Favorite inside joke?

[TrashTrash]

What's your favorite inside joke with a group you've played with?

Mine is:
Due to an unfortunate turn of events involving some goblins in hiding and a bad roll, our Fighter attacked a bush that didn't have a goblin in it, which confused the goblins but wasted his action. Now when someone just barely fails a simple action we yell "Wrong bush!" and have a good laugh about it.
It became a staple for our group so quickly that I'm currently working on a comic strip-style artistic representation of that moment.

[JackPhoenix]

When we tried 5e for the first time, characters fought bunch of zombified gnomes. One of them had just insane luck on Undying Fortitude rolls: there were 3 nat 20's in a row, and more high rolls. It just wouldn't die, putting it down took longer than dealing with all the other 5 zombies from the same encounter. When it was finally killed by a crit (described as decapitation to great satisfaction of everyone involved), the players were joking the zombie was so tough because it was actually the villain behind the whole situation they were dealing with. When they later met with some people trying to figure how the zombies work, there was a small, headless zombie amongst the experimental subjects, just standing and watching. Even though it didn't have eyes. Or head.

Since then, across multiple games and settings, headless, gnome-sized zombie appeared from time to time, staring at the characters from a distance. The ability to stare at the PCs is quite disturbing, considering it doesn't have head. And some of those settings don't even have gnomes.

[Wryte]

In the first campaign my oldest table played together, I played an archfey warlock with 16 Str and 8 Int. She was a troll who had mutated after eating a dead dryad, whose spirit now haunted her as her patron.

Having only recently had her Int go UP to 8, and lived her entire life in the wilderness to this point, she was quite unfamiliar with many aspects of civilization... such as doors. As such, "door checks" whenever I encoutered such an arcane portal to see if I could smash it open became a running theme of the campaign. The entire table still refers to any attempt by a character with more brawn than brains to interact with something that requires the slightest bit of finesse a "door check" to this day.

[Mr_Fixler]

The PCs were making their way through a windy forest road at night. The DM described a ghostly carriage with no horse or driver ahead on the road.

One of the PCs scouted ahead and did all sorts of investigating, throwing rocks, multiple perception checks, etc. He came back and told the group he thought it was a ghost carriage. To which the other players laughed and said the DM told the table as much in the initial description.

So now whenever a player isn't paying attention and states something that was given to the table as inherent knowledge via DM description, we call that a "ghost carriage ".

[Grey Watcher]

We avoid Stoink. No one wants to go there.

No real reason, it just came up when we were planning some travel across Greyhawk and the name was too silly not to make fun of.

[Danielqueue1]

Phillip the pack mule.

We were discussing alignment one day and how we consider it more of a spectrum. "My character is lawful, but kinda close to the neutral end of lawful." "My character is evil, but I'm not about to burn down an orphanage." Etc. We all put our characters where they fit on the grid, but when we finished, the packmule Phillip was all the way off the bottom of the evil spectrum where he had been placed just in the process of moving all the tokens. The DM made it canon. And crazy shenanigans ensued.

The first packmule in any campaign is now named Phillip and it is always a beast to be feared for it is not of this world.

[thereaper]

For a good three sessions, our poor Dwarven Bard could not successfully hit anything with Vicious Mockery to save his life, spawning the joke that "Dwarven Humor is no laughing matter". When he finally did start landing them, we decided that the rest of the party had given him cheat sheets of other jokes to use.

In one particularly dangerous fight, our ranger ended up shooting the aforementioned Bard in the back of the head (rolled a 1). We bring this up constantly. We're waiting for it to happen to my character, and upon reaching 5th level, we pointed out that she could now shoot someone in the back of the head twice in one turn!

Meanwhile, my Barbarian is a Thogaturge, so yeah, the whole party has their comedic bits.

[KOLE]

During our first session, we’re on a sailing vessel heading toward an unexplored island where an airship carrying very important cargo crashlanded under strange circumstances. Me and other PCs are an elite commando squad sent to retrieve it, but we’re under the command of a somewhat oblivious half-orc captain. My sky high perception ranger is in the crows nest, spot 5 strange submerged forms approaching our ship rapidly.

“Captain, five objects approaching vessel quickly! Arm the cannons!”

“...Don’t worry, it’s probably just whales.”

All around the table stare at DM/NPC dumbfounded. Literally ten seconds later lizardfolk riding pleisosaurs are hurling spears at the boat.

