The Oddest Thing You've Done As A DM When Running A Game

[Savage Wombat]

I had a group of heroes "killed" by a villain's magic item, and then wake up in the bodies of a previous group of adventurers killed previously by the same villain. They used their knowledge of the villain to prevent him obtaining the magic item, altering time and preventing their own deaths.

The fun part was the new PCs I issued them - they were specifically chosen to be as unlike the old characters as possible, while still retaining useful abilities. So when the huge, half-fensir brick fighter woke up in the body of the little purple lizard-thing wizard, he was quite surprised.

A similar adventure, in a different campaign, had the heroes "accidentally" free an evil spirit that stole a time machine and altered the past. The PCs were suddenly switched with the alternate-universe versions of themselves, and had to penetrate the dungeon and combat a demi-lich to set things straight. Fortunately, when they prevented the time-switch, the PCs annihilated by the demi-lich were restored.

Why yes, I do watch Star Trek a lot.

 

[Zappo]

I use the in media res technique quite often. It's the way I regularly start one-shot adventures at cons, when I have little time and I want to have the PCs involved immediately.

The weirdest thing... hmmm...

Back when we played OD&D, at one of the climactic moment of the campaign, the avatars of a few gods came down in the hall where the PCs were to fight a certain outer deity. The power level of the fight was such that the PCs' actions were rather irrelevant, so I had the players play the avatars instead. The aim of the whole scene was to have them understand how long they had to walk before they could challenge said outer deity (who of course escaped) and hope to live.

However, the weirdest thing is what I'm going to do now that I'm playing Monte Cook's Dead Gods maxi adventure (converted from 2e). You see, at a certain point...

DEAD GODS SPOILER ALERT (I mean it)!
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...the PCs find a device that had been used to record the memories of a party of adventurers that went exploring certain ruins on Pelion (Arborea), centuries ago. When they activate the device, they get thrown into that party's minds and relive the experience. The DM (me ) gives each player a new character sheet, and they play a whole chapter of the adventure with those characters, during which they learn many important things. And, at the end of the chapter, lies nothing less than a well-planned TPK to snap the characters back to the present! The DM is invited to make the experience as alien as possible, by using very different characters, changing the music, or even gaming in different room from usual. No possibility for the last one, but I'm going to use weird characters.

 

[Zappo]

I recalled another weird thing I did! 2e Planescape campaign. One of the player characters had to go off the stage for a good chunk of time to craft a powerful magic item. The player was planning on the fact that a big adventure had just ended and they probably had some time before the next one.

Of course, it wasn't so. The characters were dragged in a very urgent task after a few days. The player however had been working towards that item for a long time (IMC, it takes more than money to craft powerful items), and didn't want to stop. They had to go to a prime material world (namely, Krynn), to prevent a powerful Arcanaloth from installing a puppet governor at the head of the major Good nation (namely, Solamnia). However, the party's ends weren't exactly good either, so I decided that the Krynnish gods would send an agent to keep an eye on them. A dragon seemed too obvious.

Problem solved: I handed the player whose character was missing a copy of the Movanic Deva entry of the Monstrous Compendium and told him "You use this. You are going to tag along with the party incognito and make sure they don't blow up Palanthas or something".

The player read the powers of that critter and stayed mouth-open for a while - then I said "You must not be discovered. For this reason, you will have to be very careful when using your powers". He played it well, polymorphing into a human, using the spell immunity (or whatever) ability of the deva to avoid detections, and pretending to be a fighter. A character once discovered him, but he made the mistake of immediately stating it - to which the deva player reacted with a Limited Wish to undo the action the character made the round before to find him. It was very funny!

 

[Other Guy]

Poor Relm

Hmm. I didn't do this one, but once during a big fight with a dragon a small, Gnomish wizard appeared in the room, looked around, confused, and then the next round he teleported away.

I've had a letter delivered to the PCs once that explained how one of the other PCs (mine -- we switch DMs every so often, so he wasn't present at that time), a lawful good Dwarvern Defender/Cleric, had accidently given the souls of everyone in the PCs' kingdoms to a greater demon. The letter was very distressful and begged the PCs for help. The party returned immediately to kill the Dwarf, only to find that he and a cohort had already taken care of the mess. Poor Relm, he always was hideously evil deep down inside -- then again, so were we all.

 

[Zappo]

This one I didn't do, but I played in the adventure. I challenge anyone to beat it in terms of weirdness.

Comedic Sci-fi RPG. The characters are stuck on a certain planet with no money. However, after a few days, a big metal concert and music contest is taking place. Since we had a couple characters who could play and sing decently, we decided to participate in the contest to try and win the prize.

When we were ready to roll our characters' skill checks, the DM told us to produce a tape with the music we were going to play. An original one. Serious.

We stopped the game, went to my computer, loaded up a music program and spent the following few hours making the most braindead excuse for music that could ever be heard, then taped it and handed it to the DM.
We did win the prize, though.

 

[River]

I broke one of my characters down into 6 sub characters. He touched a funky artifact. I replaced his 8th leven LN neutral Dwarven Fighter with 6 6th level characcters



1 CN Barbarian (anger)
1 NG Bard (Romance)
1 LG Paladin (benevolence)
1 LE Fighter (malice)
1 NE Expert (Greed)
1 LN Dwarvenb Fighter (Duty)

Now only three of these characters were present at any given time. A random selection of three that changed whenever I felt like it. (about once an hour of play time). The party then went on a quest to reconstitute their friend. The player did a good job of playing the various personalities, and the evil versions kept betraying the party. Eventually over several sessions The barbarian was killed by enemies in combat, the LE fighter was killed by 2 other versions of himself after trying to kill the characters henchman.

Eventually the party wacked the NE expert for one too many betrayals. By the time the character was reconstituted his average Align was LG, and I reconstituted him as a Fighter/Paladin.

 

[Wolfspirit]

My DM is very, very evil. One night my party went to sleep in the woods while traveling to a city, and when we wook up we found ourselves in an inn in the city (which should have been about 5 days away). After that we've begun to discover that we've been here about 4 days, even though we have a lot of memory missing.

Now we just have to figure out we were up to before that got such a high level magic user angry at us (a limited wish didn't restore the memory)

 

[Eosin the Red]

I accidentally spit on one of my players? Does that count? No, really I did. Very embarassing.

 

[Nareau]

I replaced a character

The PC's had just finished clearing out a dungeon near town, and returned to the inn to rest. They decided to send someone (a PC and an NPC merchant) with a wagon full of gear to a larger city nearby, to sell stuff. Unfortunately, the PC was ambushed along the way by half a dozen evil cultists.

They spent some time torturing/interrogating the PC, then sent someone (who used magic to look just like him) back in his place. I gave the player a new character sheet, some mission objectives, and let him play his replacement. It was heavy-handed, but I think fun in the end.

 

[K'llan Dax]

When we were ready to roll our characters' skill checks, the DM told us to produce a tape with the music we were going to play. An original one. Serious.

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A similar situation to one my friend was in at a con. He was playing a bard, and after deciding to sing a bardsong, he was informed by the DM that he would need to get up and sing. Now, in a comedy situation, it's all well and good, but in a serious (as serious as D&D ever gets) RP session, it has no place. If a DM told me that I'd have to sing ooc for my character to have an in game effect, I'd sing, smile, and just wait for combat... Heh- I'd be surprised if the DM was conscious after the 2nd round