gamer traditions

[RandomNPC]

so, what's everyone do at certain landmarks?

when i get a first time player who makes it to three games in a row, and intends to come to more games, a get them a dice pouch designed to look like a critter, and a set of dice.

on the yearmarks of our games (if i remember the general idea of when the game started) there are cupcakes of +1 age for the gamers.

so, any traditions?

[psychoticbarber]

Back when I was employed I used to buy dice for my new players. Right now I'm in school and don't have much in the way of expendable income, so sadly that tradition is currently on hold.

[de-trick]

one of mine that is not for when a new player enters but every gaming day. MAKE SURE THE DM HAS HIS CIGARS

[Hectonkhyres]

If you miss a game, you bring all the food/booze for the next meet. And, when you get back, something truely horrible has happened. One big barbarian dude got in trouble with a god while under the influence and spent the next few weeks skipping everywhere. Ah, good times.

But besides that sort of crap, not much. Every time the phone or doorbell rings, it is echo'd in the gameworld by an ominous roll of thunder or other such sound. Nothing real noteworthy.

[Kurald Galain]

One DM I knew used to suggest experience point penalties for coming to the game session late. We've never actually done that, though.

One tradition we seem to have acquired is, whenever the party is woken early by a rooster or similar loud creature, said creature is blown to little pieces with magic missiles.

[Winged One]

One tradition we seem to have acquired is, whenever the party is woken early by a rooster or similar loud creature, said creature is blown to little pieces with magic missiles.

That's just awsome. I'm giving that idea to our warmage.

Anyway, my turn. At every new town the party of my binder goes to, the party leader, a warmage, always threatens to blow someone up who doesn't deserve it. Well, okay, the second time she deserved something bad, what with the whole reading our minds and learning secrets that my character kills people over thing, but she beat his Sense Motive by one point thanks to her having 2 more CHA than he had WIS, and no one else in the party can Sense Motive worth a damn.

Every magic item I invent bitchslaps people who try to break the game with it.

Pie is evil. It killed the cleric! And it appeared in some apparantly evil painting that killed the game this tradition started in.

After every encounter, my Warblade must do something idiotic to balance how badass he is.

[clarkvalentine]

For each campaign, I or one of the other two mini-painters in our group hand-paints a brand new mini for each PC. Long-time players who move away (we're in a college town, if happens from time to time) may take their character's mini with them as a keepsake.

[truemane]

In one of my first D&D Campaigns, in the magical world of 1st Edition Oriental Adventures, we had a standing joke that, no matter where you went, and no matter how small the town, there was a Magic Shop run by The Little Old Lady. Every town they went to they found the Little Old Lady.

And of course she was a 20th Level Arcane Caster.

And of course she had a pet Tarrasque named Binky.

After a while they tried to convince her to go on adventures with them.

Ahhh....back in the day...

[The_Werebear]

Every session, the party must spend at least five minutes plotting to kill the person who is giving them missions.

[CrazedGoblin]

our group probably spends a little time each session wondering how the wizard is going to try and kill us all

[MandibleBones]

OOC Traditions: "Oh my God cool!" roleplaying XP will be based on the fickle finger of fate (the d6 x 100), and anyone who rolls more than 3 sixes in a row will no longer be allowed to roll the fickle finger of fate.

IC Traditions: "Bob's Meat on a Stick" - an apparently pan-galactic/dimensional chain of fast food selling meat... on a stick.

[Annalia]

To get rid of an NPC/ex-PC: Get him drunk. He will automatically looses his way when trying to solve his beer-induced urges and will become lost in the woods. Even in the middle of a city.

[Green Bean]

In my group's games, there's always a downtrodden fellow selling suspicious looking 'sausage inna bun' in all of the towns. Also, their names seem to follow a theme. Guess what series the DM likes...

[RandomNPC]

Every session, the party must spend at least five minutes plotting to kill the person who is giving them missions.

i forgot that one, are you one of my gamers?

[The_Werebear]

No, that is the group I DM. It is a military campaign, and the leader of the army is an unprincipled weasel who is using the war to his own advantage. However, he is the only one who can actually lead the army, so they really can't kill him without dooming the human race to enslavement.

[Diggorian]

Not a tradition as much as a tendency, if you leave our game we will reminise about all of the stupid or lame things your characters have done amongst ourselves, with any new group members, people who read forums we frequent, and generally anyone that will listen.

[enderrocksonall]

When I was a player our DM was a real tightwad about giving out magic items or gp. Whenever we got a magic item we were drooling with suspense until he told us it was another everburning torch.

Occasionally after an extremely difficult battle we would get a magic weapon like a +1 small gnomish hooked hammer. Whoopee...all of us are human.

Anyway the running joke was that anytime one of the players had to leave the group for RL conflicts, their character always managed to have the most recent magical item we had found on them when they set out for home/were dragged into the sewers by the 40' long tentacles that never bothered anyone else before or after/ got accidentally sacrificed by the cult of Nehrul/ etc.

[hippie_dwarf]

In any dungeon/forest/shady town/evil looking montain/mine/any other adventuring location you can think of, whenever we find some it of evidence vital to the plot or a suspitious looking NPC or Monster with some outstanding feature (a favorite being glowing red eye's) we always deduct that a balor is behind everything (which is alway wrong) and one of the party immediatly proclaims "I conclude that a Balor...".

