Favorite/Funny D&D memories.

[crabwizard77]

What are some of your favorite memories of games, and jokes in games?

For example, in one of my games I DM, my players used some junk to make a store dummy look like a kenku. They then named it Jeremy. Later on, one of them glimpsed a construct of some kind on a rooftop, and they were like "Is it Jeremy?"

We all laughed so hard.:smile:

[KorvinStarmast]

The halfling paladin and I planned a stunt to follow a performance for the elf queen (I was playing a Lore Bard) which included me polymorphing him into a giant ape, him grabbing me and climbing the tower of the castle (more or less the King Kong / Fey Ray scene) and then him throwing me off the tower when I turned down his romantic overtures and doing a swan dive. (Spells like feather fall and invisibility were involved).

The other two players were not read in, and their reaction was rather comical (In terms of launching attacks on the HP bag that is a giant ape). When all was said and done, it was one of the highlights of the whole campaign, for me, and much hilarity ensued.
We also promised not to pull surprises like that on the other two again.

[da newt]

My Celestial Warlock grew up in a small coastal fishing village. He has a +1 Rod of the Pact Keeper. It's a telescoping fishing rod and he enjoys telling everyone how he uses it to 'cast' spells ... dad joke level of punny right there.

[Darth Credence]

Before the story, it is important to note that we had a bunch of a new Coke flavor, called the flavor of the future created by AI. It is an unusual flavor that has some fruitiness to it. My wife hates it, but one of the players called it "strangely compelling".

Players are chasing down a group of hill giants. The drakewarden ranger, who speaks giant and dumped intelligence, decides that he would turn himself and his drake invisible, fly up to them, and use thaumaturgy to give himself a deep booming voice to talk to them. Hill giants have an int of 5, so the ranger was definitely smarter than them, for what that's worth.
The ranger starts by telling them to stop what they are doing. The giants stop, and ask if he's God. He tries to describe himself as their conscience, but they don't know what that word means. After trying several different ways to get the idea across, he says, yes, I'm God.

So there I am, role playing a group of four very stupid giants, while he is roleplaying one fairly stupid kobold, and the other players are rolling on the floor laughing. The giants consist of Larry, Darryl, Darryl, and George, and they just don't get anything. The ranger wanted to know how they were supposed to get back to their base, and they went through a bit about trying to figure out from the sun which way to go. Then they talked about waiting til night to follow the star that doesn't move. Ranger, what do you call the star? Giant, like it is completely obvious - the Star. There are talking animals in the forest, and the ranger attempts to convince the giants not to kill the ones that can talk. The giants had never heard one talk, and the kobold tries to explain languages, which they don't get. So the player is starting to make animal noises, saying those are fine, but not noises like when he talks normally. The giant asks about the chicken that made noises like "bok bok bok", kobold says that's fine, as would be a sheep saying Baa, but not if they were saying Bob. Giant hadn't seen a sheep, but said they had a goat that kept making noises like "Heeellllppp meeeee", to which the kobold said that was probably not the right one to eat.

This went on for a good half hour. I would normally have been worried about the other players not having a good time, but it was all clicking together so well, and the others were loving the whole thing. Somehow, we ended up on the giant asking about a fungal growth on his fingers, and the kobold said he should try to get rid of that. The giant started to pull out his fingernail, but the kobold said, no, just the fungus, so the giant started to eat it. The kobold told him to stop, but when the giant found it strangely compelling and had to continue, the players lost it. Game pretty much shut down as we all just riffed on the concept of the strangely compelling fungal growth and drink of the future. When we could finally keep it together enough to finish the game for the day, the kobold told the giants to go about their business, since it was taking them away from the place the party was going and they had no need to fight them.

[J-H]

From Castlevania / Castle Dracula.

1. A duel against a werewolf pack lord, as an alternative to a chase scene.

(Session 2)
Despite all the crowd control, the team was winning,
and so one of the shamans makes her speech,
offering them a deal: She won’t activate the curse of
werewolf transformation on the two people who are
bit, if they agree to let the juvenile wolves hunt and
harry them all the way to the snake-headed witch’s
domain (I am not sure if anyone noticed that hint).

After a bit of discussion, the group and wolves agree
instead on them challenging the pack alpha (or the
one who’s filling that role now) to a fair fight in
exchange for being able to move on un-attacked.
That’s where we left off. I’m going to run a simulation
with dice rolls to see if the Pack Lord has a chance of
taking on 3 PCs at a time, or if he’ll just limit it to two
enemies. The group will be going in with some
resources expended (spell slots, smites, 2/3 barbarian
rages gone, etc.).

