Running gags in the campaign

[TracerBullet42]

We have a tendancy, in our group, to name things after the characters who cause strange things to happen.

For instance, the group was getting ready to go in and investigate some sort of hole that was leading into a cavern. We planned to camp nearby and enter it in the morning. Two of the party members would go ahead to scout it out the first evening, though, while the rest of the group would set up camp.

"How far away do you want to set camp?" asked the GM.

"200 yards," responded one of the players. I suppose none of us were paying much attention, because no one vetoed this idea. 200 yards doesn't sound all that far away, anyway...until combat begins. Sure enough, baddies popped out of the hole and 3/4 of the group was 600 feet away. That's a lot of rounds...

Therefore, we decided to name a new unit of measurement. 200 yards = 1 Reiam (the offending PCs name)

Later, with that same group, another misguided player decided to go off hunting with another player. The two PCs got very far away, and that's when danger struck the rest of the party. There was no chance that the two "hunting" PCs would make it back in enough time to be of any use.

Thus, another unit of measurement was born. Too far away to be of any use = 1 Leather (the offending PCs name) This unit of measurement, however is variable, depending on the situation. It could very well turn out that 1 Reiam = 1 Leather, depending on your circumstances.

Several campaigns later, we still use these terms...

 

[sniffles]

We had a Fantasy Hero campaign running for several years that had an important NPC named Covenant. When the GM started a new Forgotten Realms campaign, he named another important NPC Covenant. Our FH party was after a special sword, and now our FR group are peripherally involved in a similar quest...

He's also had another NPC show up in this campaign (the first one in my sig story hour) who was a temporary PC in the FH game. I expect any time now to run into a snooty elf named Fenris - that was someone else's old PC from yet another game who showed up as an NPC in Fantasy Hero.

To make matters worse, another GM of another Forgotten Realms campaign, who was a player in the FH game and also plays in the aforementioned FR campaign, is now starting to have bits of the other GM's recurrent material show up in *his* game! Our campaigns are starting to become recursive...

 

[Shemeska]

A running gag in my own current campaign is picking on the fey touched half-drow PC for being the shortest party member, and the inordinate amount of random, cruel violence that seems to befall gnomes wherever the PCs go.

 

[DarkSoldier]

When I ran my second game session, I called for Spot checks. One of the players got something like 6 or 7, so I told him, "You see a very interesting rock." He responded by picking up the rock.

Now, whenever he rolls less than 10 on a Spot check, he's too occupied with studying the rock to notice whatever I called them to Spot.

From my player experiences in SWd20:

Checking the trunk for bodies: I interrogated some thug to learn who firebombed our base of operations. Unfortunately, my interrogation technique was fatal. I stuffed him in the trunk of my speeder and left. I got pulled over and my vehicle searched; the trunk was the first place they looked. From now on, whenever any member of the group is going to purchase or otherwise operate a landspeeder, the first thing we do is check the trunk for bodies.

DON'T open the Box!: This one predates my entry to the group, but it's applied to every box or container we end up entrusted with. Invariably, someone opens the box. Sometimes it's harmless, sometimes it's spice, sometimes it's a bloodthirsty monster or a bomb rigged to blow upon opening the box.

I kill Derek: If the game were a TV series, I would probably not be in the opening credits, but in the "Special Guest Star" category; my characters more often die in a single session than last a significant period of time, and frequently die at the hands of other PCs. They killed four consecutive characters:
- Vapourised with two (8d6+6)*2 bombs attached to my guns because I didn't help them shoot up a police station, nor warn them that a Jedi had entered the building.
- Beaten to a pulp with a great force pike after successfully Dissipating a blaster bolt to the head, because I stepped aside for Count Dooku.
- Split in half with a lightsabre so they could trade my starship for a stick. It was a dark side artefact and important to the overall plot, but it was a friggin' stick!
- Killed for a 200,000 credit bounty a dead PC's cohort put on my head because she thought I was responsible for his death.

The Flying Wookiee: Here's another one that predates my entry to the group. The party owned a coffee shop on Coruscant called "The Flying Wookiee." It was frequently bombed and/or blown up by the party's enemies. Henceforth, whenever we're on Coruscant, we go the Flying Wookiee for coffee.

Duros Male Stripper: My character got captured by a persistent foe, and sold into slavery to a Hutt. He's now a go-go dancer, equipped with a G-string, bowtie, and cuffs. GM told me "Perform check," so I rolled, spending a Force Point with it to get a 26 with a total skill modifier of +1. This one will probably become a running gag, because he appeared in the SW campaign one of the other players is running for the group.

 

[kanithardm]

I am so stealing that.

ditto

 

[Mark CMG]

The ones most often initiated by players seem to be "the giving of the unflattering nickname" to some NPC who is just passing through. The nickname is often a take off on the NPC's actual name. It's very schoolyard but undeniably funny in the moment. Naturally, that same NPC then shows up a bit more often after that.

 

[argo]

In our last campaign our party was spending the night at an inn when we were attacked by ninjae, we were all in seperate rooms on the second floor and they all came busting in through the windows in the middle of the night. One of these ninja, the one sent after the gun mage, tries to crash though the window like all the others but rolls a 1 on his tumble check, so he goes sprawling accross the floor and sliding into the wall loosing his suprise round. Instantly we are all cracking jokes about the "ninja trainee" and how its the poor guy's first day. Well this stelar performance is only topped when in round two the poor trainee picks himself up and tries to attack the gun mage ... only he rolls another 1 on the attack roll, trips, hits his head on the footboard of the bed and knocks himself out cold. By now the trainee has a name, Rusty, and a voice, he sounds like the pimple-faced geek from The Simpsons. His fate is sealed: he just became the party masscot.

Rusty decided that his ninja garb was inapropriate and that he needed new clothes. However the only thing he could get his hands on was a barell. This was not as bad as it sounded though because it meant that his clothing could also serve as his bed and his house. Eventually he was even allowed to become a member of our ship's crew whereupon we made the obvious choice and determined that he was now taking levels of pirate! Arrrgh!

And thus we had Rusty: the ninja/pirate who lived in a barell.

 

[Shadowslayer]

We had a pirate campaign once, and most of it took place on the seas and in the islands around the Sea of Fallen Stars in Faerun. It didn't require us to go inland too often, but when we did, we often bumped into a kobold bandit who always managed to have some pretty brutish flunkies. His thing was to demand a toll for travelling on "his" road, or "his" bridge etc.

The DM always gave the kobold a cheesy "chop-socky" accent.

"Hey Joe. Likee my new bridge? You pay toll, Joe." (none of us was named Joe) Very un-PC, but it seemed to get funnier every time. It helped that the DM didn't overuse him, and this DM had a talent for hitting us with this guy when we least expected him.

DM: You hear a voice coming out of the bushes...."Hey Joe"
us: (slapping our foreheads) Oh no, not THIS guy.

Anyway, we'd kick the crap out of his gang, but he always got away.

Anyway, I think the DM modeled this guy after the little submarine dude on Gilligan's Island...the one that didn't know the war was over.

good times