Tabletop role-playing gamers are also fond of creating their own memes, because that's just how they roll.
Please add entries in the following format:- The name of the tabletop game (if it belongs in the "Other" folder).
- The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme, if necessary.[[/labelnote]] Explanation Like this.
- Further mutations and successor memes, if any.
open/close all folders
General Memes
- Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. Explanation Origin unknown but the earliest instance most people know is this
Something*Positive strip, where the GM becomes fed up with the players going Off the Rails and kills them all in disgust. - It's a common joke that Dark Heresy and Maid RPG are perfectly compatible with each other.
- Screw it, ninjas attack!
- "It [always] works in the movies."
- Stepping barefoot on a d4. Worse than stepping barefoot on Lego. And it makes you take 1d4 damage.
- Murder HobosExplanation Many players, veteran and new, will often make their characters have minimal backstory or goals, either through laziness or fear that the GM will go out of their way to screw the player over. The result is a homeless person with no family or friends who only kills and goes through dungeons for the sake of it, being at best sociopathic.
- "100 mm, not 4 inches!"Explanation Alleged quote from a historical wargamer disputing an opponent's movement, used to mock Rules Lawyers and "Stop Having Fun" Guys. For those who can't convert between metric and imperial, 4 inches is approximately 101.6 millimetres, so the player was disputing 1.6mm of movement distance, a miniscule amount.
- The standard response to meeting anybody or anything in an RPG? Kill them and take their stuff!
- "-4STR" Explanation A misremembered rule from AD&D 1st Edition, that penalized Demihuman female characters on their Strength score: -1 for dwarves, -2 for elves, and -3 for halflings and gnomes. FATAL is sometimes credited for creating this, but they merely made a similar "feature" (and it's based on hundreds rather than twenties).
- Nowadays, anytime someone posts this, they're attempting to get people to post pictures of female bodybuilders, amazons, etc.
- The famed Lesbian Stripper Ninja. For an explanation on that one, see here.
- Which is also badwrongfun.
- RPG.net brings us Snake Gandhi and Killfuck Soulshitter.
- The most common last words of an RPG are "We're going in there."
- Followed by "We're not going in there."
- "It's what my character would do"Explanation Few phrases are capable of inducing such rage in TTRPG players as this one. While being The Roleplayer is usually considered one of the best things you can be in TTRPG, which naturally requires you to act in accordance with what your character would do, the phrase is more often than not used as an excuse to act like a complete and utter Jerkass to everyone, including your fellow partymembers. Rogues who steal from their own party, Lawful Stupid paladins who kill indiscriminately when the party wants to be merciful, and so-called adventurers who refuse to help the party without personal incentive are all common cases of "doing what my character would do" poorly.
- Main Character SyndromeExplanation A mindset where a player thinks their character is the main protagonist of the campaign and should be the center of attention the entire time. Frequently guilty of bossing around other characters, inserting themselves into any roleplay scenario that doesn't naturally include them, and derailing events when they don't get their way.
- "Just write a book."Explanation A bit of advice that is often given to game masters guilty of excessive Railroading, especially if they use a GMPC. If they want every action or event in a campaign to be exactly as they envision, then they're better off just writing their own stories outside of TTRPGs rather than forcing players to play the roles the dungeon master wants for the story in question.
Exalted
- WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN DEMETHEMANIA RUNS WILD OVER YOU!?!?!?! Explanation Demetheus, one of the signature Dawn Castes, is sort of a cross between Tom Joad and The Rock.
- Is the Exaltation of the Dragons, or from the Dragons? Explanation Peleps Deled, a fundamentalist Immaculate Monk, is so set in his understanding of the Immaculate Texts that he killed a fellow monk over this issue.
- Chejop Kejak looks a bit like Sean Connery.
- 2E MASK OF WINTERS IS ILLITERATE LOLOLOL Explanation There's an error in the 2e corebook stats for the Mask; he doesn't have a Lore score, which denotes total illiteracy. Naturally, being one of the setting's great Chessmasters, he actually DOES have a very high Lore score.
