Knights of the Dinner Table: Funniest (or most Amazing) things that have happened around the gaming table.

[Arkhemedes]

Many of us are familiar with the great comic strip, Knights of the Dinner Table, and it's popularity stems largely from the fact that we can all relate to it because we've 'been there' and 'done that.' And we all have our own stories to tell about what's happened around the game table as opposed to what's happened in the game. So let's hear some.

Here's an example that happened during my earliest gaming days shortly after graduating from college:

Back in those days, most of my DnD buddies worked evenings at a restaurant. After work we all came over to my place to game, sometimes for an all-nighter. Our DM at the time had a friend named Mark who also joined us on occasion. On one of these nights, Mark had been doing a little partying while he was waiting for the rest of us to get off work. He had been drinking beer on an empty stomach. Later on, while we were gaming and going through the classic module Temple of Elemental Evil, Mark started complaining that he hadn't had a thing to eat all night. So we fed him some Oreo cookies. A short while later, not long after the DM had drawn out the earth temple on our mat and we began to explore it, the DM went around the table and asked each of us what we were going to do. When he got to Mark he said, "Mark, what are you going to do?"
Mark leaned over the table, examing the positions of our figurines on the mat, and said, "Well, I'm going to..." at which point he proceeded to vomit up a mixture of cookies and beer all over the table!!!

We, of course, laughed hysterically, cleaned up the mess, and continued gaming. Poor Mark however, faded rather quickly following his brilliantly played masterstroke and soon after, passed out.

Then there's the time a player of mine declared that he was going to break his cursed weapon, and despite the incredible odds against it (concidering the number of dice I made him roll and the numbers he needed to roll) he amazed us all by doing it! But that's a story for another time.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

5-Star thread, Arkhemedes.

Here's one. This was during the early 1980's, so i am sure the edition is obvious. Back at that time, gamers really became attached to their characters(old schoolers are sure to know what i am talking about). Well, long story short, a player got killed due to the actions of another. Once this player got through the initial shock of his characters death by the stupidity of another, he leaped across the bed and attacked the other player, punching him in the major body parts like pecks, arms, and thighs (he didn't want to permanently hurt him, after all) to teach him a lesson as well as vent his disappointment. Sure, we all dived in to pull the two apart, and after the yelling was over, we all laughed about it.

[Genesplicer]

Weellll..... There was this one time....
One of the guys in my old colledge gaming group was relly shy. ESPECIALLY with women. He definetly wasn't gay, but he couldn't handel anything to do with the oposit sex, and he didn't like to be touched by ANYONE. Well, there was this one time when our GM made a new aquaintence and discovered he was an avid gamer, and his wife ocasionaly joined him. So our GM invited him over to try it out with our group, and to bring his wife. Well, before the game they are being introduced to every one. Before meeting the idividual I speek of, they were given a brief description of his personality quirks, and were warned that he didn't like to be touched. Well, the wife thogght this was just a hoot, so when the introduction was made, she gave him a BIG bear hug. The poor guy ran around the room three times screaming, and then ended up curled up in fetal position in one of the corners for several minutes. The rest of us were caught between amusment of his rediculous antics, and anoyance that she invaded the man's personal space just because it was the one thing he had asked (through us) that she not do.

[korhal23]

One time, while playing Spycraft, I was GMing, and while our snoop and hacker were doing their business in the backrooms at a swanky party, the faceman character (faceman is a class... the player and the character were female) was keeping the party host distracted. Well, to make a seduction check, she decided to drop her purse and bend over suggestively to pick it up, giving the party host a nice view of her... cash and prizes. I ruled that would give her a bonus of a few points to her roll because us guys can be simple that way sometimes. So she rolls and gets a natural 1. Thinking it too funny to pass up a critical failure on a cleavage shot, I spend the action die to activate the critical failure, and so the host was offended at what she was trying to do, and she was to be escorted from the premises. The next game session she tries to pull a similar maneuver on another NPC, and again rolls a natural 1. The player of the soldier turns to her and says out of character "Seriously, Rebecca, what's wrong with your boobs?" Good times.

