Mind-Blowing Player Choices

[KiloGex]

Have you ever had a player do something so out of the box that you were stunned by their actions? Something that was just so creative and magnificent that you just had to stand in awe for a moment at their genius? Example:

A group of soldiers walking through a foreign town looking for supplies, two are attacked by robbers. One of the less reputable members of the party is able to track down the robbers to their "hide-out": A hidden hatch door in an alleyway. She manages to unlock the door and sneak down the corridor until she comes to a room full of over a dozen men. She pulls out two flasks of oil and pours them on the ground in front of her, then setting to flasks of alchemist fire next to it. Then pulling two more oil, tossing them into the room and quick drawing two more fire throwing them in as well. She takes several steps backwards and uses her sling to break the flasks on the ground, lighting the corridor on fire. She makes her escape and disables the lock on the door. She then runs through the town to meet up with the rest of the party; a ploom of smoke over her shoulder, tells them that they should leave the town ASAP.

I know that this is a pretty simple idea, but just had never run into a player who dispatched of this many targets at once. She did ultimately end up turning on the group and killing most of them one at a time, but everything was done very creatively. It's moments like these that I feel joy, watching my players grow up like children into twisted and dangerous young adults.

 

[nedjer]

Had a nice attempted tax evasion where the PCs melted everything down. The taxman was served a cup of water and an oatcake on the sofa made of near solid gold - while the PCs apologised for having nothing more to give.

Pity the paint hadn't been given time to dry. The PCs then tried to pick-up a solid gold couch and run across a field. The couch still lies somewhere in the bog at the end of the field.

Best that worked was probably PC turning and jumping on to the lich following up a long set of stairs. PC turned the lich into a sledge and broke its spine as they slid down the stairs. Might not have worked, but the player (a 9yr-old girl) used two daggers to hook into the lich's ribs and made a couple of rolls.

 

[was]

had a group of 'experienced' players split up to explore a dungeon level faster

 

[RangerWickett]

The craziest thing ever to happen in one of my games led to one of the best campaigns of my life.

Modern fantasy setting, in New Orleans, on Halloween, in 2005, right after Katrina.

There's a parallel 'realm of the faeries' where the villains are gathering power. The villains have killed off everyone who knows how to get to this realm, except one plot-critical NPC.

The PCs are supposed to protect him. I plan for him to eventually teach his magic to the PCs, but he hasn't had a chance yet.

A PC, worried about his nasty backstory coming to light, makes a selfish choice and gets the NPC killed. I basically expect the campaign to grind to a halt.

Two of the players say, "Yeah, we realize we screwed up, but it was in character." (I'm cool with this.) Then they add, "Before you end the campaign, can we get a chance to take revenge on bad guy X?"

Sure, I say. So the next session, I plan various ways they can go out in a blaze of glory, possibly thwarting some of the villains' plans. Only those two players show up.

As they discuss possible suicide plans (withdraw all our money, buy some illegal guns, go in blazing; or steal a car, load it up with home-made explosives, and drive into the guy's Halloween gala; or offer to meet and discuss a truce and have one guy set up as a sniper), one player has an idea.

"Wait," he says. "We're in New Orleans. It's Halloween. There's voodoo and . Let's talk to the ghost of the dead guy and see if he has any suggestions."

And thus is hatched a plot to bind his ghost to an item, so they can carry him around and have him still use his magic. Suicide plan is abandoned. Wacky Halloween hijinks ensue. Campaign is saved.

 

[Mark CMG]

Splitting the party, a healer not wanting to heal, a paladin killing for greed: these are the usual ones I see from time to time, so they tend not to be so mind-blowing to me.

I once DMed a gameday one-shot game where everyone was a rogue. I expected they would work together as a sort of team of specialists to pull off a caper. Some split off rather quickly while others stayed together and tried to bully their way into a gem cutter's establishment only to find themselves trapped in a front room of the store with a clerk and being told by the owners through a peep hole in the roof that the authorities were on their way. At this point, one of the more mild-mannered players suddenly went bonkers and began slicing up the clerk while the other players' jaws were dropping. They tried to protest the actions but the one player would not relent or rescind, even when given the usual DM chance, "Did you really want to do that, or were you just goofing around?"

I won't mention any names but she runs a popular game company with a fellow whose initials are jgb. Those of us who were at the table refer to her as "Stabby McStabberson."

 

[Wycen]

I had planned to post this story in another thread here, but got sidetracked and then got the flu. Now I'm thinking its time to post it, but still gotta write it up and make sure it doesn't suck.

So yeah, sometimes we do crazy stuff the GM doesn't anticipate, like asking the Imperial Inquisitor if she's had dinner yet while the rest of the crew disables her recorder-servitor by triggering the ships life support system to malfunction and open up the fire-suppression system.

That's the short version of awesomeness mentioned above.

Then, the result the following week.

My character was invited to the Inquisitors ship "for dinner" and of course to finish the interrogation-conversation. Now, I'm not going to say that my fellow crew members aren't up to the task of being sneaky, but when someone suggests spacing the xeno-tech on board and then working on a cover story, you should prolly friggin' do it.

So of course my PC ends up in the Inquisitor's ship's brig on some trumped up charge of "they are his fingerprints". At this point, the crew really should have tried to escape, which they did, but not before sending a rescue team to break my character out of the brig.

Misguided though I may be, I would have been able to bargain my way into the clear based on something we found earlier, but when I see two of my crewmates outside the cell and know that something is happening thanks to the ship rocking, I decided it would be the jerk move to tell them "no, I'm staying, thanks but no thanks". I really did contemplate that, but then you see, they couldn't really escape without me since I'm playing the navigator...it would be crazy to jump into the warp without me.

 

[Ringlerun]

Many years ago i ran a 2nd edition Ad&d campaign with 2 very devilish players. During the course of the campaign the group got ripped off from a wealthy merchant. The merchant lived only a boat harbored at the docks and surrounded himself with guards. I made it very clear there was no way of fighting all the guards to get to him. The 2 players both 3rd level one a cleric the other a mage start hatching a plan to take out the merchant.

First they purchase a small lockbox. The cleric casts firetrap on the box and the mage casts invisibility. They then get a robe made with lots of pockets. The mage casts deeppockets on the robe. They place 100 pints of oil into the pockets of the robe and fold it nicely and place in the box. The mage then casts up an unseen servant who picks up the invisible box. The mage then goes down to the docks and instructs the unseen servant to place the invisible box in a remote area on the merchants boat.

A few hours later and with the party long gone, the deeppockets spell expires expelling the 100 pints of oil. In the process undoing the box lid in turn setting off the firetrap spell that ignites all the oil and turns the merchants boat into a flaming inferno. The perfect crime.

 

[Thotas]

Oops (the way things work around have changed in the years since I was around last ... never mind this post. it's an error)

 

[KiloGex]

In the process undoing the box lid in turn setting off the firetrap spell that ignites all the oil and turns the merchants boat into a flaming inferno. The perfect crime.

Ever notice how the best plans usually involve either blowing things up or setting them on fire?

 

[Jhaelen]

Ever notice how the best plans usually involve either blowing things up or setting them on fire?

Well in my group's case the best plan was flooding the dungeon:
Since the first adventure had ended with a tpk, the party was extremely cautious the second time around. They fled from the first encounter and retreated from the dungeon after the second encounter to discuss safer options. Since they had noticed a small river flowing through one of the caves, they searched for the spot where it flowed out of the cave system and built a dam.

They managed to flush out all of the inhabitants except for a bunch of zombies, resulting in an easy final encounter.