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I am at work now, and I want some good stories. So here is something that never fails to entertain:

What are some of the most spectacular ways you as a player, or your players (if you were the GM) have completely blown up the plans of the campaign? I don't always mean in truly disruptive, flip the table IRL ways, but just ways that the players have somehow made moves that the GM never planned for that took things into very unexpected territory. And, if we want to make this constructive, what happened to right the ship, so to speak?

I have two particular stories, one where I was a player and a another where I was the GM.

From Pathfinder:

In my current group, we have had a lot of trouble in the party with geas-es and other such command spells in the past, and as a result, we have gotten VERY good at breaking down the logic to find ways around it. Though in this case, it was something that was accidental. In order to remove a powerful curse from our mage, our party needed to deal with another wizard, who made their price to be a geas on one of us. Being the team player, I stepped up and took it, though it was a conditional geas that even I didn't know what would happen until it went off, so there was nothing I could do to plan for it. But in this exchange, my character and that wizard got into a heated argument, but I couldnt do much as this wizard was also a senator of sorts in this large campaign city.

While we got what we wanted, I wanted revenge. So as soon as the meeting was over, I began plotting, Ocean's Eleven style, on the best way to get back at this jerk, and eventually concocted a plot where I would have a disguised decoy in my place at the next meeting of senators (of which our mage was also a senator) while the real me, a rogue, sneaks back to the wizard's place with a bag of holding and takes EVERYTHING.

What I did not know, however, was that my character's geas was to attack the other senators on sight. Alas, I was never there and our party got to watch the vein on this wizard's head nearly explode when the disguised decoy did not pull a sword and go to town in the middle of their attempt to frame us for treason. And when the wizard got home, his bad day got worse when he found that the only thing I left behind was a bookcase that my character could not physically lift.

Moral of the story: Petulant, childish revenge always wins.


From Iron Kingdoms:

In my second outing as a GM, I have plotted out something for my party of mercenaries to do. Essentially, the plan was to have cultists and other local terrorists attempt to rob their mercenary company and run off with the payroll chest, triggering a running fight through a city that eventually would end up with them somehow stopping the cultists' train, fighting them and returning with the pay chest to the accolades of fellow mercenaries. From which they could start plotting out why they were attacked, and what their goal was with the money and...

"You know, why don't we keep the money and just go off on our own?"

...damn it.

Perhaps a rookie GM mistake, but it certainly completely blew my mind at how casually, the party would simply go off on their own. In hindsight, I think the party's warcaster had been lobbying hard to get as much money as quickly as possible, so tha tthey could build a warjack...

From my days playing and running heroquest campaigns I have one example. Due to the way the board is all the rooms are close to each other and one spell 'walk through walls' (or pass through rock, I forget) allows a player to move between rooms without the need to use a door. I had made it so that the final room containing a sacrificial ritual to stop and a boss was close to the entry point onto the board but inaccessible without taking a long route around the rest of the board.

What I didn't count on was the wizard using the spell to walk straight into this final room, triggering the sacrifice countdown, without having any chance of stopping it (I'd expected more players to be in the room at the time and for them to work together to stop it). This caused something of a problem the results of which no-one was very happy with.

Got to love the unpredictable nature of RPG players...

One i'm rather proud of was a dark heresy one off session, we got asked to investigate a slumtown with a weird psychic presence. We get there, find a desolated church with no priests around, so we go speak to the head of the town. Seems shifty. The GM seemed to have a social encounter with him in mind and doing some kind of mini fetch quest for him to tell us. I shoot him in the leg with a needlepistol and set his office on fire, politely asking of course

Doesn't stop there mind, though i'm not sure this part counts due to luck, but turns out to be a genestealer cult with exactly 1 'stealer (one of the prime magus things, forget the name) and a psychic kid with the cult. Our Techpriest and Sister start this epic battle of dodging the crowd and 2v1-ing the stealer, all very impressive and all...I get behind the rock, mow the crowd down (rapid fire win vs mob rules) and try to shoot the brat in the leg...I roll pretty much perfectly (somehow and for the only time ever) and pop his head as he's doing his freaky warp thing. And this is why I shall forever love playing an overwieght Guardsmen

 doc1234 wrote:
One i'm rather proud of was a dark heresy one off session, we got asked to investigate a slumtown with a weird psychic presence. We get there, find a desolated church with no priests around, so we go speak to the head of the town. Seems shifty. The GM seemed to have a social encounter with him in mind and doing some kind of mini fetch quest for him to tell us. I shoot him in the leg with a needlepistol and set his office on fire, politely asking of course

