Favorite Flavours

[Brimshack]

Okay, this is a bit of fluff, but what the heck. Wwhat are the moments when the flavour a game you were running (or just part of) took off and got really fun? I mean your favorite moments, not of great conquest, but just those times when the silly sub-theme kinda took off?

A starter:

1) One of my players used to go around proclaiming the virtues of his sword, which he claimed was an artifact named "Bob." He would do this partly as a joke but also to intimidate the enemy, and he was our most effective fighter. So, over the course of a dozen games or so, people around the setting began to believe it really was a powerful item. Various enemies then began plotting to steal "Bob," and one group in particular staged a successful raid in which they were able to grab "Bob" and get away from us. Of course Bob was a standard Bastard Sword, not even masterwork. So, the thieves decided they just weren't good enough to trigger its powers; they weren't "Bob-worthy." And they traded it back to the party.

2) In my 1st edition campaign I have an evil Hill Giant, "Sphincter-Bawbo," who wades into battle with a human strapped to the outside of his shield. (The mini is a wonderful little conversion piece - and I'm a bad man for even thinking of it.) Each player has initially expressed shock and revulsion at this, but then they always end up helping me elaborate on the concept. When I gave another player the option of designing a magic item for one character in the campaign, he elected to give my character a shield of regeneration (not for the Giant, just for his "Shield maiden").

 

[howandwhy99]

Great ideas! I like the thread, but it's kind of hard to grasp the concept. Maybe something like: unplanned recurring themes?

I've got one that crosses over campaigns in our group. A few years back when we were evading a certain "Return To" adventure for the ol' Elemental Temple my character was told about a massive nail deep in a dungeon. "The Godnail!" he called it and the others groaned. Sadly, this reference seemed to come back again and again. Ignoring the specific locale, but adventuring in the area we bumped into a number of different groups after this thing and even found traces of a cult having successfully removed it from the ground. Que next campaign and lo and behold some pulsing red "fingernail" tries to fry my PCs brain. Not just an ordinary fingernail mind you, but one from an elemental God. Another "Godnail". This one has been particularly nasty as we shaved it up and poisoned nearly everyone we sold pieces off to for magic items. Not the wisest plan, I know. For whatever reason though, the Godnail keeps coming back. Who knows where next?

 

[Brimshack]

Just an excuse to tell amusing anecdotes really.

A godnail works perfectly.

 

[Gilladian]

Once, in the beginning of a game, the PCs were setting up camp and the question of who would be on what watch was raised. They decided to put the halfling on thrid watch so he could cook breakfast for them.

Unfortunately, he couldn't cook (and never was ASKED if he could). So when breakfast time came around, he served "cold porridge" (ale). Everyone laughed and now "cold porridge" is the standard adventurer's breakfast...

 

[Shadowslayer]

Eh...we came and saved a town whose mayor was under the evil influence of a mind flayer or something. The DM, in a bid to be breezy and funny, had the mayor's charm come with an unfortunate side effect....an enormous craving for cake. He loved cake, and he loved it even more when everyone else ate it with him. He had the town baker making cakes 24/7 and was buying up flour reserves from other outlying villages. It was pretty severe.

Anyway, we snapped him out of it and saved the villagers etc etc, and said no more about it.

But then we spent a year referring to ourselves as "The Order of the Cake"

Good times.

 

[Three_Haligonians]

The players in my epic level game, have made it a habit to go buy coffees with ridiculous names (frappamochachocco latte etc...). They do it when it is time to make a plan, when it is time to stop for the day, when it is time to meet back up, when it is time to wait..

They do it very often.

These coffees cost in the range of 5 to 10 gold pieces.

They buy it from a world-wide chain called Sundollars.

J from Three Haligonians

 

[Brimshack]

All cool stuff.

A bit of metagaming flavour:

My friend Andy ran a one-off in our 1st edition D&D campaign. Early in the game he announced that all of my characters were operating at a penalty of -2. About an hour later, he announced that all of another player's characters were operating at +3 (and my penalty was off). Later, I went to -5, then +1, then my friend at -3, etc. We struggled to figure out the pattern. The changes seemed to be about an hour or less apart, and no dice was rolled that we could see. (I even kept an eye on him a few times hoping to catch him rolling the dice, but no.) One player was NEVER subject to any modification one way or another and we havd NO idea why. Whatever the random modifier was, we had no clue. At the end of the game, Andy told us it was based on the music we put on. He rated it all on a +1-5 or -1-5 basis depending on whether he liked it or hated it. So, the changes were occuring a minute or two after we changed the disks on the player.

...Apparently my choice of music was disapproved.

 

[Stalker0]

For my first character "Bizwack" I was kind of goofing around when I asked the dm, "Can I have an obscure knowledge, like of s**t. So I had this guy with the obscure knowledge. It actually came in pretty handy a few times and kind of caught on with the group. My next character had obscure knowledge while unconscious. Whenever I was knocked out (which with that character was all the time) I got little visions, with a chance to remember them.

The concept became more and more popular, we eventually even had a character with obscure knowledge of vietnamese battle tactics