What's the longest running "inside joke" at your table?

[Kirin'Tor]

One of my RPGroup's best gag lines comes from our short-lived Champions (Super-Hero) game.

For reference, the ability "Find Weakness" does just that (finds an opponents weaknesses and lets you exploit them), and the character "Avenger" is a batman-type "hardware hero."

[the team enters battle with "the Bulk", a hulk-esque villian]
[Avenger]: "I use 'Find Weakness' on the Bulk {rolls dice} And I am successful."
[DM]: "The Bulk has the 'No Weaknesses' power, so no real achiles-heel. It seems the Bulk's only weakness is his vanity."
[Avenger]: "Targeted shot on Bulk's face {rolls dice} It should hit, Does he dodge?"
[DM]: He does, and screams as he does so...
[Bulk]: "No Avenger!, Not the face, not in the face!!!!!!"

Now when anyone gets a great crit (D&D usually) someone yells "No [Character Name]!, Not the face, not in the face!!!!!!"

 

[pogre]

Doppelganger Codeword

This one was used by Jolly in KODT #18 after I told him about it:

In the late 1970's and early 80's I was a bit overfond of using doppelgangers. My group took to establishing a doppelganger codeword each day - if someone did not know the codeword, they must be a doppelganger. A player missed a session and you know what happened next: The player protested vehemently all the while the rest of the party hacked him to bits when he gave the wrong code word.

If you are looking through your KODTs, I believe the story was used in the first session of the Blackhand group.

BTW: I believe the KODT boardgame "Orcs at the Gate" also has a card called doppelganger codeword.

 

[monkeygrrl]

here's a few...

waaaay back in college, we had a guy in our group that fudged dice rolls a lot. we were playing a lot of cthulu then, and he seemed to ALWAYS make his skill checks (percentile rolls, for those of you who don't know). we started watching him pretty closely, and on a roll that should have failed but he said succeeded, another player tried to call him on the cheating by asking "hey, wasn't blue tens?" without batting an eye he replied "well, I'm alternating." and ever since, if someone botches a percentile roll they say, "no, I was alternating!"

a few years ago our party was trying for some reason I can't remember now to tie something or someone up with ropes. the DM asked for a knot-tying skill check, which none of us had. in desperation, I said "well, I've got boating, does that count?" (arguing that knot-tying would be considered a necessary component of boating - and IIRC I was allowed to make the roll with penalties). and ever since, whenever the DM calls for a skill check on a skill no one has, we say, "well, I've got boating!"

in another campaign, our party was supposed to deliver a message to a cleric stationed alone at a temple in the middle of nowhere. when we arrived, he had unexpectedly been replaced by a different cleric. when we asked what had happened to the first cleric, the new one said "he moved on." it turned out the new guy was actually an evil cleric who had killed the first cleric and taken over the temple. now whenever we are asked where someone is and they are dead, especially if we have killed them or it is a delicate situation, we simply say, "he moved on..."

 

[pawsplay]

My current Star Wars group always likes to insist they "go back to the ship and head off into space," to which I always reply, "On your way back to the ship..."

"Because you're a thief." One long-time cannot resist the urge to steal, snoop, lift and scavenge. He played a magician in Torg, that everyone kept referring to as the "magic-user-thief." He snooped the lairs of other spellcasters for books, he looted corpses. Etc. He finally demanded, "Why do you keep calling me that? I'm just a magic-user." "Because you're a thief." His archetypal character is the female Tiefling magic-user thief, whom all of his characters ultimately resemble in some respects.

"What's my alignment, bitch?" Said by me to a DM back in college, as my CN character tripped several innocent PCs in order to slow down advancing monsters, prompting the opinion, "You can't do that! That's not right."

"Your character died, by the way." Said to any player who has become so distracted, they can't muster a counter-argument, because they don't know what's going on.

"You are now a halfling cleric." Standard response to, "What happened since last session?" Especially if the game is not D&D.

