Your Funniest Tabletop Story

So I run a superhero campaign. Tonight, the party faced off against King Midas, a supervillain with the name "Ronald Frump" who is, well, an Expy of you all know who. He ended up turning his daughter who of course he rambled about how super hot she is into gold due to his super powered suit.

After they defeated him, a cop showed up. Initially he was laughing at a lame pun, because the nanotech robot character (one of the P Cs) is fond of 90s sitcoms.

Now, we play online so there's frequently a delay in player responses relative to what's happening in the scene. So the nanotech robot player sent out the response of "stereo music plays a snappy theme song"-right after the cop had segued into talking about how the daughter of the billionaire was dead.

So I play a game of Call of Cthulhu with a group every week, and after an encounter with an interdimensional fire vampire, one of our party members' soul was basically stolen and taken to space so we had to go out and research how to get it back or harvest someone else's lifeforce for him. He ends up getting captured by the local doomsday cult that want to take a spell from him that's been implanted in his head by the vampire, and we're of course looking everywhere for him.

After having his leg disentegrated by a demon cat that the cult summoned when he refused to let them probe his mind, he finally gave in so they were driving him to the hospital. The cultists' car passes by myself and two other players, and we notice our missing member in the backseat. So my parapsychologist (who is a cocaine-addicted madman who does everything For Science! and introduces himself as a Professional Occultist and Master of the Dark Arts) takes out a rifle and shoots at the car...hitting our kidnapped member.

They toss his body out of the car and he dies in the morgue we were right next to investigating, but not before telling us the name of the Church where the cult was.

It was an adrenaline-rushed impulsive decision, and the absolute worst way for the character to go out. But yeah, I'm now the group team-killer, by complete accident and bad rolls. I felt really bad about it but at the same time it was hilarious, just given how crazy my character usually is, and how of course he would be the one to do something like that.

My Malkavian is a therapist (backstory is that a Malkavian got fed up and embraced him to "show him what madness is like") and his basement and the cages in it work as holding cells for his landlord. He als sells those cages sometimes.

So he has sold a cage and about 2 months later he visits the buyer, wearing his lab gown, as usual. The doorkeeper speaks with his boss and puts him into the cage, then he transports him into an elevator to visit his boss. While they are inside, my guy took out the key to the cage and opened the lock, soon afterwards tapping the doorkeeper on the shoulder. The following dialogue occured:

"Stop doing that." "Okay." My Malkavian turns around, goes back inside the cage and locks it. The doorkeeper demanded the keys and he got them.

After they arrived in the office (Malkavian still in the cage), my Malkavian asked if he is allowed to hug he doorkeeper. The buyer sarcastically said he can if he can get out while the doorkeeper waved the key in front of my Malkavian. So my Malkavian takes out the master key (ths was not the first time he was locked in his own cage), opens the lock and hugs the doorkeeper.

Just had a session with the two guys I've managed to get into my 5th edition campaign. :| It's a rather derpy thing on the whole, me being a rather inexperienced DM. I have them playing two characters each: a tiefling warlock and human fighter, and human barbarian and halfling ranger.

I think rather than synopsizing the whole story so far, I'll just tell you about this session.

The players are in this ancient library-vault deep in one of the nastier parts of the Feywild, trying to steal a ring from this dude. "This dude" is an unashamed, ghostly ripoff of Voldo, from Soul Series. So, he's basically doing hit-and-run tactics the whole time, while the fighter works on the endurance test protecting the ring (a spherical forcefield-type thing around it that pulses force damage).
There is a five-foot space between the shelves, and half of Voldo's shtick in this fight is climbing and jumping around them like a spastic monkey, making sneak plunging attacks most turns.
Friendly fire, I decide on a whim, is a thing. When you miss with a ranged attack when there's another creature between you and your target, you then roll the attack against the closer creature, albeit without adding your proficiency bonus (which, at 5th level, is still only a +3 out of your total attack bonus).
Voldo's Mantis Crawl stance, I also decide on a whim, gives all attack rolls on him disadvantage (You roll twice and take the lower roll).
The guy playing the barbarian and ranger, rather than flanking Voldo (who, granted, kept buggering off into the rafters each turn), downs his ranger with his barbarian's thrown handaxe; and even after I let her recover on her own on the next turn, Voldo immediately downs her again. And she was the one doing most of the damage to him!

