Memorable Quotes from D&D (or other Roleplaying) Games

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Just wondering if some other role-playing SDMBers have some memorable quotes from their campaigns. Memorable, in this case, meaning funny and entertaining.

We have a guy who seems to have a knack for the nearly-dramatic. He’ll deliver a line with the kind of emphasis one might expect from Olivier reading Hamlet, but mangle the phrasing in such a way as to achieve unintentional hilarity.

For example, one of my favorites - he’s just discovered the identity of an opposition group who have been doing some spying, and makes a firm, resolved statement to go after them : “… then we shall show them what they can see.”

Maybe… Maybe some of these quotes are ‘You had to be there moments’… but most folks I’ve shared them with seem to enjoy.

Another before I send this posting out into the SDMB limbo, to see if it catches the eye of passing Dopers…

" I was the last one standing… then the guy got me too."

2

I played D&D once in my entire life - in high school, about 15 years ago. (OK, I actually just sat in) The thing I remember most vividly about the game:

DM: There’s a large caterpillar in front of you.

Player: Step on it!

DM: (rolls) The caterpillar excretes an acid which begins to dissolve your feet and legs, until you exist only from the waist up, floating in space.

3

The last game I played was way too many years ago. I had a character that was mostly a dwarf, with a few extra species mixed in, and he was foul. He didn’t start that way, he just…morphed over the course of several months into something quite uncouth. He got the warrior band into a fair amount of trouble when we were invited to dinner with the lord of a castle and he farted at the dinner table.

Anyways…about a month or so later, we had occasion in the game to enter another castle. As we approached the gate, the guy next to me said, “Grondo, I swear, if you fart again, I’m gonna shove my halberd up your butt.”

Somehow, that line has stuck with me over the years. Probably says something about my mental issues… :smiley:

4

During a Vampire game: “Put the Gangrel down! Do not wave the Gangrel in a threatening manner!”

That’s my all-time favorite, simply because it can just be said without explanation. But there was a different Vampire game in which our GM had all the characters gathered and some high muckety-muck came to talk to us. He got up in front of our assemblage and said “Greetings, I am Lothar.”

I, of course, busted out “I am Lothar, of the Hill People!” in the appropriate voice. And was promptly docked a point of self-control for it.

I always thought it was terribly unfair, because I wasn’t the only one who was about to say it, I just happened to be the one who got it out first.

5

Heh… Lothar. I guarantee if I’d been in the group we’d have been saying it in stereo. I’m not a big fan of the inherent angsty melodrama of Vampire anyway… I have trouble stifling my inner comedian.

Here’re some more gems from the same guy I mention in the OP:

“I’m the guy that mind-affecting stuff doesn’t affect all that much.” - referring to his near-immunity to enchantments, but… whew.

For the next one, you may need to know that he’s sometimes a little humor-impaired. This was in reference to some running gag of ours:
“I found it funny once. Well, maybe twice.”

And finally, to spread the embarassment around a little, another fellow in a campaign of mine was having dealings with a local Thieves’ Guild, and generated this gem : "Oh, I don’t think they trust me as much as I think they do. "

6

It’s way back in the early days of D&D (I still have my 1st edition rulebook set). Probably the first or one of the first D&D games in our city. An eager DM is reading out the description of the presumed secret doorway from an early fanzine adventure (“Falakar’s Tomb” IIRC), with a long inscription full of cryptic details which we need to figure out and follow to open the door. Our host, an urbane 60ish diplomat, listens to the whole thing, and then says, “We do all that.” The DM was nonplussed, and it became our standard response to any similarly convoluted set of instructions in games we played. (Never actually got us out of doing it the hard way, though, even the first time.)

7

For some reason, my AD&D games tended to be a bit… uh… odd. Not that I was doing anything to make them so, it’s just my players had a sense of humor. I was DM’ing Ravenloft when they struck. When they were investigating the dining room, my brother started pilfering the silverware. It went downhill from there. If it wasn’t nailed down, it was gone. They even stole the ivory keys from the pipe organ.

After they killed the vampire, they decided to turn the countyside into a nature preserve. I remember my Pete riding through the town shouting “You’ve been liberated! Now leave!”

8

Oh, my players tend to strip places bare of furnishings too, rest assured. Though the nature preserve bit is a new one on me.

The player I keep mentioning (we shall call him Eric, for that is his name, which is spelled out on my very own website, so I don’t think anonymity is an issue) once asked the King of a city-state where to buy poison in town.