Doesn't stop there mind, though i'm not sure this part counts due to luck, but turns out to be a genestealer cult with exactly 1 'stealer (one of the prime magus things, forget the name) and a psychic kid with the cult. Our Techpriest and Sister start this epic battle of dodging the crowd and 2v1-ing the stealer, all very impressive and all...I get behind the rock, mow the crowd down (rapid fire win vs mob rules) and try to shoot the brat in the leg...I roll pretty much perfectly (somehow and for the only time ever) and pop his head as he's doing his freaky warp thing. And this is why I shall forever love playing an overwieght Guardsmen

So something like this, except a little chubbier? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiyRfj35S8k

These weren't so much breaking a "rail road", but more doing things that the GM did not expect. Both times the same GM actually... we mess with him quite a bit it seems.


So, Black Crusade. Our party consists of a Night Lord Marine (we called him Batman), a psychotic Iron Warrior Marine, a human psyker and my character, a human Slaaneshi Priestess. Being Slaaneshi I've put bit into the social side of things, mostly with Charm so I can make people do what I want. We're boarding an abandoned Chaos vessel (one that we had cleared out in a previous Deathwatch session), and there were pirates attempting to take the ship for themselves. We killed a whole bunch of them and then began heading for the bridge to take the ship for ourselves. I decided to see if I could get the crew to switch sides and join me. This worked, so by the time we reached the bridge we had a whole lot of crewmembers with us.

We faced down the pirate leader, and she did not want to submit to me. Her first mate on the other hand folded quickly. The GM was expecting a fight, or us to work out some way to make the pirate leader submit. I took another tact, and told the first mate that if he wanted to show his loyalty to me he should blow his leader out the nearest airlock. He did, and now I had my own ship and crew to command.


The second was Dark Heresy (2.0 Dark Heresy that is, before the beta even began). Again we had a party of four. Our Arbite Medic, an regular Arbite, my Tech-Priest Assassin and… an Arbite "Psyker". I say it like that because the character in question, Sigismund Halt, wasn't actually a psyker. His background was that he was a fraud, and had convinced people that he was a psyker by being extremely good at telling lies. The player had maxed out on all the social skills needed to convince anyone of pretty much anything. That was a very long session, but it was a lot of fun, and involved our "Psyker" (who we decided was a minor sector celebrity and thus had his own COPS-style holo-vid reality show: "Halt: In the name of the Law!") and that we were his "TV crew" (my Assassin had an Optical Mechadendrite that had a light and camera on it, so I was the camera person). Everything culminated in Halt managing to convince a small child (who was a psyker) that he was a psyker but putting some hallucinogenic residue on one hand and touching the boy's face whilst simultaneously (and secetly) zapping himself with a powered down shock maul to give the impression of a "psychic power".

The session ended with the GM saying the single line that summed up the entire adventure:

"You successfully shock the small boy, convincing him you are a psyker."

It was said with such sorrow that it made it all the funnier.

