The funniest encounter or moment in your campaign

I ran my players through Crucible of Freya. They found the guard tower in the northwest of the ruined castle, and saw one orc sentry on top, but he wasn't being too active in his lookout duty. The rogue and one of the rangers decided to climb the tower to try to take out the orc silently.

The ranger rolled better and made it to the top first, so he waited just below the battlements for the rogue to catch up. Unforunately, the rogue rolled a 1 on his next climb roll. I was feeling nice, so I let him have a reflex save to see if he might catch something as he fell. He rolled another 1. The 30' fall caused some damage, so I gave him a will save at DC10+damage to see if he could resist yelling out in pain. He failed that roll too. Here's where it gets funny.

The orc stuck his head over the edge of the tower to see what the noise was. The ranger was right there, so he says he wants to pull the orc over the edge of the battlement. I tell him to make a climbing roll first to see if he can keep a good grip while he makes his grapple attempt on the orc. He rolls another 1. I give him a reflex save, and he fails, so he too falls. The rest of the party is laughing pretty hard at this point.

One of the players says "You should make a roll to see if the orc starts laughing and falls out of the tower." I thought "what the heck" and rolled the D20, and got yet another 1, so the orc fell right on top of the rogue and ranger.

The story is funny in another way, too. The worst part was they finally killed all the orcs except for three that were running away, and they didn't bother to chase. The problem was the players were actually higher level than the module recommends, so I had changed the orcs to orc werewolves (the players obviously knew that by this point). I asked if they wanted to chase, and they said no. For the next ten or so sessions, they kept hearing from various NPC's how dumb it was to let the werewolves go, and eventually they started hearing about various groups of orc werewolves attacking outlying farms and small towns. The players never took the hint to do anything about it, so after three more full moons, I figured pretty much every orc in the mountains was a werewolf, and they came down in force on the civilized lands of the world. It's now a major campaign issue that every orc in the world is now a werewolf. It's made orcs considerably more formidable than usual, and all because the players were more interested in looting bodies than finishing off the last three orcs.
 

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This thread reminds me of a link someone posted on another board re a bunch of quotes he's collected from his gaming group over the last few years.

Some of them were real howlers. The one I remember best came right after they fled a battle with some trolls.

"Dammit! If we hadn't lost that battle, it could be us down there right now eating those sheep and raping those cows."

Anyone remember this, and have the link?!
 

The wizard in the campaign I DM wanted to cast Detect Thoughts to scan some of the guests at an inn where the party was staying. Not wanting to be seen casting, and noting that Detect Thoughs has a duration of 3 minutes, he decided to go to the outhouse to cast it.

Much hilarity ensued, especially when he stated firmly "And I'm taking Wesley [his weasel familiar] with me."

While he was out there, he decided to take advantage of the fact that he was in the outhouse anyway, and kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

That's when the orcs attacked. I ruled it was a move-equivalent action to pull up his pants. He used the remaining MEA to walk out of the outhouse, promptly failed a Spot and two Listen checks, and was criticalled from behind with a greataxe and reduced to -7 hp.

The orc brigand who took him down then stole his gold, his masterwork dagger, and his spell component pouch (hey, it's a pouch - might have gold or gems in it!)

The poor wizard went the rest of the adventure with a scar on the back of his head, dirty underwear and unable to cast half his spells due to not having components.

He's considering taking a level of Ranger just for the "favoured enemy: Orc" :D
 

here's another funny episode that happened in real life while we were gaming, not in the game.

our group played on weekends on the campus of the University of San Francisco, which is a Jesuit-run school. the GM was attending there, so knew where to find nice big empty class rooms. having all that space to spread out in and a big blackboard to write on was great.

anyways, one day we're gaming in the class room and we notice a couple of priests peering in through the window in the door at us. i guess they were trying to figure out what exactly we were doing.

one of the other gamers says, "I hope they don't try to kick us out."

i reply, "Oh don't worry; we can take them. they can only use blunt weapons."
 

Long ago, I was running an FR campaign. In the early portions of the campaign, the PC's ran into a couple of ogres as a random encounter while traveling the northern dalelands. The PC's stood back, not sure if they wanted to fight. The ogres hung back, not sure what they should do. Finally, one of the PC's steps forward and asks if the ogres had seen any goblins about. The enounter ended with the ogres being convinced that the local constables were offering a reward for goblin testacles. The goblin population declined for the remainder of the campaign.

A couple a decades ago, I was playing in a long running Rolemaster campaign. May favorite character was Jarex the "weapons master" -- kill anything, anywhere, anyway and I always managed to pull the open-ended rolls when I needed them, as long as I wasn't on horseback. When mounted with a lance, I'd fumble and polevault EVERY time.

Before that I played a Rohirrim (sp?) warrior in MERP who did the same darn thing. It is SO embarrassing being from a people known for their mounted combat skill and having to dismount to fight.

Long, long ago I ran a lenghty 1E campaign which became known as the "Telgar Campaign" after a barbarian because of his amazing exploits. Telgar was strong and had a strength bow, which he almost never used. When he did pull out his mighty bow it was to stop a villain from fleeing. Try as I might NONE of my villains ever escaped. Not one. Have them go invisible and retreat, he'd roll natural 20's. Had a drow mounted on a nightmare flying and preparing to go ethereal. Telgar gets the initiative. Only the nightmare got away.

The guy who played Telgar, Jeff, also played in the rolemaster campaign where I played Jarex. Jeff could somehow, 9 times outa 10, read the GM's mind and tell us what was coming next. We were fleeing a city in the Great Kingdom. His character says something about "I think a dragon is chasing us." I wheel my horse around and, sure enough, here comes a dragon. I get a bright idea to try and charge. I already mentioned my pole vaulting prowess.

