....and the DM just gaped

[der_kluge]

I once had a player playing a thief (2E). He was sneaking behind a member of the city watch and blew his checks. The following conversation occurred, but it was more the body language of the player that broke me:

Guard: Halt, who goes there?
PC: Me. *steps forward*
Guard: What are you doing?
PC: Sneaking into the city, why? *smiles innocently*
Guard: Carry on.

Yeah, I know, it sounds lame. It was totally in the delivery.

Something similar happened in RL at a fraternity meeting in college. Two of the guys, Chris and Scott had gone out to a club the prior meeting, and thus had absences. So, unexcused absences count towards you record, and if you get too many, you could go on probation. But an excused absence is ok, so long as the group approves it.

So, in the "new business" section of the meeting, Chris raises his hand and says, coyly, "I'd like to be excused from last week's meeting. I was out getting drunk." Of course, no one approved his absence. Later on, Scott raised his hand and asked to be excused from the meeting, and a majority passed him just for the hell of it!

I guess you had to have been there.

 

[Mouseferatu]

This one's context-specific. If you don't know Ravenloft, it won't mean a thing to you.

I was running a Ravenloft mini-campaign, with characters native to Barovia. The plot of the campaign had them pitted against Strahd--not in a "find the villain and beat him up" way, because that doesn't work in Ravenloft with the Dark Lords (and it breaks the mood, anyway), but in a "He's got the person we're trying to save, what the hell do we do about it?" way.

Now, half the players in the group knew Ravenloft very well, but they were being very good about sticking with in-character knowledge.

So they're having a discussion about this with an NPC, and it comes up that King Azalin of Darkon is a major adversary of Strahd's.

Out of character, everyone knows that Azalin is a lich, evil to the core, and--if anything--worse than Strahd himself.

In character, they know only that he's a powerful king and wizard.

So what do they decide? "Hmm. If he's Strahd's enemy, maybe we can make him an ally. Let's go visit Azalin."

My jaw did, indeed, drop. In my entire DMing career, there have only been two incidents that were so completely outside my realm of expectation that I had to stop the game early and do extra planning for the next session, because I truly had no clue where to go. This was one of them.

It turned out great, and they loved my presentation of Azalin the next week. But for that week, I was well and truly stumped. And you can bet they got a boatload of extra XP for it, too.

 

[ForceUser]

I once planned a session wherein the party, traveling aboard ship, would have to face an enemy vessel filled with hundreds of lower-level foes--I had intended for the encounter to last a couple of tense hours as, outnumbered and outgunned, the skipper of the PC's vessel would try to escape the larger enemy ship.

This being 3.0, the party sorcerer considered the problem for a moment, then simply flew into the air in the path of the oncoming ship...and cast cloudkill. The enemy ship sailed right into the green mist, unable to alter course so quickly. All the bad guys died because I had statted the entire crew as 6th-level and lower. The fight was over in five minutes.

Being a new-to-5th-level-spells DM, I hadn't expected such a move and hadn't prepared the adventure for the evening beyond that. Completely unprepared for anything beyond that encounter, I ended the game 2 hours early that night, much to the chagrin of my players.

 

[Rackhir]

I was playing Call of Cthulu (Delta Green - Modern) and we had figured out who was behind the fiendish plot. Now we still didn't know exactly what the plot was or how they were going to carry it out, but we knew who the leader was. We were kind of at a loss as to how to proceed since we had run out of leads for more information and we knew that time was running out.

So I suggested that we simply kill him.

Not continuing to discover the plot and how to stop it or waiting until the plot was about to unfold and engage in a desperate race against time. We knew he was going to be trying to bring about some terrrible catastrophy and we knew that he was key to what ever was going on. So why not simply kill him.

The DM kind of reacted to this like Scott Evil had just suggested that we kill Austin Powers instead of simply locking him up in an easily escapable cell, guarded by his two stupidest guards. It was so out of left field for how these games usually go. He rallied after a few minutes and mangage to make the adventure accomodate this deviation. It actually wound up working even better than expected as we manage to nudge the investigation into his murder into turning up the hidden chamber where his cult had carried out its human sacrifices. Which pretty much blew any chances of the cult surviving given that they all belonged to the same fire company and were known to gather at this guy's house.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Yesterday, we had a wonderful case of conflicting views (DM/players).

As 3 of our 7 players weren't here (two simply didn't show up or something, the other was sick), the DM decided to create a fast side-quest. We're in a small town, recovering from our long absence from civilization, when cries of alarm rise: The "Horde" is coming, again to pillage and loot. They had problems with them for weeks, and even sent for help, but since the assassination of the Regent (which we were blamed for, but that's not important right now), the whole Capitol and everything else is in disarray, so they hadn't reacted.

