Running Gags

[Runesong42]

Armor is for sissies - My gaming group (all two of us) have a penchant for making high-dex, low-armour characters. It doesn't matter if they CAN wear heavy armour; we just prefer it if they don't. It's pretty much ingrained in our character creation process. We took it to the campaign level. Our characters, a Ranger and a Fighter/Thief, swore off armor, and call everyone who deigns to wear armor "sissies". My F/T found an animated shield, which he kept, but is forever called a sissy by his travelling companions. Our female paladin NPC gave up full plate +5 in favor of studded leather +5, because "the leather is lighter, and shows off more." We also make fun of any opponent who wears armor or uses a shield, calling them sissies as we charge into battle. "Look, a hobgoblin in chain mail! What a sissy!"

 

[TheAuldGrump]

He's Doing It Again! - We had a player who, in a sea going campaign, would always close to hailing distance, often getting the ship shot out from under us as a result. (He thought that he was good at naval tactics...) He stopped after the cry of He's Doing It Again became common. He hates that phrase to this day.

Did We Forget the Dwarf? This only happened three times, but when the dwarf went to do something the rest of the party would forget that he wasn't with them, and head off to the adventure without the toughest tank in the group. The third time was a TPK, except for the absent dwarf. So, when someone thinks that they are forgetting something obvious he calls out 'Did we forget the dwarf?'

Don't Let Bob Carry the Hand Grenades! Cave + Hand Grenade = Bad... From that day on whenever we were getting ready to face the monsters Bob would ask to carry the grenades and the reply, in chorus, would be 'Don't let Bob carry the hand grenades!'

I Bring the Metal Detector. Same CoC modern game as above, my character always ended up being on the cleanup crew when the party forgot to use brass catchers or some other similar silliness. So when preparing for the adventure I would always say 'I bring the metal detector'. Sadly it was lmost always needed...

The Auld Grump

 

[MaxKaladin]

That's BEAUTIFUL! I'm going to have to steal that one...


do you still have the files?

Yeah, I dug them up the other day because I'm in the middle of a nostalgia attack for my college campaigns. The problem is they're in an ancient word processing format (AmiPro) and I don't have the newspaper font I originally used for them (it looked like primative printing).

 

[kanithardm]

Once my PCs tried to rob a tavern, so i told them it is trapped and they explode. So Whenever we go into a tavern they ask"did it explode?"

 

[Bloodsparrow]

* So... How naked would a Dwarf get in this room?" - Used to gauge how warm a place is.

We had this game where one of the players was a Dwarven mage obsessed with fire, so we go to his ancestral home and for some reason the doors are flung open and the snow is getting in and the whole place is FREEZING. We manage to find the smithy and get the forge going to warm the room up a little. We go away, we come back, and it's considerably warmer because we saved the life of a dying fire elemental bound to the forge and it's feeling much better now. So somebody says, "and it's much warmer in here now?" and for some reason the DM says, "Yeah, you think a Dwarf might take his shirt off while..." And I think he was going to finish with "... working in here." But we didn't let him finish because we all turned to the Dwarf Mage in the party and said, "So Roth... How naked do you feel like getting?"

"Socks and a smile" is really freaking hot... Let me tell you.

 

[DamionW]

I've got a BATTLEAXE!
Refers to an NPC in our RttToEE campaign. He was a big, strong young lad. Whenever anyone tried to intimidate or threaten the party, he'd say "Yeah, well, I've got a BATTLEAXE!" and mayhem would generally ensue. The best incident was when the character blew a fear save in the first round of combat and promptly ran away. A few rounds later, after the effect had worn off, he charged back toward the battle. In the distance we heard the faint words "I've got a Battleaxe..."

I'm with Hieronyous!
Same campaign, a paladin/cleric who tended to lead with his chin. Though the character had no ranks in intimidate or bluff, he kept trying to use these skills on the denizens of the Temple. Needless to say, he failed most times and they would always ask "Who are you and which group are you with?" Realizing that his bluff had been called, he would charge in to battle crying out his signature phrase.

Those two made me laugh so hard I cried.

"I want a talking rock with a puwafwi!"
We had a CE Fighter in our party and the player read somewhere in a Dragon Magazine or something about these Drow cloaks called puwafwis. They were supposed to be great at hiding in the dark or something, so he kept begging the DM for them. He also reaaly wanted a talking rock. So every adventure he asked for that to be in the treasure hoard, a talking rock wearing a puwafwi. He got so desperate at the higher levels that he wanted to find a mage to enchant a rock to talk, so he could have that at least.

