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Morph Bark
2012-10-28, 04:56 AM
So Friday night we had our game going, first time since weeks, so I was a bit off about where we were again. After it was sorted out, characters started going this way and that and I decided to roll for a random encounter for the only guy who went outside the castle they were staying in. Then another player rolled for one too and told one of the other players "you suddenly see 19 level 15 Paladins". (The exchange was a little different, but this is roughly what happened.)

Of course, since another player said this, it wasn't taken seriously at first. Not until I said, "yeah, you see 19 Paladins. Also, they're Fine-sized."

The player blinked.

"Also, they're riding tiny Hin Doongs. On top of the real Hin Doong's back." (Hin Doong is a large pig owned by one of the PCs.)

The player rubbed his eyes.

"Now they're doing a kind of chair dance with the pigs and they've got flaming swords coming out of their eye sockets."

The player rubbed his eyes again.

"Now they're gone. Only the big Hin Doong is left. It's the real one. I suggest you run."


So has this kind of thing ever popped up in your games, and how did it go?

Slipperychicken
2012-10-28, 06:50 AM
Well, for a while I had this terrible DM (I only recently quit his game). We had so many trippy visions (especially during teleports), and blacked out so many times, that I started joking that either the entire campaign was just one big acid trip, or all the PCs were having LSD flashbacks. The visions weren't even important or helpful, half of them were in-jokes and the other half gave nothing to the plot (or even character development). And they were non-interactable cutscenes too, like the other half of the campaign.

Kane0
2012-10-28, 11:11 PM
Well, there was this one time our bard left cause she didn't feel safe with us, then we see her next week as the goddess of commerce.

Maybe it had something to do with our Bear Antipaladin and my multi-personality (due to playing being host for multiple souls of the departed) warlock. And the sentient tree ranger.

We had a wierd party composition.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-10-28, 11:32 PM
I like tossing in this kind of stuff when I'm pressed to come up with some unimportant flavor that doesn't need to be particularly serious.

Player: "Okay, while I wait for the others, I get a drink and start chatting up the other patrons. Who here looks interesting?"

Me: "Uhh... let's see... there's a man shaving his pubic hair and collecting it in a jar, an awakened goat running around in a circle and babbling incoherently, and an 8 year old child beating a troll over the head with the blunt side of a great axe. The troll seems to not mind."

Player: "On second thought, I think I'll go wait someplace else."

NichG
2012-10-28, 11:51 PM
So Friday night we had our game going, first time since weeks, so I was a bit off about where we were again. After it was sorted out, characters started going this way and that and I decided to roll for a random encounter for the only guy who went outside the castle they were staying in. Then another player rolled for one too and told one of the other players "you suddenly see 19 level 15 Paladins". (The exchange was a little different, but this is roughly what happened.)

...

So has this kind of thing ever popped up in your games, and how did it go?

Well, not quite that, erm, 'acausally'. But yeah. I had a player whose character was basically fed essence of cosmic insanity in the form of pudding (by another PC. I can't come up with this stuff, it takes the players to do something this crazy). For the rest of the campaign, he occasionally had flashbacks or glitched out a little bit. The pudding episode was really surreal, with the PC basically experiencing a cosmic incursion of some chthonian being into reality that he and the others were fighting, while he was really just kind of sitting at the chair and shouting to the party for help. The 'resolution' of the event was couched in such a way that it wasn't clear whether he had woken up, or been put into a mind-controlled slumber consisting of an illusion of the real world by the being that defeated him due to his party's strange recalcitrance to help.

From then on, occasionally I'd do things like say 'Okay, you guys see a castle in the distance. Its manned by soldiers wearing the tabards of the Thorn King. A guard stands at the gate lazily funnelling traffic in. This is all well and good, except that your (pudding eater) true seeing detects a small invisible creature climbing up along the walls.' where there wasn't any. Or even better, if there were a bunch of Spot, Listen, or Sense Motive checks rolled and this character got the highest result, he'd sometimes get a phantom bit of extra information that wasn't quite true.

Except that all of these bits of information were actual signs of a cthonian creature that was actually trying to come into reality through that character's exposure to what was basically liquid far realms. The hallucinations weren't lies, they just weren't true either.

Narren
2012-10-29, 12:21 PM
When I was about 15 I was SEVERELY sleep deprived but being bugged to keep running a game well into the next night. I had been up for more than two days at this point.

I can't remember all the details, but somehow the players ended up shipwrecked on "Dino Island" (I'm not even sure they were on a ship) and were being harried by Velocity Raptors. They were really fast, see, hence the name. They were in over their heads, so I had some of the "locals" show up to help out. The locals being, of course, giant kickboxing kangaroos (complete with sparring gear...didn't want anyone getting hurt). Oh, and the kangaroos had Irish accents. And they set up booby traps EVERYWHERE. And I think Captain Hook somehow got involved.

Needless to say, the next day I told everyone that particular session was just a REALLY strange shared dream. I don't think they acquired any items, and I let them keep the XP. And also never allowed them to deprive me of sleep ever again.

BootStrapTommy
2012-10-29, 09:56 PM
I ran a whole campaign in a purely chaotic plane once. Really fun. Just made nothing make sense to the players, so they were forced to just come up with ridiculous and outlandish solutions to problems. At one point they used a Use Rope check to make a sword out of a tube sock, a spoon, and a decorative plate. Later they killed the chaos deity who controlled the plane by committing suicide.

The campaign begin when the party was approached by a small rock which insisted that it be skipped on a nearby pond.

DigoDragon
2012-10-30, 07:31 AM
About 10 years ago I ran a Wild West game and the party was having dinner at the nice mansion of an eccentric inventor. One of the players, a shaman, was so disorganized that when he tried helping the chef cook the meal, he put peyote in the main dish.

So... yeah, near-literal acid trip here. :smalltongue:

One of the things a PC saw was a floating blue mouse that let him know (in english with a southern drawl) that everything will be a-ok with their current mission as long as they take the first train in the morning to their destination. The other players were so amused by the floaty blue mouse that they all tried to force themselves to see it.

That silly little thing became a perminant fixture within the party. It's like a pink elephant that gave advice. Except, this one occasionally gave decent advice... somehow. I was the Dm and I didn't even fully control it.
It was funny though and everyone remember that character.

Slipperychicken
2012-10-30, 10:32 AM
One of the things a PC saw was a floating blue mouse that let him know (in english with a southern drawl) that everything will be a-ok with their current mission as long as they take the first train in the morning to their destination. The other players were so amused by the floaty blue mouse that they all tried to force themselves to see it.

That silly little thing became a perminant fixture within the party. It's like a pink elephant that gave advice. Except, this one occasionally gave decent advice... somehow. I was the Dm and I didn't even fully control it.
It was funny though and everyone remember that character.

I would totally make my character get high to interact with that mouse. It's like being given the choice between a regular horse and a cake-addicted talking Unicorn in a purple wizard hat (we gave him the hat to cover up his horn so locals wouldn't fear him) to drive your carriage. You can't not pick the unicorn, because it's just way too awesome. It's like the call to adventure, you feel compelled to pick the most awesome option.

Done right (and in appropriate quantities), it feelings of discovery, wonder, and lulz. Exactly what a role-playing game needs.