...oh no you didn't...

[Lonely Tylenol]

As a companion to StupidSmurf's "...so we tossed the jerk out..." thread, which contains example of gamer behavior ranging from annoying to soul-searingly vile, I'm curious about stories featuring players or GMs who may have acted in unusual or unexpected ways, but who you remember fondly.

For example:

During a 2e campaign, I was leading a low-level party through the ToEE. One of my best friends is playing a dwarf fighter who tries on a magical cloak. POOF! He turns into a gargoyle.

As the other PCs are trying to figure out how to un-mojo his character, my friend passes me a note that reads "Unencumbered at last by the draconian morals of dwarven life, my character flies off in search of his gargoyle kin." At which point the player got up from the table, walked out of my apartment, and drove home.

This is the same player who I was running in a solo game about a young peasant-turned-adventurer who needed gold to save his family farm. He explored the (very limited) above-ground portion of the module, and finally reached a clear dead end (which contained an easy-to-find secret door leading to the dungeon below). The player, though, had his character turn around and go home. When I asked why, he responded "I know there was probably a secret door there, but my character the illiterate peasant has never even heard of a secret door, so he wouldn't have known to look for one."

This friend of mine has annoyed quite a few DMs in his day, but I think that having him as a player has made me, as a DM, more circumspect about potential character actions and more able to think on my feet when they act unexpectedly.

So, if you have stories of crazy-but-loveable antics by your players or GMs, please share.

Ah yes, the players who enjoy causing the game to grind to a halt under the guise of "I'm only doing what my character will do." There's a special hell for them, you know.

This isn't theatre, and characters don't need to be 100% believable all the time. It's a game, and in order for the game to move along a certain amount of following the DM's plot hooks and leading scenarios is usually necessary, assuming you want the game to continue. Hell, no sane person would go out and fight monsters and look for treasure anyway, so if you're going to play a character believably, he immediately quits the adventuring business and gets a real job.

And even if it were theatre, one of the most important rules of improv (which is what role-playing is) is "never block." Never say no. Never run the thread into the ground. Never do something that will cause the scene to stop prematurely. To do otherwise is simply bad form and disruptive to everyone else's enjoyment.

It's a game, and we play it together. One person should not be throwing up blocks that prevent things from happening. Why bother even coming to the game if you're going to do that?

edit:

Reading over some of the other posts in this thread, I see that most of the stories aren't from players of the "No" variety, but of the "Yes, and..." variety. In other words, they know how to improv, to make the game more interesting for everyone. People who try crazy stunts, play interesting characters, and do stuff that makes people stop dumbfounded at their chutzpah, are okay in my book. It's the unnecessary blocking of play that makes me wonder why I bothered to prepare an adventure for the ungrateful players in the first place.

 

[sniffles]

We have a guy in our group who is always the butt of our jokes, whether he's a player or GM. A few years ago in a Fantasy Hero campaign in which he was a player, he ran a pixie. He obviously really enjoyed playing her. She was always getting into trouble, swiping things from other PCs. One day someone made a joke about fairy wings being an essential component for some spell, and after that we started making constant remarks every session about pulling the wings off his pixie. Now he GMs a Greyhawk game in which fairies and other fey frequently turn up, and a d20 Modern game with a fairy GMPC, so we have plenty of occasion to resurrect that joke. We tend to despise his fairies just on principle and do whatever we can to thwart or belittle them.

We've also started picking on his elf wizard in one of our Forgotten Realms games. He decided to take a couple of levels of fighter to get into a prestige class. So we started making fun of him about his mighty elf warrior. The player always has to leave early, so we started joking that when he left we were going to sell his elf into slavery as a pit fighter. Then we started making comments about how skinny and pale the elf must be since he started out as a wizard. Now we have a running joke about the elf ripping his shirt off and exposing his fish-belly-white chest before he goes into combat.

 

[MPA]

You know, spider webs are NOT particularly flammable.

 

[loki44]

Let's see, delving into the memory banks here I could probably add the guy who spent almost an entire sesssion trying to obtain a burlap sack, who was the same guy that insisted on taking his PC fishing despite being presented with a number of other enticing hooks (sorry, sorry), who when he eventually got his chance to DM presented us with a problem that went something like, "You must find this item in order to complete your quest but it is hidden behind a secret door that you cannot find." Of course we only learned that last bit after the fact and after spending hours looking for a secret door that was hinted at but apparently impossible to find.

Nice thread Dwarf Bread!

 

[Mark Hope]

You know, spider webs are NOT particularly flammable.

No, but those created by a web spell are very flammable. Many's the player who found that out the hard and crispy way .

It's the unnecessary blocking of play that makes me wonder why I bothered to prepare an adventure for the ungrateful players in the first place.

Amen to that. My first 3e game (run to test out the system) was a free-form, "go wherever you want on your plane-travelling spelljammer" affair. The ungrateful wretches turned their noses up at adventure hook after adventure hook, claiming that they all sounded "too dangerous". So I crashed their fancy-pants ship on a jungle-planet that was enveloped by a magical field that caused them all to devolve into semi-intelligent monkeys. Game over, thanks for nothing and good night.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

i'm usually the guy they say: "oh, no you just didn't..." about.

That's because usually you just did.

 

[Rev. Jesse]

What other unusual behavior...

Well, in the same D&D campaign we had a goat-blood-sucking female dwarf that would not bathe, a badger sorcerer, a halfing that would polymorph into a giant flying shark and who was sexually attractive to gargoyles, an orc *loving* ranger, a female cleric who was used as the inspiration to start a "massage" parlor runs by dwarves, a kleptomanic monk wearing gold underwear, and Dux.

I played the halfling. Amoung his many accomplishments include getting stuck in a pair of boots (halfings were still bearfoot in this world) and establishing an alternate idenity as "Dingus Bootwearer" in order to goad people into fighting him (and thus breaking the curse of the boots), painting the egg shell smooth face (think Cobra Commander's mask) of the cursed cleric with a "happy face" in indelible ink, eating a remorhaz (no small feet for a halfling), befriending a yeti, impersonating an angel, getting into bare-hand brawls with dwarven warriors, and joining a tribe of giant raiders, briefly.

In my other group, we just got done w/ an Adventure campaign featuring a megalomanic German industrialist, a 15 year old Japanese nationalist, and a Spainish anarchist Catholic priest / detective. Lots of cannabalism. We're playing HOL next...

 

[Agback]

Ah yes, the players who enjoy causing the game to grind to a halt under the guise of "I'm only doing what my character will do." There's a special hell for them, you know.

Bah! It's only a purgatory, I tell you! They let me out after two years.

 

[Storyteller01]

Let's see, delving into the memory banks here I could probably add the guy who spent almost an entire sesssion trying to obtain a burlap sack...

Which reminds me of an incident when I was new to RPing. The DM set up an adventure where the group had been sent on individual tasks for a rich noble. My task, I learned after everyong left, was to find a 6 fingers, left handed puprle glove. Didn't know why, but what the hey.


Turns out, the noble was the BBEG. The glove didn't exist. Not being a threat, he gave me a silly task to get me out of the way, and I fell for it.

I looked long and hard though!!!

Nice thread Dwarf Bread!

DItto!!!