From that moment forward, any time anybody at the table saw something dangerous or got into an encounter, somebody else would say “Don’t worry, it’s just whales.”

Our DM hates this, but it always rouses a chuckle.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The jokes are either:

"What happened to Crit-bot? I forget..."


Crit-bot was the party pet NPC from my 1-20 campaign. A floating eyeball "robot" construct they rescued/repaired/rebuilt early on, it had a weak force blast attack but crit on a 19-20. Hence the name. Much later she ended up getting a plug-in body (generic fighter). Right near the very end, they ended up sacrificing her (or she sacrificed herself, really) to make a world-altering super-wish. If they hadn't done it, someone would have, and the results would not have been pretty. The cost was that whoever sacrificed themselves (and it had to be 100% willing) was erased from history. They never existed--everything they did was actually done by someone else.

It's still a bit of a sore spot. I had provided them with a couple other NPC options, but they didn't trust any of them. Took several sessions of nothing but discussing this (and what to wish for).


"It's not like talking to a dragon"


They had just dropped a meteor (literally) on a temple of Evil Vileness and were going in to clean out anything left underground. Turns out the Vile Evil inside had partially shielded the temple, so the surface was ruined except for a young green dragon, with a tentacle growing from its back. This was stunned, and probably would have been easy to sneak past or ambush. But the party druid wanted to save it/see if it needed help, so he went up and talked to it. It breathed on him and the monk.


"You could cast firestorm on those fire giants"


Same druid, a bit later. Fighting fire giants in an arena. Had just leveled enough to get firestorm. Oops.

[Resileaf]

Fat Gertrude.

During a Warhammer Fantasy game, one of our players, to distract a mercenary, started babbling to him about random stuff. The mercenary was looking for our characters' lord's children, which we were keeping safe at the time, and the mercenary claimed that our lord had commited crimes against the Empire and against nature. So the player went up to the mercenary to distract him, asking him what exactly the Lord had done, and the mercenary responded "The worst thing you can think of."
P: "Even... That?"
M (obviously annoyed and trying to get him to go away): "Yes, even that."
P: "With Fat Gertrude?"
M: "Yes."
P: "... Isn't she dead?"
M: Absolutely done with this conversation.

In most sessions afterwards, we plugged in Fat Gertrude and the fact that she was dead. In different campaigns, we refered to her, also being dead, and possibly being the most powerful undead lord in the world.

(Yes, I'm well aware this is the 5E forum, but I think inside jokes transcend systems)

[TrashTrash]

These are great, I didn't think anyone would find this thread! Glad to know it's not just my group that has a weird joke. If anyone walked in on us playing with no context, they'd think we were either on something or not on enough of something.

[SpanielBear]

Our player who runs an Elven Druid plays up his “Elves are superior and ancient beings” side at any opportunity. This has lead to a Star Trek-esque insistence that any immersion breaking reference to real-world objects is just something elves invented centuries ago.

This means in our version of Faerun, elves invented escalators, non-stick frying pans and the jigsaw puzzle.

It has also been established that an ancient Elven phrase that describes a space warped to another plane and temporal location translates to “Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey stuff”.

“Obviously it sounds better in the original Elvish...”

[manyslayer]

2nd edition campaign I ran had 2 characters, wizard and thief, fall down a trap door into the sewers. Both human with no light source (the wizard did not have the light spell). The wizard starts trying to make a light source out of the only burnable thing he has - pages from his spell book. After several failed attempts with ripped out pages he finally gets one lit. The rogue turns to the wizard and says, "Oh, you have something lit. Cool, I have a candle." This is met with the wizard shouting "YOU'VE GOT A CANDLE!" loud enough to echo up to the street above.

From that day forward, having a candle was used to indicate something remembered too late.

Got thrown from your horse over a cliff and 5 minutes late remeber you have a bunch of ranks in Ride. You've got a candle.
At the theater and remember you had free movie passes on your dresser at home. You've got a candle.

[WeaselGuy]

"And suddenly, a Bebilith!"