Another player, playing a somewhat senile and addled wizard sort, would often cast useless spells in combat. In one battle, in which the PCs were attacked in camp by Ogres, his most worthwhile contribution was casting a ‘Light’ spell on an Ogre’s armor. After all the combat was done, and folks were settling back to sleep, he did contribute an amusing line : ‘Turn out that Ogre!’

A GM I was gaming with had us going through a maze, once (in the mountains near the Keep on the Borderlands, if I recall correctly)… the maze apparently was confusing even for the GM: “Then you take a hard right to the left…”

And then I will leave you again, with another classic Eric line, perhaps my favorite :
“Only a fool knows no fear. I only know a little fear tonight.”

9

Here’s a recent one. One PC trying to convince another to give up on chasing an apparently powerful bad guy: “Wise men choose their battles… as do we.”

10

I co-admin a Star Wars roleplaying board, in message board format much like this one. Each person takes a turn writing their character’s actions, and the story moves forward like that.

These two are my absolute favorites ever:

A Sith Lord: “Yes, the Jedi are a bane to my existence and have been for awhile. Getting rid of them would be most helpful in our joint operations. Pass the salt please.”

A Rebel Commando: "Just what I needed, a bad case of crotch rot coming up and some stormtrooper scout finds me with my trousers down putting caf mix on my crotch, then I thought what a humiliating way that would be to die."

11

One of our players rolls “natural” 20s with highly suspicious regularity. During one game he rolled his d20, looked down at the die, made some calculations and declared that his roll totaled 22. Which was *so very * convenient, as he knew ahead of time that he needed to beat 21. So I asked him, “was that a ‘natural’ 22?” Without even blinking he said “yes”.

During another game, the men of our party, who had been caught in a trap, woke up to find ourselves chained naked to the wall of a dungeon. Our strong, silent type character looks over at the lothario (the one who can’t stop talking about his godlike sex drive) and says to the rest of us, “I knew he was all talk.”

This is the history of my favorite character, whom I’ve only been able to play once:

12

I just remembered an incident when we were playing a nice, old-fashioned easy campaign … and my first-level female elven mage decided it would be a good idea to attack eight Hill Giants … with a stick.

I believe what I said (I was a bit drunk at the time) was “Eat stick, big hilly guy!!”

13

A friend and I were new to the game in the sixth grade. At the onset of our first campaign with newly created characters the DM tells us that there are orcs charging toward us. My friend has a wizard character and says, “I start to wave my hands.” The DM replies, “You are killed by the orcs.”

14

Heh. We’re getting some classics, here.

One of my favorite moments, though I’m afraid there’s no quote that goes with it, was as a mid-level Bard in Ravenloft in 2nd Edition AD&D … set upon by a werewolf in camp, I webbed the creature… having no magical or silver weapons, I proceeded to beat him to death… with my fist, where I wore a silver signet ring.

I may have to start a separate Great Moments thread though, for this and more like it.

For now, more quotes.

"I hate to be the voice of reason, but Hey…’ - Eric
“Ah, would this be literal death, or figurative death?” - Eric
"That entire thought process hurts… " - Eric
“That was perhaps the worst display of listening to me I’ve ever seen.” - Eric

And then there was my swashbuckler character… well, he’s still around. Basically, he’s about as smart as a human can be in the particular system, yet he persists in acting like a foppish moron half the time. He’s a very Scarlet-Pimpernel sort. He’s given me the opportunity to deliver some gems.

We’d just rescued a magic artifact of elemental water from beneath a volcanic island… apparently, the artifact held down the lava beneath the island, and the resulting pressure caused the island to raise up… when we took the artifact away, the lava could flow out to the sea, and the island sank to a more stable height. This occurred during our wrap-up meeting with the mayor, as we were reporting our success. He seemed a little confounded by the sinking, to which I replied, “Well, some settling may occur.”

Then in the same game (which is based on a friend’s homebrewed system), we were tasked to rescue a faerie-dragon that had been taken captive by a mean-spirited noblewoman and locked in a dungeon. Victor (the character of mine) refused to believe this, of course, and replied. ‘Oh, that’s preposterous. Whoever heard of combining Dungeons with Dragons?’

15

John Smith-Malkavian, unable to distinguish between television and reality. At a conclave, he took out a microphone and began attempting to interview various Kindred. One of his packmates was not happy with behaviour.

