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Hzurr
2009-05-11, 02:21 PM
So overall, I DM a pretty bright group of PCs. There's one or two who occasionally do foolish things, but for the most part, it's a smart group of people.

Now, with the exception of one guy (it's his first campaign, but we've been playing about 8 months now), they're all very experienced, and the campaign we're going through are the pre-published 4E campaigns (we're on H3 right now), so the adventures are pretty standard. There are cliches, and tropes, and what-have-you, all in a fairly standard dungeon crawl. We're talking bread-and-butter classic d&d here.

They manage to get the drop on a group of bandits who are hiding out in a few chambers in the pyramid the party is trapped in, and the party proceeds to slaughter the bandits. I mean, the party was fully rested, and this battle is so lop-sided that it's almost laughable.

I won't go into too much detail to avoid spoilers, but in one of these bandit rooms, there's a monster that the bandits have barricaded in. The idea is that if things get too rough, the bandits will go move parts of the barricade so the monster can kill the PCs. However, after a few rounds of a blood-bath, the party is between the 3 remaining bandits and the door, so they have no hope of getting over there and setting this thing free.

In a last-ditch effort I know will never work because it's so cliche (and has even been made fun of in OotS (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0106.html)), the bandit leader points to the character standing closest to the monster door, and shouts to the other two bandits who are still alive "Quick, don't let him open the door!"

The b.s. was so obvious it was painful, so much so that the other bandits give their leader a very obvious weird look, before taking a few poorly aimed shots at the character who is standing next to the door.

The PCs have almost an entire round before it gets to that characters turn, plenty of time to point out that this is a bad idea; but when he states that he's going to go and clear the door, because that's obviously what the enemy doesn't want him to do, they all encourage him in this endeavor (the only person who suggested that this might be a bad idea was the newbie who was in his first campaign).

...


The next round, the Player blasts away all the rubble with a thunderwave, and surprise-surprise, a monster starts trying to break through the door. The player (who is by far the most experienced person in our group), suddenly has an epiphany, and realizes the stupid thing he's done, and can only look at the party and sheepishly exclaim "incoming!"


So what about you? What stories do you have where the Players (not the PCs) should have seen it coming a mile away, and for some odd reason all got a natural 1 on their wisdom checks?

Trodon
2009-05-11, 02:29 PM
roflmao thats awesome

Hadrian_Emrys
2009-05-11, 02:37 PM
:smallbiggrin: That's too rich. haha

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-11, 02:51 PM
RuneQuest. The party are on an exploratory HeroQuest - a journey through unfamiliar God-World territory. In this instance, they're following a route blazed by God-Learners, who mucked everything up as they went.

Right at the start, after entering the God-Realm, they come across a brooding giant of a man in black armor, holding a huge sword before him. He booms, loud and grim, "KNEEL AND ACCEPT DEATH!"

The first member of the party, an ancient Troll-lord and master magician, promptly kneels before the swordsman, who lops off his head in one clean stroke, forever separating soul and body and ending his life irrevokably, beyond any magic or quest to resurrect.

I couldn't believe it.

Shpadoinkle
2009-05-11, 03:40 PM
I HAVE to do that. I'm certain one of the guys in my gaming group would fall for it.

Anyway... a few years ago I was playing in a campaign with my dad, my uncle, and a guy my dad worked with, who was DMing. We were investigating some ruins, and in one room, there was a very obvious trap: A loop of rope hanging down so that the loop was actually on the floor. Inside the loop, written in chalk, was simply the phrase "put fut heer." My uncle's character effortlessly stepped over the loop... and naturally he insantly fell into the concealed pit on the other side. I couldn't BELEIVE he fell for it- I saw it coming MILES away. I actually had to ask him "Have you EVER watched a cartoon in your LIFE?"

Zenos
2009-05-11, 03:54 PM
That is hilarious and awesome.

Eh, the players weren't really stupid, but they did do stuff you wouldn't want to do in a horror movie, as there is this Dark Heresy campaign I'm DM'ing now on Myth-Weavers, Ordo Xenos.

So the acolytes are in an old hotel, it's night. The acolytes keeping watch over some prisoners notice movement outside the window, where there is a balcony. So they wake the other acolytes and get their weapons. They notice more movement outside, moving up. One of the psykers, and not even the feral world psyker, decides to walk out on the balcony. And then.. claws descend from above trying to grab him.
Had I not rolled badly and been merciful he would have been hoisted up by the alien gribbly.
The fight afterwards was fun though, I startled the players enough that one of them said OOC, "oh boy, this is really going to suck," without actually killing any characters off. They were actually rather close to killing the beast but I had decided beforehand the alien assassins weren't going to let the acolytes have a chance to see their foes clearly if they had a say in proceedings.

MCerberus
2009-05-11, 04:03 PM
20x20 room, nothing in it but a door, a lever, and a sign that says, "Pull here for treasure." I was the party rogue and was out taking a natural 20 on a door in the hall adjacent because my rolls weren't cooperating.

