activities unique to your game

[der_kluge]

Whenever I play, or GM, I encourage the players to have a "fashion show" at the beginning of a campaign. After we've created our characters, we go around the table and everyone describes, in detail, what their character looks like, what mannerisms about them we might have noticed, or what they're doing, what they're carrying, etc.

As far as I know, it's unique to me, and the groups that I've imposed it upon, although others might do something similar.


Does your group have any "phrases" or activities that you think are unique to your group? Share them!

 

[freebfrost]

Lately, in the Forgotten Realms game in which I am a player, we have been collecting a Quote of the Game, which we've been preserving on our website. I have started extending this to the games in which I DM.

We don't have a hard and fast ruling on what constitutes the quote of the game, but its one of those things we all nod in recognition when we hear it.

Some of the best in recent memory include:

"That's what Hannibal Lecter would have done."​

"He's an outsider. If he dies here, he just goes back to his native plane. So if we cut off his finger, does *it* go home too?"​

"No, we can just Polymorph him into Jesus!"​

 

[kenobi65]

Across the various groups I play in, we have some unique (and / or strange) acronyms and terms we use:

PAF - Prejudiced, Arbitrary, and Final. The DM in the very first group I ever played in claimed that DMs had the right to be PAF. I think mostly it was his excuse for goofy decisions he made while DMing after a few beers.

FM - F***ing Magic. Stock explanation for a situation / effect that has no apparent explanation within the rules.

GOOMB - Get Out Of My Brain. This one comes from the online group I play with, and happens when two people post the exact same thought to the chat room moments apart. Certain combos of players in our group are particularly likely to GOOMB with each other.

Boot Da Door - force open a door in a dungeon. Must always be said in a Sylvester Stallone accent; don't ask me why.

UCT - Universal Cutting Tool. Lightsaber.

Cleric Initiative - Poor initiative result, particularly when it happens to a PC repeatedly. Name comes from the fact that most clerics seem to have lousy init modifiers, and combine it with lousy d20 rolls, thus making the cleric act last in the round far more often than you'd feel could be explained by random chance.

 

[Chaldfont]

Mike's Rules of Gaming.

One of the guys in our group always comes up with some wise rule everytime something bad happens (e.g. "Glyphs are bad"). We always joke about starting a web site with Mike's Rules, but never do.

What does your Magic Missile look like?

Every time a player starts a new spellcasting character he has to describe the cosmetics of his spells. I asked a player this question at a con once and he was stunned--"Nobody ever asked me that before."

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Lately, in the Forgotten Realms game in which I am a player, we have been collecting a Quote of the Game

Sorry, but that's not really unique.

The thread on our Forum where we collect the best quotes and slips of the tongue has over 100 answers (okay, there is some off-topic in there, but usually, there are several quotes per entry).

We have stuff like:

"This is a publig shrub!"
"I'll show him Lathander's Glory" (while inadvertantly making certain gestures with the hands"
"I have a +1 handbrake" (hand crossbow)
"If you kill me, you'll never know the answers" "She's a cleric, she'll ask your corpse."

 

[Evilhalfling]

For low itiniative we use - " Shocked and Amazed "
when I want to move from pregame chatter to actual game I have a habit of saying " When last we left our intrepid adventurers..."

I posted this to another thread as well but we moslty each have a minature for our characters, If someone is late, and we need a stand in Mini - we use the "naughty nun" a swordswoman figure with a nun's habit, leather armour vest, and a thong.

 

[AuraSeer]

A commonly repeated line: "The door says NO!"
This was inspired by an extremely minor detail in an adventure I threw together.

In the basement level of an evil wizard's stronghold, the party came across a barred stone door that had the Goblin word for "no" scratched on it. One player figured it was dangerous and should be left alone, but the others decided it must surely lead to the treasure room or some other valuable loot. Over the bard's objections they opened up the door-- and were nearly TPKed by the advanced gelatinous cube that came blobbing out at them.

That door led to the collection basin for all the privies on the upper levels. The cube was dropped in there to consume waste and garbage, so bad odors wouldn't drift upward into the living space. The word "No" was put on the door to remind the wizard's goblin henchmen never to enter that room, even when searching for intruders.

I threw that in as a minor detail at the last minute. But years later, anytime one player looks to be making a dumb or risky decision, the others are likely to say "Stop! The door says NO!"

For some reason it never fails to reduce at least one person to giggles, even though it's likely not funny to anyone outside our group.

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

Our group's favorite quote is "Belgian Congo," referring to players going off in totally useless directions. This comes from a CoC game my husband was running in which we were out of good ideas and grasping at straws, and found a journal kept by one of the bad guys that mentioned, as an aside, a research lab in the Belgian Congo. We followed that lead, which turned out to be a blind alley that we were never intended to go down, although dear non-railroading Thomas allowed us to go there anyway.

In a recent d20 Modern game, my character was doing research and obsessed over a map at an NPC's house. I kept asking for details about it and the DM (the ever-witty Stormborn) started describing it: "...and written across it are the words Belgian Congo." I took the hint.

 

[sniffles]

"I take one step forward to reduce the range penalty..."

That's become a catchphrase of sorts for us. It doesn't even have anything to do with D&D. It came from a superhero game. My PC was being held with a gun to her head, and the Batman-wannabe recited the above line after the villain warned "Don't move or I'll shoot". Of course, when the PC took a step the bad guy shot my character in the head. The player of the Batman-wannabe character still doesn't get the joke when we say that line.

Come to think of it, we make fun of that player a lot. Recently in one of our D&D games it has become obligatory to make jokes about elven pit fighters with fishbelly white skin, which is all in reference to that player's elf sorcerer/wizard/fighter. He doesn't get the joke then either.

 

[freebfrost]

Sorry, but that's not really unique.

That's ok. The original question was (emphasis mine):

Does your group have any "phrases" or activities that you think are unique to your group? Share them!

I'll just have to try harder!