(Session 3)
We start off with the duel against the pack lord.
I gave the party some time to figure out if they wanted to switch gear around or do anything else as they travel through the woods, and they did not (they later realized that they could have tried to sneak in a casting of Bless, or moved healing potions around). The paladin also blew half of his Lay on Hands topping up Dmitri instead of having the cleric spend a spell slot.

I go full-on descriptive with Svalbard the Pack Lord. “I shall show these young ones what a true battle is like – not some capped-claw spar!” You see a big werewolf, probably close to seven feet tall. His shoulders are broad and well-muscled, and his grey-tinged brown fur carries several white streaks marking old scars, including one that crosses his left eye, which seems to have a permanent squint. He carries a greataxe in one hand and a shield in the other, and is also wearing an orange-tinted breastplate. “If I triumph, you will see how to fight against greater numbers instead of as the hunters. If I fall, you will see how others may hunt you, and learn in turn that you might live and grow stronger.”
The rest of the party takes seats along one edge of the arena, while Tib (HOrc Paladin) and Dmitri (Dwarf Zealot Barbarian) enter the arena and introduce themselves. Svalbard’s initial axe throw catches them by surprise, as they’re just out of range after their first moves. He gets one more throw in before they close to melee. The combatants also figure out that the silver weapons they are using are “just” normal damage. Svalbard taunts them some and calls out instructional moments to the werewolf juveniles watching:

“Always prepare at least one surprise.”
“A true warrior uses not only his muscle, but his speed and his mind. Watch as they try to flank me, and as I in turn try to outmaneuver-them.”
“Find the weakest enemy; single him out and kill him first!”
“See, he moves to protect the weaker one and distract me. They fight not as individuals, but as part of a pack.”

There’s some moving around and attacks of opportunity on both sides. Tib’s weapon is a silver lance, with disadvantage at 5’, and they have to maneuver accordingly.

Dmitri gets dropped to 0 despite his resistance. Tib moves in and heals him, and the damage mounts on both sides. Dmitri gets dropped again (having started the fight with only one Rage). Svalbard has 10 hit points left and plays cautious, moving back and throwing his axe. He drops Tib to -4, but then another player remembers that Tib is a Half Orc and can instead be dropped to just 1. Tib gets to go, and then it will be Svalbards’s turn, which would likely be fatal with his 3-attack routine. I point out to the party that “If you’re going to cheat, now’s the time.” They don’t seem to figure out a way to do so, and Tib moves forwards to attack… he hits, and does exactly 11 damage, defeating Svalbard.

At the end of the combat, there is exactly 1 hit point left on the field between three combatants. This was epic and tense!


2. From later in the same game. They run across some red skeletons that re-animate a minute after being destroyed. Ratel (monk)'s player takes an upper arm bone from one of them. Several sessions later there's a discussion about turning enemies into weapons. He pulls it out and says "I want to turn this into a club. It would be humerus."
Dmitri (barbarian)'s player: "You spent several sessions carrying that around to set up that joke. I hate you."

[Frozenstep]

Once, our party needed to get into a dwarven city that was at war with the drow. Problem is, our bard was a drow who usually disguised themselves. But they tell us they have a plan, and so we trust them.

Once we get in, we find the city doesn't just let people in, they have a whole process which involved an interview within a permanent zone of truth. Nervously, we gave our valid reasons for entering, and waited to see the bard's plan.

Interviewer: Alright, I accept your reasons for entering the city...but we can detect your disguise magic. Tell me, are you a drow?

Drow bard: ...It is something I'm rather ashamed of, but I'll admit it: Half my blood is drow.

DM (out of character): Uh...remember your character's in a zone of truth, and your character's not a half-elf.

Player (our of character): Well, yeah, but I'm not going to say the other half is also drow!

I'm not sure if it really made sense for the city to be open for half-drows, but we were laughing hard enough that I think the DM let it slide.

[Sindal]

This is a 'in the moment' kinda thing

But our party was busy 'lodging' with a family in the woods who were slightly sus.
They offered us food which they claimed was safe but thr forest was behaving weird.

Point of note, our wizard had rolled insight and found thr npc to be believable

Cut to later thst evening where they showed their true colours and tried to feed us to a monster. The wizard, after being confronted by the npc in question, channeled the betrayal by yelling in his face "die, peasant!"

The audacious tone of it made us all laugh

[Beelzebub1111]

In Temple of Elemental Evil there is a room with three gnolls sitting around a cooking fire, when the players bust down the door they all run for their spears laying against the wall. but they do not take them. One pulls a rope that drops a net on the first party member to enter the room. The second gnoll grabs a bag of oil and throws it on the guy in the net, the third one gabs an ember from a tinderbox and tosses it at the player.

The plan went off without a hitch catching the paladin in the net and was unable to get out of the fire he didn't die but was seriously wounded. After that the players suddenly put two and two together that "Oh hey, they have tactics and a plan, we should be on the lookout for setups like this" and suddenly the players were way more aware of their environment.