[ThunderEagle]

If a player cannot get to a session, their character is getting drunk in the bar. they also get 'roleplaying xp' to bring them up to th same total as the rest of the group.

[CrazedGoblin]

In any dungeon/forest/shady town/evil looking montain/mine/any other adventuring location you can think of, whenever we find some it of evidence vital to the plot or a suspitious looking NPC or Monster with some outstanding feature (a favorite being glowing red eye's) we always deduct that a balor is behind everything (which is alway wrong) and one of the party immediatly proclaims "I conclude that a Balor...".

he stole my football!

NO! THE BALOR DID IT!!!

[RedScholarGypsy]

In my group's games, there's always a downtrodden fellow selling suspicious looking 'sausage inna bun' in all of the towns. Also, their names seem to follow a theme. Guess what series the DM likes...

Dibbler!

Ah, I remember the scariest moment of any campaign session, when the main bad wizard asked us: "What do you get when you infuse a Mimic with 10 bags of holding and a bag of devouring?"

As for traditions, we had three:

D&D: if there are 2+ arcane casters, they get into a prank war. (They made 0-lvl scrolls and wands to be able to use all the slots for presdig )

SpyCraft: The car never made it in one piece. NEVER!!!Most times we didn't even have to try to wreck it, but when the gm tried to autopilot the car home we 'accidentally' set off the self destruct as we got out. We never got a car after that, but we kept on wrecking them.

Deadlands: We'd always TPK via dynamite/nitro. Mojave Rattlers got terminal indigestion from us.

[Corolinth]

Deadlands: We'd always TPK via dynamite/nitro. Mojave Rattlers got terminal indigestion from us.

Speaking of this, we just finished off Night Train with dynamite.

[Hazkali]

If a player cannot get to a session, their character is getting drunk in the bar. they also get 'roleplaying xp' to bring them up to th same total as the rest of the group.

That's nicer than what happens to my player's characters when they miss a session- they get diahorrea and/or vomiting caused by poorly cooked food, and spend the next few days squatting behind a tree.

I thought of it when I was annoyed at one guy for not turning up, and it's become the staple thing ever since.

[Dhavaer]

At least half of all dates must be at Italian restaurants.

[Quietus]

This one started before I joined my current group, but it's a running joke ever since :

Eyebrow experience.

Apparently years ago they had someone show up to a game who had shaved not only his head, but his eyebrows. Not a lick of hair on his cranial region. Everyone else got 2 free experience, because they had 2 eyebrows. It kinda stuck.

[Accolon]

I paint a mini for every player's character. Painted minis are my big thing, and that's probably the oldest and most lasting tradition of my current group (10 years running, same members). I also used to give XP if the session fell on a player's birthday, but then our gaming schedule fell to once a month, and that stopped. We're back to once a week, so B-Day XP may be on the rise again. I recently just moved and my gaming group helped out, so they all got bumped up a level.

[Ranis]

At every session, my Bard must hit on a female. When there are no female NPC's present, the female PC suffices. When she isn't at a session, the DM suffices. (Yes, the DM is female.)

Every one of my games, the philosophy major playing an extremely militaristic Warmage sets out to prove that he is outside reality, making Knowledge(Philosophy) and Perform(Philosophy) checks for at least five minutes per session. So far, he hasn't met the DC 89,000 check to bend reality to his whim, but he's still trying.

Also, when a PC dies, he must eat a raw mushroom. Yes, we do clean it first.

[kjones]

Whenever I introduce a player to D&D who wants to be a spellcaster, they usually take Magic Missile because of the shiny. I find that it adds a nice little personal twist if you let them choose what their missiles look like - color, shape, etc. The current party wizard decided that his missiles are black bolts streaked with crimson. "Sure", I thought to myself, "Why not?"

Nowadays, every time he casts Magic Missile, the exchange goes like this:

Me: "Your bolts strike the orc square in the chest. Roll damage."
Wizard: "What color are the bolts, again?" (smirk)
Me: (sigh)
Wizard: "Come on..."
Me: "Oh, fine. Three black bolts streaked with crimson..."
Wizard: "YES! I am so awesome."
Me: (dies a little on the inside)

Also, my battlemat is color-coded - black for walls, green for spell effects, green for light sources, red for terrain features. One time after the barbarian dealt a particularly nasty crit to some poor little 1HD goblin or somesuch, I removed the token from the battlemat and drew red streaks emanating from his square.

"He's a terrain feature", I announced, and now I say it after any particularly vicious killing blow.

[Yiel]

We give out gold stars for the "special" things that PCs do.

We all meet up to cook dinner together before the session. (well... everyone may be there, but its the current DM and myself who do most of the cooking)

Also, my bard usually succeeds in an action stopping, groaningly bad pun once a session. If she doesn't, she comes up with something to say that looks Paris Hilton look like a Mensa member.

[Kyrsis]

I can't think of any noteworthy IC ones...but here's an OOC one -
We ended up with a bag of chips as a mascot once. Someone had brought them to the game and they were forgotten and left at the DMs house (as per another tradition - extra food/drink stay at the DM's for next session). A few months later someone was foraging for food and found them. After we discovered they had been there so long it was determined no one would eat them and instead all the players would sign the bag and it sat around like that for like 2 years. I think it met it's end when they moved though...