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RandomNPC
2007-07-05, 06:27 PM
so, what's everyone do at certain landmarks?

when i get a first time player who makes it to three games in a row, and intends to come to more games, a get them a dice pouch designed to look like a critter, and a set of dice.

on the yearmarks of our games (if i remember the general idea of when the game started) there are cupcakes of +1 age for the gamers.

so, any traditions?

psychoticbarber
2007-07-05, 06:40 PM
Back when I was employed I used to buy dice for my new players. Right now I'm in school and don't have much in the way of expendable income, so sadly that tradition is currently on hold.

de-trick
2007-07-05, 06:45 PM
one of mine that is not for when a new player enters but every gaming day. MAKE SURE THE DM HAS HIS CIGARS

Hectonkhyres
2007-07-05, 06:48 PM
If you miss a game, you bring all the food/booze for the next meet. And, when you get back, something truely horrible has happened. One big barbarian dude got in trouble with a god while under the influence and spent the next few weeks skipping everywhere. Ah, good times.

But besides that sort of crap, not much. Every time the phone or doorbell rings, it is echo'd in the gameworld by an ominous roll of thunder or other such sound. Nothing real noteworthy.

Kurald Galain
2007-07-06, 04:01 AM
One DM I knew used to suggest experience point penalties for coming to the game session late. We've never actually done that, though.

One tradition we seem to have acquired is, whenever the party is woken early by a rooster or similar loud creature, said creature is blown to little pieces with magic missiles.

Winged One
2007-07-06, 04:05 AM
One tradition we seem to have acquired is, whenever the party is woken early by a rooster or similar loud creature, said creature is blown to little pieces with magic missiles.
That's just awsome. I'm giving that idea to our warmage.

Anyway, my turn. At every new town the party of my binder goes to, the party leader, a warmage, always threatens to blow someone up who doesn't deserve it. Well, okay, the second time she deserved something bad, what with the whole reading our minds and learning secrets that my character kills people over thing, but she beat his Sense Motive by one point thanks to her having 2 more CHA than he had WIS, and no one else in the party can Sense Motive worth a damn.

Every magic item I invent bitchslaps people who try to break the game with it.

Pie is evil. It killed the cleric! And it appeared in some apparantly evil painting that killed the game this tradition started in.

After every encounter, my Warblade must do something idiotic to balance how badass he is.

clarkvalentine
2007-07-06, 08:32 AM
For each campaign, I or one of the other two mini-painters in our group hand-paints a brand new mini for each PC. Long-time players who move away (we're in a college town, if happens from time to time) may take their character's mini with them as a keepsake.

truemane
2007-07-06, 09:19 AM
In one of my first D&D Campaigns, in the magical world of 1st Edition Oriental Adventures, we had a standing joke that, no matter where you went, and no matter how small the town, there was a Magic Shop run by The Little Old Lady. Every town they went to they found the Little Old Lady.

And of course she was a 20th Level Arcane Caster.

And of course she had a pet Tarrasque named Binky.

After a while they tried to convince her to go on adventures with them.

Ahhh....back in the day...

The_Werebear
2007-07-06, 09:47 AM
Every session, the party must spend at least five minutes plotting to kill the person who is giving them missions.

CrazedGoblin
2007-07-06, 11:06 AM
our group probably spends a little time each session wondering how the wizard is going to try and kill us all :smallbiggrin:

MandibleBones
2007-07-06, 12:28 PM
OOC Traditions: "Oh my God cool!" roleplaying XP will be based on the fickle finger of fate (the d6 x 100), and anyone who rolls more than 3 sixes in a row will no longer be allowed to roll the fickle finger of fate.

IC Traditions: "Bob's Meat on a Stick" - an apparently pan-galactic/dimensional chain of fast food selling meat... on a stick.

Annalia
2007-07-06, 01:52 PM
To get rid of an NPC/ex-PC: Get him drunk. He will automatically looses his way when trying to solve his beer-induced urges and will become lost in the woods. Even in the middle of a city.

