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View Full Version : Gamer Tales Jokes in your campaign that became serious?



GrayGriffin
2014-02-26, 03:50 AM
Has anything that you made OOC jokes about in your campaign ever ended up being a serious part of the game?

I have two examples from my Pokemon Tabletop United game.

We're playing on roll20, which has a drawing function. Since we usually don't use the online tabletop function, we often end up with lots of random doodles on the "main" panel. One of our players decided to draw a shiny Ursaring. However, due to various shenanigans, the Ursaring picture ended up getting chopped up in various ways. So, other members added various mechanical body parts to him. As well as sunglasses for some reason.

Much later, our group splits, and one half heads into Mt. Moon to find a sword attuned with the legendary Swords of Justice. To get there, we need to fight several guardians. One of the guardians, codenamed the Baron, turns out to be...a shiny cyborg Ursaring, based on the collaboratively drawn picture. Everyone simultaneously groaned and cackled at that. He was quite a hilarious opponent, due to his rather cavalier attitude, which we kind of needed after two near-death experiences, only prevented by a literal miracle and an emergency evolution.

For the second example, in one earlier part of the game where Viridian City was under siege by an army of Bug-types, we managed to get out of the city (because the gym was apparently also a mobile fortress), but were pursued by an army of bugs. Then, one of our players, who has a Lapras, gets an idea-recall all our Pokemon, then have his Lapras use Perish Song and hold out for three turns until the swarm faints. It works. Much discussion is made about the extreme potential deadliness of Perish Song, although it is also pointed out that it just makes the opponent faint, not die. The DM makes an offhand comment about wanting to create an ancient evil Lapras that knows True Perish Song, which actually does kill you. We chuckle a bit, then go on with the game.

Later, back in Mt. Moon, we are heading towards our goal. This was today's session, as a matter of fact. We finish off the group of Poison and Psychic-types that were piling status effects on us, then head on. The next guy lets us go on without fighting him, saying that the "lady" who hired him wants to meet us directly. So we head on...and hear a strange song. Our Aura Guardian (also the guy with the Lapras) uses his aura sensing powers and notes that everyone is getting their aura sapped. And then the boss reveals herself...and she is a gray-skinned, skeletal Lapras. And the song? True Perish Song. The Lapras tells us that she plans to either kill us or steal our souls and add us to the various cave guardians, who are apparently all lost souls who have also sought the sword. This time, everyone is a bit too freaked out and tense to laugh about it. Now, OOC, the guy who plays our Aura Guardian is in the military, and he'll be gone for the next month. So, IC, he sends out his own Lapras, and the skeletal Lapras freaks out. She then tells him that, if he wants the rest of us to live, he has to get on her back right away. After some hesitation, he does so, and then his Lapras starts singing a song, which he finds himself and all his other Pokemon dancing to. The song grows and grows, and then shadows and light start to fill the room-and the guy and his Pokemon all disappear, along with the skeletal Lapras, leaving behind the sword we came to find. The other member of our party nearly had a breakdown, since from an IC POV he apparently just sacrificed himself to save us.

I can't wait for next week!

Krazzman
2014-02-26, 04:59 AM
In my old Group:

"Jeah I jump down."
Ended in me falling from a tree that apparently was 6 metres high. The Dwarven Druid and my Elven Rogue got damage and went into an argument solely because the DM didn't grasp the concept of sarkasm or irony or similar.

"Phft jeah, I drink it... NOT!"
Apparently in one of my tries to become an assassin in a evil campaign another dm sleight of handed me a poison and one player jokingly said "Drink it!" and after my comment my whole body hair was turned neon green... said Human Assassin also had a tentacle left arm that could shoot magic missiles CL3 3/day...
Was a weird one-shot.

BWR
2014-02-26, 05:37 AM
A one-liner about the amusing idea of an ogre paladin lead to the conversion of an ogre and taking him as a cohort.

