hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
Couple new additions to the highlight reel from my Roll20 campaign. Link to full googdrive thing is here
(sorry about formatting, document has it, I'm just too lazy to do stuff all over again for the forum post).
"I believe introductions are in order"
(Tsane the vampire has been spending the days as Gayan’s pet jackalope. Doom Fastfoot, jungle guide extraordinaire, has been hired by the party, who forgot to tell her about that.)
Night falls as you travel, and after awhile, Tsane drops down from Gayan's shoulder, transforms, and stretches.
Tsane: Hey, I never asked, but we are fighting Gulthias, right? Or are we doing that yet, or at all? I mean, I definitely wouldn't mind not seeing him again, but like what're we up to?
Doom: (deadpan) Well, you don't see that every -
Tsane: Also, uh, d'you think I could try some of your food, just for fun? I think it's been three hundred years or so since I had any; it's hard to tell. Fucking anything tastes better than blood.
Doom: Uh...
Ravora: Really now?
Tsane: (Finally notices Doom staring at her) ...Oh, hi. (@party) Oh yeah, also who's New Bitch? : /
Starbee: ok this is hilarious
Ravora: Tsane, don't be rude.
This is Doom, she's helping us navigate this jungle
Tsane shrugs
Doom: ...Hey?
Ravora: Doom, this is Tsane, our...
Informant?
Yes, that.
Doom looks at Ravora then at Tsane, clearly puzzled to hell and back
Tsane: Your name is... : | Well, I've heard worse
Vala KAISER: brb biotics
Doom: ...
Ravora: ....
Doom: ...Standing around in the jungle at night gets you eaten. (continues walking)
Tsane: We're in the - ...Huh, so we are.
Rabbits must be dumb, I thought we were still in the swamp.
Elias just follows the guide.
[Some time later...]
Doom: We're going to be at the village pretty soon.
Doom glances at Tsane, starts to say something
Tsane gives a thumbs-up, winks, and transforms back
“I’ll scout ahead”
(The party has just sort-of-captured a weretiger sort-of-bandit named Nephis, and hears something up ahead)
Doom motions for yall to take cover and hide
[The party does so]
Cathari Sarad: we're all within 30 feet of each other right?
Knowlessman (GM): sure
(To Gayanawathani): lots of Medium-sized somethings walking around
Doom: Lots of things walking around. Humanoids, I think.
Nephis: I'll sneak up and scout ahead.
Gayanawathani selects the party to be shaded by Pass without Trace, a stealth buff
Knowlessman (GM): Do you include Nephis in this spell
Cathari Sarad: yes
Knowlessman (GM): 27
Nephis is gone, man, solid gone
Doom: ...
Gayanawathani: That was careless of me
Though if I didn't, she might have driven them towards us.
Tsane: How much you wanna bet she's coming back? ...I'mma go check it out.
Sylthana Amakiir looks into the camera like Jim from The Office, even though this is a non-visual medium
Tsane goes to, presumably, actually scout ahead [Don’t worry, she comes back.]
Edited by Knowlessman on Aug 21st 2018 at 2:36:14 PM
i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby
These posts of sessions Gone Horribly Wrong are some of the funniest tabletop stories I've ever read. The first one has the players miss every clue on their adventure and frequently sabotage themselves, and the second one demonstrates how knowledge of physics can wreck a plan that would work in a cartoon.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Mar 27th 2019 at 12:57:05 PM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Our session last night ended with our lawful good kobold gunslinger deciding he needed to get rid of the drugs cache we had discovered while capturing a wanted alchemist. So standing right next to it, he decided to drop a coin carrying a Create Bonfire rune into a crate of the stuff, which turned out to be extremely combustible. He was thrown across the room, and him and two of the rest of the group (including me) were showered in the stuff and are going to start next session having some kind of tripped out nightmare.
Avatar from here.
Best lie I managed to get past, hilarious for its sheer audacity. We were playing changling NWoD and I was a mirrorskin. We were getting rid of a bodyguard who I was going to replace for a job we were one.
We ambushed him in his apartment but the combat was not the most quiet. Our lookout notices that the police is approaching the apartment and so I shift to look just like the person we just killed. I open the door when they knock and start doing my best to get them to go away.
The two cleaning up however were unaware of the police. They were in the process of ripping up the carpet at the time, and just as the police were turning to leave they hear this enormously loud ripping noise. They turn around and look at me suspiciously and ask me what that noise just was. Me the player was struggling for an answer so I just told them that it was my cat. With my exceptional roll, I somehow convince them and they turned back around and left.
