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Malfunctioned
2010-06-05, 08:48 AM
In my gaming group, and I'm sure many others out there, we have many running gags that continue to pop-up no matter what the system so I'm asking you guys if you have any and what your thoughts on them are.

Here are a couple of mine for example.


'It's all right guys! I've got this!'

This phrase keeps on turning up in almost all of my groups games and usually comes before a Crowning Moment of Awesome for the player who says it as well. The first time it was used was in a game of Traveller where the party were trying to negotiate the trading of captured war refugees for the supplies of weaponry they had on their ship from a supposed terrorist gang know as 'The Red Men'. The crew had just delivered a sample of the weapons to the leader of the Red Men and the groups merchant, going by the name of Sallador Saan, was trying to convince them of the worth of the guns.

Sallador: I assure you, these rifles are of the greatest quality in this parsec!
Red Men: (Picking up an assault rifle to inspect it) I'm sure they are, (Points gun at Sallador) Hand them over. Now.
Sallador: (Hands in the air and turning towards the rest of the crew) It's all right guys! I got this! (Beats the Red Man in a dexterity roll to throw a stunstick at his head, the Red Man is knocked unconscious, the rest of the crew draw their guns on the remaining terrorists standing around)
Sallador:....We take slaves now yes?

It also turned up later in that same session when the crew were rescuing a new crew-mate from a derelict military dreadnought that was being assaulted by pirates. They managed to make it up to the still-powered bridge where the new team-mate was hiding out when the sensor systems went crazy, a fleet of around 30 pirate Corsairs (very good pirate spaceships) were surrounding the ship and had launched the crew's only mode of transport off into deep space. The new guy, a vagyr (a dog-man alien) going by the name of Marty Reynolds, looked over to the others and said "It's all right guys! I got this!" and proceeded to get three natural 12's in a row for computer checks in a 2d6 system.
He managed to rig a security beacon to explode, caused the lifts to malfunctioned allowing them to crush the pirates attempting to climb up whilst in zero-g and activated a cargo drone to act as a source of muscle in clearing out the rest of the pirates. They then managed to escape on a pirate ship whilst the derelict dreadnought exploded behind them, taking the 29 other Corsairs with them.

That's just two uses of the phrases, I'll have some more up when I can remember them. Any examples from you guys?

Dhavaer
2010-06-05, 08:52 AM
In a series of d20 Modern games I used to run, Italian restaurants. somehow whenever anyone when out to eat, it was Italian. I don't even eat Italian food, pizza and pasta notwithstanding.

Scoot
2010-06-05, 08:56 AM
"Donkey has no shame"

Because he dosen't wear pants, and it comes up in the strangest moments.

When he was getting a piggyback ride from the Paladin for example...

The Glyphstone
2010-06-05, 08:56 AM
Well, the game I was running for a while had a repeating gag involving a troll. They first met him standing in the middle of the road in the wilderness, and when they got close, he told them it was a toll bridge that cost 100 gold. On a dirt road in the middle of the forest, with no water in sight. He had just heard about toll bridges from another troll, but didn't know what they were beyond people pay you money to get past them. I expected it to be an amusing semi-random encounter, but instead the party monk explained to him what a toll bridge was, and he happily trundled off into the forest looking for a river.

The next time, they were going through a different part of a different forest, and they come to a little stream - like, ankle deep - crossing the path. The troll is standing there, and demands 100 gold to cross his toll bridge (the monk had said a Bridge was where the road crosses water). The monk did some more explaining on the point that bridges crossed water you couldn't cross normally, and the troll trundled off again.

I had intended for him to show up a few more times 'guarding' progressively bigger 'bridges', but the game petered out due to time constraints.

Kaiyanwang
2010-06-05, 09:05 AM
I had many in my previous group, but are not translable because were jokes and pun linked with the italian dialect of the zone.. :smallfrown:

Fouredged Sword
2010-06-05, 09:06 AM
in nWoD the life spells don't effect cloths. That made my lifemage spend most of the game absolutly naked. That and the force mage lit him on fire and threw him at werewolves. He was a melee monkey, he could take it. It was a odd game. There was a running joke that the trauma of a flaming naked man flying at you caused more damage than the punching.

Serpentine
2010-06-05, 09:07 AM
Bilbo's Biggun.

I think my then-DM just wanted to throw in a random book to be found when someone pilfered a bookshelf or somesuch. So the player found Bilbo's Biggun, a book of the erotic adventures of a certain rapscalion hobbit. Full of graphic scenes, and exciting illustrations...

Sometime later, someone looked in another bookshelf. Just for fun, same DM gave it a 1% chance of containing a copy of that same book. Whaddayano, he rolled a 100.

From then on, just about any place involving books (and some not) had a copy of Bilbo's Biggun.

It is a very popular text...

ninja_penguin
2010-06-05, 09:09 AM
If an NPC is not a setting established NPC, they are immediately named as some sort of game show host.

This is why there's a pair of dwarven brothers named Trabek and Sajak, and why the group's butler is Foxworthy.

PersonMan
2010-06-05, 09:13 AM
In my level 21 campaign, I'm (accidentally) fairly stingy with the treasure, and whenever the players enter an actual dungeon crawl there are plenty of locked chests and the like. All are trapped, and have DC 25 Open Lock locks. Inside, invariably, is nothing, but there is a secret compartment. Inside the (trapped) secret compartment is nothing but another (trapped) secret compartment. Inside that is...a single copper piece.

Starscream
2010-06-05, 09:16 AM
I have a recurring antagonist named Kamro, a white dragon, who has become like an evil version of Inspector Zenigata (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InspectorZenigata).

Kamro just keeps showing up in a desperate attempt to destroy the heroes, and keeps failing. The first couple of times I kept having him escape on purpose, because I was saving him for a final showdown. But to my surprise the players liked the character, and have basically stopped trying to kill him entirely.

Which is reasonable. They got his hoard (his reason for vengeance). They get xp for beating him. And while I try to make him a little tougher each time, the players have long since eclipsed him in power and could take him down hard if they ever wanted to.

Maybe someday I'll try to make Kamro a legitimate threat again, but for now his function is to turn up at the most inconvenient time, have something horrible happen to him (sometimes not even at the hands of the players, but whatever more formidable enemy they are facing) and run off with his tail between his legs, swearing vengeance anew. He's the D&D equivalent of "Why universe hate Waspinator?"

Eloi
2010-06-05, 09:46 AM
There is a running gag in my narration for introductions to dungeons, because I always preface it the same way.
"You see a complex tunnel system that is like any other complex tunnel system but..."

Cookiemobsta
2010-06-05, 10:58 AM
For one (relatively short-lived) campaign, we determined that a certain character's DM was the Unreal Tournament announcer. Thus, whenever we used great cleave, we heard MULTIKILL and UNSTOPPABLE boom from the heavens.

Drake Gryphon
2010-06-05, 11:20 AM
I was playing a in a shadow run game where we found out it is a free action to slap the s*** out of the technomancer. We also discovered p***ing yourself is a free action, but s***ing yourself is a standard.

DaTedinator
2010-06-05, 11:28 AM
In one game I had a Shifter Barbarian/Variant Paladin/Warshaper named Cleave, who kept a running tally of everything he'd ever killed... in song. And whenever he killed something else, he'd sing the whole song, then add them onto the list. I sort of handwaved anything he'd killed in the past (i.e., before the campaign started), but I picked up starting with the the first thing he ever killed, and ending with the last. It eventually went on for a long time, and frequently mocked other party members for their inadequacies. "Cleave's stupid friends get tricked by bad wolves [Worgs]; Cleave kill bad wolves." Or "Cleave save [character's name]'s scrawny heiny from ankhegs by killing them all."

Cleave also had pretty much the greatest death of any of my characters, ever. We accidentally screwed up the plot, and because the DM was a straightforward, living-world kinda guy, because we happened to go to the place with the gigantic dragon, it attacked us, even though he'd been trying to get us to do other things and level up first. It's natural armor was so high, none of us could hit it. So Cleave tossed his axe aside, shifted (gaining a bite and wings), and flew right up to its mouth, getting it to swallow him whole. Cleave then tore him up from the inside, opting to dig deeper rather than cut his way out, which the DM ruled would let him deal more damage as long as we didn't use that tactic again. :smalltongue:

So, he managed to kill the dragon, at the cost of his life. However, one of the other party members grabbed his holy avenger axe, which became invested with Cleave's spirit, and became an intelligent legacy weapon, which sang every time it killed something.

CoffeeIncluded
2010-06-05, 11:33 AM
We have absolutely horrible luck in our games, especially me. I'm talking rolling a natural 1 in almost every post. And whenever I actually hit something, everybody else ends up with bad luck.

Il_Vec
2010-06-05, 11:41 AM
One running joke is my Frenzied Berserker's glass cannon syndrome. We keep track of how many times he's dropped below -10, right now his death count is 12. And always acompanied by his motto: "Better to die killin'."

Another running gag is the group's passion for the Mule. They never tire of mule jokes, and praising the mule's superiority over the horse.

Another kinda "gag" is we always point out we have an overflow of Dwarves. Since 3 of the players decided that Dwarves are the most awesome race, we have a LOT of dwarf Pcs and npcs, including several Druid Dwarves and many others that do not live in ye old typical mountain dwarf city.

Closak
2010-06-05, 11:53 AM
I told you to slay the dragon! Not lay the dragon!: This is very common whenever i'm involved.
What, there's a big bad dragon rampaging across the countryside...do you happen to know it's gender? Female you say eh? Interesting...


The man in the black coat: In all campaigns, regardless of setting, there is a man in a black coat who keeps showing up, attacking him results in instant curbstomp. It's heavily implied it's the same guy every time despite the completely different settings.
If you don't attack him he will instead send you on quests or give you information.

PersonMan
2010-06-05, 11:53 AM
In a PBP game I'm playing in my best roll has been an 11. Luckily, a good chunk of my class features(bard) don't need attack rolls, otherwise...

Kylarra
2010-06-05, 11:54 AM
A few players tend to have low Perception/Awareness/Spot totals, so when they inevitably roll poorly on one of those, we joke that they are just barely aware that they are in a room.

PersonMan
2010-06-05, 11:58 AM
A few players tend to have low Perception/Awareness/Spot totals, so when they inevitably roll poorly on one of those, we joke that they are just barely aware that they are in a room.

I love doing this.
Player: I search [the door] for traps.
Die: 1
Me: You find...a door.
Player: Natural 1, right?
Me: Yep.

Lord Vukodlak
2010-06-05, 11:59 AM
The artificer Gizmo and his ability to appear anywhere at anytime.

Leecros
2010-06-05, 12:04 PM
we had three running gags.

1. Smithpants would randomly appear and shout "BOOM! HEADSHOT!" then run off.

2. The Wizard; his name is just The Wizard. He has an enormous blue head(Wizard of oz). He was the guy we went to to enchant stuff. he gave us a box that we put equipment in and it appears there and he had the same box. Basically we would pass notes or items. The Wizard would NEVER get the enchantment right and would always mess something up or not get the effect that we wanted.

3.and the chain shirt that was always backwards(courtesy of The Wizard)

Jair Barik
2010-06-05, 12:10 PM
The DM used a fantasy sound track that included one piece of music that starts with a guy rolling a dice then going 'Uh-oh' before the music actually starts. This quickly turned into a running gag with important dice rolls always being rolled in a noisy and overly dramatic fashion with the roller going 'Uh-oh' regardless of what was rolled up (or before they even looked at the dice in many cases). Also 'don't go up the chimney. Starting where our last session left off the party fighter was stuck in a spiders web in a wizards chimney with said spider bearing down on him. Over the course of this session the fighter lost most of his armour and weapons to a Rust monster he encountered in a room he accessed via the chimney (he wasn't aware what it was) and then died by having a Howler bullrush him down the same chimney (from the top floor of the tower with the monster dying as well). So yeah.... Don't go up the chimney.

Ishcumbeebeeda
2010-06-05, 12:11 PM
In my last RL group we used nat ones and nat twenties on skills and I almost always nat oned my spot checks. (And really most checks, the dice HATED me that game.) So you'd routinely here me burst out with things like "OH GOD I"VE BEEN STRUCK BLIND!" or "My that looks suspiciously like skin!" only to have someone tell me to open my eyes. (As well as the usual jokes like "I don't see **** captain!" and of course screaming out "I'm being quiet you can't hear me cuz I'm awesome!" when I nat oned my move silently.)

Jair Barik
2010-06-05, 12:16 PM
In my last RL group we used nat ones and nat twenties on skills and I almost always nat oned my spot checks. (And really most checks, the dice HATED me that game.) So you'd routinely here me burst out with things like "OH GOD I"VE BEEN STRUCK BLIND!" or "My that looks suspiciously like skin!" only to have someone tell me to open my eyes. (As well as the usual jokes like "I don't see **** captain!" and of course screaming out "I'm being quiet you can't hear me cuz I'm awesome!" when I nat oned my move silently.)