[firelistener]

Some funny ones:

1. I did an intro scene where the PCs were all mingling at a fancy dinner party. The Half-Orc Barbarian PC walked over to a small table of food, lifted the whole thing, and tilted all the food into his mouth like a cartoon character. I let him roll a 15DC strength and then constitution check for those and he got both easily. One of the most memorable character intros I've seen.

2. I was playing a trickster-type Gnome Fey Warlock. The party walked into this ancient kung-fu master's house, and he was fast asleep on his couch, surrounded by liquor bottles. I raided his pantry and found an expensive bottle of wine, and threw it in my backpack. We wake up the master, and ask him to help us fight a blue dragon since we were way too low level to do so on our own. He was in a bit of a sour mood being woken up, so my character said, "We brought you a gift!" and pulls out the wine bottle I had literally just taken from his kitchen. He goes, "Oh man, this is my favorite! You have some good taste." The whole party got a chuckle out of it.

3. I was DM. The party was exploring a cave, on quest to find a noble lost inside. The noble was invisible and paralyzed on the ground in the middle of the path, having fallen down while sneaking through the cave to reach his stash of magical life-extending elixir ans unable to speak the command word to end his necklace's invisibility spell. The party reached his location, and I describe that they hear a "low muffled groan of pain, coming from the ground in front of them, but see nothing in the dim cave." Without asking me any questions or attempting investigate, the Sorcerer player cast Chromatic Orb with acid damage type and crits. The noble was just melted on the spot, and his invisibility faded away revealing they had just murdered one of the most important people from the city nearby. The campaign took quite a turn for the worse after that.

[Darth Credence]

Your first one reminded me of another one, firelistener. They players were exploring a tower in the feywild, and they found a long hallway with a bunch of doors. Their enemy ducked into one, and they ran after it. There was a trick to how one had to pass through the various doors, and not doing it right meant one came out a different door. Well, it quickly dissolved into a full on Scooby Doo hallway (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScoobyDoobyDoors) with everyone popping in and out. I eventually had Scooby and Shaggy run through eating a sandwich just for the humor value. Describing the large dog and strangely dressed human they passed by was fun.

[Harlequin42]

One that's stuck with me for years - I was running my party through my own attempted 4e conversion of Against the Giants. The party was trying to sneak into the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and, for reasons that I cannot now recall, they decided that the best plan was to try to fast talk their way past the hill giants guarding the front door. I asked the bard's player to roll a Charisma check to set the tone for the interaction and he rolled a 1. He thought for a moment on how to react, opened his mouth to speak, and the barbarian's player cut in with- "We're actually giants, we're just further away than you think!"

This was the same 4e game where the party was so amused at a skill challenge in a published adventure recommending two players make Athletics checks to wrestle to impress an ambivalent NPC with their prowess that, for the rest of that game, the party's warlord and barbarian would attempt to wrestle in every skill challenge. Intimidate a guard? "Winnie and Kayin wrestle." Complete a magic ritual? "Winnie and Kayin wrestle." Pick a lock? "Winnie and Kayin wrestle." Investigate a crime scene? "Winnie and Kayin wrestle."

[Leon]

The Morrowind Campaign as a whole had a lot of memories but for me the The Dire Boar Incident reigns supreme.

The party had been tasked with dealing with some Orsimer pirates and hadn't had too much trouble with them aside from some having escaped, while the Paladin and Rogue decided to try (and fail a lot) at getting onto the boat the Monk and Sorcerer decided to go looking for where the runners had gone and followed a game trail. There was no sign of the pirates but they did find a dire boar going about its business and here in where the problem starts as I read the flavor text word for word out of the Monster manual and those words include "small furious demon eyes"

The Monk leaps into attack and gets badly mangled and tossed aside into a tree, the sorcerer seeing this calmly readies their action to cast shocking grasp and then is charged by the boar, the spell does go off as the boar impacts with the Sorcerer and has singed its head however the boar has hit the sorcerer so hard (crit) that the result is a crimson mess back down past the the game trail.
The Paladin and Rogue have heard the horrific sounds off in the distance and head over to find out what happened and come across first the red mess that was the sorcerer and then the ragdoll monk in a tree. Nearby where it had been before all this was a blacked, gore streaked Boar that the Paladin "heroically" charged it and smote with divine will only to be puzzled when it didn't do much and proceeded to start getting gored allowing the rogue to get some serious damage in while it was distracted.

The "Demon" boar is down and then the Rogue decides to butcher it and then eat it raw (some interesting results later on from that), this encounter had knock on effects through the campaign where things that were just there as part of the scenery (like the boar had been) gave the party real heebie-jeebies.