That character died soon after that job so I never had a chance for any more outrageous lies, but that one moment had us in stitches the rest of the night.
I pulled a You Are Already Dead on a wizard, using a knife.
So basically, I was playing a fighter, and my friend Jacob. was playing a wizard, and we we're playing in a very rules-loose One-Shot game of D&D. We had somehow managed to infiltrate a pocket dimension containing the headquarters for what was for all intent and purposes an army of thieves (though no whores).
Eventually I find a General Usage Staff, which in game was a magic staff that could be used by anyone. But not just any staff: this one spat out fire.
Naturally I briefly turn into a Pyromaniac and begin setting the entire warehouse I found the staff on fire. It goes surprisingly well (Really!) except for the fact that large fires gather a large amount of attention, especially on the archmage running the whole operation.
So, me and my wizard friend have to act naturally and calm. I can't remember what we rolled, but i managed to succeed while Jacob did not, BUT instead of freaking out, the DM ruled that he had overdone it and acted too calm. This catches the attention of the Archmage, who promptly directs his attention to Jacob and asked if something was wrong.
AND NOW THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR: The DM decides to let me pull off a stunt: I can stab the Archmage in such a way that he won't die until a few moments later, and (given that I succeeded on a subsequent roll) be able to learn that skill so I could do it again.
Unfortunately, while I successfully pulled the old "Omae Wa Mou Shinderu", I could not pass the second roll, and I did not learn the delayed stab.
Do you have time to talk about our lord and savior, the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda?
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru does exist in 5e actually, but unfortunately Monks can't get it until like lvl 17.
Edited by Knowlessman on Nov 23rd 2018 at 11:04:33 AM
i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby
she/her
And only if you pick the Open Hand tradition.
This isn't mine, but the story of Stevey the Crater Monk must be shared. He exploited game mechanics to defeat everything he encountered via teleporting into the sky and careening down on his enemies while covered in acid, fire, and explosions until his untimely downfall.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Mar 27th 2019 at 12:54:38 PM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Me: I play Head Games, letting me look at your hand and send it all back, then give you new cards.
(looks at the field, me with a single Rune-Scarred Demon)
(gives opponent a bunch of evasive little creatures, made to let him go wide)
Him: ...thanks? I think you just gave me the game. (Puts down his 1 / 1 unblockables, 2 / 2s and a 3 / 2.)
Me: Rising Miasma.
Him: son of a—-
Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.
The Ice Queen
My wizard, Bellatrix, leaned up against a stone chest. She didn't want to open it to check for traps, so she just listened to it.
I rolled a 1.
A skeleton popped out of the chest, and the lid fell on my wizard, who spent the remainder of the battle pinned to the ground throwing rocks at the skeleton.
MY EYES
Man, where to start?
I just came out of a session of Dungeon World using Class Warfare in the Green Law of Varkith setting. Not sure it matters though. For various reasons, the players, myself included, were members of a guild dedicated to engineering and fortification building in a city where not being in a guild is illegal. My character was Gunsmoke Grypth, an undead asshole cowboy mad scientist whose moral code revolved around pissing people off and murder. It was entering Stupid Evil territory so I decided I wanted to find a more sustainable character.
After an incident involving throwing rocks at old people my drunken character was dragged into the cells of a castle that, for various reasons, one of the characters had as part of their custom class. When the other characters pointed out that putting me down for the greater good I didn't object, OOC or IC. I didn't want to drag the party into a situation nobody would've had fun resolving, and I have a feeling Grypth knew deep down that he made himself into a monster and wanted someone to stop a cycle of violence and hatred he's lost control of. The other characters began whittling down my health, and I didn't resist.
Then, demons invaded.
You see, one of the plot pointsd set up was that a demon union objected to our castle's existence due to some obscure zoning law. I had previously killed two of their kind and sold their organs on the black market, so they send a decent force to finish us, busting down the castle gates with a battering ram. Well, it didn't work out that way. One of the players drew a magic circle around the castle not to keep the demons out, but to trap them inside. You see, we had gotten good at killing demons, and I reckoned that if we just kept killing anyone they sent to enforce their interpretation of zoning law, they would leave us alone. We put our dramatic execution aside to deal with what could charitably be called a threat.
The battle ended in total demonic slaughter, but also a broken gate. After hanging a sign outside that said "SEND MORE DEMONS", me and my fellow engineer got to work fixing the gate. He rolled well, I didn't. The GM ruled that through my own incompetence, I had trapped myself inside the door, leaving a large structural flaw if I were to escape. At which point, I asked the following:
"Wait, would the structural fault be resolved if I just stayed in the door?"
