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** In "Breaking into the Castle" Katia instructs Ben's character Aligaros to stay out of trouble and not cause a scene. He misinterprets her as wanting him to do the exact opposite and doesn't listen when she tries to correct him. The video then cuts to all of them being thrown in jail, and Aligaros is convinced it is all Katia's fault.
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** Garo dies this way in the first session of ''The Shenani-Guys in the Curse of Stradh''. He gets better.
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** Garo dies this way in the first session of ''The Shenani-Guys in the Curse of Stradh''.Strahd''. He gets better.
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* BeatStillMyHeart: During ''Fane of the Night Serpent'' a player walks in on Ras Nsi's throne room right when he is killing somebody who failed him by ripping out his still beating heart.
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* BeatStillMyHeart: BeatStillMyHeart:
** During ''Fane of the Night Serpent'' a player walks in on Ras Nsi's throne room right when he is killing somebody who failed him by ripping out his still beatingheart.heart.
** Garo dies this way in the first session of ''The Shenani-Guys in the Curse of Stradh''. He gets better.
** During ''Fane of the Night Serpent'' a player walks in on Ras Nsi's throne room right when he is killing somebody who failed him by ripping out his still beating
** Garo dies this way in the first session of ''The Shenani-Guys in the Curse of Stradh''. He gets better.
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* FalseDichotomy: With five options instead of just two. Whenever Ben wants to play a particular campaign, he claims that he offers the players four other options that are objectively worse.
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** Ben's DM appears to have used [[https://www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/8sfpkn/fleshing_out_curse_of_strahd_part_2_entering/ MandyMod's Curse of Strahd guide]], or at least the Death House part of it.
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* HonestRollsCharacter: Ben once had a party who were in favor of rolling stats... Until they realized Ben's method of rolling stats was 3d6, not 4d6 reroll 1s. Then they immediately argued for pointbuy instead. He also had one player who loved rolling for stats, but ''hated that it was random''.
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* ThoseWackyNazis: Ben tried to run a ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' game inspired by ''Franchise/IndianaJones'', featuring, of course, nazis as the villains. Then he realized that nazis have guns.
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* VisualPun: While describing how a kraken was sealed in a cave by a magical seal, a seal of the swimming kind appears on screen.
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* RulesLawyer: Discussed. Ben makes a point to differentiate between Rules Lawyers and what he calls Rules Traditionalist. Rules Traditionalists generally just wants everyone to have fun, and thinks the rules are the best way to do that. Rules Lawyers, on the other hand, are not interested in following the rules. They're interested in ''exploiting'' the rules.
to:
* RulesLawyer: Discussed. Discusses this in a few videos.
** Ben makes a point to differentiate between Rules Lawyers and what he calls Rules Traditionalist. Rules Traditionalists generally just wants everyone to have fun, and thinks the rules are the best way to do that. Rules Lawyers, on the other hand, are not interested in following the rules. They're interested in ''exploiting'' therules. rules.
** He made a second video called "D&D Discussion: Rules Lawyering Video" after removing his original video on rules lawyers. He admits the reason he removed the old video is that he didn't like how he came across in the original video. However, once he started getting messages about his old video, he made this video to clarify his thoughts on rules lawyers and better explain some things. Like in his original video, he doesn't think following the rules is inherently bad, and he makes a point to make a difference between those who want to follow the rules to rules lawyers. The way he sees it, rules lawyers exploit the rules for their own benefit when it helps them out, but will overlook the rules if they would give their character some sort of demerit or penalty. This hypocrisy is Ben's biggest issue with rules lawyers. He also makes a point that sometimes, people will overlook the rules by accident. There are so many rules in tabletop [=RPGs=] that no one can remember all of them, which will inevitably lead to slip-ups. This can make it hard to tell when the rules are being overlooked for a player's convenience, or because the group genuinely forgot one of the rules.
** Ben makes a point to differentiate between Rules Lawyers and what he calls Rules Traditionalist. Rules Traditionalists generally just wants everyone to have fun, and thinks the rules are the best way to do that. Rules Lawyers, on the other hand, are not interested in following the rules. They're interested in ''exploiting'' the
** He made a second video called "D&D Discussion: Rules Lawyering Video" after removing his original video on rules lawyers. He admits the reason he removed the old video is that he didn't like how he came across in the original video. However, once he started getting messages about his old video, he made this video to clarify his thoughts on rules lawyers and better explain some things. Like in his original video, he doesn't think following the rules is inherently bad, and he makes a point to make a difference between those who want to follow the rules to rules lawyers. The way he sees it, rules lawyers exploit the rules for their own benefit when it helps them out, but will overlook the rules if they would give their character some sort of demerit or penalty. This hypocrisy is Ben's biggest issue with rules lawyers. He also makes a point that sometimes, people will overlook the rules by accident. There are so many rules in tabletop [=RPGs=] that no one can remember all of them, which will inevitably lead to slip-ups. This can make it hard to tell when the rules are being overlooked for a player's convenience, or because the group genuinely forgot one of the rules.
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** While in New York his party murders several people using a bow and arrow but are never captured by the police. Ben can only assume that the people in charge of the investigation were just too incompetent to even bother looking for a suspect.
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* PlayingPossum: One PC uses avoids a fight with two guards by doing this.
* PoliceAreUseless: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mr1fXAR4Sc That time our characters when to New York City]], the characters killed several people with bows and arrows and somehow the police never caught them.
* PoliceAreUseless: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mr1fXAR4Sc That time our characters when to New York City]], the characters killed several people with bows and arrows and somehow the police never caught them.
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* PlayingPossum: One PC uses avoids a fight with two guards by doing this.
pretending to be dead after falling down a flight of stairs.
* PoliceAreUseless: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mr1fXAR4Sc That time our characterswhen went to New York City]], City]] the characters killed several people with bows and arrows and somehow the police never caught them.
* PoliceAreUseless: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mr1fXAR4Sc That time our characters
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** Ben's claim that he wasn't at all upset by a past GM one-shotting him with a ridiculously overpowered magical attack while his voice and avatar are expressing barely repressed fury.
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* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: Ben's character Detective Savage Rage is the worst detective in the world because he has no actual skill at doing detective work.
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* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything:
** Ben's character Detective Savage Rage is the worst detective in the world because he has no actual skill at doing detectivework.work.
** His smuggler in the Star Wars campaign never actually smuggles anything, nor does he commit any other crime you might expect of his profession.
** Ben's character Detective Savage Rage is the worst detective in the world because he has no actual skill at doing detective
** His smuggler in the Star Wars campaign never actually smuggles anything, nor does he commit any other crime you might expect of his profession.
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* MotorMouth: While describing a single action in a 4E combat sessions, Ben begins speaking faster and faster with each additional mechanic until he's babbling.
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** The in-universe reason for why [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 Abserd]] was able to acquire a level in every class. He's not evil, but he has a supremely annoying voice so every group he joins ends up kicking him out. Sure enough, at the end of the mission the rest of the party willingly leaves him as a hostage to an evil elf so she'll release the person they came to rescue.
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** The in-universe reason for why [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 Abserd]] was able to acquire a level in every class. He's not evil, but he has a supremely annoying voice and personality so every group he joins ends up kicking him out. Sure enough, at the end of the mission the rest of the party willingly leaves him as a hostage to an evil elf so she'll release the person they came to rescue.
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** The Shemhazian/Mutilation Demon from the Pathfinder TPK module. It is the FinalBoss of a module that is designed to kill the players, but Ben draws it as a cute spider/bear thing and talks about it in a cutesy voice like it doesn't have a chance of winning because it is all by itself, but then he switches to a serious voice when he gets to the part about how it will petrify the players and eat their corpses.
to:
** The Shemhazian/Mutilation Demon from the Pathfinder TPK module. It is the FinalBoss of a module that is designed to kill the players, but Ben draws it as a cute spider/bear thing and talks about it in a cutesy voice like it doesn't have a chance of winning because it is all by itself, but then he switches to a serious voice when he gets to the part about how it will petrify the players and eat their corpses. This actually isn't too big of a shift from its art which gives the Shemhazian an almost puppy-like face.
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* DisasterDominoes: In "The W.O.R.S.T. Solutions!" the town's buildings are built very close together, resulting a fire started by the party jumping to increasingly poignant buildings such as the puppy shelter, orphanage (with extra orphans), and the fire department.
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'''Cauli:''' From the inside out, so your eyeballs will liquefy and your bowls shall explode!
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'''Cauli:''' From the inside out, so your eyeballs will liquefy and your bowls bowels shall explode!explode!
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In "The W.O.R.S.T. Solutions!" while the paladin is berating her party and then herself, a burning orphan periodically runs past in the background with a tiny "Ahhh!"
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In "The W.O.R.S.T. Solutions!" while the paladin is berating her party and then herself, a burning orphan periodically runs past in the background with a tiny "Ahhh!"
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* AccidentallyAccurate: In ''The Infamous TPK Module'' Ben was running an encounter with a "lake monster" but he couldn't find the relevant stat block. He instead used the block for a Purple Worm which proceeded to demolish the party, forcing them to retreat. Ben later determined he was meant to use the stat block for a ''Sea'' Monster whose stats are almost identical to a Purple Worm; the encounter was always meant to be a near-TPK.
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* AccidentallyAccurate: In ''The "The Infamous TPK Module'' Module" Ben was running an encounter with a "lake monster" but he couldn't find the relevant stat block. He instead used the block for a Purple Worm which proceeded to demolish the party, forcing them to retreat. Ben later determined he was meant to use the stat block for a ''Sea'' Monster whose stats are almost identical to a Purple Worm; the encounter was always meant to be a near-TPK.
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* AccidentallyAccurate: In ''The Infamous TPK Module'' Ben is running an encounter where the party encounters a lake monster but he couldn't find the relevant stat block. He instead used the block for a Purple Worm which proceeded to demolish the party, forcing them to retreat. Ben later determined he was meant to use the stat block for a ''Sea'' Monster whose stats are almost identical to a Purple Worm; the encounter was always meant to be a near-TPK.
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* AccidentallyAccurate: In ''The Infamous TPK Module'' Ben is was running an encounter where the party encounters with a lake monster "lake monster" but he couldn't find the relevant stat block. He instead used the block for a Purple Worm which proceeded to demolish the party, forcing them to retreat. Ben later determined he was meant to use the stat block for a ''Sea'' Monster whose stats are almost identical to a Purple Worm; the encounter was always meant to be a near-TPK.
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* AccidentallyAccurate: In ''The Infamous TPK Module'' Ben is running an encounter where the party encounters a lake monster but he couldn't find the relevant stat block. He instead used the block for a Purple Worm which proceeded to demolish the party, forcing them to retreat. Ben later determined he was meant to use the stat block for a ''Sea'' Monster whose stats are almost identical to a Purple Worm; the encounter was always meant to be a near-TPK.
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Alphabetical order.
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* AWinnerIsYou: The Infamous TPK module ends this ways. The unlikely event that the players survive and defeat all the waves of enemies has no impact on the rest of the book because the players don't get to continue using the same characters if they survive and if they do die the mission is still a success.
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* AWinnerIsYou: The Infamous TPK module ends this ways. The unlikely event that the players survive and defeat all the waves of enemies has no impact on the rest of the book because the players don't get to continue using the same characters if they survive and if they do die the mission is still a success.
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* AWinnerIsYou: The Infamous TPK module ends this ways. The unlikely event that the players survive and defeat all the waves of enemies has no impact on the rest of the book because the players don't get to continue using the same characters if they survive and if they do die the mission is still a success.
