Article: 130932 of rec.games.frp.dnd Path: news.tuwien.ac.at!newsfeed.ACO.net!swidir.switch.ch!swsbe6.switch.ch!surfnet.nl!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!purdue!haven.umd.edu!cville-srv.wam.umd.edu!jasonp From: jasonp@wam.umd.edu (Jason Stratos Papadopoulos) Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd Subject: Canonical one-liners list (long) Date: 9 Apr 1996 17:50:56 GMT Organization: University of Maryland College Park Lines: 2685 Message-ID: <4ke820$dm0@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: rac2.wam.umd.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL0] Hello all. About 1-2 years ago a thread raged through this newsgroup about silly things that FRP players said which cracked up everybody and stopped the game violently while everyone gasped for air from laughing so hard. The response was so impressive that I (among others) collected as much as I could and compiled it into a single place. A gentleman in Pittsburgh was working at the time on fixing things up into the NET BOOK OF RPG ONE-LINERS, and was very diligent about authors and sources and spell-checking and such. Unfortunately, I never found out if such a work was completed. It occurred to me that not making some sort of list available to the lot of you would be criminal, as some of this stuff is incredibly funny. Here, then, is my working copy of a canonical list of posts from that saintly thread, approximately 95% of the original posts plus a few of my own con- tributions (perhaps 5 or 6, in random places). Note that this is NOT the net book of one-liners, and I don't intend it to be. No authors are given for these little tidbits (for goodness' sake, this thing is big enough already!) and they follow no set pattern other than the order in which I found them. Anyone who wants a story of their own in here is wlecome to send it to me, to be included as soon as possible (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't bounce the whole list back to me!); likewise, any mistakes on my part should be pointed out and will be corrected. Enjoy. Jason Papadopoulos jasonp@wam.umd.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ********************************************************************** We were looking for a few mercenaries for a 'guard the caraven' scenario and introducing a new player to our group. The player was a bit of a combat monster, and he had put together an acrobatic, swashbuckling character who was a master of all bladed weapons. In order to verify that he was competent with his weapon, we agreed to a sparring match as a test of skill. "Don't be too embarassed if I humiliate you," the character said in a horrible accent, "as I am considered by many to be the finest swordsman in all of France..." He and our best fighter square off, roll their to-hits, and... thunk. 18. Critical failure. We rolled to see what it was, and turned out he had dropped his sword and stabbed himself in the foot. Our inscrutable Ranger-type bent over, picked up the sword and dusted it off. Handing it back to the PC, he squinted at him and said; "France must be a lot smaller than I thought." The weapons-master never did get any respect after that... ----------- A less than appropriately concerned 4-color hero conducting hostage negotiations: "It won't do you any good to hide behind the girl. She'll only stop three points." Actually this quote originally came frome Leading Edge Games "Living Steel" RPG. Their books are liberally laced with comments like that in the sidebars. The game deals with power armor suits, and feature one Axel, who's always getting into trouble. Here are a couple of them: "Axel said there's 3 sub-basements in the building. Oh, and bring some rope." "Axel, how could you run out of ammo! It's got 700 shots." ----------- Okay, one of the characters was teleported into the midst of a deep, dark jungle. Another character divines his location, teleports to about 30 yards from it, and finds the first character has been captured by a large group of natives. The second character shouts from the trees to the natives to let the first character go, or suffer horribly. Unimpressed, the natives' leader shouts back, "Show yourself, or we kill him!" The hidden character, in all seriousness, shouts back, "Who?" ---------- A bard in the party had been getting on everybody's nerves for quite some time, so one of the mages sticks a permanent illusion of fire around him. The bard blows his disbelief horribly, and runs screaming out of the building (they were hanging out in a party member's townhouse at the time). One of the other characters, returning from an errand, enters the room and asks in a totally casual voice, as if he were talking about the weather; "Has anyone noticed the burning bard in the front yard?" ----------- Player 1: Hey, what was the name again of that girl you'r going to marry. Player 2(me): Mary, yes Mary, Mary, or was it Jackie? ----------- Players from a low level tech enviroment find a laser distance measurer. After fooling around with it for a while they figure it out. One player points it at the sky. The display produces the infinity symbol. The player turns it 90 degrees and comments:" Hey, the sky is eight yards high". ----------- Question to DM: Why do you hate players? Answer: They kill my nice monsters. ----------- In a CoC campaign a character that everyone thought had been turned into a zombie (but actually wasn't) came to a meeting of the PC's sporting a bit of tissue paper on his face. "What's the tissue paper for?" "I cut myself shaving." "You don't have to shave, you're a zombie!" "Hey, just because I'm one of the walking dead, doesn't mean I can ignore personal hygine." ---------- Let me tell you about Gregor.... (before he does it himself....) Gregor, the Russian defective - er, defectOR - was the result of a failed attempt in the Soviet super-soldier program. He's strong, fast, fearless... brain damaged.... His KGB masters got him to defect on the theory that he would do more damage as an American. Charles (Gregor's player - or perhaps that should be "keeper") is very theatrical, and always spoke for Gregor "in hokey Russian accent, da?" - a vocal trait Charles claimed translated into Gregor's native tongue, as well. Some of Gregor's more memorable exploits: While fighting a German supervillain, Gregor dodged an axe-blow, only to leap up, level his plasma rifle at his foe, and inquire, "Remember Stalingrad?" He then blew the bad-guy through the peanut-brittle windows of the Bank of America building (an even longer story than this one....). When confronted with a Lovecraftian eldritch horror, Gregor's only comment was a hushed "Oh my lack of God...." ---------- One of my husband's characters was an erstwhile biker who had been melded with his beloved Harley. The party had gone to one of IronHorse's old hangouts, a notorious "outlaw" bar, for information, and Gregor was getting *bored.* He sauntered over to the biggest, ugliest group in the bar, sat down, and said: "Greetings, socialist brothers - am being pleased for to meet you. You are to be riding fine Japanese motorcycles, yes?" ---------- My husband was playing in a MERP session, where he was Sam to another player's Frodo. When they reached the point in the narrative which placed the pair in front of the gates of Mordor, the GM asked how they wished to proceed. "As God is my witness," the husband tells me, "this is how I responded." SAM: It's 106 miles to the Crack of Doom, we've got a magic ring, two daggers, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. FRODO: Hit it. The image of the Blues Brothers as halflings brought the game to a violent halt for the next five minutes...but it came back to haunt them. About an hour later, two of the elves were interrogating a villager who asked, "Are you with the authorities?" ELF 1: No, ma'am. ELF 2: We're mythical. ---------- Let's see here...Fantasy Hero game. Party has been stalked by an assassian with a majic autofire bow for the past couple of weeks travel through assorted cities. Hadn't gotten a glimpse of him yet. Pretty much convinced ourselves that he had a cloak of invisibility as well as the bow. The party's warrior priest steps out from an inn and into the street. A mage asks if the coast is clear. He responds "Must be. I don't see any invisible assassians." Later in that campaign, the caravan the party is guarding finds itself at the foot of a rocky crag, with twelve longbowman at the top of it, firing arrows for all they're worth. The same priest raises his War Axe and shouts- "Launch a Frontal Assault! They'll never expect it!" (Strange thing is, it worked.....) ---------- >The party's warrior priest steps out from an inn and into the street. >A mage asks if the coast is clear. He responds "Must be. I don't >see any invisible assassians." Oh, geez. This reminds me of an _old_ AD&D game from long ago. This is the first session, the group has found their way to the entrance of a lair of kobolds or nasties or some such. They send in the mage to investigate. The mage, being paranoid, casts invisibility and saunters on in, checking carefully for deadfalls, etc. I deal with him privately, but a few minutes later, one of the players playing a fighter-type (Hi, Craig!) gets bored, and tells me that his character hollers into the mouth of the cavern, "Hey, invisible mage! Find anything yet?" ---------- On learning that various members of the party, separated by great distance, were being simultaneously briefed by individualized divine visions about a holy quest they were about to undertake, the cleric in the party declared, "I continually marvel at the efficiency of the gods." In a different adventure, the party had just discovered that a warehouse they had bought (because it housed an entrance to an underground city) had been "occupied" by the local military, who refused to let them in, even though they were the ones who asked the military to guard it. (Long story behind this...). They were referred by the enlisted grunts to the captain running the operation. The mage turns to the rest of the party and says, "Okay, let's break the captain's kneecaps." After they meet the captain, said fellow claims he answers *only* to the king, and refuses to give them access. The mage then turns to the rest of the party and says, "Okay, let's go break the *king's* kneecaps." A third incident: The party had been gathering a large amount of intelligence on their current project. After a particularly detailed but rather irrelevant chunk of data had been acquired, the fighter-not-a-thief said, "That tells us... um... actually, that tells us absolutely nothing." ---------- When asked in her first game (she'd never rpg'ed before) what she wanted to do, my wife responded "I'm going to go for violence, 'cause I know that works." ---------- From a GURPS Supers game I ran at Origins a couple years ago: A flying super going after a sniper on top of a high-rise asked, "If I knock him off the building, how many seconds do I have to interrogate him before he hits the ground?" ---------- "Wait a minute. Dead people walking around get torched. It's one of the basic rules." Not quite from within a game, but close... a comment by a friend on a character who had a bonus to his Fireball spell when he was in the Hells: "It's like having a better water gun for use only against fish." And finally, from the GURPS campaign I run on eWorld: A near-immortal elf with the Destiny advantage commented: "I'm destined for greatness in *everybody's* lifetime!" --------- The party always told the druid not to wander off by herself..... The druid, Sheena, of course, always did. Sheena wanders through a door that was actually a portal to another part of the dungeon. She steps through to find a dozen or so orcs in a large room, armed with bows. She surprised them, amazingly enough, and used her free turn to throw down a small bush (not to be confused with a small shrubbery :) ), and cast plant growth on it for cover. The orcs decide it would be humorous to shoot the bush full of arrows so they draw their bows and nock arrows. Meanwhile, Kyrric the cleric wonders where the druid wandered off to and heads to the same door..... Sheena, as she was casting obscurment on her general area, comes up with the brilliant tactic of bluffing.... SHEENA: "You'd better watch out! My FIVE POWERFUL FRIENDS will be coming through THAT DOOR any minute now!" The orcs look at each other, draw back their bows, and point them at said door. Kyrric steps through the door/portal and becomes an instant pincushion. The fighter Anthrax (me) follows the next turn.... ANTHRAX: "Ok, what do I see?" DM: "First you see Kyrric lying on the floor looking a lot like a pincushion. Next, you see a dozen orcs nocking another arrow. Finally, you see a suspiciously hazy looking bush in the corner." ANTHRAX: (Covers his eyes, shakes his head) "SSSSSSHHHHHEEEEEEENNNNNAAAA!!!" ***************************************************************************** Sheena was also known for using Anthrax as a targeting sight. DM: "Okay, where do you want to target your entagle spell?" SHEENA: "Hmmmm, target it on Anthrax, he's