"The only evil in the room is Sajat"
In our first gaming session we had a Paladin and an evil cleric of another god. Before the paladin player really understood he shouldn't be associating with bad guys, he split up with him as we all explored different areas of this dungeon. Being happy with his new paladin powers, he did the quick "I detect evil" scan in every single dungeon room. The DM had to say "The only evil in the room is Sajat" (The cleric's player)

 

[Lackhand]

In ours, a little while ago, we were all at the local lord's banquet table, talking the talk and doing business, when we were approached by a foreigner with a shady deal. Sensing something amiss, my roommate rolled a Sense Motive-- rolled a 1 for a Sense Motive-- and was told that he Sensed Waffles more than he Sensed Motives.
From that day forth, we have used Sense Breakfast checks instead. The bluff skill is usually used in a syrupy voice

Another fun one; we can't count so well. Because we're the heroes, we're more-or-less invincible-- right is on our side. When we need to convince the more timorous members of the party that it's okay to charge right on in, we tell 'em that we outnumber our foes, 6 on ten!

Works every time.

 

[Bloodsparrow]

Lemon Sented Chest
The mage was talking about putting something valuble in a "Lemieund's (sp?) Secret Chest". I miss heard him.

"Set us up the bomb"
As I think we said before, we had a Dwarven mage who was, shall we say, fond of fire? Roth was also rather chaotic, My Cleric/Rogue was also more chaotic then the average bear, but I was more good and Roth was rather more "crazed". Roth would sometimes make noises about how, if he were to go down, he'd take everybody in several square miles with him, and the player often would describe this as "set us up the bomb". (You all know where that is from, I'm sure.

The most interesting use of this term however, was uttered by the party Druid...

We were fighting in a keep on a wooden floor when the fire mage got a little zealous and it collapsed beneath us. I made my reflex save but the Druid and the Mage were dropped literally in the center of a very large group of baddies. I was feeling over-confidant and assumed the others would follow somehow, so I jumped down and "death-from-aboved" one, landing on the very edge of the clump surrounding my friends.

Let's just say that the mage was more or less resistent to fire, the Cleric/Rogue's Evasion/Reflex Save was up to par, and the Druid was had a lot of hitpoints... He looked Roth in the eye, said, "Set us up the bomb?" and produced a fistfull of ... fireberries, I think they're called, and spiked the lot at their feet.

Picture this if you will, one moment you're standing over a corpse and looking at the backs of a considerable number of baddies surrounding your friends. Suddenly, a cylindrical wall of fire expands from the center of the clump and heads directly for your face. Just as suddenly, the baddies are gone and your friends are quite singed standing in a deep pile of ash, one of them, the Druid looking horrified that you're standing on the edge of the destruction, it is assumed that you would look surprised if you still had eyebrows...

"Set us up the bomb" indeed.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Save the Horses!

(other variants exist) In a current campaign in RttToEE, one PC bought some draft horses to pull a cart we were using for a variety of reasons (bait, hauling treasure, etc). A random encounter resulted in the party being attacked by griffins. They went after the horses, then attacked the PCs as we tried to fight them off..."Save the Horses!" Due to the vagaries of bad rolls, the PCs took significant damage, while the horses were virtually unscathed. However, to protect his investment, the PC that bought them made sure the horses had their wounds attended to first- the front line fighters got the dregs of the available healing. Subsequent encounters had similar results. Since then, any encounter in which the horses are even GLANCED at results in some kind of rallying cry to protect them...and they are pampered as if they were Arabian Stallions.

Where are the OREO COOKIES?

In a defunct RIFTS campaign, one of the players wasn't paying attention when, while the party was split, one group of PCs achieved the desired objective (let's call it the McGuffin) and the message is relayed over the party's agreed upon radio channel. Because he wasn't paying attention, he had his heaviy armored PC burst into the camp's mess hall and threaten the staff looking for the McGuffin, which, of course, they didn't have. One NPC fired a small sidearm at his PC (which had 0% chance of penetration), and he opened up full-autofire, shouting "Where is the MCGUFFIN? Give it UP, M****R F*****S!", but rather unintelligibly (like Jeremy Irons in D&D: the Movie).

The players then point out that the McGuffin has already been recovered and that everyone else was on their way out of the camp. Why, one player asked, was he shooting up the mess hall looking for the objective after it had been recovered? He stammered...

I then suggested that the latino mess hall crew (we live in Texas- Mexicans are ubiquitous in our dining establishments) who survived their encounter with the heavily armored nutcase would be telling stories about the "Gringo who had smoked so much loco-weed that he got the munchies so badly he shot up the mess hall looking for Oreo Cookies." - with a strong Cheech Marin/Stoner accent. We laughed so hard we cried...the guy whose PC did the shooting fell out of his chair and crawled away from the table, gasping for air.

To this day, "Where are the OREO COOKIES?" is a show stopper.

 

[Corbert]

There are several in my group

My wife plays a flying character, and had an encounter where she was hiding “20 feet up, just high enough nobody can see me” and her character died. Now whenever anyone asks where her character is someone always pops up with “20 feet up, just high enough nobody can see her”.

Another guy once asked, “are there any creatures in the Monster Manual?” So when I get out the MM someone will say “are there any creatures in that book?”

When giving out XP once I gave two sets of XP from two different encounters, 8000 and 150. So, a player said “that’s 8150 XP right?” And I said “no that’s 8000 XP plus 150. Um, yeah, that’s 8150 XP.” So now, if giving XP for two or more encounters someone will almost always say “so that’s 8150 right?”