Running Gags

[Goodsport]

In one of my Space: 1889 sessions I ran, our band of Victorian-era adventurers stumbled upon a small, seemingly deserted Martian village. I even made sounds of the whisping wind through the empty, dusty streets (replete with rolling tumbleweed). I continued describing the scene as their eyes scanned the area until they saw an elderly Martian sitting cross-legged making that whisping-wind sound. We all had a good laugh.

That was an homage to all the times there were dramatic drum beats in the musical score in almost every Mel Brooks film, only for the camera to pan sideways to reveal a guy actually beating on a drum.

It became a staple of every Space: 1889 session with that group since then, where Old Man Martian (as he was eventually dubbed by the group) would suddenly appear for a brief moment making that whisping-wind sound (at the appropriate time, of course) once a session.

Had the campaign lasted two more sessions, the group probably would've met Old Man Martian a bit more substantially, as I was actually making plans for him to somehow be involved in a session's plot (such as OMM suddenly getting kidnapped as he was making those whisping-wind sounds or whatever).


-G

 

[coz]

"Bobby goes to the wall" or "Bobby went to the wall": One character in a campaing I used to run, at some point was defending a town from impending attack, it was a high-level game, and he was in charge of the town guardsmen, etc. At some point he left the town's command center, and he issued orders to pass the message along that he was going to the wall. From then on, if anyone asked about the whereabouts of said character, the NPC would reply with something like "I heard that Bobby went to the wall".

"I'm going to smoke some knowledge": One character in the same campaign was a user of a certain 'herbal' remedy shall we say also happened to be a follower of the god of knowledge, somehow this 'herb' became associated with the god of knowledge. The god of knowledge, who never forgets anything, found this extremely humorous.

"Bruce Almighty": Another character in the same campaign, happened to be a cleric of the god of knowledge (who had no name), would refer to his deity as Bruce Almighty...this was two years before the movie of the same name came out.

"I search for trouble": Another character, this time a halfling druid, would, when bored, decide to "search for trouble", she would even make a search roll for it...to this day she does it in other people's games, and other people do it in my games...what a helpful tool for GMs who want to spring 'trouble' on their hapless PCs.

*Arms spread wide* "You're going to have to be more specific.": In a game of hunters hunted (old skool 2e vampire supplement for playing mortal hunters), the PC group would have a habit of hitting the local goth/industrial club (Club Morose) to look for vampire or supernatural activity (you could say they were searching for trouble, but this reference comes before that one), but back to the tale at hand, they would go up to the bartender, and ask: "Seen anything weird tonite?" or something to that effect, and the bartender, with arms spread wide, would say "You're going to have to be more specific." For the uninitiated, a typical Goth/Industrial club will have folks dressed all in black, usually looking like punks, goths, metal heads, doms (and their slaves), transvestites, and folks in fetish wear. The above quote ended up in many of my other games over the years.

And then of course there one of my favorite local cons, Running Gagg (www.runninggagg.org), run by the Geneseo Area Gaming Group in upstate NY, as I understand it, Gag was a squirrell wizard of some sort who showed up in a member of that group's campaign often enough that he became a Running Gag...I wasn't there, I only know parts of the story, second or third hand.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I am made to promise not to 'Shoot the captain in the face and push him out the airlock'.

So you have to choose between one or the other?


I remember some more running gags:

"Hans the Guardian" (This would be "John" or "Jim" the guardian in English, or something like that)
One of our players got a special magical sword that was named Somethingsomething the Guardian. You could fight with it, or you could stick it in a pile of gold and give let it guard something. When threatened, it would animate that pile of gold, which would attack.

Anyway, he asked the DM whether he could rename the sword, and when the DM allowed it, he called it "Hans the Guardian".

It stuck, and now whenever we want to name something, it gets old, everyday names. "Does that mountain have a name?" "Yes, it's Bernd". "How's the BBEG's name?" "Bert-Randolph" and so on.


I'd like to order some pizza
In my game, the party came upon a demon who was trapped in a magic circle. A wizard used planar binding in him and would try to convince the thing to do his bidding, getting one try per day (and obviously he had not succeeded yet). Of corse, the demon just wants to get out, and has no qualms about lying to the party.

So he starts "Let me out of here, I'll give you whatever you want in exchange for my freedom" And one player actually responds. "Yea, I'd like to order some pizza". Turns out he was calling the pizza delivery at that exact moment, but for one second I thought he actually fell for it. The poor guy had a lot of trouble understanding the girl on the phone, with all the laughter around him as we nearly soiled ourselves because of that.


