Comment Fest: What are your running gags / inside jokes / etc?
Written by e
April 6, 2008
39 Comments
Every group of friends has a few jokes that just keep popping up over and over.
I am that person who unfortunately always either takes the joke one step too far or beats the horse far beyond death (perhaps into undeath?).
That being said, what have been some of the running gags, inside jokes, etc in your campaigns – past and present?
Some of my favorites from our Eberron campaign:
- “Weast” – We are always disoriented when it comes to direction, so instead of going through all the possible options, we will announce that we are headed weast.
- The celestial bee incident. We miss you, Frank.
- Uncle Teeth and Bubbles. Again, a Frank creation (but not something Mar’Kessa knows about, which is why you are also in the dark). I’m still waiting on Frank to settle in with his new job so he can write me up the beginning of our campaign from Frank’s point of view. I’ll post it as soon as I get it!
- Magic Fingers, the story of how we replaced Frank with a guy from craigslist.
…that’s about all I can think of for now. It’s nearly 4 am. Spent an awesome day playing Rock Band with my geek and his old college buddies. Discovered that I kick some major butt on bass. However, now my sinuses have decided to revolt and I can’t sleep. Any insomniacs want to keep me company? (d20dreamgirl on AIM)
E. Foley is a geek girl extraordinaire. She writes amazing online dating profiles for geeks and non-geeks, helping clients all over the world find love. Her writing can be found at Dating Sites Reviews, Examiner.com, and elsewhere as a ghostwriter. By day, she is the Copywriter at ThinkGeek. She lives in Maryland with DaveTheGame and her adorable cats, Mr. Peanut and Don Juan. (Email e, or follow @geeksdreamgirl on Twitter.)
Lessee…
From the current campaign, the biggest one would be the Screaming Toad of Lightning Death!
Additionally, Reza is on an obsessive quest to own/steal a boat. Just because.
From previous games:
The rope incident. A PC fell into a pit trap, survived the fall, survived the spikes, survived the poison. So we threw him down some rope.
DM – “How much do you throw down.”
Player – “I dunno. All of it?” [note: there was 500 feet of rope]
*DM gathers his d6s and rolls for a giant coil of rope falling on the PC at the bottom*
PC in the pit, after surviving everything else, is killed by falling rope.
“I touch the door!”
The biggest one, though, is probably what gave my blog its name; CriticalAnkleBites.com
I will explain this one day on my site, eventually, but I think I’ll save it for there.
We have a lot of recurring jokes in our games… none are at or below PG-13.
For instance, whenever I throw a screwy plot twist, my players philosophically quote from Clerks’ Randal:
“It’s like they’re $%?&ing each other and they are $%?&ing each other”
As for insomnia I can be reached on Gtalk (phil(dot)a(dot)menard(at)gmail.com)
I totally want to kill someone with rope.
ok…total inside joke, I will try and make it as simple as possible so others can share in my inside joke…
Game: 3.5 D&D Eberron(gaming group before this one)
Party: Half elf Bard/Warlock(bulls%#t artist/”face”), Warforged Artificer(ME), Warforged Fighter, Shifter Cleric, Changeling Rouge.
Adventure: The search for the Schemas(Im sure thats not the name of the module but finding the Schemas is the main goal), anyone familiar with this module knows that we are looking for all the Schemas to find an ancient forge.
GM:He was watching a lot of Buffy during that time so added some twist on the module, he added some recurring villein who was kind of quirky. Of course he was a vampire.
Scenario: So we got the 3erd Schema and were coming out of the dungeon and hear we face a Human woman in black with 3 skeleton minions and a deep rumbling voice (who we recognize as the Vampire that wont leave us alone) says “give me the Schema”…we get ready to roll initiative when out of nowhere the Half elf says “we don’t have it”(rolls bluff), the villein (and GM) got completely off guard.
Villein:(roll Sense Motive-FAIL)”Wait…What?…You don’t have it?” No longer the big booming voice but just a very confused humanoid voice.