We had a similar experience with a nat 20 on a Knowledge (Religion) check. So....does that mean your character knows absolutely everything about the Gods, life the Universe and everything?

gallagher
2010-06-05, 12:25 PM
starting with an all-evil campaign, where we decided that we would start biting people and telling they are now vampires (which, of course, they werent), and continuing to today, where we have probably caused a few hundred NPCs, some main villains, and one PC from a new guy who was annoying the bejeezus out of me, to all commit suicide (the pc in question rerolled and then became a decent player)

interestingly enough, i was a chaotic good character and nearly killed the entire party but i was surviving easily. i bit a lowly guard for the fun of it, and it turned out he was a paladin... whoops. he tried to smite evil me, thinking i am a vampire, and didnt hit me. he spent the rest of the evening detecting evil and trying to smite me, but the evil-ometer was saying i am CG, and the smiting wasnt working. thinking that i somehow figured out a way to mess with their divine powers or something, an entire league of pally's started tracking us because we are vampires and must be stopped. of course, they can make all their saves because they are all optimized out the wazoo, so our casters arent doing much to help. our archer couldnt do much damage, as he is an archer. i, however, the barbarian/frenzied berserker leap attacker completely demolished them.

PersonMan
2010-06-05, 12:29 PM
In a recent game/campaign(we're not sure yet) I played in, my character mispronounced every single name he was given(it was an Arabian-ish-inspired-sorta setting) whenever he wasn't around the people, but inexplicably pronounced the names perfectly whenever they were around. For example, we needed to find Mahmut, and until I was talking to him or the quest-giver, I called him Mammoth. Katte(or something) became Cutter, etc.

The Shadowmind
2010-06-05, 12:35 PM
We had a similar experience with a nat 20 on a Knowledge (Religion) check. So....does that mean your character knows absolutely everything about the Gods, life the Universe and everything?

They know the answer is 42, but they still don't know the question, this applies to all knowledge checks.

The Glyphstone
2010-06-05, 12:37 PM
We had a similar experience with a nat 20 on a Knowledge (Religion) check. So....does that mean your character knows absolutely everything about the Gods, life the Universe and everything?

Thankfully, without houserules skill checks do not auto-succeed or auto-fail on natural 1s or 20s. Though when they do, hilarity often ensues (see also, Halfling Moon Jumpers).

kladams707
2010-06-05, 12:40 PM
Let's see, the GM had the mentally challenged carriage/starship washer (that used acid to clean the modes of conveyance).

The GM also had a celestial perpetually confused on the material plan, and could only be coherent only on his plane or if the person he was talking to was drunk.

amanamana
2010-06-05, 12:43 PM
This one I've seen in use, although I didn't play with the guy who did it:

It was a game of Lot5R and the master was apparently very good. He was great with descriptions and always had instrumental music playing on the background. He would burn his own CDs for this and, no matter what the tone and theme of the session was, he always included the main song of Mel Gibson's Braveheart somewhere in the mix.

The thing is: he was very good at immersing the players in the scenes and, although the music helped, they usually were unaware of what music was playing, never able to notice when the Braveheart music started. And then the shenanigans would start.

The guy would describe someone in strange clothes in the horizon. It was too far away for the characters to distinguish anything but a long hair, the loose clothes and what seemed like a big sword with him (it was Lot5R, big swords were not such a giveaway). At that point, a few of the players would notice the prank and just smile at it and be quiet, trying to see how far the others would go before noticing. Then the stranger in the horizon would stop walking and face the PCs. After a few moments of staring (and waiting for the PCs reactions), he would turn his back to them, bend over, show his ass and yell "FREEDOM!".

At that point, everyone would start laughing at those who still thought this was a serious part of the game.

I saw the guy doing this act three times. The players told me it was not the first or second time he was doing that and, at all occasions, he successfully fooled more than half of the table.

Leecros
2010-06-05, 12:44 PM
We had a similar experience with a nat 20 on a Knowledge (Religion) check. So....does that mean your character knows absolutely everything about the Gods, life the Universe and everything?

sounds like what my DM did when our rogue searched for traps

"I rolled a nat. 20"

"congratulations your mind is assaulted as you become aware of every trap on the entire planet"

<awkward pause>

"so is there a trap?"

"well you know where all the traps are in existence"

"Is there a trap???"

"no"

Jair Barik
2010-06-05, 01:19 PM
It got better when people started rolling nat ones.

"I start climbing the wall." *Nat 1* "You grab a brick and it falls out of the wall, you smash it into your head and are rendered unconscious"

"I try to convince the barman to lower the cost" "roll diplomacy" nat1 "The man is thoroughly insulted by your words and attacks. As do the other bar patrons. And the rest of the party. heck what you said is so rude the entire kingdom is in uproar about it"

Drascin
2010-06-05, 01:25 PM
Myself, in my campaign, when a player rolls a 20 in a Notice check, they hear their soundtrack itself, which usually has clues :smallbiggrin:. A 1 is usually "you got a fly in your eye", which can change depending on locale. "You got a spider on your eye" or "some moss dropped on your head" have also been frequent, with the most bizarre going to "you got skull in your eye".

There is also the random Kut-Ku. You see, me and my players are huge Monster Hunter buffs. The Kut-Ku is a weak, silly-looking monster (basically a clumsy chicken without feathers) from that game that is just plain funny, in the way penguins are inherently funny. And so, after a certain joke moment, it's become a running gag in the campaign to have a random Kut-Ku suffering all kinds of trouble as a background piece when I describe new wild locales :smalltongue:.

Also, "Elias Interposes!" To explain: Interpose is a feat in M&M that allows one to take an attack for another teammate once per round. Elias is our "tank", and so every round he'll keep interposing to everything he's able to, knowing he can absorb almost everything thrown at him long as it doesn't use Reflex saves. This... spiraled out of control, and now it's become a gag for the other players to joke that Elias will Interpose to everything and anything, ranging from uncomfortable truths to skill check blunders to even the weather.

TheThan
2010-06-05, 02:09 PM
The bucket

It all began with a LOTR miniature, a mordor goblin to be precise. This goblin, had a hole where his shield is supposed to go, but I sort of lost the shield. But I figured nobody would care so I threw him in the box o minis and took him with me for some dnd. Now the interesting thing about this model, is that the goblin’s arm is wraped around this whole, making it appear to be carrying a bucket tucked up under his arm.

Well this happened to be the first session so people were still picking out their characters models. One of my players was playing a halfing rogue, and he found this goblin, which he took an immediate liking to. He started joking around, telling people to “get in the bucket!” and whatnot.

Ever since then, I’ve made it a point that the pcs will come across a perfectly good bucket in game, usually in the first encounter. Lets see, last game the bucket held the antenna from a carrion crawler, a bit of rope, and some bones.

DragonRook13
2010-06-05, 02:20 PM
In the various campaigns I've been part of in my school's gaming club, there have always been two guys who would manage to alter the meaning of a quest to satisfy their needs. I've only DMed twice, and those two sessions were targeted.

In the first session, they were supposes to find the Ancient Tome of Damien Erwood, deep in the Erwood Tomb. This turned into Raid the Crypt for Artifacts, Slaves, and Magic Items. The group's Paladin, who happens to know Abyssal and worship Lolth, managed to tame the Boss Spider (Level 13 Demonweb Terror, Controller), and make it his mount. . . named Steve.

In the second session, when they returned the Tome to the guy who sent them on their quest, they managed to get him to tell them the main plot of the Campaign (a war between the Lycanthropes). They then made him take them to his master's palace, so they could both become "Half-Werewolves" (like becoming half-vampire). Because these guys are also nearing 11th level, I had to make a WereWolf Paragon Path, and several Werewolf feats.

These two sessions were also the most fun sessions I've ever had. Oh, and I forgot to mention, my campaign only has two other guys. The one who got theSpider as his mount is a Drow Paladin, and the other guy is a Drow Revenant Warlock, with a Spider as his familiar. Their names are Sir Gowan Commando, Drow Paladin, bringer of the Damned, and Wrath, the most alive Undead guy you've ever met, respectively.

valadil
2010-06-05, 02:40 PM
The biggest running gag we have is the mushroom inn. I play in a group with several GMs. We've each independently and accidentally come up with the exact same layout for our inns. They always have a bar at the bottom. Stairs run along one side up to the balcony that covers half the walls. The rooms themselves hang out over the street (hence the name mushroom inn) so that we can draw the interior easily. After 3-4 GMs did this we picked up on it and started using it intentionally. Oh yeah, whatever McGuffin is in the inn is always in the last room on the balcony.

Darklord Xavez
2010-06-05, 02:44 PM
Having the party rogue (who has a charisma stat of 14 but plays it like a 4) lose his foot.
-Xavez

balistafreak
2010-06-05, 03:00 PM
The DM used a fantasy sound track that included one piece of music that starts with a guy rolling a dice then going 'Uh-oh' before the music actually starts.

This sounds cool. Do you actually have it, or its name, or any other information about it?

Rothen
2010-06-05, 03:01 PM
The man in the black coat: In all campaigns, regardless of setting, there is a man in a black coat who keeps showing up, attacking him results in instant curbstomp. It's heavily implied it's the same guy every time despite the completely different settings.
If you don't attack him he will instead send you on quests or give you information.

I had something similar with some friends I used to play with. We used to play short campaigns of a 2-3 months, and every single campaign would have the same guy, called John Smith. (Well, the dutch variant of it.)

Originally, he was a barkeep who was designed as a completely random npc (hence the name). But we had an awesome scene with him, and the guy who DMed the next campaign put the exact same bareep with the exact same inn in his setting - even though it was a completely different one.

Player: Wait, is that the same guy? How's that possible?
DM: What do you mean? This the first time you guys met him.
Party: ...

Every other campaign starred the same John Smith, although he wasn't always a barkeep.

Daitini Peck
2010-06-05, 03:08 PM
In one of the campaigns I play a CN Gnome Bard 2/Warmage 2/Dragon Disciple 3 named Gnorm who is travelling with a LG human barbarian and a LN halfling rogue.

Every time we play the barbarian is of course angered at my character for certain things...he worships Obad Hai and I like to set things on fire...kinda my thing...plus the dm ruled that through Alchemy my clan of gnomes was able to create marshmallows. So I purposefully try to anger the Barbarian to much hilarity.

Example: Setting a live tree on fire, barbarian goes into a rage, tries to kill me, and I offer him a marshmallow...and then I get him to -9 hp through battle.

Last time we played, we came across a caravan of merchants, one happened to be a black market dealer disguised as a low level magician. I told the other two to go set up camp, when they were out of sight, I bought some itching powder and a belt of sex change...

I offered to take first watch, and then switched the belts on the barbarian...then when (s)he woke up confused...I seduced her (nat 20). We did the naughty (after I drank a potion of enlargement), the dm had the barbarian roll a fort save to stay awake after the naughty deed, and he rolled a 1...which was perfect for me.

So I picked up the barbarian, set "her" back in "her" bedroll, and switched the belts again....only after putting the itching powder on his normal belt.

When the barbarian awoke he thought it was a dream, and now, every so often, I say or do something to remind him of his "dream", which gives him flash backs...

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to top that, I did recently aquire a helm of opposite alignment...but I think I'll hang on to it for now.

jiriku
2010-06-05, 03:09 PM
In a previous play group, we had a fellow named Roy who spent an inordinate amount of time learning the rules and loved to play dark horse characters who were frequently at odds with the party. Whenever Roy noticed someone making a mistake in the rules in a way that favored the party, he'd ALWAYS remind the DM. Roy loved secrecy, and whenever his character learned a critical piece of information while the party wasn't around, he'd keep it close to his chest and never share it without extracting favors in return. And if a player was developing some complicated plot involving manipulating NPCs to do his bidding, like a moth drawn to a flame, Roy's character would be there, distracting the NPC at a critical moment and endangering his fellow player's plans.

Eventually, we started using his name as a verb whenever anyone did something without thinking that put another player at a disadvantage. If someone chimed up to remind his friend about his exhausted condition just as he was about to charge, it was "Hey, don't Roy me, ok?" This ultimately led to the best laughs when Roy would pass a saving throw, suddenly remember a penalty, and realize that he'd failed. I'd always chime in with "Did you just Roy yourself?"

Trog
2010-06-05, 03:12 PM
The Vampire Blackguard and the Storm Giant Ghost.

Both of these were from 3.5 and were very tough opponents the DM ran. They were considered WAY too powerful somehow or other and it was declared that they should just run the world, why don't they, since they were so tough. :smalltongue:

So now whenever there's an opponent that's really kicking their ass someone always suggests that "Well why doesn't this monster just get together with the Vampire Blackguard (optional: And the Storm Giant Ghost) and rule the world?!" :smallyuk:

If you're a DM running 3.5 give these combos a try to really challenge your players. :smallwink:

Tyrael
2010-06-05, 03:12 PM
Every single time I begin a game, I always start with, "When last we left our Intrepid Heroes..."