in the middle of them!" Of course, in other campaigns, she played a magic user who targeted fireballs the same way......OUCH! ---------- After spending several gaming sessions tracking down "The Sword of Immortality" to it's fianl resting place. The mage in the party, a rather cynical, sardonic man walked over with his hands in his pockets, blew some dust off it and turned to the rest of the group saying, "So this is the Sword of Immortality. What's it doing in a crypt?" ---------- One character, scouting alone, finds that the tower is being guarded by archers in black robes. He asks me (the GM) how many. "Ten in front; you think there are probably ten more in back." About five minutes later he rejoins the party, and they ask him how many. "Twenty." Pause. "Twenty in front, probably twenty more in back." There is some goggling from the other players (they heard what I said) but their characters accept this story, until about ten minutes later they've made their plan. The scouting character, they say, should try to take out the archers with spells. He's shocked. "But there are forty--just in front, and probably forty more in back!" At this point everyone else burst out laughing, but the player just didn't get it. I'm not sure he ever *did* get it. On the other hand, he was working on his PhD dissertation at the time, which is enough to rot anyone's brains.... ---------- On first trying GURPS Bunnies & Burrows: "But I don't wanna be a bunny. Can't I be a cougar who's a friend to the bunnies?" He never did get into the game. ---------- This crack-up line was among players i.e. out-of-character. This guy was involving us in the accountant's nightmare called CHAMPIONS, and against the emphasis of the entire rules system he was trying to get us to role-play. So we the players were getting flak for not thinking through the complicated plot-line of the story, and dealing improperly with an NPC group. So the GM asks us, "Think a minute. What are the two ways in CHAMPIONS to get NPCs to do what you want?" At which point one player, Charles P., says, "Well...there's violence, and...." We totally cracked up at that. ---------- Captain Blaines A. Jerque sees something deadly in the viewscreen : "Full astern, helmsman" Crunch! "Next time ensign, put "rear" in big white letters on the screen when it's looking backwards " ---------- In a TORG game, the PCs have recently acquired a powerful mystic artifact called the Possibility Chalice. They're being chased by a vampire who wants to take the Chalice and bring it back to his master. The vampire catches up to the party and cuts them off. "Give me the Chalice!" he snarls. In perfect streeophonic sound, two of my five players yell out "You want a _phallus_?!?!?" (The vampire was eventually killed by the group's New Ager psychic, whose name was, of all things, Buffy.) ---------- A SHADOWRUN game. The PCs are storming the hive of a group of insect spirits (trust me; if you don't know, you don't _wanna_ know!), and are armed for armor-plated, cybered-up metabear. While the PCs are slaughtering combat-ineffectual worker spirits, the warrior spirits come up from behind and burst through the walls. The party's shaman is caught completely unawares and ends up in the mandibles of a rabid ant spirit. One of the samurai turns around, levels his assault rifle at the thing's head, and yells, "Hey, bug! Don't squeeze the shaman!!!" To top it off, he blew the thing's head to little chunks. ---------- In an AD&D campaign that I was in about a year ago I played one of a pair of thieves. We had come into the campaign late, and the DM had us meet up with the existing party in the tomb complex they were exploring. We bluffed the rest of the party into thinking we were low level fighters and they agreed to take us on as 'guards' since they were low on swords at the time. After a bit of combined exploring the party beds down for the night. Arthur (the other thief) and Smee (my thief) pull first watch. Being none too swift, we decide to get a head start on the looting and leave the party, blissfully asleep (and now unguarded). Bad move. The first room we enter is inhabited by Ghasts. Lots of them. We begin backing out of the room, impressed by their numbers and, more importantly, their sharp teeth. As we back out Arthur tries to convince them that not to eat us: Arthur: Really, there's lots of you and only two of us. What's the point? You'll only make yourself hungrier! At that point Smee was dealing with about 3 Ghasts of his own and shouts out Smee: EAT HIM! HE'S BIGGER! They jump him. I run back to the party, wake them and breathlessly try to get their help. After not making much sense and being shouted at for waking them up I proclaim: (holding out left arm) Arthur! (holding out right arm) Teeth! (bringing arms together) EATEN! Now come on! ---------- Player: "I take their weapons and forge a battle-axe out of them." Player: "Well, I just want to melt them down and make a new axe." GM: "But you don't have a forge. You're in the middle of town." Player: "Why can't I just melt them down?" GM: "With what? Your fricking heat-vision?" Poor Woody (the dwarf player) was pretty quiet the rest of the game.... ---------- One of my favorite characters would have to be my priest of Lathandar, Will. Since I'm the only cleric in the party, I'm the one stuck with handling the undead, like its that much of a challenge when you're basically 13th level (he's 12th with the +1 level Ioun stone). For a while I was saying the same boring stuff "OK I attempt to turn them." Then I started getting more into it: "Demonspawn, BEGONE!" But it hit an all time high when I had recently watched Ghostbusters again. I believe it was a heucuva but instead of the usual "I turn the undead." I went amok saying: "Good evening. As a duly designated representative of the church of Lathander, I hereby order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your home plane or the nearest convenient parallel dimension." We had to wait until everyone regained their composure and the DM ceased to look like he was going to explode from laughing so hard. Later though since that was a bit long to say over and over when we fought undead, I switched to a shorter turning speech: "Back off man! I'm a cleric!" Yeah. Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies, next to Big Trouble in Little China and Army of Darkness. *grin* ---------- There was this one con game of Amber, where we ended up in this techno-industrial-wasteland, and we see this knight (or some such) dressed in full plate armor made out of automobile parts. I don't know when exactly it happened, but the words just came sliding out of my mouth: "Look! It's a Chevy Cavalier!" ---------- In a Mechwarrior game: The PC's are trying to strike a deal in a shady restaurant. Two blond, muscular men in suits walk in. One paranoid player decides to see if they might be carrying any concealed weapons. His request to the GM comes out: PLAYER: These two guys who just walked in. Can I see any bulges on them? ---------- From a cyberpunk game I was running: Butch is sneaking around a warehouse. Just as he's about to leave, the two rent-a-cops (who were guarding the place) come back in. The dialogue went something like this: 1st guard: Hey! What are you doing here. Butch: Hey man, don't shoot! I'm on your side! (draws his .454 and shoots one of the guards) Oh my god, I just shot him! Did you see that!(gets shot by the surviving guard) I can't believe you just shot me! I'm on your side! (shoots guard) Meanwhile, his buddy John Paul Winchester has been keeping an eye on the warehouse from a payphone across the street, where he is talking to his girlfriend. He sees this shootout and says: JP: Oh wait, Butch just got shot, I gotta go save him. (hangs up) Butch: (staggering away from the warehouse, bleeding profusely) Did you see that? He shot me right here, right in the chest, and I didn't even fall down! This is what happens if you have a _player_ with a fast talk skill. ---------- Here's one from a high-powered, dimension hopping fantasy campaign I played in, in which the puns were flying fast. We're just about to go up against the bad guy, and Ka-te (a PC) is missing. One of the characters had a magic sack, which he could pull things out of. He says: "I'm going to try to pull the Ka-te out of the bag." It didn't work. Other lines from that campaign that I remember were: "A very disarming experience." said by a character after his arm had just been ripped off. "I suppose I'll knock him out with a rock, only... I'll use a soft rock, so it won't hurt that much." the background to that one is just too bizarre to explain... This one wasn't actually said during the session, but in-between sessions, when a bunch of us players were conspiring. "Ok, we go to a zoo. We find a panda, and we make it sentient..." This was also the campaign with the rocket powered roller skates, the candid camera, and Spot Hidden the invisible dog, but those aren't really one-liners... ---------- The party had (unintentionally) set fire to a city long abandoned because of plague. In a desperate attempt to prevent the conflagration from spreading, the mage in the party polymorphed into a Purple Worm and dug a trench/firebreak around the city. They were also desperately seeking a way to fill it with water; in rapid succession they considered and discarded the idea of digging to a nearby lake (there was none), magically creating the water by spell (1 cubic foot at a time? No.), conjuring rain (no one could do it), and so on, until finally, one of the clerics in the party looks in her backpack and says, "Oh, I have a decanter of endless water. Would that help?" At another time, the same party was ensconced overnight in a Leomund's Secure Shelter (they travel in style ), cast in a rocky area, so that it was made of stone. A group of slightly brain-dead bandits attempted to storm the Shelter, failing miserably, up to and including shattering a tree trunk in vain attempt to use it as a battering ram. The bandits, though dumb, were persistent, and remained outside the Shelter all night, waiting to waylay the party as they left. Knowing the expiration time of the Shelter spell, they armored up and got on horseback, and used a little clairaudience to determine the direction the bandits were in, and faced that way. The moment the Shelter vanished, the mage stood up in his stirrups, waved his hands wildly at the bandits, and shouted "OOGA BOOGA BOOGA!" The bandits ran. Two days later, the same bandits tried to waylay the party on the road, not realizing it was the same party. The PCs got advance warning, and positioned themselves at the bottom of a hill, facing the oncoming bandits. The mage stood in his stirrups again, and as the bandits came over the hill, shouted "OOGA BOOGA BOOGA!" once more. The bandits, true to form, ran even faster this time. A little while later, the party met another, lower-level party, and sicced them on "some really stupid bandits over that way." From the same campaign: "Our strength is as the strength of ten, because there are ten of us." ---------- In a Teenagers From Outer Space campaign I run, one character once remarked to another, "You're a *mercenary* little geek, aren't you?" ---------- "A god was chasing me, so I ran." ---------- From our V&V campaign, after discussing various tortures that could be inflicted upon the most powerful character: "Even without feet, I could kill you." ---------- A "Famous Last Words" comment to come from my original GURPS International Super Teams playtest sessions: "Relax. You're just having a metahuman reaction." ---------- A comment made in between games by one of my players, who is an ex-street gang punk: "I know paladins don't exist in the real world, 'cause I haven't killed one." ---------- Let's see here...there was the time in the TFOS game where the Gadgeteer needed a weapon, and was standing in front of a fabric shop. He ran in, dissassembled a few sewing machines, and came up with a shoulder-fired contraption that knitted straight jackets around it's target. We called it "The Singer Missile". ---------- "I charge..." "... cautiously" ---------- During a particulary nasty fight a thief had been planning a backstab on the oppositions leader. He was moving across a tiny ledge 20 feet above the fight in order to get behind. The one of his own party members called up to him about getting down and helping, completly blowing his cover. The oppositions mage looked around, saw him and did a Fire-bolt. (similar to a lightning bolt). The thief took more damage than he had hit points, so he fell unconcious to the floor. Two other players looked at him as I described the fact that he was on fire and had just fallen 20 feet. One player turned to the other and said. "Well, he got the Stop and Drop part right" ---------- This is more of just a weird line, or one that made everyone laugh when, after the player said it, everybody realized how odd and quirky it sounded out of context. It was a Champions/Hero superhero game, a 200 point game. They were confronting a sorcerer supervillan and his animated spellbook (which was just another character