So, that goes down, and the ranger is just plain asleep for the rest of the session. Meanwhile, the guy playing the fighter and warlock decides he isn't leaving without looting the place for whatever he can get, even after they get the ring they came in for. He also wants to destroy Voldo, even though the party's been asked to leave him there if they can.
Oh, also, said ring repels corruption and undead, making the wearer somewhat Voldo-proof.

The fighter manages to nab a random book off a shelf (in spite of the checks I threw in to discourage it, saying they had forcefields protecting them) and leaves, but the tiefling wants more. She tries and fails to steal a book for a few turns, gets attacked by Voldo in spite of the ring once or twice, and prompts me to throw something into the other back corner of the room (I kinda like throwing shit in at random where I can; I can think it through later, or in strides): I come to Trope's Random button for inspiration, get Video Game Geography, and think: Flux Bauble. Tiefling gets her greedy hands on it, through its own forcefield, and goes on a 5-second round trip to some wheat field, a campful of sleeping goblins in some cave, and the library again, before getting attacked by Voldo again.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party is waiting outside the door for the greedy idjit to come back out with the Portkey Santa Claus gave them at the beginning of the session so they can 'port the hell out of there. I thumb through the Monster Manual a bit looking for something to throw at them to keep stuff going, and come up with a trio of cockatrices; a bit under par for level, but one manages to bite the fighter, who throws off the petrify effect on his next turn. A cockatrice dies, and the other two run off after "looking behind you with a glance of stark terror."

Back inside, Voldo manages to cut the Flux Bauble right out of the tiefling's pocket, grabs it, and disappears. Tiefling guy says "Fuck that; I'm gonna hang around waiting for him. I want my loot." So, she tries and fails to steal another book.

Outside, the fighter feels the ground rumble, and is thusly herded back inside as a bulette, of all things, erupts out of the ground and rams the library doorway.
It is at this point that the party finally uses the Portkey and lets me end the session.
And two weeks from now, in our final session (assuming it works out), they get to go to the Shadowfell! ...As far as what they'll actually be doing there, I'm not totally sure, but my preliminary idea is that maybe they'll just keep watch at a camp and help defend people.

edited 21st Nov '15 8:29:32 PM by Knowlessman

Alright, we all know that this is going to get buried in the forums, but I simply must put this one out there in full...

It was a mashup game, Anime/Mecha D20 as a base. The rules were simple, each player got to pick two races from any series to have added into the game and the GM would draw them up and let us play them.

I chose, and played, the Scrin. "W" threw diclonius at the GM, and the GM accepted it, so he went with that. "R" added Zoltan from FTL but went with human for his character. our next player, "C," picked up the Zoltan rather than either of her submissions. There was also "S" as a xenomorph.

We were on this little middle of nowhere dig site on a middle of nowhere planet when something went wrong and we unleashed an ancient bio weapon... think the zerg/tyranids.

We fight our way out, hold off the swarm long enough for the dig crew to get out, then run back to base as other armies are awakening across the globe. So we start this long, rolling defense of the space port as the evacuations are underway and manage to get 95% of the people off world, to include all civilians and most of the combat personnel.

As we are leaving the planet, my scrin, who's main job in life is to be a walking sensor suite, notices that there is a cloaked ship quickly approaching the planet. We also know that the vast majority of the planet has already fallen and that it does not look to be heading to evacuate anyone. at the same time, a small battle is starting between the two main factions in orbit, and we are given our choice of who to call for help... black or white... day or night...

We choose fish...

Deciding that we do not like the looks of the stealth ship, and knowing that "R" would never go along with this, the rest of us grab and escape pod, rip out everything but the life support systems and cram the diclonius, xenomorph, and Zoltan into it. Being the scrin who can survive in space for a while, I go out the airlock and cling to the outside of the pod as they launch.

