Running Gags in your games. [All]

[Malfunctioned]

In my gaming group, and I'm sure many others out there, we have many running gags that continue to pop-up no matter what the system so I'm asking you guys if you have any and what your thoughts on them are.

Here are a couple of mine for example.


'It's all right guys! I've got this!'

This phrase keeps on turning up in almost all of my groups games and usually comes before a Crowning Moment of Awesome for the player who says it as well. The first time it was used was in a game of Traveller where the party were trying to negotiate the trading of captured war refugees for the supplies of weaponry they had on their ship from a supposed terrorist gang know as 'The Red Men'. The crew had just delivered a sample of the weapons to the leader of the Red Men and the groups merchant, going by the name of Sallador Saan, was trying to convince them of the worth of the guns.

Sallador: I assure you, these rifles are of the greatest quality in this parsec!
Red Men: (Picking up an assault rifle to inspect it) I'm sure they are, (Points gun at Sallador) Hand them over. Now.
Sallador: (Hands in the air and turning towards the rest of the crew) It's all right guys! I got this! (Beats the Red Man in a dexterity roll to throw a stunstick at his head, the Red Man is knocked unconscious, the rest of the crew draw their guns on the remaining terrorists standing around)
Sallador:....We take slaves now yes?

It also turned up later in that same session when the crew were rescuing a new crew-mate from a derelict military dreadnought that was being assaulted by pirates. They managed to make it up to the still-powered bridge where the new team-mate was hiding out when the sensor systems went crazy, a fleet of around 30 pirate Corsairs (very good pirate spaceships) were surrounding the ship and had launched the crew's only mode of transport off into deep space. The new guy, a vagyr (a dog-man alien) going by the name of Marty Reynolds, looked over to the others and said "It's all right guys! I got this!" and proceeded to get three natural 12's in a row for computer checks in a 2d6 system.
He managed to rig a security beacon to explode, caused the lifts to malfunctioned allowing them to crush the pirates attempting to climb up whilst in zero-g and activated a cargo drone to act as a source of muscle in clearing out the rest of the pirates. They then managed to escape on a pirate ship whilst the derelict dreadnought exploded behind them, taking the 29 other Corsairs with them.

That's just two uses of the phrases, I'll have some more up when I can remember them. Any examples from you guys?

[Dhavaer]

In a series of d20 Modern games I used to run, Italian restaurants. somehow whenever anyone when out to eat, it was Italian. I don't even eat Italian food, pizza and pasta notwithstanding.

[Scoot]

"Donkey has no shame"

Because he dosen't wear pants, and it comes up in the strangest moments.

When he was getting a piggyback ride from the Paladin for example...

[The Glyphstone]

Well, the game I was running for a while had a repeating gag involving a troll. They first met him standing in the middle of the road in the wilderness, and when they got close, he told them it was a toll bridge that cost 100 gold. On a dirt road in the middle of the forest, with no water in sight. He had just heard about toll bridges from another troll, but didn't know what they were beyond people pay you money to get past them. I expected it to be an amusing semi-random encounter, but instead the party monk explained to him what a toll bridge was, and he happily trundled off into the forest looking for a river.

The next time, they were going through a different part of a different forest, and they come to a little stream - like, ankle deep - crossing the path. The troll is standing there, and demands 100 gold to cross his toll bridge (the monk had said a Bridge was where the road crosses water). The monk did some more explaining on the point that bridges crossed water you couldn't cross normally, and the troll trundled off again.

I had intended for him to show up a few more times 'guarding' progressively bigger 'bridges', but the game petered out due to time constraints.

[Kaiyanwang]

I had many in my previous group, but are not translable because were jokes and pun linked with the italian dialect of the zone..

[Fouredged Sword]

in nWoD the life spells don't effect cloths. That made my lifemage spend most of the game absolutly naked. That and the force mage lit him on fire and threw him at werewolves. He was a melee monkey, he could take it. It was a odd game. There was a running joke that the trauma of a flaming naked man flying at you caused more damage than the punching.

[Serpentine]

Bilbo's Biggun.

I think my then-DM just wanted to throw in a random book to be found when someone pilfered a bookshelf or somesuch. So the player found Bilbo's Biggun, a book of the erotic adventures of a certain rapscalion hobbit. Full of graphic scenes, and exciting illustrations...

Sometime later, someone looked in another bookshelf. Just for fun, same DM gave it a 1% chance of containing a copy of that same book. Whaddayano, he rolled a 100.

From then on, just about any place involving books (and some not) had a copy of Bilbo's Biggun.

It is a very popular text...

[ninja_penguin]

If an NPC is not a setting established NPC, they are immediately named as some sort of game show host.

This is why there's a pair of dwarven brothers named Trabek and Sajak, and why the group's butler is Foxworthy.