Green Bean
2007-07-06, 01:59 PM
In my group's games, there's always a downtrodden fellow selling suspicious looking 'sausage inna bun' in all of the towns. Also, their names seem to follow a theme. Guess what series the DM likes... :smallbiggrin:

RandomNPC
2007-07-06, 03:05 PM
Every session, the party must spend at least five minutes plotting to kill the person who is giving them missions.

i forgot that one, are you one of my gamers?

The_Werebear
2007-07-06, 03:18 PM
No, that is the group I DM. It is a military campaign, and the leader of the army is an unprincipled weasel who is using the war to his own advantage. However, he is the only one who can actually lead the army, so they really can't kill him without dooming the human race to enslavement.

Diggorian
2007-07-06, 03:32 PM
Not a tradition as much as a tendency, if you leave our game we will reminise about all of the stupid or lame things your characters have done amongst ourselves, with any new group members, people who read forums we frequent, and generally anyone that will listen. :smallamused:

enderrocksonall
2007-07-06, 03:41 PM
When I was a player our DM was a real tightwad about giving out magic items or gp. Whenever we got a magic item we were drooling with suspense until he told us it was another everburning torch.

Occasionally after an extremely difficult battle we would get a magic weapon like a +1 small gnomish hooked hammer. Whoopee...all of us are human.

Anyway the running joke was that anytime one of the players had to leave the group for RL conflicts, their character always managed to have the most recent magical item we had found on them when they set out for home/were dragged into the sewers by the 40' long tentacles that never bothered anyone else before or after/ got accidentally sacrificed by the cult of Nehrul/ etc.

hippie_dwarf
2007-07-06, 04:43 PM
In any dungeon/forest/shady town/evil looking montain/mine/any other adventuring location you can think of, whenever we find some it of evidence vital to the plot or a suspitious looking NPC or Monster with some outstanding feature (a favorite being glowing red eye's) we always deduct that a balor is behind everything (which is alway wrong) and one of the party immediatly proclaims "I conclude that a Balor...".

ThunderEagle
2007-07-06, 04:56 PM
If a player cannot get to a session, their character is getting drunk in the bar. they also get 'roleplaying xp' to bring them up to th same total as the rest of the group.

CrazedGoblin
2007-07-06, 05:10 PM
In any dungeon/forest/shady town/evil looking montain/mine/any other adventuring location you can think of, whenever we find some it of evidence vital to the plot or a suspitious looking NPC or Monster with some outstanding feature (a favorite being glowing red eye's) we always deduct that a balor is behind everything (which is alway wrong) and one of the party immediatly proclaims "I conclude that a Balor...".

he stole my football!

NO! THE BALOR DID IT!!!

RedScholarGypsy
2007-07-06, 08:49 PM
In my group's games, there's always a downtrodden fellow selling suspicious looking 'sausage inna bun' in all of the towns. Also, their names seem to follow a theme. Guess what series the DM likes... :smallbiggrin:

Dibbler!

Ah, I remember the scariest moment of any campaign session, when the main bad wizard asked us: "What do you get when you infuse a Mimic with 10 bags of holding and a bag of devouring?"

As for traditions, we had three:

D&D: if there are 2+ arcane casters, they get into a prank war. (They made 0-lvl scrolls and wands to be able to use all the slots for presdig :smalltongue: )

SpyCraft: The car never made it in one piece. NEVER!!!Most times we didn't even have to try to wreck it, but when the gm tried to autopilot the car home we 'accidentally' set off the self destruct as we got out. We never got a car after that, but we kept on wrecking them.

Deadlands: We'd always TPK via dynamite/nitro. Mojave Rattlers got terminal indigestion from us.

Corolinth
2007-07-06, 10:43 PM
Deadlands: We'd always TPK via dynamite/nitro. Mojave Rattlers got terminal indigestion from us.Speaking of this, we just finished off Night Train with dynamite.