They pulled the lever and were dropped onto a gelatinous cube.

TheThan
2009-05-11, 04:18 PM
20x20 room, nothing in it but a door, a lever, and a sign that says, "Pull here for treasure." I was the party rogue and was out taking a natural 20 on a door in the hall adjacent because my rolls weren't cooperating.

They pulled the lever and were dropped onto a gelatinous cube.

I would have given them treasure, give them something small but useful. Then do it again at a later date and give them a cursed item.

Coidzor
2009-05-11, 05:52 PM
20x20 room, nothing in it but a door, a lever, and a sign that says, "Pull here for treasure." I was the party rogue and was out taking a natural 20 on a door in the hall adjacent because my rolls weren't cooperating.

They pulled the lever and were dropped onto a gelatinous cube.

Sometimes you really wish bluff and sense motive rolls were made automatically... haha.

JMobius
2009-05-11, 06:21 PM
Well... I once had a party pounce on an obvious and lucrative opportunity for a triple cross in Shadowrun.

Haven
2009-05-11, 06:50 PM
That's great. Technically there probably should have been a Bluff-Insight roll, but that would have given it away. I guess the PCs' total willingness to go along counts as forfeiting it, or maybe they would have had to have asked for an Insight check...

Aw, hell, Rule Of Funny plus an idiot ball carried by the entire party.


I HAVE to do that. I'm certain one of the guys in my gaming group would fall for it.

Anyway... a few years ago I was playing in a campaign with my dad, my uncle, and a guy my dad worked with, who was DMing. We were investigating some ruins, and in one room, there was a very obvious trap: A loop of rope hanging down so that the loop was actually on the floor. Inside the loop, written in chalk, was simply the phrase "put fut heer." My uncle's character effortlessly stepped over the loop... and naturally he insantly fell into the concealed pit on the other side. I couldn't BELEIVE he fell for it- I saw it coming MILES away. I actually had to ask him "Have you EVER watched a cartoon in your LIFE?"

Ha! Wile E Coyote'd!

chiasaur11
2009-05-11, 07:04 PM
Well... I once had a party pounce on an obvious and lucrative opportunity for a triple cross in Shadowrun.

In the immortal words of Sgt. Schlock "It looked like 'get paid twice' to me".

holywhippet
2009-05-11, 07:04 PM
That's great. Technically there probably should have been a Bluff-Insight roll, but that would have given it away. I guess the PCs' total willingness to go along counts as forfeiting it, or maybe they would have had to have asked for an Insight check...


I don't think you can use skill checks like that. If there was an actual person in the room telling you to do it then you could make a skill check. Technically that works by reading body language, watching facial expressions etc. to decide if the person is telling the truth. A sign has nothing you can use to judge by - discounting handwriting analysis. It's up to the players to decide if it's a bluff or not.

Saph
2009-05-11, 07:38 PM
This story is still one of my favourites because it's a case of players managing to trick themselves and get themselves killed with absolutely no influence from the DM at all. It's been a year and I still don't know why they did it.

--------------------------

We were restarting our Phantasy Star IV campaign, and I was DMing. Two new players were joining the party.

The setting was Motavia; for those of you who don't know the Phantasy Star universe, think a planet a lot like Dune. Same mixture of low-tech and high-tech, along with sandworms. Big sandworms.

The PCs were 8th-9th level. They'd just finished a difficult and dangerous mission out in space, and had returned for a few days downtime before going back out again. They're not very tech-savvy, but they have an NPC called Rika who pilots their spaceship and operates all the technology. The two new players showed up - one's playing a warlock, the other's a warmage. The warmage player didn't get around to making a character and generated his PC in the 20 minutes before we started playing. With hindsight, this should have been a tip-off.

The two new players joined the party, and after some conversation were shocked to discover that there was nothing that immediately needed to be killed, mutilated, or blown up. Obviously, something had to be done about this.

Warlock: "Let's go out and hunt something."
Me: "Sure. This is a mostly low-level world, though, so the monsters aren't going to be much of a challenge. But you can spend a couple of days doing that and-"
Warlock: "Boring. Hey, I know, let's go out and hunt a sand worm."
Me: " . . . What?"
Warmage: "Yeah, that sounds cool."
Warlock: "Can we find one?"
Me: "Uh, yeah, in the deep desert. Listen, I did explain what the sandworms here are like, right? They're Dune-style sandworms. You know how big those are, right?"
Warlock: "That's why it's cool!"
Druid: "Has anyone tried hunting sandworms before?"
Me: "They've tried, yes."
Druid: "I'm guessing they never come back."
Me: "Yes. In fact, 'going to hunt a sandworm' is actually a proverb on this planet that translates as 'doing something suicidally stupid'."
Warlock: "Great! Let's go!"

(Ten minutes later)

Me: "Okay. The warlock and warmage are heading out into the deep desert. The rest of you are in the spaceship, following at an altitude of five hundred feet or so."
Warlock: "I start shooting eldritch blasts at the ground. Does it attract a sandworm?"
Warmage: "I walk around on the sand and jump up and down to make lots of noise."
Me: "Start making encounter rolls."

