D&D Free Village of Hommlet 4e adventure
on August 17, 2010 at 12:05 pmI was clearing some shelf space in my room when I came across this:
It’s still in its shrink wrap. It’s an RPGA reward that I got some time ago and I just haven’t had time to play it. Since I have a standing invite from a couple of groups to play it, and the DMs of those groups already have a copy, I figure I might as well give it away to a lucky reader.
The blurb on the back reads:
“Hommlet has grown up around a crossroads. Once far from any important activity, the village became embroiled in the struggle between gods and primordials when the Temple of Elemental Evil arose but a few leagues away. Luckily for the village’s inhabitants, the Temple and its evil hordes were destroyed a decade ago, but Hommlet still suffers from incursions of badits and strange monsters….
The Village of Hommlet is designed for five characters of 4th level and is inspired by Gary Gygax’s classic adventure of the same name. This Dungeons & Dragons adventure includes a full-color battle map, ready-to-play encounters, and information on the Village of Hommlet-and excellent base of operations for heroic-tier characters.”
Rules: Respond to THIS article in the comments section and tell me a gaming or RPG related joke or funny incident. I’ll pick a winner randomly from all the people that comment. All responses must be in by the end of August, midnight PST. I’ll do the random selection Sept 1st and email the winner for a mailing address. One entry per person please.
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***Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast LLC, and they are not affiliated with Familiar Ground.
Congratulations to Adam D. of Owing Mills, MD! The patron deity of d100 rolls have looked upon his entry with favor and he won this giveaway.
Way back in the day we were playing a Star Wars game under the West End system… The “team” (believe me, I use that term loosely) had their own freighter, and liked to fly into as much trouble as possible. One night, the regular pilot couldn’t make it, but unfortunately, we had left off in a ship situation. So the group Jack of all Trades tried his hand at flying. Not only did he roll no successes, but he came up with negative effects from the wild die. So they were told, “You jerk the stick hard to the right and collide head-first with a giant asteroid you somehow missed. You’re all dead. So, who wants to play Soul Edge of my Playstation?”. The looks on their faces were priceless… Of course, it was just a joke, and they merely crashed the ship and started a whole new adventure, but for those few minutes, it was pretty darned hilarious…
How do you stop an orc from charging?
Stand five feet away from it.
I ran a halfling campaign in 3.5, and it was awesome fun the whole time. The party had a whole series of adventures based around food and always seemed to make every adventure that wasn’t food-themed into one that was. One session in particular turned hilarious; we have ever after referred to it as “the crossroads incident”. The party stopped at a crossroads, scavenged around and found some giant eagle eggs, which they swiped from the nest and ate. Then they spent almost the whole game going back and forth around that crossroads, unable to decide which way to go or what to do! Finally, they went back to the crossroads, where the suspicious (and intelligent!) giant eagles accosted them and told them, “We’re looking for whoever stole our eggs!” “Not us, we just came from that way…” It was an awesome example of how satisfying a session full of roleplaying can be with no dice ever getting thrown except maybe for a couple of skill checks, and despite absolutely nothing happening in the whole session, it was one of the most fun games we ever played with that party.
Long ago, far away. We were playing a homebrewed post-apocalyptic game, vagely based on the “Deathlands” series of men’s adventure books. Think Gamma World with a slightly more obsessive attitude towards weapon caliber, and you won’t be far off.
Party was underground, has somehow become separated into two separate caverns, connected only by a tunnel entirely filled with water. Happily, he had an amphibious mutant named “Tadpole” with us. Unhappily, he was an idiot, and excellently played as such by a very intelligent player.
Fellow named Dave thought he was in charge, and immediately took command. “Tadpole! Go and find the others, and — ”
*Splash!* Tadpole’s player mimes swimming motion.
“Ha,” says Dave sourly. “I wait for him to get back. Okay, LISTEN, Tadpole! Go to the others, and tell — ”
*Splash!* Tadpole’s player mimes swimming motion.
Dave grits his teeth, genuinely annoyed. The rest of us, vastly entertained by his growing frustration, chuckle.”
“I’m back!”
“Great. Fantastic. Now! Listen! To! Me! I don’t want you to leave until I say…I say…um…’blue’!”
Tadpole’s player blinks. “Blue?” he asks, innocently.
“Yes, dammit,” Dave snaps angrily, “Blue!”
*Splash!* Tadpole’s player mimes swimming motion.
It took a good ten minutes to restore order. I was in literal pain from the laughter. Every time it would die down, someone would gasp out “blue!” and it would start all over again.
Well this was funny to me, but one of the other players brought a friend to our adventure, claiming he’s a cool dude and played D&D before so we won’t be slowed up by a NOOB. So we’re level 7 or so in 2e and he starts arguing with the DM during character generation about wanting a wand of disintegration as starting treasure. IIRC his exact words were “I can’t even play unless I have at least a wand of disintegration, I mean that fighter has a +2 longsword!”. So after us all waiting around for an hour or so while the “negotiation” continued (with many complaints from the rest of us and scowls towards newcomer and his friend) the character was finally done, with the wand, but only 2 charges left. So his elf wizard meets up with our group in the wilderness, and we are more than a bit suspicious, but then we spot his gear and are like “OMG This guy is loaded” So at sleepy time that night, my thief sneaks over and steals the wand. The guy was so pissed he started yelling at me in real life, threatening to fight me. That’s when he was kicked out of my house and my friend was told if he ever came back they’d both be banned… oh man I hated that guy… oh wait…that may not be that funny….
Five things you DON’T want your players to say:
1.Ranger wearing plate mail in a misty echoing crypt: “I try to move silently”
2.Apprentice to mage: “By the way master, I finally shot that pesky owl that kept following you around.”
3.Party fighting a band of thieves in a 4x3x4m room, when the mage says, with serious tone: “Hell, I cast a fireball, THAT’ll teach’em.”
4.Party laying on a hillside spying on the Imperial Army of Darkness commanded by Gul the Necromancer himself (+/- 10,000 troops): “Hmmm, if we attack from the rear, do we get bonuses on our attack roll??”
5.Paladin as the lone survivor of a party of 7 facing an army of evil and undead creatures, which just slaughtered his fellow adventurers: “Huh, why should I run? I got protection from evil in a 15ft radius, THEY can’t touch me” (last words).
This happened during a light-hearted 3.5 game.
I only had two players, and since neither of them liked playing any of the more healery classes, I decided to give them a little help, so I put in a small broken fountain that had once been filled with healing water. It was now more of a puddle than a fountain, but still.
They did as they always did after a combat and piled all the loot in one pile and cast Detect Magic on it. I listed the items that radiated magic, and then added “the puddle also has a faint aura of magic”.
As I expected, the players immediately picked up on this, but since I was smiling quite gleefully, they thought it prudent to try and get more information. So the wizard asks if he can identify the school of magic for the puddle.
A succesfull Spellcraft check later, and they now know it’s Conjuration magic (as the Cure line of spells). The wizard’s player starts pondering options: “It could be a teleportation portal of some kind, or perhaps it summons a water elemental…”
And the player of our happily murderous dwarf fighter/rogue interjects: “Let’s piss in it!”
A moment of silence followed, with quite a few laughs a bit later. The next couple of sessions saw quite a few references to urine elementals attacking the party.
This is very nice thing to do, and I appreciate the chance!
Back in 2nd Edition I ran the Temple of Elemental series a couple of times, but my favorite was a group that started with the adventures of a young Bladesinger. Early on he met an aged human sage who asked him if he would take an apprentice in his adventuring to learn the way of the world. He swore an oath on his sword that he would, and further would protect the sage’s apprentice.. who turned out to be a Drow Assassin PC. Revolted that he had to protect a Drow, he continued.. hoping to find some solution to his dilemna. Which got worse when a Bard came along and joined the group seeking for inspiration for a heroic tale.
