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Paranoia- The only game where it is beneficial to kill your party members. Actually, at the end of that mission, the Pyrokine set me on fire just for laughs.

Mordoskul wrote:Over the weekend, we played a game of Paronia, and we raided a communist compound in the woods. Our polymorph got the good idea to transform into a lion and use his oratory skills to get the woodland creatures to rise against the communists. Inside the base (one of our party was riding atop the polymorph wielding a broadsword while I fought with the corpse of a "Rick the Danger Hawk"), we engaged Communist anthropomorphic bears wielding acid knuckles and led by their leader 'Smoky'. Did I mention the polymorph was wearing dimond armor?

Wait, you guys got outside the compound and didn't just run for it? F$*& friend computer if you're out of the building already.

I was fishing with one of my characters in the middle of an encounter and left a keg of mead open next to where I was fishing, so I got out of fighting a Barbarian because he critically failed his fortitude save, and my barbarian conviced him that we should be friends, because I had more kegs of ale at our camp.

One that springs to mind for me was when we were happily playing the 2nd ed Warhammer Fantasy.

We were sort of inbetween missions, having just finished one and were in an NPC dwarf's mechanical hot-air balloon on our way to the next town to start a new adventure.
All of a sudden, the GM rolls for unexpected events and 2 of the lines on the hot air balloon snap, forcing us to make an emergency landing in the middle of a forest. We all have to make agility rolls to make sure we jump clear of the balloon's basket and don't get crushed by the dwarven contraption.
The thief makes the roll and lands with no trouble, as does the highwayman. I nervously roll for my character, a barbarian with all the agility of a swan with two breezeblocks attached to its wings and somehow make it.
Then come the turn of the wood elf - highest agilty of the party by a country mile and a home in the woods, or so you would think. He fails to make the roll in such a spectacular fashion (he rolled 100) that he got twanged into a tree, impaled on a branch and died. He decided to use a fate point, but failed his second roll too, noly not quite as bad this time.
iirc, I had to carry him to the next town so he could get his injuries seen to, while the rest of the party dished out all manner of jokes at the wood elf that fell out of the tree.
His luck didn't change much for the rest of that evenings play and we've since nickednamed that gaming session as " a dark day for elves"

I was running a homebrew 1950's gangster game years ago and everything was going smoothly, the party was running gambling, booze, and prostitution rings and keeping the bosses happy with the money they were sending home.

One player took it upon himself to declare himself the boss of the organization and was annoying the rest of the party. 2 other players made a whole night out of taking this guy to dinner and a show, taking him out for drinks and buddying up to him, the entire time he thought they were jockeying for power in the organization. Then towards the end of the night they all loaded up into his car, the one player who sat in the back pulled out the steak knife he secretly told me he pocketed at dinner and they whacked him right in his own car, leaving him in an alley next to his bar to be found in the morning with a steak knife in his neck. It was a beautiful whacking

I was once playing a Forgotten Realms campaign as a druid, and we had this player who was not role playing his barbarian who had a 6 intel too well, and metagaming through half of the game. The party claimed that I had this "curse", that every time I got involved in melee combat, someone in the party would die, for example I hit a goblin with my quarterstaff, then the rogue dies inexplicably. Anyways later on in the game we finally got the barbarian to actually somewhat roleplay his character, even though he was metagaming the whole time, and we came up to fighting this blood golem, after a combat with some scorpions, well I got into combat with it after a few rounds of watching my fire elemental burn the golem. During this overly long combat the Barbarian decides to run in, and he got killed because he was not paying attention to his hit points. This guy decides he is going to write up a new character and try to make it extremely overpowered, so I grabbed the DM and told him he is NOT getting a new character, and I am going to reincarnate him, because said player has not read anything about most magic works anyways. So we begin doing the whole reincarnation deal and the DM tells him that there is a spell bieng cast on his body and has the option to accept, and he does, then I made my three rolls, it turns out that he started out as a male half-orc, the spell turned him into a female halfling, and the DM forced him to roleplay that for the rest of the game, telling him that he would NOT get a new character reguardless of what he did.

