habit up.

Hootman
2010-02-19, 04:19 PM
Also, his "favorite" thing, according to this group, is DOING HIS LAUNDRY! ..Which, of course, means tossing his armor into a washing machine and standing in top of it heroically in his boxers while it makes the most horrible loud noises.

Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk....

I'm so glad I decided to DM that game. XD Now, to share some of MY stories.


So, I was DMing a game with only two players--a warlock, and a bard. They were pretty much guaranteed to die based on that ALONE, but somehow, they had managed to stay alive so far. They were approached by an unusually surly gnome with an escort mission: young women of noble birth had been disappearing recently in the town, and his charge might be a target. He had to escort her from Point A to Point B, and if the party would help him keep her safe, they would be handsomely rewarded. (They were approached because they'd had dealings with the guards in the previous adventure, and it was obvious they would be discreet about the nature of the mission--they had no desire to tangle with the guards again, and the woman wanted her actions kept secret.)

So, anyways, they met up with the gnome and the lady in the evening in an alley in the upperclass district, and proceeded to escort her across town to someone else's mansion. This was SUPPOSED to be a throwaway mission--they get to the other house, some kobolds attack, the party defeats them and follows them back to the sewers to find the Plot. However, three things got in the way.

1) I knew they'd die if they went in alone, so I planned on sending the gnome (cleric) with them to keep them alive.
2) They IMMEDIATELY developed a love for the gnome and named him Manny, regardless of what his name actually was.
3) After they mopped up the kobolds, they decided that instead of rushing into the sewer enterance they discovered following kobold footprints, they decided they had to go find Batman.

Yes, Batman. Batman was the name they had given to the Captain of the Night Watchmen, Leon. When they added "Night work" + "Good guy" + "Intimidate", they got "He must be Batman." So, they summoned Batman (luckily not with a Bat-signal), and they headed back to the sewers with Batman and Manny in tow with the intent of crushing the kobolds. That was all fine and good, but Manny REFUSED to be an NPC. He just...refused to be lame. He was just too good, pink-mist-ing several kobolds and taken a Barbarian kobold's greatsword to the face without dying (he did pass out for a litle bit). Finally, they got the boss, busted in, disintegrated his ass with the MacGuffin, he came back (as per the Walking Wormling lich-variant...thing. It was in the module), and they began fighting in earnest. Oh, right, to set the scene, this was a 30x30 room with the bad guy in the middle standing over a young woman chained to a stone tablet performing a ritual, holding a bowl of blood. Other women were chained to the back wall, guarded by some better-than-average kobolds. When the bard disintegrated him, he dropped the bowl...which spilled blood, which expanded to flood the chamber up to the ankles. The party began sloshing around in the blood, killing kobolds and trying to get at the boss guy. A few rounds later, there was only one kobold left, and Manny was soloing him off to the side, while everyone else fought the boss. Manny and the kobold traded misses for several rounds (Manny's AC was really high, and he just rolled poorly against his foe), when abruptly the bard's player had an idea.

"Oh, screw that, just drown it in the blood!" I...didn't know what to say. Moreover, I couldn't think of a reason Manny WOULDN'T do it (racial gnome-kobold hatred and all that). So, that very round, Manny tossed aside his sickle and DOVE AT THE KOBOLD. Grapple. SUCCESS. Next turn, pin attempt. SUCCESS. Manny pinned the flailing kobold in such a way as to keep the kobold's mouth and nose under the blood for at least 4 rounds, during which time the party landed several good blows against the boss. For theatrical fun, I allowed the boss to live until the right moment: the warlock delivered a final Eldritch blast to kill the wormlich, and Manny's turn was next. He stood calmly, obviously now coated almost head to toe in blood, left the drowned kobold right where it was, and moved to help the party start freeing the women and using his cleric magic to heal wounds and whatnot. He was just....so stoic. It was awesome. It was also only the FIRST time they adventured with him.

Now, whenever we need luck on an important roll while doing something cool, we always say "I invoke The Manny" before the roll. I don't think we've ever been disappointed.


In a different campaign (which happens to be DMed by the bard), I play a Rogue/Barbarian/Scarlet Corsair, a pirate captain. She and her crew (Leadership for minions) began their adventures by having their ship stolen while they were at the equivalent of Tortuga, the crew conveniently killed down to the number she was allowed to have thanks to Leadership. That number was also just enough to crew the ship. oDo;;;

So, we have the party Chaos Mage (DMPC, a whole 'nother story by himself: in keeping with the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, he's not allowed in Singapore anymore because he once "Accidentally the dock. The whole thing.") use his magic to teleport the remaining crew members into the belly of the ship, and we fought our way to the top deck, where we faced the thieves and killed most of them. Their bard turned invisible, but our Lizardfolk Druid managed to Spot and then GRAB her, keeping her from being any trouble. At the same time, the remaining half-orc fighter chugged a potion and threw himself overboard to get away, and the raging Captain Aeron would have none of it. She JUMPED OVERBOARD AND ATTACKED HIM ON THE WAY DOWN, doing enough damage to KO the fighter in the water. She then had to be dragged back up onto the boat, carrying his unconscious body, which was looted and coup de graced in front of the captured bard, along with anyone else who hadn't hit -10 yet. The bard, we allowed to live (bashing her unconscious), and dumped her overboard on Tortuga's beach, making it look like she washed up on shore. Aeron is a Scarlet Corsair--SOMEONE has to stay alive to tell the story.

This "jumping off the boat while in a Rage" thing became a habit. She dove off after an escaping slaver ship, and promptly clambered on board, beheading the enemy captain with an awesome critical hit. On a different mission, she fought Captain Bones, a 10th level Swashbuckler/Rogue/Scarlet Corsair (she was only level 7) by herself and gave him a run for his money (Improved Uncanny Dodge is AWESOME). He escaped when his pet sorcerer flew to just over the railing and readied an action to cast a scroll of Dimension Door, jumping them to nearby land. Naturally, Aeron dove after him...falling off the boat and hitting the water (luckily, not in the area covered by a Black Tentacle's spell, with it's huge radius).

This is as far as we've gotten so far, but I sincerely doubt Aeron has jumped overboard chasing an enemy for the last time.


I could go on, but I think this is enough for now.

Zanatos777
2010-02-19, 04:21 PM
Well we have a few. Two involve one player. Three of his characters in one game were all related to each other. The first one died only to be replaced by an almost identical character who was her twin. Later she...was removed from the party and the next character was both of their twin brother making them triplets. Because of this we often comment that we are about to have 'twin triplets'.

Same player has the uncanny ability to get into fights where everything is stacked in his favor or he could easily avoid whatever fate by not being stupid but he still manages to lose horribly. To date he lost a 'fight' with a pair of police officers in CthuluTech when he was a nightmare (first of the twin triplets). In my current game he, as a level 5 crusader with (unrealistically) good ability scores, he lost and died only killing one of the five level 1 fighters. He lost another fight under similar circumstances later with another character. They have started calling any incident where he comes in contact with these sorts of characters 'Epic Mooks'.

Quite funny.

The Random NPC
2010-02-19, 04:33 PM
My group has a houserule, dragonhide armor has energy resist of the same type as the dragon. You don't get the energy resist, just the armor.

hamishspence
2010-02-19, 04:39 PM
My group has a houserule, dragonhide armor has energy resist of the same type as the dragon. You don't get the energy resist, just the armor.

That's actually an official rule in Draconomicon- if the dragon is immune to energy, the armour is. But the wearer is not protected in any way.

I.E. red dragonhide armour is immune to fire damage.

It also has slightly more powerful versions, where the wearer can have a small amount of energy resistance.

Volkov
2010-02-19, 05:07 PM
That's actually an official rule in Draconomicon- if the dragon is immune to energy, the armour is. But the wearer is not protected in any way.

I.E. red dragonhide armour is immune to fire damage.

It also has slightly more powerful versions, where the wearer can have a small amount of energy resistance.

