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

"We have no means to harm you."
This happened when our group of four ran into a rather large band of orcs. My fighter/cleric decided to try to communicate with them rather than immediately start fighting, unfortunately he couldn't speak orc. So I would tell the party's wizard what to say, and he would talk to the orcs. My cleric hopes to bluff them and says, "Tell them that we don't want any trouble, but if they attack us we will be forced to destroy them."
What was the sorcerer's player's translation? "We have no means to harm you." Apparently this made sense to the player, but the orcs attacked immediately anyway.
Now whenever someone says or does something stupid despite the fact they should know better (especially during negotiations) we all say, "We have no means to harm you."

"I cast searing light."
Our priest of Pelor was involved in a tragic accident that crippled his left hand to the point of uselessness, but increased his ability to cast light based spells. As a result, he was constantly casting searing light, and nothing but searing light. Now whenever someone repeats the same action, or uses the same tactics constantly, one of us invariably shouts, "I cast searing light."
This also became a euphemism for pleasuring one's self, and is accompanied with the appropriate hand motions when said.

Priest of Pelor, know your place!
This happened when the cleric's player forgot himself (he usually tried to roleplay properly, something most of our players didn't bother with) and got uppity with the local nobility. The result was the DM cutting off the player in mid-sentence and admonishing him in a stern voice, "Priest of Pelor, know your place!"
I don't know why, but it was hilarious, especially the gobsmacked expression on the player's face. This phrase is recited by the DM when someone questions him, or whenever someone oversteps a boundary, no matter how small.
"Hey, did you take an extra slice of pizza?" "Priest of Pelor, know your place!"

Drop a mohrg barrel on that ass.
We had a player whose bard had a nasty habit of always trying to loot things first, and at innapropriate times. For instance, he once proceeded to loot the corpse of a man who had just attempted to kill a woman and a small child. They stood there screaming as the stranger who just murdered their would-be killer rifled through the man's pockets. A grief counsler he is not.
So we're in a mine and come across a room full of regular old kobolds (we were 10th level on average) and kill them all. There's nothing in the room aside from a barrel. Of course, the greedy bard makes a dash for the barrel, but the fighter is sick of his snatch tactics and tries to get to the barrel first. The bard beats him to it and he opens the barrel, only to be grappled by the mohrg crouched within. We were all attacking the mohrg trying to save him, but the next player up was our wizard (we have no means to harm you) and he vaporized the bard and the mohrg with a lightning bolt.
We don't refer to it as a barrel with a mohrg in it, or anything like that, it is specifically a mohrg-barrel. Now we sometimes threaten each other with, "Watch yourself, or I'll drop a mohrg-barrel on that ass.", or something similar.

"Hey butt-squeak"
The very same sorcerer referred to a new player's character by name, when (in-game) he wasn't supposed to know him yet. What resulted wa another "you had to be there" moment.

Sorcerer: Trandorf, get away from the Ettin so I can fireball it.
DM: You don't know his name yet.
Sorcerer: Hey, butt-squeak or whatever your name is, get away from the ettin!
Uproarious laughter ensues. Like I said, you had to be there. Any npc whose name is not yet known is butt-squeak.

EDIT
Bugbear Armpit Potion
Our sorcerer (again) got himself into trouble during a fight with some bugbears and other assorted nasties. He was in dire need of healing and he searched one of the bugbears for anything that could help. The DM informed him that he found a vial filled with liquid strapped in the bugbear's armpit, presumably concealed for use in an emergency. Desperate for any healing he could get he swallows the potion and immediately his legs turn into that of a goat or a satyr, and they are really long. For many sessions to come he was the tallest member of the party, with increased dexterity and speed, and a devestated charisma score. He was denied shelter, people ran from him shouting things about demons, and he was generally shunned by every npc we encountered. We learned that the tactics a bugbear might employ, and the attributes they may find acceptable as a condition of victory, might not necessarily match the sensibilities of more refined races.
Whenever we run into something whose effects are unknown to us, someone usually says, "Maybe it's a bugbear armpit potion.", or "We should be okay, as long as it hasn't been in a bugbear's armpit."

I got two things to say.