1st Ed AD&D. Long campaign with same group of people, many adventures, but the last adventure was a result of an annoying habit one member had taken to. He would randomly yell out "Orcus" a few times during each session (weeks on end) because he had read the fluff for Orcus in the MM where it states that upon hearing his name he will manifest and visit terrible wrath upon everyone.

He was asked more than once to stop yelling "ORCUS!!!" by party members and DM alike. Eventually the DM became annoyed and started rolling dice every time "ORCUS" was invoked. Eventually it happened. Orcus appeared with a ridiculous number of minions and it was a fatal experience for everyone in the party. Months of campaigning, well-liked and developed characters... gone.

Our party was fighting against some were-wolf/bat somethings, way under our own level but that could still hit pretty hard, and one of the characters is a ranger. He's not always the smartest fellow. He'd taken a few whacks over the course of the combat by purposely offering attacks of opportunity. Then his character's wife (his girlfriend's character), the wizard, gets jumped by one or two more of the monsters dropping in from the sky. She's in trouble, so he goes to rescue her. She's low on HP, certainly not critical though. Regardless, he runs straight up to the monster, brandishing his sword, and then:
Ranger: "Wait I have some spells...should I cast cure light on her?"
DM: "You'll take an attack of opportunity for that, but you're a pretty tough character, right? Go for it, I guess?"
Attack of opportunity is rolled, hits, and does something on the order of 18 damage.
Ranger: "And I'm dead."
The rest of us: "WHAT?!?"
Ranger: "Yeah, I only had like two hit points left."
The rest of us: "THEN WHY ON EARTH DID YOU INVITE AN ATTACK OF OPPORTUNITY?"
Ranger: "BECAUSE YOU GUYS TOLD ME TO."
We were all quite astounded by the situation. When we finished the battle about 3 minutes later, I cast speak with dead on him to see if he wanted a rez and rib him some more for it.
Me: "So, how's it feel up there being dead and all?"
Ranger: "Oh not too bad, just chillin with these 40 virgins and all."
DM: "I thought it was 72 virgins"
Me, without skipping a beat: "He's already been through 32 of them."
Then we all just about died of laughter. Except for the ranger, and more hilariously, his girlfriend, who sat there for about 5 minutes incredibly embarrassed while the rest of us laughed at their expense.

Just this past monday I ran my first non-combat encounter(we're all new players in the group). most of the players got it, but this one guy just can't roleplay what so ever. People were doing the usual thing, telling me what they wanted to do, so I asked them to roleplay and then roll. He decides to say: "Right, I'm taking a diplomacy check!" Without giving me chance to ask what for etc. Then Proceeds to roll a natural 20. Everyone was telling him he couldn't just randomly roll dice so I said I would class it as neither a success or a failure. Then he dropped to his knees and begged me for 3 minutes to let him have it because he rolled a 20. I ended up having to threaten him with a terminal illness so he'd shut up.

So a group a friends and myself were playing a game of 3.5 DnD. A member of our group had gained the power to teleport a small distance due to some bad magic mishaps(Yay side-effects).

So the DM decides to drop a dragon into the middle of the townsquare we were in because we were screwing around and he got tired of waiting on us to progress and preferred a reset to the encounter as we weren't that far in, but had missed our chance to continue on with the story(Maybe 15 minutes of messing around). We start slapping it with-out anyone taking any real damage and my friend decides to use his teleport......to inside the dragons brain.

He proceeds to pass his rolls, but due to his condition gets transformed into a lemming during the teleport. He then starts chewing on the dragon's brainstem and starts suffering from suffocation.

Because the dragon is now a tard just standing there, I use the ropes from my kit to climb the dragon, stab my sword through its eye into its brain, rescueing the group's "lemming" as he climbs out onto my character's shoulder. To finish the dragon off(which started thrashing around violently) I take my Bag of Holding and pull it over it's snout, and then proceeded to pull another friend's Bag of Holding, which he tossed to me, over my Bag which sucks the dragon, myself, and Mr. Lemming into an alternate dimension. Working quickly I pull several scales free and the lemming teleports us back through the portal we created just as it was closing, which transforms him back into a man.