The group made a bit of a name for themselves in the Hamlet of Hommlet, defeating Lareth the Beautiful, only to see him escape to fight another day….. 5 times.
But the ultimate character development was yet to come. In a battle against pirates in Nulb, the Bladesinger was struck low by a poisoned arrow. The Chaotic Nuetral {with evil tendencies} assassin raced across the battlefield, ignoring attacks against him, to try to revive his high elven mentor. Failing to do so, the Drow scooped him up and raced back to Hommlet and the Church of Cuthbert where the (5th) level Cleric looked at him without a clue as to what to do.
Enter the ‘God call’ house rule. Clerics can call upon thier diety once a level, and roll percentile to see the result. If they roll under thier level it is a favorable result. If the roll is a natural 1, the diety shows up in person to see what the trouble is.
The Cleric rolls … a natural 1.
Cuthbert walks in, much to the amazement of all involved, and asks what his cleric needs. “To raise this hero who saved our village from bandits”.
So, Cuthbert snags the Bladesinger’s soul and asks if he would return to the earth and continue protecting the area from Evil, in Cuthberts name. The Elf agrees and vows to be a warrior in Cuthbert’s service.. receiving a cudgel and a floppy hat before being raised from death.
The Bard’s tale spread far and wide of the honour of the High Elvin Bladesinger, weilder of a cudgel and protector of the Drow!
The last, very humous (from my POV) in all this… the Bladesinger never fought with the Cudgel while wearing the hat… I still wonder to this day WTH I would have those two divine artifacts do
DM: “You notice that the door to the castle is ajar.”
Player: “What kind of sorcery is this?! Okay, I crawl into the jar.”
About two years after I got into D&D and started DMing, one of the few players I had introduced to the game said that he was personally DMing a 3.0 game set in Middle Earth. I had an elf of the right level already premade as a backup character for the main group I was playing in and decided to sit in on a session or two.
Turns out, it was a complete rehash of the Lord of the Rings, but in an alternate universe where Frodo failed on his quest. Why in the world he just didn’t go out and say that it was an AU with a different Fellowship, I will never know.
I joined up right before they were to venture into Moria and managed to lead them safely in after evading the orc/goblin army encamped outside. We travelled further into the mines before we got to Balin’s Tomb. Sure enough, here comes the goblin and the cave troll. See why I said that he should have just made it an alternate Fellowship? The battle ensues with the cave troll wreaking havoc and us trying to clear some goblins away to be able to get a clean shot at it.
One of the three hobbit PCs managed to score the killing blow on the cave troll in the end, apparently managed to nick the femoral with his dagger. Since the size difference was more than one step, the DM got his own personal house rule in effect: It falls on you. He rolled to see which way the troll would fall and–as luck would have it–rolled it straight ahead towards the hapless hobbit. He then got a reflex save to dive out of the way in time. He promptly failed. Then came the damage rolls. The hobbit, already wounded from the fight, promptly died that night as the cave troll he had so heroically slain fell on top of him. The group immediately busted out laughing save for the poor player whose persona ended up like a pancake.
That game died soon afterwards and I really don’t remember anything that happened during the other sessions, but that poor hobbit will always remain in my memory.
Back in the 90′s I used to play D&D 2nd edition with some friends and we really got into the story and the fantastic environment, so much that some of us practiced the somatic components of our spells while others brought real quarterstaffs to the table. One of the characters in the party, had a Flame Tongue Sword which the real player used to hold firmly even though it didn’t existed, it was hilarious to watch him change his imaginary sword from his right hand to his left hand in order to throw some dice. We now play 4th edition, but with no more imaginary weapons, we kind of miss them though.
During one night of D&D adventuring, the topic of sling bullets came up after a certain little gnome rogue kept doing incredible backstab damage with his sling. Someone mentioned that roman artillerists had used big metal 8-siders as their ammunition of choice. Debate then began to rage about the proper-sided die to be used when slinging for optimal effect. Things deteriorated to the point where we grabbed an old bicycle tire inner-tube and created a crude slingshot (not an actual sling mind you), that consisted of one person holding each end of the flattened inner-tube and a third person acting as the shooter. So, at around 2am, we began firing various dice at targets to determine which caused the most damage. After one particular firing where a 20-sider ended up imbedded in the wall with the 20 clearly showing, we had a winner!
The party is inside a dungeon room with a closed door. The barbarian (with very very low INT) tries to break it.
Wizard: “Dear savage friend, please check first if there is a handle on the door or a lever.”
Barbarian: “Uhhhmmm… You are talking using riddles, wizard!”
(After that: Barbarian got 100xp from me. That’s ROLEPLAYING! :-p)
One of my favorite D&D moments can be summed up with a single quote (made by the DM):
“Damn you for being cool with the dice!”
The DM described the dank abode of some twisted, demon-worshipping samurai:
“The room is obviously a den of inequity. On a table at the far end is an apparatus for smoking opium, clearly having been used recently. Dangling from iron braces on the right are chains and manacles — currently empty — used to hold captives. Torture implements are strewn chaotically on another table, many of the wicked devices still covered in fresh blood. A closed treasure chest is located in the corner of one of the nearer walls, latched and locked without what appears to be a rune-inscribed locking mechanism. The weapons of the rooms’ inhabitants — two katana in ornate scabbards — lay cast aside in a corner. In the center of the room, on an opulent carpet (now stained with blood), the two samurai defile one of the prisoners you came here to save. The visage is truly horrid, and the smell of blood and sweat is nauseating in this room of terrors.”
To which one of the player characters exclaimed in true non-sequitur fashion:
“There’s OPIUM?!”
A giant WTF moment ensued.
Eberron…
…fighting a vampire and his undead minions while falling out of the sky aboard two critically damaged elemental airships…
…the players are jumping back and forth between the ships while the group’s artificer is desperately trying to regain control of the fire elemental that powers one of the ships…
…as the ships plummet towards the ground, the artificer begins using the broken elemental ring to ‘lash’ the enemies on the decks of the ships. He ignored the fact that every time he lashed out at them, the elemental burned its way farther through the ships deck…
…the third or fourth ‘lash’ attempt effectively critted the hull of the ship, which signalled its death. The players and the enemies looked at each other briefly, and began scurrying for the life boats.
…sorting out several lifeboats in the clear blue sky, each having some combination of enemies and players…led to some interesting roleplaying to say the least!
One of my favourite moments was when my friends and I were playing Paranoia back in the 80′s. During the mission debriefing the computer said that no Troubleshooter could ansxwer in the negative, and the obvious question of “Are you a traitor?” was raised to which my friend answered “Nyet!” Needless to say there was a scrabble to see who could terminate him first!
Way back in college I played a halfling thief with a group running the Temple of Elemental Evil. After robbing a bank to get into the thieve’s guild, he decided to retire. Since he was the only rogue in the party I rolled a gnome illusionist/thief. He never did much other than annoy the rest of the party with his practical jokes since he had little combat value. However, we were in one of the lower levels in a room attached by a long hallway to the main area when a horde of undead rushed the party through the hall. The wizard began casting lightning bolt so I had my gnome start casting a phantasmal force lightning bolt to go off one segment after the real one. The DM decided that the monsters would get a save against the illusion. Guess what happened? Yeah, every single one of them failed. The look on the DM’s face was priceless.
We came across a sphinx in a 4e campaign a buddy of mine was running. It demanded that we tell it a series of rhymes, not simple ones either. The rhymes had to have a certain amount of syllables (Not like a haiku exactly, but similar.) and had to follow a similar theme.