bought as an ally or whatever, I forget, and it looked funny, and had its stats altered). The spellbook kept flitting about blasting characters. It was really harassing us. When it went down, the GM said "The spellbook is unconscious." A player then said "Yeah! I killed the spellbook!" Suddenly, everyone had a nervous giggle as they realized how out of context it sounded. It's just something you hopefully dont hear in everyday conversation, like those blurbs Letterman used to do: "Things you know Have Never Been Spoken Before." ---------- We were attacking a some sort of a lab in Spacemaster. One of the characters was setting up a bomb, but he was attacked by a guard and got wounded. His pal saves the situation and starts to give first aid, but suddenly notices that the wounded guy is still holding some explosives in his hands. Without further thinking he stics it (50 grams of C16????) to a plasma grenade and throws it as far as he could. "I'll take this away so dont'n hurt yourself" The blast radius was 80 meters....... ---------- A character was trying to buy a horse in MERP. The opening line: "You better not try to play any tricks on me, I've been fooled before!" ---------- In a cyber-punk campaign, we needed some information about a street gang. We had managed to capture one of the members. I wanted the information, but I knew that my intimidation skill wasn't too good. Me: Tell me what I want to know or I'll shoot you in the leg. Him: Kiss my a**. <> Him: ARRGH!! I've been shot!! Me: I know, I'm the one who shot you... Now tell me what I want to know or I'll shoot you in the other leg... ---------- The game: Paranoia The situation: The group was guarding a really big tank (the Mark IV, in fact.) We were getting attacked by a bunch of Commies on jet-propelled skateboards (or something like that.) My character was a member of the Communists secret society and was talking to the leader of the attacking Commies, asking to join him: Me: I vould werry much like to join wit you, Comrade Borscht. GM: I think ve have an openink for you. At this point the GM make a roll to see if one of the NPCs can control his skateboard. He fails. GM: SCCREEEEECH CRASH! BOOOOM! Me: Vhat vas dat? GM: Another openink. ---------- Very funny bit playtesting _The Khan Chak Experiment_, new adventure for _Tales of Gargentihr_. In this world there is lots of weird science sort of powered by sort of magic, and lots of aliens. We were at a party, and the guest of honour was a previously unknown kind of alien (although actually he wasn't, he was a weird form of a familiar alien) in a large fish bowl equivalent, free floating a few feet above the floor. One of the PCs saw this, and was a scientist and was really impressed. To the GM (in perfect innocence) "I go over towards the grav tank". We couldn't stop laughing and get our breath back for ages. ---------- Game: Champions. Setup: In this campaign I playing a magic-type character (Chip the monk) whose main feature was a staff that could heal or harm (as needed). Another player (who was something of a powergamer) was running a character he called *TH-H-HE WRAITH!!!!* Note, it was important (to him, at least) to put the proper emphasis on the name (including Richard Nixion-ish "Victory" hand gestures). Anyway, during this one fight, *TH-H-HE WRAITH!!!!* (Emphasis, please!) was just not doing well at all--and as the party's "medic", it fell to me to keep bringing his character back from unconcosioness (sp?), just to watch him get knocked out yet again. *sigh* Well, at one point, a friend dropped by and asked us how the fight was goining. My Response: +-----(spoken in a bored/depressed tone)------+ +---(cheerfully)---+ "I wouldn't know; I've spent all my time healing *TH-H-HE WRAITH!!!!*" Everybody at that point lost it. Except for the player in question, whose indignant (My spelling is off today!) response just made the whole thing funnier! ---------- In a cyberpunkish game I was running, the PC:s were a team of investigative journalists, and one of them was the Ultimate Englishman - completely calm, expressionless and collected, no matter what happened (any relation to real Englishmen is purely coincidental). The first time we played, he was assaulted by a hitman in the basement of a post office, and got kicked in the groin, hard. Not surprisingly, he was stunned for a while, and then the cops arrived to break up the situation. When they tried to question him, he replied : "Terribly sorry, but my genitals have just absorbed a substantial amount of kinetic energy, and I am momentarily incapable of responding to any inquiries." The line would haunt him forever... There are a lot more, related to this one, but they are in pretty poor taste. Sick players, I've got... ---------- Not a game I was in, but one a heard about: (one of my friends ran) A party of mostly clerics and magic users, who noticed in the midse of an assassination attempt that Silence, Darkness, and Fireball all have roughly equivalent radiuses. Cast them all simultaneously, and you get: "Dwarmigi's Inconspicuous Fireball-- I don't know what it was, but it sure hurt like hell..." Also, from the same game, the Cleric blesses a dead NPC: "Ominus, dominus, you still dead." ---------- From a D&D campaign, the party Cleric (of the God of war) faces down a demon. Demon: "Are you a god?" Cleric: "No, but I work for one..." ---------- A compilation of amusing things people said or posted to the Vampire bboard... "Send up more bell-boys!" -IS "Seeing that the criminal justice system was not defending my rights, I released myself into my own custody." -CE "Let's meet in Central Pa- Let's meet NEAR Central Park." -JW "Eight successes on the to-hit roll." -CE "You miss." -DS "You all remember Edward, tall, good looking, makes Satan look like a choir boy? " -SB "Give me a couple of Uzis, a 44 Magnum, a couple grenades, a USAS 20 automatic shotgun with napalm and explosive rounds, and... a crossbow." -CE "Maybe we'll all stay up to see the sun (SHEA RIGHT! AND MONKEYS MIGHT FLY OUT OF MY BUTT!)." -JW "[Flame] looked like a pincushion. He musta had some bad experience with a wood shredding machine or sometin'." -JS on Helga: "What's a name like that doing on a body like yours?" -BB "Two weeks... 4th-gen Brujah... gives a whole new meaning to the word "DEADline" -IS "I'm told that most Vampires who meet Oblivion do it from an unconscious death wish. Not true. From what I can see of Jason Flame, he's completely conscious about it." -BB "Someone has to tell him that he can't reach Golconda if he's killed first." -IS "Flame walks in to the Sabbat's meeting place and is immediately blasted with enough lead to drop a tank. He seems to enjoy that kind of thing." -CE "I'm the misfit of the group, and I think they need me like a beauty pageant needs a Nosferatu." -JW "WTGGTTDGH=When The Going Gets Tough The Dice Get Hosey" -IS "Never noticed huge numbers of Sabbat taking over the Washington Monument before. I guess you miss these things when you're a mortal." -CE "I've always hated Sabbat, and now I hate their games too. Now I know how Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer felt." -IS "Spiders, dealers. It's all the same to me." -CE "What's scary is that Jason Flame is now the sanest member of the party." -IS "Why can't we fight a more congenial enemy who prefers the tropics? No doubt Babayaga could answer that. (It probably has something to do with how she looks in a bikini.)" -BB "I'll Shoot!" -Stupid Nosferatu "Go Ahead, Mine's Bigger." -BB "They wouldn't know subtlety if it painted itself purple and jumped up and down in front of them singing 'Subtlety is here again'..." -IS "And you're high on life, saying nothing could ever be this good...... ......until you crash into shore and scream, because there's a crab hanging from your testicles." -JW "'I diabolrized Cain and all I got was this lousy generation.' 14th gen Vamp" -CE ---------- GM: You see a vauge white shape in the distance, with large expansive wings Player: IT'S A HORSE! (Many confused looks) ---------- two people are knocked unconcious, and wake up in a room having no idea where they are. Using various skills they free themselves from bonds player 1: I Jump out the window! Player 2: (hesitating): I LOOK out the window. --------- player 1: (Frantically screaming so his partner will run away with him) There's 15 of them! player 2: oh good, for a minute i was worried. (brilliant playing of overconfidence, resulting sadly in player death) ---------- tracing a chemical that causes brain damage hero: SO, exactly how much insanity has leaked into the water (Perhaps you had to be there.) ---------- dungeon game: A seductress, whose spellcasting is limited indoors, finds herself in the front of the line, when the first two party members fall into a pit, and are faced to face with a mindless golem immediate reaction of the bimbo/seductress "Yoo hoo, mister golem! i'm cute don't hurt us!" interestingly, this character was played by a female. ----------- player scientist meeting a robot charachter. scientist: WOw! this is truly amazing! what a fantastic speciment you are! What exactly do you use for power? robot (Reacting in modesty to compliments): shiiiit! _________ after launching a LAW and viturally devastating a huge area. "damn, i didn't think it was loaded" ---------- A police ERT member (the grenadier) on a space station, whilst engaged with a group of cybered hit men and after firing off a *very* special (and illicit) round: "Gee, I wonder what the yield is on that." ---------- A space marine Warrant Officer gets slammed against a bulkhead due to unexpected and sudden acceleration. The player is known for being, ahem, creative: "Don't I get to dodge the wall?" ---------- A security man on a ground survey team approaches his commanding officer to report seemingly aggressive plant life on the planet: "Sir, Dr. Lund says she's being stalked by a bush." ---------- Fantasy campain, 2 clerics, 2 barbarians, 1 halfling thief/magic-user. Leaving the dungeon/orc hideout, the "outer patrols" return meet us in the first room -- we can see daylight, but we're hurt, out of healing, and desparate. The thief fumbles throwing flaming oil, and is consumed in the blast. The Barbarian fumbles, breaking his weapon. A cleric goes down. The barbarian: "How much damage does a flaming thief do?" ---------- Champions Line. (Its important that you've played champions) GM: "[sigh...] Somebody help Chris with the subtraction." ---------- From GURPS fantasy: A character takes an all out attack to attack twice. On both strikes he aims for the neck, hitting both times. For the first roll the target makes his health roll and avoids decapitation. He fails the second time and his head goes flying. I say, "Ah, the patented Lift and Cut System." ---------- From AD&D: We were using a laminated sheet of graph paper and felt tip pens to demonstrate combat. We would mark our moves by drawing an arrow from our present positon to our final position. (This is important, the board got quite cluttered.) We [the characters] were about to receive a charge, and I was separated from the rest of the group Of course, a full 50% of the charging knights veer off to attack me. To the GM I say, "See these lines?