3.5 Edition, we're somewhat decent level (12-15ish). I don't remember exactly what the party consisted of, but I know I was playing an Aglarondan Gryphon Rider, we had a Pixie Scout, a Dwarf Cleric, and I don't remember the rest. For whatever reason, we were in some swamp, trying to fight some warlord who was mounted on a dragon. It was supposed to be the final fight of the night, with some sweet loot, and a juicy plot hook. Me and the Scout were on the top of this tower, trying to plink away at this flying spellcaster, and the rest of the party was inside the tower. I think the Cleric was attempting to Summon some sort of help, maybe a bunch of Hippogriffs, or something, in order to take the fight to the warlord. Regardless, we were playing with crit-fail cards, and he rolled a 1 on the summoning check. So he had to draw a card. The card said something to the effect of "magical mishap", so the DM rolled on his table of mishaps, and compared his result with the originating spell school (conjuration), and determined that, instead of 4 Hippogriffs, something else was summoned. Another table and a "Oh. This might be bad" later, "And suddenly, a Bebilith". We spend the next 4 rounds running around that damn tower, trying not to get instakilled by a giant spider demon, while also dealing with a flying spellcaster (I eventually rolled a nat 20 to do a leaping tackle when he flew close enough, and knocked him off his dragon and into the swamp). The cleric spent each of the 4 rounds casting Banishment, eventually rolling a 20 to send the demon back to the Abyss, and there was much levelling to be had that night.

[Trustypeaches]

I always end every session recap with “...and that’s what you missed on glee. GLEE!”

[thoroughlyS]

I have a habit of propagating in-jokes, because I think referential humor is one of the highest forms of comedy...

I ran an Adventurer's League game about a year ago. One of the players played a Champion Fighter. He started without a ranged weapon, going the traditional route of great weapons, and would occasionally wind up out of reach of an enemy. I (and a few other players) would usually jokingly suggest "Throw your sword!"

We're playing through Storm King's Thunder, and we eventually got our hands on a Giant Slayer (very handy in this adventure). One time he actually decided to throw it when he ended up about 10 feet away from a giant. He missed, and the giant spent his turn to pick it up and run off. The party had a minor freak out, but they recovered it without too much trouble.

Eventually the player decided to pick up a longbow for those situations where he couldn't reliably get into melee. Now when he winds up too far from a target, we shout "Throw your bow!" (He's actually done it a few times.)



At a different table I played at, one of the players was caught in a compromising position by a guard. He hesitated for a little while out-of-character, and wasn't sure what to do. As a joke, I suggested "Snap his neck." Without skipping a beat, the player agreed. "No-one can ever know." The rest of the table erupted into a giggle fit. Every now and then, I make that suggestion to players at my table. Usually my tables have at least one person who knows how to respond to it.


I also hand out little index card placards when people do something funny or memorable, which we kind of treat as achievements. They sit in front of the players and we reference them frequently. Some of my favorites include:

massive shaft
not afraid of yetis
that was supposed to be a compliment
afraid of yetis
the big muscly ones
on brand™

Recently, I've had more of a shift towards recording the exact quotes:

*apprehensively* "These trees look kind of shady."
"In the interests of negotiation, I'm going to shoot it."
"I'm even not better at that."

[ImproperJustice]

Following every successful battle our Pcs twirl their weapons and sing:
Duh de duh duh duh, da duhn de duh!


Also, we once had one of those guys. The kinda guy that never reads the rules but wants to break the game. No matter how many times we explained to him the concept of you can move and attack on your turn, he would always try to find some way to take multiple actions. Then bring the game to a screaching halt by arguing for 10-15minutes about why he should. He even stated that he would wear the GM down eventually until he would get his way.

Finally, another player had all he could take and during on of the guys rants, the other player interjected:

“GM! Can I toss a fireball, stab those two guys, teleport, *blank off, and blankety, blank, blank blank and mow the blanking lawn?”

The group as a whole responded with such a mix of shock and laughter, that the problem player shrank lile 3 sizes, and I think actually started to realize how negative his behavior was being taken by the rest of the group. I think he thought he was being entertaining.

He never fussed about the actiom economy again, and we played together for many years after.
Anytime someone tried stretching the rules, someone in out group always says:
“Hey, let’s not try to mow the lawn here.”

[Bubzors]

In one campaign my group played in we found a wagon with a small hidden area used for smuggling goods. We thought it was super cool and kept it, much to the surprise of our DM.