[Dytrrnikl]

During a WEG d6 Star Wars Campaign I was running in 97, Rebellion Era. The thugs of the group were have a one upmanship with each other over who could pull out the bigger weapon. An NPC in the group was a Gamorrean weapons expert, that resorted to violence any chance he got - except whith members of the group...while the other three players involved were playing Boba Fett types that wholly supported the Rebellion. Well, it started with pulling blaster pistols, escalated to rifles, then grenades. It ended when one of the players pulled out a Thermal Detonator that no one in the group even knew he had. I had the Gamorrean grunt and squeal at the group and then had him walk away. By this point in the campaign everyone had learned how to understand Gamorrean speech such as it was. My brother, one of the players involved asked what was said, just before he was going to start chugging the rest of his pepsi. THe Gamorrean said "I am shocked and apalled," and which I relayed to my brother just as he started chugging. Well...this caused him to spew Pepsi all over the game table and the guy sitting next to him. We all broke into hysterics at this whiel we cleaned everything up as best we could. It sort of derailed the evening as they just couldn't recover from a line I stole from the Simpsons episode when Flanders flipped out.

[SilenzZzz]

well a quick note ... one girl that occasionally games with us ... has a very odd laugh .. and an even more odd sneeze ... her laugh is more like a bunch of high pitched squeaks ... and her sneezes sounds like a munchkin chaingun with a bigger boom at the end ...

well not everyone at the table knew about them ...

she also had the habit of taking her shoes off at the table ... and, well my dogs like to check out peoples bare toes ... so in the middle of a game .. she suddenly 'meeped' because a cold nose to the toe .... that caused us who were used to it to laugh a little ... but the ones that were not .. just stared .. which caused her to get nervous and laugh more ... within 1 min everyone was rolling ....

it repeated later when she for some reason sneezed ...

after that she left the room for a bit ... hah ...

ton's of more stories ...

[traesin]

Okay, this one game we had five players. One guy was playing an elven fighter and I was playing a half-elven thief. Evey time I tried to pick a lock I failed, so he would try and suceed. This happened over several weeks. it got to the point where I gave him my lock-picks and let him do all the lock picking.

[Arkhemedes]

Alright. Time for another great moment in the history of Dungeons & Dragons:

Many, many years ago we had a player by the name of Mike, that everyone liked to pick on for some reason - probably because he was always whining about something. This guy had the worst luck and did some of the stupidest things I have ever seen anyone do at the gaming table. He had a character by the name of Reaper that died and was resurrected 8 times!!! (Kind of ironic name, huh?) This is a record that I'm sure will never be broken by anyone in my group.

Some of his deaths were just down-right hysterical. Perhaps I'll share them with you at some point. For now however, I'm going to relate to you one the funniest things that ever happened to this character that didn't lead to his death:

During one episode, while this band of evil adventurers was exploring some caves, they came to a spot where a black pudding clung to the ceiling above them. There were six members in the group at the time I believe, and I rolled randomly to see which one of them the black pudding would decide to drop down on top of. Of course, it landed on Reaper's head and began eating the flesh away from his face. The other characters, being evil and all, just stood there and watched with the attitude of "Wow, it sucks to be you." Naturally, Reaper (Mike) tried to pull the black pudding off his head, but he was having a difficult time because it was burning his hands as well. So I (the evil DM) pointed out to Mike that his character had seen an underground stream just ahead before he was hit with the black pudding. Well, as you might have expected, Reaper, thinking he could wash the black pudding off in the stream, ran and dove into it. Of course, I failed to mention the fact that the stream was full of hungry barracudas!

Sometime later, once all the laughter finally died down, and Reaper had somehow managed to survive the ordeal, I added insult to injury by pointing out to Mike that Reaper's face was now so horribly disfigured (his nose in fact was completely gone) that healing spells could not repair all the damage and that he would need a regeneration spell to fix it - something that he could not afford for some time to come.