Also, during the first few games, one of my players was wondering how strange/rare/exotic elves were in my campaign world, so he asked, "Umm...how weird are elves?"

From that day forward, the weirdness of elves has become accepted as gospel truth. They're not weird ABOUT anything, they're just intrinsically weird.

Jair Barik
2010-06-05, 03:20 PM
This sounds cool. Do you actually have it, or its name, or any other information about it?

Dungeons and dragons (album) by Midnight Syndicate. Not sure but I think it may be the track titled 'how strange...' I'm looking at it on I tunes but evidently the track I'm thinking of the 15 second demo isn't of the start. We also mixed the music up with various Guild Wars soundtracks.

Drakevarg
2010-06-05, 03:36 PM
Vlad, the Avatar of Insanity.

Originally dreamed up as a DMPC for our DM, Vlad was a Necromancer with a completely unknown agenda who simply started following us around one day. (We'd first met him as the poison salesman of a smalll fishing village, and as we left he just dumped his cargo and started following us... apparently he'd made friends with our Ranger.)

He never bothered to explain why he came with us, but since the Ranger liked him we never complained. At a few points he would simply leave the group and reappear later, not bothering to give any explaination, but often it was hinted to be quite horrific. At one point we wandered into what seemed to be an abandoned ore refinery, and while we were exploring the surrounding camp Vlad wandered off. Once we were done, Vlad reappeared and said that he'd found a way out. It was a mining cart at the top floor of the refinery. Once we got inside, we found that the place was not so abandoned after all, and that everyone working in the refinery had been brutally murdered. Vlad instantly admitted to killing them in a manner as casually as if he'd said he'd just gotten back from dinner.

The campaign died out after that session, mainly because the DM didn't bother to keep notes.

However, in campaigns after that, Vlad made his reappearance. Unlike last time where he was clearly a mortal (I wrote up his sheet myself), Vlad had become as I said earlier, an Avatar of Insanity. His thought processes were incomprehensible, his mannerisms bizarre, and he would show up and throw crazy all over the place before wandering off again.

At one point he teleported everyone out of a room except for our party leader, and offered him some magic items if he could complete a challenge. The challenge... paper football. The party leader lost, so Vlad upturned the table and stormed out indignantly. At this point, everyone reappeared in the room, with no awareness that time had passed.

I can't remember other shinnanegans that Vlad pulled, but the DM eventually explained that Vlad was something he did to keep himself from getting bored. So, whenever the DM got bored with the story he was telling, Vlad would show up, mess with everyone's heads, and wander off again.

Ishcumbeebeeda
2010-06-05, 03:48 PM
Vlad, the Avatar of Insanity.

Originally dreamed up as a DMPC for our DM, Vlad was a Necromancer with a completely unknown agenda who simply started following us around one day. (We'd first met him as the poison salesman of a smalll fishing village, and as we left he just dumped his cargo and started following us... apparently he'd made friends with our Ranger.)

He never bothered to explain why he came with us, but since the Ranger liked him we never complained. At a few points he would simply leave the group and reappear later, not bothering to give any explaination, but often it was hinted to be quite horrific. At one point we wandered into what seemed to be an abandoned ore refinery, and while we were exploring the surrounding camp Vlad wandered off. Once we were done, Vlad reappeared and said that he'd found a way out. It was a mining cart at the top floor of the refinery. Once we got inside, we found that the place was not so abandoned after all, and that everyone working in the refinery had been brutally murdered. Vlad instantly admitted to killing them in a manner as casually as if he'd said he'd just gotten back from dinner.

The campaign died out after that session, mainly because the DM didn't bother to keep notes.

However, in campaigns after that, Vlad made his reappearance. Unlike last time where he was clearly a mortal (I wrote up his sheet myself), Vlad had become as I said earlier, an Avatar of Insanity. His thought processes were incomprehensible, his mannerisms bizarre, and he would show up and throw crazy all over the place before wandering off again.

At one point he teleported everyone out of a room except for our party leader, and offered him some magic items if he could complete a challenge. The challenge... paper football. The party leader lost, so Vlad upturned the table and stormed out indignantly. At this point, everyone reappeared in the room, with no awareness that time had passed.

I can't remember other shinnanegans that Vlad pulled, but the DM eventually explained that Vlad was something he did to keep himself from getting bored. So, whenever the DM got bored with the story he was telling, Vlad would show up, mess with everyone's heads, and wander off again.
Hey, I know that guy! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V--v5Ba_cx8&feature=related) It's Q! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1VpYIoCHok)

Brennan
2010-06-05, 03:54 PM
The traveling bard. When my players were in a pub, the sorceress stole his hat and ran from him. He then reappeared to get his hat in a town besieged by zombies and played his lute frantically to dazzle the zombies before being promptly eaten. We now have a running gag that the bard will arrive to get his revenge, whilst riding on a zombie bear.

Drakevarg
2010-06-05, 04:01 PM
Hey, I know that guy! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V--v5Ba_cx8&feature=related) It's Q! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1VpYIoCHok)

Nah. Q is vaguely comprehensible. Vlad was like L mixed with River Tam mixed with an owl. He rarely talked, when he did it made no sense, and he could turn his head competely backwards. Also, he had no face. He always wore a mask that looked kinda like Tosen's Ressurecion.

Xyk
2010-06-05, 04:08 PM
In my games (which are rare nowadays) the players never bother to remember NPC names, which is pretty ordinary, but they give them all the same name:

NPC: Greetings travelers, my name is King Jack, and I have a magical quest for you!
Fighter: Hmkay, Grishnak, let's get this show on the road.

...later that day...

BBEG: MUHAHAHA I have you now! You will not escape me: Larry the Necromancer!
Wizard: Not likely, Grishnak, eat fireballs!
Fighter: WAIT! Wasn't he the same guy as the king?! It's a huge conspiracy!


It's kinda funny.

R. Shackleford
2010-06-05, 04:25 PM
A character with low-Str will suggest kicking down the door, causing all the other STR-based characters to try to restrain him, sparking a round of failed strength checks, leading up to the low-str character kicking in the door, and failing spectacularly.

The first time the door was too heavy to budge.

The second time a nat 1 was rolled, and the door opened from the other side, pinning the kicker between the door and wall.

A third time actually passed the check, but the door lead into an empty dormitory, and while the character was in there, the party was ambushed. on the other end of the hallway.

Tengu_temp
2010-06-05, 04:30 PM
As a shout-out to All-Star Batman and Robin, each time I refer to the kid prince the party rescued by name, I call him "Ferdinand Erden, age 11". Even during a dramatic scene once.

Poil
2010-06-05, 04:38 PM
Running into the kitchen

Before I joined my current group they had a Shadowrun team searching through a mansion. They didn't find anything interesting in any of the rooms so one of the guys runs into the kitchen. Turned out the kitchen was full of vampires with machine guns. It gets mentioned about everytime someone enters a kitchen.

Dracons
2010-06-05, 04:38 PM
We have several, and quite the few we all use repeatedly. Matter of fact, new players when they DM, they use it to, even though they were not the originators of it.


VEN?!
In my first game i ever played, I also was teamed up with a woman named BLAH. She had her own character, who was a monk. She randomally came across the DM's uber powerful NPC Monk who always wore a hood to conceal his face. She somehow managed to roll 5 natuaral twenties, and the DM allowed her to see what he looked like. Turns out he was a half-celestial, and had a charsma of like 40. He ran away, and she would in every town scream where is VEN? This player eventally left us, but now in game, no matter where the party is, a door will randomally be kicked in, her face appear, looking around and asking "VEN!?" before dispappearing.

I can't be fired here
This was more of a string of just funny coinidences. The party tended to go to an INN, or a restruant, or a guild, and tend to run across the very same halfling woman named Cookie. Somehow something bad will happen and the PC's must defend themselves, and in the process destroy half the place of business that Cookie was working at and thus get fired. She would move to another town, another place, or even planes of existances to find a new job. When new pcs are introduced, she tends to complain and be fearful because of what happen with band X. A new batch of characters eventally bought her services to be the head cook of their own headquarters. She hasnt been fired yet.

Dragon's Hair
My own little gag that no-one realized yet, was that all my dragons have shapechange for one, but they their human forms always have what their scale color is for hair. They don't have a choice in that regard. So red dragons have red hair, etc etc.

huttj509
2010-06-05, 04:41 PM
Mine's rather lame in comparison.

Horses will not survive.

Started with an ambush. The PC's wagon was hit by a bugbear/Deinonychus team, and the dino went straight for the horse to stop em. Later, a Bulette attacked, and started out by leaping over the front of the cart, downing 2 horses as it did so.

It gives me a way to show a threat without downing a pc in the surprise round, or having them run or something.

CoffeeIncluded
2010-06-05, 04:45 PM
I can't be fired here
This was more of a string of just funny coinidences. The party tended to go to an INN, or a restruant, or a guild, and tend to run across the very same halfling woman named Cookie. Somehow something bad will happen and the PC's must defend themselves, and in the process destroy half the place of business that Cookie was working at and thus get fired. She would move to another town, another place, or even planes of existances to find a new job. When new pcs are introduced, she tends to complain and be fearful because of what happen with band X. A new batch of characters eventally bought her services to be the head cook of their own headquarters. She hasnt been fired yet.

That's pretty funny.


Dragon's Hair
My own little gag that no-one realized yet, was that all my dragons have shapechange for one, but they their human forms always have what their scale color is for hair. They don't have a choice in that regard. So red dragons have red hair, etc etc.

Hey! That's what happens to shapechanged dragons in my comic! :smallbiggrin:

Eloi
2010-06-05, 04:47 PM
Mine's rather lame in comparison.

Horses will not survive.

Started with an ambush. The PC's wagon was hit by a bugbear/Deinonychus team, and the dino went straight for the horse to stop em. Later, a Bulette attacked, and started out by leaping over the front of the cart, downing 2 horses as it did so.

It gives me a way to show a threat without downing a pc in the surprise round, or having them run or something.

You'd made the entire species of Horse into Redshirts. I hope you're happy with yourself!

Dracons
2010-06-05, 04:56 PM
Dungeons and dragons (album) by Midnight Syndicate. Not sure but I think it may be the track titled 'how strange...' I'm looking at it on I tunes but evidently the track I'm thinking of the 15 second demo isn't of the start. We also mixed the music up with various Guild Wars soundtracks.

It's not. Must be on the Guild Wars soundtrack, because my version of that CD doesn't have anyone rolling dice and going uh oh.

Dogmantra
2010-06-05, 05:05 PM
It's not. Must be on the Guild Wars soundtrack, because my version of that CD doesn't have anyone rolling dice and going uh oh.

Not on the Guild Wars soundtrack, unless it's a very very rare track that doesn't fit with the theme of the game.

Dracons
2010-06-05, 05:13 PM
Not on the Guild Wars soundtrack, unless it's a very very rare track that doesn't fit with the theme of the game.

Must be from somewhere else then by power of elimination.

Kallisti
2010-06-05, 05:31 PM
My luck with dice is...interesting. I roll a 3 inordinately often, no matter the die size. It also seems to spread to dice I touch and people I game with. When someone rolls a 3, they get mad at me for it. It's reached the point where, in playing cards with other friends who have never met me, one of our players begins cussing me out in absentia when she draws an inconvenient 3 of clubs, much to the confusion of her friends.

Also, all ghosts everywhere are obsessed with polo.

Ishcumbeebeeda
2010-06-05, 05:53 PM
Nah. Q is vaguely comprehensible. Vlad was like L mixed with River Tam mixed with an owl. He rarely talked, when he did it made no sense, and he could turn his head competely backwards. Also, he had no face. He always wore a mask that looked kinda like Tosen's Ressurecion.

Hmmm. Sounds like a fun guy to hang out with:smallbiggrin:

Drakevarg
2010-06-05, 05:57 PM
Hmmm. Sounds like a fun guy to hang out with:smallbiggrin:

If he doesn't randomly decide your intestines would make a good jump rope.

Eloi
2010-06-05, 06:05 PM
Oh, and another running gag I had was my characters often becoming psychologists for my poor mentally-ill NPC cast. I mean I don't think I had one sane NPC. My PCs would joke that "The whole town is populated by lunies with extremely girly voices!", which wasn't too far off the mark.