Ever since his character has had the Fury of the Lemming ability, transforming him into a lemming at will. We then run into the character we needed to contact in the crowd that come out to thank us for saving the town from the dragon.

........and I never did get my bag back.

A long time ago while GM'ing Boot Hill I had a short solo adventure with one of my friends wherein he was led outside of town by a corrupt sheriff, who was actually behind some recent stage robberies. The player had no idea at the time and the plan was for the sheriff to try and fail to kill him. My friend's character was superior in every way. But Boot Hill being the game that it is, the sheriff brings them to a halt a says simply, "Well, this is it." He then pulls his gun, turns in his saddle and fires a single shot that pierces the players gut and blows him from the saddle, leaving him with moments to live and still no explanations. When the other player jumped in the game shortly afterward he saw the sheriff leading his friend into town draped over a horse. Upon confirming he was dead and being told that a group of outlaws had waylaid them, the new player picks up and flees town, heading for San Francisco for good.

Every time our GM starts the players in a tavern, we burn it to the ground.

Beyond that, I was GMing a game, and this one player was against 5 trolls. He had 2 hand crossbows. He fire at the first troll, aimed at the head and he crit his roll, and then he crit his damage. It went through that troll and (with more criticals >:-() hit another troll in the head...

He then fired his other hand crossbow and did the same thing... I tell you, his rolls were beyond legendary...

Those dice$^@#4@#


There was this other sad game I did that was Steampunk. The main badguy was this mad-scientist planning to take over the world. Anyways, at the end of the campaign we found his secret base. We happened to have a completely OP character in our group (mad scientist), he turned invisible, teleported next to the villain, and disintegrated him. He bypassed every stinking trap! A campaign that took months to do ended in a minute worth of rolling... it was so disappointing for the rest of us who were standing outside the building saying "What happened?!?!"

DH game on a feudal world.

PCs need to get into a guard house to ask some questions of a guy in there.

One character spent too long in a tavern and so: (Direct quote)


Uriah nods "See ya on the other side" He says before swaggering into the guard's office. " 'ELLO!" He yells as slurd as he could to everyone inside, before he begin to unbuckle his pants.

GM (me): "I think you better come with me sir..." The guard ushers Uriah into a cell (With the man they're looking for.)


I had to insta give that. Too damn funny.

I have 2 that come to mind instantly, and tons more if i dig into the cranial archive a bit:

First one is a bit of DM horridness on my part:

The setting was in a LONG campaign (like our entire 7th grade year - ahhh the joys of D&D to a 11 yr old) with more or less the same characters throughout (+/- a few players who came and went, the CORE FOUR were always there school cafeteria games and weekend after weekend).
We had a gaming group that consisted of 3 characters per core player, all rolled up at the beginning of our 7th grade year of middle school. We all played DM, and lots of side adventures going on, the occasional switch in sub-partys between adventures if they happen to end up in the same meeting place after an adventure - like if two groups wound up at the same town, a player might switch out a thief for a mage from his roster or whatever - all the characters had the same goals, just there was a lot of story and subplot going on so it would split off into diffferent party organizations so everyone could DM their own little additions to it)
So its all DMed by different players, who also play in other players scenarios while they DM. Secret stuff was kept secret. If some mystery occured in some other DMs game, you wouldn't use it in your own.
We did have a 'master plot' DMed by me and Cory, who had played since 1st grade together, around which all the side adventures had to circulate. In this master plot there was a horrible alliance of all of the worlds Forces of Evil (straight from the 1st edition Monster Manual), we had a vampire, a Lich, an Ogre Magi, a Rakshasa, a Lamia, a Demon lord, an arch Devil, a trio of Ancient Black/Blue/Red Dragons, a Beholder, a Mind Flayer, and the Drow Queen all forming an alliance.
On the side of good there was a Gold dragon who posed as a kindly old man, a silver dragon who posed as a hot elf chick, a Bronze dragon who posed as a mighty gladiator... tack on the Unicorn ruler of the woodlands, the Elven queen, the cloud giant who lived in a floating cloud castle, the Ki-Rin and Coatal, etc... all the 'forces of good' in the world.