1: One of the people in our group always falls asleep, it's just him, he drinks coffee he falls asleep, he takes 2 stackers and he falls asleep, it's just him. But the entire group has started to refer to him as the incredible narcaleptic mage (he almost always plays a mage)

2: The same person I was talking about above once rolled 5 20's in a row during a 2e game (we were doing natural 20's always hit and a second natural 20 would do critical damage) while our entire group was feather falling down a mountain side with manshoon and that big nasty red dragon (forget his name). The dragon just burst through a few stone walls our mage just put up over the cave entrance to "try" and cover our escape route. So anyway the dragon just burst through the stone walls, flew around and was headed straight towards us with manshoon about 150' in front and up from us. The dragon had 5 delayed blast fireballs ready to release on us and was going to breath so it all happened at the same time. It was a party of 5 9th-13th lvl chars. So anyway the said 20 roller takes out our only arrow of red dragon slaying that we could buy and notches it. Fires, Die roll, 20. *hoots and hollers and cheers* Dragon dies instantly and falls to the ground never being able to get the delayed blast fireballs or his breath weapon off. Now there is only manshoon we have to try and escape, feather falling down the side of a mountain. =op. Same said char notches his last 2 +5 arrows (he was a fighter with more then 1 attack a round) and hits manshoon both times with, yep you guessed it, natural 20's on both to hit rolls and natural 20's on the to crit rolls. Dead manshoon. Man was the dm (my brother) ever pissed at that one. =op

Our group has ehm.. 'developed' the following phrases..

Guru
One player of ours on several occassions forgot (he was new to D&D) that he had already added all 'to hit' bonusses and thus modified his' THAC0 on his PC sheet, and added them once more after he rolled to hit. When we discovered this, and pointed it out to him, he was genuinely surprised. I called him a Guru of cheats, since he'd done it so well that he didn't even realize it himself. Nowadays, whenever someone makes mistakes, we call him a Guru or accuse him of Guru-ing.

Air molecules
Being bored one session with the phrase "you miss" and trying to liven up the game, I coined the phrase "air molecules die horribly" whenever someone missed.

Memorable quote from my group

We don't really have quotes that come up at various situations in the game. We have a catalogue of funny incidents and quotes that are worth retelling. My wife in particular, likes this one:

I had been DMing a Greyhawk game over the past year in D&D 3E rules. My gaming group was new to it and amazed at how deadly the monsters were in comparison to the 1st and 2nd Edition monsters. They found that keeping the cleric close at hand was a necessity for survival. One of my players, a rather attractive young lady, asked the cleric of the party if he had any healing spells left as she was about to engage in melee combat with an ogre who had already taken out two other members of the party. He responded confidently, "Yes." She looked at him earnestly and said, "Good. I am going to fight that ogre. If I go down. Nail me."

MeepoTheMighty said:

"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.

Click to expand...

Ah, S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. The "figuring out tech" charts were both hilarious and suicidal. I remember reading them for the first time, and vowing never to try and use a laser pistol myself in the game.

Do you carry raise dead?

This is from Sialia's and Bandeeto's old game. They had one player who always played a mage, and (although lawful good) had the bad habit of killing party members "for the good of the party." At one point, they realized that he had killed almost every other PC with collateral damage in combat and justified it as being in the interest of the group.

In this particular circumstance, one of the PCs was being grappled by a hideously dangerous extraplanar bear. Both the bear and the PC were badly hurt, and most of the group were down. The mage looked at the cleric. "Do you carry raise dead?" he asked. "Why, yes. How come?" answered the cleric. By way of answering, the mage chain lightninged both the fighter and monster.

"You're NOT THERE!"

our eleven ranger, arcane archer wannabe constantly interjects into conversations/transactions at which he's not present. he loves to try to search rooms that he isn't in or buy things from shops that he didn't enter with the rest of the group. we usually let him finish the first statement/question before yelling in unison at him. then that got boring, so we made a sign to hold up whenever he started in.

"is that (insert creature or character type) an elderly British farmer (insert creature of character type again)?"

our DM is a wonderfully dramatic storyteller, moving around, mimicking the movements and attacks of NPCs and creatures during battles, describing rooms and battles in minute detail, really immersive stuff. BUT, almost ALL of his NPCs speak like elderly British farmers. he's really worked to overcome it and has been coming up with completely new and distinctive voices for characters for quite a while now. but last week he slipped up and made the Apothecary we visited an elderly British farmer guy. we razzed him a while and then moved on. an hour or so later, when a group of Ghouls attacked us and our DM was up mimicking their shuffling walk and gurgling moans, our Monk asked "Are those Ghouls elderly British farmer Ghouls?"

there are many, many more, but my little fingers are tired from typing now.

I haven't laugh so hard in a thread for a long time. Can a moderator archive this beauty when we're done with it? Comedy this golden should be saved for all to enjoy!