My first time playing outside of my normal gaming group was interesting because it was mid-campaign and I was the youngest person there by at least a decade, and it was a forgotten realms game. I made a 65 yr old human wizard/cleric/thaumaturge (walker and incontinence jokes abounded!). Well, we were investing an issue with the Red Wizards of Thay, the Cult of the Dragon, and a local lizardman population at the Well of Dragons (a dragon graveyard). After sneaking in to the Red Wizards Camp, we set it on fire (yay Flaming Sphere!) and had to escape into the Well of Dragons. As we navigated through the Well, our Barbarian was acting a little weird and we were slowly realizing that we were trapped in the Well, so we're working out a plan when all of the sudden the Barbarian says, "We may want to get out of here, like now." We looked at him like, "wtf?" when whole mountain started shaking. We finally got out of the caves to the top of the Well and looked out and noticed that whole rivers have shifted, mountains have crumbled, 50 miles in every direction is flattened, no sign of the Red Wizards, the Cult of the Dragon, or the lizardfolk. Off in the distance we see a new city, and airships coming out of portals that are appearing in the air. Our party leader looks at him, and says, "What the hell did you do?!" Turns out (and remind you this is my first session with this group) the DM has a thing that he'll grant prayers from the players. So seeing that we were trapped, out Barbarian prayed to the god of nature (his deity) and prayed for him to move the earth to give us a way out. Well when a God of Nature moves the earth, he really moves the earth . The DM said he would only grant this prayer on a 20, he rolled for the guy, gets a 20 and then rolled again and got another fething twenty. The DM looks at us and says, "I need a smoke to figure out where the hell we're going with this."

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"You successfully shock the small boy, convincing him you are a psyker."

Both of these were excellent!

Reminds me that we have a couple pages of 'Memorable Phrases' from our games over the years where that one will fit right in.

I can think of at least one game that brings to mind Old Man Henderson. (I was accused of trying to 1-up him)
Maybe better as it quickly involved all the players instead of just one.

Another one that I ran came close, but I managed to de-rail their de-railing rather well.

I hope I remember to write something up about them, but am at work ATM.
Replying to (hopefully) remind myself to do so.

 kirsanth wrote:
I can think of at least one game that brings to mind Old Man Henderson. (I was accused of trying to 1-up him)
Maybe better as it quickly involved all the players instead of just one.

Another one that I ran came close, but I managed to de-rail their de-railing rather well.

I hope I remember to write something up about them, but am at work ATM.
Replying to (hopefully) remind myself to do so.

How exactly does one 1-up Old Man Henderson? This is a story I feel needs telling.

 doc1234 wrote:
How exactly does one 1-up Old Man Henderson? This is a story I feel needs telling.

Short answer: By involving the entire party instead of just one man. OMH's party was not involved until WAAAAAAY later.

The long answer will have to wait until I have a fair amount of time to type.

I am in no way claiming that I succeeded, just that the accusation was made.

What started as a school anime based D&D game ended with a 14 year old homicidal girl saving the world from a Chtulu-esque horror while continually showing up the DMs Mary Sue.

The DM was aiming for something like "Love Hina", if I recall his original synopsis - if that explains the accusation at all.
That probably should have been our first warning, but we really wanted to be able to play together - one of us had always run the games, usually me. So we went along. The I realized that the DM was out to get us.

In a Pathfinder game, in the same encounter that the rest of the party got lucky and killed the DM's obnoxious Mary Sue that he normally wouldn't let us touch (a succubus) my magus died. As part of the death, my magus's soul was drug to the Abyss, for whatever reason, but intact, not as a petitioner.

The magus woke up alone and without gear and started wandering. He came across said succubus unconscious and weak. In the DMs universe, Daemons that die on the abyss are permadead. Rather than make some Faustian bargain with her (Faustian bargains have been a running theme of the game), he grabbed a nearby femur and crushed her skull.

The DM was silent for a few minutes before saying, "...I thought you would try to get her to help out get back to the Material Plane."

This was the succubus, in particular, that dominated allies of ours to conspire against us, spied on our every move, killed the princess of the kingdom, level drained me to 1st as a joke, dominated me and and had me attack the rest of the party, and probably several more dickish things I can't even remember any more.

I looked at him, smiled, and said, "Good."

I can't say that I have any good derailing stories, unless you count PC's having the life expectancy of Lemmings at Disneyland, for really dumb reasons.

While these are not so much PLOT destructive, there is one person in our group whose uncanny ability to roll critical misses is something of a legendary thing at this point. He doesn't wreck the plot, but he tends to infect encounters with 1s, for both allies and enemies.

A fine example came in our last session when the super heavy armor, super heavy weapon warlord of a rival faction jumped our group. He comes in with the Babe Ruth 2-handed nothing-walking-away-from-this axe swing right at our mage who was on the flank...

Rolls a 1 and falls over with an injured leg.

I blew one up literally.