Anyway, we go up to the first floor to look at those bandits. We se about 40 mounted highwaymen approaching the city. Now the DM thought that we'd do some dark-of-night commando mission to eliminate their leaders after we see them riding in, taking what they want, including a virgin and the usual stuff, and then riding off again, watchin in helplessnes (as they're 40 guys).

Wizard: I fireball them all.

Now that really was a moral imperative, since he's a LG exalted wizard, and he probably thought that these low-lives would never survive his 8d6 blast, and they rode in a bulk so he could fry them all.

Of course, they survived his two fireball spells, went for cover, and then shouted out: We're coming back tomorrow at noon, we want those miscreants on a silver plate, or you will all die.

Long story short, we convinced the villagers to stand up to them, and beat back the attackers next day (many were wounded and didn't show up, they thought 2 fireballs were all we had and with spreading out, they could make it. We had 8 fireballs and other stuff).

Anyway, the DM meant that we should have realized that we cannot take on 40 men at level 7, fireball or not, and that we had to realize that sometimes you have to watch helplessly. Of course, our opinion was (and is) a different one (all with the wizard being forced by his consciousness to defend the helpless, even if it costs his live, and the fact that with a fireball, quantity is no longer an issue).

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Star Trek game, using home brew rules (a precursor to d20, it turns out...I was so advanced..heh). The crew pick up a distress call from a downed shuttle, and find the wreckage on a planet shrouded in twilight. The away team discover ruins with a tunnel leading into a mountain, and using tricorders, track the pathway of the stranded personnel. Once inside, the passage behind them is closed off, and a mineral in the strata prohibits communicators from reaching the ship.

I'd planned to have a creepy, spooky adventure where the players would actually encounter a mind-flayer like race, and have to figure a way out. The players who remained on the ship turned to me and asked, "We've lost their communicator signals, huh? Can we pick them up on sensors?" I answered yes. "Can we beam them out?" "No. EMS interference prohibits a good transporter lock."

My brother turns to the security chief on watch and says, "Fire a narrow beam phaser through the strata and make an opening into the passageway." So they did. With the tunnel open, they beamed the players out. Game over. 15 minutes into the first test game of our homebrew rules.

We went to a movie after that.

 

[Cedric]

...And so began, Chicken Dungeoneering. Our party had just finished saving a town from an Orc menace and were set to collect the 300gp bounty. Only the GM reveals that the town will have to pay us in trade goods.

Now the GM is imagining that since we are going to be exporing the horrors of the trap filled dungeon outside town, we can use this reward barter for lodging, food etc, ...to come back and rest.

But no, that makes too much sense.

We ordered every chicken in town, and offered the balance in exchange for them to deliver the chickens to the dungeon...where we proceeded to drive the chickens in front of us.

They pretty much created mass chaos and tripped every trap and ambush in the place. We walked out three levels higher, much wiser...but not smelling so great. Afterally, cooped up, literally, with hundreds of chickens for a few weeks will do that.

Cedric

 

[focallength]

back in 2E. We had a item we had to retrieve from a room guarded by a naga, we were in no shape to take on a naga, so the paladin throws open the door runs across the room grabs the item, the naga attacks him and misses he runs out of the room and we all run out of the building laughing our butts off.

 

[azmodean]

I was playing in my first campaign with my Lawfull Stupid paladin (Took compulsive honesty as a character flaw in the DM's homebrew system). The insane super-powerful BBEG (way out of our league, and our characters know it) somehow astrally summoned the party to rant at us, threaten our lives, make a deal, etc...

BBEG: "And how dare you keep interfering in my plans..."
Me(interrupting) "How dare you keep interfering in our plans!"

DM just stared at me for a while, then announced that my character's eyes immediately rolled back in his head as he dropped to the floor dead. (As expected)

It was pretty damn funny though.

 

[master0fdungeons]

So this particular night, one of the players couldn't show up, so I planned a quick side quest. On their way to the ancient evil tomb, the group had rested for the night. On waking, the character on watch was missing. She had fallen into a hidden well nearby occupied by a naga and had been easily captured. Well, upon waking, her twin says "Oh she's probably off exploring. She does that all the time. She'll catch up." and they proceed to pack up and move on.

They didn't even notice my mouth hanging open for those 4 long seconds before I regained my composure and continued the adventure without the poor lost twin. The scary part is that they thought this was my plan for running the adventure with a missing player.