Immediately after this we started trekking all over the game world chasing down the BBEG so there was a lot of roaming around. I made a silly reference to the country song "Should Have Been a Cowboy" by Toby Keith and played it for those who hadn't heard it before. (Its a ridiculous classic country song, look it up. Wait for the chorus) Everyone loved it.

From that point forward the one player had the song chorus Queued up on his phone as a bookmark every time we traveled long distance overland and blasted it.

DM: You roll out of town on your journey to Dwarven Kingdom. After a week...

Phone: SHOULD'VE BEEN A COWBOY, SHOULD'VE LEARNED TO ROAM AND RIDE!!!

Fast forward a year of real time and 12 levels later and we have spent nearly all our expendable income on the wagon. Hired a driver named Steve whom we handed any magic item we couldn't use or want. Paid him luxuriously. The wagon was both physically and magically altered. Had trophies of all of our major kills. It became the thing of legends.

In other campaigns we still randomly start singing the chorus during travel descriptions.

[Finback]

We're in CoS, and we encountered three peasants, scrounging up wood in the forest.
<DM, doing silly mock-Scandanavian accent> oh, ja, we are collecting the woods for our families, they are starving, it is so hard to find the wood
*players look at the FOREST.*
<me> Do.. do they not see the trees, for the forest?
<other player> wait, are they EATING the wood?

And since then, we are convinced there are were-beavers in Barovia. They *are* our friends though, and they became such an injoke, the DM keeps having us stumble across them in weird situations.

*************

Oh, and we also began logging all the weird phrases and quotes as the names of songs from a death metal album. The album, I'll have to look up later, but included such hits as "CROWBAR OUT THE HAG'S TEETH", "SHOVE YOUR FIST IN THE POISON SOCKET", and "PISS IN THE BLOOD BUCKET". But that PC died, and I have put his sheet somewhere..

[MoiMagnus]

In our last campaign (not 5e, homebrew DnD instead), the high level part had a lot of kingdom ruling.

We had one player, paladin of a LG god, had a lot of "stupid" decision he would take.
(During the epilogue of the campaign, the DM described a painting of his character talking about a plan for the upcoming invasion to the queen, while its loyal generals were facepalming behind).

The two events that were "running gag" were:
1) The time when he run with our elite guard in a middle of an empty place, which was obviously trapped with a nuke-like explosion, thinking that its personal magical protection would be enough to protect the full elite guard. (He survived, but alone...)
2) The time when he tried to argue that "We should totally fund this building because the DM wrote 'greatly increase economic power of the city, slightly decrease stability of the city' on it", but it was a temple of Asmodeos, and we had to explain him that no, his deity would probably not like him funding a temple of its sworn enemy.

The other big "running gag" was replaceable side-kick.
+ This same paladin has a a pet warg as a mount. And latter traded it for a pet Tyrannosaurus Rex as a mount.
+ Another character (priest of Bahamut) had a small dragon-like creature as a mount.
+ Another character managed to become Queen of the empire, and had a personal guard as a side-kick.
=> It is reasonable to consider the 3 of them died in average once per session. And our character quickly assumed that they were constantly dying and being replaced multiple times between each game sessions too.

[JeenLeen]

Not quite sure if it fits, but our first table-top RPG by our current DM had an insane, evil, powerful wizard/melee dude named Richard as an NPC. Very clearly lifted from the Looking for Group comic.

Since then, almost every game our group has done has had some insane and powerful NPC named Richard in it, usually with at least an alien if not evil morality. To the degree that, when one isn't present, we state it explicitly to be polite to the team. It has led to us asking, when people talk about an NPC, "Is it Richard?" or a sudden, unreasonable look of fear when we are introduced to Richard.

[DwarfDM]

Does a 23 hit?

We once had a DM Who cheated. Because he wanted to win. Whenever we were winnen he suddenly startend to roll realy high. At one moment we caught him. (A creatures with a +3 got a 23 but it was no natural 20.) He doesn't play with us anymore but whenever someone rolls a 23 on an attack roll we ask: "Does a 23 hit?" With a sarcastic tone.

[Mith]

My first D&D character (back in junior high) was annihalated after drawing a Jack of Clubs (Death) from a Deck of Many Things, and losing the fight.

Now my friends and I played a lot of cards, and were not always careful with keeping track of the cards. And the first card to disappear from every deck that lost cards, was the Jack of Clubs. It was kind of bizarre.

Also, there is a classic "feed the halfling to the dragon." technique for running away.