I then use the recoil from my main gun, which had quite a kick by this point, to guide us in to the ship, attempting to crash land into the stealth ship cargo hold.

We did this in spades... setting a new speed record for the evacuation of 200+ military personnel from a stealth combat vessel... out a four meter wide hole none-the-less! the emergency air energy shields kick in a moment later and we disembark...

Meanwhile... "R" has figured out what the hell we've done and has been picked up by the "good" faction. He now has to argue with a turrian general to not set off the planet cracking bomb that is on the transport with us... yep... it was one of those kinds of days.

So "R" opens a communication channel open to my scrin (who rings like a telephone when called) and asks me to explain what he and the general do not already know. So I do...

The general about has a heart attack right then and there, but agrees that if we follow the mission plan EXACTLY, he won't set the bomb off until it is supposed to be.

So we land, deliver the bomb, rescue the last possible people left on the planet, and took off. Handing the vessel back off to the military as soon as we catch up the general.

At this point, no one knows if we should be executed or praised as heros... so they draft us into the military instead.

by this point, we have to go chase down a "dark" faction aligned ship that was seen leaving the planet that may have been carrying samples of the bio weapon.

So we repeat the pod trick, this time with actual boarding pods, to land on the enemy vessel. end up scattered all over the place, getting ambushed by Skaven (a choice i regret making,) and losing our diclonius to a krogan with a battle axe.

We manage to shut down the shields and get off just before the military hits the ship with the big guns. We sent our poor friends body home to be buried with full military honors (having died on her first day in the service as a result of enemy action) and set about exploiting the fact that our crew had just survived a planet wide apocalypse and two suicide missions to secure ourselves better housing accommodations.

edited 23rd Nov '15 1:18:54 AM by AETHDH

^^Predictions always go wrong.

^So anyway, what were all races players chose? So far I see scrin, elfen lied catgirlhornpsychicarmaxcrazymurderious stuff, skaven, krogan, turian, zoltan and xenomoprh on the list, thats still missing some right? .-.

edited 23rd Nov '15 4:32:37 AM by SpookyMask

Let's see... Zoltan, Diclonius, Turian, Krogan, Asari, Human, Scrin, Xenomorph, the Skaven, Thranx, and the Tarth... and we had regular run in's with the Mysterious Stranger from RE 4 (who we had more or less figured as a race unto himself.)

Also, "S" was technically only xenomorph on her mother's side.

edited 24th Nov '15 9:11:09 PM by AETHDH

Found more funny threads!

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?178762-D-amp-D-Darwin-Awards-%28Dumbest-Moves-Ever

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?248776-More-Funny-D-amp-D-Stories

...Where the fuckitydoodah are the threads? Those pages are basically blank.

It's telling me that the forums are down for maintenance.

Last night was the second session of my group's Dungeon World campaign. For those who don't know, in Dungeon World, you gain experience when you fail a roll.

If you wanna talk about cursed dice, last night, there was a boss battle that went south solely from bad luck. By the end of the boss fight, our cleric and I gained enough xp to level up twice.

To give you a summary of the fight, here's a summary of some of the more memorable failed roles:

First, I accidentally slashed (and killed) an important NPC. Next, my sword slips out of my hands and goes flying to a place I can't retrieve it. After that, my armor gets ripped off. So when I'm trying to bash something with my shield, which is really all I have left, I wind up shattering it completely. So now I have no weapon, no armor, and no shield, and I killed someone by accident. If that wasn't enough, I wind up breaking my wrist with one roll and spraining my leg with another. Then when I finally finish off the one zombie I've been trying to kill most of this time with a curb stomp, I slip on his brains and lose the last bit of my health. I somehow don't fail the roll to avoid death, so I lived, but it was probably the most pathetic attempt at zombie slaying in tabletop history.

I think part of what made it so funny to us, contextually, is that it's not exactly the most lighthearted in tone of a story/setting, but after so many failed rolls, it was hard not to picture the Three Stooges fighting zombies.

edited 6th Dec '15 8:30:31 AM by FingerPuppet

hey, round two of the mashup madness. We're restarting the game with a new roster...