Hazkali
2007-07-08, 04:23 AM
If a player cannot get to a session, their character is getting drunk in the bar. they also get 'roleplaying xp' to bring them up to th same total as the rest of the group.

That's nicer than what happens to my player's characters when they miss a session- they get diahorrea and/or vomiting caused by poorly cooked food, and spend the next few days squatting behind a tree.

I thought of it when I was annoyed at one guy for not turning up, and it's become the staple thing ever since.

Dhavaer
2007-07-08, 04:36 AM
At least half of all dates must be at Italian restaurants.

Quietus
2007-07-08, 12:42 PM
This one started before I joined my current group, but it's a running joke ever since :

Eyebrow experience.

Apparently years ago they had someone show up to a game who had shaved not only his head, but his eyebrows. Not a lick of hair on his cranial region. Everyone else got 2 free experience, because they had 2 eyebrows. It kinda stuck.

Accolon
2007-07-08, 11:01 PM
I paint a mini for every player's character. Painted minis are my big thing, and that's probably the oldest and most lasting tradition of my current group (10 years running, same members). I also used to give XP if the session fell on a player's birthday, but then our gaming schedule fell to once a month, and that stopped. We're back to once a week, so B-Day XP may be on the rise again. I recently just moved and my gaming group helped out, so they all got bumped up a level.

Ranis
2007-07-08, 11:21 PM
At every session, my Bard must hit on a female. When there are no female NPC's present, the female PC suffices. When she isn't at a session, the DM suffices. (Yes, the DM is female.)

Every one of my games, the philosophy major playing an extremely militaristic Warmage sets out to prove that he is outside reality, making Knowledge(Philosophy) and Perform(Philosophy) checks for at least five minutes per session. So far, he hasn't met the DC 89,000 check to bend reality to his whim, but he's still trying.

Also, when a PC dies, he must eat a raw mushroom. Yes, we do clean it first.

kjones
2007-07-08, 11:52 PM
Whenever I introduce a player to D&D who wants to be a spellcaster, they usually take Magic Missile because of the shiny. I find that it adds a nice little personal twist if you let them choose what their missiles look like - color, shape, etc. The current party wizard decided that his missiles are black bolts streaked with crimson. "Sure", I thought to myself, "Why not?"

Nowadays, every time he casts Magic Missile, the exchange goes like this:

Me: "Your bolts strike the orc square in the chest. Roll damage."
Wizard: "What color are the bolts, again?" (smirk)
Me: (sigh)
Wizard: "Come on..."
Me: "Oh, fine. Three black bolts streaked with crimson..."
Wizard: "YES! I am so awesome."
Me: (dies a little on the inside)

Also, my battlemat is color-coded - black for walls, green for spell effects, green for light sources, red for terrain features. One time after the barbarian dealt a particularly nasty crit to some poor little 1HD goblin or somesuch, I removed the token from the battlemat and drew red streaks emanating from his square.

"He's a terrain feature", I announced, and now I say it after any particularly vicious killing blow.

Yiel
2007-07-09, 12:21 AM
We give out gold stars for the "special" things that PCs do.

We all meet up to cook dinner together before the session. (well... everyone may be there, but its the current DM and myself who do most of the cooking)

Also, my bard usually succeeds in an action stopping, groaningly bad pun once a session. If she doesn't, she comes up with something to say that looks Paris Hilton look like a Mensa member. :smallbiggrin:

Kyrsis
2007-07-09, 12:31 AM
I can't think of any noteworthy IC ones...but here's an OOC one -
We ended up with a bag of chips as a mascot once. Someone had brought them to the game and they were forgotten and left at the DMs house (as per another tradition - extra food/drink stay at the DM's for next session). A few months later someone was foraging for food and found them. After we discovered they had been there so long it was determined no one would eat them and instead all the players would sign the bag and it sat around like that for like 2 years. I think it met it's end when they moved though...

horseboy
2007-07-09, 12:35 AM
I had a friend, when he ran games, every time we went to buy or sell something, we always, ALWAYS wind up at Hung Woah's house of Foo and __________.

