Oft-repeated "theme" phrases from your Campaigns and their origins.

[Altalazar]

I know we've had a thread on notable quotables - but what I am wondering about are those utterances that became themes - tied to specific events, forever repeated in all games thereafter.

Here are a few from my games:

"What a pretty fountain."
(Said with a sense of ironic awe) - originated where there was a fountain (obviously) and the party was about to look it over - while in the meantime, out in the desert just to the right, there was an epic combat going on between a huge sphinx and some other creature, a climax of the campaign. It was a bit of a distance away, but still rather obvious and hard to miss. Everyone rolled "spot" checks - but one character blew it - bad. So while everyone else looks at this epic combat between "titans" this one character instead stands and stares at the fountain and says "What a pretty fountain." So that phrase became the standard for all missed spot checks thereafter. (And this phrase originated in 1E!)


"I'm a pacifist."
Standard introductory line when doing either a new game or a one-shot with a bunch of different characters - referring to an incident where I played a secretly-evil-assassin who pretended to be a pacifist (and really always was) in the presence of the party. Totally fooled them all - only told them after he died a glorious death while separated from the party. Phrase is said to jokingly hint that every new character is secretly an evil assassin.


"I sense ... DANGER."
A "prophet" of some sort, a diviner, who was absolutely USELESS in a campaign - he supposedly could divine all sorts of things, but in the end, he'd just say this whenever asked for a prediction - so from then on, whenever anyone uses any sort of divination spells, this is the standard catch-phrase, said aloud, holding a hand to ones head, eyes closed...

 

[diaglo]

with the latest edition:

"I elf the room." in reference to the 5' secret door detection by elves. it has always been in D&D. but this is the first time i encountered it as a term.

 

[Storminator]

"...without further incident..."

One of my players tried to get out of the fix he was in by saying, "I return to the inn without further incident." Meanwhile he was being stalked by assassins and hunted by the city guard. He couldn't get 2 blocks without an incident, and after every one, he'd repeat "I return to the inn without further incident."

So now it's my policy to throw an encounter at anyone that uses the phrase "without further incident."

PS

 

[Frost]

"You lose a level."

Any time a player does something to peeve the DM (i.e., foils his carefully laid plans, gets a crit that slays the villian before he was "supposed to," that kind of thing).

 

[Wombat]

"Give me the hat..."

I have a beat up old Fedora and, whenever someone says something stupid in the game, the person takes the hat and hits themself with it.

"..., no offense." "None taken."

A standard exchange between any two players where the first says something slighting of the second.

"twitch, twitch"

Response to gross or morally questionable scenes and situations

 

[jayaint]

"One of THOSE campaigns..."

For some reason, our gaming group has never taken to water/underwater/etc-based campaigns. Said any time we see splat books or flavor books for such things.

"I ping"

Paladin's detect evil ability. Seen it mentioned here before, but I might be the first to get it in this time.

"As long as its not a 'farmer' carrying a flame sword"

We had a (nearly) TPK (one half-drow mage/cleric 2e escaped) when we were beset at night by a group of "what appear to be farmers" on a country road. The DM casually forgot to mention the flame sword the leader was carrying. Said anytime there is a seemingly innocent random encounter about to happen.

"The dwarf with the goatee, we go talk to him..."

Said anytime we are looking for a PC or NPC that is "hiding". One of our dwarf PC's was on the run and we were trying to track him down before the authorities did, and we walked into a tavern and amongst everything else, was a dwarf, alone, at a corner table. With a GOATEE. He later told us he thought that shaving his beard would throw off the authorities. *sigh*

 

[Mytholder]

"...without further incident..."

One of my players tried to get out of the fix he was in by saying, "I return to the inn without further incident."
PS

Heh. In Cthulhu, we've got "I go to X, takingintoaccounteverythingIseealongtheway", coined by the player who got tired of Spot Hidden checks and visual clues delaying his progress.

 

[MerakSpielman]

The oft-repeated phrases of my group:

1
"I have a plan"
"Is it, by any chance, a cunning plan?"
"Yes. Yes it is. I have a cunning plan."

2
"What's the plan?"
"Let's go kill them." (or something similarly plan-less)
"Get 'em? That's your plan?"

 

[blackshirt5]

"...IN THE NUTS!"

Rakeron is infamous for this; whatever he's fighting he tries to end the fight by taking out their nether regions. Most humorously used in THRASH(a free system that I modified, it's meant for anime/fighting game RPGs), when he played a Shotokan disciple of Ken Masters(from Street Fighter) and Shoryukened an opponent, and ended with a dramatic pause followed by "In the NUTS!".

 

[Psion]

"You arrive unmolested"

My statement for telling the players that nothing untoward happens on the journey. Usually met with gripes and grumbles by the oversexed members of the party.

"Palanoid"/"I consult the Paladin's handbook."

Phrases that evolved around a rather played to the charicture-level extremes paladin in the party. He was called "palanoid" for detecting evil on everything and everybody. And, of course, "The Paladin's Handbook" was a hypothetical handbook the players joked about their characters consulting when they used appeals to honor, justice and righteousness to manipulate the paladin's behavior.