I went from deciding that my character was a monster who needed to be stopped, to deciding that my character was a door now. All the dramatic plots my charater was supposed to be involved in now end with "But now he's a door". Every bond I had with the other characters is now "Well, he's a door now." I insisted playing one session as Gunsmoke Grypth as a door, then move on to another character. What was just a silly suggestion turned into this. I don't know. I'm still in awe that this even happened.
Edited by MaxwellDaring on Feb 24th 2019 at 11:54:18 AM
INSIDE OF YOU THERE ARE TWO WOLVES. BOTH OF THEM WANT YOU TO SHOOT ELVIS.
My party has decided that my potato farmer-turned-summoning cleric brings in his celestial help via throwing potatoes like pokeballs. I have since added to it that he does so via biting off the top of the potato like a grenade. Angelic creatures have little halos above their heads in which floats a potato.
Playing the delightfully surreal Invisible Sun for the second time, our group encounters a combination safe we need to get into. Our group's Maker who Talks to Inanimate Objects tries to see if he can persuade the safe to tell him the combination. Instead, he gets the safe's feelings and memories on being opened; according to the GM, as safe remembers being opened, the dial spins and each number is more "pleasurable" until the safe is opened and the "pleasure is maximized." As the safe is closed, it feels "satisfied."
At this, another party member says, "So, in order to open the safe this way, we have to find it's G-spot?"
We ended up breaking the safe open after our Maker refused to participate in further safe-opening shenanigans.
What a spoilsport!
This Reddit thread has some good stories. I like the continual light spell mishaps XD
Some Guy Or Something
While I am typically the mischief causing ball of chaos in most groups I play in, my current game has me as a far more reasonable character babysitting a bunch of the worst behaved children in existence.
My duergar paladin of the crown had to convince our half-elf, half-goliath sorcerer that while he can be almost anything he wants, that list excludes becoming an umber hulk. She, the paladin, then had to apologize to a stone giant who was provoked by the party's halfling bard over arguments about height and size.
Luckily, my chaotic instincts cannot be entirely repressed and she later convinced a different stone giant to chuck her at a weird suspended castle due to being unable to climb up to it.
Double luckily, the rest of the party followed suit. I give us a very short amount of time until we hit a TPK.
"Evii is right though" -Saturn "I didn't know you were a bitch Evii." -Lior Val
Captain of the Dead City
A fairly funny story is how my DnD Warlock keeps getting into fights with Phandalin NPCs. I'm not sure how closely to the book campaign my DM is running things, but I got into a barfight once (chucked a bottle over my shoulder and hit someone, who then sneak attacked me), which meant I impulsively cast Arms of Hadar when the inn-keeper was still in range, and after the two thugs that had initially assaulted me ran away pissing their pants, the inn-keeper grabbed an axe from under the bar and swung at me. Bleeding from a sneak attack and an axe wound, I stumbled to the door and started blasting in the inn-keeper's direction with eldritch blast (character is a noble who is now pissed off). By the end I had reduced his bar's counter to matchwood and he had chucked two axes and several glasses at me (missing all of them). By that point, my character had calmed down, so he decided to beat a hasty retreat, except a bear was blocking the doorway when he opened it. Of course, the visiting druid, Redoak (or something). My character promptly closed the door and ran up the stairs. Cue crashing of wood downstairs. I don't have anywhere to hide upstairs, so I jump out of a window, sprain my ankle, and stumble back towards the Sleeping Giant (the inn the PCs had appropriated for ourselves). Looking back, a monkey was climbing down out of the window, so I cast Invisibility on myself and managed to stealth back home. I was subsequently banned from the Stonehill Inn and the mayor informed me that the inn was seeking reparations of 200gc, and quite a lot of the village have been quite frosty towards me since.
The second instance was in the dungeon under the manor, where a fairly powerful NPC pulled a black knight "who goes there/none shall pass" on the bridge, and I thought he was being too serious, so I used mage hand to stick a finger up his nose. DM: "roll initiative" and the NPC beat me unconscious and the only other PC who was effectively in the fight stayed back because "I had it coming".