Shademan
2010-06-05, 06:05 PM
In a campaign I ran for my big brother and his friends they assaulted a temple of Pelor and my brothers elf rogue/ranger-would be assassin came in the back door, where he ran into the temple chef and proceeded to roll the one 1 after another. in th end the chef was defeated but on the way back they didnt find the body...
the chef would turn up every time the elf entered a kitchen with evil intent, he became his mortal nemesis.

good times

Tavar
2010-06-05, 06:09 PM
Once me an another friend watched the DnD movie with Jeremy Irons in it. The next game we played, someone took leadership for a rogue. Now, initially he didn't even have a name, mostly because he was a last minute addition. After flubbing several easy rolls, however, he earned the name Snails, after the main character in the movies best friend. A rouge with the same name has turned up in many of our other games, always failing at some relatively easy task.

Iceforge
2010-06-05, 06:25 PM
We play with a house rule, that on skill checks, a natural 20 is re-rolled and added to the previous roll, so endlessly high numbers are possible, but a 20 is not an automatic success with skill rolls, and then depending on how much you roll over, your just gain really great success.

This has lead to a running gag at my table, which I as the GM repeatedly forget.

Early in the game, they encountered some fey, and the groups paladin decided to roll a knowledge roll, so see just how much he knew about these fey creatures anyway.

Nat 20, on nat 20 on nat 20..

He ended up with 88 as his score with a modifier under 10, (think it was like +5, and he rolled 20, 20, 20, 20, 3)

So I declared that he knew absolutely everything there was to know about fey, and that if he ever had an off-game question about fey, then I would supply him with the knowledge, but I didnt want to turn the session into a lecturing class on how the fey in my world was.

So every time anything happens in relations to fey creatures, I am to give up all their weaknesses, abilities, strengths, favoured tactics, and so on.

Fey creatures have become rather easy encounters for the group now due to that, not counting them fighting a group of pixies on a day where the wizard had forgotten to prepare true sight, which almost lead to a TPK

Lycan 01
2010-06-05, 07:00 PM
Umbra

There's always a hulking Ork decked out in bulky Samurai-style armor wielding a huge greatsword. He's always looking for other worthy warriors, and won't back down from a challenge. Based off Umbra from The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.


The Merchant

There's always a Merchant at the most opportune times. He's a Gnome in a black trenchcoat and hood, with a blue bandana over his face and a gruff British accent. He's always got items the Adventurer's need or could use, be they in his jacket, in a bag of holding in his jacket, or in the big box he somehow lugs around. And he's always just... there. No matter where the PCs are, the Merchant will pop up when he is most needed. Just finished a bunch of encounters, and need more healing items? Oh look, this hidden door leads to the Merchant. Just defeated a dragon, and want to sell the pieces and get new gear? Oh look, the Merchant has set up shop in... the entrance to the BBEG's lair? That's... convenient. :smallconfused: Lost in the wilderness? Hey look, the Merchant is... waiting for you... in that random clearing... Okay serious, who is this guy? :smalleek:

He's actually based off The Merchant from Resident Evil 4, and...


He's secretly a High Priest/Avatar/?? of the God of Trade, who's name I don't recall. Not sure the players will ever figure this out, though. :smallwink:

Kira_the_5th
2010-06-05, 07:05 PM
Once upon a time, my group had a member who liked to play as a drow. Despite the LA, he went ahead and made a shadowdancer for a campaign we were running set in an underground dwarven kingdom. He joined a few sessions in, and decided the best way to join our party was to follow us secretly as we traveled along the road, following as far back as he could without setting off the monk's blindsight.

Cue the ambush.

Our group gets hit by a few assassins and a sorcerer, who proceeds to prismatic spray the party. The rogue fails his save against poison and dies, without us ever knowing he was there. Eventually, we wind up retconning him into the party and continue traveling. I don't remember the character's actual name, mostly because after a few sessions, he got nicknamed "Kenny."

See, our rogue friend decided that, as a rogue/shadowdancer, he didn't have to worry about getting hit, because he would just hide in the back, shadowstep up, and sneak attack things while remaining hidden. As such, he had around 44 HP at ECL 13. On top of this, he decided to charge right into melee and then act shocked when the monster of the week dropped him in one round. It became like clockwork; every week, he would inevitably get himself killed one way or another. Find the big-a** demon the party was supposed to fight in a few minutes, then stand there doing nothing, jumping into an earth elemental right before it was banished, crit failing to disarm a trap, you name it, it killed him. It got to the point that whenever someone new would DM, it became a right of passage to kill the rogue, and similar characters have popped up in other campaigns as well, just to die humorously.

Also, whenever someone takes leadership/hires hirelings, they always take the form of one dozen prinnies (from disgaea) with 1 level in bard. It came about when our party wizard, who took ranks in Profession, wanted something to do with the money at high level and so bought a prinny bard for the entire (12 person) party. The penguins have followed ever since.

PersonMan
2010-06-05, 07:07 PM
Make him the avatar. It'd be a great Big Reveal. The characters will be...rather surprised that they've been regularly talking to and dealing with A FRICKIN' GOD.

Reynard
2010-06-05, 07:17 PM
DM: As you stay the night at the Inn, you sleep is interrupted by-

PC1: Is it an angry mob?
PC2: It's an angry mob, isn't it?
PC1: Are they going to burn down the Inn?
PC2: They're going to burn the Inn down, aren't they?"

Lycan 01
2010-06-05, 07:21 PM
Make him the avatar. It'd be a great Big Reveal. The characters will be...rather surprised that they've been regularly talking to and dealing with A FRICKIN' GOD.

I think that's what I'll do. There WAS supposed to be a climactic battle at the end of the campaign, but two problems came up...

1 - For the players to get to the level I wanted the Epic Battle to take place, it'd take us over a year at the rate they level. And that's if we're able to get a session in every week or two. At college. >.<

2 - One player got disowned by his dad, and won't be returning to college with us. Two other players will be extremely busy next semester, and likely won't be able to join us as much. And the friendships between several of the players basically fell apart on the last few days of school this semester, so gaming together would be awkward this fall.


So yeah, time was already an issue, but now I think the big campaign I had planned is effectively doomed with a broken party. :smalleek:


Oh well. The Merchant will still be there to buy and sell stuff in the most random places and times. :smalltongue:


I even have a joke planned where the party gets so used to him always being there after climactic battles, that they're shocked when they find an empty room instead. Then later on when they eventually meet back up with them, he apologizes and says he had another adventuring group to do business with that hour... XD

Xyk
2010-06-05, 07:43 PM
I can't be fired here
This was more of a string of just funny coinidences. The party tended to go to an INN, or a restruant, or a guild, and tend to run across the very same halfling woman named Cookie. Somehow something bad will happen and the PC's must defend themselves, and in the process destroy half the place of business that Cookie was working at and thus get fired. She would move to another town, another place, or even planes of existances to find a new job. When new pcs are introduced, she tends to complain and be fearful because of what happen with band X. A new batch of characters eventally bought her services to be the head cook of their own headquarters. She hasnt been fired yet.


MY CABBAGES!

Saintjebus
2010-06-05, 09:14 PM
One of the very first characters I ever played was a elven evoker. The first session, the DM gave me an iron ring that randomly affected [fire] spells. I figured that was cool, so I wore it. The very first battle, we were fighting vampires. I got off a couple of good hits with slightly improved fire spells, and one that tanked. I finally used a scorching ray on a vampire 30 ft away(figuring that that was far enough away for the ring's expanding capability). The spell hit the vampire, who was immediately the center of a 60 ft wide, maximized, empowered fireball (turns out the ring provided a link to the Elemental Plane of Fire) . Everyone in the party was hit. Everyone in the party survived- except for me. In fact, I was the only one killed by this fireball. When the party chased off the vamps, they found a little pile of ash where I had been. On top of the pile of ash, was the ring. They threw it into the ocean.

Ever since then, whenever we run across an iron ring, it goes into the nearest ocean/lake/convenient body of water.

RelentlessImp
2010-06-05, 10:22 PM
MY CABBAGES!

THIS IS WORSE THAN OMASHU!

Truenamer
2010-06-05, 10:30 PM
So once my party was going through Ravenloft. We had gotten all the way to the end and were up against Strahd. Now, I was playing an unbelievably broken factotum. Strahd uses dominate on me and I roll a nat 1 on the will save. My DM tell me to play like I'm evil. On my next turn I proceed to kill half the party before all three of our sorcerers (we have a great love for them) have their familiars deliver touch of idiocy to me, dropping my wis to zero. From then on, whenever we are in a situation that looks hopeless, someone suggests we cast touch of idiocy on my character, regardless of what I'm playing. Also I am never allowed to play a factotum again.

Dornath
2010-06-05, 10:30 PM
I've got a few. One should probably strike true to all readers of Oots.

Did the Rogue Die?

Our DM, being the amazing one that he is, decided that for our first foray into Roleplaying games he's run us through all the classics. We started our five man campaign with The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Our rogue, an elf named Neyepsung, nearly died a grand total of 5 times.
1. Our first (read:LAST) time splitting the party. We come up to the 'Haunted Mansion' and decide how best to enter it. The druid and Neyepsung go round the back, myself (Cleric) as well as the paladin and wizard head through the front. We adventure through the mansion, and finally work our way to the back door and are surprised that it's not yet open. We open it, and see our lovable rogue lying near death and the druid being attacked by....2 large rats. We ragged the rogue about that.
2. Same session, the stairs that we are using the go from floor to floor are pretty rickety, so we decide to tie a rope to the banister in case anything wierd happens.
Turns out to be a good idea, as the heavy paladin falls through the stairs and is saved by the rope.
Anyway, once everyone is down and in the kitchen, we hear a pounding sound coming from the door. Zombie in the basement. The party heads down there to deal with it, and the rogue decides he wants his rope back. The stairs, weak as they are, fall on him as he pulls on his rope. He goes back down into negatives.

There were a few other things he did that were ridiculous. Boots of levitation and getting knocked into negatives. Attempting to seduce a Sea-hag and getting slashed across the throat (Again into negs), etc. He kept a list, at one point he had up to 40 near-deaths from stupid (read: Hilarious) occurrences.

Are you sure you want to do that?

I wasn't present for this session, however I was filled in at great lengths about what happened.
For the tl;dr crowd, our paladin lost his powers.
At length, we were fighting a group of rivals. Three of them are still up. Our new cleric (I was away for a long time) was dead, our druid was dead, our sorceress was stable at -9 and our rogue had lost a finger (and nearly an eye). The paladin decides that he's going to retreat, use his lay on hands, then attack. Our DM rules that this will cause him to fall. Hinting at this by saying "Are you SURE you want to do that? Is that what a Paladin of Heironious, god of Valor, would do? Is that really your best option here?" (He still had about 40 hit points left, we were at 6th level. Potentially, he could have been fine. But he backed off, lost his powers, blah blah.

This has become a constant joke. Even though he's now playing a Psychic Warrior in the Shackled City campaign, we still try and see if he can 'Lose his powers' due to a poor decision. Teachnically, he just did. But that was due to death.

I got a 4!

That's right, we have Elan in our party.
It started with the Rogue Neyepsung. He would nearly always roll a 4 on a critical roll. Then it infected his other rolls.
Now he's playing a female paladin.
Guess what her most rolled number is?

Masaioh
2010-06-05, 11:11 PM
An inn is the most dangerous place in my setting, because they tend to implode. Also, the bartenders tend to be at least 15th level.

The laws of physics in general get so badly maimed that not even true resurrection can bring them back now.

Enix18
2010-06-05, 11:19 PM
Dungeons and dragons (album) by Midnight Syndicate. Not sure but I think it may be the track titled 'how strange...' I'm looking at it on I tunes but evidently the track I'm thinking of the 15 second demo isn't of the start. We also mixed the music up with various Guild Wars soundtracks.

Yeah, it's the track titled "BOTCH!" on the Dungeons and Dragons "Official Soundtrack" by Midnight Syndicate.



The Merchant

There's always a Merchant at the most opportune times. He's a Gnome in a black trenchcoat and hood, with a blue bandana over his face and a gruff British accent. He's always got items the Adventurer's need or could use, be they in his jacket, in a bag of holding in his jacket, or in the big box he somehow lugs around. And he's always just... there. No matter where the PCs are, the Merchant will pop up when he is most needed. Just finished a bunch of encounters, and need more healing items? Oh look, this hidden door leads to the Merchant. Just defeated a dragon, and want to sell the pieces and get new gear? Oh look, the Merchant has set up shop in... the entrance to the BBEG's lair? That's... convenient. :smallconfused: Lost in the wilderness? Hey look, the Merchant is... waiting for you... in that random clearing... Okay serious, who is this guy? :smalleek:

He's actually based off The Merchant from Resident Evil 4, and...

What a coincidence, my campaigns always feature something similar! Only, instead of a recurring character, it's just a running joke that every merchant in the world sounds like the Resident Evil 4 merchant. I even make sure to quote the actual character at least once during their conversation (i.e. Whenever the PCs purchase item X: "Ah, yes! The choice of an avid X collector!").