[traesin]

oh thought of another one. So my group had just started playing 2nd. we were all new to the game. One character had gotten hurt so our druid Steven) went and started a fire so that he could make a poltice to help heel the character. Now the week before we had had a discussion about equipment being used that was not on our equipment list. So the DM asked steven what he was boiling the water in. Steven looked on his equipment list and found out he didn't have anything to boil water in. So he told the DM he was going to boil water in his hands. The DM made him roll a D20 3 times and he rolled a 20 all 3 times!!!! So the DM let it stand. Needless to say at the next town he bout a pot.

[Arkhemedes]

Alright boys and girls, it is time for another installment of: The Eight Incredible Deaths of Reaper the Dunderhead! (or How I Became Known as Ratboy!):

In this episode we skip ahead to the eighth and final of Reaper's spectacular deaths. By this point our group of evil adventurer's has become powerful beyond their wildest dreams and along the way has gone through many a strange adventure. In the course of these bizarre tales our hero Reaper has undergone a number of changes both mentally and physically. After having repaired the horrible disfigurement caused by the face-eating black pudding (not to mention the free-of-charge, bikini-wax job done to his scalp) Reaper, in a sick and twisted magical trap built by the mad creator of the dungeon complex they were exploring (and no doubt designed by Rod Sterling himself), was permanently reduced from an intimidating figure of well over six feet in height to a somewhat less than imposing man of just under five feet.

Some time later, at the perennial height of the adventuring band's infamous careers, when there was little left for them to do than to become creatures of the night, such as liches and vampires, Reaper too desired to follow in the boot heels of his companions and become a monster like them. Well, of course, the powers (and the generous DM) being what they were, our hero's wish was soon granted, much to his initial delight. For at this time, a powerful family curse finally took it's course, and, one day after being bitten by a wererat, the long kept secret of Reaper's family was at last revealed to him. This single, seemingly innocuous bite, was apparently the very catalyst required to bring this curse to its ultimate fruition and transform Reaper into his true form - that of a wererat! Upon this discovery, Reaper was absolutely delighted with the idea of being a lower-than-pond-scum dweller of the sewers (as strange as this may sound) for he believed that it made him invincable to all but magic and enchanted weapons - a point about which he often bragged on despite the disgusted expressions of those who were unfortunate enough to be standing down wind of him.

Then came the day the band of evil adventurers came face to face with what may well have been one of the deadliest chambers of horror that could ever be imagined: a cavern full of beholders and the charmed giant slaves that served them! Upon seeing this room of what appeared to be a one-way ticket to Hades, the band immediately retreated into a magically accessed demi-plane which they had at their disposal (told you they had some cool magic stuff!) and there they devised an ingenius plan to defeat these beholders and their charmed slaves. Realizing that the magic rays of so many beholder's eyes was a sure death sentance, they decided to nullify all magic around them with an anti-magic shell and battle it out using only their weapons, which would now be rendered non-magical by the very spell that protected them. This, of course, was the point at which our hero Reaper overtaxed his mental capacity yet again, by assuming that the giants would not be able to touch him so long as he remained within the protective confines of the anti-magic shell that surrounded them. Little did the unsuspecting 'ratboy' know, as he was now affectionately refered to by his companions, that the powers that be (me again) had planned all along for this eventuality and in such a case would enact a little known rule (taken from the older 1st edition DMG) which stated, in no uncertain terms, that creatures of certain power (ie. 4+1 HD or more) could affect those which normally required magical weapons to harm. Imagine then, if you will, the look of absolute horror on the face of Reaper (Mike) when he laughed at the giants, issued a challenge to them with an air of supreme confidence and was then promptly beaten down into hideous stain of blood and puss fit to be trod upon!

The group of course, between fits of laughter, made another hasty retreat into their magical sanctuary soon after, and for the final time, ressurected the ratboy with another handy magic item pulled from their incredible bag of tricks. They then returned to the cavern, now just a smidgen wiser than before, and proceeded in their efforts to finish the job. All in all, it took them five such trips into the cavern - but eventually they prevailed.

[RoryN]

Have a kind of similar one as the first, revolving around drinking.

We used to enjoy a few "adult beverages" during some of our game nights. On one particular occassion, the guy that was going to DM had started drinking some Jim Beam well before play began. Not sure if he had anything to eat beforehand or not.

