What's the longest running "inside joke" at your table?

[demiurge1138]

One of our longest in-jokes was "is it a lawn gnome?" or anything to that effect, gnome wise.

Let me explain.

I was DMing a "prehistoric campaign" (all of the character races were reptilian), and the party was about to go off to annihilate the troglodytes when they decide to spilt up, reconnoiter, and shop. The fighter goes into a bar, has a drink, and finds an obviously drunk and highly panicked looking kobold ordering himself yet another ale. The fighter sits down and asks him if he has any information on what the trogs are plotting. The drunken kobold says that he's a spy, and that the trogs have a big weapon in the works, "a wossname, something, lawn gnome!".

The guy playing the fighter is naturally suspicious, and rolls a Sense Motive check.

Specifically, he rolls a 1 on a Sense Motive check.

From that point on, whenever he saw anything he didn't recognize, he'd instantly say, "is it a lawn gnome?"

Demiurge out.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

"What's the damage on a 4th-level fighter?"

In a very high power 2e campaign I was a player in we ran "How the Mighty have Fallen" and "Rod of Seven Parts".

In one of those adventures we wished for a Deck of Many Things. Of course, the DM tried to screw us by putting it under the control of a high level wizard, so we wished to control the Deck of Many Things.

Then we drew the Intelligence-draining card multiple times, and since it belonged to the wizard... you can see where this is going. An Int 4 wizard won't be menacing anyone with spells.

Since then we kept getting the "keep" card and "4th-level fighter" card. The DM combined our keeps into one, so it became pure mithral, then adamantine blocks masoned with mithril.

One day we were attacked by a mass of orcs, so we asked "what's the damage of a 4th-level fighter?" The DM said "not much" but the dwarf fighter (with his uber-Strength) said "No, what's the damage of a thrown 4th-level fighter?"

Well, they were more useful that way.

In "How the Mighty are Fallen" we also threw a little girl named Misty into a mythallar. Anyone who touches a Mythallar dies with no saving throw... unless they come back as Mystryl or Mystra. Well, she was amused by it.

 

[AuroraGyps]

Here's a few I remember:

The GM for our Amber DRPG game was always mixing up the names Osric & Finndo, which are from the books and are the two oldest princes of Amber. After a while of doing this, and us correcting him, he got in the habit of saying," Osric... Finndo... !" Well, this made it's way into other games, so that everytime someone said one name and meant another, they'd say ,"Osric...Finndo... !" Later on, we added the names Kendrick & Kincaid to the saying (same GM, same problem... but he was just asking for it with those two names).

I have no idea which game these next two started in because they were used everywhere. Everytime someone was trying to remember the name of someone like a bad guy or someone we'd met, they'd say "ya'know, the guy... w/ the face". There were a few versions of this for people, places, and things.
There was also "SG" which stands for "some guy". "SG" was the guy that was not important enough to have a name. PC: "Who else is around?" GM: "SG." SG had a girlfriend too, SC (Some Chick).

 

[Quicken]

Who goes there?
Rodger!

This came from a game where all the characters were sneaking around on the deck of a pirate ship in the dark until one player decided to walk. On a couple of pirates hearing him stomp across the deck they called out "Who goes there?" to which he lied "Rodger". Sadly he was not mistaken for a jolly pirate called Rodger and combat ensued. So now anytime a player is asked their name the temptation is always there.

Nayfack

This has become an addopted term of abuse since I have a big "Forbidden Planet" poster on my wall that notes the producer "Nicholas Nayfack"

Oooh!... the ring!

Over a couple of campaigns where magic items where handed out in great abundance one player, both times, had gotten himself a ring of teleportation. Unfortunatly he'd always forget he had it only to remember well after the event (and in a couple of cases his death). This is even after him writing, across 4 pages in his character's book, USE THE TELEPORTING RING. What made it worse was often the other players and even the DM would forget about the ring too.

 

[Shemeska]

Hmm... it would have to be a rather obscure and involved in the telling joke about a 'dishwater archon of Sigil'. I'll let my players here explain that one if they'd like.

Otherwise there's the nearly several times a session jokes, jibes and allusions to the King of the Crosstrade being in an abusive relationship with A'kin the Friendly Fiend, herself entirely on the receiving end, with my players always adding "And she -LIKES- it!" at the end of the joke. At which point I chuckle, roll my eyes and laugh at them in my head, knowing how much she's screwed with the PCs and will continue to do so for some time.

No respect for villains, especially the pretty ones. Feh.

There's also the one PC whose initial plot hook into the campaign involved him getting fed poisoned food during lunch at The Fortunes Wheel inn in Sigil, then forced to do a certain task for the antidote before he died of the slowacting, but otherwise all but incurable toxin. Ever since then he's refused to eat at the place, and has made a point of walking up to people when he's there at that inn and they're about to enter their festhall and telling them stuff along the lines of, "You reeeeaaaallly don't want to eat in there. Trust me, it's bad. You havn't seen the kitchen...ooze mephits."

 

[adembroski3]

"You'll recognize this spell!"

This is said or paraphrased at the table each and every night to the embrarrassment of our poor Wizard. He DMed a campaign a while back that was quite successful. We had reached moderately high levels (12-15) and were still having fun with them.

One day, we are tracking down this cultist. We happen to find him in some sort of enclosed area (might have been a warehouse, or a castle, I don't remember), and the battle was joined. After several rounds of dispatching the head cultists minions, we turned to the evil man in the black robes (I hate men in black robes. They always cast bad spells on you!) and prepared for the toughest fight of our character's lives.

