Fish Stories: What's the best bluff you've ever gotten away with?

[lukelightning]

My party was infiltrating an evil cult, and bluffed the doorguard with the classic "not am I already a member of this cult I'm actually your superior so do what I say!"

The same character got invitations for the whole party to an exclusive ball/party thing by bluffing the poor guy with the invites. "What do you mean you don't have me on the list? Ah, my idiot herald must have forgotten to pick them up..."

 

[Tolen Mar]

So I was playing this bard once, and the two of us (it was a short group that day) had just wandered into town. We were short on funds. Turns out there was some sort of festival going on, so we start to wander around, looking for an opportunity to make some money.

My buddy at this point is just a fighter, and not even a prticularly effective one. Out in a field, some of the locals are having a simple rock-throwing contest (ala Braveheart). The current winner/champion is there, and towers a full head over our fighter. This is a big fellow, and everytime he wings one of those stones out in the field, it flies a rather considerable distance; moreso than any of his opponents, a few of which he's knocked cold.

So I turn to the fighter and say "I think you can beat him."

Con #1: Within a few minutes, I have the fighter believing that its all in the skill, and not brute force, and that he can, indeed, defeat the champ at his own game.

So he goes in and announces that he wants to give it a try. After a few laughs and jeers, he's told it will be a few minutes before he gets his chance.

So I start up Con #2: I start wandering through the assembled crowd. I make the occasional nonchalant remark about how the fighter is actually 'The Great So-and-So from Far away.' I include phrases like "this will be a treat to watch," and "that big guy is in for a surprise."

A couple of bluff checks later, the lies have caught hold, and people start 'remembering' tales they've heard about this guy. The betting goes crazy. This of course, reinforces the fighters confidence, and he starts to play it up. The big guy on the field is still skeptical, but beginning to be worried.

Just before my friends turn to throw came up, I go to the bookie, and bet all we have. AGAINST my friend. The bookie gives me this wierd look, "You sure about this? Haven't you heard who he is?"

"Of course I have. But I mean LOOK at him. There's no way he can knock that guy out."

The bookie takes my money, gives me my ticket, chuckling the whole time.

Well, they throw. The fighter tosses his rock. It lands three feet in front of the big. The big guy knocks the fighter cold. I go to collect my winnings from the dumbstruck bookie. Numbly, the guy pays out, whie the croud starts to mutter about how they don't believe it. Of course, by the time they figure out they've been had, I've left.

Later, after he regained his consciousness, the fighter caught up with me. He had a horrible headache and couldn't remember what had happened.

I looked at him, deadpan and said "You took a nasty trip, knocked yourself out on a rock."

"Why did you leave me there?"

"You looked so peaceful, figured you needed the rest."

Officially, the character didn't know any different, but my GM and the other player were rolling. We never could go back to that small town again.

 

[deco]

The best bluff we've ever pulled in a game was so good it actually fooled the players and DM.

We had an orc assassin who was rummaging around in some stranger's room in an inn, when the stranger caught him in the act. So the orc stabbed him and leapt out the window. Later, when the town militia found the dead body, they questioned us, and the orc feigned innocence. To help convince them, we offered to help search the city for the murderer.

We accompanied the guards around town, investigating "tips" that we made up, shaking down thugs in the alleys, etc. This continued for about 20 minutes...and during this time we actually forgot what we were doing, and threw ourselves completely into this mission of finding the murderer.

Finally, we had narrowed the "suspects" down to one shifty looking merchant, who we had tied up in a room and were interrogating through threats and coercion. We were asking him "Who murdered the man in room 4? Who murdered him?!?" and suddenly the orc's player suddenly and quietly blurted out "...holy crap guys, *I* murdered him!"

There was a stunned silence as the entire table (including the DM) absorbed this, and realized it was true. We had actually spent half an hour searching for an imaginary criminal when really, it had been us the whole time. Definitely one of our more terrible (but hilarious) moments.

 

[theemrys]

The best one we had was in a game when 3 of us were playing gnomes... a druid, a rogue, and an illusionist. We were in Myth Drannor and came across someone who had no memory of themselves and their perception of the world was from MANY years ago before the fall of the city when elves were at the top. The rogue and the druid (myself) with deadpan faces broke it to him that thousands of years had passed since then... and that gnomes now ruled the world. One of the other party members with us (a half elf) played along by acting subservient to us. He wasn't really convenced though until the illusionist came floating around the corner (using a fly spell) in his radient robes (illusion) and commanded the half elf to gather our things as it was time to move on...

It was quite funny right up until the rest of that party came back and spoiled our fun. it sure took the DM off guard...

Needless to say we did have a few other "fun" bluffs with that party, but that was the best I think... well that and our "adjusted" gnomish that we taught the dwarf... with a few key phases not translating the way he thought...

 

[Shemeska]

I had a pair of bluffs in my previous campaign (SH1), one of which only became apparent to one PC in-character and they didn't tell anyone else because of the ramifications, though it just became known to the PCs in my current campaign (SH2). Good villains that the PCs love to hate are hard to kill off.

As for the second bluff, which never became known in-character in the campaign, nor OOC till after the campaign was over: after a few years the first campaign ended, and after the dice were put down and I opened the floor to Q&A about the whole thing, I paused and admitted to that second bluff, the content of which I won't say because the storyhour isn't anywhere near that point yet, but which I'll answer in person at GenCon or if you ask me nice enough, or it may become terribly apparent in SH2 sooner rather than later. But suffice to say I got dead silence, a few curses, and one player didn't speak to me for a few days because of how much it impacted certain events and their character especially. I was almost victim to a railing kill over the game-room loft balcony based on how much emotional impact it had, and these are the people who I'd already made cry in that campaign.