- The Gods are World of Warcraft addicts. Explanation One of the explanations for why the gods haven't done anything to clean up Creation is that they're all addicted to the Games of Divinity.
- The city of Gem is always doomed. ALWAYS. Explanation When First Edition "soft metaplot" materials came out, a lot of them had Gem being targeted by the Deathlords/the Locust Crusade/the Fair Folk/whomever.
- There is no such thing as the White Veil Society. It does not exist. It is not an absolutely awesome club, with the most fascinating of members, and unlimited sources of the most sweet, delicious, euphoric tea and ice cream that they use to control the Scarlet Empire. Because that would be incredibly stupid. Nope.
- MAGICAL. FUCKING. MOONPUPPIES.
- It's a daiklave MADE OF CATS!!!! Explanation The Wyld is a weird place.
- Lyta X Peleps Deled, OTP. Explanation Lyta is a Solar who burns Realm Dragon-Blooded to death with giant mirrors as sacrifices to the Unconquered Sun; Peleps is a Dragon-Blood, The Fundamentalist and Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy dedicated to a belief system that wants as many Solars as possible to die right now.
- In Soviet Autochthonia, Exalted serve you!! Explanation The extradimensional realm of Autochthonia is basically a Soviet state that actually works, and its Alchemical Exalted serve to defend its people and enact their will rather than ruling above them as glorious god-kings.
- Magma Kraken. It's the answer to everything. Explanation A thread on RPG.net on how Magma Kraken is your one-stop Sorcery spell.
- Keychain of Creation: "Dodge Charms. DODGE CHARMS."
- Heroin-pissing dinosaurs. Explanation The Beasts of Resplendent Liquids are somewhat notorious among the fanbase for being exactly that.
- What the Christ are you talking about?! Explanation The result of signature Zenith Caste Panther's "Angry Black Man" Stereotype status; to lampshade it, a fan on the official forums went through all the official comics and made photoshopped versions that replaced Panther's lines with "WHAT THE CHRIST ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT", leading to the fanbase treating him as if his entire character consists of shouting this line and punching people in the face.
- The Lunar ate 54 cakes. She ate 54 cakes. That's as many as six nines. And That's Terrible. Explanation The book Masters of Jade had a one-off reference to a Lunar attempting to save a Solar Exalt baker from being corrupted by the Guild... by eating the cakes the Guild had paid the Twilight to prepare for them.
- Chicanery-No. Explanation A hypothetical keyword, created by Robert "The Demented One" Vance, which authorises Storytellers to respond to someone using the Charm in an abusive manner by punching them in the face.
- Meerkat Steals the Spotlight Prana. Explanation A supposed Lunar charm that forces all discussion to be about the Lunar Exalted. A reference to the tendency of threads on the official Exalted forum to suddenly become about Lunars.
- Sidereal'd (/Getimian'd/Night'd/etc.) Explanation "Ninja'd", using Exalted's ninja-equivalents.
- Malfean Stealth. Explanation Malfeas is not known for doing anything subtly, so Malfean Stealth consists of using loud distractions (with Malfeas, usually involving lots and lots of radioactive green fire), with the occasional generous dash of preemptive witness removal. Alternatively, it involves walking around in plain view, regularly screaming at the top of your lungs the command "IGNORE ME!!!" while lit up like a nuclear green bonfire.
- Avoidance Kata! Explanation The name of a Sidereal charm that lets them retroactively make it so they were never present in a scene. Fans and writers for the line will sometimes use the term when editing out mistakes or otherwise making evidence of past errors disappear.
Warhammer Fantasy
The
Total War: Warhammer Trilogy has its own
page.
- Remove X, replace with Skinks. Explanation The 6th Edition lizardmen army book was all about fielding as much skinks as one could.
- Remove Skinks, replace with Skinks
- DOOMWHEELS! Explanation A Skaven unit that is, even by the developer's admission, a giant hamster wheel with lightning guns. Must be written with the CAPS LOCK on.