The third instance was not technically my fault. Some elf noble we picked up as a captive by the Redbrands in some mine and was holed up with us in the Sleeping Giant. After a few sessions, the DM told us to make an ability check, and upon getting a high roll, he tells us that we're starting to get suspicious about that individual. So I go find him and see that he's got a portion of the cellar curtained off and is very defensive and protective about his privacy. I can't get anything but a few books out of him through conversation, so I retreat for the moment (the books incidentally helped advance the main storyline). Later, the Paladin in the party decides to try his luck, and I turn invisible to look behind the curtain while the Paladin is distracting him. I don't find much other than a shrine to a god of wealth, and begin to withdraw. Unfortunately, the elf's suspicion is raised because of the Paladin visibly noticing something I did, and I manage to stealth out, but the elf gets more insistent that the Paladin leaves, to the point of throwing an illusion spell of some kind at him. The Paladin makes a saving throw against it, and resolutely stands his ground. I (roleplaying a Cthulhu cultist) use awakened mind to whisper ominous Cthulhu phrases into his mind to try and confuse him. At this point he casts a fire/radiant damage spell at the Paladin which also hits me. At this, I run back up the stairs (still invisible) to find that the elf has teleported to the ground floor. I decide to run upstairs to feign ignorance (the Paladin doesn't know I was down there) when the elf yells "YOU WILL ALL BURN" and casts the same spell at the building. Now my inn is on fire. The Paladin runs up and attacks him, and I come back down and cast Eldritch Blast, since now my character knows that the situation isn't going to defuse. The elf teleports away and once we vacated the inn, we see a plume of smoke coming from the town centre and vague shouts of "BURN" in the distance. And that's where the last session ended. So now we have a Warlock and a Paladin at half health each and a Cleric in a different building (and one fighter a day's journey away because he wanted to solo an Owlbear in Cragmaw Castle for loot) and that is where the last session ended. I don't know if we or the town will survive us angering a mad elf pyromancer, but we'll see.
Edited by GoldenKaos on Jul 4th 2019 at 1:38:04 PM
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
Chaotic Greedy
Last Sunday's game saw us in space, in an asteroid field:
- GM: So, you spend an hour piloting carefully through the asteroid field, scanning all asteroids in range for interesting metal. In terms of volume you haven't done a thousandth of it, but you have fairly generous scans since there's many in scanning range at once.
- Player: Wait, how can that be? Aren't asteroids super far apart?
- GM: It's the movie kind of asteroid field, I know it makes no sense but it's that dense, OK?
- Other player: Oh, like a Star Wars asteroid field?
That all you got?
On Tuesday I was DM'ing a game with some people on Discord, where they were trying to stop a necromantic cult from overthrowing the kingdom they were in. Their path to the cult's base took them through a forest that had been corrupted by necrotic energy, making it an Überwald style place. The group's bard was so creeped out that he decided to shut his eyes and walk with them closed.
Immediately after he made this decision, one epically-failed Athletics (or maybe Perception, it's been a few days) check later and he trips over a log and faceplants into the ground.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.
I found a 16-page archived forum thread of these kinds of stories; there were parts 2-5 as well but those weren't saved. My favorite one so far is on page 3 and involves a Very Tall Ladder Store XD
Chaotic Greedy
I don't think I've mentioned this one yet, it happened late in our Star Wars d20 Revised Edition campaign, on the tail end of the Clone Wars.
My Muun character had accepted a "military contract" right on the Separatist capital world, to slice into their starship accreditation database and grant access to another ship containing a payload of Jedi (he's an expert slicer). Right after the job, he was caught by Count Dooku himself, who interrogated him and decided to contract him in turn to break the encryption of stolen Republic data.
- GM: Dooku is satisfied with the NDA part, all that's left to determine is the price.
- Me: OK, so I take my +21 diplomacy and my +4 racial bonus to haggling; I also have Illicit Barter but I doubt it applies...
- GM: Dooku waves his hand, saying "$good_amount sounds like a reasonable price to me." Roll Will.
To me, this really showed the state of mind of the guy who's been dealing with Muun for the last two years and does not want this crap right now. He didn't even try to rip me off, it was just... "Please skip the forcedamned haggling."
PS: I naturally failed the rollnote , and repeated his sentence word for word.
Edited by Medinoc on Nov 11th 2019 at 4:21:33 PM
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Unbeugsame Klinge
I was at Adventure League, playing through Dungeon of the Mad Mage. There were six people in the group: a Life Cleric, a tiefling Paladin, a half-orc fighter, a half-elf warlock, a goliath barbarian/paladin (dubbed a "barbaradin" for short by his player), and a dwarvish druid (me).