Anyway, we got pretty deep into this dungeon, and he had a hallway filled with doors that were trapped with teleport spells, so when we went in one door, we reappeared outside of another. He was pretty toasted by this time, so we huddled at the table and decided to make things interesting. Four of us tied a 50' length of rope to our waists and gave the other end to the cleric, who waited in the hallway. Then we started going in different doors. Our DM was able to keep up for about 3 minutes, then things started to get to him. In another 2 minutes, he was running out the door and puking in the front yard. Unable to continue, we carried him to the back of his truck and drove him home. To this day I still think he cringes when he hears the words "Jim Beam".

[Sascha]

DnD, 3.5/3.75 mush (3.5 characters using a Pathfinder module): One-shot land last night, turned into a Comedy of Errors.

The Set-up: four players - a crusader, a cleric, a ranger/rogue and a battle sorcerer (myself); level 12, modestly geared.

The Mission: head into barbarian territory and assist the General camped down there in his campaign.

Encounter 1: 6 barbarian scouts on horseback approach us during the first watch. (Level 1, all of them, who only wish to ride by and set our tents ablaze as a rite of passage. But there's no way our characters know this.) Combat starts and we set to dispatching the invaders rather well ... until my first attack. Three d20s hit the table: 1, 1, and who cares, since there were two potential fumbles there (our DM uses them). Reflex save to avoid something silly? One miss and one natural 1; apparently, being proficient in the longbow means I aim at my own foot to nock and ready the arrow. The lesson of the encounter? A rogue/ranger can nail an enemy's horse from 60 paces, while a sorcerer with roughly the same base attack manages to staple their own foot to the ground.

We get to the General's camp without further incident, and are tasked with recon: a green rock off the southern shore intrigues them, and the last party to find out what it is turned up missing. Off to the swampy south we go. Turns out the rock is the corroded remains of a copper ship, wrecked offshore. Oh, and our horses were dragged into the swamp by creatures unknown.

Encounter 2: Nowhere near as exciting as the first, being that we were outnumbered almost 2:1 by "even challenges" (read: 9 11th level barbarian frogmenthings their "god," a levell 14 devil-winged toad critter that regenerates, plus a fair amount of terrain penalties to our movement). A wall of ice cuts off half the frogmen infantry, those behind our camp, then my poor little sorcerer gets snagged by the toadthing's sticky tongue; silly toad, don't try to eat teleporting elves~. Of course, we still get overrun, as the other 5 frogmen charge, and the deviltoad turns the ground to quicksand consistency. *poof* Teleport back to safety. Lesson here: stacking terrain penalties against the party makes the challenge rating somewhat increased. Who knew?

At this point, we get to the actual plotline; where we failed, NPCs succeed, I suppose. The location of the original scout is divined by the newly arrived priests - a short jaunt due north from the copper ship's corpse. Since we've already been there, we teleport back to the beach to start the search.

Or so we thought. It took 4! attempts to land in the right spot, as my dice weren't wanting to roll anything lower than 80 (percentile table, to see if we safely arrive, for those unfamiliar with the rules). One of our destinations? Underwater. Out of 6 potential teleports, I burn 4 just to get us to the right spot safely. The cleric windwalks us up north and we discover the sunken remnants of a ginormous temple, complete with ginormous statue-lady attached. Good place to hide our lost scout, no?

Encounter 3: Underwater, this one, seeing as the entrance to the temple appears to be rather ... submerged. Automatically, this means those of us not using piercing melee weapons (basically all of us) aren't as effective as we would normally be, as well as handy fire spells being quite likely to fizzle. Oh, and penalties to attack rolls, yay! Back to the monsters - 4 of the previous frogmenthings, who take no hits to their effectiveness, being that it's their native environment.

It starts off standard, tight formation, haste, getting charged by frogmen. Round two sees the cleric forcing three of the frogs to flee, leaving the one, naturally, that's attacking me. By round three, our sorcerer is unconscious, as there's no real way to protect against an even number of foes without leaving someone out of healing reach. And deaf, permanently; yes, the frogmen wield thundering clubs, and oh look, my save roll missed by a significant margin.

