General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Have you ever had a game completely derailed by a word or sentence that you mangled?
Last night, I meant to say, "The Hobgoblin responds to you in broken common".
What I actually said, "The Hobgoblin responds to you in broken condom".
The game was almost a complete loss after that. I laughed until I almost passed out, the players laughed for half and hour. I turned beat red... because... my teenage son was among the players.
I was running a Dark Sun one-shot, and the PCs were about to be ambushed by a gang of psionic humanoids. I don't know the correct pronounciation of the name of the race (maenad), but to their ears, the players thought they were being attacked by "my nads."
Running through the 3.5 Eberron adventure path; we were on the adventure in the back of the book. A warforged with an axe jumped 'em. What do I yell?
"The warforged grabs his ass, and... wait..."
I, of course, meant to say axe. It didn't help that one of the players, who happened to be a WF, immediately jumped up, grabbed his own ass, and started dancing around.
This wasn't the result of a mangled phrase, but it's infamous in our group no less. One player (the aforementioned WF player) fake-laughed at something I said. Then a player thought that was funny, so started laughing, making the first player laugh in earnest. When the first player laughs, his face scrunches up and turns beet red, so, naturally, the rest of us start laughing. For 15 whole minutes, we did nothing else. I was sure one of us would die from suffocation.
Now, it's very easy to get anyone in the group to start laughing uncontrollably. I wonder why? Hrm...
In a campaign a few years ago, the party found an informant at a tavern with some info they needed. The problem was, the bad guys had found out he was a snitch and we was scared for his life. He'd only tell the party what he knew if they would protect him and get him out of town the next day. So the dwarf tells him, "Don't worry, laddie. Ye won't be alone tonight!"
Yeah, there was a lot of laughing after that. It's become a recurring joke at the table.
Have you ever had a game completely derailed by a word or sentence that you mangled?
Last night, I meant to say, "The Hobgoblin responds to you in broken common".
What I actually said, "The Hobgoblin responds to you in broken condom".
The game was almost a complete loss after that. I laughed until I almost passed out, the players laughed for half and hour. I turned beat red... because... my teenage son was among the players.
I'm not sure I'ld call a game failed where everyone almost passes out from laughing hard.
We had a DM who described on more than one occasion that the room was lit by burning brassiers. Which caused me and one of the others to collapse in hysterics...
__________________
This message was posted by Eccles, the percussive maintenance technician.
I once derailed a game with a single sentence, though it wasn't that serious to begin with. I simply said, "I put the bowl on my head for a helmet." My DM gave me a +1 to AC but apparently the soup inside was poisonous so you got this Elven wizard drenched in poisonous soup running around with a bowl on his head.
This just ended any amount of ordinary gameplay. From that point on we found a sleeping ogre decided to set it on fire by throwing all the furniture we could find into its room, lighting it on fire then locking the door... It got through and chased us (on fire) out the dungeon into the woods where I set the woods on fire and all the woodland creatures attacked. I stayed to fight while my Barbarian buddy ran away... You can figure out what happened.
__________________ Secret Member of... *blink, blink* Damn you amnesia!
The players just finished saving a city from a BBEG and started talking about what to do next. A female player got excited and blurted out, "Maybe the king will reward us with a golden shower!"
She honestly had no idea what that meant and I guess she heard that term before and thought it was related to wealth. She sat there dumbfounded as the rest of us couldn't stop laughing. It was pretty awkward explaining to her what a golden shower was.
I wish I had something nearly as amusing to add (any stories I have would take way too much typing to explain the context).
But, I had to still post to say everything on here is hysterical! Thanks for sharing!
__________________ If you're bored and like to follow links provided by random strangers, check out my ENWorld Blog http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/fba827/
It will have campaign logs and random thoughts...
We were inside of a vast temple trying to solve a puzzle that involved pressure switches that operated large stone doors that slid up to open and crashed down to close. Well, the DM would make the crashing noise himself every time we let off of a pressure switch, and when we described pressing in rapid succession the noise the DM was making became almost like a song. The whole group broke down into a harmony of door crashing in a style that rivaled the popular Nike basketball commercial that used the sound of screeching shoes and bouncing basketballs as impromptu music.
Yeah, it happens to everyone once in a while...but never to me!
1) We had a game session end when one guy scanned his character sheet and uttered "Hey, my character speaks Elvis!" (He had also, just 20 minutes previous to that mangled "Hornet Darts" into "Hanet Dorts.")
2) A similar double play ended a session when a player warped "Cannoness Yday" into "Canyoness Yday" and struggled with "water elemental." He kept saying "watermelon ental" instead.
3) My protestations above aside, I have participated in some play stoppages, though not due to MY malaprops- the culprit was my sharp tongue.