The Blacksmith

This one originated one time when I was desperate to quickly think up a name for a blacksmith, and I chose the most original name ever: Smith Black. Now, in every campaign I run, if the PCs visit the blacksmith, he will invariably be named Smith Black. It's never actually the same character (once he was a human, another time he was a dwarf, etc.), but the name is always the same. Probably the most memorable incarnation was Smith Black, the Exalted Sword Archon Warblade/Expert, who actually decided to join the party for a while. He was one awesome blacksmith.

Lemme Get In There!

This is actually a rather humorous tactic that originated when the same party who had befriended Smith Black the Sword Archon was faced off against a kraken-like creature, and fairing badly. Finally, the Monk decided to take drastic measures, and actually leapt into the beast's mouth shouting "Lemme get in there!". Long story shorty, he beat up the kraken from the inside, and now this tactic has become sort of a running joke to use against particularly massive creatures in dire straights. So far, it has also been successfully used to slay a large White Dragon and a Fiendwurm!

Chainsaw Hobbit
2010-06-05, 11:22 PM
This isn't really a running gag but when the party goes to a tavern it's always called "The Valiant Blade".

Serpentine
2010-06-05, 11:35 PM
We have absolutely horrible luck in our games, especially me. I'm talking rolling a natural 1 in almost every post. And whenever I actually hit something, everybody else ends up with bad luck.This reminds me, my characters have an annoying tendency to be bad at the things they should be the best at. For example, my 3/4-elf Ranger with maxed out Survival always failed Survival checks to find her way or avoid getting lost. My dwarven Knight has trouble with Constitution checks and attack rolls.
For a while we also had some interesting things with names. I had a cabin boy called Timmy, and the party (well, one in particular) decided he would be called Jimmy, instead. We rescued a little girl with some Aztec name that was a bit tricky to pronounce and that meant "stream" or something to do with water. They called her Brooke, instead.

Drakevarg
2010-06-05, 11:42 PM
For a while we also had some interesting things with names. I had a cabin boy called Timmy, and the party (well, one in particular) decided he would be called Jimmy, instead. We rescued a little girl with some Aztec name that was a bit tricky to pronounce and that meant "stream" or something to do with water. They called her Brooke, instead.

Which reminds me, in our current campaign our party has been lead about the wilderness by a badass 10th level ranger named Listaff. Since I wasn't really paying attention the first time we were told his name, I decided that since he was a crumudgeonly old badass that he would simultaneously be Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery. So I started calling him "Clint Connery" or just Clint. This wind up sticking so hard that the entire party started calling him Clint, even IC.

At one point we had to get past a door guard. When I told him "Clint sent us." he had no idea what I was talking about. It took me a moment to remember and correct myself that "Listaff sent us."

IonDragon
2010-06-05, 11:50 PM
What's in the baaaaaawks!?: A pointed reference (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_reTt7Hj4) at popular culture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRJcxMe1zWY) comes up pretty much any time there's random loot, or a treasure chest.

Dracons
2010-06-06, 12:07 AM
Yeah, it's the track titled "BOTCH!" on the Dungeons and Dragons "Official Soundtrack" by Midnight Syndicate.

!

Prelude
2. Troubled Times
3. Ride to Destiny
4. The Fens of Sargath
5. Descent into the Depths
6. Stealth and Cunning
7. Behind Door #1
8. Skirmish
9. Eternal Mystery
10. Heroes' Valor
11. Relic Uncovered
12. Deep Trouble
13. Chant
14. Craft of the Wizard
15. Beasts of the Borderlands
16. Secret Chamber
17. Lair of the Great Wyrm
18. Ancient Temple
19. How Strange
20. Army of the Dead
21. Final Confrontation

BONUS TRACKS
22. Ruins of Bone Hill
23. City of Sails
Are this listings on mine. I played through my CD twice today. Nowhere on there is a person rolling dice and going uh oh. I use to play this all the time at Work too.

Serpentine
2010-06-06, 12:09 AM
One of my players has just reminded me about the toads.
Way back when, we had a Bard called Noholls (that particular player was a running gag himself...). We had to get into somewhere, so he created an illusion to distract the guards. His illusion of choice was... a giant flaming toad. I think it worked.
Now, we have an elderly Witch in the party. His familiar is a toad. He keeps it in his pants. Once the player was absent, so another player (same as above, actually) took him over. At a market, he decided to buy the Witch another toad in an attempt to breed them. The character doesn't know how to sex toads, so noone knows whether they can breed. They both live in his pants.

senrath
2010-06-06, 12:12 AM
In a couple of the games I've been in there has been mass destruction occurring somewhere along the lines. And it's usually the fault of the players. Or rather, the fault of one player. And it's never on purpose. The first time he accidentally solved a puzzle box that, when opened, triggered a massive plane shift centered on the box. It ripped a several hundred square mile area from the Prime Material and threw it down on Mechanus. It also caused the fabric of reality to break down, and the rest of the game was spent trying to escape from the rapidly eroding world.

The second time was in a game of Shadowrun. Long story short, we were tasked with locating a case that had been stolen, and return it, within 3 days. My character was the only one told what was in the case, and why it mattered that it be recovered so quickly. It turns out the case contained several kilograms of antimatter, and the containment field wouldn't last much longer than the time limit. A bit later, the actions of the previously mentioned player caused us to not only be about a hundred miles in the wrong direction, but also triggered the group that had stolen the case to open it.

Ever since those two, whenever a game ends without something catastrophic happening, someone ends up saying something along the lines of "But Jack hasn't destroyed the world yet!"

Jokasti
2010-06-06, 12:24 AM
Bars are always called: The [Status] [Strange Animal], so we've visited the Aching Lion, the Fatigued Golem, the Sleeping Fae, the Happy Dragon, and the Sad Lich.
Also, due to a clerical error, liches (not nymphs) are the hottest thing since fire elementals. Whenever we meet a lich, someone nat1s the Diplomacy roll and falls in love.
"URN FILLED WITH BLOOD! with blood! THE WHOLE ROOM WAS LOOKING AT URNNNNNNNNNN" to the tune of AppleBottom Jeans.
When I rolled a druid, we met some bear slavers, and we were at the top of a hill, I was a bird I think. I transform into a huge dire bear and roll over the cages (nat20 on Dex) so as to release and not harm the bears. I also killed like 7 of the twenty slavers. So whenever we see a bear (it comes up more than you think) someone says, "Whitney's Milktank uses ROLLOUT! It's Super Effective!".
We played a crazy game where we switched multiverses (campaign and d20 to Earth d20Modern) we were part of the New American Drug Program to test how far our bodies could go. Long story short, we all can use magic and have the best artifacts in the quarram. We razed Africa then got tried by the Great Old Ones (like gods but for quarrams). And were found guilty then escaped. We also carried our NADs (New American Dollars) in our SACS (Strategically Aerodynamic Carrying Satchel [Bag of holding]).

Ashram
2010-06-06, 12:41 AM
Due to the general power level of the games I play in, whenever the DM asks us to recap what had happened in the last sessions, he starts with:

"On the last exciting episode of Dragon Ball Z..."

Sindri
2010-06-06, 01:20 AM
I have several...

In a Traveller game I was in for quite some time, we had a hotshot pilot named Janz. The problem was that his player was tired of the character and kept trying to get him killed off so he could make a new character, but didn't want to just retire or suicide. Thus, every time we need someone for a suicide mission, he yells out "Janz'll do it!" and then somehow survives against all odds. Every time someone suggests something so incredibly stupid that it has no reasonable chance of success and would probably result in the death of whoever attempted it and everyone nearby, "Janz'll do it!" and somehow, he does. The character hasn't been so much as scratched in the dozens of combats he wades into, with no combat ability and crap equipment.

In a 3.5 game I run, very early in the campaign, the necromancer cleric was like 2 EXP away from making second level, and the party was in town between encounters, so he decided to buy some chickens and kill them in solo combat. He brings them up to his room in the inn, and lets one of them out of the cage. He attempts to kill it with a dagger, fumbles, and breaks the dagger. Then he tries to do an Inflict Light Wounds on it, fumbles again, and hits himself for most of his HP. Before he can attack again, the chicken pecks him for 1HP, dropping him to zero. He manages to stagger outside and lock the door, then heals himself but decides to get a new weapon and get his spells back before trying again. The next day, the scene repeated itself almost exactly...and the next. Eventually he gave up, when another party member found an adventure for them. Now the character screams and hides whenever he sees a chicken, even though he's 10th level and has a wide variety of undead minions.

In the same game, one of the PCs is a tiny black wyrmling. Every time we find an abandoned mineshaft, or a business from which the workers have fled, while the rest of the party is discussing plans, he quietly writes "property of ___" over the entrance. Likewise, whenever we encounter kobolds, or goblins, or other weak, numerous, minion-type monster races, he distracts the rest of the party, starts negotiating with the leader, and diplomancer's his way into control. I'm pretty sure that his goal in life is to take over the world without anyone noticing.

In a HackMaster game I play in, one character (same player as the poultry-phobic necromancer) is always hit by every fireball. From both sides. It's gotten to the point where, when stratgising, we actually say "and then you cast a fireball, centered on me..."

In that same game, we've heard several prophesies and/or legends about the BBEG, a high level dark knight serving the frog god, each of which portrays him as even more evil, powerful, and going-to-hunt-us-down-and-eat-our-entrails than the last. The problem is that none of us can remember his real name. Every time we talk about him, we refer to him as "low-carb fish-snack" or "lojack fishnets" or something along those lines, because they sound somewhat similar to the name the GM keeps giving us in exasperation. We often joke about how, since he's Lawful Evil and somewhat insane, we might be able to reduce his combat ability or ruin his strategy by driving him into a rage with the bad nicknames.

Closak
2010-06-06, 05:20 AM
In the same game, one of the PCs is a tiny black wyrmling. Every time we find an abandoned mineshaft, or a business from which the workers have fled, while the rest of the party is discussing plans, he quietly writes "property of ___" over the entrance. Likewise, whenever we encounter kobolds, or goblins, or other weak, numerous, minion-type monster races, he distracts the rest of the party, starts negotiating with the leader, and diplomancer's his way into control. I'm pretty sure that his goal in life is to take over the world without anyone noticing.

Awesome!

...(Smirk) *Hugs dragon*

Dragon: O_O HELP!

Enix18
2010-06-06, 05:57 AM
BONUS TRACKS
22. Ruins of Bone Hill
23. City of Sails
Are this listings on mine. I played through my CD twice today. Nowhere on there is a person rolling dice and going uh oh. I use to play this all the time at Work too.

Really? :smallconfused: In my iTunes library there's a track 24 titled "BOTCH!"... :smallfrown:

senrath
2010-06-06, 06:02 AM
Don't worry Enix, you're not crazy. It's just that "BOTCH!" isn't the official title. It's not a listed track, and as such doesn't have a name. But it does exist. At least, according to Wikipedia:

There is a final 36-second bonus track, which sometimes receives no title, and sometimes named "BOTCH!" The Midnight Syndicate website does not mention the track at all. It features the sound of dice being rolled, which Chris Harvey of Movement Magazine described as being "hilarious".

Scarey Nerd
2010-06-06, 06:40 AM
We have a running gag that every single adventure, no matter what, has to begin in a clearing in a forest. Also, we have another longer one, that I started when I was a DM at one point:

The party had reached a small town and asked what was there. I told them that there was a blacksmith, a "bookshop", a merchant, a stables, an inn, and, because I got bored, a brothel. The party being as immature as me, all decided to visit the brothel, which took about 30 minutes of real time of me attempting to advance the plot with the PCs asking what was happening behind closed doors. I then stated that all the staff of the brothel, and the brothel itself, spontaneously combusted, but the fire left the PCs unharmed. One of the PCs pointed out that if I sia dit then it couldn't have been spontaneous, which made me yell: "THEN THEY JUST COMBUST!", good-naturedly of course.

Reynard
2010-06-06, 06:43 AM
Don't worry Enix, you're not crazy. It's just that "BOTCH!" isn't the official title. It's not a listed track, and as such doesn't have a name. But it does exist. At least, according to Wikipedia:

There is nothing sadder than the word "hilarious" being used like that. It seems like the writer of that article was a bit biased.

Mr. Anon Omys
2010-06-06, 08:51 AM
I have a palladin character who my group finds rather comical. Firstly, he always trys to kick down the door. Always. Even if the door is ajar. And he only succeds half the time, with his plus five strength. Second, as he is my first palladin, I spend my first session abusing detect evil. So now, he detects evil on everything. For example:
DM: You see a tree
Me: Detect evil on the tree
DM: Not evil
Me: Detect evil on [really scary looking ten foot tall party memeber]
DM: Not evil

Third gag: The DM has decided that my palladin's donkey is not all that he appears. The donkey enjoys holding flails in his mouth and twirling them, but is highly proficent with them in a fight. The donkey's alignment is also questionable, as in "Detect evil on the donkey...The donkey's alignment blinks monentarily to evil and then back to neutral" And my palladin carries his donkey half the time.