Had another GM that, when your character died, he'd take your character sheet. Everybody went outside and we held a pyre where we burned the character sheet. Usually we were laughing about how stupid the occurance was that caused said death.

Oh yeah, another GM I play with has a rule about "teaching" new players how not to play d20 when playing Rolemaster. He puts three smiley faces on their character sheet. When ever they do something stupid that causes the character's death they mark off a smiley face. Once they're gone, the next death is "for real."

Tor the Fallen
2007-07-09, 01:40 AM
No-show player's characters get drunk and fall into their bag of holding. Don't have to be played tag-a-long, but are conveniently with the party when their player shows up.

nerulean
2007-07-09, 05:07 AM
Something disgusting and brain-scarring must be said over pizza every night without fail. Somehow, we always manage it without even trying.

Every paladin in our gaming group is given the free ability Smite Bad Pun. It's an invaluable one.

Oh yeah, and Trevor has to show up in every campaign, adventure, oneshot and other various forms of game. Trevor was originally a copper dragon, but he's now appeared so many times in so many different incarnations that we think he must be a Timelord.

Krimm_Blackleaf
2007-07-09, 05:32 AM
Hmm... Case of mountain dew, case of dr. pepper, two or three (or four or five or six, if I'm there) boxes of pizza and if no one else in the house minds, all the lights off except the one above our table. If possible, a fluorescent lamp. I like them.

enderrocksonall
2007-07-09, 11:39 AM
Playing at the new player's house, pulling the ferret out of my backpack before I leave.

Prometheus
2007-07-09, 03:50 PM
Every Friday night its game time.

Somehow the monk fails every Will save it has to roll, and gets eatten by everything with the Engulf or Swllow Whole ability. Seriously, without fail. What killed him as a PC was Finger of Death from a Nightstalker (Will save), when he came back as a NPC villain, the final blow was dealth by a Red Dragon summoned by the Druid.

Several racist jokes are made: Its okay, are group includes whites, blacks, and hispanics are we are only kiddin'. Of course, we would be exculsive of asians, american indians, middle easterners, and russians if we didn't include them too.

In my newer campaign, someone gets drunk (the Cleric is a skilled brewer), someone gets eaten (party vampire), and someone gets stolen from (Rogue).

Black Hand
2007-07-09, 05:23 PM
No matter where you went, and no matter how small the town, there was a Magic Shop run by The Little Old Lady. Every town they went to they found the Little Old Lady.


We've had something like that except it wasn't a little old lady with a Tarresque....

...It was the turbaned Travelling Merchant that went by the name of Honest Achmed who was unfortunatly good at selling watered down healing potions. :smallconfused:

Kurald Galain
2007-07-09, 07:10 PM
Ah. The thread on OOC secrets reminded me of another tradition.

Sneak-o-notes. Or at least, that's what we call notes passed to another player, or the DM, that aren't supposed to be read by other players. First, whenever anyone does this, someone will say out loud, "Hey, that guy is doing Something Secret!" as if it wasn't obvious already.

Second, me and a few other DMs have been known on occasion to pass bogus notes. For instance, pass a note to player one stating "you see a goblin hiding in the shadows" and a note to player two stating "this is a note". Of course, both players will write a response and pass it back...

RandomNPC
2007-07-09, 10:21 PM
that reminds me of my groups assassin notes. you can guess the first notes purpose. any general purpose info is given out to quickly to make a note matter, but if its inteparty conflict, like an assassination. last time i think it was about the annoying warforged being suseptable to sleep arrows or not....