- Malekith: ageless, undisputed witch-king of Naggaroth. Supreme commander over the Dark Elven hordes. Still lives with his mom. Explanation That's...basically it. All of those things are technically true, though we should probably add his mother is an evil sorceress who similarly plots with him.
- Similarly, Malekith will never live down the accounts of him and his mother committing incest together in much earlier editions.
- That's going in the book. Explanation A meme related to the Dwarfs, who are so obsessed with honor that they record every slight against them in the Great Book of Grudges. The phrase has been used in similar contexts to the heresy meme over in Warhammer 40,000 to describe anything deemed unforgivable or offensive.
- Death Metal Vikings. Explanation The Warriors of Chaos, a playable army in the tabletop, are essentially a race of evil, over-the-top METAL Vikings.
- Beardy. Explanation Dwarves were a very overpowered army in early editions of the game. Hence, "Beardy" became a term to describe any army, unit or rule which was overpowered and/or easily exploitable.
- HULKING OUT! Explanation Expect a High Elf player to say this whenever he makes Teclis drink his Strength potion.
- Sigmar is the patron deity of shouting and hammers. Explanation Fairly self-explanatory, Sigmar is a man-ascended-to-godhood who was known for being a manly warrior with a big warhammer. Overlaps with Memetic Badass.
- Settra does not serve! Settra rules! Explanation Despite the usual Warhammer Fantasy fan's opinion on the End Times, Settra's response to Nagash to an ultimatum to serve with him or be destroyed is well known and loved as a perfect display of determination and arrogance which succinctly defines Settra the Imperishable's character. Became ascended in Total War: Warhammer II, where the line is not only uttered in the Tomb Kings reveal trailer (by an unknown narrator, possibly Khatep), but Settra himself will utter the line in various contexts in-game.
- Holy Sigmar! Bless this ravaged body! Explanation A memetic line spouted by Victor Saltzpyre in Warhammer The End Times Vermintide, which is used by the fandom on seeing something shocking (similar to the heresy meme over in Warhammer 40,000).
Others
- Aberrant: Divis Mal has arms?! Explanation In the official forum, someone posted a post, expressing horror, along the lines of Divis Mal is gay?! This was particularly hilarious because the game's Have You Tried Not Being a Monster? symbolism between Divis Mal's sexuality and his superpowered aberrant nature had always been a massive part of his character, right from the moment he was introduced. Someone else created a thread making fun of this, expressing shock and horror that Divis Mal had arms, supported by some of the art that didn't show them. Since then, treating the fact that Divis Mal has arms as a huge, controversial thing has been a running gag among the fanbase.
- "You sank my Battleship!" Explanation A line used in an old commercial for the MB game, it has become an Obligatory Joke whenever the game or something similar appears in fiction.
- BattleTech:
- Problem, Capellan?◊ Explanation Image macro derived from a piece of fanart well-known in the BattleTech fandom, depicting Crown Prince Hanse Davion choking Chancellor Maximilian Liao with a shit-eating grin.
- Lyran scouting party◊ Explanation While exaggerated for the sake of humor, the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces do seem to have an inordinate fondness for deploying many, many assault 'Mechs - the so-called "Lyran Wall of Steel". Also extends to some fans jokingly referring to lower-end assault 'Mechs such as the Zeus as "ultralight" designs.
- TRUCK◊ STRONG!◊ Explanation Originates from /tg/. Someone proposed using an army of machinegun-equipped trucks, and while it was quickly pointed out that a lance of Firestarters would eat such a force alive, the idea of some petty Periphery warlord or the like trying to loot and plunder with a swarm of guntrucks amused the thread participants enough to spawn a minor meme.
- Fuck Harmony Gold!Explanation In the 1990s, Harmony Gold, the owners of Robotech and the rights to Macross outside of Japan, sued FASA (the then-owners of Battletech) over mech designs in Battletech that were borrowed from Macross. This resulted in FASA having to stop using any mecha designs that were borrowed from any outside IP (not just Macross but also Fang of the Sun Dougram and Crusher Joe), and the resulting mecha became known as the "Unseen". Naturally, Harmony Gold remains widely reviled among the Battletech fandom for this, a sentiment that is shared with the Macross fandom as well over said company's hyper-litigious tendencies.