Half elf: “Thats right…We don’t have it.”(Roll bluff)
Villein:(roll Sense Motive-FAIL)”What do you mean you don’t have it?…you were in their for 3 days”
Half elf: “WE DON’T HAVE IT, there is nothing their…you are welcome to go in and look but were tired and in need of a bath. Are we don hear?”(roll bluff)
Villein:(roll Sense Motive-FAIL)
(At this point the GM is getting his bearing again, so he tries one more time to see if he can beat his Bluff)
Villein: “Are you sure you don’t have it?”
Half elf: “WE DON’T HAVE IT”(roll bluff)
Villein:(roll Sense Motive-FAIL)…silence…”Well…kill them anyhow”
We roll initiative
Ever sins then every time someone in the group said “We don’t have it”/”I don’t have it”…we could not help our self…we giggle.=)
Ok…Is a had to be their kind of moment but thats way is called a Inside joke.
My GM loves for our gang to adventure in the edge of swamplands, and one of the pc’s was wanting to go hunting for a rabbit. GM says good luck finding one, PC says, OK, I’ll go get a fribbit, she meant frog, and ever since we live on a strict diet of fribbits.
While I hate the game and had to stop playing. I was a lizard man who got hit with a poorly targeted fireball. The joke started with “tastes like chicken”. It was a running joke for my final 3 gaming sessions.
Kat – One of my friends lived in an apartment that didn’t allow cats. So she didn’t have cats. She had “flibbets”, which look a whole lot like cats, but aren’t.
Jeff – Sorry to hear of your hatred!
Maybe come back for 4th edition? 
One gag that comes up every so often in our game is the bag of wailing souls. I can’t even remember how it started, but basically you open it and all the souls start screaming and the wind whips around. So if you only open it for a split second and close it, the scream gets cut of…well. It’s funny when WE do it!
In our Traveller game, we like to annoy our DM by attaching “space” to things, and the other half of the joke is…well:
Char 1: I need to stop by the mall and pick up a few things.
Char 2: What’s a mall?
Char 1: You know. The Space Mall.
Char 2: Oh. The SPACE Mall.
e – I haven’t given up on D&D. Just that group.
My 4e books are already on pre-order.
Sweet! I hope you find a good group.
The halfling potato thief song – every time the bard does something useless, out comes this old chestnut.
The Ted with a Net song – Ted was an orc with a net, not two orcs named Ted and Annette. Get it – Ted with Annette? Ah vey, had to be there I guess. That still cracks us up 10 years after it came out at a gaming session.
What are the words to the halfling potato thief song? do we want to know?
The words change regularly to suit the occasion, but the lyrics are mostly to do with the great derring-do of the halfling who stole potatoes from a field and then suffered the wrath of many farmers with pitchforks (and of course, as usual, nearly getting the entire party killed in the process, thrown in a dungeon, and generally made to eat turnips).
The words of the song don’t matter so much as the title
.
I don’t play D&D but I due play a game called Midian. I believe these will still be equally understandable by any gamer.
GM: “You going to stay up all night?”
Player: “I’ll take the point of fatigue”
GM: “Rocks fall everybody dies!”
We have lots of in jokes that make little or no sense because of Dok.
There was the time Asad was talking about Little Pakistan (Asad: “Its just like being back home in Pakistan”, Buff: “Then why would anyone want to go there?”, Asad: “I hate you Buff.”), at this point he then said “And I saw this guy standing in his doorway…” He let it drop and didn’t pick up on it, so Dok says “WITH NO PANTS” randomly which is now our response when somebody stops long enough for us to get those words in. It has spread beyond us and someone has infected Livejournal with it.
I have played Midian, is a fun game.
I don’t get the “rock falls on everyone” bit. =/
A mixed party of some dwarves, an elf, a halfing and a human paladin who was 6’5″ tall enter an old dwarven stronghold with ceilings about 5’8″ high, recently overrun by kobolds a few years back to retrieve a dwarven heirloom for one of the PC’s. I told the paladin’s player that he would suffer a negative adjustment to his THAC0 due to having to fight stooped over and he understood my reasoning.