The magic handbrake
The players were discussing their options as they were confronted with an enemy with damage reduction. As they go through their inventory, one player blurts out "I also have a magic handbrake!" She meant hand crossbow To that day, whenever DR comes up, we break out the magic handbrakes.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

"I search for trouble": Another character, this time a halfling druid, would, when bored, decide to "search for trouble", she would even make a search roll for it...to this day she does it in other people's games, and other people do it in my games...what a helpful tool for GMs who want to spring 'trouble' on their hapless PCs.

That reminds me of the Knowledge (what's good for ya) skill

 

[demiurge1138]

"Muffin Dies Tonight!": In the D&D game I played in, from about 6-7th level, all of us were constantly outshone by Muffin, the halfling druid's riding dog. Being an animal companion, it had a lot of hit dice and very good strength, and it was infinitely luckier than all of us. Muffin tripped the giant spider. Muffin pulled half of us out of quicksand. Muffin tore out the throat of a runehound. So, we imagined, the DMs were plotting to kill the damn dog (the fact that pretty much everything went after Muffin before too long made it apparent). So, of course, pretty much before every game, was the litany of declarations from us players that "Muffin dies tonight!"

"Dark times are upon us": Same game. The DM more focused on storytelling took practically every oppurtunity he could to remind us, the characters, that "dark times are upon us", so much so that it became standard practice to greet NPCs that were obviously plot-important with the line.

"Are you made of poison?!": A game I DMed many moons ago, in which an air demon (from some Dragon magazine or other) was knocked unconcious, bound and healed so it could be interrogated. The only problem was, of course, it only spoke Abyssal, which nobody spoke. After a few abortive attempts to communicate, everyone wanted to leave it to die, except for the lizardfolk fighter, who wanted to eat it. He tried to speak to the thing in "the universal language of mathematics" (his words), before settling on the time-honored tradition of speaking in a language you know, but slowly and loudly. The question, of course, was "are you made of poison?!", repeated over and over again in the manner of a tourist from a bad comedy. This has since become the appropriate response to any stupid question.

Demiurge out.

 

[Richards]

My son played a dwarven barbarian in a one-shot game I ran (actually, it was Piratecat's Of Sound Mind), who chose a greataxe as his primary weapon. However, he decided that "greataxe" sounded a bit too presumptuous, so he called it his "pretty-good-axe." The thing is, throughout the entire adventure, he always did way more damage in combat than any of the other PCs, so after each battle, his brother (playing a human ranger/druid) would turn to the dwarven barbarian and comment, "You know, that is a pretty good axe."

Johnathan

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Hmmm. Two signature tactical lines:

"Hit me!" as the halfling rogue (diaglo, incidentally) calls for the sorcerer to target a fireball on him, relying on his evasion to save him. It's now the catch phrase for something near suicidal.

"Fireball formation" -- for when the group all clusters up and one spell could get them all. Used as a plan or a warning, as in "You realize we're all in fireball formation here, right?" or "We take up fireball formation outside the door, and open it."

 

[jerichothebard]

Another one we had was a princess held captive by a dragon. In one of those same campaigns, I used to produce issues of the "Waterdeep Daily Trumpet" for the players to read before the game sessions. One running gag came from the "looking for adventurers" ads I put in the first one. I put in something about a dragon holding a noble lady captive and the family needing adventurers to rescue her. The players didn't bite on that plot hook. As new issues came out, the rewards became bigger and better and it became a running gag in the group to see "how things are going with the dragon lady". A couple of stories ran about adventuring groups disappearing or getting wiped out trying a rescue. The rewards shifted from just money to offering to pay bards throughout the western realms to sing the rescuers praises for years to come and other rewards like that intended to bring in people more concerned with glory than money. The city government ran articles warning of the dangers posed by this dragon and advising people to avoid it at all costs and so on. The players never bit at the plot hook and the gag ran until the end of the campaign.

That's BEAUTIFUL! I'm going to have to steal that one...


do you still have the files?

 

[the Lorax]

Another one that I was reminded of this last weekend is:

Monkeys!?! - which is said in a tone of abject horror

Originally it comes from the movie The Rundown where the characters are
beset by monkeys in th jungle while it compromising positions.

Later, when I running an adventure with a werebaboon leading and a bunch of normal baboons, the party was having a hell of a time with the baboons running up and grappling them. One PC dropping his polearm to wrestle with the monkey, had another monkey run up and steal his weapon. The party and the players have had a fear of Monkeys ever since.

I have even broken down and bought a huge monkey mini that I cant wait to spring on the players.

 

[Dark Jezter]

I once played in a campaign where the DM had a recurring NPC named Blackleaf (female human rogue) who would bump into the PCs, die before the session was over in some completely embarrasing fashion (poison dart trap, engulfed by a gelatinous cube, drained by stirges, etc), and then inexplicably be alive again a session or two later much like Kenny from South Park. The character of Blackleaf was, of course, a reference to the well-known (at least among gamers) Chick tract Dark Dungeons.