I get healed, yay, and the frog who hurt me gets a face full of Scorching Rays (12d6 damage, rolled decently - you hurt me, you get hurt; simple as that :P). Down again, up again, another face full of fiery bolts. And the frogman's barely even hurt. That should have been our cue to leave, but we decide to see how far we're willing to skirt the edge of our own doomcliff.

Turns out we're not all that far from it, and rapidly losing control. After being knocked unconscious and healed a third time, I use one of the remaining two teleport attempts to pop on the other side of the crusader; it was something I really, really didn't want to burn willynilly. (Movement prior to this was in no way putting me out of danger; the frogman swims much, much better than the elf with a negative Strength modifier, a chain shirt, and no ranks in Swim. Nobody ever said the words "you'll be underwater, at least for one or two encounters, so maybe take options to prepare for that.")

It was around here that the frogman was being pummled by the rogue/ranger and the crusader, when the crusader fumbles his weapon. Luckily our other meleer managed to drop the critter before its friends showed back up. It was here we decided to return to the General's camp again, to heal up. All that and we still hadn't found the entrance to the temple. The lesson here? If stacking swamp penalties on your party is bad, wait til they go underwater~

Next day, we try a sneaky-recon mission. The sorcerer gets to teleport, all alone 'cept for a ring of invisibility, and scout out the entrance before returning for the rest of the party. Remember how my dice were last time we tried teleporting? Yeah, new dice; they still hated me. One failed attempt, before the success. Being sneaky-invisible, I manage to find the entrance to the temple, whew. I also find a frogman looking at the suspicious shimmery-shape that is the elf. Time to punch out and gather the troops.

And the worst possible teleport option lands - horrible mishap. By now, the DM's getting annoyed that I'm not just lying about the rolls. I think he went lenient, 'cause normally he's all for the crippling disfigurement that is a botch; I make it back to camp, with a small amount of damage. (Remaining teleport count - 2.) We decide to press on, against, well, all better judgement; at least the DM "rolled" for me on the teleport.

Final Encounter: Still underwater, but we're in the temple, finally. It's here we notice the temple is slanty, leading to Balance checks to avoid sliding into walls. The crusader has ranks, the rogue/ranger has ranks; the sorcerer and cleric, both wearing armor with penalties to said skill, not so much. (Bet you'll never guess what comes next.)

The road ahead is dark, as in pitch-black; we see a hallway straight ahead, and two hallways going perpendicular. One of the perpendiculars (the right, from the entrance) is the direction of the temple's slant. We rope the cleric and crusader together, so at least they'll be together when the cleric slips. Except it isn't the cleric, it's the crusader. Both go flying into the murky waters beyond our senses' reach. And get attacked by a colossal devilfish thing. The ranger follows, though in control of his descent; the sorcerer? Lost footing and slid straight down. Surprise~

Since this encounter was three or four rounds at best, I'll skip to the part where it bites the crusader to death. It was rather shocking, given all that happened, that we only had one official death. And again, the DM's annoyed "roll" for the teleport out.

Since it was getting late, we decided to call it a night and a wholly unsuccessful adventure. I have never been part of such failure of epic proportions, let alone been the majority party in the dice-hating-the-player thing. We laughed hard, but I really think the DM was thrown for a loop when the one-shot characters were completely unprepared for the encounters planned (and they were even scaled down in numbers, he said afterwards).

[Arkhemedes]

Well, look at it this way. At least you didn't teleport into solid rock (instant and irrevocable death) or 100' in the air (almost as bad if your not over water). Not sure how it works in 3.x but in 1e and 2e this was always a definite possibility.

[Sascha]

Yeah, I think he was going lenient, just due to the sheer number of times it failed, right up until the double-aught. And the underwater only happened once, because he didn't expect it to happen a second time.

[Arkhemedes]

Yeah, I think he was going lenient, just due to the sheer number of times it failed, right up until the double-aught. And the underwater only happened once, because he didn't expect it to happen a second time.

Yeah, I can recall a number of game nights that came to a sudden and screeching halt when a player nonchalantly rolled those percentile dice thinking, "Eh, what are the odds that something will go wrong here? Baahhh!"