The party at the time consisted of a rogue, wizard, warlock, swordmage and barbarian. Wizard and swordmage both had 24 int so we figured that they would handle it. Until the DM said that instead of simply rolling we actually had to come up with the rhyme. We started to freak until the barbarian cleared his throat and started speaking. Off the top of his head he pulled out exactly what we needed, telling an epic story about how much he loves smashing things and crushing his opponents. We all just looked at him dumbfounded and his reasoning for being secretly well spoken? “I have a soft spot for poetry.”
I respected that half-orc much more after that.
We were playing in a group that had a wife and husband as players. The wife was late to the table after we’d done some scouting through a dungeon and she asked, “What’d I miss?” The husband immediately replied, “Nothing much, would you mind standing over there?” It was said in such a casual manner that no-one was alerted to the fact that he was positioning her on the trap we’d just been debating how to disarm. Without a hint of distrust, she moved her piece to the square next to the trap she didn’t know about. The husband then said, “Nono, one square up, yeup, that’s the one,” and the trap went off and killed her character (we were powerful enough to resurrect her right away). He then said, “There you go, problem solved!”
We were playing a Legend of the Five Rings game and our monk stated, he was drinking four bottles of sake, one for each element. and the GM said. “This is Legends of the Five Rings. There are Five elements.” and the monk said “For Void I had an empty bottle.”
Back in 2nd edition days we were playing up in the attick. The loud mouth of the group, rolled a 20. He instantly jumped up, banged his head into the ceiling and stilled screamed “DOUBLE DAMAGE”. The DM informed him, you need to roll a 20, then roll to hit a second time to get double damage in his game. The loud mouth sat down, rolled another 20, jumped up, screaming “Double damage” again, and once again banged his head into the ceiling and sat down.
We all looked at him, and laughed. He got mad, yelled “I’m out of here”, got up and banged his head again. Which had everyone laughing again.
One of my players Jay, one day told us a story about how he was trying to help this woman, presumably a prostitute who was having some difficulty that I cannot currently remember.
He approached her and asked if she needed help. She freaked out and screamed like she was being attacked and ran down this hill into a wooded area while passersby gave my friend looks as if he had done something to scare the woman.
Anyways, that story in mind, I orchestrated events in one of my campaigns to set up Jays character to witness a screaming, hysterical tavern woman running down a wooded hill away from the Inn, with Jay’s character knowing a dangerous werewolf-like creature was lurking beyond the tree line. Jay was forced to run after the woman, sword drawn. Just in time for the other PC’s to witness what looked like Jay’s character chasing this poor woman into the woods with his weapon.
It was a lot of work to set up, but the pay off was hilarious!
How many drow does it take to light a torch?
None. They have darkvision!
Joke Origin: 7-year old son
Apparently the idea of winning something brings all the creepers out of the woodwork.
Well, my story is relatively recent. We still play 3.5e, although it’s a heavily modified version. The DM had created this monster she lovingly called a Gribbly. It’s a combination of a Cthulu and some other beasties. It can swallow people whole, rip them apart if it gets hold with all it’s legs, and spits acid.
There were 4 or 5 of us, and we were around level 10 iirc. The DM had created it as a kind of boss monster, so it was a pretty high level. Oh, did I mention the Gribbly’s can disguise themselves as people and go undetected? Yeah, fun times. Anyway, We had a fight with 1 of this creatures by surprise in an abandoned hut. It damn near tore the group apart, but we *just* managed to kill it, by the skin of our teeth.
Couple of sessions later, we had…somewhat…annoyed a local evil deity for other reasons. Turns out these Gribblys were it’s minions. So we end up outside this cave which we estimated held about 20 of them. We were a level higher than before but the encounter level was incalculable. Deciding my character would insist of attempting to purge the creatures (which had been terrorising a local town) we set up some traps and had developed a shield to protect us somewhat from the creatures.
So anyway, these explosions we’ve set go off, killing one of the creatures but bringing all it’s friends out charging towards us. I *still* don’t remember exactly how we did it, but we managed to kill every single one and came out having lost no hp. The DM couldnt pick her jaw up off the floor. She had to give us so much exp that we levelled at the end of each session for about a week.
Funny thing is, a few weeks ago, when we are actually higher level than the Gribbly now. One of them caught us by surprise again and nearly wiped the group out. We’d forgotten all about the Gribblys and got a nasty surprise in the palace of the campaigns capital city. =(
We had an Epic shirt for our gaming store and group in Ft Myers Florida.
Gamers do it on the table…!
What a saying.
Regards
First session with my high school gaming group. We were all maybe sixteen or so and I was DMing. Group included a ranger with 18/50 strength or so, and a bard with 12 STR.
So when the group starts trouble with the town guard and beat a fighting retreat to the city gates, dodging arrows everywhere, only to find the portcullis dropped behind them, who makes the Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll? Yep, much to the ranger’s dismay, after three epic attempts, the bard’s player says, ‘oh, I’ll give it a go,’ and voila!
“Must’ve loosened it.”
“Yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night.”
I had a PC necromancer who summoned an Owlbear skeleton to fight for him. I thought he said the name “Albert” in a French accent, you know, without the t sound.
“Albert Skeleton? Who is that? A French skeleton?”
This immediately led to endless hilarity ever time he was summoned with thick French accents.
” ‘allo, I am Albert, Skel-e-ton. Would you like a croissant?”
“Albert Skel-e-ton is the undead with a cetain, je ne ce qas.”
“Albert Skel-e-ton es dead, ‘owever, he is still French and he wants to give you ees loooove.”
I still can’t look a picture of an Owlbear without snickering.
Love the comic.
I contacted my local FLGS to play D&D encounters season 2, and asked if I could bring along my 2 gaming sons, aged 16 and 9. The owner said sure, we’ll try the little guy out on a probationary basis and discuss it after the game if there’s any issue.
The games starts, Darksun 4e, our caravan ripped to shreds by a sand storm with shards of obsidian. My 9 year old’s eyes were popping out of his head, and he leant over to whisper “This is so awesome.” Combat encounter, his first turn came up, he took a deep breath and I knew something was coming… sure enough he announced: “Using my free action I yell ‘Get out of my swamp you damn kids!’” He was invited back the following week.
Story from my first time GMing a D&D game: Under Illefarn.
On the way to the dungeon, I rolled a random encounter and came up with a dinosaur. The guy playing the 1st level paladin was bored and made a suicide attack against it. I didn’t want to kill him so I made the dinosaur run away, and the paladin chased it. Total mess. The evening was ruined, most of the participants disgusted with either me or the paladin.
Not exactly hilarious, but I laugh at myself now for this newbie mistake.
Me and a friend were playing a RPGA event at San-Japan, and were investigating an alchemist’s shop for clues on where he went. Cue this:
Barbarian: *Picks up a random book from the counter and looks in it* “This book is nothing but WORDS!” *Throws book down*
Another game the next year, same con, I decided to run a dwarven runepriest with a mordenkrad through the same adventure. When we got to the cave with the two squids and a cave crawler, my dwarf couldn’t do anything due to a) the squid’s squishy bodies are out of reach, and b) the cave crawler was on the ceiling. Cue attempts to grab tentacles and drag the squids out to hit the damned things. When that didn’t work, I turned my attention to the cave crawler oh so dickishly attacking us from the ceiling. I ran under it, jumped up, grabbed a flailing tentacle, and dragged the damned thing off the ceiling!
Needless to say it was easy pickings when the rest of the group wandered over and beat it to death.
So, everyone knows that kender are evil. Kender should not be played by powergaming fifteen year olds with little in the way of maturity.
Of course, I had to let a player do that.
He played the kender to the hilt – annoyingly chipper, always poking his nose into things, constantly pushing buttons – we’re talking DeeDee from Dexter’s Laboratory, amped up to eleven.