 

[shilsen]

Just had one happen today which we should make into a running joke.

We have somebody who has DMed before in other groups but is doing so for the first time in ours. As a player, he has had some pronunciation and vocabulary issues, so I was wondering if they'd show up today. Sure enough, he introduced an NPC who was carrying "a large glowing scythe". Except that he pronounced it as "a large glowing sith". At which point some players collapsed laughing and others began to excitedly ask if it was Darth Vader or Darth Maul whom the NPC was carrying around

 

[storyguide3]

From far too many years of gaming comes a collection of long-running hits:

"Now THAT's a trap!"
A kender thief transplanted into a Realms game. While traipsing through the ruins of some northern dwarven enclave, she came across a suspicious-looking box. She checked for traps, found none (failed the roll) and proceeded to open the box. A huge, demon-like "something" came out and ate her (actually teleported her to Thay). The other thief in the party shook his head and said "Now THAT's a trap". Ever since, that phrase gets a workout in just about every dungeon crawl I run.

"Free, Free from the evil wizard."
The above was never actually said in-character, but came out after an encounter. The party, including a brand-new member who had pretty much invited himself to join the group, was captured by the nasty Captain of the Guard. During the questioning, it began to look like a more defiant member of the party was going to get everyone executed. In the end, that did not happen, however the player of the new party member revealed that, had it gone on longer, he would have begun to act as though recovering from an enchantment and yelled "Free! Free from the evil wizard!" and denounced the party magic user as having put him under a spell. In subsequent campaigns, that phrase is used any time one party member looks to be getting the rest in hot water.

"I check for traps, I open the lock."
Same dwarven dungeon as the trap above. This time the remaining thief is working on a door.
Player: "I check for Traps"
DM (Me): "You find a trap"
Player: "I pick the lock"
DM: "You sure?
Player: "Yeah."
DM "The arrow trap fires (rolls dice), missing you and hitting the guy behind you"
Now used as a cautionary tale, especially when there are large numbers of checks for traps in a long dungeon.

"Well that was fundamentally unsatisfying."
Near the end of a long adventure, one of the characters had built up an extremely strong hatred for the main villain and intended to face him in personal combat. During the climatic scenes, during which the rest of the party used gold stolen from the villain to buy his mercenary forces out from under him, the PC hides in the villain's tent and awaits his return.
As the bad guy strides back into his tent, the PC attacks, gets a massive critical in whatever rules we were using, and kills him with a single axe-blow. Robbed of a long, epithet riddled duel with his nemesis, his looks glumly at the ground and says "That was fundamentally unsatisfying."

"Is she SEXY!?"
Uttered by one of my players about every bar maid, female warrior and Big Bad Evil Woman in every campaign I have had him in, no matter what kind of character he was playing. Nowadays, he just waits quietly, as someone else will usually say it, followed by "It had to be asked" Heck; even my female players have started saying it for him.

 

[WayneLigon]

We're Beatrice

In, oh, the early 80's we started to notice a common thread among several very different product ads, products that had nothing to do with each other: they'd all end with this chipper yet very Stepford Wives-like voice saying 'We're Beatrice', along with a red label. It appeared on a lot of ads, and it soon became apparent to us that Beatrice, whoever the hell it was, was in fact one of the Secret Masters. It looked like they owned everything. Then, maybe a year or so later, it all faded away, as if they'd realized they'd tipped their hand and revealed too much. It was, indeed, a little creepy. We'd never realized before just how many things some of these huge multinationals owned; brands we'd thought were in happy free competition with each other were in fact all just fingers of the same hand.

But the name, the saying, made it into our games and stayed there to this day. When we find evidence that a villain owns this, and this and yes this as well.. like as not one of us will say 'We're Beatrice' in that same creepy voice.