Lastly, every dwarf I ever played, regardless of system--I'm talking even "Powers and Perils" and other off the wall games--died of poison.
 

One of the players in my group was playing a Minotaur fighter back in the days of 2e. It was a Planescape campaign and we encountered an Abishai in a cavern (the other details of the adventure escape me).

The Abishai took flight, so most of the party readied missile fire except the Minotaur who begged the wizard for a fly spell saying, "I can take him down in two rounds!"

The wizard cast the spell and the Minotaur flew up to fight the Abishai hand to hand. In the first round of combat, the Abishai hit the Minotaur with its poison sting, the Minotaur failed his save and dropped like a rock.

The phrase "I can take him down in two rounds" is now used to denote fatal overconfidence and is usually followed by "Too bad he can take you down in one".
 

Champions: I once managed to 'kill' a Champions campaign, with the help of the rest of the group of course. Suffering from a near total lack of imagination at the time I came up with a Captain America rip-off Super-Cop called "Steve", he just carried an enormous sidearm instead of that 'wussy' shield.

In the first 'adventure' of that campain I arrived only after the others had already managed to subdue all of the 'agents (ie: think Followers) and were standing around discussing things like if they should form a group in that town and what the Agents had been there to accomplish. When I found them I of course attempted to bring them in for questioning (not arrest) to find out just what in heck was going on. Unfortunately for all of us one of the others was a "Egoist" (ie: Psi powers) with some major paranoia and the Danger Sense power. Right after I shouted my "Freeze! Nobody make any sudden moves, and raise your hands to where I can see them, slowly!" this Egoist turns around and lays me out with one mental stun-bolt.

After this the game devolved into a pattern. Villians would appear and do something 'bad', players (sans me) would arrive and defeat said bad-guys, then I'd arrive and chase the PC's around trying to arrest them. It's not like I didn't have charges on them! They were wanted for many things, all legit: Resisting Arrest, Assaulting a Police Officer (me), Manslaughter (hey, the PC didn't mean to kill that officer, honest!), Fleeing the Scene of a Crime, Tresspassing, and a few others I've forgotten over the years since then. If the one wasn't paranoid and the other PC a murderer (by accident) they'd probably have been able to straighten the whole thing out... *sigh* :p Still, till the GM pulled the plug in frustration, we were all having a lot of fun!

DnD3e: If you get or read Dungeon magazine you may recognise the adventure/dungeon. In a FR campain I was in (we switched DM's) we went to investigatea 'tainted' well outside of town. Turned out this 'well' was just an opening to an underground cavern network with water flowing along the bottom. This water was, except in one spot we found, at least 3 feet deep (1 meter). Now the funny part, my character is a Ghostwise Halfling Wizard who can't really swim and is all of 2' 11" tall (about 290cm). I didn't find it at all amusing to spend most of that time riding on the shoulders of various party members. :rolleyes:

Hatchling Dragon
 

:o OK. Taladas. The party was fighting something that could petrify. Two of the members of the party was a politition/gladiator Taladan minotaur(L.N.) and a kender "handler"(N.G.).

The kender had been warned NOT to steal the minotaur's ring of regeneration ever again...and this warning was the last warning. Well the kender must have had a bad short-term memory cause' the first thing he did in this battle was steal the damn ring. (kenders really are amazing--stealing a ring being worn in the middle of battle of the strongest fighter in the group)

Shortly thereafter, the kender gets turned to stone with no chance to unpetrify him. The minotaur (and Jay)was so infuriated he, with a battle cry like no other, picked up the lifeless statue and threw it at a tree. I (as the DM) never laughed so hard in my life.

After 2 game hours (and a week long arguement between the two players--we were in high school after all) of trying to put him back together, they realized they couldn't.

he he he:D
 


This happened in a 2E campaign where I was introducing a group of total newbies to the game. I was running a modified "Return to the Keep on the Borderlands", and the party was exploring the kobold caves. The rgr/drd had found a pit trap and they'd just moved past it. Someone got the bright idea to put out the lantern so that whoever created the trap wouldn't see them coming. The poor human bard was somewhat unhappy, since he couldn't see in the dark, but they move on. Next thing they know is that what appears to be a large boulder (actually made of papiermache, with six hornet nests inside it) is rolling down the tunnel towards them. That's when everyone goes crazy.

The dwarf fighter (slower than anyone else) tries to run away. The bard is standing there going "Why is everyone screaming? What happened? I can't see!!" The rgr/drd tries to flatten himself against the wall and grab the bard at the same time, stumbles, and slams the latter against the wall, pulping his nose. The elf ftr/wiz throws herself flat against the floor (?!). The clr/wiz is the only one who manages to get out of the way. The "boulder" careens off the rgr and the brd, bounces on and over the prone ftr/wiz, and follows the dwarf down the tunnel. She reaches the pit trap, tries to jump over and fails, falling ten feet. As she groggily rises, the boulder lands on her, falling apart and releasing a swarm of hornets.

The dwarf is screaming down in the pit, and as the hornets swarm up and over everyone else, they run screaming out of the tunnel and throw themselves into the stream outside. All except the clr/wiz, who bravely runs back in to throw a rope to the dwarf, who climbs out. The pair, covered in welts, rush back out and into the stream, with the dwarf not watching where she's going, and landing on the bard and knocking her out. I think they returned to the keep and refused to leave for the next week :)
 

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