As the game unfolded over a year or so this 'things happening bigger than you think' became more and more aware as these alliances of superpowered good vs evil became drawn in, with the PCs as pawns in their schemes.

During one game, early on, the Rakshasa (disguised by his illusion) appeared to be a sage who they came to for advice in finding the identity of the elusive Vampire. He gave them an AMULET with a gemstone set in it, with the instruction... "break this stone when the time is right, you will know when the time is right."

They forgot about it, shelved along with 3 pages of inventory, until several game plots later a few months later... after the Rakshasa had been revealed as what he was... after the vampire had been dispatched...

During the final battle against the head of the evil alliance, they are all racking their brains and pouring over their character sheets and inventory for what they can use... and what do they find? an Amulet from the Sage, which they said "break the stone when the time is right" on the inventory sheet. Now remember they KNEW at this point that the sage was actually just an illusion of the Rakshasa and he gave it to them when they were hunting for his ally... yet stilll....

ever seen the movie 'dragon slayer'.

break the stone... at the lead up to the 'epic-final-battle scene, this dude broke the stone and KABOOOM. Cory was running this as DM, he asked me what the stone did. I told him. It was meant as a trap, duh. so the 6d6 fireball goes off, frazzling half the partys scrolls, boiling their potions, denting their hit points, etc etc, right before they face off against the Arch Devil Geryon et al. It was meant as a trap to scare them and give them an obstacle to overcome when they faced down a 8HD vampire about 6 month real world time ago. Nobody had expected it right before the climax battle, including my poor co-DM. Oooooops.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
My other one involves "Black Dirk", a Paladin in 3rd Ed. He was the most unlikely Paladin you could imagine, posing as a gutter rat street mugger cutthroat thief type, Asimar as race, amnesia from spontaneously being created in earthly form to fix a demonic problem in the city of Ptolus (its a huge hardcover book limited print game setting full of steampunk meets demons and vampire council type city politics) by some type of celestial being. He found himself drawn to do 'good', but also found himself physically embodied as a gutterpunk in the worst mafioso-crime ridden city ever invented by a DnD game designer. He made do, eating rats and getting sloshed at the local taverns and doing odd jobs (always assassinating someone 'evil' but without knowing why, never agreeing to the jobs that killed the innocent)...

My DM worked with us all about our character backgrounds and such and every character had his secrets. Black Dirk's secret was (and this lasted 6 all-nighter game sessions) that he was a paladin and didn't even know it himself, just kind of 'felt' like it. He failed a lot of skill checks being sent to do roguey kinds of things.

My DM had - also in secret - worked in another player, who was a good-aligned 'cleric' with far more levels in rogue than appropriate, and a level of bard so he could fool us all with cure-light-wounds. He was a paid assassin sent to kill a member of his own holy order that he theoretically belonged to.

We both found out about each other during the same adventure and did a lot of behind the scenes discussions with the DM in the second room, that culminated in a no-holds-barred beatdown fest between the two of us with 3 other players having no idea what the hell we were fighting about. The fight culminated in all the other party members picking a side and jumping in. Black Dirk killed his friend the real rogue, the mage blasted black dirk's real target and killed the assassin character, and the fighter decided to join the winning team. The fighter and the mage kicked out my character because he had decieved them.

So now we have a dead bystander, a dead player, and another guy kicked out of the party. 2 PCs left out of 5. I asked the DM that same question, WTF did you do that for?

They went on to become NPC undead slaves of the vampire lord and recurr later in the story, so it was, after the fact, well thought out on his part... but at that moment... grrrrr