Because Full plate armor should ideally not expose any part of the body, shouldn't it logically grant energy resistance?

DementedFellow
2010-02-19, 05:08 PM
That's actually an official rule in Draconomicon- if the dragon is immune to energy, the armour is. But the wearer is not protected in any way.

I.E. red dragonhide armour is immune to fire damage.

It also has slightly more powerful versions, where the wearer can have a small amount of energy resistance.

So how does that work? You take a blast of a dragon's breath weapon and even though you have exotic armor, you still take damage?

Window459
2010-02-19, 05:16 PM
Well beside the Barbarian having the shinyest equipment, we had a half vampire that ate the fanta girls, it made laugh

TheCountAlucard
2010-02-19, 05:20 PM
I"m failing to see what the armor has to do with a running gag, though...

AtopTheMountain
2010-02-19, 05:47 PM
Ooh, here's another one! About that barbarian...

Once we were confronted with a locked door. Unfortunately, the rogue was missing. Long story. Anyway, instead of waiting 10 minutes for knock, I (the barbarian) said, "I use intimidate" because that was his only good skill. So:
Me: "I use intimidate."
DM: "...It's a door."
Me: "I intimidate the door."
DM: "[sigh] fine, roll."
Me: "[rolls a natural 20]"
DM: "...The door runs away."
Me: "YES! Freaking BEAST!!!"
Me + rest of group: "[bursts into laughter]"

So as long as I played that barbarian, I said "I use intimidate" whenever we came to a door, locked or not.

Calemyr
2010-02-19, 05:49 PM
The armor itself takes no damage, but that doesn't stop the wearer. Wearing a suit of red dragon armor when fighting a red dragon only means that he will target you first and that when he's done with his breath weapon all that will be left is some ashes in an undamaged suit of armor. That said, the rules ALSO add that you get a discount when applying appropriate elemental enchantments to such a piece of armor.

Personally, one of my favorite characters I ever played was a mad scientist artificer who specialized in inventing artifice versions of modern amenities, such as a pda homunculus, a set of "walkie talkie" earpieces that were later upgraded with a full scale cellular network using telepathically linked homunculi, and a trio of Effigy constructs that were customized to serve as vehicles: a wyvern as an airship, a young gold dragon as a personal jet fighter, and a bulette as an all-terain vehicle.

Since my allies were a half-minotaur warblade god of combat, a pyrophilic gnome warlock rumored to have fathered a legion of half-gnome/half-fire-elemental children, and an elven Bow Initiate who frequently believed he was a night-elf hunter from World of Warcraft, I didn't even feel particularly outlandish in that group.

DementedFellow
2010-02-19, 05:54 PM
The armor itself takes no damage, but that doesn't stop the wearer. Wearing a suit of red dragon armor when fighting a red dragon only means that he will target you first and that when he's done with his breath weapon all that will be left is some ashes in an undamaged suit of armor. That said, the rules ALSO add that you get a discount when applying appropriate elemental enchantments to such a piece of armor.


How much of a discount? Like for free? Otherwise, I think it's a horrible idea. Armor should do what it's supposed to do.

If you're going to have the item's magic only affect itself, then I can only see someone who wears Boots of Flying heading off into the air, feet-first while their pockets empty out onto the field below.

Sillycomic
2010-02-19, 06:08 PM
We had a human sorceress when we were playing Pathfinder, who was about 8 months pregnant. She played it fairly well, strange food cravings and mood swings all the time.

Then she would do weird stuff, like run into combat because the paladin just dropped fighting a minotaur... to give him a potion.

We would all look at each other and go, "Wait a minute, aren't you pregnant?"

That line became a running gag for a good long time.

sofawall
2010-02-19, 06:14 PM
How much of a discount? Like for free? Otherwise, I think it's a horrible idea. Armor should do what it's supposed to do.

If you're going to have the item's magic only affect itself, then I can only see someone who wears Boots of Flying heading off into the air, feet-first while their pockets empty out onto the field below.

Well, considering the armour isn't magic or anything, it makes sense to me.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-02-19, 06:14 PM
We had a human sorceress when we were playing Pathfinder, who was about 8 months pregnant. She played it fairly well, strange food cravings and mood swings all the time.

Then she would do weird stuff, like run into combat because the paladin just dropped fighting a minotaur... to give him a potion.

We would all look at each other and go, "Wait a minute, aren't you pregnant?"

That line became a running gag for a good long time.
Similar oWoD Vampire story: a player decided to make a Malkavian Speakeasy Owner in a Roaring 20's game. Well, every Malkavian needs to be crazy in some way, so the player said "I'm paranoid." OK then.

Said player then failed to have a doorman to spot a gang of Sabbat breaking into his joint, signed a "joint venture" contract with a high-gen Ventrue without reading it, and basically acted without a whit of planning or mistrust.

Subsequently, whenever talking about another character who has made similarly credulous actions, it is customary to preface the story with the fact that "he's so paranoid!"

Thurbane
2010-02-19, 06:18 PM
We have a number of running gags at our table...

Every time someone uses a quarterstaff, we say "It's a buck-and-a-quarter quarterstaff, but I'm not telling him that!" (Daffy Duck quote).

Every time someone casts Sanctuary, we all break into song "She Sells Sanctuary" (The Cult).

...and a lot not suitable for a family friendly website. :smallbiggrin:

AslanCross
2010-02-19, 06:30 PM
No, we were playing Faerun. Kind of. (Normally Faerun doesn't have a character named Rick Astley)

...so his Countersong instead listed on his character sheet as "RICKROLL"? :smallbiggrin:

1. The dwarf Crusader always rolls a natural 1 when it counts. RHOD is a rather serious campaign, but we've seen him roll so many 1s when executed attempted "death blows" that we seem to have given up on him slaying stuff.

2. The shifter warblade is somehow related to all the big cats they encounter (mundane and dire). This coming from her remarking on how a dire lion they had rescued from a lich druid reminded her of her grandfather. (She's actually wereleopard descended.)

3. The dwarf Crusader's adopted warforged scout "brother" was the object of such ire that when he was shredded by a Greater Barghest, the party just pretended to bury him while stuffing his remains into the bag of holding. (The Crusader was deafened then.)

He only discovered those remains recently. (Even the player didn't know.)

4. The dwarf and warforged scout are named Holden and Loven Magroen. Say that very quickly. (That got old, actually, but his ENTIRE CLAN has names like that.)

5. The new rogue sniper's name is Box. His name is really Nox, but due to the player not saying his name very well when he introduced himself and that he has an insanely high Hide modifier, the other PCs just say "What's that...box...on the roof?"

Which is of course a reference to Metal Gear. :P

6. I ALMOST misrepresented the city's Aasimar cleric of Dol Arrah as a closet lesbian furry-lover when the city's lord mayor (her lover) was shot by a sniper and she decided to use her restoration spells on the Shifter warblade instead of the mayor.

7. Eberron = Earth. Why?
Aundair = France
Breland = USA (Sharn is clearly New York City, but could also be Chicago if your campaign is grimdark)
Cyre = Japan
Karrnath = Nazi Germany
Thrane = Papal States

Read the Five Nations book and you will likely come to the same conclusions.

8. Others:
Q'Barra and the Lhazaar Principalities = The Carribean countries
Adar = Tibet
Riedra = Communist China
Xen'Drik = Mesoamerica
Argonnessen = Australia

Remmirath
2010-02-19, 07:27 PM
Some of these are pretty funny. :smallbiggrin:

In one group, we had a raptorine samurai who was slightly higher level and along to help us out. While we were making characters, the player of this character commented on how ridiculous he thought it was that his character had proficiency with the footbow.
It became a running gag whenever we faced a large group of enemies to tell the raptorine to "use your footbow on them!". The best one was when there was a new player in the group and he actually thought the samurai had a footbow. :smallamused:

In another (usually World of Darkness) group, the DM is very fond of adding a surreal element to his campaigns by giving the characters lots of hallucinations. One of the stranger ones (which was later explained away by the trandoshan's drug-smuggling habits) was in a Star Wars game where the dark jedi we had just met started shouting things in an unknown tongue, screamed, aged a hundred years and died.
Now whenever something weird starts happening we ask the DM if anybody is about to age a hundred years and die.
"You have a hallucination" is more of a phrase we've come to dread.
Other hallucination examples: In a Vampire game, one of the characters was a Nosferatu who was working for a crime boss. He had a 'dream' in which he shot the boss. When he woke up, the boss was dead. Thus "I killed him in my dreams?"

