The group is sailing past the ruins of Lost Milwalkee, the skeletons of skyscrapers half submerged by rising Lake Michigan.
They see a huge fin, 1 story high, protruding from the water, amid a ruined shopping mall.
The mutant creature drags itsself onto land, on 4 titanic elephantine legs. A giant mutant catfish, it’s “whiskers” writhing like tentacles. The damn thing is the size of a 747 Jumbo Jet, & its eyes are alive with intelligence!
“QUICK! QUICK!” they scream. “THE MISSILE LAUNCHER! GET THE MISSILE LAUNCHER!”
The titanic beast opens its vast maw, and squeaks in a high, thin, voice:
“You do, and I’ll give you such a pinch!”
Soda out the nose, for all of my players.
Your story reminded me of another moderately amusing anecdote from a campaign I’m currently in. My character is an Elven Ranger/Rogue, very ‘Batman’ like (complete with a plethora of useful gadgets) … he’s a grim and determined sort, dedicated to keeping Elven culture from being subsumed by the human culture of the campaign.
A city-state by the northern sea hired us to take care of a problem… something was attacking their shipping lanes to the colonies on the edge of the arctic continent, and they had to get this last run of supplies up there before the winter freeze, or else more than half the people would certainly die. So we went along to take care of the ship-sinking problem… which turned out to be an Abyssal Dire Shark of enormous proportions. My first words upon sighting it were, of course, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
In a Champions (Superhero genre RPG) game I ran for years, there was the following incident. The players had managed to get advance infirmation of a major weapons shipment, part of a gathering gang war. A gadgeteer/powered armor type hero was the first to break in, while the other team members approached through back and side entrances.
GM: Ok, you step around the corner into the warehouse’s main room. There are several large boxes on pallets, some of which have been opened. In the open boxes you can see explosives, guns, ammunition, grenades, and various other weapons. There are a about a dozen apparantly nomal men here, unloading the shipment. They see you step in, reacting with suprise. What do you do? Player: A dozen normals? I’ll spread my electrical blast to fill the room and hit all of them. GM: Uh … are you sure you want to do that? Player: Sure!
The resulting explosion demolished the building, killed all the unarmored normal people inside, nearly killed several PCs, and destroyed the evidence the party should have gathered from the scene. I think they all fled the location before the authorities arrived.
The player in question did have a tendancy to not pay attention to situations, and make questionable decisions. In another campaign, this same player had a character nearly die after falling off a bridge - forgetting that the character in question had the power to fly. Thus the line “Dorian, you can fly!”, still used to this day to sum up the player.
That sounds a bit extreme, after all, the character wouldn’t have forgotten that he can fly, even if the player did. On the same note, it’s always aggravating when people fail their coolness rolls, so their characters are afraid, but then the player says “Hey, I am not afraid. Why can’t my character do this and that then?”
But the general premise of players not paying attention is quite common and sometimes funny. In a shadowrun game my brother shot the guy we were supposed to meet up with, just because he had a gun and was suspiciously inside his own appartement - he mistook him for a burglar.
And looting characters are another matter - We always had a first come first served policy regarding gold & items, so whenever there was a treasure chest in a room, people would try to be the first to reach it.
Player 1: I’ll run to the chest!
Player 2: Me too! Actually I am already there.
Player 3: I am sitting on that chest, how would you open it?
“Roll the dice to see if they ‘did it’!” was once cried out, in semi-seriousness, in a game I used to play. (Dice were rolled. They had, in fact, ‘done it’.)
I actually kept a quote list, and while most aren’t as funny out of context, I think the following stand alone. It’s best if you imagine the deadpan, raspy voice I used for my rather gloom & doom character.
After returning from a mysterious absence: “I was kidnapped by a giant chicken.”
While trying to convince the guards that there was nothing strange going on, not at all: “People are just looking at us because they recognize our friend. He’s a porn star.”
I can’t for the life of me remember why, but there was once some incident that inspired us all to start singing “Unchained Melody”.
I wasn’t there to see this one, but reportedly one of my friends was in a game in which the party had found a dancing sword… and everytime it was used in battle, the players would start singing “Daaaanciiiin’…”
Quick sidetrack. If I wanted to have a thread in which to share general RPG anecdotes that do’t necessarily involve quotes, would it be more appropriate to just post to the long defunct thread here with the Honknar story, or start a new one?
