What's your DM Gimmick?

[Bardsandsages]

Are there certain elements that always appear in your games, sort of inside jokes with your players or just stuff you like to do? Are they the sort of things your players not only expect, but would very well be dissappointed if you DIDN'T do?

Well, with me, the big one is kobolds. There will always be a kobold NPC that appears early in the campaign, and it will develop a crush on one of the PCs. The funny part is the party will ALWAYS adopt the darn thing, to the point where they are willing to share XP with it so it can gain levels! I've actually tried to just have them wander off, to have the party go looking for their kobold.

After that, it's Mrs. Smedley. Mrs. Smedley is a really annoying, old librarian that aggravated the crap out of the part in the first game I ever ran. So Mrs. Smedley makes a cameo in every game, normally trying the patience of the party at a point where they need information quickly. She has it, but drags her feet giving it to them.

 

[demiurge1138]

The Skull and Flagon is a tavern that appears in all of my games. Every single one. No matter what.

I do also make a habit of making references to other games within the current one - old NPCs, old PCs and events done in other groups occasionally get mentioned.

And, of course, there are the tentacles. One of my groups has come to expect dripping Lovecraftian monsters in every game I run. No idea why they'd ever think that...

Demiurge out.

 

[freebfrost]

Demons.

I have other topics that sometimes find their way from game to game - Cthulhuesque monsters and aberrations being my big "thing" right now, but you'll always find some demonic element in the game.

Heck, had two multiyear campaigns centered around Orcus, and my last Epic game had Demogorgon, Orcus, Fraz'Urb'Luu, and Pazuzu as major opponents.

Yeah... Definitely demons.

 

[lukelightning]

The Pickle Bandit. The local town just celebrated the "Pickle Festival" featuring pickles (of course) and performances of the Pickle Pageant, which tell the story of the Pickle Bandit, a local Robin-Hoodesque figure of legend who saved the town from goblins. The players ended up having to act in a Pickle Pageant; I wrote out a script and they had to act it out.

Great fun, especially since one of the many traditions of the Pickle Festival is the Throwing of Dirt at poor pickle performances.

 

[DragonLancer]

Undead.

My players hate them because they can't crit them, but if they didn't have undead to deal with they would be dissapointed. Undead are the opponents they love to hate.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

There's always been a tavern or bar called "The Sandy Jackboot" in every campaign we've ever run or played. It's even shown up in our old DC Heroes game and a recent Star Wars d20 game I ran.

 

[shilsen]

We're developing a standing joke in one of my games about the deadliness of the short races in my Eberron campaign. Apparently humans, half-orcs, gnolls, ogres, trolls, minotaurs, etc. are no trouble for the PCs whatsoever. But goblins, kobolds and similar-sized creatures give them a horribly hard time. One of my players joked that they need to go fight some giants because then they know they'll be okay, whereas if they run into some gnomes they're running (okay, that's not just me - Eberron gnomes are scary!).

I've started joking that it's a hidden Napoleon complex on my side. I'm 5 ft 4 inches tall, so it's only the creatures shorter than me that are really deadly

 

[ZombieButch]

If I'm running a sufficiently long campaign - most of them are pretty short - I'll figure out a way to work zombies into it sooner or later.

 

[The_Gneech]

My ubiquitous bar seems to be "The Drowning Rat." And all my dwarves are Scottish for no readily apparent reason. Beyond that, I'm not sure I've got any recurring gimmicks -- although I might start to cultivate some now that you mention it...

-The Gneech

 

[Imret]

Well, there are a couple little things my players would come to recognize as "parts of an adventure I wrote", the most common gimmick is the Baron & Baroness Orccrusher, frontier nobles with a remote manorhouse who will invariably invite the PC's in for dinner, lull them with music, and attempt to devour them. Yes, I know it's hokey, but they got named when I was 12, so.....

They've been wolfweres, bardic vampires, Ravenous (BoT) humans with enchanted instruments....the players follow along just to discover their newest reimagining.