Many, many years ago in a game of Traveller our happy band of mercenaries supposedly begins a new adventure in a local bar (as you do) but for some reason we took an instant dislike to the guy who was trying to hire us and our ship for a cargo run, got drunk and refused to deal with him and instead got into a fight with some locals.

'no problem' thinks the GM and next day the plot-critical patron turns up at our ship with an armed escort on a grav platform carrying his precious cargo to press-gang us into taking the mission. Unfortunately for him, and the GM, all I see is an armed assault unit approaching at speed, probably in revenge of the previous day's fight, so I grab the lone one-shot anti-tank missile we had left over from a previous mission, leap into the hatchway and fire. The resultant critical hit blew the skimmer, the patron and the cargo into glowing chunks.

Match abandoned.


As an example of GM's not helping themselves in this regard, I was in a D&D campaign once where the evil mastermind behind the whole campaign made an appearance in an early encounter so we could see who it was, presumably before he makes a cunning escape while his minions fight us to the death. Which would have been fine if the DM hadn't let the archer in our party loot a slaying arrow in an earlier encounter. He sees some guy ordering all the monsters to attack us so decides to shoot him straight off with the slaying arrow. Rolls a 20. We made the DM roll his saving throw in the open. Scratch one antagonist

Was playing pathfinder with some people, for 2 hours we roleplayed being in a bar where we needed to show a feather to some people and get some info. Our two talkative players were completely passed out and it was already morning, so I took the feather and showed it to this waitress lady that seemed to be always asking us if there was anything else (gm nudge).

Somehow after I present the feather, and say we were sent to talk to them, they bust out and attack us.

In a Deadlands game I played essentially an ex-military now turned mercenary as the only non magical person (The rest of the party was a Holy man, Mad scientist, Satanist and Indian Shaman) managed to derail multiple plot points with nothing but a shotgun. Essentially every time we ended up in a situation where either diplomacy should have been used or the antagonist started monologuing I would pretty much shoot on site. I must of burned through 3 or 4 plot hooks before not killing it. I only got away with it due all the other PC's investing a lot of time into personal side plots.

Also in our current CoC game we found out a Mexican Ranch owner (located just outside of Oakland, the game being based in the Bay) was involved in meeting what we though were extras from a film dressed in fish costumes:we got photos from a friend. Said friend then starting getting threatened by them so we intercepted the meet which involved us killing all the Mexicans (One being driven over by Old Mr. Chibbers, he though it was just a large Deer)except one who we then interrogated getting info about the ranch. So we gear up to go the ranch and question the owner about the extortion attempt. In typical fashion we don't actually work out who has the best drive skill so when we arrive at the ranch we find out that the owner is out tending to some cattle; a few botched attempts at diplomacy with the people at the house later we end up in a gun battle with two farm hands while trying to drive away. The ensuing drive checks means the worst driver in the group flips over the van we travelled in, rupturing the fuel tank and lighting the fuel with multiple party members taking damage. Eventually we finish off the farm hand with a rifle (The one who had a shotgun got downed in the first round from a point blank double barrelled shotgun) So we all prepare to leave quickly. I just start legging it towards Oakland, 2 PCs drag themselves from the burning wreck of the van, spend a few rounds searching and eventually saddle up some horses and leave. While this happens Old Mr. Chibbers goes with his elephant gun (yes elephant gun) and tries to storm the house, finds a housewife weeping over the very recent death of her husband and tries to take her. He started the fight on full HP (12 to be exact) and after two rounds had dealt 0 damage to her and taken two knife wounds for 8 damage, he was only saved when a GM guided PC (The guy who played that PC wasn't there) showed up and shot her. All we got out of investigating the now deserted house was some strange looking robes in a box with any chance at further diplomacy burned to the ground.
That is in addition to another PC accidentally converting a university into a cthulu cult

EDIT: Mr Chibbers is the first PC to be committed. In order to cover up the Ranch hit the PC Cop (Who wasn't there at the time) decided we have Mr Chibbers take the fall as he wouldn't go to priison (Old demented racist he was) and instead was sent to the looney bin. Unfortunately the Looney bin was using corrupted heroin to sedate patients (Corrupted in that it had an extra chemical in it which induces Cthulu based vision/hallucinations and relevant loss of SAN) and lost ~70 Samity in one go. Then the takes over the other PC (Who's player is never there) and drowned trying to get indian coins off the sea bed while handcuffed

Like HBMC, not exactly plot derailing, just one of those things the GM hadn't expected or planned for.