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-02-26, 06:02 AM
A villain named after a brand of beer (Carling Black Label - which became "Khalin of the Black Shield") is still going strong in my campaign, 20 years after the joke.

A drunk game session where the staff of a hospital were indiscriminately massacred by the party driving vehicles into the corridors and opening fire with miniguns (the party were rescuing children from evil corporate vivsection: very dark, very cyberpunk, see - but 4 am, and we were being very silly by then) - then using the rescued kids as human shields in order to escape...
This got used later as the hook on which to hang a whole series of serious games.

A lich lord who - on his own demiplane, so we couldn't easily take him on - sat the party down for a cup of tea and scones, and drove the cleric of the party mad by demonstrating how corrupt his church was. (This was a setting with absent gods - the churches couldn't ask their deities' opinion, so they tended to drift from the "TruePath".) The lich had been a high ranking member when he was alive, and knew all about the lies and false doctrines. He was very cheerful and friendly about it.
The cleric then became a mad arch villain, deciding that the world was so corrupt that the only way to save the souls of his flock was to destroy the universe. There followed several horrific adventures full of Clive Barker-esque nasty rituals and Giger-esque monsters and landscapes as the players tried to stop him.
All because of a cup of tea and a cake.

Brookshw
2014-02-26, 06:46 AM
Don't know about "serious", but we ooc laughed at "fearless" leader, head of a mercenary company who ended up being immune to fear when it finally came up. G-gnome who was the mapper, an ancient elven ruin called "Alsonova" that when they found its sister city had its name default to "Nova".

DigoDragon
2014-02-26, 08:40 AM
In a modern day X-Files campaign, my character often had a chopping knife in her backpack. Why? It... was a weird quirk. She's used it on several occasions to defend herself so it became something of a staple item in her inventory. At one point it was successfully used to break into the back door of a house, to which another agent asked what brand it was so he could buy one.

"I dunno, just a generic chef's knife... generic... ah..."

And thus we jokingly dubbed it "Generica".

As the campaign finshed up, we had a couple other random items we dubbed the "Generica Brand". Generic flashlight, generic lighter, etc. This little joke eventually turned Generica into an actual in-universe brand for almost all the modern/near-future campaigns we've played in since. On par with something like Pixar's "Buy-N-Large" brand injoke.

There was even an A-rated corporation in the last Shadowrun game we had that was Generica Consumer Products, makers of generic brand products for all your low-lifestyle needs. :smallbiggrin:

JeenLeen
2014-02-26, 09:14 AM
In a Mage game, we met and started working with the Butcher Street Regulars, a group of marauders.

One of us wound up forgetting the name and calling them the "Backstreet Boy Irregulars". Name stuck, and we wound up having our characters in-game mis-speak the name rather often.

We also joked about how it would be awesome to have a marauder who thinks everything is soup... and later met an Oracle-strength one who ran a soup shop in Quebec. (Rather important to the plot, actually. He and three others purposefully went marauder in order to avoid the 'do not interfere or we other Oracles will kill you' mandates that oracles apparently have. However, after going insane, he was too focused on making good soup to help save the world.)

ElenionAncalima
2014-02-26, 11:59 AM
In one game, myself and another player had really good bluff scores, so were were constantly bluffing our way in and out of places. I forget why, but at some point we were joking about using the phrase "We represent the Lollipop Guild" in a bluff.

Later that session, we were scouting out an orc fortress, when we get caught. The orc guards demanded to know why we were here. I didn't speak orc, so we all turned to the other party face. He was clearly drawing a blank on what to say, so we see him stutter and say..."Uh...um...uh...We represent the Lollipop Guild"

Yeah...we had to fight our way out there.

Guran
2014-02-26, 12:05 PM
During the second session of my first campaign this new guy joined. He was playing a bullywug (or however you spell it). The printer failed him though. The cartridge was running out and his sheet came out pink. At that moment, he started jokingly say he was a pink frog. However, he didn't stop there. He kept refering to himself as a pink frog. It didn't take long for the entire party to consider him a pink frog IC and OC.