The party searches through a few rooms and comes to one of the old guard rooms and there is a trap door set in the ceiling but no ladder nearby. So the dwarf that is leading the party (to find his heirloom) asks the paladin if he can reach the latch and open the door which the paladin does. Now the dwarf looks up into the opening and sees that there is an iron spike embedded into the wall of the passageway above and he asks if anybody has any rope and knows how to use it. The halfling thief says yes and he is requested to try to throw a lasso around the spike so that they can climb the rope up through the trap door opening. He tries and fails his skill check (rope use 2e). He tries again, and again, and again. The dwarves and halfling players are starting to get frustrated and the paladin says:
“Will you guys hurry up, my neck is starting to get a creak in it.”
Of course everybody broke out in laughter as we all realized that the paladin could have just lifted the other PC’s up through the opening. After that it became a standard question to ask, “how high is the ceiling?”
On the inside of my DMG, like most good DMs, I have certain rules on world creation and so forth. On the inside of my PHB, however, are my rules of role playing. They are not guides to good role playing, but my rules for the table. They include things like “The DM eats for free” and so forth. One of my rules is “Don’t talk about role playing in front of hot girls.” (These rules are left overs from high school and college. But they still apply. Any player who comes up to me and wants to talk about the campaign when I’m talking to a woman knows that to do so would mean expulsion from the table.)
Currently, the newest Player at one of my tables is a very attractive woman. I’ll do the recap of the previous session, and then say something along the lines of “You enter a small room filled with dusty chests…” or “You pass through the airlock and encounter three customs officers.” Whatever the shpeal, I’ll end it with “So what do you want to do?”
And one of my male players will say “I’d like to tell you, but Robin has to leave…”
Maybe it loses something in the translation.
I feel bad for Robin!
Then again, if I were her, I’d just slap whoever said that upside the head. Eventually after they develop bumps on their heads, they’ll stop saying it. 
By all means, don’t feel sorry for Robin. She points it out all the time, too. When she first came over to mi casa for her first session with our group, she was browsing through my RPG shelf, and she opened my DMG and saw the inside cover and started cracking up. Now, anytime someone brings up that rule, she’ll get all faux-abrasive and say “What, you sayin’ I’m ugly?”
TCDM,
The random avatar strikes again with awesomeness. Somehow the word consummate and a monocle just go together like peanut butter and jelly.
The facial expression really says it all, too.
One things we do when we see something innocuous in a scene I describe, someone will scream “Caltrop!”
Why? Well:
In one of the bigger fights we had, a Hill Giant some how came into town and started slaughtering people for not giving him his proper payments. The Characters at the time were jailed because….well they were Jerks. Locked up in thier cells they could only hear as the town above was being demolished, and the hill giant was laughing his ass off.
Then they felt the gate to the dungeon opened and the rumbling o th Giant walking down the gate, they new they had a fight on their hand. After ripping the gate apart, the character did they’re best at keeping the giant at bay and busy while the barbarian, who was the fastest ran for the weapons. As they fought in the dungeon they used every trick they and finally after retrieving the weapons they started winning the fight against the giant. The giant gave as good as he got, though and the characters were all on their last hit points when the rogue through some caltrops to keep him at bay, away form harming the more injured characters. He threw a slew of them in succession, and Hill giant jsut laughed and walked through them…1 hit point of damage….2 hit points of damage…..another 2…and as the giant stood over his the wounded wizard about to smite him… he fell.
Amazing with only 4 hit points left on the giant he was well…. under 0 hit points…from Caltrops. With a mighty bellow, the giantnt fell yelling
“CAL-TROPS!”
After that, the players never left without Caltrops on them. Everywhere. The wizard even wanted to develop a caltrop spell of something.
Nice. I believe the Caltrop spell actually exists, too. Lessee…
Yep, Spell Compendium. Sorcerer/Wizard level 0 spell.