I did a little web search, and found out more about 'We're Beatrice' here.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

the DM asked for a knot-tying skill check, which none of us had. in desperation, I said "well, I've got boating, does that count?" (arguing that knot-tying would be considered a necessary component of boating - and IIRC I was allowed to make the roll with penalties). and ever since, whenever the DM calls for a skill check on a skill no one has, we say, "well, I've got boating!"

We played a lot of Call of Cthulhu in college, and after discovering the way skills improve in that system (if you succeed in using a skill, there's a chance it'll improve at the end of the scenario) we kept looking for ways to try doing just about anything, on the off chance that we'd succeed despite being nearly completely unskilled at it. We'd try to figure out everything we were faced with in as much detail as possible, just to get a chance at rolling some obscure skill.

Nowadays, whether we're playing CoC or anything else, any time someone is flailing randomly around their skill list asking if maybe this skill or that skill would work, inevitably someone will say "Hey, if <thing name> was a rock, what kind of rock would it be?", which was our favorite stupid question to ask when slumming for a quick Geology roll.

--
though obviously, we never gained any geology skill from asking that

 

[d20Dwarf]

The Ballad of Billy the Retard.

First session of our current group, about 15 months ago, the Chronicles of Anyaka (my excellent adventure path at Dire Kobold ) playtest.

The group is just getting to know one another, and I sprung it on my girlfriend that her guild had just kicked her out! So they decided to steal some guild horses and get out of town before things got too hot. Keep in mind, not only have the characters never met each other, but most of the players were just meeting as well!

So Bree's thief and Warren's ultra-clumsy fighter decide to sneak into the stables. Bree's thief scampers up the outer wall into the loft, no problem. Warren, however, rolls a nat 1 on his Climb check, and goes rappelling up the barn (clang, clang, *swing*). They get inside and there's a "guard" sitting on stool at the far end, who miraculously seems not to have heard the fighter. Without hesitation, Warren declares "I shoot him with my bow."

"Huh?" I ask. "He doesn't look armed."

"Good! I shoot him with my crossbow," says Bree.

Both hit, both crit, Billy the Retard goes down with sticks in the neck and chest. The characters escape town on stolen horses, the blood of Billy the Retard forever staining their adventures.

Ok, so maybe that's not that funny in the telling. It's the bloodthirstiness of this group of players, regardless of character frankly, and the fact that he really was just a 0-level commoner sitting on a stool. They didn't know him from jack, and they weren't really criminals or adventurers at the time. They just blew him away, and I told them the sad story of his true identity as they rode for freedom and adventure.

 

[Burne]

PC0 "I check the door for traps"
PC1 "I move 30ft away."
PC2 "I move 60ft away."
PC3 "I move 90ft away."

Too many chain lightning/Area Effect Stone to Flesh/Dimensional Portals/Giant Spider traps.

"I check the trees for elephants, ninja elephants."

Masters of the Wild contained stats for the Dire Elephant. This fine book taught us that the wily elephant has a climb speed of 5ft, thus explaining how often they are found in trees or attached to the ceiling. While we haven't faced a Dire Elephant in combat yet it is best to be safe and check the trees anyway.

"It plucks out your eye"

An obscure reference to a one-shot a friend of a friend ran for some of us. The adventure was a complete disaster, but featured many different kinds of birds being controled by some evil something (We never found out). The DM insisted that all birds (Yes, even the Goose, most especially the Goose) have a 25% chance to pluck out an eye (that hawks/falcons had it 2nd Ed). The night ended with maybe 4 eyes out of 6 players, and us fervantly murdering one another.

The Dungeon of Save versus ______

While I don't think the DM in question designed the dungeons this way, but during the campaign we faced the Dungeon of Save versus Poison where a single Imp ended 4 out of 5 PC's, and 2 NPC's. In the Dungeon of Save versus Paralyzation (Super Ghouls and a Lich), our good friend JR literally took no IG actions for 8 real life hours. We opened a door and he was paralyzed by ghouls. We opened another door and he was paralyzed again. We get to the final room of the dungeon and the Lich permentently paralyzes him again. Good times.