I can that success. Mean perhaps, but a success.

 

[rvalle]

2nd Ed Halfling Thief. We are in a maze of gullies and canyons and have just killed a dragon-wyrm type thing.

Being a 2nd Ed thief I didn't do much of the fighting and am at 100% health wise. The rest of the party is tapped on spells so they decide its time to make camp and rest/nap. I take guard duty up on one of the high points. Before I get down to the serious business of guarding the camp I taunt the Half-Ogre some and he chucks a Large spear at me (and misses). I grab the spear and keep it, throwing it over my shoulder and marching around.

After everyone is asleep and I'm throwing rocks at imaginary foes, a head appears over one of the near by canyons... A giant of some sort doing a walk about. He sees me and frowns. I puff out my chest and hold the spear up high.

He snorts and hefts a big rock. I (using a magic item taken off a previous giant... a giant sized pouch that made whatever inside weigh 0 lbs.) take my duffel back and stuff it full of big rocks, then hoist it over my head. The giants eyes get big.

I toss the back from hand to hand then put the bag down and flex.

I hold up a finger in a 'just a minute' gesture and climb down to the dead dragon body and quickly hack off a piece. Bringing it back up I toss it to the Giant who takes it and sniffs at it. He looks at me with amazement in his eyes. I puff out my chest even further.

He takes out a pouch and shows me gold with 'come with me' motions. While riding on the shoulder of a Giant has its appeal, I shake my head 'no'.

The Giant climbs over to make his offer more forcefully, waking my companions who quickly slaughter my almost friend.

I thought it was great I was able to convice a giant I killed a dragon single-handed without using a single word.

rv

 

[Luthien Greyspear]

I can think of two:

The first happened in a Shadowrun game I was running. The party has been hired by Renraku to investigate a cyber-terrorist that has been Black IC-ing legitimate users of Renraku headware and cyberdecks. The IC (a variation on Black Hammer) basically only attacks hardware that is encoded with a Renraku ID code. The decker in the group (Penna) is particularly worried, as her entire C-squared deck (internal cyberdeck layered DIRECTLY onto her brain) is made entirely by Renraku. So, after undergoing lengthy (and highly illegal) procedures to scrub out the Renraku ID codes, she begins the search for the terrorist, simultaneously crafting a deceptively elegant trap. The group eventually figures out that the terrorist and her cronies (who have destroyed an entire apartment building to try to kill the players) are actually hiding INSIDE the Renraku Arcology, and are tapped into the Central Mainframe which generates the ID Codes, guaranteeing that they can always tailor the Black Hammer for the latest cyberware. Penna arranges for a (mock) secure internal node with a bottle-neck access to be set up within the Renraku Mainframe, and leaks that Renraku has developed a new algorithm to create ID codes that the Black Hammer can't attack. Naturally, the terrorist tries to break in to get the algorithm. Penna plants her cyber-persona at the bottleneck and battles the terrorist, and loses on purpose, using her very high Deception rating to fool the terrorist. The terrorist rushes past her and unleashes the Black Hammer on the secure node, at which time Penna turns and attacks with a simple Hog program. Unlike most Hog programs, which just write babble that takes up an increasing amount of memory, THIS Hog program wrote line after line after line of Renraku ID codes. The Black Hammer turned on the terrorist, and laid waste to her entire deck (and the mind plugged into it). This fight, combined with the physical assault that the rest of the party led on the terrorists' hiding spot, was one of the best climactic fights I ever ran.

The other one was even simpler, and it wasn't the character using Bluff on the NPC's, it was the Player using Bluff on the DM! We were playing Call of Cthulhu, and we were trying to stop a ritual that would have summoned some very nasty critters into the middle of Central Park (using the Egyptian Obelisk as a focus point). Needless to say, we were just as worried about the police as we were about the cultists, but we didn't have time to bribe them or get them on our side. As we got there, we saw the cultists fanning out to take their positions, so we had no chance to take any sort of tactical position. Suddenly, Rick (our leader) said "My character runs towards the high priestess, firing his weapon!" He hit one or two cultists, and drew the direct attention of the priestess. After one or two rounds of combat, he gets hit with a powerful magic spell and goes down. The NEXT round, when the DM asks us what our intentions are, Rick just says "I play dead." The DM, familiar with Rick's luck when the odds are against us, as well as the fact that Rick's character has had YEARS of in game experience and very well could be resisting her magic, has the high priestess use her turn to attack him again. The next round, the same thing: "I play dead," followed by a magical blast into him. This goes on for about five rounds, during which we manage to mop up the minor cultists with only one fatality on our side. Finally, the DM says, "How many hit points do you have left anyway?" Rick just looks at him with a lopsided smirk and says, "Oh, I was negative from that first magic blast. I'm betting they'll have to ID my body by my teeth."

 

[Arnwyn]

Regale us fellow sneaky, duplicitous types with a tale of the boldest, most outlandish or elaborate bluff/lie/con that your DM let you get away with...or that you, as DM, let your player get away with.

Just what immediately comes to mind (because we still laugh about it today):

One of my players always plays the sneaky, shifty, roguish type character that likes to lurk in the shadows, keep quiet, and never been seen. His characters are good-hearted, but have extreme cases of "fame-phobia". The less people knew of him, the better.



Villagers: "Hail to the heroes! We have heard you vanquished the evil black dragon of the Rotting Swamp!"

Anti-fame Rogue: "But it was only a baby!"