Sith_Happens
2014-02-26, 05:06 PM
Does recruiting a one-off comic relief NPC as a permanent ally and de facto mascot of the campaign count?

Cikomyr
2014-02-26, 05:17 PM
in WFRP I GMed, a character rolled up a Zealot (and started with a bottle of strong alcohol), and for fun counted all the money he had/had to spend as "beers", which costed 1 for 2 copper.

However, I had planned for his to be Displaced in Time, and he had came back to his hometown 10 years later, where only a few days had passed for him. His wife was dead, and his son had disappeared.

Adventures later, they find out the son; who has becomed a very harsh police Inspector. Since the PCs were up to no good, he tried to arrest all of them and they resisted (the Zealot is the one who performed the nearly-killing blow, before he recognized him). They brought the body to be healed to a safe house, and there's a powerful scene that me and the player acts up.

Son: Why should I care about you? You were never there! You disappeared for 10 years, and even before, you weren't much of a father to me!
Father: I am here now.. I wanted to find you, ask forgiveness.. I have becomed a better man since the last time you saw me.
Son: Can I forgive you for your old ways? Have you genuinely changed? You have always been a drunkard, can you swear to me you don't have a bottle of booze on you?
Father: [sheepishly] forgive me... /walks away

(me): Gain 50 xp for that great scene man

Rakoa
2014-02-26, 07:25 PM
I once sent the PCs off on a quest to find out why honey deliveries to the city had stopped. The Wizards of the place were looking to buy some. As the Wizard was talking to the group, he said, "be sure to find out what is going on, and fix the problem is possible. We Wizards love our honey!" But the last word didn't come out quite right. For whatever reason, I can't remember quite why, it came out a bit deeper than I meant it to. So it sounded more like (and should be read more like): "We Wizards love our... honey," complete with dramatic queues. From then on, not one Wizard I introduced from then one, in any campaign, could get away without having some strange honey obsession.

In fact, I later attempted to make a Honey Wizard class.

Alejandro
2014-02-26, 07:38 PM
We have one joke that has run for so long, the punchline is now my wireless Internet password.

Dycize
2014-02-26, 08:38 PM
I have an anecdote which is a perfect fit for this topic.

It was an online game of D&D via instant messaging, it was basically a long running campaign with one of the players as the leader of a town/keep/land trying to expand and have big army battles and a bunch of... Not quite serious comrades, which we'll call the other PCs (I was among those).
That campaign was never really serious, one of the earlier stunts involved the leader finding himself in possession of a cursed loincloth, and his right hand wizard (another PC) became more or less huh... Deathly afraid/in perfect harmony with pinecones. And was somehow really popular with halflings. The leader has found himself becoming undead at least once, and it happened because of an unlucky critical strike during a friendly duel (the friendly PC werewolf with a war scythe accidentally rolled a 20, low level gishes aren't exactly the most resilient things). Another PC once played a mummy as dumb as bricks, and I think I'm insulting bricks right now. The kind of character that hugs you innocently and transmits you mummy rot without meaning to. I once played a cook who secretly was some sort of medieval super hero (he also had a great RP moment when he willed some cows into becoming a guest's black dragon's dinner).

So it all started long into the campaign, the leader had been lawful evil since the beginning by the way, and our bunch of characters were out to pull another prank on him, which involved a powered up helmet that switches your alignment. We managed to make him put it on and then...
His character suddenly finding himself good, took up a mirror, declared himself a monster and went on to surrender to all the people who wanted him dead. We suddenly went from whacky hijinks to throwing a rescue operation because he was going to get publically executed. The tone of the campaign changed forever after that. The leader got saved and brought back to normal, but at what cost? He lost his land, his army and everyone had to flee somewhere far where they wouldn't search for him too much.
Sadly, some sessions after that, real life caught up to us and we never found a way to continue playing this campaign that had now went on much more serious rails. The party went from an ambitious noble, his rebel right hand wizard and a myriad of whacky characters to a mentally broken lord, his right hand wizard that's not-in-a-relationship, a spy and a shadowcaster.