Maug, Protos, Zoltan, Tarth, Necron, Garthim (The Dark Crystal), Diclonious, Xenomorph, Navi (Avatar), Dark Elves, Sultai Brood, Slug (FTL, Turians, Asura (Guildwars), Jawa (Starwars), Reyvatale (Ar tonelico), Groot, Human

This is going to be good...

edited 6th Dec '15 10:47:37 PM by AETHDH

So, had the finale session of my derpy, whatthefuckismydndquest.com-aided campaign. Had the party go through the Shadowfell, sneak past a few things, fight and kill a coupla Cloakers (who were without their coolest abilities, to nerf them), one of which the barbarian then decides to wear, sneak past a shadow dragon without even knowing it's there, sneak past a bunch of skeletons that would've noticed them if I hadn't been in a hurry to move it along, and reach the factory machine doohickey that's been buffing Shadowfell stuff (in ways I didn't finally cement until they started fighting the Cloakers).

They gotta poot the Positum Ring into the machine. There's a cambion and his evil scientist nerd friend, a coupla unbuffed zombies, a coupla similarly underwhelming darkmantles, and a coupla fucking robots that I threw in for no reason.
I distinctly remember doing arithmetic and using CR's to decide exactly how much of what to put in there. Apparently, that's worth jack shit when I'm in a hurry and just want the thing to happen so I can work on this stupid overdue paper that I'm even not doing right at this moment.
Experience gained; I now know more about DM'ing than I did earlier today. Whoop.

Anyhow, first thing they do is roll in and shoot the nerd guy, who I didn't even have stats for yet, with a legit fireball and a few arrows, blowing his 40 HP and 14 AC out the window.
Second thing they do is get nommed by darkmantles, who continue to be negligible inconveniences throughout the fight.
The cambion's turn comes up, and the tiefling guy says "I wanna try to seduce him." I don't even know what I would've done if he'd rolled high; in all honesty, probably nothing.
The funny thing is, cambions have an ability that actually does the kind of thing that guy wanted to happen, and the tiefling also has a +0 Wisdom.
Tiefling wanders off to the lake they'd passed on the way here to go for a swim.

Fighter leaps from a catwalk to attack the cambion in the air, hits, gets missed by the cambion on his way down, and ripostes, in the air (I wouldn't have let him, but the guy was bitching about it). He misses, and also lands prone after flunking an Acrobatics check, but I go and give him inspiration for it because in hindsight, trying to jump attack an enemy in the air is a pretty badass thing to do.
The rest of the fight after that, or at least what I remember of it right now, is pretty boring, except that a round or so after the cambion bites it, the shadow dragon comes back with the tiefling in his jaws, and successfully ransoms her for the cambion's magic swords and the tiefling's stupid haystack-summoning scarf.

And then I described the ending for maybe five seconds and the campaign was concluded. :| That's what I get for trying to run a campaign during a college semester while I'm taking five classes. They started at level 3, and ended at level 5. I should've started at 1. Maybe my next campaign, which I won't be taking five classes during, will start at 1.

Also, I went and gave them three allies for this, all the same level as them and having homebrew races I'd brewed myself. I completely forgot two of their racial abilities (The third doesn't have one that comes up during co - No, wait, he does).
Note to self: Don't do that. You think it means you can justify throwing heavier shit at them, but A: it probably doesn't, and B: you don't have the spine to throw anything challenging at them anyhow. That, or you're just overdependent on creatures you shouldn't be using at all past 3rd level.
And/or, learn to actually plan stuff, and maybe only plan stuff you actually have time to plan. Making new player characters is not in the least constructive towards a campaign.

