Your Best Plot Derailment

[horus42]

I bet that there's probably been a thread like this before, but if there was, I haven't seen it. So, I guess this one's pretty self explanatory. Just post the best/funniest/most epic derailment of a plot you've ever seen or been a part of.

Obligatory first post example:

My friends and I were playing a Dark Ages V:tM chronicle, the first one that our Storyteller had ever run. When Mr. Exposition came out and told us his plan, (which was dumb and wouldn't have worked anyway) We just said "Nah. We'll go do our own thing." Our own thing, incidentally, was to use my supercool Tzimisce fleshcrafting powers (a.k.a. Vicissitude) to make myself look like various nobles, and then kill them, thus taking their place. Eventually, I had taken over Ireland. Good times...

[JaxGaret]

One of my characters was a (3.5e) Minotaur Forsaker, Kragh. Evil campaign, all of the PCs are hired by the BBEG to do his bidding. So the party is back at the BBEG's residence, and Kragh gets stuck in the BBEG's Mirror of Entrapment for a couple of minutes. After the BBEG releases Kragh from the mirror, Kragh bellows "STUPID MIRR-OR!" and smashes it to bits.

Now, this is the mirror of entrapment that the BBEG had been using to store a collection of monsters that he needed for certain spells, as well as several of his enemies that he had managed to subdue and stuff in there.

The look on the DM's face was priceless. He just said "Okay, we're stopping tonight's session here while I figure out exactly what the heck is going to happen."

[only1doug]

very minor derail:

DnD 3.5: Having followed the clues leading to the enemy being located in a 300' tall tower...

"walking around the tower you find no doors on the ground floor, the only way in is to through the roof..."

..."nah, I have a adamantine Maul, Lets make ourselves a door"

...

...

"Ok, so you step over the rubble and have successfully bypassed all the adventure I have prepared, give me 10 mins to read up about this level of the tower"

[L'intrigant]

The penguin. The penguin was definitely the best. This wasn't just a random passing joke the GM (this was GURPS, and the GM refused to be called a "dungeon master") pulled out of nowhere. We were in a "very high mana" world, meaning that spells were insanely effective and a vivid imagination could usually reshape reality even without magic training. My character was from a low mana world, meaning she not only had never seen magic, but didn't even believe it existed. The shock of winding up in this world took a toll on her mind...

She started randomly staring off into space, then coming back and saying "Sorry. Penguin distracted me." No penguin there. We were walking along randomly in a tranquil forest, and she broke down screaming "That penguin needs to shut his mouth! Er...beak. Whatever." No penguin around. We went to book transportation and the guy asked for money for five. This was odd, since there were only four of us. When our leader asked why five, the guy pointed behind us next to my character. Sure enough, there was a penguin there.

The penguin then latched onto our leader, who named it Jim. Within two hours, the girls we were sent to escort had been long gone and our leader had gone through conception, labor, and childbirth for two healthy little penguin babies of whom Jim was the father. Hilarity ensued.

[mcv]

I don't know if it counts if it happened by accident. In a medieval GURPS Mage: The Ascension game, I accidentally destroyed the world, when our intention was to save it.

Other than that, there's been the classic "your employer is dead. who could have killed him?" "So you mean we don't get paid?" thing.

[Korivan]

Flight+Invisibility or any good utility/mobility spell against a DM not familier with magic but still allows mages. "You mean we were supposed to fight our way to the mountain fortress over HOW MANY DAYS!!!...nah, we'll be there by lunch."

[BloodyAngel]

I've a few fun moments from game.

My favorite was when my Fey'ri sorcerer (teifling elves from FR) managed to destroy a far more powerful succubus-esque sorceress through profuse use of sneakitude. (It's a real word, I swear!) Said sorceress had been making many a pass at me, as I was the only evil member of a then, good and neutral party. (They would all circle the gutter later. Oops. *Palpatine laugh*) Sitting in her little castle, scry-proof and well-defended, as well as a FAR more potent sorceress than I was, she figured she was pretty well invincible. Our plan involved creative use of polymorph, and not in the way most are thinking. I sent word to her that I was tired of losing, and ready to switch sides... provided I could bring my lover (a little ex-slave girl) and infant daughter (who's mother was said ex-slave girl). She agreed in traditional "Sure sure... I would never harm them" fashion, and began setting up what was likely an elaborate plan to kill us all.