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** The Shemhazian/Mutilation Demon from the Pathfinder TPK module. It is the FinalBoss of a module that is designed to kill the players, but Ben draws it as a cute spider/bear thing and talks about it in a cutesy voice like it doesn't have a chance of winning because it is all by itself, but then he switches to a serious voice when he gets to the part about how it will petrify the players and eat their corpses.
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** The In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6kEVfU93gc "M&M Story: Chadwick Strongpants"]], the group paladin told the gnome monk Michele that he can't be chaotic good because he robbed a homeless man for his clothes. Michele pointed out that said paladin [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil owned a halfling slave]] [[MeatShield who he used to disable traps]].
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** The In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6kEVfU93gc "M&M Story: Chadwick Strongpants"]], the group paladin told the gnome monk Michele that he can't be chaotic good because he robbed a homeless man for his clothes. Michele pointed out that said paladin [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil owned a halfling slave]] [[MeatShield who he used to disable traps]].
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** One GM Ben played with punished the party wizard any time he cast a spell that the GM regarded as "breaking the game" (i.e. anything that wasn't a healing spell). When Ben asked him why he couldn't just talk to the player about his issues with this, the GM responded without any hint of irony "[=GMs=] aren't supposed to interfere like that, it's rude to mess with the player's autonomy." Ben also noticed that the same GM's magic-using [=NPCs=] weren't subject to the same penalties as players when a villain hit his character with a no-save, 100 points of damage spell for a OneHitKill.
to:
** One GM Ben played with punished the party wizard with bad luck and magical misfires any time he cast a spell that the GM regarded as "breaking the game" (i.e. anything that wasn't a healing spell). When Ben asked him why he couldn't just talk to the player about his issues with this, the GM responded without any hint of irony "[=GMs=] aren't supposed to interfere like that, it's rude to mess with the player's autonomy." Ben also noticed that the same GM's magic-using [=NPCs=] weren't subject to the same penalties as players when a villain hit his character with a no-save, 100 points of damage spell for a OneHitKill.
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'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say they're not very ''gnoll''-edgeble!\\
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'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say they're not very ''gnoll''-edgeble!\\''gnoll''-edgeable!\\
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** In "Last Orders at the Yawning Portal", a player preparing to [[ItMakesSenseInContext fight a booze kraken in a lake of ale]] makes a "Let's get Kraken!" pun. Ben at first has the kraken OneHitKill that player's character, then RetCons it so the Kraken kills the ''player'' and leaves them metaphorically dead to the rest of the table.
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** In "Last Orders at the Yawning Portal", a player preparing to [[ItMakesSenseInContext fight a booze kraken in a lake of ale]] makes a "Let's get Kraken!" kraken!" pun. Ben at first has the kraken OneHitKill that player's character, then RetCons {{Ret Con}}s it so the Kraken kills the ''player'' and leaves them metaphorically dead to the rest of the table.
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(Later, the party gets into a fight with sveral [[GiantFlyer rocs]])\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say someone's stuck between a roc and a hard place!!\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say someone's stuck between a roc and a hard place!!\\
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(Later, the party gets into a fight with sveral several [[GiantFlyer rocs]])\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say someone's stuck between aroc ''roc'' and a hard place!!\\place!\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say someone's stuck between a
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'''Alchemist:''' I guess that's how we... roc 'n' roll!\\
''Ben:''' Well look at that! the roc suddenly rises with one hitpoint and flies up the hill to attack you.
''Ben:''' Well look at that! the roc suddenly rises with one hitpoint and flies up the hill to attack you.
to:
'''Alchemist:''' I guess that's how we... roc ''roc'' 'n' roll!\\
''Ben:''' '''Ben:''' Well look at that! the roc suddenly rises with one hitpoint and flies up the hill to attack you.
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* LamePunReaction: Ben sometimes does horrible things to the [=PCs=] in his games to punish their players for making bad puns.
** In "Last Orders at the Yawning Portal", a player preparing to [[ItMakesSenseInContext fight a booze kraken in a lake of ale]] makes a "Let's get Kraken!" pun. Ben at first has the kraken OneHitKill that player's character, then RetCons it so the Kraken kills the ''player'' and leaves them metaphorically dead to the rest of the table.
** The same thing occurs 4 times in Ben's video on running a Pathfinder 2e playtest:
-->(The party sneaks past a gnoll encampment, and the gnolls fail their perception check)\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say they're not very ''gnoll''-edgeble!\\
'''Ben:''' The gnolls ambush you!\\
'''Alchemist:''' Oh, I guess someone's a ''gnoll''-it-all!\\
'''Ben:''' The alchemist is dead now.\\
(Later, the party gets into a fight with sveral [[GiantFlyer rocs]])\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say someone's stuck between a roc and a hard place!!\\
'''Ben:''' The enemies all attack you.\\
(The party defeat one of the rocs and its corpse slides down the side of a hill)\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess that's how we... roc 'n' roll!\\
''Ben:''' Well look at that! the roc suddenly rises with one hitpoint and flies up the hill to attack you.
** In "Last Orders at the Yawning Portal", a player preparing to [[ItMakesSenseInContext fight a booze kraken in a lake of ale]] makes a "Let's get Kraken!" pun. Ben at first has the kraken OneHitKill that player's character, then RetCons it so the Kraken kills the ''player'' and leaves them metaphorically dead to the rest of the table.
** The same thing occurs 4 times in Ben's video on running a Pathfinder 2e playtest:
-->(The party sneaks past a gnoll encampment, and the gnolls fail their perception check)\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say they're not very ''gnoll''-edgeble!\\
'''Ben:''' The gnolls ambush you!\\
'''Alchemist:''' Oh, I guess someone's a ''gnoll''-it-all!\\
'''Ben:''' The alchemist is dead now.\\
(Later, the party gets into a fight with sveral [[GiantFlyer rocs]])\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess you could say someone's stuck between a roc and a hard place!!\\
'''Ben:''' The enemies all attack you.\\
(The party defeat one of the rocs and its corpse slides down the side of a hill)\\
'''Alchemist:''' I guess that's how we... roc 'n' roll!\\
''Ben:''' Well look at that! the roc suddenly rises with one hitpoint and flies up the hill to attack you.
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* AdaptationalBadass: The Banshee in ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' (which is an ofshoot of D&D, so it still counts). In D&D, they're low-level bossmonsters, or {{Mooks}} for higher levels. In Pathfinder, they're ''stronger than liches!''
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* FictionalSport: The episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g7xICOq4zA D&D Story: Journey to "Magic-North-Korea"]] introduces Flatch Kriga, the national sport of Gautor. It has a [[{{Doorstopper}} 1639-page rulebook]] and several GratuitousGerman terms.
--> '''Ben''': "Just get your dungeldort and gundlebotton on and you're ready to play! Just remember if the door hits the red like it becomes vatischnatt and you can hit it back but only if held two tringlebopples on."
--> ''later''
--> '''Gautor player''': "No, no! You are only supposed to hit it on lines of two, four, and seventeen rebounding!"
--> '''Ranger''': "This game is stupid!"
--> '''Ben''': "Just get your dungeldort and gundlebotton on and you're ready to play! Just remember if the door hits the red like it becomes vatischnatt and you can hit it back but only if held two tringlebopples on."
--> ''later''
--> '''Gautor player''': "No, no! You are only supposed to hit it on lines of two, four, and seventeen rebounding!"
--> '''Ranger''': "This game is stupid!"
to:
* FictionalSport: The episode [[https://www."[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g7xICOq4zA D&D Story: Journey to "Magic-North-Korea"]] 'Magic-North-Korea']]" introduces Flatch Kriga, the national sport of Gautor. It has a [[{{Doorstopper}} 1639-page rulebook]] and several GratuitousGerman terms.
--> '''Ben''': "Just -->'''Ben:''' Just get your dungeldort and gundlebotton on and you're ready to play! Just remember if the door hits the red like it becomes vatischnatt and you can hit it back but only if held two tringlebopples on."
--> ''later''
-->\\
''[later]''\\
'''Gautorplayer''': "No, player:''' No, no! You are only supposed to hit it on lines of two, four, and seventeen rebounding!"
--> '''Ranger''': "Thisrebounding!\\
'''Ranger:''' This game isstupid!"stupid!
--> ''later''
-->
''[later]''\\
'''Gautor
--> '''Ranger''': "This
'''Ranger:''' This game is
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g7xICOq4zA
- adding trope
- adding tropeAdded DiffLines:
* FictionalSport: The episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g7xICOq4zA D&D Story: Journey to "Magic-North-Korea"]] introduces Flatch Kriga, the national sport of Gautor. It has a [[{{Doorstopper}} 1639-page rulebook]] and several GratuitousGerman terms.
--> '''Ben''': "Just get your dungeldort and gundlebotton on and you're ready to play! Just remember if the door hits the red like it becomes vatischnatt and you can hit it back but only if held two tringlebopples on."
--> ''later''
--> '''Gautor player''': "No, no! You are only supposed to hit it on lines of two, four, and seventeen rebounding!"
--> '''Ranger''': "This game is stupid!"
--> '''Ben''': "Just get your dungeldort and gundlebotton on and you're ready to play! Just remember if the door hits the red like it becomes vatischnatt and you can hit it back but only if held two tringlebopples on."
--> ''later''
--> '''Gautor player''': "No, no! You are only supposed to hit it on lines of two, four, and seventeen rebounding!"
--> '''Ranger''': "This game is stupid!"
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Moving to proper namespace.
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->''If I'd had a character killed off every time I laughed in a campaign, I don't think I would've gotten out of the tavern alive.''
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/skjermbilde_2019_03_20_kl_194543.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Picture taken from his official youtube channel [[note]]left to right: Ben himself, Michele, [[EvilSorcerer Malikar]], a recurring player character, [[MasterOfNone Abserd]][[/note]]]]
''Puffin Forest'' (originally titled ''Puffin Forrest'') is a Website/YouTube channel where the creator, Ben, describes his experiences with TabletopRPG Games as well as with other things in his life. His channel can be found [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUpkp-6fXuG9dqfoJ99XTmw here]].
----
!!''Puffin Forest'' provides examples of:
* AbsurdPhobia: Ben's character Aligaros, being the DumbMuscle, is afraid of libraries.
* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdCdQJxBDA first game Ben GM'd]] takes place in one. It's big enough that [[spoiler:an otyugh, a giant tentacle monster, lives in it]]. But [[RealityEnsues it turns out]] that [[VomitIndiscretionShot sewers are gross]].
* AccidentalInnuendo: In-Universe. The GM of a ''Franchise/StarWars'' campaign [[https://youtu.be/VsK6KFojRDo describes lightsabers as "extending"]] and [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything start emitting white light after touching]].
* ActionGirl: The episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHVO0NxQ5oQ "An Abserd-ly Difficult Mission"]] gives us Langderosa, a dragonborn fighter with a stat-block that Ben describes as "abusively long". She leads a raiding party against a human town, and [[SingleStrokeBattle cuts a player's head off with one stroke]] during a blood duel.
--> '''Langderosa:''' Haha! You call that an attack? I'll show you how ''real'' warriors duel.
* AchillesHeel:
** Ben is surprised to find out that Krakens are weak to magic in 5e. Despite their high saving throw bonuses, they do not have magic resistance, the Immutable Form trait or even legendary resistance, meaning that even a low level polymorph spell can hit them hard.
** Gods in Ben's setting are extremely resistant to all damage ''except'' psychic. While it takes a lot of damage to kill them, doing so with psychic damage is the easiest way.