At one point, he finally ticked me off by setting off one too many firetraps and getting the rest of the players good. There were pleading eyes from the players. So, being the guy I am, I set him up with the perfect foil – a Wish spell.
“You may have anything you wish for,” I said, but then added, “but be careful.”
Grinning ear to ear, a second later he responds with, “I wish for all of the beer in the world.” And then, expectantly, looks up to the sky, spreads his arms open, and opens his mouth.
Don’t know how many GMs can say they’ve drowned a kender under a ton of liquid beer, but I know I’m one of them.
Bullywug Passion Play
I was running my D&D Metrocalypse game. Metrocalypse is an original setting that takes a real-world city from some place and time on Earth (in my case, Oxford 1605) and teleports it magically into a harsh D&D world (in this case, an endless jungle). Jungle quickly chokes the streets. Monsters quickly overrun the citizens, kill most of them, and loot everything. It’s an urban nightmare. A small handful of special citizens begin change (into things like eladrin, dwarves, shifters, goliath, and halflings) and exhibit strange, new powers (like those of a D&D fighter, wizard, rogue, warden, etc.). But all very English and Christian (usually Anglican) otherwise.
Anyway, they meet a tribe of bullywugs, and parlay. Most of the ‘wugs do not speak English, but they meet a friendly one who has learned enough to converse with the party. His name sounds like “Robert,” so they call him Frog Robert (to distinguish him from Rob the Bard, who is in the party). Rob the Bard is a playwright and trained Actor!
Somehow, they start discussing religion.
The party listened in horror as Frog Robert described his tribe’s polytheistic ways and their host of terrible little deities. Instantly, they start proselytizing.
Eventually, they take their case to the chief of the bullywugs. To convince them, the players (led by Rob the Bard and playwright) decide their characters will put on a Passion Play for the tribe. When I ask how they intend to communicate with non-English-speaking ‘wugs, they exclaim, “We’ll do the play in their language!” They also decide to use tribesmen in the play. This turns into a skill challenge.
So here we have Frog Robert translating English play lines into Bullywug, which the PCs carefully memorize. They have bullywug rehearsals, during which the frogsmen get very unruly and violent, and the PCs have to smack and coerce them into line.
They put on the play. The illusionist PC uses her magic for stage effects. There are some unfortunate violent bullywug incidents, but the gist of the play is conveyed to the tribe, who especially like the nasty business with the cross at the end, and chief agrees to add the Christian God to their list of gods to worship… which isn’t exactly what the party had hoped for, but they barely squeaked through the skill challenge and figured it was better than nothing.
In the fiction, the characters were taking this as SERIOUS BUSINESS. The whole time we played out this RIDICULOUS bullywug passion play, we were tearing up with laughter. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever done as a gamer.
I was running KotSF (no that isn’t the funny part) for my group and they came upto the large-ish zombie encounter. During the fight the paladin starts coping a fair bit of damage and so goes to use Lay On Hands on himself. Well this ended with him rolling a 1.
From general concencus from the whole group (including a Paladin) we decided that he had squirrel gripped himself and as such had dealt damage to himself. The Zombies had then proceeded to have a paladin snack. Oh and he was a Paladin of Kelemvor (we didn’t use the chars from the module.
Why did the Orc cross the villiage road?
To get to the other side so he could attack the PC’s.
I was running the low level encounter from Dungeon Delve with the tower. The players get to the 2nd floor and the Fighter and Ranger run into the middle of the room. The ranger makes it to the middle without setting off the trap but the fighter takes one step and sets it off and they fall.
The Rangers animal companion gets hit by the Goblin Hexers stinging hex power and when he went to move dropped dead. The paladin drops the goblin cutters no problem and eyes the hexer and the archers who are flinging arrows at them from across the now pit area.
With a stroke of luck the Hexer gets his stinging hex back a turn later just as the paladin gets ready to charge him. He hits the paladin with the Stinging Hex and the Paladin just shrugs it off even though he saw the wolf go down. He spends an action point, second winds to heal and then He charges the Hexer but realizes he needs to climb up to get them.
He fails his saving throw but he rolled so good on an athletics check to climb the wall I waited until after he got up to tell him how much damage he took. The player looks around the table patting his head with a paper towel looks at it in horror and says “thats not sweat! its my blood” knocks over his mini all wide-eyed as a way to tell us, he just went negative hit points.
He had us dying of laughter
It was along day of Shadowrun back in the 80s. We were blessed with a 3 day weekend and we were RPGing until we dropped.
Anyway we tended to do the non-dice/combat stuff while eating at the local McDonalds, or while driving to pizza or what have you.
This time found us at a Sizzlers seated, waiting for a young serving lady to turn up. While we waited we were discussing body parts and their sale in the Shadowrun black market. You see we had just defeated a large group of Street Samurai and they were geared to the max. So as we’re hashing numbers it comes down to me to do the math in my head – its my forte. So this add this, multiple by this, and “in total we can sell those bodies, parts and all, for about $250000″.
I had not noticed that the young girl had approached the table, my friends had gone quiet, she had overheard my statement, and she had found another customer to serve. My friends just started laughing, explaining the situation. What could I do but laugh with them … and be embarrassed.
I’ve got one.
I started a new campaign, and one of my friends decides to make a drow rogue. We enter a town, where he goes on a stealing spree. He meets up with a drunken member of a bar in an inn. He convinces the man that he wasn’t stealing the money he had payed for his room back.
Earlier that night he also convinced a man that he hadn’t stolen a dagger he made himself for
his own son, a magic salesman who he sold the dagger to, and a farmer that he wasn’t stealing his horse, but merely admiring the horse for it’s large ass. He succeeded in rolling high numbers every time to successfully lie, even though his bluff stat was low.
Anyways, after successfully convincing the drunkard that he wasn’t stealing, but an illusion brought on by years of alcoholism, the man sits on a stool, which breaks, causing him to fall and break his neck. With the bartender in the bathroom and everyone else asleep, he is accused of murder the next day. He attempts to tell the truth to the bartender the next day, and rolls a 1. He is thrown in Jail and is beaten into a cripple, forcing him to take a -1 to speed for the rest of the campaign, until he his healed by a priest in the main city.
Back in 2nd edition, my brother was playing Drast, a priest of chaos and pranks; my friend was playing Drogan, a fighter trying hard to become a paladin. Drogan was working on being a leader of a rather chaotic group. During a heated argument the following exchange occurred:
Drast: “Maybe if we’d be a bit more tactical, we could win.”
Drogan: “Everytime I mention tactics, you spit in my face”
Drast: *spit*
Way back in the early 80′s, friends and I were playing AD&D up in my attic with characters, dice, graph paper and cans of Old Style beer, some imbibed, some not. As the night progressed, the halfling thief in the party, named Kinko, decided it would be fun to pilfer the favorite weapon of one of the fighter’s, whose player was about to pass out from too much imbibing. The halfling succeeded.
When the final climactic battle ensued at the end of the dungeon, the fighter’s intoxicated player finally broke out of his drunken stupor. When he reached for his +3 Bastard Sword and discovered it was pilfered, Franker (yes, the player’s real name) stood up, jumped up and down, fists clenched and screamed . . . .” I want my bastard, I want my bastard.” You had to be there to appreciate the scene!
Well, a long time ago, I was running a Dragonlance game, and the characters has found the tomb of an unknown knight. The players included my sister, a young teenager at the time, but a very avid player.
Well, they enter the tomb, and lo and behold, they see a phantom in Solamnic armor, floating above the center of the tomb. He radiates cold, and is obviously a level-drainer. In a booming voice, it declares, “Who are you, who would dare desecrate the tomb of Huma, and why would you test my wrath!”