Ah, now I'm missing that game...

Nerd-o-rama
2014-02-26, 09:34 PM
The Celestial Monkey.

Basically in an evil game of D&D one player asked for a Wand of Summon Monster I that summoned one specific Celestial Monkey every time. Because we used it as a Wand of Trap-Springing and, well, we were Evil.

Several levels later, the Monkey got some very powerful Archon friends who could Plane Shift...

LibraryOgre
2014-02-26, 10:53 PM
In a Castles and Crusades game, working their way through the Caves of Chaos, the party became oddly aligned with the minotaur (they traded him owlbear meat for their lives, and then traded him improved armor for him to go out and kill the ogre, then assault the bugbears). They started joking that they were going to find a helm of opposite alignment and trade him that.

Then they found one.

***

In a 4e game, someone jokingly named his Dragonborn Murderous Rex. He then doodled some of Murderous's brothers, including Tyrranus and Oedipus, who ran a town named Colonoscopy (instead of Colonus).

NecroticBanana
2014-02-27, 05:51 AM
Just recently, while entering a new town my players asked questions about it. I had suddenly remembered that i had forgotten to come up with the basic info for this town, so i reach for my notes and try to play it casual when i notice my wife's cross stitching things are sitting atop my notes. Inspired i called the town Yarnington. They asked about an inn, so i directed them to "The Spinster" and when they went weapon shopping they came across "Bow strings n' Things" right when the puns got thick i explained that this was the kingdoms main source of textiles and cotton based goods. Which they thought was pretty clever for an off the cuff idea....but they groaned and rolled there eyes at me when they visited "Horses of Courses" to get fresh mounts. :biggrin:

TheCountAlucard
2014-02-27, 08:55 AM
A Wizard NPC in a game was having the party do fetch quests for materials to make golems out of. He was actually gearing up to make a "race" of intelligent automatons (essentially like Eberron's Warforged but not built explicitly for combat), and eventually sent the PCs after some metal that, unfortunately, was in the stash of a dragon.

They prevailed over the dragon, and one of the players joked about hiring a bard to sing about their deeds. Then a PC, behind the party's back, did exactly that.

Then his player asks me, "How well does he do on his Perform roll?"

So I roll it. The song apparently found its way onto the Outer Planes.

Cue Bel sending devils to steal the wizard's blueprints and prototypes, to create a slave-race of hard-wired loyal soldiers to fight in the eternal Blood War, potentially messing up the balance of Law and Chaos on the Material Plane. :smalleek:

The campaign ended with the PCs preparing to infiltrate the first circle of Hell itself to put a stop to Bel's machinations.

The_Werebear
2014-02-27, 10:22 AM
A party I was in killed a Red Dragon (it was e6, we ) and we were both stoked, and ready to sell off it's horde and corpse for a major cash influx. In our hometown, however, the best we were going to get was maybe having parts of it taxidermied up, or one suit of Dragonhide armor. So, we made a joke about how we could get a bid from a larger city down the road that was technically under the control of Devil cultists.

As we thought about it, we got a little more serious and figured "why not? What's the harm in knowing?" They offered us 26,000 gp for the corpse. Our party had 6 people at level 6. We were expecting a quarter of that. We might have even gotten more had we not rolled so badly on negotiations. We immediately sold it off, despite uneasy feelings.

Cue the end of the campaign. We're attempting to take back the city from the Devil Cult. Their biggest asset (which decimated the assault that got farthest into the city, stalled the other assaults, was the personal mount of our Nemesis in the city, and killed my character) was that Dragon, reanimated as a Ghoulish Dragon. A dragon with 6 paralyzing attacks a round at a VERY high save.