* AdorableAbomination:
** The aboleth with the SplitPersonality from ''Terror of the Deep''. Ben draws it more like a cute whale thing than what aboleths actually look like, and its cutesy, friendly personality ends up talking to the players a lot more than its evil side. A similar adorable aboleth also appears in ''Too Many Pets'', although considering the latter campaign takes place in Waterdeep which the ''Tomb of Annihilation'' module merely references, it's unlikely that it's the same Aboleth. Another story ends with the party finding a trinket with ''another'' adorable Aboleth inside it (which may explain how the party got the Aboleth pet in ''Too Many Pets'').
** The immortal cat monster from the holiday one off.
* AffablyEvil:
** The party that fought Tar Hogar/Garathor. The DM himself considered them [[NeutralEvil Pure Evil]], but Ben was still very affable and friendly.
** Ben chose to play Sauron in the ''Lord of the Rings'' game as a polite and cheerful company CEO since he had no idea what Sauron's canon personality was like, and also because it helped keep the team of villains together.
* AlcoholInducedIdiocy: Captain Morgan volunteered for a ridiculously dangerous mission because he was high out of his mind on cocaine.
* AllJustADream: Subverted in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sufhijLw5zc The WORST solutions]]. After a trek through the Dream Lands, one of the players lampshades this trope, and states that it's a good thing Ben won't do that. In the background, Ben is seen tearing a page out of his notebook.
* AllThereInTheManual: Several of Ben's videos are from adventures based on official modules, and reading these modules can provide some additional insight. Sometimes this justifies Ben's mistakes (the Waterdeep module doesn't actually have a stat block for Nihiloor, you're supposed to use the monster manual Mind Flayer stat block. Nihiloor's portrait is also right next to the Nimblewright stat block), other times not so much (The Fane of the Night Serpent contains a section specifically called "Getting into the temple").
* AlphaBitch: Trixie Starbright, who is also a BitchInSheepsClothing.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Ben's thought process on what alignment his own characters are depends on what they're holding - if it's dynamite, they ''will'' be Chaotic Evil, because StuffBlowingUp is too fun to resist.
* AndTheAdventureContinues: 500 years after the Malikar and Covenant campaigns, a new story begins. Since the party gained the Boon of Immortality, we can be certain they'll be around to witness it. When the new campaign starts, one player decides to keep playing as his old character, though there isn't any info yet on where the other old characters are.
* AndIMustScream: It is revealed at the start of the campaign after the TimeSkip that the gnome monk Michelle spent 500 years completely alone, unable to be seen or heard due to losing control of his powers. Meeting the new characters is the first time since then that anyone has been able to see him.
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Humorous variant: A DM accuses Ben of not knowing how alignment work. When Ben asks "How does alignment work, then?", the DM can't come up with an adequate explanation. [[note]]Alignment in D&D is mostly subjective, but a common interpretation is it mostly depends on ones intentions. [[/note]]
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking:
** The Covenant was forged to protect the Prime Material from incursions of planes like [[LawfulEvil Hell]], [[ChaoticEvil Pandemonium]], [[DarkWorld the Shadowfell]] and ''[[LawfulGood Mount Celestia]].'' [[invoked]]
** When describing the fallen world in the ''How every D&D Universe begins'' video, he mentions "Evil, disease, [[OurGnomesAreWeirder gnomes]] and death".
* ArtEvolution: Compare Ben's earliest videos with his recent ones and see how much he has improved.
* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E "Black Market Blues"]], there is a town where both the local government and police force sanction the black market. It's the primary source of income for the town, yet the town council doesn't make it an open market [[CircularReasoning "because then we'd lose the black market and nobody would make any money."]] When Ben points out the logical error in this, the town's Inquisitor tortures his wizard character.
* AscendedExtra: When the W.O.R.S.T. are exploring a DreamLand, DM Ben makes the mistake of describing one of the surreal sights, a dapper FunnyAnimal otter pulling a cart, in a bit too much detail. The party immediately interacts with him, and since he was intended to be window dressing Ben has to improvise a name ([[ALizardNamedLiz Ottie]] [[Disney/{{Zootopia}} Otterton]]), and they then essentially kidnap him. He helps save the day and becomes part of the campaign in the real world. [[spoiler:Then the party decides, for literally no reason, that he must be secretly evil.]]
* AssuranceBackfire: When their ''D&D'' characters [[https://youtu.be/2mr1fXAR4Sc get transported to New York City]], Ben's character reassures the now-human Dragonborn that being human isn't so bad.
-->'''Ben:''' I'm a human every day! Now you're [[PunctuatedForEmphasis just! Like! Me!]]\\
'''Zod:''' Oh my god... the horror...
* AtrociousAlias:
** The players characters in the Malikar and Covenant storyline got themselves stuck with the name "The Turtle Molesters/Fuckers". They later changed it to The Turtle Friends.
** The successor party was named the Warriors Of Really Shitty Timing, or WORST.
-->If you have a problem, what you need is... the WORST solutions.
* AxCrazy: Two so far.
** Prospector Jenkins, Grim servant of death!! [[spoiler: He throws dynamite for fun!]]
** Crazy Mike! [[spoiler: He's owns a toy store, and holds children hostage to force their parents to buy toys at his store.]]
* BadassNormal: Antonio de Castilian Maximilianos. He's [[spoiler:actually a completely normal goblin. The players just had really bad luck with the dice]].
* BackFromTheDead: After being slain by monsters, the Goddess pulls the soul of Ben's cleric back from the afterlife and restores him. [[DeathSeeker Much to Ben's disappointment]].
* BalefulPolymorph: The final villain of the Covenant campaign is defeated when [[spoiler: the players accidentally use an artifact to turn him into a potted plant, which also turns the warforged hero into a human. They then get rid of him by banishing him to [[PlaceWorseThanDeath California]]]].
%%* BatmanGambit: [[FunWithAcronyms W.O.R.S.T.]] thinks Otterton is pulling this on them.
* BeatStillMyHeart: During ''Fane of the Night Serpent'' a player walks in on Ras Nsi's throne room right when he is killing somebody who failed him by ripping out his still beating heart.
* BestialityIsDepraved: The episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUOyaevNQJY "D&D Stories: funny moments from my campaign"]] reveals that the party from the Malikar and Covenant storylines is called "The Turtle Fuckers". When Will's character Michele asks Ben to tell the story of how they got that name, he refuses to animate it.
* BearsAreBadNews: In "Miscellaneous Monsters and Bears of Sand" a PC lied to a guard that they were hunting sand bears, monstrous half bear half scorpion creatures. One of PC's didn't realize that sand bears weren't real and was later killed by a manifestation of his fears in the form of a sand bear.
* BigBallOfViolence: In "Too Many Pets" when a player finds himself fighting against a dog headed hag, the rest of the players and enemies are shown fighting in a big cloud in the background.
* BigEater: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldXiylzEyPM "Adventures In The Real World: Christmas Shenanigans (also, thanks Dingo!)]], Ben reveals himself to be this. His favorite part of the holidays is the food, he feels tempted to crash holiday parties so he can eat their food, and at a game of White Elephant he picked a giant ham as his present (which the others at the party considered the gag gift).
* BigFun: Ben always draws himself and any character he plays as noticeably fatter than everyone else. Also can be a FatBastard when he is playing an evil or jerkish character. He actually isn't fat in real life. Also frequently combined with FatIdiot since Ben enjoys playing dumb characters.
* BirdPeople: Flynn, the Aarakocra bard. He's the target of quite a bit of FantasticRacism, even from his own party.
* BitchInSheepsClothing: Trixie Starbright, one of Ben's RP characters, is not above using a WoundedGazelleGambit to make others suspicious of her rival.
* BittersweetEnding: The ending to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o My players LOSE the final fight!"]]. While the party failed to kill [[BigBad Malikar]], they succeeded in preventing his plot to destroy the world and inadvertently sending him to Mount Celestia [[note]]A land of LawfulGood, filled to the brim with paladins and angels[[/note]]. The [[AdamAndEvePlot fighter and his drow elf companion]] ended up in the Beastlands[[note]]a wild paradise dimension[[/note]], the sorcerer ended up in Arcadia[[note]]a dimension of law, [[PerfectPacifistPeople peace, and harmony]] where diseasees don't exist[[/note]], the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing ended up in Ysgard[[note]]The realm of [[WarriorHeaven immortal heroes where brave warriors go to test their skills]][[/note]], and the Monk escaped the tower and was greeted as a hero. However the party members are permanently separated from each other, and because the Monk had no idea that the people in the tower were transported to different dimensions he believes that his friends died and that Malikar will return. He lives in fear of this, the rest of his life, [[PassingTheTorch and when he is old he gives]] [[VillainBeatingArtifact the Mournblade]] to his son. The next campaign retcons these events because the players wanted to continue using their old characters so Malikar still survived, but the party was reunited sometime after being scattered and got to go on another adventure. The next story after also ends in a bittersweet note because the heroes are given the gift of immortality, but part ways and never see each other again.
* BlatantLies:
** In the job interview video, Ben tells several extremely obviously lies to the interviewers.
** Ben claims in one video that there are no stats in D&D for a house-cat. When someone else tries to point out the cat stat block in the Player's Handbook, Ben punches them in the face.
* BornUnlucky: Ben has all kinds of bad luck and it is hilarious. When he runs games they often do not go as planned, and when playing he often gets terrible rolls. This turned to his advantage when he went to the Stream of Many Eyes and played a game where the goal was to get low numbers with the dice instead of high numbers, which he has had a lot of practice with.
* BoringButPractical: In the "DM.exe has crashed" video, the whip paladin goes to get a search warrant for the school. It takes a while, but it was a lot more practical than the samurai's preferred method of holding the entire school hostage.
* BossInMookClothing: Antonio de Castilian Maximiliano, a Goblin Swashbuckler who manages to parry all the party's attacks and fell two players before the rest retreat. [[spoiler: Ultimately a subversion; while one PC accuses Ben of making him a "3rd level bard, 5th level fighter, 8th level swashbuckler", Ben reveals that Antonio is just a normal Goblin with normal stats and Ben's rolls were particularly lucky this time.]]
* BrownNote: The Omega Pun is a pun so powerful that it can kill even gods that here it and only a true PungeonMaster can safely learn it.
* TheBusCameBack: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 "A Most Abserd Character"]], Ben made a [[MasterOfNone useless multiclass]] adventurer called Abserd. He was last seen being handed over to an evil wood elf by his own party, but he returns in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHVO0NxQ5oQ "An Abserd-ly Difficult Mission"]] as the town's mayor.
* CallBack: Calling back to a notorious aboleth encounter outlined in, "Terror Of The Deep!", "The Xanathar Guild" ends with the party finding a magical stone with an aboleth inside it that introduces itself with, "Hey guys, how's it going? I don't really get a lot of new friends in this stone", in the same way as the aboleth in Acererak's tomb.
* TheCameo: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1_lLxaH0fo "Dungeon Bebop: 12 Cartoon D&D Sketches"]], Blue from WesternAnimation/BluesClues is exploring a dungeon with Ben. They skidoo into a picture ... [[DidntThinkThisThrough which contains an evil monster]].
* CannibalClan: Averted two times. The first, in the first Parnast video, was because one player was WrongGenreSavvy, and assumed the village were cannibals because they would be "happy. to have [them] ''for'' the feast". The other was in the second Malikar video, and more understandable. Two players had killed a large amount of guards and stuffed their corpses in the kitchen. The two players that hadn't been present later tried to hide in the kitchen, and you can imagine the rest.