The scene was perfect, and the encounter was ready to spring, and… My sister blurted out…
“By the gods, it’s the Wrath of Huma!”
Two days work, ruined by one single undead pun. I was forced to shutdown the game as everyone at the table cracked up and unraveled. It literally took a week to recover enough to even stop bursting out laughing at the table hysterically every time we sat down to play, and even years later, we randomly chuckle about “The wrath of huma!” for no apparent reason.
I gave her a level for pure evil.
Many years ago our little group were playing a 2nd Edition Dragonlance Campaign when the Kender thief due to various reasons managed to find himself unattended wondering around inside the Tower of High Sorcery …he “let himself into” an small un-warded but interesting room that had a strange looking crystal ball with a couple of finger sized holes in it ( not unlike a bowling ball with swirling mists inside ) … so being a Kender he stuck a finger in one of the holes which teleported in a very large unimpressed looking daemon into the room… who was quite confused to find the cause of his sudden journey from the comfort of his fiery hell was if fact a little Kender. The Kender thought: “cool” and excitedly stuck another finger in a different hole, and then another finger, and then again… each time bringing a different large beast into the small room…. shortly after a high level, white robed mage (whose name now escapes me) located the Kender… in a room squeezed full of “beings”, promptly closed the door and send the room to another dimention …. from which the Kender never returned much to the rest of party’s relief….
In true high tech fasion, my group decided to start gaming using a slide projector and Map Tools on the wall of the game room we used. Unfortunately, the scans of my hand-scribbled maps were not prepared with that sort of display in mind and when the party entered a room they saw the large “2″ inscribed on the map for the room number. One of the players couldn’t help commenting on the Giant Number Two on the floor to which much hilarity ensued followed by suggestions about watching where you step, the presence of stinking clouds or wall ornaments that resembled flush handles, etc. You get the idea. The dungeon has lived on in our game as the Butt Temple ever since.
“Rocks fall. You all die”
-Our frustrated DM every game.
In our Return to Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, our thief nearly died every session, but always by one of two means: being swallowed by a very large monster, or blasted by exploding furniture. One incident, he was stuck in the belly of a buffed t-rex — his salvation came via a handy application of “gaseous form”. He took the obvious escape route.
A pirate walks into a bar with a ship’s wheel attached to his crotch.
The bartender yells “Hey buddy, did you know you’ve got a ship’s wheel attached to your crotch?”
The pirate replies “Aaarrr, I know… it’s driving me nuts!”
(OK, so it’s not really a D&D joke, but I like pirate jokes and D&D has pirates, right?)
While tooling around ye old megadungeon, we came upon a large cavern. Looking down, my wizard sees a beholder tooling out of a cavern below and I immediately unleash a disintegrate. One failed save later, the beholder is dust.
As the DM put it, the beholder came out and said “Welcome…” before being disintegrated. It turns out the beholder had a quest it could give us, but given that it’s a beholder I stand by my decision to zap it to oblivion.
Still anytime we kill something in one-shot, someone in the group will shout “Welcome…”.
One of our players has the nickname “CB”, which he got playing Homlet.
Homlet was the first module we ever played, and this player was a fighter decked in platemail. When we encountered the Giant Crayfish in the well he jumped right in with a rope tied around him, platemail and all – and he drowned! We laughed so much the DM ruled that by the time we stopped laughing the Crayfish had eaten him.
CB means “Crayfish Bait”
A gaming joke, eh?
So WotC published a remake of The Village of Hommlet for Fourth Edition…
Playing the world’s largest dungeon and our fighter has been wounded, is poisoned and infected by some fungus not to mention paranoid thanks to a cursed dagger. Drinking to make the pain better he is now drunk and trying to figure out a way to get away from the rest of the group which consisted of a Litorian Mage and a Blinkling monk. Asking the Blinkling to be allowed to go into the next room for the a bathroom break, (though he said something to the effect of I need to take a S***).
While he is out there he trips the trap on the door and the conversation is as follows with the Litorian and the Blinkling.
Mage: Where is the fighter?
Monk: In the next room doing his business.
Mage: Why did you let him go alone?!
Monk: I am part dog! I would rather not smell what it is that he is working on out there.
Sounds of a flame trap going off.
Mage: That does not sound like he is taking a S***!
Monk: You sure? Sounds like a mighty S*** to me!
Mage grumbles and leaves the room to find the fighter with his pants about his ankles and trying to not look suspicious.
Fighter: Don’t come any closer Kitty! I have taken a might crap and got it all over me self (spoken in an Irish accent).
Mage: Fine let me help. (Casts a clean cantrip)
Fighter: Oh ok…well thanks but I must be going now. (tries to leave again)
Mage: What are you doing?
Fighter: I need to leave.
Mage: Why?
Fighter: I need to come clean. I don’t trust the puppy.
Mage: But the puppy saved your life…
pause…
Fighter: :Alright. I need to come clean again. I trust the puppy.
In one of my first adventures as a player at a convention, about 25 years ago, I played today’s rogue back when the was still simple, honest and blunt, and called it a thief.
The dungeon was huge, and, being a classic BECMI type of crawl, had the obligatory red dragon sleeping on top of a huge pile of treasure. I decided to try my luck and sneak in, hoping to make all my checks and add a little action to the session by sneaking past the sleeping dragon to grab a piece of his finest treasure — Unfortunately, one of the other players, a barbarian type of warrior, had chosen my character as his role model.
Me: “I sneak in”, making my checks easily
DM: “Ok, you are easily sneaking past the dragon and have a choice of its hoard.
Me: “Ok, what kind of treasure do I see?”
Barbarian: “Oh… I sneak in, too!”
DM: “Ok, roll for moving silently…”
So in he went, while I furiously waved my arms, tried all the sign for “STOP!” I knew. Meanwhile, he had the greatest fun closing in. As he failed his move silently checks by far, the dragon stopped snoring and I whispered “Noooooooo…”
Then the dragon woke up and rose its head.
Me: “I run.”
Barbarian player: “I run, too!”
DM rolls some dice, grins at the other players and says:
“What’s the difference between a thief and a barbarian?”
the answer:
“The barbarian takes longer to burn.”
The first amusing RPG related story I can think of comes from waaaaay back when I was playing AD&D 2E with my friends in middle school. I’m pretty sure we weren’t really playing a lot of the game “properly” and our DM was mostly just making things up as he went along but it was pretty fun. Anyway, everyso often, as groups do, we’d glom onto some throw-away character and they’d become recurring characters. One such character, (I have absolutely no memory of his “real” name, and in fact probably couldn’t have told you even when we were playing) became known as the “Arrggh Matey” guy. He was originally just some sailer or something we ran into on some docks who had a tendency to talk like a pirate. I don’t really remember what he was doing when we first encountered him but we all thought he was funny and cool so we kept finding excuses to go talk to him. For a long time he remained just a background character we’d see every once in a while, until we found a artifact in some book of artifacts that had the throw-away line mentioned in it that it caused it’s owners to say “Arrggh Matey” far too often. The DM decided that this guy had actually once been the weilder of the cutlass, and that that effect had become permanent on him. Eventually he started to become more important to the plot (such as it was) and it turned out he was a pretty powerful and knowledgeable guy. But he remained known to us (and even the DM most of the time) as the “Arrggh Matey! Guy.”
Rogue to wizard, as they were exploring a crypt: “Can we hurry up and get out of here? The smell of fear is thick in the air. And I think it’s coming from me!”