[PersonMan]

In my level 21 campaign, I'm (accidentally) fairly stingy with the treasure, and whenever the players enter an actual dungeon crawl there are plenty of locked chests and the like. All are trapped, and have DC 25 Open Lock locks. Inside, invariably, is nothing, but there is a secret compartment. Inside the (trapped) secret compartment is nothing but another (trapped) secret compartment. Inside that is...a single copper piece.

[Starscream]

I have a recurring antagonist named Kamro, a white dragon, who has become like an evil version of Inspector Zenigata.

Kamro just keeps showing up in a desperate attempt to destroy the heroes, and keeps failing. The first couple of times I kept having him escape on purpose, because I was saving him for a final showdown. But to my surprise the players liked the character, and have basically stopped trying to kill him entirely.

Which is reasonable. They got his hoard (his reason for vengeance). They get xp for beating him. And while I try to make him a little tougher each time, the players have long since eclipsed him in power and could take him down hard if they ever wanted to.

Maybe someday I'll try to make Kamro a legitimate threat again, but for now his function is to turn up at the most inconvenient time, have something horrible happen to him (sometimes not even at the hands of the players, but whatever more formidable enemy they are facing) and run off with his tail between his legs, swearing vengeance anew. He's the D&D equivalent of "Why universe hate Waspinator?"

[Eloi]

There is a running gag in my narration for introductions to dungeons, because I always preface it the same way.
"You see a complex tunnel system that is like any other complex tunnel system but..."

[Cookiemobsta]

For one (relatively short-lived) campaign, we determined that a certain character's DM was the Unreal Tournament announcer. Thus, whenever we used great cleave, we heard MULTIKILL and UNSTOPPABLE boom from the heavens.

[Drake Gryphon]

I was playing a in a shadow run game where we found out it is a free action to slap the s*** out of the technomancer. We also discovered p***ing yourself is a free action, but s***ing yourself is a standard.

[DaTedinator]

In one game I had a Shifter Barbarian/Variant Paladin/Warshaper named Cleave, who kept a running tally of everything he'd ever killed... in song. And whenever he killed something else, he'd sing the whole song, then add them onto the list. I sort of handwaved anything he'd killed in the past (i.e., before the campaign started), but I picked up starting with the the first thing he ever killed, and ending with the last. It eventually went on for a long time, and frequently mocked other party members for their inadequacies. "Cleave's stupid friends get tricked by bad wolves [Worgs]; Cleave kill bad wolves." Or "Cleave save [character's name]'s scrawny heiny from ankhegs by killing them all."

Cleave also had pretty much the greatest death of any of my characters, ever. We accidentally screwed up the plot, and because the DM was a straightforward, living-world kinda guy, because we happened to go to the place with the gigantic dragon, it attacked us, even though he'd been trying to get us to do other things and level up first. It's natural armor was so high, none of us could hit it. So Cleave tossed his axe aside, shifted (gaining a bite and wings), and flew right up to its mouth, getting it to swallow him whole. Cleave then tore him up from the inside, opting to dig deeper rather than cut his way out, which the DM ruled would let him deal more damage as long as we didn't use that tactic again.

So, he managed to kill the dragon, at the cost of his life. However, one of the other party members grabbed his holy avenger axe, which became invested with Cleave's spirit, and became an intelligent legacy weapon, which sang every time it killed something.

[CoffeeIncluded]

We have absolutely horrible luck in our games, especially me. I'm talking rolling a natural 1 in almost every post. And whenever I actually hit something, everybody else ends up with bad luck.

[Il_Vec]

One running joke is my Frenzied Berserker's glass cannon syndrome. We keep track of how many times he's dropped below -10, right now his death count is 12. And always acompanied by his motto: "Better to die killin'."

Another running gag is the group's passion for the Mule. They never tire of mule jokes, and praising the mule's superiority over the horse.

Another kinda "gag" is we always point out we have an overflow of Dwarves. Since 3 of the players decided that Dwarves are the most awesome race, we have a LOT of dwarf Pcs and npcs, including several Druid Dwarves and many others that do not live in ye old typical mountain dwarf city.

[Closak]

I told you to slay the dragon! Not lay the dragon!: This is very common whenever i'm involved.
What, there's a big bad dragon rampaging across the countryside...do you happen to know it's gender? Female you say eh? Interesting...


The man in the black coat: In all campaigns, regardless of setting, there is a man in a black coat who keeps showing up, attacking him results in instant curbstomp. It's heavily implied it's the same guy every time despite the completely different settings.
If you don't attack him he will instead send you on quests or give you information.

[PersonMan]

In a PBP game I'm playing in my best roll has been an 11. Luckily, a good chunk of my class features(bard) don't need attack rolls, otherwise...

[Kylarra]

A few players tend to have low Perception/Awareness/Spot totals, so when they inevitably roll poorly on one of those, we joke that they are just barely aware that they are in a room.

[PersonMan]

A few players tend to have low Perception/Awareness/Spot totals, so when they inevitably roll poorly on one of those, we joke that they are just barely aware that they are in a room.