* CannibalLarder: Two player characters mistakenly think that they have found a cannibal larder when they enter a kitchen in a bad guy's fortress with pieces of dead bodies stuffed everywhere. Actually what had happened was that two other players characters had hidden in the kitchen and killed all of the guards that entered and then did their best to hide the bodies.
* CatsAreMean: The villain of the Holiday One Off is an immortal monster that happens to look like an ordinary cat and loves to hunt humans.
* ChaoticStupid: The video "DM.exe has crashed!" leans this way, with the LawfulGood paladin being the only rational player character in the group. The story involves the group having to break into a school to investigate it, and the paladin's decision is to get a warrant to search the school legally and avoid conflict. While she's off taking care of the warrant, the others all decide to break into the school and cause a bunch of trouble. One character with the power of invisibility was knocking out teachers and breaking walls. The thief disguised himself as a student and conned students out of their money, which ended with him getting beaten up by students once they caught on to his cheating. The druid defends the thief by setting one of the students attacking him on fire. The samurai's solution to calming things down is to whip out his gun, and shoot it into the ceiling, which leads to a stand-off with the police, and him throwing magic grenades at the cops.
* ChekhovsGun: A seemingly insignificant detail Ben gives in the Job Interview video is one of the interviewers asking him how small the batches of protein he had worked with were and Ben responding by pinching his fingers together to show how small. Ben is shocked when he got hired because of how poorly the interview went. It turned out that question was the most important question in the entire interview.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: One of Azrael's complaints in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHKNbvCoDks "D&D Story: Too many betrayals!"]]. The Covenant Campaign had eight [=NPCs=] betray the party, back-to-back across two sessions. While Ben can justify each betrayal individually, all these occurring so quickly has eroded player trust.
--> '''Azrael:''' "Never trust Ben's [=NPCs!=] Every single one of Ben's NPC's is ''evil!''"
* ChurchMilitant: In the Deadlands one shot, the players were attacked by a group of magic wielding reverends.
* CoolOldGuy: Halaster Blackcloak, lord and creator of Undermountain, one of the greatest mages Faerûn has ever known... And also avid bowler.
* CoolPet:
** The party that Ben GM's for in the Parnast story has a giant flying snake, a bear wizard, a psychic raven with a third eye, and a twin pair of mephits dressed in baby clothes.
** In the ''[[https://youtube.com/watch?v=RrYkSM4OG4U Too Many Pets]]'' video he talks about how he has a problem with players trying to keep every cute monster they meet as pets. He also explains how the party added a ghost dog detective and a demon dog to their collection of pets. The same group has several more strange pets that he doesn't explain how they got.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUOyaevNQJY "D&D Stories: funny moments from my campaign"]], the party in the Malikar and Covenant storylines is shown to have a flying whale named Bernard and a giant spider named Bitey.
** A group of NPC adventurers in the Covenant storyline called the Dream Team that the players hired to do a minor quest for them had a pet hippo.
* {{Corpsing}}: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsK6KFojRDo A Star Wars campaign podcast fell to pieces]] because of the GM's in-depth description of [[SomethingElseAlsoRises everyone's lightsabers extending]] [[AccidentalInnuendo before emitting beams of white light.]] The GM was also the only one able to keep a straight face, as he was the only one who ''didn't'' get the innuendo.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: When Ben played as Sauron in an evil The Lord of The Rings campaign, because he had no idea what kind of character Sauron was he ended up roleplaying him as a corrupt executive who ran the team of villains and their armies like a company.
* CoveredInGunge: The first D&D game that Ben GM'd takes place in a sewer. One of the party members, a blond elf girl, falls into the sewer and gets covered in poop. [[CombatTentacles It only gets worse for her from there]].
* CowboyCop: This is Detecive Savage Rage's character. He is too badass and cool to follow any rules and he thinks that being a cop allows him to do anything he wants.
* CreationMyth: Parodied in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlT4H1qKp7c How Every D&D Universe Begins]]".
* {{Crossover}}: Dingo from ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' makes occasional cameos and crossovers. He also participated in a livestream with Zee Bashew from the ''WebAnimation/AnimatedSpellbook'' series and Dingo, featuring Dingo's boyfriend Felix as the DM. Ben also did a channel invasion with T the Writer, where each of them made a video for the other's channel.
* CursedWithAwesome: The players in the Malikar-campaign, except for the monk and the fighter, are sent to a random plane of existence. Miraculously, they all ended up on the good side of the great wheel (the other fighter and his drow companion went to the unsoiled wilderness of the Beastlands, the sorcerer went to the utopia of Arcadia, and the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing went to the eternal battleground of Ysgard), which contains places like the Nine Hells, the Abyss, Hades and Limbo. They can never return, but they were pretty lucky all things considered.
* CutenessProximity: One player who fighting a group of hags was unable to fight when he saw that the hag he was fighting had the head of a dog and tried to ask the other players to switch opponents with him. In "DM.exe Has Crashed!", when a new player joins the group during a battle, one character is distrustful of the new character, until his player see a picture of what the new character looks like - an adorable little girl wearing a bear skin wielding a giant wooden ladle - and he decides to trust her immediately.
* DarkerAndEdgier:
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKZcWZM-EXw Pokemon Tabletop Gangster]]", the GM hoped to have a light kid-friendly game. Then he [[PoliceBrutality gave the players temporary control of NPC security guards]].
** [[https://youtu.be/QN5lVdwvufc Trixie Starbright]] inhabited the same game's world - the poor GM just couldn't catch a break.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Way too common in D&D.
-->Ben: Take a moment to flesh out your backstory and figure out who your parents are - [[DeathByOriginStory they're dead]]! Did you have any friends - also dead! What village did you come from - [[DoomedHometown burned to the ground]].
* DeadpanSnarker: Dingo from ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' is this when she makes a cameo.
-->'''Ben:''' You guys get snow? In Canada?\\
'''Dingo:''' ... Yes. Yes, we do.
* DeathSeeker: In one campaign, Ben got sick of playing his cleric character and wanted to swap them out, but the other players and the DM thought his healing was too important and refused to let him retire the cleric. Ben's solution to this was to start roleplaying the cleric as simultaneously being reckless and selfless, charging the deadliest looking enemy in fights and never healing himself, hoping that he'd get killed and the party would have no choice but to accept the swap. Unfortunately the one time Ben managed to get him killed, everyone else was so distraught that the DM brought him back to life through divine intervention, much to Ben's annoyance.
* DescriptionCut: Used several times in "Whoops! Guess everyone has to die now!" to juxtapose the expectations of the module (sneak in, make a deal with an NPC, quietly make their way to the head priest) with the realities of just how far OffTheRails they'd gone (ringing alarm bells, a ''dead'' NPC, heated battles in the halls, etc.).
* DetectiveAnimal: The players in ''Too Many Pets'' name the ghost dog they befriended Sherlock Bones after it helped them solve a mystery.
* DidntThinkThisThrough:
** In "Everybody Died in Call of Cthulhu" a player character killed himself by setting everything in the room he was in on fire, including the only door out of the room. This same player character had in a previous game collapsed the entrance to a mine with dynamite while he still in it, which Ben let him live from.
** In "The Hero of Parnast: Part 2", the group wanted Wallace out of the group as swiftly as possible, so at the end of the adventure, [[spoiler: they sent him ahead on a mount with the villain in tow. They realized too late that this would, again, [[DudeWheresMyRespect cast Wallace as the true hero of Parnast]].]]
** In "Read your spell BEFORE you cast it" a player cast the spell Darkness on a dragon without reading what the spell does. Instead of making it so that dragon couldn't see them, it made it so they couldn't see the dragon.
** In "PEE IN MY BUCKET!" a player cast the spell Flaming Sphere, while they were on a wooden ship that was stuck in some trees, which set the ship on fire, and resulted in most of the remaining crew falling to their deaths escaping from the flames.
** Ben himself in '[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdXZA2bdR_k Whoops! Guess everyone has to die now!]]'. He wanted to DM an Adventurers League, which resulted in him having to DM for an already in progress campaign for a module he hadn't read yet. As a result, he had to skim through most of it, resulting in him skipping how the party is ''supposed'' to get into the fortress and only finding that out ''after'' the party had already gone in guns blazing. The end result? What ''should'' have been a simple stealth mission turned into a massive blood bath that [[spoiler: contrary to the title, the party barely survived.]]
** In "D&D Stories: funny moments from my campaign", the party rogue cut's off the blacksmith's hand arbitrarily. For the rest of the story the blacksmith refuses to do work for the party again, and only the inexperienced blacksmith's apprentice will work for them.
** Later in that episode, when the party was ambushing Orcs in a Church Steeple, they forgot until after they set the explosive trap that ''they'' were in the building. Cue a SuperWindowJump and broken legs for the party members.
** In one of the real life videos, Ben was surprised that nobody recognized him from his show at a gaming convention. Then he remembered he had never shown his face in his videos...
** In the first Covenant campaign video, it is revealed that the monk lost the Mournblade because he thought that a sandbox in a public park was a good place to hide it.
** When Ben got to play in an evil The Lord of the Rings campaign where the player characters were villains brought back from the dead, he eagerly chose to play as Sauron only to realize that he had no idea how to roleplay as Sauron or what Sauron's abilities were and thus he had to make up Sauron's personality and guess his abilities, which may have explained why nobody else picked Sauron.
** There is also the GM who told Ben that he trusted him to know how the game worked so he would sign off on whatever character Ben made without checking, not considering that this was Ben he was talking to, who of course brought a ridiculous character to the table.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUA5aCOF3y0 DM.exe has crashed! || Attack at the school]], an idiotic samurai player tries to calm down a bunch of frightened students by firing a pistol, which of course has the exact opposite effect and ends with him in a confrontation with the police which he keeps on making worse with one bad decision after another, eventually resulting in him getting thrown in prison.
* DisguisedInDrag: Ben's character Detective Clancy disguises himself as Trixie Starbright then the party is infiltrating a party to act as one of the other party member's date.
* DistinctionWithoutADifference: When a player wants to frame Wallace, and another player protests, they try to argue that they are not really framing him, but when they try to describe what they want to do they end up admitting that they really are framing him.
* DistractedByTheSexy: One of the ten items an adventurer should always carry with them according to T the Writer is a scroll covered in either nonsense or a picture of a naked woman, which the player drops on the ground so a guard will pick it up and examine it while the players sneaks up on them.
* DivineIntervention:
** When one of the party members tries to rescue a child from the sewers she falls in and gets attacked by a tentacle monster. How do the rest rescue her? By summoning a literal angel! No, it's never explained why they didn't use the angel to rescue the child directly.
** When Ben finally a character he was tired of playing killed, the DM railroaded him into continuing to play the character by ruling that his goddess intervened to bring him back to life.
* TheDogWasTheMastermind: During a campaign, the players kidnap a well dressed otter man they met in the dream world and bring him to the real world, but they later start to suspect he is actually the BigBad of the game and tricked them into kidnapping him, without any evidence at all. It isn't confirmed if they are right or wrong, but it seems unlikely since Ben's players are very unpredictable and it would be hard for Ben to plan something like that, and plus Ben didn't seem to have even planned for them to talk to the otter man.
* TheDreaded: The Chadwick Strongpants somehow has a reputation as a ridiculously powerful hero, such that when he approaches bad guys panic and end up [[FriendlyFire accidently killing each other]], thus defeating themselves without Chadwick having to do anything. [[spoiler:Chadwick [[JokeCharacter doesn't actually have any powers at all.]]]]