“We’ll be right back, after these commercials.”
“John, there are no commercials!”
“Oh. I see… In that case, I’d like to remind our viewers that programs like conclave, women’s locker room, and the haven of Judas Deveraux are made possible by the contributions of viewers like you. Our operators are standing by to take your call. But we have even more incentive. A $25 pledge will get you a tote bag. A $50 pledge will get you a copy of my children’s show The Lab Of Professor Von Fun.”

He also had clan enmity Toreador. At one conclave he greeted the Toreador Primogen with “Wonderful! I see the doctors were finally able to get your head out of your ass!”

16

Way back when we were playing Spelljammer, there was a band of hobgoblins, who cooked some disgusting food and offered it to the players.

And just when my mum walked in with some noodle-salad for us to eat, one of my friends said “Tell you what, I am going to eat some of that slimey goo!”. Naturally everyone burst out laughing :smiley:

Another time the group was attacked by an evil wizard, who threw a fireball into the midst of the party. The same guy as above screamed “Ich bin zurückgeblieben, ich bin zurückgeblieben!” which translates to both “I stayed behind! I stayed behind!” and to “I’m retarded! I’m retarded!”.
That was pretty damn funny as well. Heh, good times.

17

This one ought to be fairly self-explanatory - “Fork! Those wenches stole my husband!” (replace “fork” and “wenches” with appropriate profanity.)

A friend of mine had a character that was an avariel - winged elf. I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but she got somehow tethered to the ground. Naturally, she tried to fly away, and kept crashing back to earth. The sound effects were classic. “Fwip, fwip, fwip… thud! Fwip, fwip, fwip… thud!” We kept bringing it up over and over again. People must have thought we were crazy.

18

The avariel bit reminded me. I once had a player utter one of the items from the net-list of ‘Famous Last Words.’ A group of Baatezu had taken over a keep on the Prime Material … the PCs ran into them, and were cordially invited to spend the evening there. The avariel cleric accepted. She died.

The Player : ‘But they’re Lawful Evil!’

More good quotes. A GM I gamed with was describing our party’s actions as we approached our destination :

GM : Allright, you all walk towards the castle.
PlayerOne (A Bounty Hunter) : I Stroll.
Me (My Swashbuckler) : I strut.
PlayerTwo (A Faerie Mage) : I meander.

Eric, as a vigilante in a Pulp Superheroes game, after dispatching two guards, and being jokingly referred to as a serial killer, describes his motivation:
“I’m not a serial killer, I’m just bored!”

Another Eric gem : “You have about as much loyalty as… I don’t know. What’s something with low loyalty?”

More to come…

19

Hee.

From a Werewolf game: It is not advisable for your Cliath to use their new Spirit Speech gift to taunt 20-foot Bane spirits in their native tongue.

From the same game:

(Having just pinned a vampire to the ground in Crinos): I rip her throat out with my teeth!
<Rolls>
Hey, that’s a lot of ones.
GM: I’ll be nice this time. You got distracted and started nibbling sweetly upon her neck.

GM: For the last time, you cannot telefrag someone by leaving the Umbra!

20

More quotes.

We got distracted once while playing Gamma World… we players talking amongst ourselves, while the GM browsed the rulebook, and happened to fall upon the skill section.

"Dude! Wrestling is awesome! " - he suddenly said.

Eric, talking about my character’s role in a high-level D&D game we were playing :
“You know stuff about things.”

Eric, in the Pulp Superheroes game:
“It’s always an evil cult! Why can’t some nice people try to take over the world?”

The last three I have to share revolve around ‘Reginald Spencer’, a friend’s character in my Pulp Superheroes game, and a bit of background info is required. Spencer was alcoholic and casually murderous. An Amoral Archaeologist.

Spencer : “If it were up to me, I’d be studying Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Well, shooting people’s a good second choice.”

An Evil NPC Cultist, regarding Spencer : “I’m in an evil cult, and I think he has issues.”

And lastly… the finest exchange I’ve ever had the privilege to witness. Spencer talking to his rival, a female archaeologist, at a high society party.

Marie (the Rival NPC) : Don’t go getting yourself killed, Spencer. Your life is mine to end.
Spencer : Don’t worry. I’ll stay alive for you, Marie… Professional Courtesy.
Marie : Since When are you professional?
[Two of Spencer’s fellow PCs] (in unison) : Or Courteous?

I laughed till I cried.