In the group I usually play in, well, it's been going for about twelve years, so there's probably much I'm forgetting. :smallsigh:

The villains of the main story arc are a race of evil, ancient beings who were sealed away long ago for trying to kill the gods. They manipulate events through use of their servants on other worlds.
One of my characters is rather paranoid, and has taken to believing that they are controlling everything the characters do. Thus, they are often referred to as "the puppet masters", and most plot hooks are instantly seen as them "pulling our strings" whether they are or not.

The organisation they work for is known as H.I.T., and one of my earlier characters had a way of recruiting the strangest creatures they could find into the organisation.
People now tend to say "we need that guy ... in H.I.T.!" if we find some truly bizarre NPC.

In an older game, one of my brother's characters was a depressed lizardman ranger who acquired a hooked spear and was a champion swimmer. One of the first things he would typically say to any NPC he encountered would be "I can swim the mile" or "behold my hooked spear", both said in a very dejected tone of voice.
He once tried to show off in the middle of a tavern and ruled a series of four natural ones in a row. Shortly before he did this he had asked those in the tavern to "check out my cool moves". This now means "watch me fail" in our group.

In a different older game, my character was a very unpleasant grey elven necromancer who had a habit of killing most anyone he could get away with, offending those he couldn't, and double-crossing all parties. This did eventually catch up to him.
Very early on, he was put in jail and a thief broke in and offered to bail him out for a hundred gold pieces. He responded with "I don't have a hundred gold pieces!" in an indignant tone.
The DM apparently thought this was funny, because the same thief tried the same trick on him with ever-increasing sums of gold that he couldn't pay at the time. They would invariably get the same response.
This has happened once or twice in games since.

Going back to our new game, there's "Let's form the diamond!". Most of the characters have no sense of tactics at all, but there are one or two who've tried to drill tactics into the rest.
It didn't work. Their response to any threat is now to form a diamond, even if it's a bad idea.

That's all I can think of. Well, aside from a few that probably shouldn't be mentioned here.

Dragero
2010-02-19, 07:34 PM
My one play is convinced the BBEG is Tom Sawyer......Why you ask? They found his hat, it was marked T.S.

His real name is Thuman Sandstrike.....

ZombieGenesis
2010-02-19, 08:49 PM
My one play is convinced the BBEG is Tom Sawyer......Why you ask? They found his hat, it was marked T.S.

His real name is Thuman Sandstrike.....

Good lord, coincidence overload.
Someone mentions Tom Sawyer on the forums as I'm playing Rush-Tom Sawyer on my mp4, and it just happens to be my PbP DM, which I was playing while listening to the song in the first place.
I think I need a new brain after this one.

Dogmantra
2010-02-19, 08:55 PM
"I'm rolling my bluff."
This has been said several thousand times. I believe it first came about after I said there weren't any animals around (for handle animal, you see), but the player rolled a 20 on their spot check, so I had to give them something. Yeah, it turned out that it was a god in rabbit form who didn't take too kindly to being "handled" by the ranger. What did he do? Roll a bluff check.

Other things where that awful phrase has been uttered:
Telling another character that the room that was guarded by a trap and a locked door didn't contain anything when in fact it contained several thousand gold pieces.
On an angry dragon.
On the gnome the party was doing a quest for, to try and convince him they didn't find any treasure in the aforementioned room (he demanded commission) when they clearly had.
In place of a fortitude save to avoid suffocating. I'll admit, this one was me, my reasoning was that I faked not dying so well that I actually did.

Of course, all this means is that there's now another running joke that you're never ever allowed to try and bluff anything. Ever.

ShadowsGrnEyes
2010-02-19, 11:36 PM
"There's a feat for that." Said after just about any action anyone can think of ever! It started ages ago when someone asked if they could down an opponent take their five foot step and Cleave to another guy. Then a while later another similar question was asked and again later and it eventually became a joke. because in the vast wealth of source books there reallyt is a feat for pretty much everything.

One player is constantly called "The Bard" in reference to the web movie The Dorkness Rising. he doesnt actually have to be playing a bard. . . he's just the bard because he has a knack for dying. . . alot. . . seriously. . .its insane how often he dies. . . and its all total flukes. . . like npc villains have a remarkable talent for criting him and he has a remarkable talent for rolling 1's on saves.

oh and lewd jokes but i"ll leave those out.

Beowulf DW
2010-02-20, 12:01 AM
The halfling rogue in our party constantly tries to disguise himself using the skins of dead creatures we've just defeated. Our cleric then attacks the disguised rogue, believing that one of the creatures we just defeated is now undead because his spot checks suck. My monk is then forced to use one of his stunning fists to stop the cleric.

We aren't even on our second session, yet.

Optimator
2010-02-20, 01:40 AM
If someone rolls 17 as their initiative, one says "Seventeen--you ready" like Chef. Also, saying "It's super-effective!" or "It's not very effective..."

Akal Saris
2010-02-20, 01:49 AM
I run a Birthright game, which means that each session generally it's a new player's turn. But since one player's gotten more turns than the others b/c of group makeup and whatnot, invariably whenever we sit down and anyone says "Whose turn is it?" everyone else choruses "Ian's turn!!"

Because of a short-lived game several years ago, lots of places, ships, and groups in our games are now called XYZ "of the Boorish Owlbear". Likewise anytime a character orders a drink, odds are that it will be a Halruuan Hellbender.

Superglucose
2010-02-20, 03:24 AM
Two more:

Cr16 Lich (I rolled on an encounter table for a party of level 4s, guess what popped up?)

"It's Flamestrike!" Whenever someone fails their spellcraft check to identify a spell, they identify it as flamestrike, no matter what effect it has.

Corollary: I and IonDragon insist on rolling spellcraft for every spell cast... even those by party members and ourselves.

"Burning Hands has the same effect as Produce Flame" in a high-magic campaign someone played a psionicist pretending to be a wizard for the social benefits, and would make a spellcraft check (in secret) to disguise his psionics as a spell. This wouldn't fool most of the real wizards, but no one else really knew the difference. At the table though, he'd say "I cast {arcane spell}" and then send the power he was using in a note. He confused Burning Hands and Produce Flame though, so he said "I cast burning hands" when the effect duplicated Produce Flame instead. So now they're the same thing.

"Knowledge Engineering: How do I tie my shoes?" The Bard was getting carried away asking inane questions for the last half hour (things like, "Are these particular goblins known for any exploitable weaknesses?" "Yes, they're weak to melee attacks, ranged attacks, and spells." "Where are the goblins in the hills?" "In the hills." "Are the goblins in the hills?" "Yes.") so I interrupted and stole his thunder by rolling a Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering (untrained as a fighter in full plate) asking how to tie my shoes. The GM got pissy, the bard got pissy, the other four people fell to the floor laughing.

Clovis
2010-02-20, 05:13 AM
Fireplaces.
Our 3.5 D&D halfling rogue has some kind of fireplace fixation. Wherever she sees a fireplace, she's got to check it. So far this has resulted in several near-death experiences whatwith the inevitable traps, spiders and other nasty critters that tend to inhabit them. We have begun to buy antitoxins just for this.