(pointing at old marks on the map) I try to hide there." ---------- In a VD&D dungeon game many years ago, Ali, the best fighter of the party but not renowned for brains (Int 3), led us into a room... GM: You see several creatures which look like human-headed lions Ali (happily): Lammasu! GM: Ali is hit by several crossbow bolts. Ali (indignantly): Nasty Lammasu! ---------- Another classic came from a Champions game in which a playuer was running the villain. The master plan he presented to the GM to escape from a high rise building included the following two steps: 1. Jump out of window 2. Secure rope to window frame Player, on realising his mistake: Execute step 2 before step 1 ---------- "It's only a LITTLE demoness!!" ---------- "Do you repent?" "No!" "Do you repent?" "No!" "Do you repent?" "Yes!" "Ref? What's his alignment?" "Uh.. Lawful Confused, I think..." (enthusiastic paladin converting a troll) ---------- OK... The scene: San Francisco, CA, in my Cthulhu:1999 campaign. The PCs, having defeated the villanous Dr. Deiter, have taken the transmitter that will blow up the Doctor's electronic mind control devices, and hooked it up to their van's satellite dish. They point it at a nearby university, then call a friend who works there. PC: "Hi. Has anyone's head just exploded?" Friend: "Ummm... No...." PC: "How 'bout now?" In this same campaign, people were frequently heard to say, "Ia Ia, sure sure," and the favorite spell was "DWEAD CURSE OF AAAAAAAAZATHOTH!" And one of the PC's suggested blowing up the Moon to prevent an eclipse. He was joking. The rest of the PC's eventually did that just that, much to his chagrin (on Sept. 13, 1999, for you SPACE: 1999 fans). ---------- Re: Dwead curse of Azathoth. The secret last syllable of Azathoth's name is, of course, "Ski!" (He is, after all, the Pole of the universe...) ---------- I saw the crack-me-up lines in RPGs thread; I have none to contribute at the moment, but that brought my current campaign's crack-me-up situation to mind. We're playing GURPS. The starting scenario of one of the characters is that his teacher of ten or twenty years, Tarvack One-Eye, has taught him all he can for the moment and thrown him out of the university to go out, journey, and learn from the world. Old Tarvack was -supposed- to be a pretty good teacher, moderately well known in his country, but not very well known in other countries, one of which was the starting place for our current campaign. For the first three months, Tarvack made his reputation role EVERY STINKING TIME. EVERYBODY had heard of him. Bartenders. Old hermits out in the woods. Famous heroes. Kings. Shopkeepers. Enemies. The DM started out taking this in stride, but by about month two, every time that roll came up (which was almost every time) the players could tell by the disgusted look he got on his face. The DM took a break for a while and switched with one of the players for a while and Tarvack STILL kept making his rolls. By month three, every time we met somebody who recognized Tarvack (which was darn near everybody, whenever the subject came up), the group would collapse in laughter. Finally, the DM conceded that fate seemed to be taking a hand, and raised Tarvack's reputation to "well-known all over the world" - and Tarvack hasn't made a reputation roll since. ---------- This one was from a Star Wars game I ran a few years back. The PC's get in a f ight in the Cantina in Mos Eisly. The bartender is yelling"NO Blasters!! NO Bl asters". Two of the PC's dive over the bar, lob thermal detonators both ways. The bounty hunter then turns to the Bar tender and says "no blasters" ---------- Our characters began in the FTL universe, and were shangheid into the Star Trek one by some saboteurs who vented most of our hydrogen in the process. Our cargo ship was carrying several tons of beer, which we proceeded to use as reaction mass, playing hob with the engines. Finally, a Federation starship approached us, only to be hit by a piece of our rapidly decomposing engines. The exchange went something like this: FTL GM: "The engine cone blasts off and hits the approaching starship." ST GM: "Impact! Impact!" ST Players: "Where!!??" ST GM: (rolls some dice, consults hit charts) "Ummm, the ship's gymnasium." FTL Players, all together: "IT'S DEAD, GYM!" ---------- Shadowrun. On a snatch-and-grab mission, the runners bust into a boardroom in the middle of a meeting (guards being eliminated quickly and quietly courtesy the street shaman and a stun ball spell). The lead street samauri kicks the door open, racks a shell into his shotgun, and cries "This is a hostile takeover! Everyone down!" ---------- Greyhawk Ruins, the single most fun AD&D module ever made. One player is running a chaotic chaotic dwarven fighter-thief, whose response upon finding anything without monetary value is "I burn it". Later he gets caught in a rug of smothering. When the DM asks how we propose to get him free of the rug, someone in back pipes up "I burn it". ----------- Same module. We find a giant dragon head made of stone, and further find that if you crank the lever just so, it belches fire. Unbeknownst to us, when we turn off the fire we leave the gas tap open. HOURS later, we're fighting a hydra on the other end of the level, and someone lights a flask of oil. BOOOMMM! While the DM is rolling a huge fireball, my player yells: "No! BUD light!" ------------- My overenthusiastic elven fighter-mage runs to the rescue of a fighter beset by gnolls. He calls in gnollish: "NOW IS THE HOUR OF YOUR DEATH!" and rolls a horrible miss. "...more or less". ---------- On a more disgusting note, having gotten through the very first few rooms in Dragon Mountain, a gloating evil persona made himself apparent, commenting that we would die since we had had so much trouble getting to where we were, and that we had not even penetrated deep into the mountain, I snappily remarked, "Well we're not to heavy on penetration." ---------- here is one for you , courtesy of a TV show called : SheWolf of London . the heroines' boyfriend is being attacked by a vampire , and was eating dinner ...he tosses the contents of a container of chinese food at it , to distract it , and low-and -behold , the vampire dies ... He uses it to rescue the heroine , and as they leave , she remarks : " If you kill a vampire with chinese food ( it was garlic chicken ) , does that mean he is undead again in an hour ? " think about it ... ---------- My character's introduction, the party's considering taking him on: Mage #1: Ah! Your reputation precedes you! You should be able to take care of yourself. But the job may involve danger. Swordsman: Ha! I love danger! I just qwish you could eat it! Mage #2: (Less impressed) How are you at fighting demons? Swordsman: (Thoughtful pause) This is hypothetical, right? ---------- My thief, Blackbird, watching one PC, a Flind, dig a hole for two hours, then try to cover himself with turf, as camoflauge: Blackbird: What the hell are you doing? Flind: How do I look? Blackbird: Like a grassy Gnoll. ---------- : This is one of my favorites from a Vampire campaign I was running. The character was an Uppity Ventrue, very high-class, who had just botched a hunting roll. Character figures out he has contracted herpes from his prey. Gamemaster: As you sink your fangs into his neck, you feel the diseased blood flood down your throat. Player: I...I feel VIOLATED! ---------- I don't know if you ever read my signature, but it was a real quote. Belchmore the Barbarous(a minotaur) and Ren the Repugnant(a Tren) were both very high level munchkin characters(both had a str of 22, con 22). I was getting tired of them putzing around, killing demigods, so when Ren said "I Challenge anything to try to kill me!" I reply,"You see 6 many-headed dragons flying toward you." He screams,"What do you mean, a PACK of Tiamats!!!" Bye Bye, party! ---------- On discovering a party member's ardent pursuer was a demon... "oh great, she's from hell. You didn't give her your adress did you?" ----------- Situation; PC Red Slaad (Gurps) bouncing through a forest, Scared senseless. Her Master Wakes up in the tree he's in, and contacts her mentally... Master: "...SLAADI! Get a hold of yourself!" Red Slaad stops in her tracks, and the player quickly wraps her arms around her self. "Now what, Bossman?" ---------- From my group's experiences playing Shadowrun: To set the scene: A street sam is busily getting fixed up in a DocWagon clinic. The group suspects another attempt on his life and goes to the clinic to break him out. Buck Naked, another street sam (played by a guy who is playing for the first time), is told to make a diversion while the rest of the group goes upstairs to the patient's room. Buck is sitting in the waiting room. GM: You see a secretary at the counter. Buck: What? Nothing else? GM: [rolls his eyes] A box of mints. Buck: I take a mint but I don't leave a penny. GM: Roll your Stealth. Buck: [rolls] Secretary: "Hey! Put that back!" Buck: [licks the mint, puts it back and walks away] ------ Buck: I look for a boiler room or something. GM: You see a door labeled "Electrical Room - No Admittance" down the hall from the waiting room. Buck: I try the door. GM: It's locked. Buck: I shoot it. GM: [blink] You shoot it? Buck: Yes. GM: Okay. The door opens and you hear a few startled screams down the hall. Buck: I go in. GM: You see a lot of electrical equipment. Buck: Do I know how to turn it off? GM: Roll your intelligence. Buck: [rolls] GM: You don't know shit. Buck: I shoot it. GM: [blink] [sigh] Okay, the lights go out, alarms go off and people are running everywhere. Buck: I go get the box of mints and sit out on the steps. ------ [the rest of the group has gotten the patient out by now] GM (to Buck, still sitting): Crowds of people are running by you. Buck (thoughtfully): Do I see that receptionist? GM: Er ... yea. Sure. Why not? Buck: I shoot her. [shrug] For some reason it had us in hysterics. ---------- To set the scene: Koshhka's a Cat Shaman. He and his companions find that part of completing their job involves nabbing a guy who has been busily uniting Seattle's gangs. They find him (along with a number of street punks, gutter rats and bored adolescents armed to the teeth) in a dockside warehouse. The group nabs the leader which predictably attracts the attention of all the gangers there. Koshka makes his way out of the warehouse fairly unscathed but ... GM: [rolls] A bullet whizzes by and clips you in the arm. Koshka: [rolls body - Light Wound] Hmmm. [whirls around and casts Urban Renewel on the (still occupied) warehouse which quietly falls to pieces] GM: Roll your Perception. Koshka: [rolls] GM: You notice a network helicoptor with its camera trained right at you. Koshka: I smile, wave, and polish my fingernails on my lapel. __________ Spoken by one character to another who was going to become a blood-hungry ravening beast as soon as the sun goes down... "Uh, could you cast invisibility on everyone before you die?" ---------- In a cyberpunkgame I played an combat-robot and this one wheighted (sp?) over 180 kg (how mush thats in lbs i don't know but thinks it about 400). We entered a bar/resaturant becourse the human PC needed to eat. We joked about how much the chair sqeesed under the weight of my robot. the waiter came in and ask if I wanted something and I answeard "no thanks, I'm on diet." ---------- In one CoC scenario, the players were chacing a villain in an underground bar. One of the villain's friends ran out from the back door - directly towards a car in which one of our characters sat on guard. The PC asked: "Stop! This is police! What's going on?" The guy: "You don't look like a cop to me." The PC lifts up a Thompson smg, saying: "Now what did you say?" The guy: "Umm... Well, mr. constable..." ---------- CYBERPUNK: One of the PC's was a huge man with full-body implanted armor. (You should have seen his handgun - bigger than most bazookas.) We were raiding a warehouse (and having a little fight, I might add), when suddenly we heard the police helicopters. This cyborg points at the combat map: "I go out right here." The GM: "There's no door there." The PC: "I know. But I still go out there." ---------- MEGATRAVELLER: The guys were secret agents on a mission to kidnap a famous scientist. Unfortunately the guy was working in a mine inside an asteroid. There were one heavily armed guardian per five persons working at the mine, and all kind of weaponry was forbidden. The guys were stopped by guardians during they arrival, and I said as the GM: "The guardians want to check on you." One of the players: "Really? I stick my laser in my ass." I was a little bit pissed off, so I said: "OK. After two weeks in hospital they charge you, and you get a death sentence. Make a new character." We had to stop the session for several minutes. ---------- Ok, here is the situation: Once in our Star Trek campaign there was a time when two characters got ambushed in the street, near an aircar. (Characters were run by Dan and Mark.) Dan: I dive for cover. Mark: I dive into the aircar, start it up, and fly to where the sniper is located. Vicki (the gamemistress): What is you Vehicle Operation skill? Mark: Ahh, I don't have any. Vicki: If you don't have the skill you can't fly it. Mark: But I have Warp Dive Technology! ---------- Fantasy rpg group have just about successfully negotiated their way through an encounter with a minotaur lord in its lair. They have bargained their way onward past the minotaur without recourse to violence and are feeling pretty pleased with themselves when the group's cleric, Abel Zeek wanders up to the minotaur and without realising what he is doing wrong says... "Kind sir, please accept this token of our gratitude, some food from afar, BEEF JERKY..." Later, the same group enter a vast underground chamber which has a description something like this... "Four stairways leading down, three doorways along both N & S walls, a set of double doors facing in both the E & W wall and spiralling iron stairs going up through the ceiling... What do you do?" Abel Zeek promptly responds... "I'm checking this place for secret doors..." ---------- OK, another one from an Amber game... Benedict has just hunted down a player character who has been exiled from Amber, and invited him back. "Oh, and yeah, your dad committed suicide." PC's reaction? "If you were anyone but Grandfather Death, I'd punch hell out of you." ---------- ..I was a magic user in a party that was trapped in an underground complex with a dragon between us and the exit. The dragon was alert, aware of our presence and hostile. In the safety of an adjoining chamber we discussed for ages what to do... I was getting frustrated at the delay and so I stepped into the dragons lair with a Wand of Lightning in hand... I reckoned if only I could get the drop on the dragon I might have a chance to survive the encounter. But then, as so often happens to me when I'm role-playing, a perverse muse (inspired by the John Wayne movie, True Grit) took control of my mouth and instead of filling