The one thing that I remember, besides everyone having the old gauntlets of ogre power, girdles of giant strength, and vorpal blades, was when we played Keep on the Borderlands, there was this chest in one of the caves (can’t remember which one, think a Minatour was invlolved) with 3 gems in it….and the printing in the mod said something to the effect “3 gems worth 389,269,175 gp” the numbers I placed here aren’t correct but the commas and space placement was how it showed in the mod…..back then we played that for every 5 GP found you got 1 XP…389 million gold shot us up to 8th level pretty quickly…we would always play this mod if we needed high level characters fast!
One of our PC’s Whiskey Jack, notorious for drinking, had been granted points to his strength.
This is how he received them in game. Down in the tavern the exhausted Whiskeyjack passes out after a shot of powerful spirits, yet he dreams of a heavy night of drinking. Each time he comes too, he is greeted by a hulking version of himself encouraging him to take one more shot. The Tavern seems to be full of Whiskeyjacks, bounding with muscles and partaking in great feats, and games of strength. When he awakes in the morning he finds he is in his bed upstairs no hangover, only a dry mouth and the sense he has some how grown stronger.
I was DMing a group of players in college that included a house-rule character similar to a Paladin, but Chaotic Good and having slightly different special abilities. The player was someone I didn’t know before or outside the gaming sessions and quickly became an annoyance to everyone else in the group because of his arrogance and trying to stretch the interpretation of every rule possible to maximum benefit of his character.
Well, while assauling the first Orc cave in the Caves of Chaos (KotB), the party is engaged in a large fight in the common room and an Orc Shaman (which I had added asa 2e update to the module) appeared and began casting spells at the party from up a sloped passageway exiting the room. This CG paladin immediately runs up the slope to assault the Shaman and a couple of the other characters follow. I had the Shaman tip over a barrel of oil conveniently sitting in an alcove at the top and spill it down the slope. The CG paladin made it up, but the other characters were having a hard time advancing as they were only about half way up the slope.
The Orc Shaman pulled out a mace or flail to defend himself against the psuedo-paladin and a melee ensued between the two. The psuedo-paladin was having an easy time of it until he rolled a ’1′ To Hit and slipped and fell in the oil on the floor. His player then told me that he was rolling away from the Shaman, who was about to slam his weapon down on the prone warrior. Successfully avoiding the blow, the psuedo-paladin gains his footing and wades back into the melee. The Shaman promplty rolls a ’1′ To Hit and his weapon goes sailing down the hall in the direction of the characters still trying to make their way up the slippery slope. I have the Shaman grab a lit torch off the wall as a make-shift weapon and continue the fight.
I’m hoping that the Shaman can score a hit against the psuedo-paladin and do a few points of damage before he’s finished off (1d4 for the torch as a club plus another 1-4 fire damage). One more hit against the Shaman will kill him. At that moment, the Shaman rolls a ’20′ To Hit. I smirk mildly, glad I could smite the arrogant player’s character a good one before my bad guy bites it. The player, however, immediately gets a look of horror on his face. I wonder for an instant before realizing that his character was just slapped with a flaming torch after rolling around in oil.
I couldn’t help an evil smile creasing my face as the rest of the players drew in a collective breath.
The two characters trying to negotiate the slope immediately gave up and ran back down as the psuedo-paladin went up in flames. The player never returned. The other players always believed that I had set the whole thing up, but not a bit of that series of events was planned by me in the slightest.
We were actually playing the ORIGINAL Village of Homlett when this one happened:
The Gnomish Underwater Parachute
Underwater movement is unimpeded when wearing a ring of free action (or was in 1st edition). The Giant Crayfish in the moathouse grabs the party’s fighter and pulls him deep into the water. The paladin, wearing the ring of free action and about 100 lbs of plate mail and equipment, leaps into the water to save him. Deep water. I adjudicate (probably improperly, but we had little guidance in those days) that she sinks like a rock without the benefit of drag from the water due to the ring of free action.
Meanwhile, Paladin has taken the precaution of telling the gnomish thief and elven wizard to hold a rope that is tied to her waist. Together, soaking wet, the thief and wizard weigh about 120 lbs. The end result of her free fall and two failed strength checks? They are pulled into the water as well.
HOWEVER, they are not wearing rings of free action, and are effected by the drag from the water.
The end result? The gnome and elf effectively act as a parachute, underwater, slowing the paladin’s descent enough to avoid damage, letting her land safely and kill the crayfish and save the fighter.
The gnomish underwater parachute. Now THAT’s D&D Physics.
Sometime back when we were transitioning from 2e to 3e we had a regular that loved playing Rangers. Our party had stopped at a small trading post along a crossroads and for the benefit of the plot was ambushed by enemies that had been following us.
It had been heavily raining and when we commenced fighting the Ranger rolled a nat 1 and the DM ruled he wiped out in the heavy mud and fell prone. Our Sorcerer was behind him and used a spell that produced flaming balls of fire, which the DM ruled dried the mud onto the Ranger. Instead of just shrugging it off, the Ranger decided the best way to remove the caked on mud was to run headfirst, multiple times, into the side of the trading post, until he rolled so poorly (many 1′s, 2′s and 5′s) that the DM ruled he had knocked himself unconscious.
There was one night in our campaign where our fighter was just rolling bad, no really bad. He could not hit to save his life, well his bad luck streak went on for about an hour before we noticed he was using the d12 instead of a d20
SAVAGE TIDE (aka: TOTAL RECALL) / ORCUS
This occurred whilst playing Dungeon Magazine’s SAVAGE TIDE Episode 2: The Bullywug Gambit. The party had gone into a secret harbor in search of Lavinia Vanderboren’s brother. There, they encountered the fallout of a supernatural explosion that had caused the pirates to be turned into ‘Savage Creatures’ As Demogorgon had a hand in creating the Savage Tide, the supernatural effect of creating a savage creature manifested vestigial heads and arms sprouting from various parts of their bodies . The party’s drow Cleric was inadvertently infected by a stray bite attack from one of these creatures and she too, started to take on aspects of the supernatural effects. Without missing a beat, the guy playing the cleric dropped out of character, unbuttoned his shirt, moaning ‘Quaaaaaaaaaaade….open your miiiiiiiind……..’
as he rubbed his belly….
(If you don’t get it, go watch Total Recall!)
If you don’t find that funny, here’s one from Dragon Magazine some years ago:
Two adventurers — an archer and a fighter — standing next to one other. Mighty Orcus, lies dead at their feet, (X’s in place of his eyes) There are three arrows in his belly. The archer looks surprised.
After a moment or two of silence, the fighter says to the archer and says:
“Well……adding ‘U’ and ‘S’ to an arrow of Orc Slaying? Who knew?”
Back when we were playing 2nd edition, we had a weekly game that had gone on for about a year. When entering a land, we were required to charter our party. When the guard asked for the name of our group, we sat staring at each other for a minute, when my smartass deep Gnome shouts out “Spankus Welikeit!” The Guard turned to my character and said “What!?” To which I replied “It’s Deep Gnome for ‘Mighty Warriors’”. After the laughter died down a bit, “Spankus” lived on for another couple years of game play.
Of course, since there was always so much Gold and Platinum to find, we would just leave the silver and copper behind. We never thought anything of it until we built a keep, and a few months of in game time went buy and people started showing up that we had saved from previous adventures asking if they could start a business (blacksmith, inn, etc.) outside our keep. You see, after we saved them, they were leaving, when they found all this copper and silver just lying around! Several of them went to the nearest town and bought a cart, went back in and collected all the treasure that we didn’t think was worth our time.
In one of our adventures, Our bladesinger was casting a light spell, so the player stood up, and very dramatically held out his hand and said in a grand voice “Let there be light!” At that exact moment, in real life, the wall just behind his hand gleamed with a brilliant white light! He immediately dropped to the ground and, being a good Catholic boy begane profusely apologizing to God for blaspheming! It turns out that someone had turned into the neighbor’s driveway to turn around, and the sun had reflected off their windshield, through the basement window, to the exact spot he was pointing. Oh yeah, and this was on a country road that doesn’t get a whole lot of traffic to begin with. What are the odds?