Finishing blows.
The same rogue has an uncanny ability to be the last one to hit the enemy, thus she's gained a fearsome reputation with her sling. The meatshields and the wizard do most of the battle, whittling away those hitpoints and then <whammo> comes the sling bullet and kills the monster. Thus we've began to invoke the rogue's name when facing something that just won't die.

Grand piano.
Whenever a player says something stupid (well, more stupid than usual) or metagames horribly the DM says in an ominous voice: 'You suddenly realize there is a grand piano hovering over your head, ready to drop any second.' Nowadays we players say 'grand piano' to the offending player before the DM, thus invoking the piano to hover over our heads. This magical piano can even hover over your head in a tight corridor in the Underdark, or at the bottom of the sea.

Sillycomic
2010-02-20, 05:18 AM
"Damn you Manann!!!"

In Warhammer the gods are a lot more interactive with people than D&D. You can pray to them, and roll percentile to see if they hear and answer your prayer. Well, so that also works the other way around. You start cursing Gods and bad things start happening.

So, our campain was in Middenheim. This is a super city located within the mountains. Like a mile up from sea level... imagine something like Denver Colorado.

And Manann is the god of the sea... which is nowhere near this area.

So, whenever we wanted to curse the gods for soemthing going wrong, or bad luck, or stupidity, it was always Manann's fault.

It worked out kinda awesome, until one day I had a dream where Manann personally came to me and said I was being a ****.

After that, I think my dwarf switched religions and became a devout pirate.

BobVosh
2010-02-20, 05:26 AM
Finishing blows.
The same rogue has an uncanny ability to be the last one to hit the enemy, thus she's gained a fearsome reputation with her sling. The meatshields and the wizard do most of the battle, whittling away those hitpoints and then <whammo> comes the sling bullet and kills the monster. Thus we've began to invoke the rogue's name when facing something that just die.

We have the exact opposite happening at our table. We have a guy who consistently gets within 5 damage of killing everything. A few lucky crits and he almost one rounds a dragon. It had 2 left. Repeat with almost every big bad.

If you are in the Rusty Kettle Inn, or Copper Ante Tavern you have gone beyond where the DM has prepared.

Crickets became a joke from my rogue messing with a NPC. Standard escort mission, and I kept telling the NPC guard how I know these woods are filled with giant, horribly mutated crickets. DM has me roll bluff, and I get a 10ish. He gets a 20ish sense motive. We have a random encounter (exactly 1, no matter how far :D) and he rolls. Ankheg. I thereafter got a +20 bluff against that guy.

juggalotis
2010-02-20, 10:26 AM
running joke in one of my older games was my dwarf fighter who started out as lawful good but slowly shifted down went through an entire battle weilding only a door as a weapon eventually was given a dynamic waraxe thats only shapeshifting power was to turn into a door. which turned into a drunken dwarf starting every battle with a cheesy "door" pun and a large magical wooden door being used as a heavy thrown weapon.

Swooper
2010-02-20, 10:45 AM
If you roll a natural two on an attack roll, you kill a crow. Even if you're inside, or under water, or on a planet that doesn't have any crows.

This came in handy when we had the evil necromancer down to like 3 hp, and he attempted to escape my polymorphing into a crow and flying away. I (playing a wizard) had no useful spells left to take him out, so I drew my sling and shot at him, in a desperate attempt to take him out before he became a recurring villain. As fate would have it, I rolled a natural two on the attack roll and killed him. :smallcool:

Closak
2010-02-20, 11:18 AM
Every time we deal with an annoying NPC.

Me: I shapeshift into a dragon and eats him.

And i find most people annoying.



Also when talking with a dragon.

Cleric: I roll a Sense Motive to see if she's telling the truth.
DM: You can't tell, but you get the feeling she's horny and wants to hump someone.
Me: ...Don't mind me *Takes pants off*
Everyone: ....:smalleek:
Me: What? You know how i feel about dragons!

Happens every time we have a conversation with a female dragon.



Then there's this one.

DM: A giant swarm of scorpions are attacking! Run for your lives!
Everyone else: I HATE SCORPIONS!

Cedrass
2010-02-20, 12:26 PM
A friend of mine, when he played for the first time created his character and wanted a horse, but couldn't afford it. So, he goes "I'll get a pony instead, wait a bit and I'll have my horse then". So now, when something's too costly, we just say "Get a pony instead, it'll turn into a Ring of Three Wishes eventually!"

This same guy, after an hour of story and all, a fight starts and he goes "Alright! At last! So I'll attack that goblin over there! ... How do I attack?". So yeah, each fight now, someone asks how to attack ;P

Brauron
2010-02-20, 12:36 PM
"No One Gets Yog-Sothoth" -- we were playing the SHADOWS OF YOG-SOTHOTH campaign for Call of Cthulhu, and one of my players actually went to bed and dreamed about the campaign after a session ended. In his dream was a jumbled chanting of "No one gets Yog-Sothoth, no one gets Yog-Sothoth" This phrase would later become incorporated into the campaign when he essentially crit-failed a Sanity check. I told him, "You suddenly get Yog-Sothoth."


In D&D, any casting of Shocking Grasp or similar damage-dealing touch spells is accompanied by a poorly sung "You've got the touch! Ah! You've got the powaaaaa" from the 1986 Transformers movie.

Orzel
2010-02-20, 05:35 PM
MAG references

After the MAG beta and now MAG game, the house campaign is littered with MAG references.

Enemy archer shoots a spellcaster = "Enemy Triple A has taken out our bombers"
I want to cast a spell but it might cause friendly damage= Grenade out! Take cover!
Any healing spell = "Don't bleed out!"
Fighters = APCs
Failed Divination spell = Your UAV can't get past their Triple A.
Goblins = SVER

Anytime someone dies of negative damage, they just "can't take the pain."

Volkov
2010-02-20, 05:38 PM
"Leman Russ comes out of nowhere and starts beating your face in with a power fist."
It started when due to a mishap with a gate spell due to it being cast in limbo, allowed Leman russ to enter, he saw that the PC's were in the way and promptly beat their faces in with a power fist. I do this once or twice a campaign, and it frankly never gets old.

Kastanok
2010-02-20, 06:50 PM
Jumping on monsters that really shouldn't be jumped on. Started with a Huge rideable skeletal construct chair/tank, just got wackier from there.

Used to have a tradition when my group used to play d20Modern of encouraging the monsters to consume large quantities of C4.

PC names beginning with J. We have no idea why.

And an anecdote of a stupid player:

WoD Werwolf game, having an in-character day of just training, gathering info and watching our territory. New pack mate, an off-duty cop, goes wandering and patrolling in the neighbouring pack's territory (big no-no already). Goes down a small residential street (BIG no-no, never). Spots some guys moving many TVs from a van into a house, approaches them and demands to know what they're doing. Naturally, they tell him in no uncertain terms to mind his own business. Thinking they're moving stolen property in broad daylight, he tries to arrest them but gets stopped by two burly werewolves from that area's pack. He, a brand new wet-behind the ears pup, tries to intimidate them and fails miserably. Has to be rescued by his own pack before becoming dog's meat.

Turns out the guys were from a TV repair shop, whose basement had been flooded out and were storing/working from one of theirs home. Copper pup ends up suspended, on psych eval and has TWO packs very unhappy with him. Bad day.

Lucas Pitta
2010-02-21, 09:47 PM
Whenever i grapple someone, the yell: LET GO OF ME, I AIN'T A SECRETARY!
This is because my barbarian bull rushed a poor scared secretary in one of our adventures... and got shot in the face by her friend

BloodyAngel
2010-02-22, 02:02 AM
My group has a few.

1: Rhem'vrock. In one particular game, our group included a drow priestess and a half-orc barbarian. The drow, arrogant cuss that she was, just sort of assumed that the barbarian was her minion and would obey her and she threatened him with all manner of pain if he did not. His revenge was remarkably clever. When speaking to a group of orcs she sought to dominate, he introduced her as "Rhem'vrock", an orcish word which he swore meant a great and powerful spellcaster, but which actually was an orcish term for what is essentially a slave/concubine. She didn't speak a word of orcish, so she believed him, and spent the rest of the game referring to herself as "Rhem'vock" to orcs whenever she got the chance. It's shown up in several games since, usually in battle cries like "Bloodtusk make you scream like Rhem'vrock!" or the like. I even have an orcish hunter in WoW named Rhemvrock.