the dragon with electricity without warning, my character issued a challenge (where winning initiative would be all too critical)... I yelled: "Go for your dice, you sonafabitch". The sorry end to this tale is the dragon won initiative and fried my butt before I was able to trigger the wand. End of character. Actually, this reminds me of yet another occassion when my mouth got the better of my survival insincts, this time whilst playing Cyberpunk 2020. I was involved in a firefight on the rooftop of a multistorey building, I had semi-auto pistols in both hands when one of the nomad oppostion simply grabbed me by the collar and threw me bodily off the side of the building... Faced with a long fall and certain death of the "red-jam-on-the-sidewalk" variety the GM offered me a lifeline... GM: "As you fall backwards you notice a safety-railing. What do you do..." NICK's PC: "I empty the magazine of both pistols at the bastard nomad!!!!" My character plunged to his death all guns blazing. ---------- A player in my group generally played the mercenary fighter type in D&D games. So we are in a dungeon and out steps a skeletal warrior. "Why are you here?" it asks. We all look at each other. That player has his character step forward confidently and says (honestly), "We're here to loot and pillage!" with great enthusiasm. Needless to say, it wasn't he right answer. This same player also made the statement, "I make noise to attract monsters so I can get more experience points." Another player (the GM in the above game) was playing in a techno-fantasy game and was involved in close combat with a very skilled opponent. First, he tries shooting with his gun and gets that knocked out of his hands. Then he draws his sword and that also gets knocked out of his hands. Finally, he is standing there unarmed and starts getting beaten around for few rounds as he makes unskilled hand-to-hand combat rolls. Finally, the player looks down at his character sheet and reads carefully. "Wait! I'm a MASTER at unarmed combat!" That little detail helped quite a bit... ---------- I've played AD&D with a group of friends. We were chasing a pack of villains and at last caught up with them. One of nasties casts fear spell at our elf fighter. He fails saving throw. DM removes his miniature from the desk and says "Your elf turns around, shouts 'Sevilla, here I come!' and splits." We've trashed the scum in about 20 rounds. Several minutes later, DM says "And the brave elven warrior returns, ready to hack them!" Me: "All the way from Sevilla?" Our MU: "And he brings us oranges, moor pottery and skillful Piccasso forgeries!" We've totaly cracked up there, and Elf wrote those under his magic item column. Later he tried to push some of those to Sthrad von Zarovich in Ravenloft. Suprisingly, it didn't work...:) ---------- Hi all, I was GM'ing a group through the third adventure in "Something Rotten in Kislev." The game system was WFRP. The party included a spiked-and-tatoo'd Giant Slayer dwarf, a communist Halfling, a militant priest of Ulric, and an elf necromancer, among others. They had been sent by the Czar to investigate what had become of one of his spies in the town of Bolgasgrad, a town in rebellion against the Crown and rumored to be under Chaotic influence. So, when they got there, they knew they had to operate subtly, incognito..... So, of course, when they make their way to the house of the missing agent, Julius Olvaga, they are met at the door by his elderly wife who, naturally, is rather unnerved by all these strangers who have just shown up at her door. The Halfling just about has her confidence when the Giant Slayer decides this has gone on long enough and cries out "Stand aside, we are agents of the Czar!" Woman screams, slams door, and the rest is History. :) ---------- Here are two from a *very* long-running Traveller campaign: Our crack team of psychotic problem-solvers had been hired to rid a planet of their number-one godfather of crime. Sneaking into his headquarters, we carefully and quietly made our way to his private quarters, stealthily terminating the opposition with hand-to-hand combat, knives, swords, and the like. When we finally reached his room, we all hunched outside the door and unloaded all of the heavy hardware that we had been saving: grenade launchers, auto-rifles, plasma guns, etc. On the count of three we burst in the door and proceeded to renovate the room. After ten seconds of this we stopped and looked at the smouldering remains of the furniture. Just as we started to congradulate ourselves, the bathroom door opened and a naked man entered, coughing a bit before delivering the line, "Gee dear, do you always smoke after sex?" ***** We later found ourselves on a balkanized planet with a pressing need to leave. Unfortunately, the authorities had captured us and insisted on our performing a minor service before our transport off- planet could be arranged. It seems that they were at war with one of the other countries and needed a commando team to infiltrate the enemy headquarters and neutralize their finest general. The fee would be 5000 credits and transport to the nearest world if we brought him back dead and 10000 and transport if we brought him back alive. We managed to get into the headquarters (definitely not in stealth mode!) and had advanced up through the building to the conference room. We knew we had him trapped, so I yelled through the oped door that he should surrender. He fired off a few rounds at us. To demonstrate our sincerity, I reached around the corner with an SMG and fired a few rounds into the ceiling above where I thought he was. He responded by getting an incredibly lucky hit that damn near blew my hand off. As I retreated and tried to stop the bleeding, Raymond (our resident homicidal maniac) picked up his grenade launcher and prepared to fire around the corner. Just before he made his move, one of the other players shouted, "Remember that he's worth twice as much alive. Just shoot to stun him!" When Raymond was finished, we had trouble convincing the authorities that the pieces in the bag actually *were* the general. ---------- Our party (5th-6th level, I believe) are summoned by a huge dragon, who sends us to explore an abandoned ogrillon temple for treasure and such. After my mage re-emerges from his cave with these instructions, the ranger starts walking in to "bargain" with the wyrm. The psi/fighter (who had just joined the group) says "Would you like regular or extra crispy?" ---------- This situation came from a module called "Fate of Istus", and is from the first adventure - a raid on a Sage's Tower. The party finally got into the Sage's lab and found him dead (killed by one of his experiments). So, being the good PCs they are, they raided his stuff. One of the things was a metal cabinet. The thief in the group determined that while it was unlocked, there was a needle trap, and she couldn't disarm it. So, the noble ranger agrees to open. HE wraps his hand in cloth and such, but the needle still penetrates and does some minor damage. Unfortunately, the party being low level, had no cure poison and thought that the poison was deadlier. The *CLERIC* yells, "Cut off his finger before the poison spreads!" AFter this, the bard determines that the poison had already done its damage. And finally, to the funny part. Inside the cabinet were several potions. So naturally, they decided to taste them all. And it seems that the cleric got the refill of the needle poison. So as the cleric gags, the ranger calls out, "Cut out his tongue before the poison spreads!" There are also a bunch of one-liners from the current group: "I saved myself by healing the enemy." "Let's put it on! Maybe the curse is worth it." "I'm maintaining my power over the cantelope." (said by a psionic) "He's not a savage. He's wearing a hat." "Keia, why are you using a weapon? You fight better without them." "Keia try be civil-ized." "Eat me." (said to a disguised mind flayer) From an Al-Qadim campaign: "She has a voice which bursts pimples." "Seeing as how my sorcerer is drunk, he will pull down his pants and sit in the jello mold." ---------- Let's see, a fighter in our party asked a cleric... "Now, the one you follow... is he a really religious god?" ^^^^^^^^^ When my 1st level fighter was growing up on the farm, we had a large number of sheep. When he turned 20, his mother gave him some money to go to town and have some fun. Not wanting to treat him like a child, but still wanting him to come home early, she said: "Now when you come home, you wouldn't want to scare the sheep." Our group then continually reminded me: "DON'T SCARE THE SHEEP!" all night long. ---------- One of the characters in our long running Harn game had a curse on him that he summoned an Earth Elemental at noon each day. We were in an underground complex, and found a godstone. We thought it would be useful for sending a captive to justice through - but the mage had a critical failure in using it, and *summoned* another mage from the place he was trying to send the captive to. The other mage was understandably somewhat surprised at being summoned - "I don't know, I was just on my way to lunch -" The other characters all turned to the cursed character and said as one "Lunch?". Cracked us up... ---------- This from an RoleMaster ages ago: Our party were earning their pay as adouble agents on an enemy country, which, I maight add, hated unlicensed magicians (we had one those) and abhorred priests (we had one of those too). We had agreed on delivering an important diplomatic message in behalf of this enemy country. Needless to say, we had other plans for this message. Just before leaving for our appointed journey, in walks this shady character who pretends to give us our last briefing, asking some questions in the while. Not too soon we realise this is some psionists, casting a standard spell that forces a truthful answer to a simple yes/no -type of question. Since guards are nearby, we are forced to under-the-table counterspells, and luck with resistance rolls. Still, the psionists gets some good ones in, and interrogates our priest, asking if we were to go directly to our destination, etc. Mollified by the said priests fast talking, he finally goes for the break asking: The Psionic: "Now, is it really sure you are not going to betray us?" Our Priest: "Yes! We are not going to betray you!" (hint: consider a no -answer on similar vein) Both the psionic and GM were too mollified to try anything else for awhile. ---------- In an AD&D game many years ago, we discovered a hole in a corridor leading down to the next level. The rest of the party climbed down to take a quick look around, while my character stood over the hole to hold the rope the rest of them would climb back up on when they had determined whether it was safe. Unfortunately, they were attacked by Nasty Things rather soon, and never got back. As they continued wandering for their lives down there, my character was all but forgotten. Periodically through the rest of the session, I would interject for no reason, "I continue holding the rope." This, of course, culminated in my creating a character a month or so later named "Whole D'Roap." :-) ---------- Game: GURPS Supers Setting: Modern, with two characters: Bloodbath (aside from super ST and Clinging, just a normal 500-point Special Forces guy) and Vindicator (a high-powered psi, with Telepathy, enough Psychokinesis to lift a car or vaporize a rifle in one second, but no common sense to go with it). Vindicator has enough Levitation to fly at Mach 1.1, but he's also Acrophobic! NOT a problem with low-level flight, but... Adventure: The city is going insane from TV broadcasts. Vinny and Bloodbath are at the top of a 7-story building, discussing how to find the source of the TV broadcasts. Vindicator's solution? "I activate Levitation and fly about half a mile up to look for antennae." Me: "Okay...um, when you're about 1000 feet up, you start looking around. Oh, make your fright check." "Oh yeah...I, um, rolled a 16." [A near critical failure!] Me: "Fortunately, the bodies in the street cushion your fall...you only take 16 dice of damage." [3 dice can kill a mortal] --- Same team (yup, he survived), slightly different adventure. They had been captured and were wearing Super-Stopping Manacles (TM). So they only had about 10% of their normal powers, and were being driven down a hall in a golf cart. BB: "We need a distraction!" V: "I think I can still TK the locks on my manacles. Can I?" Me: "Roll against TK at -5, and it'll cost you 5 fatigue." V: [rolls] "I...got a 17. Critical failure." Me: "Okay, Vindicator passes out and falls out of the cart. He hits the floor and rolls for a dozen yards." BB: "Perfect! That's JUST the diversion we needed!" I'm not sure if he was sarcastic or serious... ---------- One particular Champions module at Texas A&M several years ago took the intrepid group of South Central Texas superheroes out into the Gulf of Mexico in search of a secret underwater base. One of the heroes that came along was a martial artist-type named LoneStar (a Texas Ranger and state hero). LS had absolutely no Life