It's D&D 3rd(I believe actually 3.5 before they changed the Psionicists). We've got a Shooty Ranger(who's stats make her terrible at using her bow), a shifter druid, a beardless Dwarf psionicist with amnesia, Two-handed sword Warrior, generic Wizard #34, a Cleric/(insert actual name for the Bahamut Cleric Dragonlance Prestige Class), and my Nezumi Rogue. We'd just left town after saving the Merovingian-styled king from a Purple Worm despite nearly half the party being jailed: me for being a suspected thief and Were-Rat, the Druid for shifting into an elf in front of the king, and the Cleric for being an ass(the LAWFUL GOOD cleric tossed a gold to the guard and told him to, direct quote, "give your king a bath"). Passing through the nearby swamp, we get attack by two young Black Dragons. Most of the party panics, the Cleric and I jump in excitedly, and the Psionicist simply bubbles one of the Dragons to keep it out of the fight(remember when Psionicists were broken awesome and a pain to actually use?). We take down the first one and the party preps to release the second when I'm struck with an idea.

"Can I tell how large the Dragon is?"

"Yes, it's 9 feet long."

"Stout, how big is your bubble?"

"How big you need it?"

"Small enough to slip into my Portable Hole to suffocate this thing."

"... OK."

One Crit Failed attack to escape/blow up the PH later, we have our very own intact dragon corpse and a very peeved GM.

I tend to build my games around the PCs and their motivations, plus I run pretty free form and improvise well; so I am usually pretty good about rolling with the punches and keeping things flowing.

The only time I really just had to take a minute was during this game I was running - it started out as a regular (New) World of Darkness game where the PCs were residents of an apartment complex and weird stuff started happening (A cthonic horror that had been trapped below was breaking free and sending it's spawn up to crawl into people's faces when they were asleep and take them over), so after a good many sessions they figured it out and killed it, burned the place to the ground and promptly got arrested due to all the charred corpses and everything.

So, they got waylaid by corrupt cops who sold them to a secret 'prison' run by vampires who used the place as a feeding ground and to stage bloodfights, and during the course of this ideal they all Awaken as mages. Using their newfound abilities they are able to escape and make it to town. So while they are sitting in a diner, trying to figure out a way to pay for the food, one of the players apparently got upset because all the other players were arguing about what to do next - half the group wanted to do one thing, the other half something else, I was about to step in when the player decided to speak up.

He decided his PC was sick of all the fighting, and morally wouldn't want to use magic to get the food for free as he would consider it stealing. So he went out back, fished some food out of a dumpster, ate it , and then went to the bus station and snuck onto a bus using magic (somehow that wasn't stealing) and go back to the city where they had come from to see if any of his family was still alive.

Completely ditching the group. After a couple "Uh, are you sure, dude?"s, I let him go, figuring I would find a way to bring him back in later - the bus started rolling, and I told him he had to make a straight stamina roll because of all the garbage he ate. Which he proceeded to crit fail thrice, and after he began violently spewing stuff from both ends, I had the bus driver throw him off the bus; neatly solving the problem of him ditching town.



Now I, on the other hand as a PC am known for throwing buckets full of monkey wrenches into people's plots.

I wasn't expecting to add a new story here so quickly, but oh to the glories of Pathfinder cleverness!

So here's the basic situation:

We have been clearing out the manor of a high-power politician who had tried to frame the party for political assassinations. We had managed to break into the place through her basement, and after a pause to loot her alchemy lab (my character is an alchemist), we start clearing out the manor properly.

Our party is on one end of a long hallway, while the enemy (a leader mage and 2 mage knight things) are holed up waiting for us. As a side note, the element of surprise was long gone as our mage decided to flank some other enemies by blowing up a wall downstairs...anyway! These enemy mages really, really specialize in curses and various debuffs rather than direct damage spells, and they have invisibility going on themselves and they are very, VERY ready for the party.