* DrowningMySorrows: The Gnome Monk Michele turned to drugs and alcohol after defeating Malikar, because he couldn't bare to face the fact that the rest of his party allegedly died.
* DumbMuscle: Ben's fighter character, Aligaros, who always tried to use his axe to solve problems and kept getting arrested because he thought getting blackout drunk nightly was a good idea. When Katya convinces a revenant to leave by talking to it, he comments it was like she used an axe, but with her mind. Creating the RunningGag that he should use his mind axe to solve the problem. [[spoiler: Which resulted in him taking a level of Psion in order to have an actual Mind Axe ability that he sat on for ''months'' JustForPun.]]
* DungeonmastersGirlfriend: Averted with Ben's brother Will. Ben gives him no special treatment, and when he doesn't bother to create a character Ben teaches his brother a lesson by [[JokeCharacter creating one for him]].
* DyingDeclarationOfLove: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M6dRjOsbew Taking An Arrow to The Heart In D&D]]": Lemmy makes one to Thrognar when the latter was shot in the heart ... and immediately backtracks when it turns out that [[SubvertedTrope Thrognar will pull through]].
* {{Eagleland}}:
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mr1fXAR4Sc That time our characters went to New York City]]", Ben portrays New York City as being on a large United-States shaped island labelled "FREEDOMLAND". This island's land is colored with the American Flag.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqFS1YSVJ4 a collaboration]] with ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'', Ben describes a Call of Cthulhu game he was GM for. In this game, [[{{Expy}} Dick]] [[ComicStrip/DickTracy Tracy]] and [[PunnyName Justin Case]] break into a dorm room in an all woman's school. When the women in the dorm corner the two detectives to find out what they're doing, Dick Tracy tried to bullshit his way out of this. Dick Tracy argued that [[InsaneTrollLogic America being a free country means they can go anywhere they want]] while Justin Case waves a miniature flag and hums the national anthem. [[spoiler: The college girls critically failed their intelligence check and believed it, so the two could steal everything not bolted to the ground. After that, they got a 1% bonus to their success chance when eating apple pie.]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: In early videos, Ben's character, Aligaros, as always depicted as having a hat signifying a ranger or maybe a bard. Later videos identified him as a Fighter.
* EarlyBirdCameo: The monk from the Malikar video was played by Ben's brother from a later video.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Malikar from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o My players LOSE the final fight!]] makes a clear distinction between being evil and being a jerk. He doesn't like instant death traps because he thinks they're unsporting, and chastises one of his henchmen for making inappropriate comments to his prisoners and making them uncomfortable.
* EverybodyCallsHimBarkeep: Ben generally doesn't give us the names of the characters, or even the [=NPCs=] in his videos. The literal barkeep in the Xanathar guild video is named Durnan.
* EvilSoundsDeep: Deconstructed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KttVzzfNc30 Unleashing Evil in Dungeons & Dragons]]: The evil entity sounds so deep and demonic that Ben shuts the door immediately.
* EvilWeapon: In the Malikar campaign, the players had to find the pieces of a evil sword called the Mournblade that had the power to destroy souls, which they needed in order to make sure Malikar wouldn't come back after killing him. The Mournblade can talk and only cares about killing things, not caring if it is being used for good or evil.
* ExplainExplainOhCrap: The moment when the players realize that they are still in the building that they are about to blow up.
* {{Expy}}:
** Ben's wizard character, Doctor Solomon, is a [[DirtyCoward less heroic]] version of [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings Gandalf]] that [[DraggedOffToHell sends his enemies to a nightmarish hellscape]].
** Ben's detective character, Detective [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude Detective]] Savage "[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Savage Rage]]" Rage, is [[Film/KungFury Kung Fury]].
** When Ben GM's for a Call of Cthulhu game, one of the players plays a detective character called [[ComicStrip/DickTracy Dick Tracy]].
** Ben's [[MasterOfNone multi-class]] [[TheFriendNobodyLikes adventurer]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 Abserd]] at one point went to a school called [[Franchise/HarryPotter Swogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry]].
** In the dystopian ICONS campaign, the players based their characters on Franchise/SpiderMan, [[ComicBook/LukeCageHeroForHire Luke Cage]], and [[Manga/FullmetalAlchemist Edward Elric]].
** Unintentionally on Ben's part, but one of the [=NPCs=] in the Malikar and Covenant campaigns was an elderly Tortle wizard. The party just called him [[WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda Oogway]] and refused to listen to him when he tried to tell them his real name.
** When Ben GM'd for a Mutants and Masterminds game, the party involves a lot of this. In addition to the ICONS Campaign party, he also had a party that consisted of Venom, Lucy from [[Manga/ElfenLied ''Elfen Lied'']], Kuma from [[VideoGame/OnePiece ''One Piece'']], and a combination of [[{{Franchise/Batman}} Doctor Freeze]] and Nick Fury. He also described a Final Fantasy party he GM'd for which included Mercy from [[{{VideoGame/Overwatch}} ''Overwatch'']] and [[{{Series/Dexter}} Dexter the Serial Killer]].
** In the new campaign after the TimeSkip, when a player decides to switch character part way through since his reputation had been ruined by another character's actions, he makes Shredder from ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles''.
* EyeScream: How an unfortunate NPC is killed in "Secrets Of The Skeleton Town."
* FakeUltimateHero: Chadwick Strongpants is a super hero who somehow has a reputation as TheDreaded, which causes enemies to panic and defeat themselves through FriendlyFire when he approaches, but it turns out that his actual power is [[spoiler:nothing at all. He is a completely average guy.]]
* FallenHero: When Ben learns that his party is pure evil, he likes to imagine that the GM will use those characters as villains for another party's adventure.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: The nation of Gautor in Ben's setting. The players called it Fantasy North-Korea.
* FantasticRacism: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3bTwyEbq14 We were betrayed in our D&D campaign]]", the party is extremely patronizing and dismissive of the [[BirdPeople aarakocra]] bard Flynn. When they have a feast they locked Flynn outside in a hurricane. When their patron Garathor betrayed them Ben punched Flynn in the face for pointing out [[CassandraTruth that he distrusted Garathor previously]]. Later on, in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFiISQJDxW8 Breaking Into The Castle]]", the Lord of a city wants to execute Flynn for writing a satirical song about him and Ben is more than willing to hand Flynn over. A dragon saves Flynn, much to Ben's disappointment.
--> Aligaros: "Now we're just down to three party members."\\
Flynn: "Excuse me, three party members?"\\
Aligaros: "Aww! He's so cute with those people clothes he's wearing. He thinks he's a person!"
* FelonyMisdemeanor:
** Ben's Star Wars Edge of the Empire's party reaction to learning he had never actually seen the original trilogy of movies, especially as they had been playing a Star Wars game for the past year.
--> Other Party Member: "Ben, of all the secret things you could have revealed about yourself, that was the worst. There's absolutely nothing else you could have told us that would have gone over as poorly. If you said 'Hey, [[AxCrazy I'm keeping a pile of dead bodies under my house]],' we would have gone like 'Okay, cool, right. Everyone has [[ILoveTheDead their fetishes]]'. But not seeing Star Wars... Jesus Christ, dude! The fuck is wrong with you?"
** Wallace taking the credit for the players' hard work after he was completely useless to them is treated by the players as being worse than if he had killed their families.
* FishEyes: In many episodes, when a character is feeling stupid or suffering SanitySlippage (usually Ben), they will be shown with eyes pointing off in different directions randomly.
* FiveTokenBand: [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3HyvfrwscLKtE_NmOQfWGw Jess]], WebAnimation/{{Dingo|Doodles}} and Logan in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIMG_oaQMME cocaine video]] played as an aasimar (celestial-touched humans), a bird person (aarakocra or kenku) and a reptile (lizardfolk, kobold or dragonborn).
* FlatEarthAtheist: One episode has a guard who insists that magic isn't real, because he has [[NotHyperbole literally]] never been outside.
* FlatWorld: The Malikar campaign and its sequels apparently take place on a disk shaped planet as seen in a few video where the world is shown.
* FluffyTamer: The party in "Too Many Pets" end up befriending a ghost dog, a shadowbeast that's enchanted to look like a small corgi, a bird butler, and aboleth, and a gold dragon (who they employ as an accountant).
* TheFundamentalist: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c9-gFB3a_k&t=2014s "D&D Happy Holiday One-Off"]], all three members of the party are zealots for Pelor. Cauli and Urson harass a little girl to find out if she believes in Pelor, and when asked to give a speech to the town Cauli talks about how Pelor will smite all non-believers.
-->'''Cauli:''' But if you don't believe in Pelor, let him come down and smite you from the inside out!\\
'''Urson:''' For he is a vengeful God!\\
'''Cauli:''' From the inside out, so your eyeballs will liquefy and your bowls shall explode!
* FrameUp: The characters in "The Hero of Parnast pt 2" discover that someone is attempting to frame Wallace for a series of crimes against the town, but almost go along with it because of how much they hate Wallace.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes:
** The in-universe reason for why [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 Abserd]] was able to acquire a level in every class. He's not evil, but he has a supremely annoying voice so every group he joins ends up kicking him out. Sure enough, at the end of the mission the rest of the party willingly leaves him as a hostage to an evil elf so she'll release the person they came to rescue.
** Wallace from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWwHKYPSjc "The Hero of Parnast"]] is treated like crap by the entire party due to being [[RailRoading rail-roaded]] into the party despite having no useful skills whatever, yet he ends up taking credit for their actions.
*** Taken UpToEleven in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HjGNQGsBVM Part 2]], in which the party (except the one who'd just joined) wanted to frame Wallace for the crimes being committed in Parnast, even after the villain is revealed. [[spoiler: Made even funnier by TheReveal that ''all'' of the members of the party were ''LawfulGood''.]]
---->'''PC:''' Swear to God, Wallace, if you don't stop talking, I will reach down your throat, rip out your intestines, and then ''strangle you with them'' just to get you to shut up!
** Ben himself in 12 short D&D sketches. A new player would rather sit in an armchair filled with broken glass and rattlesnakes than sit next to Ben.
** And done again in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2M9wVlO5Fk the Breath of the Wild Co-Op video]].
--->'''Ben:''' ...and he's the only friend who hasn't installed good enough locks to keep me out of the house. That must mean he ''likes'' me!
** And again in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Z1_raOH40 his tips for getting into D&D]], in which he posts "Facebook keeps having your account accidentally block me..." to a friend's post about the game.
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdCdQJxBDA The first time I ran a D&D game]], Ben's notes says [[KillerGameMaster Kill EVERYONE]].
* FunWithAcronyms: His second campaign creates a new team name, which Ben accepts under the assumption that it can't be worse than the "Turtle Molesters/Fuckers" from his previous campaign. The group ends up calling themselves W.O.R.S.T, which stands for "Warriors of Really Shitty Timing".
* GenreBlind: The GM running ''TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles'' said this to Ben.
-->'''GM:''' You don't have to ask my permission for anything. Whatever you make, I'll sign off on without checking.
* GenreSavvy:
** One party member [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdCdQJxBDA in Ben's game]] exhibited this trait, much to his frustration.
** It also makes [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsusuVm001Q running a mystery and surprising the party]] very difficult.
--->'''Ben:''' My villain didn't even manage to get in [[EvilGloating one line]] before he figured it out. ''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis Not! One! Line!]]'' [[OffTheRails Everything was ruined]]!