Well, it was the toughest. It wasn't the longest. We died as a whole in about 3 rounds. On the third round, the DM threw what seemed to us to be as many dice as he was capable of fitting into his hand onto the table and said,

"You'll recognize this spell!"

Every one of us were dead. Well beyond dead, for that matter, we were killed multiple times over. None of us figured out what spell it was until the DM informed us (Meteor Storm). It was discovered the next day that the spell in fact would not have killed us, as the DM had read the spell description wrong. I never asked how, so I don't know. All I know is that we should have lived through it. Unfortunately, by that time, it just didn't feel right to reneg the whole thing.

 

[ltclnlbrain]

Hmm, well, I have a few that I might as well contribute.

"Happy Druid's Day" - This one came from a game where one of my regular players decided to take a shot at running an adventure. Keep in mind that this is his first time being a DM and the adventure itself isn't a very good one. Anyway, during this adventure, our party came across the home of a druid in the forest. He gave us a prewritten speech revealing certain plot points and such, but at the end of it, he added, "Oh, by the way, happy Druid's Day." Naturally, our PCs reacted with confusion. The druid went on to explain that today was the day that druid's all over the world celebrated their, well, druidity. This struck us as quite absurd, especially considering one of our fellow PCs was a druid. Therefore, every five minutes we would call the druid PC's attention and wish him a happy Druid's Day. This continued for several sessions where, at random intervals, we would wish each other a happy Druid's Day.

"WHO AM THROW THAT?" - Ah, good old Black Sails Over Freeport. At the beginning of this adventure, some human dock workers incite a riot by throwing a rock at an orc. When the rock hit the orc, he looked at the crowd angrily and boldly asked, "WHO AM THROW THAT?" This sent all of the players into huge laughing fits, and it took about 10 minutes before we were able to continue. From that point on, every time the players saw an orc, they would throw a rock at it so that the orc would shout, "WHO AM THROW THAT?" This joke was even applied to things outside the game. A few weeks ago, I went with several of my players to see Hellboy. During the movie, there is one part where one of the characters gets hit by a rock from offscreen. Naturally, at this point, one of my players shouted, "WHO AM THROW THAT?" We were laughing so hard we missed most of the next scene.

Good times, good times.

 

[Dark Jezter]

In one of the first sessions of my Forgotten Realms campaign, the PCs got in a fight with a couple of hellhounds. The party managed to slay one hellhound and reduce the other to low hp. When it was the fighter's turn to act, the surviving hellhound was out of his range, so he picked up a rock on the ground, threw it at the hound, and managed to hit despite the -4 attack penalty for using an improvised weapon. As you probably guessed, the rock knocked the hellhound below 0 hp and ended combat, which resulted in much laughter from everyone at the table.

So now, whenever the PCs are involved in a tough fight, someone will inevitably say "better break out the rock." or "looks like we'll need the rock to bring this one down!".

 

[reveal]

Great stories people!

Here's one of mine:

"I put on the ring" - A few years back my wife and I were in a gaming group in which I played a Dawrf Fighter named Bert Anernie. Bert was CN and very, very good at it. Anyway, one of the other players was an elf who, after many trials and tribulations together, became Bert's best friend. One session, we wandered through a dungeon and stumbled across a secret room. In the room was a sarcophagus with a body in it. On the body was a very nice ring.

The Elf tells Bert, "Go ahead. Put on the ring." So I turn to the DM and say "I put on the ring."

The DM just looked at me through incredulous eyes and said, "We'll stop here for the night." Sometime later, I learned he had to rewrite his entire campaign because I put on the stupid ring. (Which, btw, made me into the long lost king of the dwarves and heir to the throne. Of course, the ring wasn't meant for me.)

My wife and I have since told that story to other groups we've been in. Everyone thinks it funny, it's probably funnier acted out then written out , and every time the players do something that causes the DM to be amazed that the PC is actually doing it, someone will inevitably say "I put on the ring."

 

[WayneLigon]

Aunt May's Discretion

In Champions, there are several levels of Being Unconscious. The further into negatives you go, the longer it takes to wake back up. The last level is at -30 and beyond, and is called 'GM's Discretion'; you just don't get normal recoveries at that point. The above phrase came from the first large-scale, long-running Champions game I ever did, which was set in the Marvel Universe. We had a couple people (PC and NPC) that could dish out damage at such a scale as to put people into -80 STUN or worse. Such a thing became known as 'Aunt May's Discretion'; the character was so unconcious not even the GM could allow him back up. You'd have to phone Spider-Man's kindly old Aunt May to get permission. Being the loving soul she is, she'd instantly grant it. Of course her being a fictional character means it's hard to get her on the phone... It meant you were out for a long time.

SMITH

An acronym for 'Six Months In The Hospital'. That might be a real world one for all I know. The specific case where this showed up the first time was in, I believe, a game of Top Secret. 'Agent Smith' had bungled a mission badly, blown his cover, and was shot on top of all that. He was very badly wounded and required hospitalization. Six months of game time passes (he was that badly wounded) while the rest of the team does research, vacations, files paperwork - all the mundane spy work stuff. Finally, it's time for 'Agent Smith' to be released, and the rest of the team is there with flowers and baloons, waiting for him to be wheeled into the lobby. 'Agent Smith' is wheeled out to the pavillion to await a car, where six Russian agents promptly fill him with lead. He manages somehow to survive and is wheeled right back in to ICU for, yes, six more months.