- Busen Memo. Explanation A pornographic memory game (the title means, roughly, "Bosom Match" in German) in which players have to match pairs of cards that contain images of right- and left-breasts. BoardGameGeek users have found the idea so hilarious that just about every GeekList will find a way to shoehorn it in.
- Call of Cthulhu:
- SAN check. Explanation In Call of Cthulhu, if you are exposed to anything particularly disturbing or otherworldly you have to make a "sanity check" and lose sanity points (abbreviated SAN) on a failure.
- All the dice.
- No, not all your dice. All the dice.Explanation Most of the eldritch horrors in the game can do several d10's worth of damage, this is an exaggeration of that.
- Cthulhu: 1d6 investigators per round Explanation Instead of damage ranges, some editions of the RPG simply indicate that in combat Old Squidface devours a random number of Investigators (player characters) per round
- Old Man Henderson, the man who "won" Call of Cthulhu Explanation Old Man Henderson was a character in a game of Call of Cthulhu that essentially derailed the plot by use of Min-Maxing and ludicrous shenanigans that culminated in Henderson permanently killing Hastur with a hockey rink packed full of explosives.
- Champions: FREd will stop a bullet.Explanation It's a common assertion that the 5th edition rulebook, which is 600 pages long, thick enough to stop bullets. This was actually tested. Conclusion? If you're being shot at by a kid with a squirrel gun, a Civil War reenactor, or a mad Japanese soldier doing a bayonette charge, you're safe.
- Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine: There's no such thing as Russia. Explanation In Fable of the Swan, everyone seems to believe Russia is a mythical place - which proves awkward when Natalia, who is Russian, turns up.
- Clue: "It was [person], in the [place], with a [object]." Explanation This is the standard format for making a suggestion about how Mr. Boddy/Dr. Black was murdered. Easily transposed to any slightly mysterious situation.
- De Bellis Multitudinis: Elbows/Buttocks of DeathExplanation In the ancient/medieval wargame De Bellis Multitudinis, troops who are pushed back into the side or rear of an enemy unit are destroyed. The player base jokes that this is due to the troops impaling themselves on the enemy's elbows/buttocks.
- Diplomacy: Destroying friendships since 1959! Explanation The fact that you essentially have to break alliances and betray people to win can be hazardous to relationships
- Dogs in the Vineyard: "Go go Power Rangers, you Mighty Mormon Power Rangeeeeers!"
- F.A.T.A.L.
- Roll for Anal Circumference. Explanation This is an actual roll you must make for your character's stats in legendarily-terrible RPG FATAL. Online it's stated as a response to some sort of impending disaster, the implication being that you are about to be literally or metaphorically arse-raped so hard that you better check to see whether or not your body can take it without tearing.
- Negative Anal Circumference. Explanation Earlier editions made it possible to have zero or even NEGATIVE anal circumference. This effectively means you have no anus; knowing FATAL this is actually a good thing.
- REALISTIC! Explanation Byron Hall, creator of FATAL, likes to claim his game is more "realistic" than others. This cry comes up when you run into something mired in blatant Critical Research Failure.
- BELL CURVE!! Explanation Byron's explanation for the oft-laughable number of dice you have to roll for some things (4d100/2, later changed to 10d100/5).
- It's Cloaca Time! Explanation Spawned on the TV Tropes liveblog of the FATAL corebook: It states that if an orifice is penetrated by an item too large for its circumference, there's a risk of it tearing open, and if it's the vagina or anus...
- RANDY GAY OGRES! Explanation Another from the liveblog, it's #85 on the Random Magical Events list.
- The most historically accurate game ever! Explanation A claim by Byron Hall concerning his game.
- "Experience an accumulation of gas in their rectum." Explanation The terms the manual used to describe a magical effect that makes a character fart.
- The GURPS 4th edition dildo gun.