** And in the finale of the Covenant campaign, after the players successfully recovered the Covenant, instead of handing it over to the angel who sent them to rescue it, they figured out that the angel was actually the BigBad and wanted to destroy the Covenant in order to make sure the war between heaven and hell will continue.
* GenreShift: "Secrets of the Skeleton Town". It's a ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' one-shot, a game where the focus is investigation and SurvivalHorror (in comparison to D&D's HighFantasy shenanigans). The story is very creepy and Ben really nails the narration.
* GiantSquid: The Otyugh.
* TheGMIsACheatingBastard: Discussed in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRIr4-oYj1A Should The GM Cheat in D&D?]]". The conclusion he came to is that it shouldn't be used to invalidate player choices, and if used at all it should be used consistently.
* GoodIsNotNice: This comes up sometimes.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c9-gFB3a_k&t=2014s "D&D Happy Holiday One-Off"]], the three players interpret Pelor as being this. For context, in canon Pelor is a Lawful Good God.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E&t=106s "EVERYONE in town shops at the black market"]], the party's Paladin Relthorne impaled a local assassin through the chest without provocation.
* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy:
** When a samuri ninja adventurer falls down the stairs in front of two guards, he [[PlayingPossum plays dead]]. The guards fall for it, despite the attempt being pretty weak.
** In another video Ben discusses how useless guards usually are and has an ImagineSpot where a man asks a guard for help with a friend who has been turned into a dog, but the guard doesn't believe in magic because he has never been outside, ever.
** Malikar manages to escape from his prison on Mount Celestia because the guards are innocent baby seals who he gets away from just by asking to go to the bathroom, though his freedom is short lived as he immediately sprains his ankle and is captured again.
* HalfHumanHybrid: It's a subtle detail, but in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWwHKYPSjc D&D Story: The Hero Of Parnast]]", Wallace's mother is a tiefling.
* HappyEndingOverride: The first Covenant campaign video, which continues where the Malikar campaign ended. The players wanted to continue the story, so the ending of the previous campaign was retconned. The other players didn't change much, but the monk ended up as a homeless drug addict, obsessed with his failure. He also lost the Mournblade.
* HeelRealization:
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE&t=8s We Became The Villains In Our Own Campaign]]", Ben and his party [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin discover that they are the villains of their campaign]]. Deep into the campaign they discover that their have been unintentionally causing a lot of harm in the world [[note]]They saved a ship only to get it's crew killed by [[SuicidalOverconfidence summoning a]] [[KrakenAndLeviathan kracken for them to fight]], [[VanHelsingHateCrimes they killed zombies]] [[PoorCommunicationKills that only wanted to warn them about an impending danger]], and they helped [[EvilSorcerer a guy]] retrieve black crystals that he needs to summon his [[EldritchAbomination dark master]] to take over the world[[/note]]. The GM confirms this by telling the party that they are pure evil and [[MoralEventHorizon beyond redemption]].
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soc4GrlymzY "My Failed Game Attempt"]], Ben mentions that he had five games he was GM for crash and burn. He comments that someone who didn't know better might think he was a terrible GM ... and then he proceeds to panic.
* HelloInsertNameHere: When Ben asks a forest dragon for his name, the dragon states that he is nameless. Ben then proceeds to name the dragon [[Film/TheNeverendingStory Falcor]].
* HiddenBadass: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0HA0FtHUOs "The Xanathar Guild"]], the Bartender turns out to be a level seventeen fighter with magical weapons. [[BigDamnHeroes He saves half the party from a troll]].
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: In the Tomb of Annihilation campaign that Ben ran, the Ras Nsi is killed with his own FlamingSword after a player cut his hand off in a duel with him and stole the sword.
* HorribleJudgeOfCharacter:
** Ben and his party (minus [[BirdPeople Flynn]]) were too trusting of Garathor. When Flynn asks how they can trust him, Ben states that Garathor has [[BlackCloak an honest face]].
** The GM's that Ben plays with tend to be this as well. One gives the players temporary control of Security Guards (said guards proceed to [[PoliceBrutality beat two vandals to a pulp]]), and another tells Ben he'll approve Ben's character without reading it (Ben proceeds to create a character that probably wouldn't have been approved otherwise).
* HumanityEnsues:
** Happens to the non-human characters in one story where the party got sent to New York City.
** The Warforged character gets turned human by accident at the end of the Covenant campain.
** A character who hasn't yet appeared in the animated videos but Ben has mentioned a Q&A was a Druid who was a dog who got turned human by drinking from a magic spring.
* HumanityIsSuperior: When player statistics were released for 5th addition D&D, it turned out that Humans were the most selected race for player characters. In-game, Humans also receive either +1 to every stat or an extra feat.
* HungryJungle: The jungle in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I "D&D Story: PEE IN MY BUCKET! The Adventurer's League Game"]] counts as this trope. It's infested with undead humans and undead four armed gorillas, and the vines are highly lethal to climb.
* HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: In the Holiday One Off, the disappearances are caused by a monster that prefers to hunt humans, which the town offers as sacrifices.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** The In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6kEVfU93gc "M&M Story: Chadwick Strongpants"]], the group paladin told the gnome monk Michele that he can't be chaotic good because he robbed a homeless man for his clothes. Michele pointed out that said paladin [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil owned a halfling slave]] [[MeatShield who he used to disable traps]].
--->'''Michele:''' Glass houses, that's all I'm saying. Glass houses.
** One GM Ben played with punished the party wizard any time he cast a spell that the GM regarded as "breaking the game" (i.e. anything that wasn't a healing spell). When Ben asked him why he couldn't just talk to the player about his issues with this, the GM responded without any hint of irony "[=GMs=] aren't supposed to interfere like that, it's rude to mess with the player's autonomy." Ben also noticed that the same GM's magic-using [=NPCs=] weren't subject to the same penalties as players when a villain hit his character with a no-save, 100 points of damage spell for a OneHitKill.
** Ben mentions that he doesn't use miniatures, because he finds them too expensive (which is a valid concern). Then, in the very same video, he tells a story about how he once bought 7 copies of the Player's Handbook (and a monster manual) on a whim because he wanted to impress younger players, and also admits that he impulsively buys new dice that he doesn't need.
* IAteWhat: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I&t=80s "D&D Story: PEE IN MY BUCKET! The Adventurer's League Game"]], Ben's Party tries rescuing the crew of an airship that crashed in the trees. This crew was exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated. To alleviate the last problem the party peed in a bucket, cast a purification spell on it, and gave it to the crew to drink. Hilariously, clerics like Ben and the one who had the pee-idea have the spells "Create or Destroy Water" and "Create Food and Water", meaning that if they took a long rest, they could prepare those spells.
* IdiotHero: Ben really enjoys playing IdiotHero characters.
** Aligaros Ashuin: A fighter with a fear of libraries who things that all problems should be solved with an axe and treats his BirdFolk teammate like a pet.
** Detective Savage Rage: A stupid police detective who has no investigation skills and thinks that being a police officer means he can do whatever he wants.
** Detective Clancy: Another detective who has no investigation skills but is completely convinced that he is the world's greatest detective.
* ImTakingHerHomeWithMe: Ben's players have been shown in many videos to have a tendency collect a ton of pets and followers due to wanting to take any NPC or monster they take a liking to with them, sometimes going as far as outright kidnapping [=NPCs=] that they like.
* IncorruptiblePurePureness: Baby harp seals are so cute and innocent that they are immune to evil and so are used as guards on Mount Celestia. Too bad they also [[GoodCannotComprehendEvil cannot comprehend evil]].
* IncrediblyLamePun: The [[AC:Omega Pun]] is an extremely exaggerated example of this trope. It's apparently so powerful that anyone who hears it takes enough psychic damage to ''kill a god''. Knowing the pun would, according to Ben, be like having a nuclear bomb in your head, and only the legendary Pun Warrior can take it. Said pun warrior is ''not'' one of Ben's players.
* INeedAFreakingDrink: Melthat has this reaction after [[{{Expy}} Dick Tracy]] completely [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsusuVm001Q figures out his sinister plot]] [[EpicFail before he can even say one line]].
--> Dick Tracy: "Oh I ... I wasn't supposed to figure that out, was I? Dick Tracy, world's greatest detective!"
* {{Jerkass}}: Many of Ben's characters and the characters that he ran games for were huge jerks. Aligaros was a racist who openly said that his Arakocra teammate wasn't a person. His Trixie character was a massive BitchInSheepsClothing who would do anything to be popular. The players characters from the Hero of Parnast story verbally abused Wallace just for being an unwanted TagalongKid and allowed him to get hurt when he got taken hostage.
* JokeCharacter:
** Abserd! When Ben was a player in a one-shot campaign where he could create a level 14 character, he decided to make a character with every single class. Abserd only had one level in each class, and so was bad at all of them. Not helping this, Ben played Abserd as an annoying person to justify why he kept getting kicked out of groups.
** Chadwick Strongpants! Ben built him up as a great hero feared by all ne'er-do-wells, but he has no powers or interesting backstory events at all. This character was created by Ben to punish his brother Will for not creating a character or giving Tabletop [=RPGs=] a chance.
* JokeWeapon: In the Captain Morgan video, a player created a sword by casting a spell on a bag of cocaine,
* JumpingOnAGrenade: The paladin player does this after the idiotic samurai player throws a grenade at the police.
* JunkRare: Happens in-universe with Barathorn, the sentient dwarven glaive. He's a +1 Glaive of Stabbing, which is decent for a low level party, but the party at that point had gathered practically every magic item in the DM's guide, so they didn't really need it.
* JustForPun: One of Ben's players in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqFS1YSVJ4 Crossover with Dingo Doodles]] played as a character named Justin Case, with a cousin named Justin Time.
* JustifiedCriminal: Defied in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E "Black Market Blues"]]. The Game Master clearly intended for the town and it's black market to be this, but Ben is unconvinced. He goes so far as to say that the townsfolk deserve to be enslaved for failing to find an honest source of income. The main problem is that he overshot so far that it came off as the town deliberately instituting an absurd law just for the pleasure of breaking it.
* KillerGameMaster: Ben can sometimes be a Killer DM
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b87D1eGSp0 Miscellaneous Monsters and Bears of Sand]]" Ben killed two of his players and forced the others to retreat by having them fight a permanently invisible beholder. To be fair, the beholder was from a module.
** In the first Malikar video, he admits that he sometimes adds in monsters just because he thought they looked cool, without concern for CR.
** In the video about the first time he was a dungeon master, he has an annoying player character killed for complaining about the story and being too GenreSavvy, but it turns out to only be an ImagineSpot.
** Something similar happens in ''Last Orders At The Yawning Portal Tavern''. When a player makes an IncrediblyLamePun that nobody found funny, Ben has the monster [[LamePunReaction instantly kill the player's character]], but then he changes his mind and declares that the character is ok, but the monster has instead [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou killed the player ''in real life'']], so the player is now metaphorically dead to them.
** During the Covenant campaign, Ben realizes that he may have gone too far when a player points out that the party got betrayed no less than ''eight'' times in only two sessions, causing them to be suspicious of all of Ben's [=NPCs=]. This probably explains why in the next campaign, the players suddenly came to the conclusion that Ottie Otterton must secretly be the BigBad without any evidence.
--->'''Ben:''' I mean, I hate my players as much as much as the next DM, but I think six would have been fine, but eight, eight's a bit much even for my game.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Out of universe, we can definitely see why the players of the Parnast campaign would hate Little Wallace, but in-universe, they basically treated a child horribly just because he wanted to help. They had everything that went bad coming.
