Silly jokes becoming plot points

[King of Nowhere]

sometimes, we do things as silly one-off jokes, but they end up later being relevant to the plot.

i was playing a monk who's basically a parody of the "misery builds character" and "wax on, wax off" training styles. in that this character trains in the most outlandish, silliest ways I can imagine. includes using sandpaper as underwear and peeing against the wind while trying to dodge.
and I would tell stories about my monastery, that worked on similar principles. There was a challenge to test equilibrium that involved assuming a pose in the courtyard, and standing perfectly still. If you were stll enough, pigeons would land on you, and eventually they'd defecate on you. The contest involved a bunch of monks standing in the pose all day in the courtyard, gathering pigeon droppings, and at the end of the day their robes would be weighted and the monk who was shat upon the most was declared the winnder. one of the monks at the dojo was unbeatable at that "game"... until it was discovered that he actually trained a bunch of pigeons to take dumps on him.
this was just one of many silly hijinks that my character was involved into, until the party stormed the lair of a villain that was into hybridation experiments and got ahold of a few half-dragon puppies. Some of the players wanted to keep them as companions, but good luck training them... then we remembered that my character knows a guy with ranks in handle animals and enough survivability to deal with dangerous animals. and so we brought those puppies to my old monastery to be trained. problem solved!
(I later had to make penance for the troubles those puppies caused to the monastery; which I did by hiring two guys to drop caltrops in front of me wherever I went).

share your stories of jokes unpredictably becoming plot points

[ShadowSandbag]

I had a character named Dr Algernon Hue in a Blades In The Dark game. Part of his backstory was he faked his own death and was living under a new name, but i initially didnt put too much thought into his past life.

When doing the end-of-session wrap up and experience, the GM would often say Dr Huey instead of Dr Hue. Almost soley because of that, I decided his original name was Huey Smitz when expanding on his Lore. (Smitz also comes from a joke, about Smith being a very common last name). Since then, his secret life has become a much larger plot point.

[MaryPoppinsYall]

Had a random NPC soldier who by coincidence was described similar to a player. It was session one and I didn't know what the player's looks were gonna be so truly random.

"She sounds like she could be my cousin."

"Roll a D100. 99 or 100 she's your cousin."

"What does all zeros mean?"

"That means she's your cousin now i guess."

Ended up being a small thing that they started helping the army way more than i thought all because they kept checking in on the cousin who was a captain.

[Pex]

Playing a sorcerer as typical for a squishy I hide behind the fighter. Other players would make "those" jokes. I decided to clap back at them making their jokes a real thing. The fighter player played along as we flirted with each other. Campaign ended with our wedding.

[Bulhakov]

I remember a lone female druid NPC I used in my campaign. The players were to stumble upon her hut when trekking through wilderness and be suspicious if she's a witch. I intended her to be just a "resting point" and she was to guide them towards the next plot hook. However, an offhand question/joke about body hair caused one of the players to exclaim (in character) "Of course she's a druid! She has hairy legs! Have you ever heard of a witch with hairy legs!?"
The mood of the session got really silly. The players immediatelly liked the NPC and enjoyed a drunk party with her. One of the players got flirty with her and many sessions later found out to have fathered a child.

[Kane0]

PCs travelling along and notice on their map a place marked 'runed forest', with a dwarven trade post on the road by the forest edge. 'Runes must grow on the trees or something' they say to themselves, have a chuckle and think nothing more of it until they get to the trade post to rest and resupply on their way and they are primarily dealing in lumber marked with magic runes. They have a fun time at the dwarven lumberjack's expense amd continue on their journey.

Cut to about a month game-time later and the party are knee deep in political intrigue as unrest grips the city to the north and there is talk of a coup in the works. One of their scant few solid leads is an intricately carved wooden mug with some odd markings on it...

[PhoenixPhyre]

Less plot point than setting canon, but...

I had a player whose character[0] was deeply racist. In the WH40k Imperium mold. Believe his goddess[1] had told him to purge all the uncleanness (ie anything not human, elf, halfling, or dwarf) so that the faithful followers wouldn't have to worry about sinning by being around them.

I wanted to tweak his nose. So I created an in-universe document where a researcher had written evidence that humans had actually derived from goblins (not the other way around)--specifically that humans were originally artificial creations based on goblin stock. As were orcs. Character refused to believe it, got mad, etc. Much fun was had by all.

About 2 weeks later, I realized...wait. That makes tons of sense for the setting. It put things in a tremendous new light and was very productive in answering a bunch of questions I'd had about how the races connected. So it became real. And is now a centerpiece of the setting.

[0] not the player, it was conscious, open, and played for laughs. Teenagers...
[1] who was the goddess of hearth, life, and family. Notoriously pacifistic. He was really getting his power from the god of practical jokes, who thought it would be tremendously funny to snipe a few worshippers of the most peaceful, inoffensive goddess around and make them into genocidal zealots. Because he's just kinda that way.

