Gaming catchphrases, expressions, and idioms--what are yours?

I have two memorable lines, both stemming from one long-running campaign:

"The stupid one says 'yes.'"

This line was spoken at a time when an insane chaotic evil drow demigod had our characters chained to the walls of his jail. It was a lightless place, so the three humans in our party couldn't see a damn thing. I was playing a drow fighter at the time, and since one of our friends had left early, I was also playing his ranger, Scars (he had a 4 Charisma, poor guy). Someone made a comment about how they'd give the demigod an opinion of their accommodations if there was some light in them. The demigod responded by saying, "Ah yes, would any of you like to SEE?" I looked over at the sheet for my friend's character. His Intelligence was a 7. Without thinking, I held up the sheet and said, "The stupid one says 'yes'." The demigod cackled and polymorphed him into some sort of whacked-out vampire/angel hybrid freak of nature. It was very entertaining. I have since learned not to speak through anybody's character, as well.

"So.... that means we have to drink his blood, right?"

The entire city we were in - and I mean the ENTIRE city, including the Paladins - was ill. Everyone had a nasty cold. Except for one party member, the monk. There was another monk in the city who was sick, however, so we knew this wasn't it. Someone knowledgable advanced the theory that perhaps the monk's blood had something called 'antibodies' that were special and helped fight off the disease. My character asked the above question, and got a 'no.' As the days passed and no cure became evident, we started growing more and more desperate. Eventually, every time a solution failed, I would ask if this meant we had to drink the monk's blood. This literally went on for hours. Several party members actually started lobbying for 'only a few drops.' The monk was nonplussed.

the last group i was in accumulated a few.

we had one player whose characters were always unheathily curious. always poking around where they shouldn't be. the first character ended up losing an eye, a hand, and part of one leg. he had to be retired. his second character lost some toes on his first session and an arm in the second. he was retired. when his third character was about to do something ill-conceived, someone would ask, "How many limbs do you have left?"

same player. his character had to swim down this submerged tunnel in a mine. (i forget exactly what we were looking for.) as he was swimming back to where the rest of the party was waiting, something brushed against his leg. he freaked out. "Oh no! there's something in the water with me! it's going to eat me!" he tried to swim faster, and it appeared the thing kept on following him, bumping into him as he went along. finally, he gets to shore, whips out a dagger and throws it into the water. he got a critical hit! so he wades in and pulls out ... a blind, albino, foot-long cave trout.

"Watch out! it's a cave trout!" became a popular taunt after that for when someone was scared of something they shouldn't be.

one of the major villains we were up against had a pet snake. this guy wasn't quite right in the head. he'd take his snake everywhere and pampered it. one time when we infiltrated his mansion, we found a guest bedroom. the bed had an impression that looked like a coiled-up snake had been sleeping there. "now why would this guy have a whole decked-out bedroom just for his pet snake?" of course the obvious answer is that it was a WERESNAKE! for the rest of the campaign, we were always sharp to keep an eye out for any weresnake activity... if anything happened we couldn't explain, it must've been the weresnake. over time, this somehow evolved into an undead weresnake. then a VAMPIRE undead weresnake. and then, the ultimate bad-mojo monster in the universe: a vampire undead weresnake that SHOOTS BEES OUT OF ITS MOUTH!

the city the campaign was set in was based on Renaissance Venice, so the leader of the city was known as The Doge. during one adventure, we were at a party at the Doge's mansion when he died of a heart attack (apparently). one of the players was out of the room when the GM dropped that bomb on us. when he came back, he was a little confused as to what we were all talking about. "Waitaminute. Who died?" "The Doge." "Why are all those people hurrying upstairs?" "THE DOGE." the answer to every question was "The Doge."

now, our group was prone to a lot of table talk and drifting off into out-of-game discussions. it became standard practice after that scene, that if you wanted to get the group focused back on the game, you'd ask a question based on whatever topic was being discussed, but the answer would always be "The Doge." like, "That scene where Yoda was fighting and spinning like a top was really cool." "Yeah, but you know who can really spin like a top?" "THE DOGE!" or "I can't believe how badly the stock market is performing lately. "But you know who's really performing badly?" "THE DOGE!"

Due to the action of one PC, all Paladins of Heironous are required to cry out "WHORE!" when charging into combat, striking a critical hit, or being critically hit.