edited 7th Dec '15 2:12:45 AM by Knowlessman

Setting: the Wrath of the Righteous campaign, specifically the part where we infiltrate Drezen to get back the Sword of Valor
Cast of characters:
- Saskarozaskan, Half-Drow Rogue/Sorcerer (despite going on at length about the Drow, he's good-aligned)
- Patronicus, Aasimar (I think; he looks human, but he isn't) Paladin of Erastil, designated leader of the party (due to charisma, though he's the least intelligent member of the group)
- his cousin Gustav, NPC Cleric (the healer of the group, he can only speak Celestial under stress)
- Dante, Aasimar Arcanist (a bit obsessed with cleaning desecrated temples, though he's the only non-good member of the group)
- Sefayll (pronounced Seefole, for some reason that escapes me), Human Cleric of Shelyn (she's the most fashion-aware in the group, and also the slowest, due to her heavy armor and the only one who cannot see in the dark)
- Gannok, Half-Orc Barbarian (I didn't want to be subtle)

Last session (we were all level 8, mythic tier 2), we ran into a succubus who tried to to pass herself off as Iomedae. Sefayll approached her to receive her "benediction" (I was skeptical, but what does a barbarian follower of Gorum know of Iomedae?). She made her save, so the succubus ordered her followers to attack us (we made short work of the poor guys, and restrained the survivors). Then we found a secret passage (which we expected, because we have a map of the fortress in Drezen) and ran into some mimics. I bit into one (I lost use of one arm earlier, so it's my best attack if it's the only one in a round) and fail the reflex save (extraordinary ability, so no Superstition bonus), which means I'm stuck until a teammate finishes it off the next round (though I would probably have made the STR check on my own). I then pretend to spit out the bits. The secret passage was a dead end, so we backtrack and go another way. In the next fight, the succubus manages to mind-control Dante, who promptly opens up a pit under Saskarozaskan, Sefayll and myself. Only Saskarozaskan makes his save, but he uses his spells to help Sefayll come out (I'm raging, so he doesn't take the chance of wasting them on me). Dante then casts fireballs on Patronicus, who was trying to get to the succubus, and catches Gustav, who was trying to rejoin him, and burns him to a crisp. I don't remember how we managed to finish this fight, but we then use our Raise Dead scroll on Gustav (who manages to lose every one of his 12 prepared spell slots). Then we run into some other demons with mind-affecting abilities (can't remember the name). I promptly fail my will save, so on my next turn, the DM hand me a note that says "you now attack your leader Patronicus". Seeing me do that, Sefayll attemps a Magic Circle against evil to give me another save attempt. Since I'm raging, I have to make a save against it and I roll a 1 (sometimes, you're glad of rolling one), then roll another 1 on the new attempt (but most of the time, you aren't). So I continue attacking Patronicus until he drops unconscious (not dead, though it would have been barely possible, given he has only 10 CON), at which point the compulsion stops (though Sefayll tries and fails to put me to sleep). When Patronicus revives, I innocently ask him "What happened to you?"

edited 7th Dec '15 8:07:13 AM by Khudzlin

I have one from the game I'm running for parents.

The game is Pathfinder, and I'm running them through the Giantslayer module. We're nearly at the climax of the first part, "Battle of Bloodmarch Hill," during the titular battle. The party is at the main portcullis, when one of the characters decides to check out the surrounding area while waiting for the oncoming orcs. Worth noting, this guy is himself an orc fighter.

He goes up to a particular house that the module even specifies has 5 orc looters inside. Again, by himself. They're described as busy, so I have both sides roll perception and stealth checks, to see who notices who. Every single one is a massive failure (the highest check anyone got was an 8 after modifiers). So the first thing that happens is they all kind of stare at each other and go "Uhh..." for the entire span of a round.

So then, we come to people being able to act. The player decides he wants to try to bluff his way out of the situation by claiming to be a friend of their leader. I look over the situation - lone orc, not taking hostile action, dealing with other orcs who have no reason to believe a full-blooded orc would be on the humans' side. Also, the character in question has a charisma of 6 and no ranks of Bluff. I figure he certainly could try, but they'll still get the Sense Motive check to see through it.

The player gets a natural 20 to bluff, and the orcs get a 2(!) to see through it.

I actually had the orcs be slightly intimidated because they believed their leader's best friend was checking on him. They were even ready to offer up some of their loot to him if he demanded. He, however, decided to not press his luck, and the PC orc instead went and rejoined his companions.