[LibraryOgre]

In early 4e, we had someone play a Dragonborn named Tyrranous Rex. This quickly grew into the Rex family, including elder brother and family patriarch Oedipus Rex, who lived, not at Colonus, but at Colonoscopy. Over the course of the game, we had a number of members of the Rex family... and we also had a Warforged Druid named Optimus Prime, who talked like Wreck-Gar.

[Telok]

I put a donkey in the last Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e game I DM'ed. It had three "stats"; 'just fast enough', 'true immortality', and 'read the script'. No reason, just a whim, not a plot point or anything...

Naturally the players glommed on to it, came up with theories, assigned it massive importance, and dragged it everywhere. They actually made real use of it. If I knew a fight wasn't serious the donkey would wander over behind the best cover and take a nap. If things were super deadly it would bolt at the first sound. If something was certain death they couldn't get it to go there no matter what. Bloody thing turned into the perfect danger level barometer despite being a normal and (almost) regular donkey.

Next campaign I'll drop a random mention of it in a news story and see what they do.

[animorte]

Prepare yourself for the classic poop jokes from elementary school.

My very first session of my very first D&D game ever:

It was in 3.5e. My brother had a Dragonborn Fighter. He needs to go number 2. Came back to the table and said, “So my character also has to go take a s*** outside while you guys went in the cabin.”

I don’t remember the skill check that followed for something very soon after, but he hits a critical one, discovering that he didn’t clean up the poop and tracked it in. Now it’s on the frame of the door. Instead of cleaning it up, he decides to decorate the door with a symbol from his tribe… in poop.

Later on he and some fellow tribe members become renowned for being able to track down each other and maintain communication via their “language of flatulence and defecation.”

The S***stalkers

[Pauly]

In a Supers game I rolled up a character who was a functional (i.e. not humaniform) robot with a stealth mode. I declared my stealth mode was transforming into a Coke machine, complete with dark glasses.

As our team gained renown I enquired as to how much coin I would get if I sold out to Pepsi.

Cue the DM making my character a pivotal maguffin in the cola wars, fought with real guns and bombs in full shadowrun style.

[Alcore]

Bob, the Axe Merchant.


A player wanted an axe. A magical axe that he failed the availability roll for. Kept wanting an axe over the adventure that Bob was born and placed into the next town. He got his axe.

The party needed a mythical weapon reforged and decided to go to Bob, for some reason, who was a traveling merchant. So they find him and he takes the sword and hands them a 'reforged' axe...



He later became a brick joke as a necromancer had a skeletal champion covered in axes and, despite being mindless, was happy to espouse the virtues of axes and shout "GET YOUR AXES AT BOB'S AXES!"

The party then carried the skull around for a cleric to resurrect...

[SimonMoon6]

I've had a few NPCs who had rather silly introductions to the PCs.

Back in first edition days, the party was on an island inhabited by beholders. Just for fun, I rolled for a random encounter with the table in the DMG. I rolled up an ogre. One of the players asked, "What's an ogre doing on an island full of beholders?" I answered with "Running away!" And so they met up with this ogre who was sensibly running away from beholders. They teamed up due to the circumstances, and "Bob the Ogre" ended up being one of the mainstay NPCs in this campaign.

In a completely different and rather unique campaign, there was a chicken. Now, this chicken had asked what his fate would be (he asked the farmer that owned him). After receiving his answer, the chicken was on a quest. Strangely, the chicken believed that Whigs were the opposite of Tories (having only heard of the Tory party in the context of American history and only knowing the part where the Whigs and the Tories were rivals). So, when this chicken met the party, he jumped on the head of one of the PCs and was delighted to find out that this was real hair growing on this person's head. Since it wasn't a wig (Whig), it must be a Tory. Therefore, the chicken had accomplished his fate (or so he thought). After all, the farmer had told him that his fate was: Chicken Cacciatore ("Chicken, catch a Tory!").

That chicken became the companion of one of the other PCs. This chicken wasn't really capable in any significant way but he was another character who could take actions and every now and then, a great result could happen (like, one lucky hit with a flame cannon).

The farmer did eventually come looking for the chicken, but the farmer was a minor villain, who was parodying a character from a really lame superhero RPG that one of the other players had run. In that game, there was a hero called "Armor 2000" (which was already a bit out of date). Well, this farmer merged with his high-tech tractor to become Farmer 2000. Eh, he was just a throwaway villain. But the chicken stood the test of time.

[King of Nowhere]

I wish we had an upvote button, there are some real fun stories there...

A character in the current campaign (named Aidon) started with a debt to the mobsters. And he was the target of stereotypical intimidation tactics.
At some point somebody wrote "aidon cuckhold" on the wall of what was the party's home at the time.
The player took it in stride. In italian, the word for cuckhold translates literally as horned, so he bought a horned helmet and added "investigation services" underneath.
18 levels later, he's still wearing a horned helmet, and he's still introducing himself as "horned Aidon, investigation services".

Another piece of intimidation involved leaving a can of tar and a lighter inside the house. The party did use that equipment, though i don't remember exactly for what.