Gaming Hoaxes

[jmucchiello]

Obviously, this could have never worked at a table-top game, but in an online format it was brilliant.

Says, you. A friend of mine was "waiting for his character to join the group" so the DM had him play a playful "NPC" pooka. He was only visible to one of the other PCs and he constantly got that PC in trouble with the party. He and the DM managed to keep the players from figuring out that the weird stuff happening to one character was not only a pooka but controlled by the "guy just sitting in". The best part was when he convinced the PC to throw someone's familiar into the "water". When you are sitting on an airship on the plane of air, the place overboard goes down quite a long way. And as this was 1e, the familiar wasn't smart enough to fly so it "fell" away from the ship out of sight.

 

[Sleeping Dragon]

Hiya Sleeping. heh, I had no idea you were on Enworld. How's England working out? FUnnily enough we're going to have another player moving to that side of the pond in a couple of months.

Out of curiosity, did Hussar tell you what he did with Gugeno after you left?

Not the most frequent poster around. England's working out just fine thanks

Hussar didn't tell me, but I did glance at the logs...damn halflings I'm sure Gugeno must have made a very comfortable set of boots.

 

[jasin]

I had a necropolitan bard who I managed to keep the party thinking he was human for a couple of sessions, before he slipped up and let the cleric remove howler quills that got stuck in him, which gave the cleric a save against the bard's hat of disguise.

They even missed meta-game giveaways like not having 3rd level spells at 7th level (since I was in fact 6th, thanks to the XP cost of becoming a necropolitan), because we've just been talking about house-ruling bards lately, and I just mumbled something about having made a special sort of arrangement with the DM...

 

[MarkB]

In our Eberron campaign we had a changleing in the party and it was weeks or months before the other PCs figured it out.

Same in ours, except that the (male) changeling who was pretending to be a (female) human cleric had already seduced all but one of the other PCs by the time they found out.

In another game, the newly-arriving character was a mischievous Forest Gnome, and his first act upon finding the party was to turn the Paladin's armour pink from hiding using prestidigitation. The thing was, we were on a tight schedule, so we had to go ahead and fight the drow to free the enslaved villagers before the effect had worn off. As a result, the paladin soon became known and feted throughout the land as The Pink Paladin. Years later, at near-epic levels, he'd still occasionally be addressed by that title.

 

[Mark CMG]

When I was very young, in 1E days, I tried to run an adventure based on the movie The Sting but it didn't work out so well. As I recall, I wass too subtle in the clues and the players didn't pick up on them.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Back in the 2e Days I had a bounty hunter I'd converted from 1e. A friend of mine had a character that hated my character with a passion. But, my guy being neutral and always willing to make a buck, found out there was a bounty on his character.

The next session, I introduced another character. Eyepatch, one arm missing and fitted with a blade, red hair, beard, etc. The DM even had my friend's character do a perception check at random times to notice anything "odd" about my new character, but he never made the check successfully.

We adventured together for 6 or 7 sessions, and my character convinced his to make a raid on a local warlord's treasury (the same warlord offering the bounty). Under cover of darkness, we flew in on a flying carpet, landed in the courtyard, and my character surprised his and using the old 1e pummeling rules, knocked him out. He woke in the warlord's dungeon, with my character sitting on the other side of the bars.

While sitting there, my character removed the eye patch, the false stump-blade, and told him, "Ok. Here's the deal. You've been going around threatening to kill me for a long time. But remember; I put you IN this cell, and I can get you out. I'll even split your bounty with you. But from now on, just remember that Logan the Hunter is no one to ever trifle with."

The PLAYER was so angry at being duped he stopped gaming for a couple of months.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I had a PC back in the 1E days who was a worshipper of Arawn, god of the dead. He was a dedicated cultist (lawful neutral, not evil). We devised a set of rituals whereby he joined a group known as "the eyes of Arawn" and could cast inflict wounds spells via gaze attacks (Arawn in the 1E days cast death spells from his eyes). The other PC's never really clued into the fact that something was amiss, as I managed to avoid using the powers in the presence of the other party members - except for once when I killed an NPC with a lucky max damage roll once after telling him to "drop dead."

EDIT: In that same game, one of the other PC's was a Time Cop. Took us years to figure that one out - he had a vibroblade and a couple of Time Stop one-shot items that he used to great effect. Took us a while to figure out just how he made that one guy explode into a fine red mist.

 

[Umbran]

Three words: Head of Vecna.

 

[werk]

Same in ours, except that the (male) changeling who was pretending to be a (female) human cleric had already seduced all but one of the other PCs by the time they found out.

But in all fairness, how hard is that to do, really?

"A female non-dwarf approaches the party as if she wants to talk."

Done.

 

[Bardsandsages]

Well, there was that Kobold necromancer who made good use of the change self spell. He kept disguising himself as various individuals and hiring the party to do odd jobs for him. He turned into a dwarf and hired the party to avenge his brother by killing Yellow Musk zombies...oh, and bring him the thumbs as proof the deed was done! And then he turned into an elf female and asked the party to kill a peyrton for her that had killed her brother...and bring her its heart to prove you did it!

The funny thing was, the campaign was about the party stopping this necromancer from opening up a portal to the god of vampires' plane and bringing him to the prime. For months they hunted down this guy, doing these little "side quests" as they came along. Not realizing they were actually collecting the spell components needed for the ritual!