We didn't think it was so funny anymore.

SimonMoon6
2014-02-27, 12:02 PM
Well, I don't know if this quite fits, but...

Back in 1st edition days, I was running a game where the low-level players were on an island full of beholders. (Don't ask.) I decided to roll a random encounter on the table in the DMG. The result was an ogre.

So, now I had to think, "What is an ogre doing on a island full of beholders?" The obvious answer was "Running away."

So, the PCs simply saw an ogre running away. The PCs decided to talk to him and he became an NPC that was forevermore allied with one of the PCs.

That particular PC was a drow cavalier/magic-user/thief (don't ask) and this ogre, quickly named "Bob", came to idolize him. Bob wanted to cast spells like his idol, so studied magic with him as well as with the party's intended NPC, a gnome cleric/illusionist. Of course, as an ogre, he wasn't going to be able to gain levels in these classes or anything. Instead, I let him advance in a home-brew "monster" class (decades before there was a Savage Species book) which was pretty much just a lousier version of the fighter class, except he got to use the "monster" tables for "to hit" and "saves". He even trained one of the PC's girlfriends (an NPC) how to be a monster (she became probably the first human "monster").

But then, after giving Bob a backstory in which he had been raised by druids, this meant that he had studied as all four types of spellcaster. So, then Bob would occasionally (usually when things looked bleak for the party) decide, "Uh'm gonna cast uh spell!" And then he'd cast a random spell (usually as one of the PCs would be shouting "No Bob! No!").

I'd roll a d4 to see which spell list. Then a d10 or d8 to see what level spell. Then a d"whatever" to see which particular spell. Strangely, "astral spell" came up often.

arcane_asp
2014-02-27, 12:15 PM
Our partys lead tank and general bearded-drinker type decided to try genuinely befriend a village of goblins the party was negotiating with. After some initial successes, we jokingly commented he was starting a 'Goblin Outreach Program' and was going to stay on and build them some general amenities.

Several sessions later, the player brought along some handouts he had made and informed us that IG his character would be producing these and handing them out:

GIVE GOBLINS A CHANCE!
Their suffering is as valid as ours - give generously to the Goblin Outreach Program!

Its been an uphill struggle for him since them as goblins just arent that popular with the townsfolks, and has made his character a bit of a social pariah wherever they go. He's been talking about retiring the character who will go and build schools for villages of the worlds most deprived goblins :smallamused:

GPuzzle
2014-02-27, 12:48 PM
Rain of piss.

As crazy as it sounds, we decided that we should make a TF2 Homebrew for 4e.

The party was composed of an Human Warlord with plenty of "grenades" (Alchemist Fire, Alchemist Ice) and a hand crossbow, a Genasi Artificer with two uses of Daily "Summon" Powers and another hand crossbow, a Goliath Brawler Fighter who will crush you with his BEAR HANDS, a Changeling Rogue with a dagger AND a hand crossbow and an Human Ranger with a greatbow and an utility that made enemies in an area burst 3 give combat advantage.

The Ranger quickly figures out "if I drink enough beer, I'll piss more often". He had multiclass in Fighter and had a decent Constitution score, so he starts to go spend all his money in the tavern, pull a jar, and fill tons and tons of jars of piss.

At night, during the ambush, he throws his piss rain, and rolls a series of crits.

Result: the piss is blessed. And now, we have an entire religion based on his piss that has appeared in Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Exalted, Paranoia, d6-lite, Drunken Bear Fighters, and many more. In fact, piss rains are usually a sign of good luck (yeah, it rains piss from the sky).

GrayGriffin
2014-02-27, 03:48 PM
But then, after giving Bob a backstory in which he had been raised by druids, this meant that he had studied as all four types of spellcaster. So, then Bob would occasionally (usually when things looked bleak for the party) decide, "Uh'm gonna cast uh spell!" And then he'd cast a random spell (usually as one of the PCs would be shouting "No Bob! No!").