* LastSecondWordSwap: "You're the turtle..."
-->'''Michele:''' Friends! Turtle Friends!
* LawfulStupid: "Black Market Blues" leans this way with a plot involving a town's black market. Magic items are illegal in the area, so the local black market sells those magic items. However, it's eventually revealed that the town's leaders knew about the black market, and let them do as they please because the town's economy depended on its success. However, Ben questions why there was a need for a black market when the government supported it. He asks why the town didn't just change the laws to legalize magic items so they could be sold in a regular market. The inquisitor Ben questions gets locked in CircularReasoning, saying they can't change the laws and legalize magic because that would get rid of the black market, and they can't sell magic items in a regular market because magic is illegal.
** The Modrons also act like this, true to D&D tradition. When someone steals the Covenant despite the sign saying "No touching", they conclude that someone stole it without touching it, and solve the problem by putting up a sign saying "No stealing".
* LegionOfDoom: Ben once played in a Lord of the Ring campaign where the players are several villains brought back to life including Sauron, Saruman, Smaug, Gollum, Shelob, and the Balrog. Ben playing as Sauron ends up being the one to convince the other villains to cooperate with each other.
* LimitedAnimation: Ben uses very simplistic animation in his videos. Characters in his videos are nearly stick figures and move very little. Ironically, he has twice the amount of subscribers than ''WebAnimation/AnimatedSpellbook'' (who has better animation and more regular uploads, but shorter videos), ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' (who has rarer uploads, but better artwork), Jocat (who has better animation and consistent uploads), and more than 20 times the subs of [=JessJackdaw=] (who uploads rarely, but has better artwork). One thing he always takes the time to do, however, is animate mouth movements.
* LivingToys: When the player characters are shrunk during the holiday one-off, the monster hunting them is locked outside of the house they are in and so attacks them by bringing the toys in the house to life to fight them. They get attacked by toy soldiers riding a wooden train, and after escaping run into a paper dragon.
* TheLoonie: Or to use his own term, a "troll player". He loves to come up with insane characters like taking one level in every class, or (on two seperate occasions) detectives with no investigation skills whatsoever.
* LovecraftLite: How Ben ran a ''Call of Cthulhu'' games when he was the GM. At least until the TotalPartyKill.
-->'''Ben:''' The games resembled more like ''Scooby-Doo'' where the players would go out, solve the mystery, encounter some supernatural and then call it a day.\\
'''RP Player #1:''' Gee gang, it looks like Cthulhu is trying to enter our dimension.\\
'''RP Player #2:''' Zoinks!
* MaliciousMisnaming: The players in one campaign continually insist on referring to a wise old Tortle wizard as Oogway, no matter how much he tries to get them to stop. When they beg for his help in the finale (by that name) he's so annoyed he refuses.
* MasterOfNone:
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 Abserd]], a level 14 character Ben created for a one-shot campaign, is this. He has every single class, and has so many magic systems that he has a character ''packet'' instead of a character sheet, but he is too low level in all of these classes to be able to use any of them.
--->'''Other player:''' How does he play?\\
'''Ben:''' He doesn't!
** For more elaboration: Making a character like Abserd is so CoolButInefficient because to multiclass, you need at least 13 in the class' core ability score; the only one you can afford to [[DumpStat dump]] in this case is ''Constitution'' (which no class uses), and Con determines your health and is ''never'' recommended to dump. Abserd does have a lot of skill proficiencies and cantrips going for him, and he can use any weapon or armour, but without a multi-attack or upgraded sneak attack for physical damage and no ability score increases or feats from levelling up, he is a poor physical fighter. He has a few third-level spells at a table where the real spellcasters have sixth-level spells, and his spells are easy to shrug off with a low spell save DC.
* MeaningfulName: The aforementioned Abserd, because he's an absurd character concept. Also works as a PunnyName.
* MeaningfulRename: After the party from the Malikar and Covenant Campaigns return to save the realm from a devil, they rename their group from The Turtle Fuckers to The Turtle Friends.
* MontyHaul: In the campaign against Malikar, Ben rewarded the players too generously, and this allowed them to buy whatever magic items they wanted, which made it difficult for him to reward them later. Barathorn the talking glaive ended up as a JunkRare item because they already had several magic weapons that were better.
* MoralMyopia: In the Deadlands one shot, a magic wielding reverend declares that the player characters are servants of the Devil because used magic to command snakes to kill him, but he was the one who summoned the snakes in the first place to try to kill them.
* {{Mordor}}: Whenever he talks about his home state of California, he describes it as this.
-->'''Ben:''' Look over there! That's almost, like, three trees! Where would you find that many trees in one place? I think two of them might even still be alive!
* {{Munchkin}}: In the post-timeskip campaign, Will wanted to keep playing the same character, and explaining the LegendFadesToMyth backstory as him actually having gone permanently invisible, and apparently the party are the only ones who can see him. Not only did he spring this on Ben with no warning, but invisibility is normally a spell that requires concentration, only lasts for 1 hour, and ends early if you try to attack. Permanent invisibility is a ludicrously powerful ability. It being ''unintentionally'' powerful is why Ben seems to have allowed it--Will seems to have no idea how to use invisibility in combat, going by his actions when "sneaking" into a school (break walls with boat).
* MurderSuicide: In "Should The GM Cheat in D&D?", describes and animates one such scenario as a warning to one possible way cheating can backfire.
--> Ben: "Maybe you have a dragon that flies up and goes 'Blah! Mega death face flames!' and [[TotalPartyKill it kills everyone]] [[SoleSurvivor except for one guy]] who walks away unscathed. He's not gonna be the one who grabs you by the scruff of the neck and flies with you out the hundredth floor window!"
* MyFriendsAndZoidberg: From "How I ruined my DM's Star Wars Campaign Podcast": "This DM decided to put together a team of his best and brightest players. Also he brought me along for some reason."
* NegatedMomentOfAwesome: The titular [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frcxo_3x6OY Obelisk Encounter]] ended up being this. After all the buildup about what a ludicrously impossible fight it would be, both sides had too much defense and healing for the other to do meaningful damage before the summon counter timed out. There wasn't even any experience or loot at the end.
* NeverMyFault:
** Ben does seem to have this attitude from time to time.
*** In one game, the players completely derailed the game using a portal to the moon ''he had placed there''. It's obviously impossible to plan for everything, but if he places the possibility for something to happen, he has to expect that that may happen. Golden Rule of Game Masters: If the players can do it, they will do it.
*** In a few other games, the campaign becomes less enjoyable for the players because Ben insists on following the module even when it's obviously poorly written. A key example is Wallace, who Ben foisted upon the part because the module had no provisions for a party declining to take him along.
*** In "Chadwick Strongpants", he complains about how his brother doesn't like tabletop [=RPGs=]. However in one session, the brother was stuck doing nothing while everyone was having fun. In the other session mentioned, Ben intentionally made a terrible character for his brother. With this in mind, the brother's dislike for [=RPGs=] seems more justified.
*** In several episodes where he's running from a pre-written adventure the parties get into hopeless fights because he didn't bother to read the setups or monster stat blocks ahead of time.
** The parties Ben GM's for aren't above this either. In "My players LOSE the final fight!", they leave one of their fighters paralyzed outside the villain's antechamber when they could have very easily given him the antivenom to restore his mobility. They lose this fight by one point, likely because they needlessly left one of their party members out of commission, and instead blame a different party member who couldn't make it to that game because he had to work late.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: In the video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE We Were Just Making Everything Worse]], the players have a HeelRealization when they think about all the things they accomplished in the campaign and realized that they had unintentionally caused several disasters. They caused the sinking of a ship they were trying to save, killed a zombie who was actually trying to help them and came back for revenge, and helped a villain obtain the means to cause the apocalypse by being too trusting.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: In a game he was running he accidentally created a Mindflayer Swashbuckler by getting two stat blocks confused and not realizing it until halfway through the battle. As the game as written included a gang boss who is an ordinary goldfish it didn't immediately strike him as out of place.
** Justified if you check the book. There is not actually any stat block for Nihiloor. He was supposed to use the Mind Flayer stat block from the Monster Manual, the book just contains some fluff and a picture of him... A picture that's right next to the stat block for the Nimblewright, a mechanical duelist.
* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: In "Deadlands: For A Few Idiots More", one of the players whines that the twenty KnightTemplar Reverends (in Salt Lake City) are Mormons. Ben says that they aren't Mormons exactly ... but doesn't say which denomination they are from.
* NoodleIncident: In the ''Too Many Pets'' video, Ben explains how the party picked up a ghost dog and a dog that turns into a shadow monster at night but doesn't explain the bird butler, the gold dragon or the aboleth.
** For reasons that Ben refuses to reveal or animate, the group of heroes out to defeat Malikar somehow picked up the nickname, "The Turtle Fuckers".
*** He has since revealed how they got the name in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73OAFbxIHYA this video]]. And he also explains that the name actually was Turtle Molesters, not Turtle Fuckers. Basically they used to have pet turtles traveling with the party, and had a running joke about where they applied those touch spells.
* NowWhat: Malikar apparently hadn't expected to actually defeat the heroes, so he wasn't sure what to do when he did. As they had succeeded in thwarting his current plan first, he was back to square one at best. He ultimately didn't have much time to consider it.
* ObligatoryJoke: Ben tracks the party with ''tracking down the location'' of a band of lycanthropes called ''The Wild Things''. He then immediately realizes his mistake and is disappointed but not surprised when they realize they're "trying to figure out Literature/WhereTheWildThingsAre".
* ObviouslyEvil: DoubleSubverted when Ben is an EvilSorcerer at the end of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE&t=8s We Became The Villains In Our Own Campaign]]". The [[{{Mordor}} desolation around his tower]] is because Ben wanted to save money on gardening, the Lava Sharks are [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter cute pets]], and the EvilTowerOfOminousness just has a very good view. Also he's [[HumanSacrifice killed people in that tower]].
* OffTheRails:
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19-I5xQV_Zs In one campaign he ran]] his players found a mysterious temple. He had planned for his players to come back to the temple later in the campaign but due to a lucky dice roll they learned how to use the temple's magic circle before they were supposed to and insisted on using it, resulting in them getting teleported to the moon without any way to get back.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsusuVm001Q In an another story]] a Call of Cthulhu game he ran was ruined when a player instantly guessed that an NPC they just met in a hospital was possessed by the villain, despite the fact that it hadn't even been hinted yet that the villain was capable of possessing people, and the NPC hadn't even spoken a single word yet.