There are a lot worse ways to learn that you Never Split the Party.

That is frigging amazing.

The best part was when that 20 hit the table. We all stared at it for a second before busting out laughing. Everyone knew that roll saved his bacon, and we were all laughing about how I would spin it in the story. It was a fun time.

He didn't need such a high score, though, unless the other orcs had high Wisdom or ranks in Sense Motive (since a 6 just means a -2 modifier).

I rolled the enemy's Sense Motive for two reasons. One, if they also got a natural 20, it would have provided a bit more tension to the scene. Two, that said, on the 95% chance they didn't, I wanted to see just how fooled they'd be. If they had gotten a 10, I would have played it with them just assuming that he was just another random orc in their tribe, and they would have told him to loot somewhere else. The fact that they bombed it swung the situation much more in the PC's favor, which he could have exploited if he wanted. Had the enemy actually botched, they would have panicked and handed him the loot themselves.

As a GM, sometimes, I roll to see just how screwed the players are... but sometimes, I roll to see just how screwed the enemy is. It's only fair.

Wait, there are no special results for skill checks (1's and 20's are special for attack rolls and saving throws), at least in the rules as published.

You are correct. I added in a few House Rules for flavor. In general, I'm going to describe the same end result regardless of the flavor of success or failure. However, how I describe it varies depending on how dramatic the success or failure was.

One simple example that has come up is with a killing blow against a foe. If the damage is enough to drop the foe, they're going to drop the foe, no question. That said, if the player only barely hits (i.e. rolls the foe's AC exactly or beats it by one), I like to describe it as a solid blow that hits armor/bony plates/solid bone, only for the protection to give way through the player's focus and force of will, doing mighty damage. On the other hand, if the player beats the AC by five or more, they cleverly wait for their foe to give them an opening as they blindside them with a brutal blow that's accompanied by a sickening crack of bones and a wet thump as they collapse.

I tweak here and there depending on the situation, but while I let the rules lead me to an end result, I decide how I get there.

That's a good way to make the game more fun.

In one of the "funny" threads, I read someone house rule'd something more reasonable than "automatic success/critfail durrr!" for natural twenties/ones on skill checks: 20 became 30 and 1 became -10. Which meant that while it was still possible to get exceptionally low or high results, at some DCs the rolls are simply impossible to succeed or impossible to fail.

edited 16th Dec '15 8:57:24 AM by Medinoc

1 being a critical failure has always been a house rule. It's only an automatic normal failure when it's special (attack rolls and saving throws). And the critical aspect of the 20 only comes in for attack rolls, where it's an automatic success (as for saving throws), but has to be confirmed as a critical hit (I'm not sure how this rule evolved, though, it might come from an "automatic critical on 20" rule). Additionally, more variance (as introduced by critical hits and/or more extreme results on 1/20) benefits the enemies (who only need to get lucky in one encounter) rather than the players (who hopefully will get through many encounters).

To go slightly more on-track, further adventures in the Giantslayer campaign.

The players got to a major setpiece in the battle - there's an entrance that the enemy has broken through at, and they're trying to hold off the rampaging orcs from advancing towards the medics and rescued townspeople. Yup, a "hold the line" mission.

Part of the catch with the area is that one of the top men in the town militia is there, and the module even specifies that he's a former alcoholic that has relapsed due to events in the module. There are ways to sober him up, but the players missed all of them, so he's belligerent, drunk, and it even specifies that he's a bit racist against orcs. Which is problematic when the party has one full-blooded orc and another who's a half-orc.

Unsurprisingly, it did not take long for him, in his drunken rage, to start throwing anti-orc slurs. Thus, when the party decided to get ready to use some of the siege setups on the raiders (including two sets of logs meant to tumble down the path), this meant that they didn't really bother trying to warn him about the oncoming attacks. Especially because, in each case, the orc-blooded party members were the ones to unleash it.

Remember - only you can prevent Friendly Fire. One way to prevent it - don't be racist.