2: Grekks, the kobold master of disguise. A player in one of my games made up a kobold rogue named Grekks, who was infamously terrible at everything. His catchphrase "Nyarrr!" and strange, nasally voice were funny enough, but to go into town without provoking the guards, he declared that he would disguise himself as a dwarf. His disguise consisted of a viking helm, a fake beard and a tankard he carried at all times. He declared his dwarven name to be "Redbeard Axeface", which became a running joke in and of itself. Since then, Grekks has become a running joke, often showing up in other games in disguise. No matter how terrible the disguise (and they're always terrible), or how odd his mannerisms, no one ever notices that he is a kobold. Grekks has been an elf, a WINGED elf, a fire genasi, a beholder, a hill giant, a centaur, and a nymph. Periodically, a creature will simply utter "Nyarrrr" and the entire group will laugh, knowing that wily kobold has tricked them again.

Munchkin-Masher
2010-02-22, 03:19 AM
Heins the sleeping Wizard; the Greatest recurring NPC in all the Fleaness (and Eberron incedently).

We would always meet him Usaually right before the Throne Room of the BBEG of the moment. We all asummed he was evil but we could never get him because he would fly away in his enchant straw basket.

Also he wore a turtle on his head.

PanNarrans
2010-02-22, 12:36 PM
Our group has a few.
The answer to every problem according to one player's cleric was to cast Create Water. He doesn't play often, but next time we'll make sure he ends up with a decanter of endless water.
Failing a check to craft a Scroll of Darkness produces a Scroll of Purple. It makes everything... purple. Same effect if you fail a concentration check while casting Darkness or a similar effect.
The Escape Artist skill allows you to defenestrate yourself. A lot like the Dashing Swordsman ability, but for quick getaways.
Skeletons don't need to breathe, so a castle with sewers or a moat will be stormed by an army of skeletons bursting from the privies.
A villain that the DM intends to be recurring will be killed with extreme prejudice. Then chopped into tiny pieces, set on fire, and possibly surrounded by a detail of skeletons to keep hacking for a couple of days if we have a necromancer.
Never, ever put a villain in front of a large window.

And finally, because binding Malphas is awesome:
'I click my fingers, and a raven appears.'
NEVER GETS OLD.

Gamgee
2010-02-22, 01:21 PM
I was trying to get the game back on the serious tracks, and I kept failing, and failing. So naturally they all went to a bar and wanted to pick some hot NPC's up for the night.

Considering this was now the third time they did this in one session I decided to have some fun with it, and one of them went for a rather good looking elf. Remembering how elves are really androgynous I didn't tell him this fact until after they went for a blissful night up in one of the tavern rooms. Also I made sure to suggest getting incredibly wasted in game to make it that much more fun. Secretly it was so I had an excuse for his character to not realize anything he was doing.

I have never seen someone reverse their opinions on elves so fast in my entire life. He is a dedicated anti elf to this day, and everyone else caught on that session and got back on the serious tracks. Now it is with great caution they try derail my games for any length of time. Also they never trust an elf, and always have to debate every last detail of whether or not it really is the gender it claims to be. Heh heh... :smallcool:

Yukitsu
2010-02-22, 01:57 PM
The one I run with came from CoC. We were playing modern day normals working for some big secret agency trying to keep down the eldritch terrors. I was out on a mission and out of line of sight of the rest of the party when an enemy chopper opens up on me with plasma missiles. This being a normal tech world, the boss accepted all of the eldritch horror stories, but had my character committed when I mentioned the plasma missiles.

Pretty much every time we reported back, and he asked what we encountered, I'd scream "PLASMA MISSILES!" and be thrown into the psych ward.

Eventually I faked my death to get the slip on interpol who was after us, and after I managed to clear things up with them, I went back to my bosses office (who thought I was dead), kicked open his door and screamed "PLASMA MISSILES" and was promptly shot. Fortunately only wounded.

The line comes up from time to time when we're talking about irritating legitimate authorities.

Vulkarius
2010-02-22, 08:32 PM
I was given a premade half elf cleric named Tanis to get the hang of the game. Whenever he was bloodied I would scream in a high pitched voice "my Tanis is bleeding!" a la Don Hertzfeld.

Noedig
2010-02-22, 11:26 PM
There are a few at my table.

One of them being the part wizard says "I open it!" in character whenever confronted with a delicate social situation, a possibly trapped object, or just general combat. He has gotten himself, and the party nearly killed multiple times but it does not cease to be funny.

Another is "Cite your sources!" for a player who abused(s) meta magic he didnt(doesnt) understand.

Lastly "Shut the F**k up Donnie, you're out of your element!." whenever someone spews ignorance.

Xallace
2010-02-22, 11:36 PM
EL CONGO!
EL CONGO! began as the toad familiar of a wizard character I was subbing for. His character sheet was a mess (68 skill points at 1st level, two familiars, 4 feats?) so I helped him out a bit by cleaning it up and fixing up the math. When we got to familiar, I erased the raven (the party said it had died) and asked about the toad. The party claimed that he had just gotten the toad and hadn't named it or anything yet.

So, put a tiny Luchadore mask on my new reptilian friend and named him "EL CONGO!" I constantly praised and gloated my masked wrestling amphibian friend, to the point of near hero-worship. While waiting for the monk to scout out a submerged passageway, EL CONGO! and a cockroach got into an epic wrestling match, which cemented EL CONGO! into our memory.

While I've been DMing, various characters have worshiped EL CONGO!, or at least recognized him as a divinity. Toady avatars will occasionally make an appearance, croak wisely, and ascend into the heavens.

Monolingual?
It's become something of a running gag how nobody in our group new a lick of Spanish (this has changed, since one of my current players is bilingual). This started when the Gun Mage tried to get some answers from a bartender who didn't speak common. In order to get it across, the bartender responded to his queries with "¿qué?" (some of the only Spanish I knew at the time).

The Gun Mage looked taken aback for a second, hesitated, and responded with: "Er... No... no hablas Español. Mesa verde, por favor."

Basically, throwing together all the Spanish he knew.

Well, now when someone doesn't speak a language in D&D, you'll sometimes here the above uttered.

Camelot
2010-02-23, 01:09 AM
The wizard, a young player very new to not only to D&D 4e, but to RPGs as a concept, who couldn't comprehend that using encounter powers was useful. Whenever her turn came up, the only question I needed to ask was, "Which monster are you using cloud of daggers on?" If she ever thought a second before saying what she would do, someone would inevitably say, "Cloud of daggers?"

The tiefling rogue whose player didn't like the character and wanted to kill him off. I offered letting him just switch out, but he insisted on having the character die before moving on to another character. Also, he would still play the character as trying to survive, except being a little overconfident. We were in a dungeon when we came a tough encounter against two level 5 elites while the party was at level 3. The rogue went down, dying, and the rest of the group ran away, unable to beat the encounter. The rogue rolled his last death save...20. Healing surge, now is conscious. Of course the dogs are still in the room, so the player says, "It doesn't matter, they'll kill me anyway." "They think you're dead," I say, "so you could roll a Bluff check to play dead." He does. And succeeds. And escapes to rejoin the group. Much to his displeasure.

Not much of a running gag, though I love telling the story, but it was really really funny. You should've been there.

Also, one of my new players who really likes Star Wars is a swordmage. Give you three guesses as to what he refers to his sword as.