Gaming Catch Phrases

We've adopted the standard RPGA in our game store.

"We Greyhawk him." First time I had to explain Greyhawking, I went through a long and complex explanation.

"We search the entire section of the last battle and adjoining rooms, taking multiple people and taking 20. If no time for searching, mark it for later searches."

"Now to the villian(s)."

"We strip all pieces of non-organic metal from his body. We search for gold teeth, implanted jewelry and vital body parts. Cut, remove, store and catalog. Run detect magic over all magic items. Sort items into two lists, magical and non-magical.

Broken items, we sort into two lists...fixable with Mend, fixable with Make Whole. We cast Prestidigitation to clean all items. We make checks to recall if there are any bounties on this race.

Check again with wizards to ensure none of their body parts are good for spell components. If not, bury and offering condolensces to their heathenous gods.

Load all loot up onto any mounts captured. Turn mounts into a congo line of livestock. Take all of this into town and sell it.

Party members may buy items or accept them in lieu of using their share of non-magical wealth (after costs for identifying have been deducted).


All of that, simplified with a simple phrase:

"We're Greyhawking."

Laugh if you want, but those Year One modules were a beee-och as far as getting enough money to live (unless you were lucky enough to get one of the massive +2 Keen Kukri's that floated around...then you were Mr. Wealthy!)

I remembered a few more. The first isn't so much a catchphrase, but something that comes up quite a bit...

Our Earthdawn GM has developed quite a few NPCs over the years, but for whatever reason, a significant number of them have names that begin with the letter "A" or start with the "Eh" sound. Needless to say, it creates confusion sometimes. Thus whenever we meet someone new, and the GM is having to come up with a name on the fly, we usually end up suggesting something like "His name is Aaaaaraaalan."

"Turpin drinks the potion"

This wasn't from a group I played in, but one that friends of mine did. One of the players (last name Turpin) frequently couldn't make the game, and his character was dragged along. Needless to say, that character ended up testing potions, opening doors, checking for traps when the thief didn't find any, etc. Still used as a joke to signify when an absent player's character is 'volunteered' for dangerous work.

"Brenna Trapfinder"

We were in an underground tomb, and one of the characters, an archer named Brenna, died. We were carrying her body around, and in the process managed to accidentally use her to find several major traps. Like when we came to a pit trap, and decided to jump over it, the first thing we did is toss the body over the pit, which is how we discovered the concealed pit trap in the next section of floor. Or when we found a small empty room, and put the body in there for safekeeping until we were ready to leave, only to find out that the floor dropped out into a pool of piranha once the door closed. This is used for anyone who accidentally stumbles on a trap, or in situations where we're facing an area we're pretty sure has traps in it.

"Wing cozies"

At one point, a small group of our Earthdawn players formed a second game where they played the bad guys, our main group's opposition. It didn't last due to scheduling problems, but one of the players created a corrupted windling (fairy-like creature, for those who don't know Earthdawn). As a joke, he said that his character had wing-cozies knitted out of black yarn (the character was older, and needed help keeping out the chill, I suppose). When he played in the regular game, the player would make occasional vague references to finding wing-cozies in his saddlebag, or under a pile of straw, etc. Now 'wing-cozies' refer to any evidence that a major villain we know has had a hand in affairs.

Okay, this next one is more anecdotal, but oh well. We have a player named Jake who, no matter what game he plays, seems to have the worst luck with any kind of climbing skill check. No matter how high his skill in it, he manages to fall and has died more than once. Thus now as an in-joke, we all require climbing checks from him for even mundane activities involving a change in elevation - "You dismount? Roll climbing." "You all walk down the stairs. Jake, I need a Climb check from you." At this point, pretty much every time we start a new adventure, he asks "Does this involve any climbing?"

I'm sure there are more, I just need more time to remember them...

A few terms from our current game :

Fordujits
(for-du-jits)
(alternatively known as renducockoff)
Meaning : Battlecry before a VERY powerful melee attack.
Explanation : One of our party members is a samurai who carries a +4 Katana that does an additional 2d6 damage if his opponent is chaotic and/or another 2d6 if it is evil. What is worse is he has the ability that allows him to inflict a lot MORE damage if he catches his opponent flat-footed.

Yardley
(YARD-ley)
Meaning : Battlecry shouted during the rolling of a LOT of damage.
Explanation : This strange term is a corruption of yahtzee, the name of a dice game that involves rolling a large amount of dice at once (see Fordujits)