Covers one 5-foot square with caltrops.
Fun!
My group use to play 2.0 but reading about caltrops brought up a funny memory. We had the Complete Arms and Equipment Guide. They had a picture for what a caltrop was, which was in the Player’s Handbook but this picture was also a diagram. It showed a foot stepping on the caltrop. We just laughed that they would need a diagram of what would happen if you stepped on a pointy object. So whenever we hear the word caltrop we mutter, “and this is what happens when you step on them.”
The 4th Ed post’s comment by Graham reminded me of something that has happened. Well, with my limited Sorceror spells and our relatively low level/not wanting to waste everything on little fights, I occasionally use Ray of Cold (1d3 damage). Every time I fire it into melee (EVERY TIME AND ONLY THIS SPELL), I hit…my ally. And every time I don’t fire it into melee, it misses (usually on a 1, so we’ve decided it hits whoever is in melee somewhere else on a 1).
Odd, since firing into melee and missing doesn’t actually hit an ally without a house rule. The only way to do that is to fire into a grapple.
If it misses, we rule a 50% chance of hitting someone else adjacent. Makes sense if you think about it, though I’ve done more damage to our groups fighter than any enemy in any dungeon ever has so far 1d3 at a time.
I recall a Forgotten Realms jaunt, where the goal of the quest was to find a certain portal.
Before leaving, we equipped. Our rogue insisted on only three inventory items. He wanted the largest keg of beer we could transport on the wagon. He wanted rope, at least two thousand feet (!!!) of rope. And he wanted a goat. Preferably a mean goat, as he would feel worse about what was to come if he had a chance to grow fond of the little guy.
His plan, of course, was to tie the rope to the goat, and have the goat explore the portal. If we pulled back a gnawed and bloody stump of rope, and no goat, than we would declare it to be the wrong portal and keep looking. The beer would be for Billy’s wake.
Never happened.
But the items came in really, really handy all the same. The goat was able to climb the gorge with the rope and the halfling, enabling the rest of the party to cross. The half-orc raiders were invited to partake of the ginormous cask of beer. Twenty gallons later, they had passed out, and we rolled them for spare change and moved on. The rope provided cheap armor repair for the fighter. The goat made a listen check the rest of us failed, alerting us to danger. And so on, and so on, and so on. The ginormous keg even served as a boat for the halfling at one point, after, alas, the beer had gone.
We never again left for adventuring without “A goat, some rope, and some beer.”
MrJames – That is the best story ever.
The biggest running gags we have in my gaming groups are Bob and The Russian S-O-B.
The first one began in a d20 Future game, wherein we were a group of treasure hunters by choice due to a galactic treasure hunt being announced by the richest man in the galaxy. It turned out that my Biot (BIological robOT) whom the the Sessra (short lizard-person, best described as an overcaffeinated tech-worshipping hyperactive marmoset) declared a saint needed to be a saint /of/ something. So when we found an ancient Dyson Sphere that the treasure hunt had lead us to, the Sessra declared it a god. And gods need names.
So we named it “Bob.”
It started as a Titan AE reference, and rapidly grew out of control. We tried naming the City Father of our First Age mecca in Exalted “Bob,” too. When the DM asked in a separate Exalted game what we named the ship, it was “Bob,” though he didn’t let us do that. Whenever we run out of ideas for character names, we propose “Bob,” especially for really outlandish concepts. That particularly DM may have a psychotic hatred of the name “Bob” now.