I apologise in advance for my rambly post.

TurtleKing
2010-06-06, 08:58 AM
About a page or two ago someone bought prinnies... Well I have played a prinny-immortal embodiment of failure- to play test the race for my DM. For all the hilarity my character managed to survive through by being the butt of whatever bad that happened or caused. I did managed to achieve epicness along with another pc where both of us are adepts in a low magic/ low wealth world.

The first moment I knew I could achieve greatness was coming out of the Abyss with five ogres as my slaves. A gnoll who is probably chaotic evil wielding a flaming axe from one of Baphomet's personal guards that I made suicide who ends up actually liking having served by my side. And something else I also picked up while in the Abyss that I and now riding on out of the Abyss. What you ask that could be. Well considering this embodiment of failure led my units in to knocking it out. A being who should be able to toss my level four butt around like a rag doll. This almighty being that I have has my "pet" is a ... Purple Wurm. With said units we procede to defeat a Elf Psion 16 Rogue 2 where we did stop her plot, but incured some really high costs while the group with extra units range from level three through five.

Oh that "epicness" with me and the other adept was us RP our way through an interaction with Wee Jas, Vecna, Pelor, Nerull, Yondalla, Darun Thaun, and even Death. End result is the group that was present becomes Quasi-Deities for saving the human race.:smallbiggrin:

Nihb
2010-06-06, 10:34 AM
I've been gaming since the end of high school, so I have quite a few.

The number 22. It is taboo. The origins? A very dangerous shadowrun mission about infiltrating Renraku's building. One of the character was a living armory. Never ran out of anything. We were almost done when a couple of mages started flinging thunderbolts at us. One of the grenades that living armoire was carrying went, causing a chain reaction. The magic number was 22, as in 22 grenades BAYSPLODING near the top of Renraku's.

Another one, still from Shadowrun. The group went in the mountains to rescue a group of business men who were captured by evil henchmen of a big, bad megacorp. We were given a pair of infra-red, x-ray and range-finder goggles. As the window were paneled, one of the party members decided to use the x-ray function to scan the basement. He saw a couple of skeletons, some sitting on the ground, others walking slowy around. He removed the goggles and got a pale complexion. Skeletons... everywhere... To this day, everytime someone talks about skeletons or is misguided by what he perceives, there's always someone at the table who says : "Ho my god, skeletons everywhere!"

Also, we all add a very inept character at the table. One that was highly trained, but kept rolling bad dices. One last running gag : "Stay put and silent, I'm going in...", followed by a trap activating, the character failing, breaking a arm and a leg in the fall and alerting everyone in the vincinity.

Kingboy
2010-06-06, 10:39 AM
The Setup: Group is playing WHFRP, mostly modules with some GM created material to tie it all together. A lot of our travel to and fro is done via riverboat, so inevitably riverside combat ensues. A vinyl combat map is used for such occasions, along with the requisite dry erase markers. Except that one of the markers was permanent (cheapo Sharpie clone) rather than dry erase, unbeknownst to the GM at the time. The shoreline of the "Mighty Vaswasser" thereby becomes more or less permanent fixture of our travels throughout The Empire, which sprouts tributaries through every province, burg and hamlet known to Man, becoming the single largest river system in the Old World.

The Mutation: Any time that an unnamed body of flowing water is encountered by any party containing at least two players from the original WHFRP campaign, it inevitably becomes a pan-dimensional tributary of The Mighty Vaswasser, regardless of metaverse or rules system.

mikej
2010-06-06, 10:56 AM
Due to the general power level of the games I play in, whenever the DM asks us to recap what had happened in the last sessions, he starts with:

"On the last exciting episode of Dragon Ball Z..."

We had something similiar to that. It was "When we last left our heroes." The rule was no session was "officially" started until the DM said that one line. After awhile the gag was actually reminding him in very inappropriate moments.

DM: "So we ready to begin?"
Party: "Yeah, sure."
DM: "So last week we fought a bunch of..."
Me: cough* " You forgeting something?"
DM: sigh* " ... Oh yes. We when last left our heroes!"
Me: :D

CockroachTeaParty
2010-06-06, 11:23 AM
Blackbeak and Squat
In all of my games, the party runs into a duo of reoccurring NPCs, a pair of kenku named Blackbeak and Squat. Blackbeak is a rogue (or factotum) that never shuts up, and is always on some manner of get-rich-quick scheme. Squat is his much quieter, much more menacing partner, who is a rogue/assassin. Squat only has one arm.

In the very first game where Blackbeak and Squat appeared, one of the PCs, playing a half-orc barbarian, rolled a critical hit against Squat in a battle, severing his right arm. Ever since then, regardless of what campaign setting or world the game takes place in, Squat is missing his right arm. If asked how he lost it, he always mutters something about "that damned half-orc."

The Orphan
In an Eberron game I ran, much of the action took place in Sharn, the city of towers. Whenever something inevitably fell from the upper wards to the bottom of the towers below, whether it was ammunition, masonry, junk, or even whole creatures, they would inevitably land on the Orphan, a poor boy living in the lower wards. He was repeatedly splashed with blood, body parts, vomit, refuse, chunks of stone, and once even the Lord of Blades fell on him.
He somehow survived all of these incidents. Whenever something fell, I'd say "Meanwhile, down at the base of the towers, a lonely orphan happens to be in the right place at the wrong time..."
By the end of the campaign, we figured he had gained several levels of Survivor. In my next Eberron game, the orphan returned once again. He'll show up in every game that takes place in Sharn from now on...

Nihb
2010-06-06, 01:22 PM
There's a more recent running gag, started about a year ago when I was DMing. Some sort of tribute to the genre.

Every tavern, inn or the like has a cloaked man, sitting in the corner, smoking something. They have a dark cloak, which may be of light material, leather or padded for the winter, and either smoke a pipe, a cigar or some sort of hand-rolled cigarette. They are streetears, with grade A information about the locales. They don't have names.

This friday, we decided to stay at a small inn for the night. The DM said the place was empty, so one of the player decided to put his cloak's hood on his head and go sit in the corner to light a pipe of the region's tobacco.

Yukitsu
2010-06-06, 01:36 PM
It's a recurring theme that my male characters are violently "accosted" by various attractive female NPCs, despite the fact that I generally try to avoid those situations. This first happened when I made my first modern character, ending up with a charisma 18 14 year old character (due to random age rolls) in an anime themed campaign. It seems to have carried over, to the point where my total list of "attacks" took a page in word. My DM pointed out that any of the ones involving inanimate objects was my fault.

Coincidently, the 14 year old anime character started off every single story arc by getting kidnapped by villains.

My female PCs on the other hand, invariably are attacked by tentacle monsters when the DM uses random monster tables. Doesn't even have to make sense. We're in a dessert? "(encounter rolls) A sand squid reaches out of the sand and grabs (random roll) Yukitsu."

Whenever we are in a horrible deathtrap, we often say something along the lines of "at least it's not our potato cellar." As we had purchased a small castle, dug 500 feet under ground, put a potato cellar in the bottom and filled it corner to corner with traps. Many of which had to be set off to some degree to be set off. At the bottom of it? A sack of potatoes, and a cheap magic item that keeps them fresh. As such, we often wonder if the horrible death trap has any potatoes in it.

One of my characters had a campaign long recurring joke that no matter what the problem was, he could fix it somehow by throwing something at something else. He was good enough at throwing that he could throw a wrench at a bolt, have it catch and fasten it, fly off and fasten another before returning to his hand while he's in an AMF. He sent a message via rock with paper attached at one of our employers who was very, very far away, thus killing him by accident. Which he fixed by hucking a philosophers stone at him.

drengnikrafe
2010-06-06, 02:35 PM
I throw my horse.
It started out with the party getting horses in a small town. There was nothing interesting there, so they traveled to the next town over. There was then a giant wall they wanted to scale, but after everyone failed their climb checks a few times, they decided to go for an alternate plan. The rogue sent his horse to climb the wall. Since it was a natural 20, I let it happen. Later, when they all get up there (the horse had a rope) they encountered a suit of armor. Lacking a weapon at that moment in time, the same rogue picked up his horse, and threw it at the armor as an improvised weapon. It hit, and killed, the armor. He regularly used it as a weapon from then on.

Closak
2010-06-06, 03:12 PM
The birds are evil!: Once in a while, when we are passing through a forest, we will be assaulted and promptly mauled by a giant flock of giant birds, with spellcasting, and are twice the size of a man, and run faster than a horse, and like fighting dirty.
The DM admits that yes, those are chocobos ripped right out of Final Fantasy, and yes, they just pecked our eyeballs out.
We are still cursing the smartass who thought it was a good idea to burn down the forest they lived in, because now they show up every damn time we are in a forest in order to maul us.

The trees are evil incarnate:

It involves trees, detect evil, and will saves.
DM: The evil aura of the tree overwhelms your senses, make a will save.

Every time a tree get's caught in a detect evil there's a 1 in 10 chance of that happening.


NPC's yelling at the players through the fourth wall:

It is quite common for the NPC's to break the fourth wall and adress the players instead of their characters, they also like yelling at the DM for being so cruel to them...
So now the DM is yelling at himself when roleplaying the NPC's, then he goes back to being himself and starts yelling at the NPC's for yelling at him, and so back and forth, having an argument with himself.
It get's kind of creepy sometimes.

Morph Bark
2010-06-06, 03:38 PM
While our party has several running themes that come up in campaigns other than the one it got started in, it's usually something out-of-game. However, almost every campaign after our second one has included a character capable of summoning monsters or mounts or such, and used them as a tactic by summoning them a number of feet high in the air above an enemy and drop them on top of them. Sometimes the monster or mount is immediately de-summoned afterwards.

This has saved a PC's life once while he was being attacked by sharks as the party's Paladin//Cleric summoned his mount right over the edge of the ship, on top of a shark, killing it, then de-summoning his mount.

In our last campaign a character summoned a hydra he had tamed in this manner a lot. The last time he did it it fell on top of a tiny prismatic sphere-like effect that was invisible when someone wasn't subjected to it. That PC got rather scared after that, as the hydra was one of the few big guns he had...

sadie
2010-06-17, 09:39 AM
Produce Flan

After joking about it one session, the DM made the mistake of letting us find a wand of produce flan. After all, what harm could it do? In the hands of a (partially) chaotic evil party, lots.

So far we've used the flan to disguise a stabbing on a busy road, diffuse (and embarrass) two separate ambushes, and defeat a group of automata. And made a lot of bad jokes. I have no doubt that the flan's tendrils will reach into future campaigns.

No enemy survives first contact with the flan.

Serpentine
2010-06-17, 09:40 AM
By flan, do you mean... the tart? :smallconfused:

Dusk Eclipse
2010-06-17, 09:42 AM
Well this has become a Running Gag in my 4e game, we constantly are in a shifter tribe and every damn time my kobold assassin puts a foot in the village, someone tries to eat me!!!

Snake-Aes
2010-06-17, 09:49 AM
Our group's running gag is that whenever we show ourselves openly someone asks if we are "That Horrible Circus".
1) Our orc is a samurai/dervish whose dance fight is pretty much "Break dance with swords"
2) My character can sing, and routinely does so while fighting
3) We have a bard

It all started one fated night when I timely played "can't touch this" as soon as our samurai said "i start my dance fight"

Morph Bark
2010-06-17, 10:00 AM
Our group's running gag is that whenever we show ourselves openly someone asks if we are "That Horrible Circus".
1) Our orc is a samurai/dervish whose dance fight is pretty much "Break dance with swords"
2) My character can sing, and routinely does so while fighting
3) We have a bard

It all started one fated night when I timely played "can't touch this" as soon as our samurai said "i start my dance fight"

Add in a necromancer for a thrilling effect.

Snake-Aes
2010-06-17, 10:03 AM
Add in a necromancer for a thrilling effect.

I go out of my way to find 80s musics to play on the big fights. Got Billie Jean against a succubus and her paladin(blackguard) slave the other day.

GolemsVoice
2010-06-17, 10:17 AM
"You cannot win in the World of Darkness, you can only hope to lose a little less each day."

While this actually sums up WoD quite well, we quote this whenever somebody mentions anything from WW, and it is sometimes adapted for other products, such as "You cannot win Warhammer, you can only hope to lose a little less money each edition"

"Nosferatu can fold themselves like shirts and hide inside people's closets. That's why they know so much."

I really don't know how this got started, but every player lives in the knowledge that the Nosferatu are hiding among their laundry.

"Every vampire I don't like is really an Assamite. Especially ALL Sethites."

Our Storyteller just doesn't like Sethites, but he likes Assamites quite a lot.

"Ravnos dance silly gypsy dances with silly shoes", this is accompanied by Sirtaki music to represent the dancing

This one get's our Storyteller right through the roof. It started with the stereotype of the Ravnos as gypsy thieves, and ended up with them dancing on the roof of a burning building.