Drakevarg
2010-02-23, 02:03 AM
By my own provokation, everyone in my group except the DM has gotten into the habit of calling our trail guide "Clint Connery." I named him that because he was a grizzled old 10th-level ranger, whom I decided had Clint Eastwood's face and Sean Connery's accent. I had a Badass Grandpa quota to fill, it seemed. Since then calling him Clint has gotten so habitual (even in character) that I've already confused a few NPCs by calling him that.

Guard: "Who are you?"
Me: "Clint sent us."
Guard: "...Clint?"
Me: "Oh, wait... um... Listav? Yeah, that's it. Listav sent us."
Guard: "Oh! Well let me let you in, then."

Askaris
2010-03-03, 12:18 PM
Escape Artist covers defenestration.

Volkov
2010-03-03, 12:28 PM
"The X leaps over your X spell which hits a dam and wipes out three fourths of the X race." All spells or powers that miss or are evaded hit a dam and make a flood that wipes out most of X race. Even if it's underwater...

El Dorado
2010-03-03, 12:50 PM
How big is the creature? As big as the table.
--our traditional response to any huge, multi-armed beast with an impressive grapple check.

JeenLeen
2010-03-03, 01:08 PM
1. In tribute to the webcomic Looking for Group, there is almost always an insane character named Richard, usually in the overpowered psychopathic murderer sense.

2. In a M:tA game, one of the character had a lot of Paradox, was badly wounded, and decided to turn rocks into a diamond sword. After about 4 or 5 "Are you sure?"s from the DM, expression of fear from the other PCs, and noting that he will probably die from the backlash, he said he does it.
That put him to I think 6-8 Paradox, so the DM rolled for a backlash. It was enough damage to kill him. He rolled Stamina and wound up just incapacitated but bleeding to death. Fortunately, one of the PCs decided to go by the lab to check up on him, so he recovered before he died.

We took to nicknaming the PC "Diamond Sword," and now "making diamond swords"/shields/armor/etc is a way of saying "doing something incredibly stupid."

JasonP
2010-03-03, 01:14 PM
Femur chucks
we are playing 4e Scepter tower of spellgard and after defeating a group of halfling were-rats our human paladin of correlon decides to gather up all the femur bones to make nunchucks.

Thurbane
2010-03-03, 01:54 PM
We had a DM who would always say "You hear naught..." when we didn't hear anything in a dungeon. So naturally, we started making PCs with the name of Nort, so that whenever the DM made the statement, the PC in question could wave and say "Hi!". :smallsmile:

Fallbot
2010-03-03, 02:31 PM
"It's not gay if it's fey!" Adapted from Penny Arcade and used to justify all kinds of inappropriate behaviour (Apparently it's not straight either, allowing the lesbian swordmage to molest the male drow ranger with impunity).

"I throw food at it/him/her/them!" The cleric's response to every problem we encounter, from needing to talk our way past guards to saving a party member who'd been knocked off a cliff. No one is quite sure why.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-03-03, 03:44 PM
We're losing guys! Light the elf on fire!
Last campaign, one of the PCs was an elf swordsage, the second or third elf character he'd made in a row, and, due to a variety of reasons such as bad burning hands targeting, bad aim with alchemist's fire, etc. ended up catching on fire in every single battle from levels 1 to 3. When this happened, he ended up doing rather well in combat for whatever reason--apparently being on fire translates to rolling higher.

The first battle the PCs started when they were level 4 is the first battle in which he wasn't set on fire, and also the first that they lost. They determined that him not being on fire was the cause of their defeat, brought copious amounts of fire to the next battle, and won. For the rest of the campaign, the elf was set on fire every single battle, often saving it for when the battle got tough. The one time the elf picked up some fire resistance, they had a harder time, so the group ruled that the elf must take full damage from the fire for this to work.

This wouldn't have become a running gag except that the same guy is playing an elf in the current campaign, and the sorcerer is a bit of a pyro....

Really, really, really ****ing high!
Also last campaign, we had a kobold swift hunter who dual-wielded hand crossbows, from griffon-back when the party was outside. During one session while the party was sailing across the ocean, they were attacked by a giant kraken--and not just any kraken, but the Guardian of the Depths, a monster of legend, half-water elemental, kraken with some innate casting. As the kraken pulled the usual surround-the-ship-with-tentacles routine, the kobold took off and started firing while the tentacles were occupied with the other PCs.

Well, stuff happened, tentacles got severed, etc. and combat went on for a while. Dave (the kobold's player) had to leave early, so he told us to let him know what happened afterwards and left. No sooner had he left the dorm than the roll to see which PC the kraken would attack next came up with his number. His max range was inside the reach of the tentacles, and he had specified that he'd attack every round, so he was going to get hit...but he took his sheet with him, so we only had his attack routine information with no defensive info. We opened the window and the following conversation ensued:

[B]Me: Hey Dave!
Dave: Yeah?
Me: Quick question...what's your AC?
Dave: ...what?
Me: What's your AC?
Dave: You know I'm flying on my griffon, right?
Me: Yep.
Dave: Flying high in the air?
Me: Yep.
Dave: ...really high?
Me: Yep.
Dave: Really, really, really ****ing high!?
Me: :smallbiggrin:
Dave: :smallsigh: I hate you all.

It turns out the AC didn't matter, since the kraken got 4 crits and brought him and the griffon from full HP to red mist in a round. Now, "Really ****ing high!" is code for "Dammit, I thought I'd be safe. I'm gonna die, aren't I?"

Crank...crank...crank...crank....
This one signifies "You're failing horribly against a creature much weaker than you are." For context, read the second spoiler here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6498812&postcount=14).

Camelot
2010-03-03, 04:08 PM
That cranking story was epic! Recurring villains pulled out of the blue are the best.

Speaking of recurring villains, that reminds me of a running gag. I had a recurring villain who posed as a friend before turning on the PCs. When he was friendly and they beat something, he'd usually say, "Well, well, well!" cheerfully. When he turned out to be evil and met back up with the party, I'd always start by saying "Well, well, well," before telling them who they see.

Eventually, it got to the point where the PCs would walk into the last room of the dungeon. "What's in there?" they'd say. I'd pause, then..."Well, well, well," and I didn't need to say anything more.

It has even gone so far that if I say "Well, well, well," in real life, my players freak out and tell me to stop.

JediSoth
2010-03-03, 04:14 PM
It was the first D&D 3.0 game I ever ran. Greyhawk, one of the players played a Druid who frequently used the poorly-named ability "Dominate Animal." I say poorly-named because my group consisted of dirty-minded 20- and 30-something players.

That poor druid never did out grow all the bestiality jokes, despite being the best fighter of the bunch.

The animal dominating jokes continued through several more campaigns with that player. Maybe that's why all his subsequent characters drank a lot....

Thurbane
2010-03-03, 04:36 PM
Did the dominated animals wear form fitting leather armor? :smallbiggrin:

Yukitsu
2010-03-03, 04:51 PM
I don't know why that reminded me of this, but for some reason, my male characters in D&D are inevitably molested by female NPCs. Inversely, all of my female characters are inevitably attacked by grapple based tentacled creatures during random encounters, when the DM has rolled in the open, and has elected the target randomly in the open... For some reason, these sorts of things happen when I'm otherwise rolling really well.

strider24seven
2010-03-03, 05:52 PM
Because I tend to play rogues (especially factota and rogue/magi), most of the players refer to me as the "rouge" (which means red or makeup).

Also, because of my general rogue-ness, I am constantly paranoid. I try to always have a "Zone of Truth" scroll, and use (Greater) Arcane Sight on everything. So my DM changed a normal squirrel into a level 20 Shapechanged Necromancer. We were level 12 at the time.

I also like to steal the Fighter's secondary weapons. And use them.

Our cleric (a fellow metagamer) constantly made Tiny arrows imbued with Cure Light Wounds. He used them like hypodermic needles. The DM countered this by having him make attack and damage rolls.
-"I use my healing needle on Taj!"
-Rolls a nat 20
-Rolls a nat 20 to confirm
-Kills the incapacitated party member with a critical:smalleek:.