* A DM protested the way our low-level party utterly abused some harpies by using the Druid's entire complement of Entangle spells- this after it was pointed out that the party was rolling abysmally for attacks and damage. I asked him what he wanted the Druid to do, "...Purify Food and Drink them to death? They'll be 'Oh no, we're wet and well fed!' while we shoot at 'em..."
* The same DM (and same campaign) had our party encountering a tribe in the wilderness, and he was struggling with the Chief's welcoming speech, which had a part something like "We are a tribe of hunter-gatherers...well, more hunters than gatherers...um...well we gather a lot too..." And I lept in (mimicking his "Chief voice") with "Argh! "more hunters than gatherers?" Who wrote this speech? Bring me the royal speechwriter's head! This is CRAP!"
* We were playing RIFTS, and the player from #2 above had lost track of the fact that someone else had already found what the party was looking for and was bugging out. He burst into the camp's mess hall, all fierce, black and deadly in his captured SAMAS armor...only to encounter unarmed kitchen workers. They had no clue as to what he was looking for, despite his demands and threats, backed up with displays of physical violence (breaking tables, firing his weapon, etc.) FINALLY, someone in the group got his attention and told him we had accomplished the mission and he left.
We chose that moment to break to get drinks for the kitchen, and I started with: "Imagine these guys, 10 years from now...(w/Mexican accent- we're in Texas, after all) "Miguel, Lupe and I were just minding our business, when some madman burst into the mess hall firing his big gun and making threats. We had no idea what he wanted...I think he was high!" "Yeah...maybe he had the munchies something fierce...and he was all like "Where are the Oreo Cookies? C'mon M-F! WHERE ARE THE OREO COOKIES!"
At that point, everyone lapsed into similar accents and "role-played" aspects of his attack as a stoner in SAMAS with the munchies...with him supplying the appropriately altered dialog for his PC.
We laughed like it was a Cheech and Chong movie, and didn't game for the rest of the night.
FWIW, every last story in this thread has made me at least chuckle. Good stuff! Eventually, I'm going to be rewarding them all...
That DM I mentioned with the befuddled Chief? He routinely stops game night with stories of his job or RW love life (he's married)- he has almost a professional comedian's mastery of timing and storytelling, so its almost like a private comedy show.
In an Eberron game, our party's Warforged Wizard created a legendary gag when he proclaimed he was casting "Scootching Ray!" instead of the far more situation appropriate Scorching Ray.
It still come up too this day, especially when wizardry is involved.
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As a DM, while reading some player text out loud, I once pronounced brasier (brā’ zher) as brassiere (brä zēr’). Pretty much stopped the game for the next 30 minutes.
edit: looks like Eccles encountered a DM with the same problem.
__________________ Mark "El Mahdi" Armstrong - Semper Operor Verus
". . . after all, that is why we're here. Kill the last bad guy and then there's cake." - Major General Jack O'Neal
"Don't Just Do It, Just Do It Right!"
"Right, without Reason, is unmitigated Foolishness."
"If you make a mistake, Acknowledge It, then make it Right."
C'mon- its a given that THAT mispronunciation happens at least once per campaign with new gamers. It may not have been you, but SOMEBODY will goof that one.
The question is...what happens afterwards?
I mean, is the mis-speaker the only one who makes the error, which is then quickly corrected (with humor), or are you the only one who realizes the mistake?
In the latter case, your guffaws could seem quite awkward...
* The same DM (and same campaign) had our party encountering a tribe in the wilderness, and he was struggling with the Chief's welcoming speech, which had a part something like "We are a tribe of hunter-gatherers...well, more hunters than gatherers...um...well we gather a lot too..." And I lept in (mimicking his "Chief voice") with "Argh! "more hunters than gatherers?" Who wrote this speech? Bring me the royal speechwriter's head! This is CRAP!"
* We were playing RIFTS, and the player from #2 above had lost track of the fact that someone else had already found what the party was looking for and was bugging out. He burst into the camp's mess hall, all fierce, black and deadly in his captured SAMAS armor...only to encounter unarmed kitchen workers. They had no clue as to what he was looking for, despite his demands and threats, backed up with displays of physical violence (breaking tables, firing his weapon, etc.) FINALLY, someone in the group got his attention and told him we had accomplished the mission and he left.
We chose that moment to break to get drinks for the kitchen, and I started with: "Imagine these guys, 10 years from now...(w/Mexican accent- we're in Texas, after all) "Miguel, Lupe and I were just minding our business, when some madman burst into the mess hall firing his big gun and making threats. We had no idea what he wanted...I think he was high!" "Yeah...maybe he had the munchies something fierce...and he was all like "Where are the Oreo Cookies? C'mon M-F! WHERE ARE THE OREO COOKIES!"
Laughed so hard at these - too funny - I'm wiping the tears away, haha
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Dark Water Campaign run in the Last Lands
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Pretty much stopped the game for the next 30 minutes.
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