As soon as we enter the corridor, the party is hit with the following:

A fireball to scatter us (injuring the monk and druid)
Confusion on the same monk, who is the party's melee powerhouse. And since our party outnumbers the group, he has a much higher chance of going after us than them.
Blindness on me (the rogue).

Naturally, nobody makes any saves against this stuff, and so the two best physical fighters in the group are either blind or flailing wildly.

However, I also happened to have been on trap duty until the wall-exploding part downstairs, and part of that was a Detect Magic spell going on that I had in a mask on my character. And because of that, I can sense the auras of the enemy mage leader's stuff. But I mean, it is still just a shimmer, nothing I could reliably hit with a sword or crossbow. But what I -can- hit her with is the splash of a potion. Specifically a polymorph other potion that we looted from her lab.

One failed Fortitude save later, the enemy leader is, of all things...a turtle. And the GM mutters:

I thought I'd slow you down by blinding you...instead you became Daredevil.

I wish I had more stories, but most of ours are more about how the GMs hate how our parties develop character wise rather than anything we tend to do plot wise. Regardless of how serious we intend to play campaigns or our characters, our dice always seem to tend to turn us into a comedy of errors unless we do the silliest things ever. I think my post on the Wasteland really spells it out:

Played D&D last night. Nothing to report as I realize our adventures sound so mundane when we're effective at doing things.

A typical occurrence when I'm in a party:

Skyped into a session of my Colorado group's 4th ed D&D Campaign. I'm playing a Dragonborn Warlord. The following exchange took place.

Me: "I grab a log out of the fire and since I'm bored of the shenanigans of the rest of the party concerning this door, I push the Paladin and Cleric out of the way, kick open the door and throw it(the log) at the closest enemy on the other side."

DM: "You weren't paying attention were you? I already said the fires aren't burning wood, it's poop."

Me: "EVEN BETTER." *Rolls*

DM: *sigh* "Fine, what'd you get?"

Me: "Nat 20."

DM: "I, uh, don't have a chart for that... roll 3D6 damage?"

Me: "15."

DM: "You killed a Giant Beetle. With flaming poop."

And thus continues a proud tradition of my characters killing gak in unconventional ways.

I remember another. This time it's from Star wars (The new FFG version)
Our party was on Correlia (I think)having some errand to run and one of our obligations comes up. There was a human pilot, Wookie mechanic, Wookie brawler and a Twi'lek Swordswoman and me as the pilot's Droid Bodyguard. The obligation in this case was the Wookie brawler's childhood friend really needed help. His backstory was he tried to bring the Hutts by himself (Real dumb) and was now in big debt to them. The way they had selected for him to work it off was to kill the planetary mayor and he wanted his friend to try and help him. So the party got called to some dingy apartment where he laid out his plan to kill the governor, me sensing this as a huge threat to the lives of the crew tried to alert the authorities through vid evidence. Unfortunately it all went to hell when they failed to catch the Wookie & his friend at the apartment and had them on the run. I also forgot to encrypt the data so it was traced back to me and came to the hotel where we were. Fortunately I managed to hide in time but the wookie was upset with the deadline missed he essentially wanted to ride off into the sunset with his friend and was determined to use our spaceship, even with the huge fact neither of them could pilot or navigate. The Twi'lek was threatening OOC to bring in Blacksuns if the Wookie did elope and the wookie really wanted to take our spacecraft and couldn't get the idea that it would screw the group over hugely. This was after the Wookie lost a leg to the Twi'lek when trying to attack one of our prisoners (The race which wookies can't stand) The campaign essentially with both of them trading threats and the group scattered tot he four winds with no plan

That actually reminded me of one that happened when I was playing Star Wars - I think it was set during the Jedi Purge, and I was a giant sentient tree creature, who didn't use lightsabers but I was really good with the force. So we were pushing back these Stormtroopers, and the GM drops in reinforcements for them, including some big antagonist he had set up.
For some reason he had them dropping down in big crates with parachutes, and I just used the force to crush all of the parachutes while they were still a few hundred feet up, dropping them all to their deaths. I was a pretty gray jedi.