"I don't prepare this sh**!"

This one was the reaction of our party cleric when we aksed him to cast "Create Water". It is since used whenever somebody doesn't feel like doing something ingame, particularly if he feels it is beneath him.

SilverClawShift
2010-06-17, 10:35 AM
We've got an Australian dwarf who shows up bars randomly, completely out of place, always the same dwarf (though our characters don't know that obviously).

When we pointed out that he had an unusual accent for a dwarf, he just told us he was raised by elves. As if that explains anything.

He's the single most trustworthy informant we've ever had. Nothing he's ever said has been even remotely untrue, and he always knows things he shouldn't even be ABLE to. We haven't told our DM this, but away from the table, we theorize that he's actually a guardian angel of player characters, springing up everywhere from ravenloft to sigil to keep the plot flowing smoothly.

LibraryOgre
2010-06-17, 11:05 AM
A table with wheels. It is our usual suggestion for most any problem, after something similar (a table on minotaur back) was used to protect from duergar arrows.

Zovc
2010-06-17, 11:42 AM
As a preface, I'm awful at narrating personal stories.

My friends, Brittany (my girlfriend), Eric, and John, were playing Acquire (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5/acquire) with me (a board game, wrong forum, I know). Essentially, at the end of each of your turns, you draw a 'card' (I call them tiles) to replace the one you've used. The tiles are arranged much like they would be in a game of scrabble, randomly and face down in the game's box. John finished his turn and Brittany was taking her turn. As Brittany went to finish her turn, she went to draw and John was like "WHOAH!" he lunged over to the box and grabbed his card before Brittany could grab hers. I said, "Damn, John! The box almost got away from you that time!"

So, now, any time we're playing a game and someone realizes they forgot to do something, another person will tell them the object almost got away from them--particularly when the object is stationary.

OMG PONIES
2010-06-17, 11:49 AM
Manly man

In a nautically-flavored part of a Dragonlance Campaign, I had the opportunity to make a pirate captain. Enter Tallahassee "Twoblades" Blossom, the character with the longest backstory I've ever written. Long story short, he derived his masculinity from his boat. I decided that, for hilarity's sake, he would be gruff and tough on the boat, but speak with a kinder, gentler, sing-song voice on land. Of course, it would have been nice if I could have been consistent with it. I accidentally shouted profanities at various nobles while in port, and one time I cooed "Don't worry, no hurry, you're all doing great," in the midst of a sea battle against a Krakken. It ate us.

Hello. Are you evil?

My 4E Warforged Warden/Warlock Peacekeeper is determined to eliminate all evil from the world. However, he has no idea what constitutes "evil." Since he is also unfamiliar with the act of lying, he takes everybody at their word. Invariably, he begins every conversation with the salutation above. He has asked the party members, kings, and criminals alike. If they say "no," he takes them at their word and only attacks if provoked. If they say "yes," they immediately get smote with his Mordenkrad.

The comfy chair

Once, our group's long-time DM decided to run Expedition to Undermountain. Somehow, a ring fell into the hands of my lazy wizard that empowered lightning spells :smallannoyed: as well as allowing me, the party, and our gear to teleport to any familiar locale in Undermountain at-will :smallbiggrin:. The ring worked well for its intended purposes, until we entered a room that held a bookcase and a fancy armchair.
Me: "I sit in the chair. Gather round, everyone. Mighty Ring of Storms, transport us...back to the hallway!"
DM: "Okay..."
*party is teleported 30-40 feet*
Me: "Okay guys, carry on down the hall."
DM: "Are you staying behind?"
Me: "No, I'm teleporting with my gear down the hallway 20 feet at a time. By the way, this chair is now part of my gear."
DM: :smallmad:
Me: "I never need to walk again!"

Of course, I eventually wound up teleporting into an anti-magic field full of golems, unable to teleport back out. I was faced with a hard decision: get up and run, leaving behind my most prized possession, or stay and face instant death. Mine was an ignoble passing.

Altarus
2010-06-17, 12:05 PM
All of this namely comes from my current game. I play as a Rogue Sniper in AslanCross's Red Hand of Doom game. You can find the campaign journal in the forum somewhere...

Your name is Box
When I introduced my character to the party, I knew it would lead to this. The one who played our Badass Shifter misheard my name; She heard it was Box. The name stuck.

Epic Hiding... In a box.
If you read the campaign journals, you would know that my character has insanely high hide checks due to practical optimization. When my character was sniping on the streets, they saw a bolt fly and an enemy die. Looking at the origin of the shot, they only saw a box. Metal Gear Solid reference, this really stuck in some sessions.

Psionic Railgun for REAL DWARVEN DAMAGE!
I forgot how this started but if memory serves me right, we recommended that our Psion use her powers to shoot the Dwarven Crusader at targets to offset his slow speed. It reached the point that we use the dwarf to deal massive damage against enemies. And he deals more damage being a projectile than using his maul and maneuvers. We even gave him boots which makes him land on his feet every time so when we launch him, he's beside the enemy ready to lay the smackdown.

Nox is David Caruso/Horatio Cain :smallcool:
I was browsing one of the Eberron books until I saw a neat item. Primarily used by orcs, it removeds the penalties of light sensitivity for a -1 penalty to spot checks for the price of 50gp. Nox bought them while I go to the sessions wearing sunglasses. Cue in One Liners, :smallcool: , and YEAAAAAAAH!

Karuth
2010-06-18, 02:05 AM
In a now finished campain from level 1 to 20 (I entered at Effective Character Level 9; A capoacinth cleric (aquatic gargoyle, hope I wrote it correctly)). We had some running gags. Here are two.

One was of course using the cleric as ram to open doors (thanks to damage reduction and horns he was all for it). Even later when on his own, running into things head first was his signature move.
___________

And then there was this armor. A light armor made from bone and black leather. Magical of course and evil, with many special abilities.

First it was worn by an evil Kobold early in our adventure days (around the time I joined). We defeated him (well the NPC who was with us killed him while I tried to question him) and my character got the armor. It had a nice AC bonus, but I started hearing voices that wanted me to commit acts of evil.
Due to good will saves I still wore the thing for a while. But later I sold it when I had the chance (I was pondering to destroy it, but the greed got the better side of me)

A few levels later we face aforementioned NPC (it turned out he was the BBEG, cleric of Talos). And he sics a kobold on us... wearing a familiar armor. Even the kobold was familiar. It was the very same. We defeated him again.

Another few levels later. My character has lost a lot: most of his equipment, his companions (both succumed to the dark side and became the new BBEGs for a short period of time before they were consequently defeated) the home town he was trying to protect. Also the incredibly strong monster sealed away in a cavern under the town got loose.
On his way to set things right he is challanged to a duel by the champion of the Talos. Being the champion of his (homebrew) deity as well he had to accept. And when the opponent appeared... guess what, he was wearing 'the armor' too. Turns out he was the original owner und knew how to unlock all its powers (poisonous claws for example). It was a very close fight.

Forward another few levels. My cleric is at around HD 17 by now (effective character level is higher of course). An angry Talos, sics an Aleax on my character (a special construct that was a copy of him and had all of his abilities and more). And... it wore 'the armor' in battle.
My character won again and after a bright flash he suddenly wore the armor, now turned white, and could use all of it's abilities. Yay I thought, it got purified, finally I don't have to fight it anymore and can use all the sweet bonuses for me.

The final, final battle. Talos sics an advanced Tarrasque at us. Character is at HD 20. He jumps into battle and suddenly the armor turns black again and gives him a powerful debuff. In a fit of rage he finally does what he should have done 15 HD and 3 years ago (realtime not ingame time). He destroys the armor.

(I'm sure I forgot some events where the armor appeared. Those here are just the most important ones)

CubeB
2010-06-18, 04:07 AM
In our Mutants and Masterminds Street Level Vigilante game, we always have to have at least one major screw up per session. Most of the time, this involves accidentally killing the people we're trying to interrogate.

Screw Up 1: First encounter of the game: A Giant Spider attacking a squat in the ruins of LA. Civilians are running everywhere. After a massive struggle, we manage to kill it! ...Then it falls on top of the building.

...Which is still full of civilians.

Go us.

Screw Up 2: We're trying to a catch a teleporter with a connection to the giant spider's appearance. The teleporters are required to hold a special device in their hands in order to avoid taking damage on reentry. They can also react on the same initiative count as someone else. The Crimson Falcon (An batman style vigilante who fights using acupuncture) uses his grappling hook to snatch the device out of the 'porter's hand. Unfortunately, he had just finished initiating his teleport. I think he rolled a one of his toughness save. Hard to interrogate a pile of organs...

Screw Up 3: We finally manage to catch some of these 'porters in the lab of the mad scientist who created the spider. It turns out they were stealing chemicals to fuel their teleportation powers. Unfortunately, the mad scientist really liked his bug monsters (Which were all killed), so he goes and tries to commit suicide by blowing up the lab. We all run for the exit. Immediately after the explosion, we remember the 'porters we captured were still tied up in the lab...

Screw Up 4: We ambush a bunch of teleporters to find out the location of their secret base. One of the party members (And the only one who chose Lethal Damage over non lethal) does a whirlwind attack. 6 of the teleporters die instantly.

Go us!

Lycan 01
2010-06-18, 04:26 AM
Wow CubeB, that's... heroic. XD

Reminds me of the homebrew Superhero game I made. The players ALWAYS screw up, even though its a simple system designed for the player to ALMOST ALWAYS SUCCEED!! :smalleek:

A few small examples:
-The guy who can teleport rolled a 1 to grab a woman and zap her to safety. He left her sitting in the middle of a street where bank robbers where shooting it out with the cops... :smallsigh:

-One guy dressed as a woman so he'd be kidnapped. Instead, the police questioned him for possible soliciting prostitution. His escape attempts eventually resulted in the cops seeing up his skirt, and he was able to escape while they vomited uncontrollably all over themselves and the inside of their cop car... :smallyuk:

-Building is on fire. 600 pound fat guy needs to be rescued. Fat guy gets thrown out a hole in the wall by a lazy superhero. Fat guy lands on a car, then rolls off onto his wife and dies. Other superhero rolls his body off, saves her life, and gets her number. :smallcool: Lazy superhero climbed down to join them... and in an attempt to destroy the phone a kid was video recording him on, electrocuted the child almost to death. :smallannoyed:

Susil
2010-06-18, 06:34 AM
I go out of my way to find 80s musics to play on the big fights. Got Billie Jean against a succubus and her paladin(blackguard) slave the other day.

Win.



Our old group had one running gag, wich originated thanks to our regular DM's sister's first (and I think last) attempt at DMing...

In response to a successful listen check, we are frequently told: "You hear goblins."

Project_Mayhem
2010-06-18, 06:43 AM
Because our DM is Norwegian, and ran a lot of Vampire the Masquerade, when ever Vampires come up in anything, Vs and Ws are swapped, as are Ms and Ns

I got an epic win summarising a trip to Oslo in our Mage game as 'Vell, ve trawelled to Norvay to conwerse vith the wampire vith vhom ve vere vorking on the werge (or vound - I don't knov vitch), vhen Dawe inconwenienced him vith shrevd vords qvestioning the weracity of his vonderfully contriwed weneer.'

Snake-Aes
2010-06-18, 07:01 AM
Because our DM is Norwegian, and ran a lot of Vampire the Masquerade, when ever Vampires come up in anything, Vs and Ws are swapped, as are Ms and Ns

I got an epic win summarising a trip to Oslo in our Mage game as 'Vell, ve trawelled to Norvay to conwerse vith the wampire vith vhom ve vere vorking on the werge (or vound - I don't knov vitch), vhen Dawe inconwenienced him vith shrevd vords qvestioning the weracity of his vonderfully contriwed weneer.'

Hey, if you pulled a fluent speech with that, sir, you're winning in my book. Just under 'totaling cars with a squeaky mallet', but above 'defacing giant robots with a turnip'

Coplantor
2010-06-18, 07:17 AM
On every DnD campaign I DM, there's always an incopetent wizard with a heart of gold called Jeremias. ALWAYS.

Every now and then, someone puts a deep voice and says "We [race] are a proud people". Due to a DM we once had that, for some reason, even though he probably never said it and if he did he said it only once, liked to make us know that elves were, well, a proud people.

Every now and then, an elf appears out of nowhere in front of the party and then, just like that, dissapears. This is due to a friend of mine who played only once with us, it was AD&D 2nd ed, when he rolled to see if he was a wild talent, not only he had a positive result, but his power was Teleport. Since he never returned to the table, we just assumed that he randomly teleported away.