(Ten minutes later)

Me: "The distant earthquake seems to be getting louder and stronger. In the distance you can see a disturbance in the sand, getting closer."
Warlock: "I use fell flight and take off!"
Warmage: "I cast fly, take off, then cast fire shield and ring of blades!"
Psion (on the spaceship, five hundred feet up): "Rika, can you find it?"
Rika: "Getting a reading on the gravimetrics. About eighty feet long. It looks like a mature sand worm."
Psion: "Okay, how about you take the ship down, and open the hatch, so that we can-"
Rika: "No."

(Five minutes later. I couldn't be bothered to make up stats for a fully Dune-sized sandworm, so I decide to go with 'only' a D&D Purple Worm (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/purpleWorm.htm).)

Me: "The sandworm breaks the surface of the sand beneath you. You see its jaws, followed by the enormous length of its body."
Warlock: "I fly down and eldritch blast it!"
Warmage: "I fly down and cast orb of electricity on it!"

(Five minutes later, during which the players discover that flying at close range above the ground is not actually all that much protection against a creature that's 80 feet long.)

Me: "The sand worm's teeth sink into the warmage. You take 19 damage and you're grappled."
Warlock: "I eldritch blast it again!"
Me: "You know you're firing into a grapple, right?"
Warlock: "Yup."
Me: "Roll percentile dice."

(Five minutes later)

Me: "Okay, the rest of the party just saw the warlock blast the warmage, who's still in the worm's jaws."
Psion: "Maybe if Rika takes the ship down to close range-"
Rika: "Are you out of your mind? No!"
Warmage: "I've got Sudden Still. I use that to blast the worm with another orb of electricity!"
Me: "*sigh* Roll concentration."

(Five minutes later)

Me: "The worm gulps down the warmage like a cocktail olive . . ."
Warlock: "Great! Now I've got a clear shot!"
Me: " . . . and submerges beneath the surface of the desert."
Warlock: "Damn."
Warmage: "Hah! Now I'm in its stomach, my fire shield and ring of blades are doing it damage each turn!"

(Three minutes later)

Warmage: "Hey, Shout is a verbal-only spell! I can cast that from inside its stomach!"

(One minute later)

Me: "You take 23 crushing damage . . ."
Warmage: "That puts me to -7. But I'm still-!"
Me: " . . . and 8 acid damage."
Warmage: "Crap."
Warlock: "Can I see anything?"
Me: "Just swirls in the sand."
Psychic Warrior: "Can we leave and get back to the mission now?"
Druid: "Rika, can you put me on the speaker?"
Rike: "Sure."
Druid: "I shout out at the warlock, 'I told you, dumbass!' "
Me: "There's nothing to see anymore. You turn around and start flying back to base."
Psychic Warrior (to the warlock): "Does this usually happen to your companions?"
Warlock: "Well, come to think of it, he was always kind of stupid."
Warmage: "I'd just like to point out that my spells are going to keep going even after I'm dead, so I am eventually going to kill that thing. Ha."

The warmage player made a new character, a monk, and died one hour later to a pair of babau demons, putting him into the rare category of players who've managed to die twice in one session.

- Saph

Hzurr
2009-05-11, 07:39 PM
That's great. Technically there probably should have been a Bluff-Insight roll, but that would have given it away. I guess the PCs' total willingness to go along counts as forfeiting it, or maybe they would have had to have asked for an Insight check...


Trust me, had even one person come close to questioning it (other than one half-hearted "I don't know if this is a good idea" by the new guy), I would have given them an insight check. With bonuses. But when they all go along hook line and sinker....

Ovaltine Patrol
2009-05-11, 08:36 PM
I once tricked my players with a mere goblin, who successfully convinced them that he was a conjured demon, simply waiting for someone to break the spell binding him by crossing the threshold into the room. It only worked because of a bizarre combination of a lack of ranged weapons and a malfunction in their collective BS detectors :smalltongue:

Oracle_Hunter
2009-05-11, 08:44 PM
One of my very first campaigns, AD&D. Now, I was really young (6th grade, IIRC) as were my players, and they were my "trial and error group." I decide that it would be neat for a local baddy to trick the PC Thief into getting trapped so that the rest of the party would have to find and rescue him. There was no motivation for this - it just seemed like a fun idea at the time.

N.B. Never use this plot.

Anyhow, in order to trick the PC Thief, I send an agent that asks the (LV 2) Rogue to steal an item out of a manor. His reward? A ludicrous amount of gold or a magic item of his choice or advanced training with the agent's master thief. Despite the obvious questions this raises (why is this guy paying so much for a petty thief? And why pay him at all, if he already has a Master Thief?) the PC takes the bait without blinking.

The rest of the party takes an in-game month to finally break the Thief out. It was bad all over.

This particular Thief turned out to be a magnet for bad ideas. Later, after being drained by a Wight, the PCs find themselves in the service of a (clearly) Evil Wizard. Rather than take the proffered reward for their quest, the Thief asks if the Wizard can restore his lost level. The Evil Wizard thinks for a moment and says "why yes, I think there is something I can do about that." Of course, the PC agrees without asking for any details.

So I infused him with demonic essences that slowly warped his body and mind. By that point, I had absolutely no sympathy for this guy :smalltongue:

Swordguy
2009-05-11, 08:50 PM
Head of Vecna, guys. Head of Vecna.

Used it in 2 campaigns thus far. It's caused 1 TPK, and wiped out half the other party before they caught on. Including 1 guy who was in the TPK'd party!

holywhippet
2009-05-11, 08:53 PM
One story my DM told me about a session he was running. The players came across a bridge leading across a gorge. For some reason one of the players decided there must be some kind of illusion involved - the DM said he never said anything that would indicate that. So this guy is disbelieving, tossing stuff into the gorge etc. None of it is having any effect. Finally he decides that the gorge itself must be an illusion and jumps down into it. I think he took something like 100 feet worth of falling damage - easily fatal at his level.

ocato
2009-05-11, 09:10 PM
The warmage player made a new character, a monk, and died one hour later to a pair of babau demons, putting him into the rare category of players who've managed to die twice in one session.

I have a friend who used to bring 5+ character sheets to a session because he invariably died several times. He kept them on a clipboard and ripped them off as he went. Now, we played marathon sessions (12+ hours, this was weekends and the summer when we were in high school) with a pretty tough DM and 2 or 3 person parties (with blaster wizards and fighters and so on). The odds were usually stacked against us, but he was the only one who really died that much.

Actually, one time there was a small river of lava (maybe 5' across) that, after our party member fell into and died, something like 7 people randomly ran up and jumped directly into. Cleared the clipboard pretty early that night.

aboyd
2009-05-11, 09:30 PM
I'm not sure this falls under the "fell for it" category, as there was no trick. However, it's still amusing to me. Sam, I hope you don't mind me telling this story. You have to admit, it's pretty funny.

My group is 8 4th-level players with hired mercenaries & animal companions & familiars. If everyone gets off a combat round, there are 15 total "allies" in the party that can attack. Because of this, I have them doing modules a couple levels above their average level. So long as they stay together, they swarm & overwhelm just about anything that is a CR 8 or lower.

Well, in the Cage of Delerium module, there is a hidden pit below some loose floorboards. The pit contains the bodies of hundreds of mental patients who died when the head of the mental hospital lit it on fire. Players who fall in take 4d6 damage, and then have the possibility of awakening a 12 hit die corpse-amalgamation that breathes fire. Oh and it has 12 "tentacles" each made of 3 or 4 connected torsos, and these tentacles each hit for 1d8 + 6, and they have +10 to hit.

By reading that, you might guess that even for the levels the module was designed for (levels 6 to 8), that pit monster is supposed to be death. Only 1 or 2 players will fall in. An 8th level character fighting a monster with 12 +10 attacks will likely die in just a few rounds. Add in that the monster has lots of immunities, and it's just silly.

So, knowing that my players were a couple levels too low and would likely die in a single round against it, I halved everything. Only 6 heads, half the hit points, etc. The creature would still be deadly, but maybe if the PC unlucky enough to fall in were to flee he or she could live long enough for reinforcements to show up, so that no one player bore the brunt of all the attacks.

So, the party hits the creaky floorboards and 1 guy falls through. I rule (quietly, to myself) that he does not fall on top of the monster but rather on some inanimate corpses. If he flees, he's OK. Someone lowers another player down, they scoop up the fallen player, and get out alive. All they know at this point is that the fall really hurt the player, and there are corpses piled high.

They heal the fallen player, give him Spider Climb, and have him investigate. He investigates by climbing down the hole and hurling alchemist's fire flasks at the bodies. This of course awakens the monster. I draw it huge on the map, explain what it looks like, and have the monster spew fire that travels so far up the hole that it reaches all the players standing at the opening.

The player investigating runs back up the hole. Everyone is safe. "Whew," I'm thinking, "They're playing smart! They picked up on my hints about the danger!"

Then another player -- the one previously lowered in on a rope -- says, "I still have the rope around me. I jump in to fight it. Everyone else better figure out how to get down there."

So he's down in a pit, standing alone on a pile of blackened corpses, going mano-a-mano with a custom undead horror built from a hundred dead bodies. It is size 15' square with 10' reach. 5 of the 6 "tentacles" hit, all roll high for damage, and the character ends his first round at -29 hit points.

I guess that's more of a "I can't believe they just did that" thing. :)

chiasaur11
2009-05-11, 09:51 PM
Head of Vecna, guys. Head of Vecna.

Used it in 2 campaigns thus far. It's caused 1 TPK, and wiped out half the other party before they caught on. Including 1 guy who was in the TPK'd party!

In the immortal words of Bullwinkle J Moose:

This time for sure!

The_JJ
2009-05-11, 10:24 PM
Although I'm normally a smart and sane player, I went ahead and... didn't fall for something last session, I just made the mistake of 'giving the GM ideas.' So we're doing some puzzles and we run into a homebrewed Tarot card thing, like a cross between Memory and... that one anime for kids. The one with the hair? (Like that helps...)

The cards came alive is what I'm saying. So anyway, we flip over four of them, and if we got anything that fit into the GM's list of precombinations, stuff would happen. Or not. Anyway...

GM: "Okay, gust of wind, leaves, creepy jack-o'-lantern, pot of black power. Mmmm... nothing happens."
Me: "Cool I was worried that the wind pick up the leaves, blow them through the jack-o'-lantern, light on fire and then get blown into the explosives."
GM: "Hmm... okay. Reflex saves everyone!"

I guess it was okay because we were in a place that was activly trying to kill us...

Random NPC
2009-05-11, 10:29 PM
<snip>
- Saph

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/success.png

DragoonWraith
2009-05-11, 10:46 PM
It's true, 40% of OpenBSD installs lead to shark attacks.

holywhippet
2009-05-11, 10:48 PM
So we're doing some puzzles and we run into a homebrewed Tarot card thing, like a cross between Memory and... that one anime for kids. The one with the hair? (Like that helps...)

??? Dragonball Z maybe (Super Saiyans have their hair sticking up and glowing)

Pokemon?

Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo?

Rhiannon87
2009-05-11, 10:57 PM
In a game I'm a player in, we managed to cause a TPK because we failed to properly hide a skull that, when hit by a weapon, shattered and cast wail of the banshee. We knew the enemy we were fighting was shooting at it. We had an NPC holding it that we could have shouted at to hide it. And yet. We did not. The only reason the characters are still around is because three people hadn't used their "mulligan" deaths, and one person had a ring of deathward. Sigh.

I also once charged a guy who did six attacks in a round, and could get more any time he threatened a critical. (F***ing Lightning Maces.) I briefly forgot that my compulsively multi-classed character =/= front-line melee fighter. Sigh. She's still alive, as the party has many many diamonds (we die rather a lot).

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-05-11, 10:58 PM
??? Dragonball Z maybe (Super Saiyans have their hair sticking up and glowing)

Pokemon?

Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo?Yu-gi-oh. You know, the one with the card game?

archon_huskie
2009-05-11, 11:02 PM
It was just a simple lever. All it did was re-lock all doors on the dungeon's level. Totally confused the party theif when he had to re-pick all of the locks. The party fighter was certain they were being followed by an invisble demon. But in truth, that level of the dungeon had no enemies at all.

The moral was, if you don't know what it does, don't pull the lever!

KBF
2009-05-11, 11:08 PM
??? Dragonball Z maybe (Super Saiyans have their hair sticking up and glowing)

Pokemon?

Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo?

.. What do any of those have to do with cards doing stuff?

It's Yu-Gi-Oh. The hair is Yugi's insane hairdo and color. I mean.. Seriously.

holywhippet
2009-05-11, 11:26 PM
.. What do any of those have to do with cards doing stuff?

It's Yu-Gi-Oh. The hair is Yugi's insane hairdo and color. I mean.. Seriously.

You said the anime with the hair. Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is all about a guy who fights using body hair.

Pokemon is a card game - even if the anime doesn't reflect that exactly.

Coidzor
2009-05-11, 11:39 PM
It was just a simple lever. All it did was re-lock all doors on the dungeon's level. Totally confused the party theif when he had to re-pick all of the locks. The party fighter was certain they were being followed by an invisble demon. But in truth, that level of the dungeon had no enemies at all.

The moral was, if you don't know what it does, don't pull the lever!

But hey, lock XP!:smallbiggrin:

Colmarr
2009-05-11, 11:44 PM
The only stupid thing my party ever did was to discover a banned book (the Liber Inhumanis) in an evil temple and not hand it in to the proper authorities... because they forgot.

Of course, the next time they got "scanned" by a Paladin, they suddenly had some very serious explaining to do...

chiasaur11
2009-05-12, 12:02 AM
But hey, lock XP!:smallbiggrin:

Dang right.

Xp is a perfectly good reward.

averagejoe
2009-05-12, 01:06 AM
The moral was, if you don't know what it does, don't pull the lever!

This is not a philosophy I can accept. Levers were meant to be pulled, by God.

SolkaTruesilver
2009-05-12, 01:16 AM
I have a friend who used to bring 5+ character sheets to a session because he invariably died several times. He kept them on a clipboard and ripped them off as he went. Now, we played marathon sessions (12+ hours, this was weekends and the summer when we were in high school) with a pretty tough DM and 2 or 3 person parties (with blaster wizards and fighters and so on). The odds were usually stacked against us, but he was the only one who really died that much.

Actually, one time there was a small river of lava (maybe 5' across) that, after our party member fell into and died, something like 7 people randomly ran up and jumped directly into. Cleared the clipboard pretty early that night.

I think this player simply secretly wants to play Paranoia, and don't know it yet.

You know, those things you are Fated to do?

Lycanthromancer
2009-05-12, 11:19 AM
Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh... (http://www.yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/episodes/) (Don't worry; it gets better.)

(Whether you love it or you hate it with the passion of a thousand flaming suns...which are on fire...you should watch it. Start by scrolling down at the end of the episodes list, down to the pilot.)

Faulty
2009-05-12, 11:42 AM
Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh... (http://www.yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/episodes/) (Don't worry; it gets better.)

(Whether you love it or you hate it with the passion of a thousand flaming suns...which are on fire...you should watch it. Start by scrolling down at the end of the episodes list, down to the pilot.)

The Abridged Series... oh god, how I love it.

Ernir
2009-05-12, 02:30 PM
Long story short: My 10th level group (on a quest for good) sat idly by, watching a MBEG conjure a wave of negative energy that killed and zombified half a continent.

Why? The MBEG made a speech, and told them completing the ritual was for the best. They just... believed him.

Swordguy
2009-05-12, 02:59 PM
Long story short: My 10th level group (on a quest for good) sat idly by, watching a MBEG conjure a wave of negative energy that killed and zombified half a continent.

Why? The MBEG made a speech, and told them completing the ritual was for the best. They just... believed him.

Well? Was it? It could all have been some sort of Watchmen-esque plan to pull the various warring species together by presenting them with a larger threat (the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!). Don't your players want to end the pointless wars between the races? Is this act, while reprehensible, not for the greater good of the world?



(No, I'm not serious. I'm also not allowed to play evil PCs in my group, for doing precisely this sort of thing. :smallbiggrin: )

Thajocoth
2009-05-14, 09:05 PM
M: All my spells are radiant. Except Halo of Fire.
Me, sarcastically: That one's lightning, right?
M, sarcastically: No it's acid.
K: That's weird. I would've thought fire. Acid's cool though.

I GM that campaign, and you people have given me too many nasty ideas.

Also... In this one fight, M was knocked into a pit. The party assumed she was dead. They even tossed a live drake into the pit to kill it. I had her solo the drake in private. The party pressed on without her and found her waiting in the next town with the party's horses that they forgot. Not that 2 horses would've helped them much... They were escorting most of a small town's entire population back to their town. She had character growth though, which she needed, so all was well. This is all as M & I discussed beforehand... She wanted an excuse to change class & stuff... But the fact that no one else in the party questioned it struck me as odd...

In this other campaign, after a monster hit this one player, he decided to use Second Chance. I tossed the die and quickly caught it mid-air when I realized... He's playing an ELF, not a HALFLING! (He's a Halfling in another campaign.) We'd question his completely unreadable transparent dice if he ever rolled well too.

In a campaign I'm in, during an auction I wanted to win, I cantriped the word "thousand" after my opponent's bid. Humiliated, he had to bow out and let us win my grandfather's old house.

Aedilred
2009-05-15, 05:10 AM
I'm currently staring in disbelief at what my players are up to.

They came across a rather uncaring and unjust local nobleman and decided to take him on, with the intention of killing him and claiming that one of them was the true heir (he isn't). They arrived at the castle to find that the noble- and his entire household- had been killed by a demon. Undeterred, they proceeded to loot it, nick everything they could find with his family crest on, plus the guy's head, to "prove" the inheritance.

This might actually have worked-for a while- if they'd stayed at the castle, because it's unlikely anyone important was going to happen by, although there was no way they could have kept it up. But that wasn't enough for them, so they've packed up and headed off to the local seat of power where they intend to get their chap officially appointed. (Upon arrival, a couple of them decided to go and egg the temple of the local god. Yeah, that's a way to make friends quickly).

At no point does it seem to have occurred to any of them that the ruler might be a bit annoyed that they have- or so it would seem- killed one of his senior nobles and are now parading his head around like a trophy. There are no witnesses to back up their demon story, so it looks like they just murdered everyone.

If that wasn't enough, they also found in the castle a load of paperwork, specifically letters, which hint that the dead noble was involved in some rather dodgy dealings, was heavily in debt, and had reneged on the deal, plus another set of letters from his son (although not openly identified as such) who is still alive and living not too far away. The set of conclusions they've jumped to regarding these is so inaccurate it's hilarious, and they're now planning to track down his correspondent and blackmail him. If they carry on like this, they're going to manage to get on the wrong side of just about all the most powerful people in the setting, even those who would normally hate each other. That's quite an achievement.

TomKatt
2009-05-15, 07:17 AM
Ive got plenty of stories of stupid things players do... unfortunately they are things IVE done XD
I had an affinity for playing paladins, when in truth im just a C/N rogue-ish type must be some weird L/G fetish >.>;;
SO ive played a paladin that has been Ko'd or killed by:
a set of stair, TWICE in a row same session

a book it was evil and smiting it prolly wasnt the brightest idea

3 Different altars, all smote with the wrath of bahamut >.>;; One summoned undead one out right was senscient the other held a yuntai demon.... YAY

a door knob, trapped with magic jar and a lunatic, it was fun watching my pally turn around and wipe the floor with the party until the rogue hamstrung him and he went down but i got my body back

and im sure im forgetting other every day objects that have almost killed him XD

Somebloke
2009-05-15, 07:38 AM
Well, I can think of one instance, in my recent 4th ed campaign:

I had created a buried, ruined city into which my (non-flying) players would have to enter via a rope (i.e. a method that meant they could not effect an immediate escape. I then had the entire area full of 80 zombies, who would slowly surge at the players. There were also two wights who 'led' the zombies and would harry the party with ranged attacks.

I envisaged that within a few rounds the players would realise that they faced being overwhelmed and would attempt to find a choke point or engage in a running battle. I designed the level to reflect this i.e. multiple entrances to every rooms, small cracks in the walls that would provide temporary respite if they managed skill checks, etc. I assumed that my players, all familar with the classic zombie flicks, would use their heads.

Nuh-uh. The moment they spied the wights they turned into terriers chasing sticks, ending up in a huge passageway with multiple entrances. They seemed to delight in charging masses of zombies in open spaces, only to be entirely surrounded the next turn. A combination of very good luck and very handy dailies meant that both strikers (the ranger and the rogue) just barely avoided total destruction. The warlord meanwhile threw himself repeatedly at a wall of zombies to get into melee range with the wight.

And every round, more zombies showed up. And every round, they said to themselves, "This has to be the very last lot".

About three quarters of the way through the fight, I snapped and told them that it would be a very, very, very good idea to actually use their brains. They managed a fighting retreat (except for the rogue, who was cut off from the others and made it back up the rope ladder) got their fighter to block a doorway and destroyed the wights. The fight ended with some 15 zombies still on the table (as we were desperately over time at that point I decided that with the wights gone they lost their necromantic 'steam' and dropped dead.

Naturally, they loved the fight. They grin widely every time it gets mentioned.

LibraryOgre
2009-05-15, 12:04 PM
For the record, the guy who opened the door did not look sheepish. He enjoys the hell out of danger, because he's an adventurer, and it makes a better story later.

Besides, he still has the ability to control minds.

Joringel
2009-05-15, 12:23 PM
I have a friend who used to bring 5+ character sheets to a session because he invariably died several times.

Heck, that's just par for the course for 2nd-ed Dark Sun. ^_^

One particular game I was running for my PCs had them climbing a tower belonging to a gnomish wizard with an obsession for chimeras. They had been hired to retrieve the formula to brew a specific potion, and when they finally reached the second-highest story of the tower, they found the wizard's living quarters.

So, rather than wonder why the wizard's living quarters were currently unoccupied, they just started searching the libarary therein for the formula. The fighter of the party decided to rest on the wizard's bed since he was down to single-digit hit points.

And so it was that the seven animated objects in the room got a surprise round on them.

After the bear rug grappled the rogue, and the candelabra set him on fire, the rogue's player swore to find my copy of Beauty and the Beast and destroy it with a claw hammer. ^_^

rokar4life
2009-05-17, 12:41 AM
okay, just to back up some, and go a bit off topic, have any of you read the original YuGiOh manga, the first few had Yugi being seriously messed up in the head, and that would be really cool for some kind of villain.

The Glyphstone
2009-05-17, 12:51 AM
yeah, I've heard that the first season of the anime (the one not released in the US) was a lot more bloody/violent, and the Super Yugi spirit was a real prick.

rokar4life
2009-05-17, 01:06 AM
ya, ive never seen the anime, and never read past one after the last one where he's evil, but ya he killed a kid because his virtual pet was eating other virtual pets. i dont think it was ever intended to be about cards.

huttj509
2009-05-17, 05:15 AM
Now now, he didn't kill him, he just drove him insane for a bit (Kaiba's brother).

The nitroglycerin frozen in an ice puck on a griddle air hockey, however...

Then there's Kaiba's Tower of Terror...with a 100% certified chainsaw maniac...where Yugi has to go through it because Kaiba GAVE HIS GRANDFATHER A HEART ATTACK BECAUSE HE HAD A RARE CARD!

Yeah, for the US release of the cartoon they just took the marketable season 2, where it worked on the card game and stuff behind that.

rokar4life
2009-05-17, 12:51 PM
i thought the kid ended up having a heart attack

holywhippet
2009-05-17, 11:08 PM
My 2nd ed campaign had "can't believe we fell for that" moment yesterday. We'd finally cleared out a lair full of kobolds and found their treasure room. Despite the DM hammering in that these buggers were devious and nasty, despite there being a pit trap directly in front of the treasure and despite the kobold's shaman having shown a nack for alchemy - we tried to pry open the nailed shut wooden box that was in the treasure room.

**BOOM**

My ranger was knocked down to -9 HP, the druid was knocked down to -8 HP, the fighter was knocked down to -7 HP and the rogue was knocked down to 1 HP. The rogue was the only one who made his saving throw. If he hadn't remained concious he wouldn't have been able to stabilise us. If he'd been knocked down just two more HP it would have been a TPK.

Nu
2009-05-17, 11:43 PM
You said the anime with the hair. Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is all about a guy who fights using body hair.

Pokemon is a card game - even if the anime doesn't reflect that exactly.

Technically, Pokemon was a video game before it was anything else. And I'm about 80% sure the TV show came before the card game.

Just sayin'.

DragoonWraith
2009-05-18, 12:12 AM
Technically, Pokemon was a video game before it was anything else. And I'm about 80% sure the TV show came before the card game.

Just sayin'.
Both are true. As a very avid Pokemaniac when it first came out (and I was the perfect age for it), I'm quite certain that that was the case.

Even in the card game, you were supposed to be using Pokemon from the Pokeballs, just represented with cards. It wasn't like Yu-Gi-Oh where the cards are actually how the monsters were carried and used.

chiasaur11
2009-05-18, 12:13 AM
Technically, Pokemon was a video game before it was anything else. And I'm about 80% sure the TV show came before the card game.

Just sayin'.

Exactly.

Show was first in the US, game was first in Japan, card game was first pretty much nowhere.

It's like saying Star Trek is a card game.

monty
2009-05-18, 12:17 AM
If I remember right, there was also a Pokemon TCG video game. So I guess that would make it a video game based on a card game based on a TV show based on a video game. I also believe that game was terrible, unsurprisingly.

DragoonWraith
2009-05-18, 12:18 AM
Exactly.

Show was first in the US, game was first in Japan, card game was first pretty much nowhere.

It's like saying Star Trek is a card game.
The game was definitely first in the US, too. The show may have come out in Japan before the game did in the US (though I doubt it), but it was a game first everywhere.

Glyde
2009-05-18, 09:00 AM
If I remember right, there was also a Pokemon TCG video game. So I guess that would make it a video game based on a card game based on a TV show based on a video game. I also believe that game was terrible, unsurprisingly.

I liked it, though the computer cheated a lot.



On topicish: The group is currently doing a nautical campaign. They are trapped in the temple of a long-lost civilization that worshipped a (now awakened) sea goddess, who was going to help the cleric who had just lost contact with his deity.

Chaotic Neutral ranger, and chaotic good sorc and rogue all go on to call her a 'seabitch' as his most common insult. To the goddess of the sea. While a boat is their primary means of transportation.

I'm being a little gracious in letting him get away with it for now, but if the insults continue to come out whenever the goddess is mentioned, then let's just say the weather isn't going to cooperate (Rain with a chance of angry giant serpents).

Lapak
2009-05-18, 11:01 AM
The only stupid thing my party ever did was to discover a banned book (the Liber Inhumanis) in an evil temple and not hand it in to the proper authorities... because they forgot.

Of course, the next time they got "scanned" by a Paladin, they suddenly had some very serious explaining to do...This reminds me. It's not so much a 'they fell for it' as a 'can't believe they...'

The players successfully defeated a kobold necromancer, who made clear references to the fact that his (much nastier) master would come after them for revenge if they killed him. In the basement beyond him they find a book. In a locked, sealed box, in a water-filled chamber which they can only drain by flipping a switch in the neighboring room that will be flooded and filled with the water as it empties out of the box chamber. Guarded by zombies hidden amongst piles of corpses, that stand up and attack when the water floods. The book is the only thing in the box.

They successfully retrieved the book, but only to stick it in a pack and forget about it. Literally. They didn't read it, didn't ask me what was in it, didn't turn it in to the authorities when they got back to town, or consult a sage, or anything. Even though I started the next two sessions with recaps that included 'and then you defeated the kobold necromancer and retrieved his book of dark rituals.'

They were shocked and amazed when the town was attacked by fire-throwing skeletons whose victims arose as charred zombie minions when they were burned to death. They cried foul as the town guards that were helping them defend the town became enemies already atop the walls. But it wasn't MY fault it came as a surprise to them! :smallfrown:

chiasaur11
2009-05-18, 01:13 PM
The game was definitely first in the US, too. The show may have come out in Japan before the game did in the US (though I doubt it), but it was a game first everywhere.

Well, although I'd concede it's less than a 100% reliable source, Wikipedia says the first episode aired in the USA September 8, 1998, while the games came out on the 30th.

A couple of old magazines say the same thing. Might be wrong, but at least I'd have some excuse for erroneous beliefs.

Waspinator
2009-05-19, 11:26 PM
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/EP001
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokémon_Red_and_Blue_Versions

chiasaur11
2009-05-19, 11:44 PM
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/EP001
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokémon_Red_and_Blue_Versions

That's odd.

Huh. Wonder why the two sites disagree.

The_JJ
2009-05-20, 12:03 AM
I do believe I can take credit for this massive thread derail.

*bows*