It's a looong story...

one more. different campaign. this one was set in a large city that was effectively governed by a coalition of commerce guilds. this was in the GURPS system, where there are normally two different social advantages: Status, which represents your position in the society as a whole; and Rank, which represents your position in an organization.

since the guilds were the government, the GM decided to just make one hybrid advantage that took into account both, because if you were high ranking in a guild, you were of high status, and you couldn't be high status in society without being high rank in a guild.

but he wasn't sure what to call this new advantage. i come in with the ever-so-witty "Status + Rank = STANK!"

since he couldn't think of anything better, STANK was actually used as the OOC name of the advantage. "My character has a STANK of 4! how much STANK do you have?"

"Don't talk to the monsters"

At some point in the game you end up with a player who starts talking to an NPC (or heck, even a monster). They try to rationalize things or maybe even begin some sort of stupid "make the monster like me" activity. If it fails miserably and combat is going to ensue, the DM will say "Don't talk to the monsters" - meaning you've obviously angered the critter and everyone should roll initiative.

Also used by players to signify that in-game their character is really extoling the virtues of quiet monster killing versus giving the monsters time to prepare and cast a bunch of beef-up spells.

Ahem. "Gurten-Bu-(double T)-load"

This comes from time in college where we were playing cards instead of RPGs, etc. A good friend of ours (who's since moved away - so sad - we all miss him) was sitting beside me. It was a large game of hearts and frankly it was becoming a silly game. At the beginning of one hand he made some claim as to how much trouble he was in because of all the hearts he had. After a buddy of mine completely destroyed him by playing a bunch of hearts on him during that hand, Gurten remarked "I was sooooo doomed. I had a buttload of hearts. There was nothing I could do". Of course, I had blatantly been looking at his hand (we had all progressed beyond fair play - it was a drunken and competitive variety of the game) knew he had only two. From this point forward, a Gurten-buttload now signifies two of anything.

"Lawful stupid", "Chaotic selfish"

You can figure these out on your own.

"Crowd Reaction"

In the old Bloodbowl game (several versions back), if you rolled horibbly low on a roll the crowd at the match had some sort of reaction, like storming the pitch or throwing things at your player. Rolling exceptionally low is often referred to as a "crowd reaction".

ThomasBJJ said:

. . . Bard is on the bottom of the list, just below Rogue.

Click to expand...

I resent this! I've been playing 3E since two months before it oficcially came out (playtesting), and I have yet to find a character class that is more fun to play or (particularly with a touch of multiclassing) that kicks more butt in combat than a rogue. If you don't think so, you are just playing them wrong.

And it is particularly offensive that you rank rogue lower than Ranger!

A few more.

"This deli tray is unacceptable!"--A friend had a character who was usually drunk and somewhat insane. This is one of my favorite of his nonsensical sayings, usually said by someone whenever the conversation would pause for a moment.

"Je Sui le fromage en batente" (I probably spelled that completely wrong... I don't speak french)--The same friend had an annoying habit of spouting off the only two french phrases he knew at odd times during our game sessions. The one I have quoted here translates roughly to "I am the annoying cheese." The other phrase, which I can't remember the french translation for, was "Make the noisy pig squeal in pain."

"Don't drink the blue guy."--We ran a campaign one time that had us exploring the cottage of a wizard. There were some vials on the table, one of which contained a blue liquid. A warrior in our party drank the liquid, and immediately died. A few minutes later, he came to life again, except that this time he was the dead wizard whose house we were searching andwho had apparently put his essence into the blue potion. So, from that point on, when someone was about to do something recklessly without thinking of the consequences, we would always say, "Don't drink the blue guy!"

1. "Massive Search" and how to find nothing.

PC's search a room for hours and ask if i they find anything. I stare at the players, cup the dice in my hands palm down and shake them on the table and say "You find nothing". This usually gets them moving along.

2. The ominous 'wow'

When the PC's are in battle or about to be in battle I simply mumble a simple 'wow' and it gets their attention. I said wow 5 times last nite and the pc's were sweating bullets.

in the last D&D campaign i ran, one of the players had a rogue PC.

it seems there's a standard way of describing the results of a rogue's skill checks.

"There don't appear to be any traps on this chest."
"It appears that you have disarmed the trap."
"There doesn't appear to be anyone noticing you sneaking around."

eventually, i started doing this on all her skill checks, much to her confusion.

"It appears that you have climbed the wall."
"You appear to have jumped the chasm."

"You pull the trigger of the death ray only to find that the barrel is pointed at your face."

Supposedly this is from some old sci-fi game as an example of a critical fumble. It usually gets mentioned about every other time someone rolls a 1.

"Lay hands on myself"

One time a paladin asked if he could lay hands on himself, and the DM said yes, but it would make his palms hairy. He later ruled that every lay-on-hands attempt had to be made via a naughty touch.