- Legend of the Five Rings: Googly eyes on everything. Explanation A silly image of the lion mon with googly eyes had been around for a while. When Fantasy Flight Games started remaking the game, people started googlying everything else as well, up to and including the game's designers.
- Monopoly:
- Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Explanation Found on community chest/chance cards. Used to say when something must be done NOW.
- Also from Monopoly, "get out of jail free" card. Explanation Also on community chest/chance cards, used to say when someone gets out of a punishment for a trivial reason.
- The incredibly bleak OSR game Mork Borg has some of its own:
- Like a spiked flail to the face.Explanation Part of how the creators described their Crapsack World included this, and the fans picked it up and ran with it as a way to point out points when the game gets extra bleak - especially when characters die, and they die A LOT.
- Light on rules, heavy on everything else.Explanation Another way that the creators described the game, to the point it's how the game is pitched to others.
- BLACK METAL D&D!!!Explanation The other way this game is described to people.
- Rifts: Giga-Damage - set everything right.Explanation In Rifts, damage is divided into Standard Damage Capacity (SDC) and Mega-Damage Capacity (MDC), the latter of which represents 100 of the former and will reduce an unprotected character to red mist. "Giga-Damage" is a theoretical level above MDC which would kill not just the character hit with it, but their player.
- Robo Rally: "BE THE SALMON!", when a player attempts to move in the opposite direction to a conveyor belt.
- Do NOT taunt the Maelstrom! Explanation Except for the outer rim, the Maelstrom board consists entirely of inward-spiralling conveyor belts with a pit at the centre. Announcing out loud that you can deal with it is a form of Tempting Fate, inevitably resulting in the player concerned either being trapped on the conveyor belts or going into the pit.
- Wil E. Coyote Award Explanation Given to a player whose who creates a sequence that results in their own destruction, without any intervention from other bots.
- Old World of Darkness:
- Demon: The Descent: Demon: the [X] [[labelnote:Explanation]]After Mage: The Awakening, White Wolf would usually tease or hint at the title of their next nWOD game, then eventually reveal the full title. When they got to Demon, both the writers and fans had fun coming up with various possibilities for the full title, ranging from the serious to the silly, whenever they talked about it. Some such solutions were Demon: the Spearmint, Demon: the Frutang, and Demon: the Cleanrinse.
- Trenchcoat and katana.Explanation The stereotypical old World of Darkness character was an angsty badass who dual-wielded katanas and wore a trenchcoat to conceal them with. This was encouraged by the game mechanics, as katanas were just better and could only be concealed by a trenchcoat.
- Paranoia
- Trust The Computer. The Computer Is Your Friend.
- Questioning the Computer is treason. Treason is punishable by death.
- Only a Communist Mutant Traitor would question the Computer.
- You do not have clearance for this article, citizen. Please report immediately for termination.
- Please report immediately for termination. Failure to report for termination is grounds for termination.
- New Settlers of Catan players will quickly become acquainted with "Wood for Sheep".Explanation "Wood" and "Sheep" are the more common names for the lumber and wool resources. The game allows trading resources, so a player trading A for B will say "I have wood for sheep."
- Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG
- And the related "Things Runs-Like-Hell is no longer allowed to do in the Garou Nation"
- Traveller: Dying during character creation.Explanation Most Traveller characters are veterans of some sort of armed force or other organization in which they learned/were trained in the skills that will serve them as adventurers. As a nod to the hazards of such careers (and a hedge, along with the aging rules, against players creating characters with long service histories and very high skill levels, ranks, etc), every four-year term required a "survival roll" at the end. In early editions, failing this roll meant the character was dead; on a meta level, the player had pushed their luck too far and "crapped out", and would have to start over. Later editions modified this rule to say that the character had instead suffered some career-ending mishap and left the service at the end of that term.
- Unknown Armies: COSMIC BUMFIGHTS Explanation Unknown Armies is a game where magic requires you to be insane in a way that lends yourself to crazy hobo-dom. One class of mage is fueled by alcoholism.