This happened a number of years ago, we were playing in Eberron (3.5). There were two gnomes (one a fighter, played by Robin and I was playing the bard), a warforged, a new player was a drudic princess and another player or two I don’t remember what they played. The two of us who were playing gnomes figured out early on that no one else chose gnome as a language, so we conversed to each other in gnome, to the annoyance of the other players.
Our “mission” was to help the druid regain her memory. Introductory conversation as follows:
Druid: I lost my memory…That’s my unicorn over there..and I’m a Druid…Druidic….Druish…Princess..
Bard (me, ‘speaking’ in gnome): Funny…She doesn’t LOOK Druish!
*Rest of party and DM glares at both me and Robin, who are hysterically laughing*
Me: It’s not like any of you knew what I was saying except for Robin and the DM!
~
Great thing is that the new player didn’t realize she said “druish” in her intro speech, until I said my 2 cents.
Back in the old 2e days, a friend and I played a pair of Halfling twins who were thieves. One of us maxes out move silently, the other hide in shadows, and so on. As you can imagine, we weren’t the most effective thieves, but the comedy derived from the sessions was huge.
I once played a pacifist cleric with psionics in a 1e campaign. My good friend who was the DM at the time thought it was very difficult to play when my character never attacked anything. I would use my psionics to turn ethereal so he couldn’t be hurt by physical attacks.
Back in the heyday of Runequest, I was roaming around the floor of a gaming convention when I happened to overhear the comment: “Ducks? Let me tell you about Ducks!” From the passion in his voice it was obvious that this person absolutely loathed Ducks. So I couldn’t help but listen in and eavesdrop on the rest of the conversation.
If you are unfamiliar with Runequest Ducks, they are a race of small intelligent feathered humanoids that are reputed to be cursed by the gods. Whether they were originally ducks cursed with intelligence and flightlessness or originally humans cursed with feathers and small stature isn’t known. They’re basically feathered halflings — physically weak but naturally dexterous. They were one of my favorite races to play so I was really curious how this guy developed his passionate hatred for them.
So he started describing a game he had played at a previous con. The party had planned a raid on a Lunar Empire caravan, set up their ambush, but when the caravan came along it was much more heavily guarded than they had anticipated. Everyone seemed to be content to let the caravan pass by unmolested, until the Duck in the party shot a guard with her crossbow and set the ambush off. Things went downhill rapidly, and the entire party ended up getting captured — except for the small and sneaky Duck who managed to slip into the forest and escape.
Now I didn’t know or recognize the storyteller, but it didn’t take too long for me to recognize the story he was telling — as it turns out, I had also been a participant. Playing — you guessed it — the Duck!
It was with amazement (and, I must confess, a little bit of satisfaction) that I discovered that what had been for me a forgettable incident had been a life altering experience for someone else.
Back about 1980 or so, I desperately wanted to play D&D with my brother (who is nine years older than me) and his friends. To appease my mother he let me play. To get rid of me, he kept sending me outside to “watch the horses”. After 5 or 10 minutes I would return only to be re-tasked with the same thing.
Back in the day, my brother and I used to go over to my friend’s house to play D&D. The only place that his mother would let us play (we were too loud) was up in their attic. In the summer it used to get so hot we were afraid the dice would melt!
Today, whenever it is like 100 degrees out, I have this irrational urge to pull out the old red box and start creating 1st-level fighters!
In recent game one of our group was making an attack and accidentally he missed table with his dice. He prepared to make a second roll, but DM stopped him and said:
“If you can’t hit large table with your dice how can you think that your character can hit that little sneaky goblin?”
Nice comic ) I like horse. She looks like those Grecian horse from Troy.
This isn’t so much a funny story about an rpg, but a funny story about a funny story about an rpg.
When I first met my wife, she knew I was into gaming, and she was interested in gaming. We didn’t get a chance to actually play together until a few years later though (since I wasn’t part of a group then, and didn’t have the time to start one). When we were walking around a mall, though, I heard a store security alarm go off, by someone walking too close to the door sensors with a tagged item, and it brought back a game-related memory for me. I laughed, and she wanted to know what the story was.
I could have just said “My drow elf wizard set off a store security alarm when he was walking out of a department store, and some poor guy lugging a big TV got dragged away for it.”
However, I realized that would have caused even more questions afterward… so, I launched into this story about how our group was accosted by a dragon that forced us to make a deal with it, to go into this dungeon to retrieve a magical necklace for him. Going down into this dungeon, we found it to be empty, but home to a god-being that revealed itself to be the first god… god of gods, so to speak. It needed us to do something for it. In modern-day Earth, a group of Satan worshipers was going to use a magical necklace from the D&D world to summon Satan into that word, where he would take over, and then use the power he has there to exact revenge upon the devil princes in Hell and the gods of our D&D world for exiling him. So, first this god had us all fight each other in the maze of dungeon in order to tell who was the strongest (the Cleric/Fighter won, duh). Then it sent us into the past of Earth, where we’d fit in better, to get some way of learning English. We went back to the D&D world to learn the language, but the Chaotic Neutral fighter got bored, explored, found this evil entity of blackness, and got us all absorbed by it. We woke up 20 years later to find the entire countryside changed, and we eventually learned that Satan took over Earth because of our failure. Forced into working for some rather angry deities, we failed a couple more quests due to stupidity until the gods finally got even more angry at us, and just sent us to modern day Earth to end Satan’s grip on the world. Arriving there, the drow wizard I was playing cast Invisibility on himself since he stood out quite obviously. Needing supplies,he went into a large store and started taking things, putting them into his cloak. Upon walking out the doors, which automatically opened for the man with the TV, he slipped though and set off the alarm, causing the man to be dragged off.
Now, the funny thing about this is that this story went on for about an hour and a half, through walking through the rest of the mall, sitting down for dinner, and the drive back for her dropping me off at my place.
And after that incredibly long story, and part of my brain shouting at me “SHUTUP!!SHUTUP!!SHUTUP!!” because I thought she was going to get scared off. But I kept talking, and she still married me, and we’ve been married for almost 10 years.
She still calls it the longest story she’s ever been told.
So im not sure if this counts but I was playing with my sister the other day and she ws running a halfling paladin and at one point she jumped on top of a coffin and then pounced onto a kobold’s head while slicing open its back with her sword, now even though she rolled max damage it still had 3 hp left so I let her kill it if she fell prone on top of its dead body, needless to say it was a great night of gaming
years ago, running a D&D adventure I included a group of cliff toads in ambush in a gorge … first player through triggered their attack, and he was crit’ed by two!! of them, on opposite sides of the trail … I ruled that they had both swallowed him, which meant he had been torn in half with each creature swallowing its share … the party killed the toads, dug out the player’s remains and restored him to life … I imposed huge penalties to charisma (an extended bath in stomach acid is damaging to the complexion) and dex (being torn in two somewhat impairs flexibility and muscle tone).
The party agreed to track down some BBEG and retrieve a MacGuffin of some sort that he had stolen from a monastery. While I don’t remember all of the details I do remember that time was a bit of a factor here – the sooner the item was returned to the monks the better.
The party defeats the bad guy and retrieves the item. 2 party members – a Sorcerer/Wizard and a Ranger decide to immediately teleport back to the monastery with the item. The Sorcerer/Wizard casts teleport and the 2 of them appear at the monastery and are taken before the head monk. He is excited as he asks “Have you returned with the MacGuffin?” And it was at that exact moment that both players simultaneously realized that neither one of their characters had actually been in possession of the MacGuffin when they teleported.