Support, and only the bare minimum swimming movement, and no Flight to use underwater. All of the other heroes dove off the rowboat that the Coast Guard had lent them and engaged the underwater foes guarding the installation, leaving LoneStar to guard the boat and wonder if anybody might attack him. Everytime that it would roll around to his turn (quite often, he was a Speed 6 character), LS's player would say (in his best Hollywood Texas accent): "I sit in mah dinghy and hold mah action." ---------- I think my favorite line had to come from a Call of Cthulhu game I was running. I had this giant monster chasing the party. (Sorry, I forget which one; just assume it's mean, nasty, and wants to kill them all.) Me: "You hear heavy thudding footsteps behind you." The players (having had experiences with this kind of monster before): "We start running". At this point, when the monster realizes it can't catch up with them on foot (it's big but slow), it levitates itself and follows them. Me: "The footsteps stop." The players (whose characters are getting exhausted): "We stop running." The monster then descends and lands on one of the characters, who is crushed into a fine red jelly. The characters start running again. Me: "You hear the footsteps behind you again." The players: "We keep running." Me: "The footsteps stop again." The players look at each other, then at me, and say "We keep running!" ---------- The group that I role play with uses the whitewolf system, STREET FIGHTER. There were four of us,three women and one man, and we had just gotten caught infliltrating the bad guys' headquarters. An intense fight insued between our three good guys and the other twelve bad (or so) bad guys. One of the women were learning how to play the system and was still not accostomed to the different skills and tecniques that were involved in combat. Unfortunately, she was pitted against a bigger and more experienced foe. Her character was struck, and was to receive more damage than she had hit points (this would result in unconsciousness). The newbie player looked around in frustration and said 'But I don't want to die! I can't die. My character has survival!" ---------- ONe time in a Marvel Super Heroes campaign we had a new gamer playing a shapechanger. She was carrying the team brick, a 650+ pound slab of muscle and fur called Yeti, when she was hit by the 150 M.P.H. winds of a weather controller. She said " I fly into the winds " Dm said " How can you do that " She said " I got "Super Techno-Adjustable Wings" We lost it. Ever since then, whenever you want to do something outright impossible you just say " Sure I can, cause I got " Super Techno- Adjustable Wings" ---------- Dwarf in full plate with friends, searching for a famous dragon in the caves below somewhere or other. Dwarf and friends fight orcs on bridge. Dwarf falls off. Dwarf tries to swim. Friends try to help. Dwarf disappears under water. Current pulls dwarf through dragon's cave. Dragon fishes dwarf out and lays him in the middle of his treasure. All this unknwown to player. I say "You awake on a bed of gold." Dwarf says "I make a perception roll to see if I'm dead". ---------- We have a member, Mark, who absolutely loves to play theives. I remember one time we were trying to create a diversion for some reason or another and Mark looks at the GM and says, "James, I'm going to act like I am picking his pocket." Since that time anytime someone didn't have the right skill to accomplish something we would "act" like we were doing it...and send the entire group into fits. Acting has become the most powerful skill in the game. :-> "I am going to act like I am shooting those 9 bad guys coming through the door." "I am going to act like I am repairing the Hyperdrive Engine." "I am going to act like I am seducing her." etc. ----------- I'm running _Horror on the Orient Express_ for Call of Cthulhu. The characters were at the opening night performance of _Aida_ at La Scala in Milan. They had been given front-row seats by the lead, who had since vanished. So there they were, just across from the orchestra pit, expecting the _absolute_ worst to happen during the performance, completely unarmed and lamenting the fact. They began cracking nervous jokes, and I had to deal with lines like: "Maybe I can use the long stemmed roses I brought for the soprano to defend myself." "How much armour protection does a slide trombone provide?" One player "Let me check the tactical position again. GM, where did you say the bathrooms were?" Other player, not thinking, "Well, you could always use the orchestra pit!" It made building a sense of tensiona nd foreboding impossible, let me tell you..... ---------- OK- My character is pulled through a doorway by a mean evil nasty creature.It slams the door behind it. Party members try to come to my aid. The fighter who lost one of his arms in the last adventure wins initiative. HE DRAWS HIS SWORD, runs to the closed door, and screams: "HEY, quick, somebody open the door for me! OPEN THE DOOR!" ---------- Hmmm, we was in Dragon Mountain (still are, actually...) and the 1/2 orc high priest of Gruumsh and his two lackeys tried to convert a few captured kobolds. They believe in "Pacifism by Submission", a.k.a. beat them 'til they agree with you. The chief lackey was holding the kobolds and shaking vigorously, yelling "CONVERT! CONVERT TO GRUUMSH!" in their faces. The DM rolls a few dice, and sez, "You hear a snapping sound as the kobold's neck snaps." After the same thing happens for the next five or so, the DM turns to the player and sez, "By the way, did you know that the kobolds don't speak common?" ---------- Runequest: the PCs are facing a bunch of goat-headed broo; one leaps at the lead PC who hefts his sword and shield. "He's going to butt you," announces the GM. Strike ranks are tallied. "Do I beat his butt?" demands the player. "I don't know," deadpans the GM. "Do you?" ---------- Again Runequest: again a fight with broo. The PC warrior shatters a broo's spear with his sword. The broo (not a goat-headed one, this time) attempts to grapple him. The PC fumbles. Rolls on the fumble table are duly made: "Fall Down" and "Lose Armour". The armour location is rolled for: "Abdomen". The PC loses his chain- mail skirt and falls over. The broo continues its grapple attack. Simultaneously, the players and GM remember what broos are famous for (their ability to mate with *anything*, for non-RQers). "Oh, no!" wails the player. The GM grins evilly. Well, we were only about 15 at the time... ---------- This one cracked the entire party up, 'though it could have been a little terminal... My Cthulhu investigators were crammed into a cabin on the Orient Express, armed with garlic, shotguns and sharpened bits of wooden furniture. Being a kind keeper I had decided that the compartment counted as a 'home' of sorts, and the vampire who was hunting them (for those who hadn't guessed...) had to make do with floating along outside their window holding an unconscious comrade, making threats and generally scorning their pitiful mortal existance. At which point came from a rather shaky character the fateful. "Come here and say that" It did. ---------- In a champions game: GM: Your group is now being forced against the wall by a bunch of super agents. Player: How much is a bunch? GM: (thinking thoughtfully for a moment) about eighty. Player: (verty quietly) Oh. GM: What do you do. Player: Well, I have a code vs. Killing so I'll hold my action till they do something. GM: Alright. Many branish weapons. And one fires a rocket at you. Player: I'll deflect the rocket. GM: Roll to hit. Player: Hm. I think I was thinking about my other character, I don't have deflection. GM: OK. Quickly, what do you do? Player: I'll catch it. GM: Roll your grab. Player: A five. GM: OK, you catch it. Roll 7 dice? Player: Why? GM: Just roll. Player: 32. GM: They all turn around and run away! Player: Why? (He was very confused) GM: You just caught a rocket. They were very impressed! Normal people don't catch rockets. ---------- In an adventure I ran some time ago... The party came across a trap zone liberally marked "Trapped!" "Do not Enter if you value your body!" Of course the party's Macho Warrior ran through as fast as he could. At the end of the corridor, he hits the "Flesh to Air" spell-trap, turns around and says, "Ya-ya, what are you bozos lookin at?" Well, it was funny as hell at the time, this living skeleton stayed with the party for a long time. Even threatened to kill the cleric who was attempting to reverse the trap. He liked the "New Me". go figure. ---------- Player: I'll spend a blood point on Celerity, use my first action to get on the bus, and then the other five actions to hit the driver in the back of the head until he's unconscious. Then I'll drop him on the floor next to me, close the door, and start running over the guys in suits. Meanwhile, I'll pick up the rest of the party so we can get out of here. [Later... from a party member who had missed that night's gaming] "YOU STOLE A BUS???!?!!!?" ---------- Our DM had just put all of his sheets from the Monstrous Compendium in plastic wallets. He turned to the group and said "I like to keep all my monsters in plastic bags, it makes them last longer!" We all fell about laughing when someone chipped in "Why, hasn't the barbarian worked out how to undo the twist ties?" ---------- Probably he best crack-up line I can remember is when in an adventure I ran recently an ancient undead magic wielder offered an orb to the party's mage that would give him all the knowledge and experiences and power that the mage had. The mage in return commented, "And could probably win a hell of a lotta cash on Jeopardy!" ---------- The best Crack-me-up I heard was when I was experimenting with written moves during combat, to simulate the chaos and lack of communication. I was at the time running a party of 18 *players* (1/2 - 2/3 of whom would be present for any given session) so I thought it would expedite things. In a battle with a mummy, one rattled player, scrambling to write his action in the time allowed wrote "I run up on back of mummy, and hit the bastard, with my sword" No prizes for guessing what kind of sword he had! ---------- Player of recently-obliterated character: Hey, why didn't you guys save me? Team leader: Because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the DUMB! ---------- >>Dwarf says "I make a perception roll to see if I'm dead" Well, to continue the story, the dragon was a dark drake (all sorts of elemental ickiness at his command) who was dying and needed someone, preferably another drake, but a dwarf would do, to sing his death. As a payment for doing this the dragon fixed up his left hand to be composed of shadow (immune to crits, can dematerialise) and gave him a shadow beast that he could summon. Eventually the dwarf gets back to the rest of the part (days later and they're back at town), riding on the shadow beast and waving his hand at them. Their response: "I thought he was dead" "Is he dead?" "I make a perception roll to see if he's dead" They never were entirely sure or not. Until he was flame-grilled by a demon much much later. No one needed a perception roll then. ---------- Okay, here's another one: The party has just fought a hellish battle against a whole passle of Drow. We're about eigth level on average, and have all been really torqued. There's no clerical magic obove level two spells, and my character, a Kensai (modified for 2nd ed), is down to about half of his hit points after refusing any healing. So my character has taken some time early in the morning to practice a bit, and being the most arrogant sword-saint on his world and several others, he is off by himself. After all, what could possibly harm the greatest swordsman time has ever seen? So, about an hour into practise, GM asks for a perception roll, and I make it, noticing that a large reptilian head is watching me, resting atop a nearby boulder. The dragon's head rears up when it sees that it has been noticed at last and it lets loose a thunderous mocking laugh, expecting the puny human to run in fear. Unfortunatly, the dragon (and the GM) forgot that Kensai are immune to fear. The conversation went a little like this (And yes, I do play the character this arrogant and long winded. It's quite a bit of fun): Kuno (my character): Ah, great worm, you have no doubt come to observe my swordsmanship. As the greatest swordsman in the world, I am flattered. Dragon: No, human. I come to deliver a message from my master. Kuno: Ah, that is well. Deliver your message. I promise not to slay you until you have finished it. Hmm, on second thought, this is such a good day I do not think I will slay you at all. You may deliver your message and then leave in peace, knowing you have been spared by my hand. Dragon: Heh. You are arrogant for a mortal. Kuno: HAH! I AM ARROGANT FOR A MINOR GOD!!! (group busts up) Deliver your message, or I may revoke my earlier kindness. Surprisingly enough, Kuno survived the experience. Showing that Dragons can have a sense of humor. ---------- One of my favourite Star Wars characters was an 