The second one is smaller scale. In our Rifts game, we have an NPC Shifter following us, who is a fat Russian alcoholic. The GM (a different one than the “Bob” one, though his name is actually Bob) speaks in a bad Russian accent when he’s talking as him. Whenever something bad happens in the game or we forget something important, the players harken back to the bad accent and cry out in unison in said bad accent, “SON OF B!%@#,” and get the GM to glare at us. It is unclear whether or not he actually said this before at this point. The new players are confused as to why we think it’s so entertaining.
so, we are doing a dungeon crawl with a melee heavy party and what do we see, but a couple of gricks… crap, second level, and our cleric is out of spells.
so what do i do?
me: alright, i charge and initiate grapple :rolls, gets 20 total:
dm: huh?
the rest of out party starts working on the other grick
a few rounds and an amazing run of grapple checks later
me: alright, now that i have him pinned, im going to drag him to the underwater tunnel that we came in through (15 feet away) :dont remember the roll, but i kept grapple:
by then, the rest of the party had killed the other grick and was just standing there watching. as i drown the grick. which i do, then my character stands up, his sodden cloak streaming and his gloves covered in the mucous from the grick’s tentacles and proclaims
“your damage reduction means nothing to me”
so worth the “why the hell would you metagame, if you are always telling everyone else not to metagame” speech that came after that.
that same character also grappled with a o’toug in the same dungeon while the rest of the party held a door. killed that one too.
it is amazing what rogues can do with high rolls.
I love this comment fest.
I want to add this link for anybody who stumbled on this page but hasn’t explored the rest of the blog:
http://geeksdreamgirl.com/2008/08/03/its-about-your-goat-sir/
“Is there water?”
The most prominent running gag my players have in our current game came after their second or third session. The party was battling against the dungeon’s boss, a quasit that had such a high AC, no one could even hit it at their level. While the battle was raging I was wracking my brains trying to figure out how on earth such low level characters were supposed to fight such a highly powered monster. I figured that I would need to step in at some point and intervene – it just seemed impossible.
Luckily my players came up with the solution for me. The party’s barbarian moved up to a balcony and did a jumping tackle – grappling the quasit in midair. They fell down into a pool of water in the middle of the room. The quasit, being a tiny creature, had a horrible grapple check, and no method to free itself. Despite the dozens of grapple checks I rolled, it was easy for the barbarian to simply hold the quasit underwater until it drowned.
Now whenever they enter a boss fight they of course ask, “Is there water?” They’ve considered researching magical ways to bring a portable hole filled with water along with them. They are sure that this is the best way to beat all of their most powerful enemies. They get a kick out of it.
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Hmm… sounds a lot like my game. Same adventure and location.
Though in ours, the players didn’t drown her in water.
They shoved her in the Runewell.
Grahams last blog post..Stupid Monsters ahoy!
Yup, your post certainly looks familiar. I through a comment up over there Graham
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I have a running gag that all the players in my group I DM use. It comes from20 years ago when I was a player on my first ship in the Navy. I had a really badass barbarian with an 18(97) STR, this being 1e AD&D. After many failed attempts of our thief at finding traps & picking locks, my barb decides he has a better solution. Our party had the thief, a magic user, a cleric, and a dwarf fighter. The dwarf & I were always heckling the thief, so I decided he would be great to ‘help’ me with the next locked door. Sure enough, we came to a door & the thief announces it is locked. My barb shoves past him & the dwarf thinks it would be neat to see what I plan on doing, so he follows right behind. I tell the DM, “I kick open the door & throw in the dwarf.” I made a natural 20 roll & nearly tore the door off the hinges. After telling the story, every time my players come to a door, they threaten to kick in the door & throw in the dwarf.
All of my gaming groups’ running gags are probably a bit too explicit/offensive for…anyone. Even us. I think the worst are when me and one particular gamer of mine whose character is a effeminate bisexual sex machine (one time when she was down in the dumps, I comissioned a yaoi drawing of her character and his favourite boytoy) start bouncing our depravity off of each other.
But one of my favourite, non-offensive, non-sexual running jokes was when a half-ogre NPC (that I intended as one-off assistance for one adventure, but was loved by my players so much they invited him to be a full member of their guild) got a headband of intellect +6 and became of average intelligence, only without any vocab, so he would try and deduce what things meant. The best one was when he was trying different wines and giving reviews of them on a vinyard, and one character said to him: “You’re a sommelier in the making.” and he said, “I’m kinda large, actually.”