Thinking quickly, the player of the Sorcerer/Wizard announced that the party had been successful in retrieving the MacGuffin and that they had hurried back to let the monks know that it would be back in their possession in about 3 weeks when the rest of the party arrived. Thankfully, the head monk did not ask why the 2 had not merely brought the MacGuffin along with them – I mean, obviously, if they could have then they would have, right?
The monks put the 2 up for approximately 3 weeks until the rest of the party arrived with the MacGuffin and then they threw a big party for the party. Fun was had by all.
Yes, I was the player of the Sorcerer/Wizard and not the DM of that particular game.
Long ago in a dungeon far away, I was DM’ing an adventure with a large adventuring party(players with multiple characters). The group had worked their way through the dungeon to the lair of a white dragon which had the item the party needed in its hoard. The party contained the usual assortment of 2nd ED D&D characters plus an old 1st ed Bard the character had nurtured through 18 months of gaming (to say he was dedicated to his character is an understatement). The party began to combat the Dragon and was giving as good as they were getting when the Bard player slips me a note that he is searching the walls towards the rear of the cavern. I am wondering what he is up to as everyone else is focused on the dragon and combat. I realized that according to the map there was a ledge that went up and around the upper portion of the cavern. The Bard continues moving along the edge making his checks until he is directly behind and above the dragon. The dragon is totally absorbed by the combat coming at him and fails to notice the Bard. The Bard on his turn in initiative pulls his longsword and jumps down towards the dragon yelling “BACK STAB!”. The group convinces me that he meets all the requirements(thief skills, position,surprise,etc,etc) so I give in and tell him to roll. The only natural 20 that guy rolled in 6 months happens then. Critical hit table and level multiplier = dead white dragon. They cheered for an hour and that Bard asked every innkeeper he ever met afterward if he could sing of the “Dragon-slaying Bard”.
I have two. My fave comes from the classic Age of Worms campaign in 3.5 by Paizo. One of my fellow players chose to be a thief in what proved to be an very undead heavy campaign. It was extremely frustrating for him.
So we found ourself at the bottom of a pyramid, facing a spellweaver Lich. The DM was playing it as obviously flirting with the poor rogue, but obviously teasing him as well. Joking with the player, I said “Wow, looks like he wants to go all Brokeback Dungeon” on you. Without missing a beat the Rogue player turns to the Lich and says:
“I wish I could crit you.”
We lost it.
The other story come from when I was DMming the old Bloodstone Pass series in 1st ed, I think it was. The scenario was one where the group was trying to infiltrate a wizards tower. Part of the way in had these perfectly circular tunnels that massive purple worms patrolled. They filled every inch of the corridor. When they ran into the worm they went nova and killed in in a round or two.
Now, back in those days you rolled for init each round. Since the worm filled the corridor there were no obvious signs it was dead, so I merely called for imitative again, and again, and so on. About 10 rounds in there was much consternation about the amount of hit points these massive worms had. To which the cleric says “Well at least I still got lots of healing.” Then it clicked. He turns to the group and says “When was the last time this ting attacked us. They conferred and realized much to their embarrassment, that they had just way overkilled that worm.
The other one
From way back in high school:
We’re sitting at our RPG club, a semicircle of desks around one single desk where the DM is sitting, his back to the wall. I remember I was playing a dark elf assassin, under 1E rules. He says, “Anyone have a pen?” so I casually pick mine up and toss it his way, where it flies, end-over-end, to hit the wall, point-first, inches from his head. Without skipping a beat he says “OK, anyone but the assassin have a pen?”
Second Entry – Please do not consider for contest as I posted just above here. Just wanted to share this story;
Ghin the Giantslayer, a dwarf fighter (2e rules) is trying to reclaim his ancestral homeland from the forces of the nine hells. He is holed up in his fort, surrounded by the vast armies of evil, when a herald arrives to demand his surrender. Ghin looks the sycophantic miscreant in the eyes and says “You go back and tell your master he is but a mere stepping stone upon my path to world conquest.” and slams the door in his face. This angers the enemy overlord so much, he comes out from his near-impregnable bunker to face Ghin one on one….
I’ll leave the rest of the story to your imagination, but that quote is priceless.
Thanks for the stories all. This is the cut off…
I was dm’ing a group of 1st level characters through a pre-made module when I introduced a new magical item. a +1 sword that shot a web spell from the tip of the sword, the trigger being when anyone who was carrying the sword mentioned or thought about spiders the spell would fire. Shortly after picking up the sword, and placing it in his scabbard the fighter entered a dim room shrouded in cobwebs, the first words out of his mouth were “Keep and eye out for spiders” he proceeded to web the whole party to the door giving the spiders their mid-morning snack.
There are 2 stories i’d like to share.
I was playing, long time ago, in an evil campaign. My character was a half red dragon / half half-giant ranger of about level 10. It might sound a bit complicated, but the DM had ruled that a half-giant, with the large build, would be able to have fully functioning dragon wings as half-dragon. There were only 2 other party members: A were-creature rogue who is not really important for this part. The special one was a half arcane and half divine caster necromancer human with some rather strange feats and prestige class, and too bad i cant remember how it was done.
I remember that we more combat oriented guys thought him a bit useless, with hardly any combat related or supporting spells, untill our first few encounters…
While heading towards a capital city of some country where we would recieve instructions, some villagers asked us to kill the baby 5 headed hydra that had recently moved into the swamp. We agreed for a pretty small reward, as we were slightly bored (In Game). After a trek through the swamp, encountering some giant snakes and such, we found the cave where the young hydra was supposed to be.
It was a trap. As we entered the cave, we indeed saw the baby hydra, together with mommy and a druid, and the back of the cave was blocked by pappa hydra and a ranger. Flying, I managed to stay out of harms way and quickly finished the druid and the ranger with some well placed arrows, then went to help my comrades who were having a hard time against 2 fully grown hydras and a small one, luckily no special abilities. In the end we won and me and the rogue started searching the bodies and the cave, finding quite a bit of loot, while the necromancer was fiddling around the hydras, I thought to get some expensive components or something (hydra blood anyone?). When we left he just said “One moment,” and indeed one moment later the flesh fell off the hydra corpses and he now had 3 hydra skeleton servants. Out of Game, he proceeded to show the DM the relevant abilities and skills that allowed him to quickly raise undead and controll larger numbers of them. The DM was stunned. We headed back to the village, but the necromancer stayed back so the villagers wouldnt be scared. (by the way, we could just stand back the next time the snakes attacked. 15 hydra head attacks can do quite some damage)
As the two of us arrived at the village, they took one look at our battle worn look (necromancers aint big on healing) and the missing companion and…. Attacked! The necromancer came charging in with his hydras, causing great panic, I took my position in the air again taking shots, while the rogue stayed defensive for a while. Needles to say, with the skeletons and our combined might, we slaughtered the whole village, women and children too. In the end, the rogue remarked “shouldnt we have left some of them alive, to interogate?” We felt a bit silly for thinking about it this late. The necromancer just looked at us. “Guy’s, I’m a necromancer, they dont need to be alive to talk to them.”
second story, its a bit shorter:
As the party decides to ambush a camp of some ogres with the local militia offering some spearmen for support, the fighter gets into a fight with the others and goes off on his own. rolled for random encounter and he meets a perimeter scout from the ogres, that continues to smash him. In desperation he throws a feather token: tree at the ogre and shouts the command word. We had all laughed at him for taking that useless thing(he said he just liked trees), but now we’re all quite speechless. The ogre is launched skywards as a 60 ft tall tree instantly appears under his feet, resulting in 10 minutes of remarks along the lines of “up yours” and “where the sun dont shine, man”. Since then they all carry a few of the tree tokens for emergencies