'Armchair Historian', however I took this rather literaly. He was disabled and rode around in a Davros style repulsorlift chair, muttering about how 'It was never like this in the old days, you kids have it easy!' We had the misfortune of having a Jawa as ship's engineer, scavenging was in his blood. He used to steal parts from the ship's drainage and life support system to repair the weapons systems! Anyway, we were in the middle of an infiltration mission in an Imperial base, when the Jawa decides he needs some parts from my chair to fix up a landspeeder. The smelly little oik jumps on the back of my chair and opens the access panell. AH : "Oy, get off you little wretch, what do you think your'e doing. Jawa : "Ouche, heheday, juba-repulsorcar, degoobar! Chair has many backup systems. Work fine, just take this - MWAAAaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!! A blue spark bursts from the inspection hatch and the chair leaps into the air and careers off down the coridoor. None of the controlls respond. The scene cuts to a hanger nearby. A huge black figure with breathing problems is inspecting the troops. Suddenly an old man in a flying chair carreers into the hanger, a Jawa clinging on the back by one hand, with a large piece of repulsorlift controll system in the other, both screaming at the tops of their voices. Stormtroopers scatter out of the way as the chair whiscks round the room and shoots off down a side ramp, the sounds of screaming echoing into the distance. The imposing black figure turns an armoured head to his aide. He raises a black armoured hand and flexes his fingers. "HSSsssSHhhhhh... NOW THAT'S SOMETHING YOU DON'T SEE EVERY DAY!" ---------- The best crack up line I've heard is from a champons game, not AD&D...Someone in the party had a hard day and said (in character): "I could really go fro a screwdriver." My frined reached into his real life back pack and handed her an orange and a potato and said "One screwdriver, some assembly required."....He said that he had been waiting sometime to use that line.......I never asked him how long the orange and potato had been in his bag in the first place.... ---------- This isn't the best but it is the most immediate. This is actaully from a novice group of players, which is why I though it was impresive. First of all as a DM I beleive highly in random encounters for I would have never chosen this encounter, even if the players did need to be humbled. The group was an elvin 3rd level Swashbuckler, a half-elvin 2nd/1st level fighter/mage, a 2nd level cleric of a Goddess of beauty, a sylvain elf 4th level ranger, and a 2nd level halfling thief. Only the levels are important actually. They were in a temparate forest region and I rolled for a random encounter a Myst Dragon and then continued to roll for age and got very old. Needless to say they would have been stupid to attack, luckily for them a Myst Dragon is Nuetral. Just for the hell of it I had the Myst Dragon actually approach them. They played it well and had thier characters be scared sh_tless. The 3rd level fighter managed to blurt out some words and actually had a psuedo-conversation with the dragon. The ending is the amusing part: Dragon: "I just came out to get something to eat." Player: "Oh so your a vegatarian." Dragon: "Oh I eat anything I want." Player: "I beleive that." ---------- Last nights game session: Game: M:tA Situation: Some nephandi and BSD's are trying to convert this person to the wyrm they're just holding her over the pool, we're trying to fend off the two werewolves and nephandi adepts as somebody else tries to kill the mage holding her. GM:(OOC)Join the dark side luke. Me;(Also OOC)I cant I'm too busy going crazy. (my Character looked, by mistake in the pool that you find at the bottom of Black Spiral Dancer caerns, you know, the one that shows the face of the wyrm.) ---------- I was running a nice cosy little Call of Cthulhu game. One newbie player (not too bright) was present; the others had been playing for a while. We were just warming up for the night; while I was helping the newbie get his character sheet together, a couple of the veterans were discussing a car they planned to buy together. At this point, while I'm explaining about skills to the newbie, he looks up and asks confusedly, "Do I have a car too?" This got *me* rather confused, until he explained by pointing to the skills section of his character sheet: "It says 'Dodge' here...." ---------- Today at the first running of my PAranoia/Call of Cthulhu game... One of the PC's had what he thought was a Disintegration Ray, which he told everyone was a TEleport Ray. It WAS in fact a Teleport ray... but he didn't know that. ANYWAY... The ray was getting overused... (It was shot back and forth and what not , at everyone and everything, and even at the Necronomicon... which REFLECTED IT back at the players...) Well, when using it on Great Cthulhu himself, the I said "Well, the gun begins to smoke and all of a sudden it melts in your hands." To which he replied "Not in my mouth?" ---------- The party found a luxurious room in the dungeon and went to ransack the place, ignoring the DM's description. There was supposed to be a giant bear in the place (acting like a rug or something) but no one noticed. A bit peeved, the DM had this bear attack the lot of us from out of nowhere, and by surprise. "Wait a minute! You never said there was a monster here!" "Sure I did. [reads] 'In the room there is a chair, bear, table...'" Later the DM tried it again: "You see a chest, dragon, flagon..." He didn't get any farther. ---------- DM (after hours of gaming, when asked what the thief hears at a door): "It sound like an empty hallway". ---------- The situation involved a need for risky reconaissance and a low-level invisibility spell that only affected the body of the recipient: "I don't mind being stripped naked and thrown in the air if you think it will help." ---------- Here's another from my group of Shadowrunners. The players are in the middle of a street shoot out (involving a number of snipers, a few gunmen on street level and a couple of magicians). For some reason our GM mentions "You see a car stop at the end of the block and a man step out." One of the more ..er.. reactionary players blurts out, "I shoot him." The GM blinks. "Okay. Roll." The player rolls. "Good. You just shot a pimp." __________ During a recent Robotech campaign, my game master (who was also playing) sent me and my wingman (wingwoman? I digress) down to the engine room of a captured Zentraedi ship to try and start the sucker up. We had a friendly Zentraedi on board, but she wasn't much help, so after much discussion my buddy and I started banging away on various switches in the engine room. We managed to short the lights out a couple times, and eventually my squad leader asked me, "what the fuck are you guys doing down there?" Beth, my wingman, responded with "we're trying to move this damn thing, that's what. Do *you* know how to do it?" Jason, our squadron leader, looked at her dead-faced and said, "No, but here's a hint - if it starts to explode, you've gone too far." (Later on in the campaign, Jason said, to a Destroid pilot, "betcha wish you'd chosen something more aerodynamic, eh?" right before the ship exploded.) ---------- You see, our adventuring party (RuneQuest) was low on food while tromping through the wilderness, when one of us noticed a panther skulking in the woods. The animal had wisely decided not to attack a band of seven heavily armoured and beweaponed warriors, and was trying to sneak off, but one of the more bloodthirsty/paranoid of the group (I forget who) let'er rip with a bow. Well, can't let a wounded creature crawl off to die like that, in horrible pain and all, so my character and the other nomad of the bunch decide to finish the poor beast off, which we do in short order. (Bows are SO much more effective in RQ than in that other game I'm not going to mention...) Anyway, short on food as we were, we set to work cooking it. Later on, when a new character joined the party, and was offered some of the rations, reacted (in the same tone of voice as that guy on Monty Python who says, "Lemon curry?!") "PANTHER jerky?" ---------- I've had a lot of good lines, I just can't remeeber most of them right now. From a recent GURPS Campaign, run mostly in TL3, (TL stands for Tech Level, which is a useful term for classification of items of different technologies.) I had players who kept asking about anachronistic devices: "Can I buy a musket?" "Musket's don't appear until TL5." Stuff like that.The best ones are as follows: Mage:"Summon Spirit, Huh. I should look up Elvis with this." Me :"Elvis doesn't appear until TL6." Mage: "So we're trying to take down a Pirate operation. Maybe we should try a Trojan horse type-thing." Me: "Trojans don't appear until TL7." ----------- OKay, this was told to me by a player in the game, but, hey, humor is humor. The game is Call of Cthulhu The players are creeping around an abandoned and dark old mansion in pursuit of a vampire, whom they have just chased upstairs. In the lead is the `athlete type (not too bright, but strong and handsome). They are creeping up the stairs when someone in the back asks, "Well, what do you see up there?" GM hands athlete a note. Athlete character: "I see a piano?" Others: "AHHHH!!! Run!!!!" Athlete turns and watches his companions scamper dopwn the stairs: "What?" Sound of large heavy upright piano crushing character... ---------- I was playing the only dwarf in a partly of mostly humans and elves. Kazrak Kelrakson was a fighter-cleric under second edition AD&D rules. Because I was a fighter-cleric, worshiping the dwarven war-god, my DM decided that, instead of a "turn undead" ability, I should be able to force a morale check when "leading a mostly dwarven force". Kazrak and two of the other characters are in a cave with three tunnels leading out. We're attacked with missile weapons from one of the tunnels; all three of us are hit. The other characters are knocked out by sleep poison on the missiles; being a dwarf, I resist. I look at the DM, and ask "Am I a mostly dwarven force now?" This campaign also featured target vomiting from dragonback. I was on dragonback (unwillingly), and was given a liquid to "calm my nerves" before we went. The liquid in question was syrup of ipecac, used medically to induce vomiting. We're flying along, and I'm losing my lunch (so is the magic-user, but that's just becuase he's a wimp), when we're attacked from the ground. The DM asked each player how they wanted to react. When he got to me, he said "You're still throwing up." "Okay," I replied, "can I try to hit the attackers with it?" I tried, but missed. ---------- One of the players in our group was killing time reading a Call of Cthulu book, and running down the list of ancient demonic eldritch horrors. He came upon "The Thing That Should Not Be" and immediately looked at the ceiling and said: "I really wish you weren't." ---------- In a wizards campaign using the Hero rules, we three players were given the task of bringing back the head of a dragon. After searching for information regarding where to find dragons and how to kill them, we discover that we must use live bait, and that great white sharks are best for these purposes. So we go to the ocean and get some of these sharks. I transform them into coins that will turn back into sharks when the coin's name is spoken. I choose the easily remembered name of "Dragon Bait Number X". After getting six of them, we decide to give it a try. Since the transformation was my Idea, I get to pull it off. On our first try I toss out the appropriate coin and say "Dragon Bait Number 6" thinking that I can more easily keep track of the coins that way. A dragon quickly appears and gobbles up the shark and flies away. I try again, tossing out a coin,"Dragon Bait Number 5" and the same result. We decide upon a plan to keep the dragon around for the next time. I pull out the next coin and say "three times a charm" and toss it. My 'buddy' quickly calls out "Dragon Bait Number 3"- "NO!...4!" I cry out rapidly clawing at my pocket. ---------- I had total ly forgotten about this one until reminded by this post... My friends and I were running an introduction to D&D at the local library about 12 years ago, and had pre-made characters for everyone. When the group surprised a room full of Kobolds playing poker, we asked everyone in the group what they were going to do. This fighter said that he was going to hit one with his sword and another with his chain. "With your what?" I asked. "Here on my sheet, under Weapons and Armor - it says I have a +1 chain..." ---------- I just remembered a moment in a Villains & Vigilantes game a few months ago that cracked _me_ up. Maybe you'll get a chuckle out of it too. The heroes were exploring a subterranean complex built by Sinister Forces, skulking about the corridors from room to room. I told them, "...the corridor turns to the east. On the west wall, you see a door. There is a sign on it, labelling it _Supplies_." At which point, EVERYBODY in the group shouted out "SUPPLIES!!" (to