p_johnston
Adventurer
So after years of playing my group has started to amass quite a few interesting, funny, and often silly stories. I assume the same can be said of most groups who end up playing long enough. My question to the community are which are your favorite stories from your years of playing tabletop? Either real life or in game.
I'll start out with what my group calls "The Iron Flask Incident."
So in ages past when 5e was young I decided to put together a D&D group from a bunch of my college friends. We were all young hopeful things with a not so great grasp of the rules, but we still had fun. The problem was that one of the rules I had a not so great grasp of was how to build balanced encounters. This led to a.... let's call it unusually high causality rate among characters for our first few sessions. I had also (Probably foolishly) let each character start with a slightly cursed magic item (Berserker longsword, Wand of cure light wounds/wild magic, A Driftglobe that never turns off, rope of climbing/strangulation, etc).
So one of my players (Let's call him Lucky) is introducing a new character and I have to come up with his magic item. I have nothing. I've had to come up with like 12 different cursed items over 4 sessions and I am out of ideas so I turn to the DMG and start searching for things that might work which is where I find the item Iron Flask. So I present Lucky with an item card that reads "This Iron flask is of the kind used to trap extraplanar beings of extreme strength for indefinite periods of time. This flask radiates power though as if it is unable to fully contain whatever is trapped inside." Upon sharing this with the group every single member told him "Do not open the flask."Also it is worth noting that I did not know what was in the flask. "Surely" I thought to myself "No one would be so foolhardy that they would open the flask and risk destroying themselves and everyone around them. I mean who would risk a TPK for simple curiosity? Should give me a couple of weeks to figure it out." Cut to the end of the session where Lucky pulls me aside and says "I go into the woods and open the flask" and I just stare at him for a good 30 seconds silent while my brain goes "shitshitshitshitshit what's in the flask?" Finally I just look at him and go "A Balor comes out." 2 1/2 hours later the session finally ends with a city destroyed, another player changed into a gnome infected with demon blood and trapped in the flask, and Lucky handing in both his character and the flask to me to do with as I like.
I'll start out with what my group calls "The Iron Flask Incident."
So in ages past when 5e was young I decided to put together a D&D group from a bunch of my college friends. We were all young hopeful things with a not so great grasp of the rules, but we still had fun. The problem was that one of the rules I had a not so great grasp of was how to build balanced encounters. This led to a.... let's call it unusually high causality rate among characters for our first few sessions. I had also (Probably foolishly) let each character start with a slightly cursed magic item (Berserker longsword, Wand of cure light wounds/wild magic, A Driftglobe that never turns off, rope of climbing/strangulation, etc).
So one of my players (Let's call him Lucky) is introducing a new character and I have to come up with his magic item. I have nothing. I've had to come up with like 12 different cursed items over 4 sessions and I am out of ideas so I turn to the DMG and start searching for things that might work which is where I find the item Iron Flask. So I present Lucky with an item card that reads "This Iron flask is of the kind used to trap extraplanar beings of extreme strength for indefinite periods of time. This flask radiates power though as if it is unable to fully contain whatever is trapped inside." Upon sharing this with the group every single member told him "Do not open the flask."Also it is worth noting that I did not know what was in the flask. "Surely" I thought to myself "No one would be so foolhardy that they would open the flask and risk destroying themselves and everyone around them. I mean who would risk a TPK for simple curiosity? Should give me a couple of weeks to figure it out." Cut to the end of the session where Lucky pulls me aside and says "I go into the woods and open the flask" and I just stare at him for a good 30 seconds silent while my brain goes "shitshitshitshitshit what's in the flask?" Finally I just look at him and go "A Balor comes out." 2 1/2 hours later the session finally ends with a city destroyed, another player changed into a gnome infected with demon blood and trapped in the flask, and Lucky handing in both his character and the flask to me to do with as I like.