We had just completed the fifth floor, which is mostly taken up by a forest ruled by a powerful druid. She had just told us the way to the stairs down, but she had also mentioned a green dragon on the same floor. After a brief debate about what to do, we ended up going to see the dragon. I had argued against it because I expected it to be a full-grown dragon, and thus a powerful enemy if we got into a fight. Instead, we found a juvenile dragon. And he had what looked like a magic sword stuck in his head, though he didn't seem to care much. We offered to take the sword out, but the dragon refused. And that's where things got messy.
The barbaradin was the ringleader of what happened next, so I'd like to go into a bit more detail about him. He was a paladin of conquest who swore his oaths to himself. His plan was not only to become a god, but to become the Top God of the giant pantheon. He was lawful evil, and the player openly called him a murder hobo. He decided that he was going to attack the green dragon and take the sword by force. That's where our group split into two groups.
The the warlock (chaotic neutral) decided that he wants to join in with the barbaradin, and the fighter joined in. The paladin, cleric, and I were less than excited to kill a sentient being to steal from it. But, since this was Adventure League, direct Pv P was forbidden.
The fight started with the dragon on the top of a short tower and us at the bottom. Team kill the dragon climbed to the top. The cleric and paladin held back. I summoned a giant eagle to carry me to top.
The started attacking the dragon, and found out he wasn't very strong. For his first turn he didn't attack, he just let out a really loud yell. I decided to test out what the DM would allow and cast Entangle to try to restrain the other members of the party. Surprisingly, the fighter and barbaradin were able to pass their strength saves. I learn a valuable lesson about preparing hold person.
During the next round, the archdruid shows up. She's wildshaped into a quetzalcoatlus and tells them to get away from the dragon. The DM informs us that the archdruid is level 17. Most of us are around level 6, meaning they don't have a great chance in a fight.
I try to calm things down and cast Cure Wounds on the dragon. The others go right back to attacking the dragon. The archdruid decides that she's really sick of us and summons more reinforcements: Hallister. Y'know, Hallister Blackcloak, the Mad Mage. The Final boss of the campaign, who we're not supposed to fight for another 17 floors.
Team kill manages to survive for another round and kill the dragon. The barbaradin draws the sword from his head, and discovers that it is indeed a magical sword- one that only works for good-aligned characters. The rest of us get a good laugh out of this ooc, and I bring up to the other playes that trying to kill the dragon was futile because none of them could have actually used it. The fighter reveals he's actually chaotic good. The DM calls for an alignment check. When he protests, the DM states with obvious amusement that trying to kill somebody to take their stuff isn't very heroic.
Back in the game, Team kill was quickly getting their asses kicked. The fighter, injured, decided to try getting away from them by jumping off the tower. He got knocked out by the fall damage. The cleric booked it when Hallister showed up. The paladin was trying to talk things down to no avail. I haven't been targeted because I was trying to help the dragon, but I decide to wash my hands of the whole affair. I tell my teammates that they're getting what they deserve.
I wildshape into a cat and try jumping off the tower. I only take three fall damage, but cats have two HP. On my next turn, I wildshape into a horse, get the paladin and take off running. Team kill is quickly dispatched, and fail their death saves on top of it. Hallister leaves, while the archdruid revives the dragon and sticks the sword back in his head.
But hey, they did unlock the non-legendary version of the Sword of Sharpness. Yay Season 8!
Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.
These two websites document hilarious player character deaths. I think my favorite one is the guy who, seeing his companions use Featherfall and a Ring of Featherfall to slow their descents into a pit, jumped in after them, and the trio of characters who tossed a pilot out an airplane window mistakenly thinking he was a bad guy, only to realize none of them could fly the plane.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Dec 7th 2019 at 4:23:02 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Chaotic Greedy
Today's Star Wars d6 game (first time on Discord rather than face-to-face) had us accomplish a well-paid delivery through pirate-infested waters space. Once we got the payment, we decided to roll Bargain to decide on how to split it between the ship containing most of the PCs, and the solo character in his own ship.
And we proceeded to all make truly abysmal rolls, one after the other, most of which had a 1 on the wild die. The money ended up split 50/50 between the two ships, and all of our ship's crew is convinced they got a pretty sweet deal.
Edited by Medinoc on Mar 22nd 2020 at 11:09:07 AM
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Not mine, but a friend who is running a game told me that her players decided to name their party The Aristocrats.
Which consequently made me realize that you could structure pretty much any version of an Off the Rails session (and quite a few ludicrous but somehow on-the-rails sessions) as a version of The Aristocrats (A man walks into an adventuring guild...). I'm already doing it mentally to some of the more absurd sessions I've been in, and it works amazingly well.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.