I'd roll a d4 to see which spell list. Then a d10 or d8 to see what level spell. Then a d"whatever" to see which particular spell. Strangely, "astral spell" came up often.

So, what was the solved problem/created bigger problem ratio of Bob's spells?

SimonMoon6
2014-02-27, 06:24 PM
So, what was the solved problem/created bigger problem ratio of Bob's spells?

I don't think they *ever* helped, but it's been a long time.

Calinero
2014-02-28, 12:14 PM
Once played a nWoD Mage game where the start of the session was "It's Monday morning. None of you remember the weekend." Naturally, we suspected magical shenanigans were afoot.

We made various attempts to see what had happened to us and what we had done, most of them blocked. All attempts to access our own memories were stopped by a sort of metaphysical wall. So, we used our Time mage to cast Postcognition and look back at ourselves in time.

The GM said "Okay, you're looking at yourselves talking." Since he hadn't told us what we were saying yet, I jokingly said "Okay, guys, here's how we burn down the orphanage."

Everybody laughed, then we looked at the GM and asked "So, what are we saying?"

"That. You just said that."

"..."

It turned out we had been mind controlled by an evil mage into literally burning down an orphanage. There was some reasoning behind it, wanting to get us in trouble /make an offering to some fire spirits. Still, though, was not expecting that line to be taken seriously.

Kimera757
2014-03-01, 01:19 PM
In my Dark Sun campaign, I warned the players that the Silt Sea had dangerous Silt Spawn. Alas, they heard "Silt Prawn" and so a new class of monsters was created.

RMcCall
2014-03-01, 09:10 PM
The Sword of Healing! Once while I was playing in college, a roommate of mine walked by and made a joke about there being a sword of healing that only healed when you struck someone with it. Since I was planning on the game being a one-shot, I included the sword of healing in the next treasure horde. Everyone had a good laugh.

Then the game turned into a mini campaign that we continued playing over the course of the year. There was no way to take away the sword of healing now, and the player's wouldn't part with it, so it became a staple of that game for the resident fighter to attack his allies when they were low health.

QuackParker
2014-03-02, 01:08 AM
Flumphs.

I introduced a couple flumphs in need of a new home. One thing lead to another, and the players were fighting tooth and nail to slay the evil warlord of the Demiplane of Colossal Nightmares to liberate flumphkind and lead a massive exodus of them from there to our plane. Now they have built a small civilization of Flumph Island near the main continent ruled by the Elder Thing. Their introduction en masse could change the course of our campaign history. All because the players invested more time into the flumphs than anyone could expect.

chainer1216
2014-03-02, 08:38 AM
me as an NPC: "he's up to some fiendish deviltry no doubt!"
PC OOC: "a fiendish devil tree?!"

three sessions later the party nearly TPKed because they walked into a forest filled with half-fiend trents.

Rabidmuskrat
2014-03-02, 10:23 AM
I was DM'ing when one of my players unexpectedly ask the name of a shopkeeper. Fully intent on just abstracting their shopping trips, I just reply:
"Irrelevant".

The player isn't happy with this answer, so, thinking quickly, I continue:
"I'm serious. Irrelevant Jones runs the local potion store."
"Oh really? And does he have a brother named Pointless and a sister named Unnecessary?" one of the other players sniggered.
"Close, but not quite. His sister is named Pointless and his brother Unnecessary. I mean, really. Does Pointless sound like a man's name?"

Needless to say, Mr I. Jones is now a contact of the party and the go-to person for obtaining certain items of an adventuring nature, through his numerous family connections in all manners of adventuring business.

Sal Trebov
2014-03-03, 03:54 PM
Needless to say, Mr I. Jones is now a contact of the party and the go-to person for obtaining certain items of an adventuring nature, through his numerous family connections in all manners of adventuring business.

Probably would have happened to me a dozen times if I gave my shopkeeps odd names too. You never know who or what they'll latch onto...