rhyme with "surprise"). Well, _I_ laughed... ---------- I was playing a vampire game once, where the party was holed up in an old house after a big fight and hard-won victory w/ other vampires. Unfortunately, the police showed up to investigate the gunshots, and we found ourselves fighting w/ them too. (They wanted to arrest us and take us out into the sunlight...which would have been a bad thing...) Anyhow, the GM had very stereotypical police, with boxes of donuts, and one with a danish stuck in his mouth. The guy with the danish was giving the party lots of trouble in the ensuing gunfight, until finally one of the players managed to strafe him w/ bullet fire. GM: You've hit the cop with the danish. He is bleeding from the shoulder, has a gunshot wound in... Player (interrupting): Hell with all that! Just tell me if I knocked the danish out of his mouth. GM (looks strangely at player, then rolls dice): Yeah. You knocked out the danish. The entire party erupted in cheers and high-fives. ---------- In a Star Wars run I was refereeing, one of the players got nabbed by this big, nasty, carniverous beastie intent upon eating (amongst other horrible fates) the unlucky character. While the rest of the stood around looking rather dim, the player hanging by a foot up inthe air says "Get me down, get me down, I owe you money". :) ---------- Our Shadowrun party tended to let its reach exceed its grasp, so the following scene tended to recur again and again: GM: "Do you have a skill in that?" Player: "No... but I have a stat!" I think the weirdest one was when I had to use dexterity as a substitute for a Knitting skill. (And yes, this was a serious situation. Our lives were riding on that knitting roll.) ---------- Something a while ago, from my Harn campaign. The PCs are trying to kill the evil dark lord, Lothrim the Foulspawner, by giving him a gift which will hypnotise him while they kill him. They've infiltrated his base and decide that the best thing is if the powerful mage and one of the warriors stays in the background. The other warror (a woman), the shaman (a woman) and a barbarian (a man) dressed in a makeshift suit of armour made from the shell of a giant crustacean he killed recently, go forward and pretend they want to enlist in his forces. They creep subserviently towards his throne and bow low. "Oh great and powerful lord of Harn," says the shaman, "we have travelled many leagues to join your forces. We wish to help you in your great plans of conquest." The dark lord stirs in his seat and looks down at the PCs. There is a long silence. Finally, he says, in tones of the deepest sarcasm, "How useful." Pause. "Two women and a lobster." [NOTE from editor: this sig was so cool I just had to keep it!] ------------------------------------------------------------- "The earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer mind their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching." - Assyrian Tablet, c.2800BC ------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Well I have a couple from Rpg experience... While playing a Vampire(White wolf) campaign One player faced with ineviatable doom in one oppenent says "I will jump out the window"... The GM replies "Okay but you do realise that you are on the 26th floor"... player "... Ah yeah but at least this way I have a chance to survive :)". The player did survive that encounter but died soon after when he fired a rocket launcher in a sealed room full of petrol fumes. ---------- The very first game system my group played was Star Wars. In the first adventure, the players were trying to talk to a wookie npc (none of the spoke the language). Suddenly one of the players decided he wanted to try his pick-pocket skill. The other players warned him not to, but he reasured them 'look at my dexterity, nothing can go wrong!'. Yeah, you guessed it. He didn't simply fail the roll, but he failed in epic proportions. The wookie, not amused, turned around and used his face as a punching bag. The player ended up mortally wounded (would have died without immediat medical attention) A couple years later, we're playing AD&D. A couple players (call them A & B) are trading treasure, including the player mentioned above (he's player A). Player B said he wouldn't bother trying for A's healing potions since A needs them often. Player A responded 'I don't get hurt that often'. Player B put his hand on A's shoulder, and with a perferctly straight face said 'Okay, let's forget the wookie incident...' We were laughing for 20 minutes. I guess you had to have been there. ---------- Just this afternoon in PenDragon, the PC knights had split up to go hunting, agreeing that we should return with the *first* animal we found. My partner & I quickly returned with a fallow deer, but the other pair wasn't so lucky; the tracker fumbled his Hunting skill, and ended up chasing a rabbit! After chasing it for a while it dashed out of the woods toward a road where it hid under the skirts of a passing nun, who asked the knights to let it go unharmed; they agreed, for which a Merciful check was given, & 10 Glory for being merciful. It was remarked that if the knight did that 100 times, he'd get a Glory point. Someone said he would also be renowned for being kind to rabbits. I said he would be Sir Ioun Hare-Savior. He would be the Knight of the Lepus. [Night of the Lepus is a really bad TV movie from the '70s about giant rampaging killer bunnies. Bunnies the size of pick-up trucks.] ---------- A few years ago, in our MERP campaign, this happened: My character, a small hobbit thief (or merchant of used-up things, as he called himself) was getting into trouble with a HUGE man (about 7 feet tall very muscular guy). The guy called me "a dwarf", on which the dwarf of our party, of course, said that I was a hobbit and HE was a dwarf (he was very, very proud fellow). Well, the man tried to hit the dwarf. When the GM asked us what we would like to do, I said, without any thought: "Well, I bite his leg from behind." That was funny already, but it got funnier when I actually hit and managed to inflict maximum damage with tiny bite! The fellow stopped his fighting at that moment, and everybody exploded into laughter. Actually, the damage would always had made our mage unconcious. I never managed to inflict that much damage with my short sword (well, once to a giant spider...) Afterwards, it became a slogan of my character: "Shut up, or I bite you in the leg." ---------- One of the only things I liked about shadowrun was that it gave experience points for cracking the party up in laughter. This makes for very entertaining games. The best line came from my best friend. The party was being stalked by an undead assassin and had recently been blown up. They were all in hospital in skin tanks getting better, except for our troll who had managed to soak all the damage. Unfortunately he knew if he fell asleep alone the assassin would kill him. So he went to an all night diner that served a bottomless cup of coffee to wait the four to five days it took for the rest of the party to get better. He started off at one cup every hour then every half hour etc. By the end he was drinking a litre of Expresso every ten minutes. Finally he could call the hospital to see if we were better. And the player was really getting into his character, he was slurring his words, stuttering and generally sounding like someone who was was on a caffiene-overload and sleep-deprevation diet for the last four days. - "G-g-guys? Y-y-you gotta, y-y-you gotttta come p-p-p-ick, pick, p-p-pick memememe uppp!" - "Gart, you sound like shit. Why don't you have a cup of coffee, or something?" And in a one-off Aliens game: Every member of ourcolonial marine corp unit had a "dead man's belt" on. It was 4 radio detonated grenades. The idea was that if you got captured by the the luitenant would detonate the belt and you might take a few aliens with you. Well, as luck would have it, my character got captured by the aliens. The GM gave me second to scream out one thing before I disappeared. I tried to shout "Blow me up, Blow me up." But in the heat of the moment I screamed "Blow me! Blow me!" My obituary in a fanzine was: RIP Leroy "Black Ball" Washington Never have sex with an alien. ---------- I was GMing a group of players in rifts. One character was a paritial conversion borg minitaur, that is he was over nine feet tall and gleeming with all kinds of shiny metal. Well as luck would have it they players were captured by one of their major enemies. He put each one of them alone in his prison. The cells were 10X10X10 feet and solid steel, the insides were sheer metal, i.e. there was nothing in the cells. Anyway this minitaur decides he'd had enough. So what does he do? Minitaur: I prowl (rolls dice) I make it. Me: You what? Minitaur: I prowl, I made my roll. I'm hiding. Me: Where are you hiding? (Note at this point I'm trying not to laugh, just giving him the benefit of the doubt. Minitaur: (note this isn't made up, he was completely serious, not to mention he had the "what are you, stupid?" tone of voice) In the corner, of course! Well the rest of us fell down laughing (he never thought it was funny). As far as we could tell the minitaur put his head in the corner with his eyes shut, and whispered "You can't see me, you can't see me....." Sort of an ostridge type thing ---------- Here's some background for Non-Warhammer Fantasy Battle people: Halflings in that game have an amazing bonus to their personality. In fact the worst tempered halfing has a higher personality than the most pleasant starting character from any other race. One particular halfing was fed up with the common view of halflings as 'short good-natured fellows' (which happens to be true, btw). So he tried to instigate a revolution among his peers to change thier image with such slogans as: 'Throw off the shackles of your own good natures!' 'Humans are such easy prey!' 'Come out of the kitchen and experience true power!' Side note: cooking is based off of personality, so guess who always got stuck with the cooking? ---------- In a Rolemaster game, I (a Bounty Hunter) was trying to explain the fine art of assassination to a Nightblade (played by a 13-year old, hence the need for explanation). We were "guests" of a town that never let anyone leave once they found it, and every weekend people were selected from the populace to fight in the arena. We were each given private quarters with in-room bath (about the size of a Jacuzzi). I invited the leader of these people to my quarters for discussion of the terms of our "surrender" to the town's wishes. The plan was for the Nightblade to hide under the water of the full bath with just a breathing tube. I would sit in front of the bath to obscure the tube. When I, in the course of conversation, dipped my hand into the water and lightly rapped on the inside of the tub, the Nightblade would rise up out of the water, crossbow ready, and shoot the enemy leader. The group agreed that this was a good plan, except the Nightblade. He didn't understand it even after the 4th time I explained it. When the GM wanted to continue and I started hurriedly explaining for the 5th time, the Paladin's player (yeah, Nightblades and Paladins... it was a weird game) grabbed the Nightblade's player by the shoulders and said: "Read the cue cards, Luke!" (said in a Obi-Wan style voice) Not suprisingly, the Nightblade's player was the only one who didn't crack up laughing for 15 minutes (he didn't get it). ---------- There is a girl playing a pixie in one of the Rolemaster games I'm in and we had gone thru a few adventures and scenarios where there were a lot of traps/levers, hidden compartments, the whole works.. well.. we came across this statue barring the way into an area and, being a pixie and a little flighty... started searching the statue.. after looking it over for about 5 minutes and not finding anything as of yet, she asked the fatal question 'Is the penis a lever??'.. the entire game broke up for 20 minutes cause we were just dying laughing.. ---------- From a recent Star Wars game: GM (looks at character sheet): Do you really want to carry this many weapons? Briefing Officer: Frankly, you're not the best, but you're the best we could do on such short notice. Player (thought dawning): We outnumber YOU. Port Authority: It won't do you any good to look in the other spaceports for a better fee; I own them all. Player: who's your heir? Player (on wideband): There's a Darth Vader-like figure on the loose, probably Darth Vader! ---------- From the second AD&D module in the slavelords series: DM: You fail your Dexterity roll Player: Even with roller skates on? DM: Even with roller skates on. (Later) One Player: Why are we here anyway? Other Player (confused): We want slaves, I think. (Another, similar adventure) "As concerned citizens of...(aside) what were we concerned citizens of, again?" And finally, from a quickie out of a Ravenloft Book of Lairs: Player(after depositing the guard-captain-who-was-really-a-fiend at a house in town to recover from his wounds, and finding out the awful truth): Oh shit, I just doomed a family. ----------