I love doing this.
Player: I search [the door] for traps.
Die: 1
Me: You find...a door.
Player: Natural 1, right?
Me: Yep.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The artificer Gizmo and his ability to appear anywhere at anytime.

[Leecros]

we had three running gags.

1. Smithpants would randomly appear and shout "BOOM! HEADSHOT!" then run off.

2. The Wizard; his name is just The Wizard. He has an enormous blue head(Wizard of oz). He was the guy we went to to enchant stuff. he gave us a box that we put equipment in and it appears there and he had the same box. Basically we would pass notes or items. The Wizard would NEVER get the enchantment right and would always mess something up or not get the effect that we wanted.

3.and the chain shirt that was always backwards(courtesy of The Wizard)

[Jair Barik]

The DM used a fantasy sound track that included one piece of music that starts with a guy rolling a dice then going 'Uh-oh' before the music actually starts. This quickly turned into a running gag with important dice rolls always being rolled in a noisy and overly dramatic fashion with the roller going 'Uh-oh' regardless of what was rolled up (or before they even looked at the dice in many cases). Also 'don't go up the chimney. Starting where our last session left off the party fighter was stuck in a spiders web in a wizards chimney with said spider bearing down on him. Over the course of this session the fighter lost most of his armour and weapons to a Rust monster he encountered in a room he accessed via the chimney (he wasn't aware what it was) and then died by having a Howler bullrush him down the same chimney (from the top floor of the tower with the monster dying as well). So yeah.... Don't go up the chimney.

[Ishcumbeebeeda]

In my last RL group we used nat ones and nat twenties on skills and I almost always nat oned my spot checks. (And really most checks, the dice HATED me that game.) So you'd routinely here me burst out with things like "OH GOD I"VE BEEN STRUCK BLIND!" or "My that looks suspiciously like skin!" only to have someone tell me to open my eyes. (As well as the usual jokes like "I don't see **** captain!" and of course screaming out "I'm being quiet you can't hear me cuz I'm awesome!" when I nat oned my move silently.)

[Jair Barik]

In my last RL group we used nat ones and nat twenties on skills and I almost always nat oned my spot checks. (And really most checks, the dice HATED me that game.) So you'd routinely here me burst out with things like "OH GOD I"VE BEEN STRUCK BLIND!" or "My that looks suspiciously like skin!" only to have someone tell me to open my eyes. (As well as the usual jokes like "I don't see **** captain!" and of course screaming out "I'm being quiet you can't hear me cuz I'm awesome!" when I nat oned my move silently.)

We had a similar experience with a nat 20 on a Knowledge (Religion) check. So....does that mean your character knows absolutely everything about the Gods, life the Universe and everything?

[gallagher]

starting with an all-evil campaign, where we decided that we would start biting people and telling they are now vampires (which, of course, they werent), and continuing to today, where we have probably caused a few hundred NPCs, some main villains, and one PC from a new guy who was annoying the bejeezus out of me, to all commit suicide (the pc in question rerolled and then became a decent player)

interestingly enough, i was a chaotic good character and nearly killed the entire party but i was surviving easily. i bit a lowly guard for the fun of it, and it turned out he was a paladin... whoops. he tried to smite evil me, thinking i am a vampire, and didnt hit me. he spent the rest of the evening detecting evil and trying to smite me, but the evil-ometer was saying i am CG, and the smiting wasnt working. thinking that i somehow figured out a way to mess with their divine powers or something, an entire league of pally's started tracking us because we are vampires and must be stopped. of course, they can make all their saves because they are all optimized out the wazoo, so our casters arent doing much to help. our archer couldnt do much damage, as he is an archer. i, however, the barbarian/frenzied berserker leap attacker completely demolished them.

[PersonMan]

In a recent game/campaign(we're not sure yet) I played in, my character mispronounced every single name he was given(it was an Arabian-ish-inspired-sorta setting) whenever he wasn't around the people, but inexplicably pronounced the names perfectly whenever they were around. For example, we needed to find Mahmut, and until I was talking to him or the quest-giver, I called him Mammoth. Katte(or something) became Cutter, etc.

[The Shadowmind]

We had a similar experience with a nat 20 on a Knowledge (Religion) check. So....does that mean your character knows absolutely everything about the Gods, life the Universe and everything?

They know the answer is 42, but they still don't know the question, this applies to all knowledge checks.

[The Glyphstone]

We had a similar experience with a nat 20 on a Knowledge (Religion) check. So....does that mean your character knows absolutely everything about the Gods, life the Universe and everything?

Thankfully, without houserules skill checks do not auto-succeed or auto-fail on natural 1s or 20s. Though when they do, hilarity often ensues (see also, Halfling Moon Jumpers).

[kladams707]

Let's see, the GM had the mentally challenged carriage/starship washer (that used acid to clean the modes of conveyance).

The GM also had a celestial perpetually confused on the material plan, and could only be coherent only on his plane or if the person he was talking to was drunk.