what house traditions do you have?

[Terwox]

My gaming group has a large delineation of types of smoke breaks, or smokies.

There's pre-gamey, post-pre-gamey (we never start until after post-pre,) post-eatey, Laura's leaving smokie, Christian's leaving smokie, Focus smokie... all in all, my darn group spends more time smoking and socializing than actually playing. Frustrates me sometimes, as I'm one of the few non-smokers!

 

[BaldHero]

we have the Necklace of Shame for anyone that does really stupidstuff, like casting spells they dont have, or what have you. We have a Tikki altar that we leave all our foreign coins for in the hopes of buying better dice rolls, and we have Bobcat day! Our annual gamers only dinner.

 

[ssampier]

I never thought about it before. We don't have too many traditions: Re-roll die if goes off the table, over a game book, or any other non-flat surface; if you spill it, you must clean it up (using appropriate towels, napkins, etc). Some people apparently don't know proper manners.

I like the pun rule. But then again, I'm the one who makes puny jokes. Everyone else usually groans or ignores it (about 40/60).

My gaming group has a large delineation of types of smoke breaks, or smokies.

There's pre-gamey, post-pre-gamey (we never start until after post-pre,) post-eatey, Laura's leaving smokie, Christian's leaving smokie, Focus smokie... all in all, my darn group spends more time smoking and socializing than actually playing. Frustrates me sometimes, as I'm one of the few non-smokers!

You'd have more game-time if you just play outdoors. As a fellow non-smoker I empathize not wanting to join them, though.

 

[dutorn]

If there's ever a dark room, hallway, corner, etc., we "attack the darkness"
We use a lot of the stuff from the summoner skit, we all have ogre slayers, and are always out to do girls

 

[Barak]

Well I'm the DM, and by now, my players know that if I announce a smoke break, and don't ask a player to step out with me (yes, I stay downwind of the non-smokers) for a private chat, it means a long combat is coming up.

Also, if I give a player The Dirty Look, it means he better shut up with OOC crap, or Bad Things Happen.

 

[Testament]

Stolen from the old Gamer Jargon website, my games use the Moose Rule, in which you put one hand to your head in sort of an antler shape to denote OOC talk. In my dorm, it was so well known that people who didn't play but wanted to stop and interrupt us for a while used it.

Demiurge out.

The "Half-Moose!"

 

[StupidSmurf]

Spilling a drink on the carpet is called "Making a sacrifice to GooFoo". GooFoo is the patron god of carpet spills.

I used to use this acronym: SFTOID (prounounced SIF-toid). It stands for Sixty Feet, Trails Off Into Darkness. As in, "The hallway goes east SIFTOID".

 

[Imperialus]

We have one of AlsiH2o's "Demon Head" dice rollers that is used only when the players need good rolls. We refer to asking for it to be unveiled as "selling your soul" (looks like Jack Chick was right).

Actually my group has somthing like that too... It's just a yahtzee cup that we call the lucky cup... The DM is not allowed to touch it.

 

[Chaldfont]

Actually my group has somthing like that too... It's just a yahtzee cup that we call the lucky cup... The DM is not allowed to touch it.

We bought a wooden dice roller at gencon this year. We call it the Tower of Power. We started going to it for really important rolls but, over time, it seems to roll either really high or really low. So "going to the Tower" is always a time for suspense.

We also have a few of those golfball-sized d20's. They are used for "floor rolls"--long distance rolls on the bare concrete floor of the basement where we play. Floor rolls are only for the most important rolls.

We stick up the character sheets of all dead PCs on the "Wall of Valhalla".

When given a choice of two paths, we always take the right: "If you always go right, you'll never go wrong."

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

We have a Pun Fund. It's a small ceramic piggy bank with a large cork where the nose should be. An out of character pun is .25. A war story that sidetracks the game is .50. The money is used to defray costs of our Chrismas party, Halloween party, or summer cookouts. For some reason, the female gamers seem to end up being the most consistent enforcers. A groaner is usually followed by a female voice saying "Pay the Pig!"

We used to have something similar, but we had a Bunny bank. The call when something sidetracked the game or was way OOC was "Pay the Bunny!" It lasted for a few months, but once people started bringing change to the game in order to have money on hand to pay, or dropping money in the bunny before they started talking, we decided to stop using it as it became more of a joke that a useful way of limiting OOC talk.

Now, about the only true tradition we have is spending a good amount of time on OOC stuff. If we'd learn to keep the jokes and ooc talk down during the game, we'd probably accomplish a heck of a lot more, but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.