Morph Bark
2010-06-18, 07:23 AM
Because our DM is Norwegian, and ran a lot of Vampire the Masquerade, when ever Vampires come up in anything, Vs and Ws are swapped, as are Ms and Ns

I got an epic win summarising a trip to Oslo in our Mage game as 'Vell, ve trawelled to Norvay to conwerse vith the wampire vith vhom ve vere vorking on the werge (or vound - I don't knov vitch), vhen Dawe inconwenienced him vith shrevd vords qvestioning the weracity of his vonderfully contriwed weneer.'

If rs would be turned to ls too (speech inhibitation or slight Chinese influence?) "vampire" would suddenly sound like "one pile". I am now going to name the next vampire villain I create One Pile the Nowaygian and have him be completely incapable of pronouncing rs. :smallamused:

Knaight
2010-06-18, 08:02 AM
Mine's rather lame in comparison.

Horses will not survive.

Started with an ambush. The PC's wagon was hit by a bugbear/Deinonychus team, and the dino went straight for the horse to stop em. Later, a Bulette attacked, and started out by leaping over the front of the cart, downing 2 horses as it did so.

It gives me a way to show a threat without downing a pc in the surprise round, or having them run or something.

I have a similar rule in one of my more futuristic fantasy games for Jeeps. There are a few addendum however. The demise of the jeep must be couched in the most optimistic terms possible, and it may not survive more than a session. The only exception is the Toyhita Prarie, and it stills falls under the "most optimistic terms possible rule."

This has led to all sorts of fun euphemisms. "Your jeep is in one piece" for "welded together in a fire ball and now lacking moving parts" is a particularly fun one.

In another game, the session always ends with a door opening and no description of what is on the other side. And this is from someone who doesn't really have many running gags.

Traveler
2010-06-18, 01:07 PM
In a hackmaster campaign, the party had an npc ranger who was along to guide us to point x. Not to long into the session one of our player said something along the lines "so we are just supposed to trust this... this... Dirk Chunkhead guy?" He couldn't remember the ranger's real name so he made up Dirk instead. Ever since we refered to the ranger as Dirk Chunkhead. Well, the campaign took a few months to get through and then the end came around. The GMdecribes a character coming out of the woods that we recognize as (insert real name). We took about 5 real time minutes trying to figure out who this guy was until someone spoke up and said "Wait, do you mean Dirk Chunkhead?" which was promply followed everybody asking why the GM didn't say that to begin with.
I think the ranger's real name began with an S... or a K.

Gruffard
2010-06-18, 01:59 PM
There was a player in my group who is a nice guy good player, but sucks at math.

His first character was Korgoth, a barbarian. Now when every Korgath attacked, you have to roll attack add all modifiers, but again, he wasn't great at math, mismathed or whatnot and missed when he should or added it too big. After the second game he roll the dice, screamed "MATH!" and handed his sheet and roll and asked for help.

From then on Korgoth's battle shout was "MAAAAATTHHhh!" which confused and scared many (picked up intimidating Rage) and its been a running joke for all barbian/fighter characters in our groups from then on.

CubeB
2010-06-18, 02:47 PM
Oh, another running gag: The Scone.

This is a personal one, really. In 3.5e, my Half-Orc turned Dragonborn Barbarian (His alignment was Chaotic Adorable) loved to hang out at the Temple of Bahamut.

This is mostly because of a house rule that shifts the rez penalty from the person being raised to the caster. (The caster loses a year of their life. So it pays to get in with the church.)

Anyway, I needed to find out what he did between adventures. So I decided that the priestess made him tea and scones. My Barb loved these scones. Whenever the GM asked what we did between adventures, the conversation went like this. (Extreme Paraphrasing Ahead!)

GM: Okay, you're back at the Free City. What are you going to do for the next few days?
Dwarf Fighter: I'm going to go work on that armor.
Spellscale Sorcerer: I'm going to go shopping for some equipment.
Me: I'm going to go get scones!

Eventually, whenever I needed a pastry in a D&D game, it would be a scone. The most recent appearance was when my Warlock had Path of Shadow cast on him by his patron (a shadow elemental) in the middle of breakfast. He literally dropped from the ceiling of the cavern the party was in, dressed in full armor, about to take a bite from a scone.


Another gag, though it isn't quite a running one yet, is from M&M as well.

Our M&M Campaign borrows some concepts from Shadowrun. (And City of Heroes. And everything else the GM Likes.) My character is a Troll, scaled up to PL10, with the ability to magically disguise himself as a 98 Pound Human. (The GM came up with that concept, I'm just running with it. XD)

He's like the Hulk, if the Hulk were a Shadowrun Troll.

He's also an Huge comic geek. In more than one way.

So he's constantly talking about how the current situation is like a comic he read.

Anyway, there was a spinoff campaign I had to miss, in which the party inadvertently destroyed all life in another dimension. My character needed an excuse for his absence. Solution? He was at a convention.

He missed an apocalypse because he was at PAX.

So now, whenever my Troll misses something, it's because he's at a comic convention. Or Disneyland. Or something equally non-heroic.

Mauther
2010-06-18, 04:08 PM
Bar Fights – If the players visit a bar, tavern, beer garden etc, there will be a fight. At this point, even in situations where the DM doesn’t create the tension, the players will throw the first punch. This has recently been expanded to include any establishment that’s primary purpose is to serve beverages, as the recent “Tea House Incident” can attest.

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things – Back in a ShadowRun game, the party was lacking vehicles, so they took several runs where at least part of the payoff was they would be able to recover/steal better vehicles. During a hostage rescue job that should have resulted in them getting their hands on a helicopter, the team combat mage dropped a massive lightning bolt into the chopper, destroying the enemy guards, the hostage and the helicopter. Since then, this phrase is used when ever something big is destroyed (evil NPC lair), a weapon is sundered, or a vehicle gets trashed in a fight.

We Are Highly Trained Professionals – Yelled out when ever a fight starts to go horribly out of control, or someone makes an obvious tactical mistake.

Nigdrel – this was only a running gag in a single campaign, but the characters first heard of a npc named Nigdrel when the campaign started around level 2. I think they were trying to hire an NPC tracker and they were told they could get one that was reliable or that psychopath Nigdrel. They chose the reliable one, but didn’t like his performance and tried to hire Nigdrel when they returned; unfortunately Nigdrel had fled town after killing an Imperial magistrate. As they continued to adventure, they kept running across the path of Nigdrel: a caravan saved from goblin attack, a sheriff unwilling to pursue brigands outside of town because of what happened when he tried to chase Nigdrel, an irate farmer and his three heartbroken daughters, a section of docks burned down in a fight between Nigdrel and Imperial Inquisitors, overhearing a bard singing the Ballad of Nigdrel Swordsleaves, a town called Nigdrel’s Crossing after the hero who saved them from enslavement, a hobgoblin samurai/dervish hunting the scourge called Nigdrel. Finally around level 19 they go into a an opium den and meet Nigdrel; a gnome wearing pants with a rope belt with a shillelagh. The party couldn’t decide if he was an epic badass of just a conman with an awesome bluff. They let him pass without testing. While Nigdrel has only appeared in one campaign, he is the measuring stick for badassery. When encountering an NPC the players will frequently assign them an arbitrary score on the Nigdrel scale, or make an aside comment "well he's no Nigdrel". Always used in jest.

Muck-Tilly-Muk-Muck – The “Jaffa-Kree’ “ of the orcish language. Can be used to mean anything said in orc.

onthetown
2010-06-18, 04:11 PM
When the adventurers stop for the night, the DM says, "Night falls," and a knight will fall out of the sky.

The next morning, he'll proclaim, "Morning comes..."

The only problem is that I had a character called Morning at one point. :smalltongue:

Eldan
2010-06-18, 04:54 PM
Well. In our very first adventure, there was a port tavern called "Mermaid's Rock".
One of the characters went out to the sign and wrote below that: "No, they don't. Trust me, I know."

Later, someone else DMd and made a tavern also called "Mermaid's Rock". He said it was an accident, he didn't remember the last one. The same player wrote the same graffiti below that.

Since then, "Mermaid's Rock" became a franchise. Every tavern our group went to, even on different planes had about a fifty percent chance to be called that, and it always had that graffiti.

Flavel
2010-06-18, 05:26 PM
We had a very imaginative DM who would, very occasionally, trip over his words.

Once, when describing a scene of an unending forest that we needed to make our way through, he said "carnivorous forest." Of course, he meant coniferous forest but the damage was done. The PCs would not enter the hundred plus square mile carnivorous forest. Nope, wasn't going to happen. We were very suspicious of his 'accidental' slip of the tongue.

From then on, any forest encountered, somebody always asked if it was carnivorous.

Dust
2010-06-18, 08:02 PM
The group's paladin opened the game session by picking up pastries - cupcakes, to be specific - with which to feed to the city's orphans in return for a bit of information. For some reason, she kept the remainder of these cupcakes throughout the dungeon crawl.

They were hurled without much effect at a Mimic and then, later, she found herself tumbling off a cliff. Managing to grab on with one hand, she couldn't pull herself up because the cupcakes were held in her other hand.

One of the other party members ran up and shouted 'DROP THE CUPCAKES AND GIVE ME YOUR HAND!' to which she replied 'NEVVVERRRRRRR!!!!' and proceeded to lose her grip and fall to her death.

I'm pretty sure the wtf-faces were both in-character as well as out. We never did figure that one out, but ever since then, someone switches to a Gir voice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_zK9e6FKX4&feature=related) and says 'I needed to save room for the cupcake!' whenever encumberance or what-is-each-hand-holding rules come up.

VeisuItaTyhjyys
2010-06-18, 08:41 PM
A campaign I'm playing in right now has a rather high mortality rate, with two original characters remaining, one of which is my elf seeker with a vague, halfhearted disdain for just about any creature with a language. The first death was staged so that the player could reroll a different class when another friend wanted to join as a rogue, which was all well and good. His character had befriended the other party members, all of whom took his arranged death in roleplaying stride and howled as they realized there was no way to save him from the burning roof under which he was trapped, with the runepriest even breaking down in tears.

. . . Except, of course, my seeker, who had joined on the second session, and thus had not befriended the party in the past, who said "I just met the kid." Throughout the remainder of that session, whenever his death was mentioned as a rallying cry for vengeance against those who had burned the city, etc, she kept saying "I just met the kid." It became a party-wide catchphrase any time a character or NPC died, even being used once by the DM when we attacked a monster we were supposed to talk to; "You just met the kid!"

Rodimal
2010-06-19, 02:32 AM
I love doing this.
Player: I search [the door] for traps.
Die: 1
Me: You find...a door.
Player: Natural 1, right?
Me: Yep.

*Laughs* about ninety percent of the time when someone rolls a 1 on a spot check the response is something to the effect of "Ohhh berries!" Doesn't matter where we are, tundra, desert, middle of a dungeon crawl, anywhere.

As to Running Gags, the one that comes up for everyone of my characters sooner or later started with the first character I ever played, a Half-Elf Cleric. I was a very polite fellow so he tended to knock on any door we came upon.....up to and including that of a Night Hag. It really turned into a running gag when I started doing it with all my other characters as well. Sooner or later we always find that doorway and on my turn -no matter what else was happening- my character would utter those immortal words:

"I knock."

Usually to groans and threats of bludgeoning damage from the DMG.

Anasazi
2010-06-19, 06:02 AM
We have this dwarf ranger in our party (4e) whos played by this player who constantly reminds us that he played original dnd back in the day (but hasnt played since) who tends to think he's all that and his roleplaying consists of "I burn things" (litterally). So I've had this running gag with trying to get rid of him, the following is the list of things I've done:
Auctioned him off to a tavern for the ability to have a tab.
Sold him to a gang of outcasts (rolled a nat 20 on that one)
Offered him as a 'good faith' deposit when dealing with a warlord.
Offered him as a bribe to a city's sherrif.
Threw him in a bog to use as a stepping stone, the mud was 5ft deep and I didnt want to tarnish my warforged's feet.

We're 5th level now, I hope to continue the trend until he's dead to the point the GM wont save him.

CubeB
2010-06-19, 10:05 PM
I think I mentioned this before, but every M&M Session, the Sniper's van is destroyed.

First, the axel was shot in half by a bounty hunter.

Next, a Robot Tentacle of Exposition cut a big hole in it.

Then, this session: We were all captured and forced into one on one battles against enemies designed to counter our powers. (My Character is a Psychic Detective who manifests a psionic blade. I defeated my enemy by using a hero point to replace "Psychic Sword" with "Boot to the Head". Psychics don't have good toughness saves. :D)

Anyway, the entire group of contestants (The party, and the mercs) all decided "This contest is stupid" and decided to gang up on the MC, who teleported away. So we had to find a way to escape from the arena. A Mechsuited NPC punched a hole in the ceiling... which happened to lead to a storage room.

Where the Sniper's van was.

We all got a free, auto success on our saves as we watched the van fall through the ceiling... through the floor of the skybox, and alllll the way to the floor...

Poor Sniper...