The things we do for our players...

[NRSASD]

So I just stayed up until 3am my time writing a smutty letter in a coded language because my players thought it would be hilarious if the coded messages they keep intercepting were actually raunchy love letters. The lengths we go to for our fans!

What is the most ridiculous thing you, as a DM or player, have done outside of the game? Not necessarily the most impressive, just the most unnecessarily over the top, I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this, outside of your comfort zone (in a good way).

[Kane0]

One previous DM of mine provided me with prop letters and notes that were artificially aged, torn, words scratched out and all. The best part though was that the letters themselves were 'coded' into wingdings. There was just enough of a cipher provided that I didnt have to pull up a computer to translate it, was a great little side task when it wasn't my turn during sessions

[Grod_The_Giant]

As part of the mid-campaign climax of a superhero game I was running in college, the players were going to have to fight a giant (as in 500ft tall, body-parts-as-separate-creatures giant) robot, so I built an eighteen inch humanoid robot out of K'nex and plopped it down on the battle map.

[Jay R]

In a Champions game, when designing a Superman-like character, I researched the range of speeds of a bullet fired from a gun, to ensure that the character would be "faster than a speeding bullet", as required by the documentation.

I wrote a long backstory for my gnome, involving his hooked hammer. It was an ancestral relic, but he doesn’t know its history. It was owned by his ancestor Grabthar, who used in in a great battle in support of King Warvan and his sons.

This whole story was invented so if he ever learned its history, he would have an opportunity to say, “By Grabthar’s hammer, by the sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged.” [I was designing the character when I heard about Alan Rickman’s death. This was my tribute to him.]

That gnome was known to the elves as Tildring, which means “pointed hammer” in Elvish.

Also, names in general. I aim for linguistic consistency.

In one village, I had a farmer named Johann Bauer, a runaway named Steffan Ausbrecher, a mayor named Heinrich Burger, and an innkeeper named Karl Krüger

I once researched the elvish for “Gold Cloud” (“Glorfain”), to name my character’s horse. Why? Because Golden Cloud was the name of a horse in 1930s Hollywood who was eventually sold to Roy Rogers and re-named Trigger.

One of my PCs had followers named Doli and Felix, who were out to get revenge on the one who killed their five brothers. You have to think in other languages to recognize the connection between those names and Grumpy and Happy.

Back when D&D was new, and it still had hobbits instead of halflings, I did my research into hobbit names by looking at the appendix to the Lord of the Rings. I found the perfect name for a hobbit thief:
"Robin Banks".

[KorvinStarmast]

What is the most ridiculous thing you, as a DM or player, have done outside of the game? Not necessarily the most impressive, just the most unnecessarily over the top, I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this, outside of your comfort zone (in a good way). I have a modest catalogue of song parodies that my bard/me created based on various rock and popular music songs ... plus one case of a tune based on church music from Easter Vigil ... and in one case a created cant/poem of my own invention. They are all posted at PhoenixPhyre's campaign world wiki under Enigma (the name of our party).
The songs all refer to various adventures and battles that the party had.

Artists parodied include, but are not limited to, Led Zepplin, Evanescence, Bruce Springsteen, Judy Collins, Bad Company, the Beatles, Queen, Kansas, R.E.M., Van Halen, Ian Hunter, a traditional folks song called "Molly Malone" and of course Black Sabbath.
Yes, I have eclectic tastes in music.

I tried to do a rendering of Edgar Alan Poe's "The Raven" after we had a battle of four camps against an army raised by a lich, and I could not make it scan. It made me appreciate Poe's unique talent with meter and word smithing even more than I had previously.

One of the more ridiculous things we did with that was have a performance for the queen of a major city/nation where my bard performed the songs. We pulled a stunt at the end with a halfling being polymorphed into a Giant Ape, and then we did something like a re-enactment of the King Kong / Fay Wray 'climb the empire state building' scene ... it was a hoot.

[Jay R]

I tried to do a rendering of Edgar Alan Poe's "The Raven" after we had a battle of four camps against an army raised by a lich, and I could not make it scan. It made me appreciate Poe's unique talent with meter and word smithing even more than I had previously.

It's just using trochees instead of iambs. I once filked "The Raven" into Batman's origin.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's just using trochees instead of iambs. I once filked "The Raven" into Batman's origin.

My problem was getting the words I wanted to sub in that were related to our adventure/battle to overwrite onto the rhythm of the verse as Poe wrote it. I expect tat if I had spent more time on it I'd have probably gotten what I wanted out of it (four stanzas) but sometimes one knows when to cut one's losses.

[gbaji]

In a Champions game, when designing a Superman-like character, I researched the range of speeds of a bullet fired from a gun, to ensure that the character would be "faster than a speeding bullet", as required by the documentation.

I once created a supervillian based on ridiculous amounts of density increase (permanent effect). Then calculated the Roche limit for him. I accounted for this by assuming that his flight ability was some kind of gravity manipulation he used. But the heroes had to deal with this fact when fighting him (he could literally destroy the Earth just by *not* consciously preventing it, which makes knockng him out somewhat problematic).

I don't know if that counts as going the extra mile *for* the players though... :smalltongue:

One of our GMs ran us into a mage who was killed in a fire, and had a journal we needed to read to get clues. So... he wrote in the journal (like lots of stuff, like it was really a journal), and then tossed it in a bonfire, pulled it out before it completely burned, put it out, and then wrapped it up and handed it to us. It's actually pretty darn amauzing how well ink remains readible even on really badly scorched thick paper stock.

[Mastikator]

I once created an entire quest, homebrew items, unique contract, homebrew monsters, etc, for a player that wanted to multiclass into warlock (celestial) just so they could have an encounter with a celestial at the end (where, in doing the quest, they had proven themselves trustworthy).

[King of Nowhere]

I wrote wikipedia-style artcles for fictional nations in my campaign world. They are basically info dumps to give to the players, but more immersive because they are supposed to be in-world documents.
I also wrote dossiers styled as secret service reports.
When building battle maps on roll20, i spent inordinate amounts of time on beautification. I describe magic rituals as electrical circuits, and i mixer exhisting sprites on roll20 to get the desired effect. Once the fight was taking place in a safe room, and i painstackingly put dozens of "protective runes" on the walls

[Jay R]

A couple of decades ago, I ran a Champions game, set in the Silver Age of comics. So I introduced a superhero-centric tabloid.

The campaign introduction included the following paragraphs:

Heroes might be believed to have powers that they don’t really have. There are rumors of a half-man, half-flying-predator creature seen flying around the streets of Gotham at night. Don’t assume that that means the creature can fly, or even that it really exists.

Rumors about heroes are extremely common. In fact, there’s a supermarket tabloid that specializes in them. “The Brave and the Bold” is a source for any rumor about any hero you could ever want to read about, from Forbush-Man to the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. They are responsible for the rumor that Captain America didn’t really die at the end of World War II. They are currently writing an “exposé” about a putative hero team called Sugar and Spike, (who nobody else thinks exists), and are trying to convince everyone that these are merely new costumes and identities for the Golden-Age Fox and the Crow. Nobody takes them seriously, but everybody seems to know what they’re saying, and they outsell the National Enquirer by millions of issues each week.

Between games, I always gave them a few stories from The Brave and The Bold, both for color, and to introduce some plot.

An unknown clown was found beaten to death on the streets of Gotham city. There was no evidence linking the crime to anybody, and the only unusual aspects of the case are that the coroner was unable to take off his white clown makeup and green hair dye, and that his face was frozen in a hideous grin, like the victims in a couple of earlier crimes also in Gotham. The police suspect that his murderer must also be guilty of the other crimes, but no other clues are available. (Of course, Gotham is believed to be a corruption-riddled city worse than anything seen since Chicago in the 1930s, so who knows?)

Meteorologists are unable to explain certain weather conditions in Central City. Blasts of extreme cold, and mini-whirlwinds are being experienced.

There is also evidently a new costumed villain in New York City. The papers there are all talking about the illegal exploits of this “Spider-Man” character, but it’s not entirely clear what crimes he’s committed.

A small town in upstate New York reports that a couple of local crimes have been solved by an “Ant-Man”. A couple of weird weather conditions have been seen in and around Central City (bizarre lightning strikes on a clear day, large amounts of ice in the streets, and whirlwinds that cannot be explained meteorologically).

A small pudgy man in a tuxedo was found cruelly murdered in Gotham City. The name on the handle of his umbrella identifies him as Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot.

People near an air force base in New Mexico claim to have seen a green monster occasionally. The base claims that these are hysterical reports, and says that no such monster could exist. But “The Brave and the Bold” tabloid seems to believe that a really strong hulking brute really exists.

A man wearing a weird suit with question marks all over it has been found with his head caved in at the scene of a Gotham city bank robbery. He has been identified as Edward Nigma, a puzzle editor on a local paper. Nothing in his background explains his presence at the crime scene or his death. He appears to have been beaten severely. “The Brave and the Bold” claims he has been leading a double life as the little-noticed crime fighter “The Question”. (They’ve been running a series exploring the hidden identity of “The Question” for some time, illustrating him as a man with no face.)

In Star City, a modern Robin Hood has appeared, using green arrows with unusual gimmicks.

Each time, there was reference to a brutal murder, or to a half-man/ half-flying-predator vigilante, in Gotham. And there was often an unexplained phenomenon in Metropolis, Central City, Washington, or Coast City. There were also references to Dr. Solar, Dynamo and Noman, and even Captain Sprocket.

It was primarily just to provide color, but I was also slowly giving them clues that the Crime Syndicate (evil versions of the Justice League) were a major villain group.

[Pex]

Map out a tesseract. It mattered to which room a door led to and what direction orientation because it can happen even though you went north from the room you were in you arrive through the east door in the room you enter.

[Slipjig]

Rewrote the lyrics of Tenacious D'S Beelzeboss for a Battle of the Bards between the party Bard and a musically-inclined Wicked Fairy.

Wrote a full adaptation of "Straight Outta Westgate" about the events of the campaign thus far, to be delivered as the opening act of a festival. I then spent three full session with a karaoke track of that song queued up.

I was very sad that neither of these got used in play.

[RazorChain]

I wrote numerous editions of Baldur's Mouth that reflected the state of the city and the PC's exploits. All set up as a real newspaper.

Took a sword with me and knighted one om my players when her character got knighted and gave her a patent of nobility.

Aged letters with calligraphy and wax seals I have done a lot of time.

Lot of bardic songs about the PC's exploit. The chorus of the last one has become a hit. The Paladin is wielding an axe called Dickslapper. So the Chorus goes

He was wielding Dickslapper, Dickslapper,
The mighty clapper
and none could stand before him!

The other players sometimes sing the chorus during the Paladins turn for good luck I guess.

[Tarmor]

I've put a few in-jokes into games (mostly using references to/from movies or TV series we know well) - for example a small puzzle area based on the song "I'll find my way home" (John & Vangelis). I've written one-session games for different RPG's based on stuff we all grew up with (Cthulhu Scooby Doo, Future Cthulhu Gilligan's Island, d20 Oriental Monkey Magic, 5E Battlestar Galactica, Gamma World Wizard of Ox, Paranoia Monty Python's Holy Grail, etc)..

The main thing I've been doing for decade is hand-outs: Maps, history, prophecies, notes, diaries, diagrams, etc. Nearly everything in the image is from our current campaign. Much better now with a computer (graphics programs, word processor, etc) and a printer than it was when everything was hand drawn or written.
https://tarmor21.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/fk-handouts.jpg

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Fan art of the PCs. (I run PbP exclusively so the opportunities for physical props are limited.) Alas that I haven’t had time to do it recently!

[gbaji]

... Paranoia Monty Python's Holy Grail, etc).

This is pretty much how I imagine every Paranoia party...

[Beelzebub1111]

I spent 4 hours trying to figure out how to combine, overlay and resize out two maps for a hex crawl so the players would be able to discover locations and travel on their own and make it feel like they were pinning notes to a map.