AslanCross
2010-03-03, 06:01 PM
I forgot one: Resurrection always makes you come back slightly crazy. Granted not all of my players are able to RP this well, but it started with an elf wizard in my very first campaign getting cut down by some hobgoblins.

He came back prancing and whistling and proclaiming that it was a beautiful day because the "sun was blowing and the wind was shining."

Hyozo
2010-03-03, 06:32 PM
The Monster Manual 3: If the DM is looking at it, the players should panic.

Energy Push (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/energyPush.htm): A great way to get your allies out of combat. :smallamused:

Call Lightning: Sadly, the player known as "Lightning" no longer goes to our college, and can no longer coincidentally show up when the spell is cast.

Also, there is a running joke that every PC death in my campaign is entirely the fault of another PC.

Ernir
2010-03-03, 06:37 PM
Leaf cows.

And that ****ing boar.

Thursday
2010-03-03, 06:54 PM
A group i was in a while ago, we weren't very serious..

The running gag at the table was the fact that we didn't, in fact, have a table..
Someone would inevitably at some point point out that we should really get a table, and conversation would commence about secondhand furniture shops in the area etc.. and how the DM (his house) was somehow morally opposed to tables.
Looking uop things in tables became Pun-hazardous.

Never did get one. That floor was hard, too.

AsteriskAmp
2010-03-03, 07:00 PM
I only have two, from a group I used to DM until I became to permissive and they became to demented.

-Da Vinci's tank, aka The Death Chariot.
My group decided that horses were not a cool enough transport for an Epic Level Party, so they began begging for something else to ride, this began of as Unicorns and pretty much ended in asking for T-Rexes, after a while I told them that if it could have been built and operated during the Renaissance, so could they if it was reasonable and had logical stats. Great Mistake, specially since one of them was studying to become an engineer. They came up with an adaptation of Leonardo's tank, with somewhat realistic stats, seemed logical and it was too slow to actually be a problem and the cannons were removed, but the Necromancer, the Wizard and the Cleric decided that the tank had potential, and it was their duty to achieve it, they built their classes around the tank, which eventually became indestructible thanks to the buff placed in it, and that they were constantly renovated, and the necromancer found a way to speed it up by using undeads as a work force. They basically killed the ultimate evil in the campaign by ramming him with the tank at full speed, never again would I allow them to use any vehicle aside form either a donkey or an alpaca.

-The Ballet Dancing Orc
After a good time with my group I became very permissive, but only if they could justify it by either logic or hilariousness. This was taken to its logical extreme when during a campaign a player decided his orc was shunned out of his tribe because he wanted to dance ballet (Obviously taken from Billy Elliot), this allowed for occasional jokes and essentially advancing through arabesques. This was all perfect until they reached a chasm with a broken bridge, I had planned for them to be forced into side-quests and exploring before allowing the bridge to be repaired (the city was at the other side and they would slowly repair it). The orc said he wanted to jump to the other side, I said he would fall to his death if he tried, he reasoned that his years as a ballet dancer gave him the strength in the legs to do the jump and gracefully land on the other side, I told him that if he rolled a twenty he could make it, he got space and began gracefully running into the chasm, and jumped at the edge of the chasm into the other side, he twirled in the air and helped by his magically enhanced tutu managed to get into the other side and got help for rebuilding the bridge, we were laughing so hard that the neighbour came to complain.

We would mention at least one of them in the last campaign we held, where I actually allowed a rogue to multi-class into Tank Engineer, a class tailored into making tanks and selling them, at that point it became Medieval Business Empire Tycoon, their nemesis essentially became a crazy communist, but that's another story.

Ormur
2010-03-03, 07:45 PM
Leaf cows.

And that ****ing boar.

I was wondering what running gags we had but, yes that fricking boar certainly counts.

Edit: You didn't fudge the dice when Erebus came back as one did you? :smallconfused:

Jarrick
2010-03-06, 06:28 PM
I'm responsible for a few in my group. All of them go back to my namesake character, a dread necromancer by the name of Jarrick Ulcher (Pronounced UHL-kur as in sepulcher).

He was always doing horribly evil things; exposing children to hideous diseases so he could study their effects more quickly since kids succumb faster, stealing many pet cats and turning them into one stitched flesh familiar, attacking people with their recently dead relatives, etc.

Now anytime we discover that something horrible happened, someone looks across the table at me and says "JARRICK!".
And I respond in his voice: "It wasn't me this time! I'd have (Insert something worse)"

One time we were sailing across the land in a magic ship heading for our next destination when the captain, subordinate to us because he worked for our boss, announced that we were coming upon a tiny city populated entirely by pixies, grigs, and other tiny fey. We looked at each other with chaggrin and then Jarrick stepped up:
J-Excuse me captain, but may I take the helm?
C-Uh, sure. What for?
J- You'll see... (Proceeds to order full speed and make a hard turn, causing the ship to powerslide sideways, crushing the tiny city and all its inhabitants)
Party- :smalleek:
J- I hate fey...

Completely skipped an entire adventure, but the DM and everyone were laughing so hard that no one minded. After that point it became customary, when encountering fey, to say something along the lines of "Oops, missed one." or "Where's that landship when we need it?".

He's also the source of the often-quoted-by-my-party: "(S)he'd make a very handsome zombie/skeleton/corpse."

Critical
2010-03-06, 07:21 PM
Player: "It used gaze attack on me!"
Someone from the Party: "OMG, you're gay now!"
:P

PersonMan
2010-03-06, 07:46 PM
Near the very end of a campaign I was in, the BBEG teleported my character into the upper atmosphere and, after some phenomenal Fortitude saves he was able to do one thing upon hitting the ground. I chose to do a sort of burial-look thing, arms crossed over sword, sword pointed down.

During the battle everyone moved, and as the Ultimate Artifact of Doom was activated, the BBEG stepped back and got impaled by the weapon. As I saw him, I told the DM I moved the weapon and he gave me an attack roll to move it into the correct position. I roll three natural 20s, landing and slicing him cleanly in half, crushing the artifact under a few hundred pounds of fighter. The result? We now consider 'Teleport fighter into upper atmosphere' a viable option whenever facing something powerful.

In another, I was playing a Naztharune Rakshasa who had a habit of intimidating enemies, telling them that they would see what Hell was like, baring her fangs. The BBEG got a lucky critical and killed the pixie. I picked up her bow and fired, getting an instant kill (double 20s). We were above a huge pit, which he fell into. The remaining enemies saw him fall off, and I got a free intimidate for it. So, she said "Alright, anyone want to keep him company?". Natural 20 on Intimidate. Now the aforementioned Rakshasa does all her intimidates with that line, whenever we kill an enemy. She has yet to roll below 14.

Volkov
2010-03-06, 09:16 PM
Saying "How do you turn this on?" leads to the speaker getting attacked by a viper car with dual machine guns that fire explosive bullets. Similarly saying "Photon man" get's you attacked by fast moving men in silver powered armor with rapid fire laser guns. The last person to say "O canada" was brutally mauled by a laser shooting, super fast bear and his monkey side-kick.

Dr.Epic
2010-03-06, 09:19 PM
In one of my old groups whenever we came across someone who was a tank their name was "Ted".

balistafreak
2010-03-06, 09:43 PM
Near the very end of a campaign I was in, the BBEG teleported my character into the upper atmosphere and, after some phenomenal Fortitude saves he was able to do one thing upon hitting the ground. I chose to do a sort of burial-look thing, arms crossed over sword, sword pointed down.

During the battle everyone moved, and as the Ultimate Artifact of Doom was activated, the BBEG stepped back and got impaled by the weapon. As I saw him, I told the DM I moved the weapon and he gave me an attack roll to move it into the correct position. I roll three natural 20s, landing and slicing him cleanly in half, crushing the artifact under a few hundred pounds of fighter. The result? We now consider 'Teleport fighter into upper atmosphere' a viable option whenever facing something powerful.