Instead, upon my arrival... she was somewhat disappointed to find that my "lover" was actually our party cleric under a polymorph spell... and that the defenseless infant was our barbarian. One quick dispel and an AMF later, and she wished she hadn't locked us in her tower alone. There are few things more hilarious than defeating a villain by throwing your infant girl at her, who then turns into an enraged amazon and rips her apart, bare handed. Technically, the barbarian was the one who killed a major villain in three rounds, but I got the satisfaction of sitting back with a smirk and watching her face as she realized I'd pulled one over on her. She had been smugly superior to me the entire campaign thus far, so I got a nice giggle from it.

[Badgercloak]

I was introducing some friends to D&D and ran an intro game for them to cut their teeth on.

A straight forward no plot, no reason dungeon crawl. In a room they found a cannibal goblin munching on his family. They Charmed him. They called him Steve.

They came to a room with a Hydra. The NPC ranger used Steve to distract the Hydra. They grabbed Steves corpse and begged for him to be resed.

Steve got resed. Then they gave him assless leather chaps.

[Glimbur]

So the party gets hired to go investigate the disappearance of serfs from a thorp. The noble makes it clear that returning them alive would be preferred, but evidence of their death is enough. The goal is to discourage further serfs from running off. All well and good so far.

They go investigate the village and find that everything seems to have been packed up to leave. A few coppers and some "lovely filth" are all that's left in the huts. The trail leads to the forest.

In the forest, they run into some krenshars. They butcher them.

Then they find another krenshar in a pit. As they debate what to do with it, two serfs come up and start throwing rocks at it. You see, in this campaign world, there are no wizards, clerics, etc. Magical Beasts and other magic things bleed magic which anyone can use to make magic items. The peasants are killing them en-masse.

The PC's are led back to the camp. They meet the wandering minstrel who led the peasants off into the woods on this plan, as well as the lord's ranger who is helping them. I fully expected the PC's to attack, but they negotiated. Ok, I figured they would get the serfs to go back to farming. Nope, they have a better idea. After killing an owlbear that was terrorizing the area, they go back to town and talk to another noble.

They buy serfs from this noble to go work the abandoned thorp.

So now my PC's have friends in the woods that are gathering magic. This will end poorly, I am sure.

[rayne_dragon]

I recently joined a 4e game and two sessions ago our DM threw our first Solo monster at us when we tried to rest (and we were pretty exhausted at that point). We bloodied him and he ran away promising to get us some day. The we locked ourselved in a room and took an extended rest only to be woken in the morning by him blowing up the door with an explosive. We proceeded to butcher him like a pig. After that encounter our DM said (in a disappointed tone), "Ohhh- and he was supposed to be a reoccuring character too."

I don't make a habit of messing up plots unless I have a really bad DM, which has been pretty rare.

[horus42]

I've a few fun moments from game.

My favorite was when my Fey'ri sorcerer (teifling elves from FR) managed to destroy a far more powerful succubus-esque sorceress through profuse use of sneakitude. (It's a real word, I swear!)

I love out-sneaking the villains and/or the GM/DM/ST. One time, in a nWoD chronicle, our Storyteller was trying to get us to try and get some information we could use to blackmail a Senator. He really counted on us to fight our way through, and was saying things like, "Get ready for this next scene guys. It's gonna take at least two hours."

There were 6 of us total, 5 PCs and his Uber-powerful-ball-of-Deus-Ex-Machina DMPC. My friend (the party's social monkey) and I (the party's stealth monkey) went in by ourselves, and completed the whole sidequest in 15 minutes.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

My last campaign involved 2 groups of 5 PCs playing on different nights, both working simultaneously in the same world towards the same goal though they hadn't yet met in-game. At 4th level, one party decided that they would be safe from the villains if they had a mobile, flying, five-story-tall turtle-shaped fortress within which they could carry their home village and tons of armaments and within which they would be undetectable. They statted the whole thing out from the Arms & Equipment and Stronghold Builder's Guides.

Not to be outdone, the other party captured a Githyanki scout ship and retrofitted it to the same purpose.

End-game plot about the Ships of Chaos being unstoppable doomsday machines? Bye-bye. Instead the campaign became more of a stealth/hit-and-run game rather than exploration (since they could get anywhere they wanted), and I eventually had to introduce the Hammer of Baator, the flagship of Dispater's personal interplanar navy, for the endgame.