Enzario
2007-07-09, 11:07 PM
With one of my gaming groups, the character Bob the Bandit has shown up in every single campaign in some way. It started as me (the cleric) converting Bob to the worship of Pelor, and he repented his evil ways and joined us as a cohort. Unfortunately, it was shortly after that that the party wizard got bored and had an extra Scorching Ray on hand. The next campaign, Bob the Bandit was the Spymaster of the Hegemonic Power. Let's just say that the party wizard got detained for *ahem*illegal imp smuggling*ahem*. He never used Scorching Ray again. Ever.

Now whenever we get into trouble, we call on the power of Bob the Bandit to save us. It usually works.

Breaon
2007-07-09, 11:09 PM
One of my personal traditions is the "educating" of dice which misbehave (ie. roll poorly.) Every so often, one of my AAA league dice gets called up, and used as an abject lesson to my current major league dice. They're lined up in a semi-circle around the microwave, the designated die is placed within, a small speech is given about "you don't want this to happen to you..." and the microwave is turned on.


Every session, the party must spend at least five minutes plotting to kill the person who is giving them missions.

Considering that person is the Minister of State in my current game, bad idea. We're in pretty good with the king and government, having brought back his long lost (20+ years) brother.

Fooliodislapsis
2007-07-10, 02:52 AM
my DM's daughter started playing at 4 years old, which is 2 years earlier than when he started. she played a pixie and turned a troll into a pillow, which we burnt after she went to bed, as pixie magic tends to wear off :smallwink:

Winged One
2007-07-12, 11:17 PM
In the pro-Imperial Star Wars OpenRPG game I'm in:
The Devastator(Darth Vader's flagship in Episode IV) is the You're ****ed. The Executor(Darth Vader's flagship in Episode VI) is the You're Really ****ed. This is to avoid confusion.
The guy who gave us our most recent mission has a really long goatee and pale skin, is the third highest-ranking advisor to the Emperor, and was recently seen in a state of deep thought that I, out of character, surmise to be Force use. We call him Darth Goatee because of this.
All diseases have been renamed to MacGuffin's Disease, in keeping with the tradition started by the Krytos virus.
Every session, I attempt to steal the guy that plays our resident soldier's mocha. Unsucessfully, because we live 3 time zones away.

Calenestel
2007-07-13, 02:14 AM
My oldest gaming group has two major traditions:

OoC - Our DM's ex was a real pain and had him a bit... well, whipped. Hence when she yelled his name from the other side of the flat he answered with a sigh and a "Yes, Dear" and rose to leave the table all of the players would grin more/less evily and make whipping motions and sounds. Today, several years after they split up we still greet any interuptions to our gaming sessions with whiplashes. (I have a funny anecdote about that, but it's a bit TOO off topic)

IC - When we play Call of Cthulu the GM usually says (at some point when we're exploring a house, ruin, castle, mansion, whatnot): "In the far right corner there's a door leading down to the basement." which is followed by the Player Choir: "I'm NOT going down there!" :smallbiggrin:

Aure Entuluva!
Calenestel

Townopolis
2007-07-13, 04:18 AM
In the past few games I've run, the first encounter is always a TPK.

Lolth
2007-07-13, 11:05 PM
Our group was pretty tame, I guess.

Traditions: Host doesn't pay for food (poor host, whoever it is, usually has an apocalyptic mess to clean up after), we always lie to one chronically late player, telling him the game is an hour earlier than it is so he'll be an hour less late, candle light, and phones are turned off during play time.

If someone misses a session without a Darn Good Reason™, they pay for the food and drink for the session after, when people always seem to be especially hungry.

Amphimir Míriel
2007-07-14, 10:27 AM
Our gaming group today consists of my best friend, his wife, my wife and myself...

Nowadays we meet every friday night at my place, we have dinner while we talk about work, kids and various stuff... an hour or two later, after the kids are in bed (a 3 yr old & a 4 month old), we start playing D&D but usually have to quit before two hours have passed, since by then its late and we are all tired from a full week of work and/or child rearing...:smallsigh:

We joke about being old and tired, unable to pull the all-nighters we used to do when we were teens...:smallamused: