Hilarious things to do to your players as a DM

[TylerFerretLord]

Now, to prevent an irritating drawn out argumentdebate, let me say this beforehand: These are things that you should usually not do and I do not advocate doing them, but would be funny if you did. Please, just read and laugh, don't turn this into a flame war.

Now, with that said, post hilarious thing that you have done to your players or have always wanted to. I'll start off with a few.


There was a time I ran a little one-shot adventure for my cousins that involved time traveling kobolds as the antagonists. Being from the future, I ruled that they had access to 'advanced' technology for DnD. When the final showdown between the kobolds and the PCs commenced, I said:

"The kobolds pull out machine guns and shoot you."

The look on their faces was priceless.

[Brauron]

Vending machine in the middle of a dungeon. Put in 1 GP, get a vial of liquid. 25% chance it's a beneficial potion, 25% chance it's poison in a potion bottle, 50% it's a refreshing beverage.

[Occasional Sage]

In a Shadowrun game I took inspiration on the fly from the Grimtooth's Traps books during a firefight in a factory.

The team's street sam was firing from an elevated catwalk, which was blown out from underneath him. He landed in a vat of... something: too thin for swimming and too slimy to get a grip on anything reached down to him.

He drowned.

[Stupendous_Man]

Just randomly roll a d20 every now and then.

[Grail]

In a game that I was a player (one of the few), the DM had the Elf Fighter get struck by a poison needle. Slowly the Elf's right arm began to turn to stone. Everyone was freaking out, so I drew my sword and cut the elf's arm off just above the elbow to save him from becoming permanently petrified.

Unfortunately, the petrification was an illusion.
Unfortunately (2), the Fighter used Two-Handed weapons only (2e, WP in Longbow, 2handed sword etc)
Unfortunately (3), the Cleric had offended his god and couldn't cast Restoration or any other spells until he had atoned.

Very funny, but not for the player.

[mikeejimbo]

Make puns. In lieu of a plotline, have a series of puns with a tenuous connection between them.

When one of the players attacked an NPC for making too many puns, I knew I was doing my job right.

[Grail]

Have a plane shift go wrong and the Druid materialise in the same spatial proximity as a zombie, and both go squish.

Yes, I've done that.
Yes, it was funny.

The group are still carrying around the druids head some 1 year later (in game time).

[skeeter_dan]

Just randomly roll a d20 every now and then.

I do that all the time.

[Flickerdart]

The worst thing a DM can do to his players is never say "are you SURE?"

[Thane of Fife]

There's nothing more fun than cursed weapons which pretend to not be cursed weapons (i.e. identify as beneficial).

Eventually I felt sorry for that poor cleric and showed him the business end of a gray ooze.

[monty]

The worst thing a DM can do to his players is never say "are you SURE?"

I hate it when the DM does that to me.


One I like to do is to randomly make them roll Spot checks, then grin evilly when they tell me what they rolled. Then nothing happens. I have to do it infrequently enough that it blends in with the real Spot checks, though.

[Rebonack]

I... really don't do mean things to my players.

I do things that I think would be hilarious. Such as finding a pair of Shears of Expeditious Retreat (running with scissors!) in a dragon's hoard. Aside from irritating stuff like a reoccurring talking sword I guess my players have gotten off lucky.

[Doomsy]

You need a good poker face for this one, but I find it really funny to wait until they are in a travel segment and suddenly glance up and ask, deadly serious, who is driving and what their relevant skills are. You should preferably do this right before or after rolling a few dice.

I've used this to suddenly kill rambling OOC conversations before.

[Starscream]

Anything and everything involving sovereign glue is hilarious. Smear it on door handles, weapon hilts, chamber pots, etc. Of course, it sets within a round, so some sort of trigger to release it is necessary.

Big bucket of it above a dungeon door is bound to make hilarity ensue.

I've always wanted to have an evil (if clever) necromancer give a tube to each of his mindless skeletons. Each has standing orders to, when attacked, smear some glue on themselves and then charge and grapple the heroes. Even if they succeed in killing their foes they now have dismembered skeletons stuck to them.

Muhuwahahaha!

[golentan]

One of my players, without plot incentive to roll the check, rolled for gather information. 1, followed by a 1, a 1, and a 2. On the third one, the paper he was reading spontaneously combusted. On the final roll, I said "You wake up with amnesia three days later. All you remember is the phrase 'President Bartlett commands the Humming Chair and the Vacillating Shoggoth." Everyone bugged out when they recognized shoggoth as a cthulhu reference, and they were packed and lifted off in record time.

[WaterTengu]

Just randomly roll a d20 every now and then.

but then every so often look at them like they are about to die.

but one of my favorite devices is when i need to kill off a player (he is leaving the game, we have issues, etc.) i say "a book appears in the distance flies toward you and hits you in the face, it deals 9,999 damage, you die".

[starwoof]

"Everyone roll a d20 and whoever rolls lowest dies this round."

They thought I was kidding for a moment.

[Kroy]

In a game that I was a player (one of the few), the DM had the Elf Fighter get struck by a poison needle. Slowly the Elf's right arm began to turn to stone. Everyone was freaking out, so I drew my sword and cut the elf's arm off just above the elbow to save him from becoming permanently petrified.

Unfortunately, the petrification was an illusion.
Unfortunately (2), the Fighter used Two-Handed weapons only (2e, WP in Longbow, 2handed sword etc)
Unfortunately (3), the Cleric had offended his god and couldn't cast Restoration or any other spells until he had atoned.

Very funny, but not for the player.

Do I know you? This exact thing happened in one of my games. Very strange.

[Egiam]

-Ask the players if they can lend you a few D6's
-ask a player if they've ever considered playing a ranger

[xPANCAKEx]

have a jolly gnome NPC join the party... one who has a fondness for practical jokes

[monty]

have a jolly gnome NPC join the party... one who has a fondness for practical jokes

So a new improvised weapon for the party barbarian?

[TheEmerged]

"Annoying Man". I've mentioned him on the board before. This is under the HERO system, in a Champion's campaign. Short version is that I (the GM) was challenged to make a single character with very limited damage powers and only average defenses, and see how long I could make the fight last.

The fight lasted in-game *turns*. It's unusual for a HERO fight to go a single full turn (12 segments, 6 phases most of the time).

How? He was built around delay tactics and misdirection. He could turn invisible, and teleport.

"Wait, did he just teleport away? Or turn invisible?"

He could create illusions (images, in system terms) that were *only* visible to unusual senses.

"Wait, my radar says he's over there!"

He could also become invisible to unusual senses while being visible to normal ones.

"That one can't be real! He's not showing up on my radar!"

He could also create standard sight-sound illusions. Not that impressive... until you found out he could turn desolid (think "phase out") without the power being visible. So you couldn't tell if your attack went through him because "he" was an illusion, or because he was desolid...

Think I'm done yet? He could also create duplicates of himself.

Yeah, it gets even worse. By the time that fight was over, I was under threat of death to never use him again

[BRC]

"alright Everybody, we're playing Paranoia today!"
It's hilarious for the DM anyway...

[NEO|Phyte]

"alright Everybody, we're playing Paranoia today!"
It's hilarious for the DM anyway...

Hilarity is mandatory.

[Epinephrine]

Make their actions actually have consequences.

Seriously, they'll never expect it. They strike up a conversation, talk about the glory of adventuring, get some young guy fired up about it. He tries to follow them, gets killed, the village decides that they're responsible for encouraging him... Sometimes it's the simple stuff that throws them completely for a loop.

a pair of Shears of Expeditious Retreat (running with scissors!)

Oooh, I may have to borrow those!

[Lycan 01]

Call of Cthulhu.

Modern setting.

Cthulhu was going Cloverfield on New York City.

The players were checking out a maintenance room in a subway tunnel.

One of them did a spot check to find a crowbar or something.

He rolled a 1.




One of my players gave me a hug for being so awesome after I described to the other player how he discovered the skeletal remains of Jimmy Hoffa.

(I wonder how many people are gonna ask me for the campaign diary on that one... )

[sebsmith]

First, I remember something about conspiracy's in there too, so I don't think anyone can blame Traveller characters running from a Cthullu references.

Second, I've sort of always wanted to do the opposite of what Monty mentioned, which is force the players to roll so many spot and listen checks that you will eventually be able to ask for a spot check and nobody will freak out when they fail because they think it's just another fake one.

[Lycan 01]

Oh, wait... I forgot my personal favorite!


Smirk.

[Neek]

I once started a campaign that had a lot of plot, and the players weren't really into plot, just go to dungeon, and slaughter. Well, that's what I got from the previous campaign--not that they didn't get into it.

The game was a Method 1 campaign: 3d6, down the line. Reroll if your total stat bonuses are not great than +1, I believe. We had a Transmuter, a Fighter, and a Ranger in the group.

So the three were assembled by Lord Bishop Johan to head north to a Dwarven mining camp and find out what happened, as it was out of contact and there are rumors of an orcish encroachment nearby.

They met up with a trio: A dwarf fighter, a halfling rogue, and a gnome sorcerer. The dwarf was really smelly, the halfling had no personality to speak of, and the gnome twitched a lot. Their wagon "broke" a wheel, and they were scammingasking money to fix it. The party pretty much told them to bugger off.

Half a day later up the road, they were ambushed. By the trio. They were pissed for the lack of assistance. The players tried to negotiate first, and told them that they are an important mission sent by... Lord Baron Whatshisname. They woke up six hours later, bound and gagged in the middle of the forest with no gold.

It was an unintentional humbling, but the players remembered they weren't on top of the world. (As the DMG tells you, always remind the players that there's someone more powerful than them. I did it with embarrassing consequences).

[Deepblue706]

I:

-Smile. A lot.
-Randomly roll dice.
-Describe absolutely mundane things in great detail.
-Constantly have menacing creatures appear as indirect threats (like an Ancient Red Dragon chillin' outside some castle ruins the PCs are investigating...when the party is level 2).
-Place traps in innane locations
-Having highly observant commoner NPCs who make subtle jabs at the adventuring life
-Having periodic encounters with a troupe of bards who, after being defeated, go to all known local towns and spread tales of how they trounced the PCs.
-Making random magical items intelligent. Including Potions.
-Having con-artists sell PCs defective magic items

There's more, but I don't feel like typing it all out. Suffice it to say that my DMing motto goes as follows: If the PCs are not confused, enraged, sad, insecure, irritated, embarrassed or paranoid, then I'm doing something wrong.