Some friends of mine used to play Shadowrun, and one night they were assaulted by a gang of men who happened to be of African lineage. One of the players being assaulted got into a sort-of quip fight with the leader of the gang. No matter what he said, the gang leader had a perfect, insulting response. When the player was insulted for the final time, he came up with this insulting gem:
“Ohhhhhhhhh, you black, black man.”
When I was a kid, there were three eternal verities in any game we would play:
It would begin in a bar or tavern.
If we came across a bridge, there would be a monster who would attack us in the middle and/or collapse the bridge while we were on it.
If we got on a boat of any sort, it would sink. Usually because of sea serpents.
The last two were so predictable that we used to go to absurd lengths to avoid bridges and boats. We’d rapple down the side of a cliff and swim the rapids at the bottom rather than cross a bridge. The DM finally got the point when we were required to sail somewhere to start the adventure, and the entire party flatly refused to get on the ship:
“You have to get on the ship to sail to Chult.”
“Why? We won’t get there. We’ll be attacked dragons, or hit by a typhoon, or something halfway there, and wash up on some deserted island.”
“You don’t know that!”
“It’s what’s happened every single other time this characters set foot in a boat! Why on Earth would he get on this one?”
“… Maybe this time will be different.”
Not quite a RPG but related . . .
I used to play Vampire: The masquarade collectable card game with a bunch of friends. On one occasion, I uncharacteristically attacked on my second turn. I had a card which let me play a weapon without warning, and a weapon. The person I attacked said of his vampire “Koko sticks out his tongue at Eureka”
On another occasion, one of my vampires had a card which provided intercept(which meant it would require additional stealth to attack me as long as that vampire wasn’t tapped.) Friend A sent my vampire to torpor and stole the intercept card. I questioned whether the card that gave the intercept actually could be stolen that way. Friend B goes to check the rules. Someone said “Eureka’s Vampire is a perfect example of Schroedinger’s Cat” (Decision was made that he couldn’t have my intercept so he didn’t attack my vampire).
And then there was the time that I was playing capture the flag and we started comparing jail to torpor, etc. . .
Speaking of card games, I was showing my friend how to play the first Star Wars CCG. He was playing Dark Side, and was winning by a fair margin. At one point, he looks at the cards he had in play, and said, “Hmm. Looks like the Dark Side is pretty powerful.”
So, of course, I shot back. “No. Quicker. Easier. Not more powerful.”
Funny thing is, it was pretty much true. We played a half-dozen games, and the Dark Side player would always take an early lead but lose in the end. I’d have thought it was a deliberate part of the design, if the game didn’t pretty much suck in almost every other way.
I did have a three-card combo in that game that I always wanted to play, but never had the opportunity. I don’t remember what the individual cards did, but their names were, “Evacuate?” “Moment of Triumph” and “You Overestimate Their Chances.”
Remidns me of something. Friend of mine (Eric, coincidentally) was into the Star Trek CCG. In fact, I traded him all the cards for it that I’d gotten for something, and offered to play him anytime, since I liked the game, but didn’t want into another quagmire of collectoritis.
We were playing a game of it one day, and he had his big, bad Federation deck with all the cool uniques he’d gotten, and the rockin’ ships, and I had … his Romulan deck. I was enjoying myself, but I noticed two of the cards I’d managed to draw. One of them let me peek at his hand, if I recall, and the other let me name a card… if it was in his hand, it had to be discarded. It’s been a long time, but I believe that was the combination.
So soon the second-rate Romulans were running roughshod over the poor Feds who couldn’t get a card to help them at all.
I later found out that that particular card combo was banned from Star Trek CCG Tournament play.
From a Dragonball Z campaign. (Yes, I’m sure some of you loathe Dragonball Z… such is life. I think it’s hilarious, myself.)
(Upon witnessing a human transform and get yellow streaks through his hair, similar to a Super-Saiyan) “He’s a Super… something!”
(Upon being challenged as to our purpose on visiting the Planet Namek by a generic thug, our party’s Namek replies…) “We’re a boy scout troop. Want to buy some cookies?”
And in the game where I play the swashbuckler Victor, his signature line: “You can’t hope to defeat me, I’m always the Victor!”
Can it be from shooters? I was playing UT2K4 today, rolling around in my Goliath and blasting stuff and one of my opponents was named Neo. Neo, to be blunt, got the short end of the tank’s cannon. My girlfriend happened to be watching…