But did you survive? :smallwink:

Bookworm42
2010-03-07, 12:11 AM
Short Version, "Kill it with Fire!!!"

Long version: My GF plays our party caster, only problem is she knows very little about D&D, and often asks questions about what she should do next, (even though we have played for a few sessions). Cue battle scene. She is a Mystic Theruge and she just got second level arcane spell casting, so scorching ray is on her spell list. During the fight my character (a paladin) is getting mauled pretty heavily, and is close to death. the exchange goes like this.

GF (OOC): Ummmm guys, what should I do?
GM: You are going to have to speak in character and Strom (my character) is the only one who can hear you.
GF (IC): "Strom, what should I do?"
Me (IC): *As Strom is getting mauled badly* "KILL IT, KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!"

*GF precedes to crit the creature and roll almost max damage killing it*

*Everyone at the table stares at GF*

Me: You should listen to me more often.:smallbiggrin:

Now, anytime we are in battle, and sometimes out of battle, when she asks what she should do, my first response is "KILL IT WITH FIRE."

krossbow
2010-03-07, 12:51 AM
The Stubby. Statted as a riding dog, minus the being able to be ridable. Or combat ready. Great fun for traps.


In one campaign the group ended up killing off an NPC by the name of Johnson for a fairly arbitrary reason (he broke his leg, and one of the PC's killed him on the spot rather than be slowed down). Ever since then, through random chance or whatnot, in every campaign there has been at least one NPC named Johnson that the party always encounters, and they keep on causing his death, everytime. Not even by DM contrivance, just a combination of bad luck, apathy, and stupidity.

We've almost concluded that his character is perpetually being reincarnated only to die at the same adventurer's hands.

TheCountAlucard
2010-03-07, 12:56 AM
Last D&D session I ran, the party's Fighter bought a cursed buckler, knowing it was cursed; the curse causes the wearer's hair to grow at triple speed. We joked that after a month, all he'd need is a bowcaster, and he could be Chewbacca.

He also got a box of magically-replenishing rations for the rogue; the only downside to it is that every food item it produces, from the dried fruit and granola to the wad of salted meat, is always created slathered with thick, savory gravy. :smallamused: Good thing the party has access to prestidigitation.

Telok
2010-03-07, 04:30 AM
We have "That Guy"

He only plays ninjas and boomstick sorcerers, and he's usually a female drow. Right now in a 4e game he's playing a dragonborn sorcerer (last one was a female drow assassin, 4e does not yet have a ninja). Last session we attacked a small group of hobgoblins guarding the base camp for their raiding band. The plan was to lure them to the tree line and then charge out and attack...

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/671/dsc01011n.th.jpg (http://img97.imageshack.us/i/dsc01011n.jpg/)

He ran out and used an action point to dragonbreath the minions.

TheCountAlucard
2010-03-07, 05:39 AM
Oh, remembered another running joke...

One game I ran featured a battle atop a city wall; the party's on the wall, helping to defend it, when a goblin lancer attacks them from dragonback. Thanks to some previous action, the party's dwarven Fighter had been enlarged, and was around nine feet tall, and with all of his equipment, weighed over a ton. He bullrushes the goblin right off, causing him to plummet three hundred feet. I rolled for damage behind the screen, and the goblin survived with seven hit points.

It was at that point that I asked the Fighter for a Balance check...

With no ranks in Balance, a penalty to his Dexterity from being enlarged (which was on its last round, duration-wise), and rolling a 1, he fell, too.

I described it thus...

"The goblin sits at the bottom of a mini-crater, rooted to the ground by his spiked armor. He moans in pain and rubs his aching head, and then he realizes that he's in a massive shadow..."

The now-normal-sized Fighter survived the fall, and wisely decided to wring every last charge out of his healing belt as he sat at the bottom of the refrigerator-sized crater, the soiled spiked armor stuck in his back...

And now whenever falling damage is brought up in our group, we recall that story... :smallamused:

Closak
2010-03-07, 10:30 AM
The treasury is always a trap.

You see, we were after a dragon, and had attacked it's lair.


We had barely made it alive past a long line of defenses guarding a single room.

The room turned out to be a treasury, containing all sorts of treasure and gold.

So, thinking that this room must have something real valuable we quickly started doing what adventurers do best, looting stuff.

Problem is that all the treasure was an powerful illusion that dissappeared when we touched it.

So suddenly we are instead staring at a wall full of "Epic Explosive Runes" that can start chain reactions.

So one rune goes off, dealing massive damage, the explosion causes the runes adjacent to it to go off as well, dealing even more damage (It keeps going like this)

And when all the runes have exploded the structural damage causes the room to collapse, sending several hundred tons of rock down on our heads.


Ever since then i have always ran away screaming every time we come across a room full of treasure.

onthetown
2010-03-08, 06:39 AM
As it's getting late in the day for our intrepid adventurers, the DM will say, "Night falls." We'll then hear a scream, and the next morning we'll often find a knight who fell from a great height. We've stopped using it so much, but still good.

Elixia
2010-03-08, 07:04 AM
player: I open the chest
DM: A dire rat jumps out on your face!

okay, its started with our gnome bard, he opened a chest without a spot check and dire rat jumped out and landed on him. he was grappled for most of the fight and couldn't push it off so he ran around failing his arms. our two brave warroirs also couldn't hit it for toffee. that combat encounter last ALOT longer than it should :D

the ironic part, the player of the bard buys dnd mintures. in one of his boxes the first model was a dire rat!

Coplantor
2010-03-08, 07:50 AM
Back when we played 2nd ed, beign a psionic wild talent was'nt a choice, sort of, at char creation you had the option to roll for wld talent, wich most of the time gaved you a slim chance of geting some crappy/game shatering power. If you were demi human, your chances were half normal, if you were magic user, your chances were halved again. And if you rolled too high, you had a chance of having your mental stats permanently reduced to three (and no magic would ever heal that)
So, when the party elven wizard/fighter with a 1% chance of beign a wild talent rolled his 1, jaws were droped, and when he got teleport without error as his natural power, bricks were, well, you know.

So they had a teleporting elven guy, anway, the guy played only once with us. What happened to his character? He teleported away of course.
So, every now and then, when nothing is going on in the adventure, and the players ask: "What do we see?" I just say "You see an elf, but he teleports away".

Also, it's pretty common after a natural 1 "Hey! You are a psychic!"

Admiral Squish
2010-03-08, 08:11 AM
Okay, so I've got a warforged character who has been spending quite a bit of time in the last several years lying low after a particularly gruesome murder. Due to this, a lot of human basics are foreign to him. So, when he's finally settled into a group that can keep him in good repair and provide a pleasantly lengthy string of victims, ther are some... misunderstandings.

My favorite was when the leader was telling his he wasn't allowed to kill anyone in this fight. My 'forged suggested that they make a stop in town for some extra murder to make it more enjoyable for him.

Boss: You know, there is such a thing as 'too eager'.
Me: Hey, I don't wave a.... Um... What's that meaty thing you humans eat?
*pause, looking thoughtful*
Me: I don't wave a snake in your face and tell you you can't eat it.
Boss: *blinks*
*tumbleweed*

P.S, I SWEAR, I was just looking for a word that sounded a lot like 'steak'. It didn't even occur to me how creepy that sounded.

Jarrick
2010-03-08, 09:42 AM
As it's getting late in the day for our intrepid adventurers, the DM will say, "Night falls." We'll then hear a scream, and the next morning we'll often find a knight who fell from a great height. We've stopped using it so much, but still good.

With us it's "Night falls like a brick. You take 1d8 bludgeoning damage."

One of our players has a pathological fear of MM goblins with morningstars. In the first round of combat of the first battle of the campaign, his first character he ever made was 20-20-20'd by a goblin with a morningstar and a surprise round. We all have a new respect for goblins as a result (party:"do they have morningstars?":smalleek:), but he kills them on sight.