** [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xgxhNwPEJUA Another Call of Cthulhu game]] was derailed into a TotalPartyKill. While everyone dying is not unexpected in ''Call of Cthulhu'', this one happened because of an [[TooDumbToLive idiot]] player setting everything on fire to keep a monster away and trapping himself in the fire, and the fire spread and killed the other surviving player.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdXZA2bdR_k When he ran Fane of the Night Serpent]] (part of Tomb of Annihilation) he accidentally skipped over the part of the book explaining how the players are supposed to get into the Temple. The players were supposed to either disguise themselves as the enemy, or let themselves be captured by the enemy and make an alliance with one of the villains, but what happened instead is the players had to fight their way though every single enemy, just barely managing to win after a very long and hard battle.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5C0rbcJDok In a dystopian ICONS campaign that he ran]], the heroes are sent on a mission to find out what happened to some people who were sent to recover a typewriter and never came back. The heroes find that they were attacked by bandits and incorrectly assume they are dead, and end up killing them instead by blowing up the bandit's base. It goes further off the rails when they find the typewriter and accidentally smash it, and discover a mysterious data disc inside which they were not supposed to know about, and they keep it for themselves instead of delivering it to the guy who sent them on the mission. After this he started running the campaign without rails and instead gave them several different plot threads they could choose to follow or ignore.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E In the Black Market Blues story]] he and his party are confronted by assassins when visiting a black market who are suspicious of the party's paladin. When talking their way out doesn't work the Paladin starts a fight with them and causes chaos in the black market and everybody gets arrest and the black market shut down. When they are in jail, Puffin realizes that it didn't make sense for the town to have a black market because [[OpenSecret everybody already knew it was there]] and was ok with it.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o Another campaign that he ran ended up going of the rails at the very end when the players fail to kill the villain]]. The players succeed in stopping the villain's plan but the final battle between the villain and the last player standing ultimately comes down to one last dice roll, which the player misses, ''by one point''. The standing player character is forced to retreat, and the rest of player characters get scattered across the universe and never see each other again although end up in nice places. Since they failed to kill the villain using the VillainBeatingArtifact he will eventually come back, and so it seems like a BitterSweetEnding, however it ends on a funny note because [[spoiler:the villain ended up on Mount Celestia, the realm of Pure LawfulGood where he is immediately captured and imprisoned for a very long time.]]
** Taken UpToEleven in "[[HeroicBSOD DM.exe has crashed]]!" [[https://youtu.be/WUA5aCOF3y0 which must be seen to be believed]]. The players break into a school because they were too impatient to get a warrant to enter legally and get into a fight, and an idiotic samurai player tries to defuse the situation by firing a gun, and it just gets worse from there, as he gets into a completely unnecessary standoff with the police, which all could have been avoided if they had just waited for the warrant.
--->'''Ben:''' I'm too busy handling ''[[ItMakesSenseInContext the child-hostage negotiation]]'' to pay attention.
* OnlyInItForTheMoney: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTNAmFuT7ak D&D King's Ransom"]], the adventurer party immediately asks for more money from the King. When he refuses to do so the halfling steals the King's clothes ... and his throne ... and all of his guard's armor.
--> Ork: "So ... money?"
* OpenSecret: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E EVERYONE in town shops at the black market]]. No, it does not make sense.
* OrgyOfEvidence: In one campaign when the players were investigating a crime, they insisted on continuing to investigate even though they already had enough evidence about who the culprit was, so the case would be iron-clad. Ben tried to get them to move on by having them find the culprit's diary proving that they did it, but this just made the players even more suspicious.
* OurElvesAreBetter: Discussed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J6OlsTSxRc "My favorite classes to play in D&D"]], when Ben notes that typical high-fantasy elves have all the benefits of being simultaneously old and young, with none of the downsides.
* OurGodsAreDifferent: Ben has only mentioned gods a couple time in his videos. The Lord in ''How Every D&D World Is Created'' is a JerkassGod who unleashes monsters upon the world for no good reason. There's also the god of Law who blessed the heroes with the Boon of Immortality.
** Gods in Ben's setting can also apparently be killed, but they're highly resistant to all damage except psychic, and even then it takes an immense amount delivered at once.
* OverlyPreparedGag: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8dXuGof7dc The Legend of the Legendary Aligaros Ashuin!]]", Ben wasted a character level just to get an ability he had to wait months to use just for a joke, which he never used again.
* OverShadowedByAwesome: In a ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' campaign, Ben picked character last, and wondered why no one wanted to play as the DarkLord Sauron. It turned out the other players were [[InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons Smaug]], [[GiantSpider Shelob]] and [[OurDemonsAreDifferent the Balrog]]. Apparently someone also thought playing as Saruman was cooler than Sauron.
* PaperTiger: One of the toys that the players are attacked by during the holiday one-off is a paper dragon. It attacks them with its breath weapon, and the players fail their save to dodge it, but it does no damage because its breath weapon is nothing but harmless confetti. They players decide to simply go around the paper dragon instead of fighting.
* PaperThinDisguise:
** In the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIMG_oaQMME Captain Morgan]] video, Jess' character was a bird person (aarakocra or kenku). Since her avatar on her channel is a Spectator (a diet beholder), Ben drew her as a spectator with beak and wings held on by strings.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz3DYa2IGYc Detective Clancy]] seems to [[ZigZaggedTrope Zig Zag]] this with his disguises. His normal disguise is a basket that apparently works most of the time... However, Ben ''always'' has them use the basket disguise even if it wouldn't be logical too. Case and point; the 'suspicious looking basket' climbing on the ceiling.
* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: Ben's character Detective Savage Rage is the worst detective in the world because he has no actual skill at doing detective work.
* PlaceWorseThanDeath: In the Covenant campaign the players discover a place that connects to many dimensions and are warned about a horrible place called California (where Ben lives). After the final villain is [[spoiler: turned into a potted plant they banish him there]].
* PlayingPossum: One PC uses avoids a fight with two guards by doing this.
* PoliceAreUseless: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mr1fXAR4Sc That time our characters when to New York City]], the characters killed several people with bows and arrows and somehow the police never caught them.
* PoliceBrutality: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKZcWZM-EXw Pokemon Tabletop Gangster]]", the GM gave four NPC Security Guards to Ben and the other three players to control ... said security guards proceed to [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown brutally beat two teenage vandals with metal flashlights]]. They wanted to use ColdBloodedTorture on the children, but the GM vetoed them at that point.
--> Guard #1: "You walked in on the wrong Pokemon University motherfucker."
--> Guard #2: "Growlithe, go for the legs! They're small, weak, and break easily!"
* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: Ben lampshades this continually when it comes to Pokemon's gangsters that "hold Pokemon against their will," as the players behave almost identically. (Ironically, he mentions the name "[[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite Team Plasma]]" without seeming to know anything about them, when this is in fact their in-game argument. It's decisively disproved.)
* ProtagonistWithoutAPast: Ben has a reputation for making player characters without any backstory, which he talks about in the video about his character Aligaros and the problems and hilarity it caused.
* PutOnABusToHell: A humorous inversion. [[spoiler:Malikar's fate at the end of the first Malikar Campaign video is to get sent to heaven, where he is immediately captured and imprisoned for a very long time, thus ending him as a threat for the foreseeable future.]] Played straighter in the end of the Covenant campaign, where the players banish the BigBad to [[spoiler:California after trapping him in the form of a potted plant]].
* PyrrhicVictory: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o My players LOSE the final battle]]. The [=PCs=] are unable to finish off the BigBad once at for all thanks to an ''extremely'' unlucky dice roll but are able to stop said BigBad from destroying the world. While the monk of the group ends up living in paranoia for the {{Big Bad}}s return, through [[RandomNumberGod luck of the dice]], most of the players end up in plains of existence that fit each characters personality/outlook while the BigBad [[spoiler: ends up in a plane full of being dedicated to fighting evil]].
* {{Railroading}}:
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E&t=76s EVERYONE in town shops at the black market]]", the GM does this when Ben tries not to go with the rest of the party to the Black Market. A train horn plays while the GM pushes him out the door.
--> Ben: "All Aboard!"
** The module writers for a D&D campaign [[https://youtu.be/AbWwHKYPSjc foisted an NPC onto the party]] with ''no'' provisions for if they wanted to reject the help. [[spoiler: When they return to town, Wallace ''much'' worse for wear, Wallace gets heralded as a hero [[DudeWheresMyRespect while ignoring the party]].]]
*** Part Two underscores this, as the players desperately want to go away from Parnast, [[https://youtu.be/3HjGNQGsBVM but the module is having none of it]], to the point that Ben dresses as an old-timey railroad conductor while welcoming them aboard the train.
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE We Were Just Making Everything Worse]]" when the players hear that the town they are in is run by a family that is killing humans, [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere they pack up and leave]] instead of confronting them but end up having to come back later to take them down anyway to progress the plot.
** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT9HgcufRQk Why Won't May Character Just DIE Already?!]] has two examples:
*** Ben had gotten tired of his current character and the group wouldn't let him change to a new character, so he decided to get his character killed in battle by being reckless and never using his healing abilities on himself. When his character finally died, the DM declared that he is brought back to life by his Goddess.
*** When the players succeeded in stopping the villain from completing his evil ritual, they suddenly fell through the floor and discovered the real villain completing the ritual right below them, and the guy they had just killed [[ActuallyADoombot actually wasn't the villain]], but a [[ContrivedCoincidence completely unrelated bad guy who just happened to look like the villain and was there at the same place and time conducting his own evil ritual]].
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVfGZPVqCNk In this video]] talks about why you should not punish players in game for out of game decisions. He once had a DM who hated magic spells being used to bypass puzzles and traps, and always punished the players who did this by having them set off more traps whenever they tried, hoping that they would give up trying to use magic to solve problems, instead of just telling the players out of game that he didn't like magic. This backfired and just cause the player to try harder to solve everything with magic.
** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXBy8E_GOtI The GM Took Away My Addiction Because It Was Breaking His Game]]". Ben's character is knocked unconscious with the force and finds that his addiction to death sticks is mysteriously gone when he wakes, and all of his death sticks, and only his death sticks, were all stolen. No part of this makes any sense.
** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g7xICOq4zA D&D Story: Journey to "Magic-North-Korea]]" Ben really wanted his party to try out the war machines from Descent into Avernus. However, they generally preferred to hoof it no matter the circumstances. Eventually he had to veto every other possible method of travel to get them to use a war machine.
* RazorApples: In the Halloween One Off, Moss warns trick-or-treaters that the Followers of [[ChaoticEvil Loleth]] are putting razor blades in candy. It's never confirmed if this is true or not, even though the party meets a trio of Loleth Clerics later in the story.
* RealityEnsues: The main reason why the players at Ben's Table didn't want to play Traveler. Spaceships are so prohibitively expensive [[note]]they cost 150 million dollars[[/note]] that people can only afford shares of a ship. Moreover, instead of starting the game as the character they want the players have to roll for life events. Thus the noble became a half-deaf exile [[note]][[CharClone his family was wiped out, he joined the army under an assumed name]], he was made deaf in one ear by cannon fire, and he was imprisoned for a time by pirates[[/note]] and the scholar became a disgraced outcast [[note]]he got caught stealing someone else's work, got kicked out from the university, and when he tried to do independent research on an alien planet his ship broke down and he ended up stranded there for years[[/note]]. On a more meta level, springing that kind of character creation on them with no warning certainly didn't help their enthusiasm.
* TheRealMan: [[HardboiledDetective Detective Savage Rage]], Ben's character in a ''Dresden Files'' game.
-->'''Journalist:''' Did... did you just make [[{{Expy}} Kung Fury]] from--\\
'''Ben:''' Yes, I basically just made Kung Fury from ''Film/KungFury''.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J6OlsTSxRc My favorite classes to play in D&D]]", Ben used to play his human Wizard - Doctor Solomon - as the TeamDad of the group who [[CoolOldGuy took care of the youngsters]] ... until he realized he was the youngest person in the group. [[note]]The elf was 256 years old, the halfling was 98 years old, and he was 76 years old[[/note]].
* ResurrectiveImmortality:
** In the holiday one off, the players fight against a cat monster that won't stay dead.
** The BigBad Malikar of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o this story]] has a variant of this. He is reborn after he dies, although with each death he becomes crazier. The players have to track down an artifact that can kill him permanently by destroying his soul.
* {{Retcon}}: Ben retconned the Melikar campaign because his players wanted to reprise their roles in that group.Instead of growing old and fathering a son, the Gnome Monk Michele became a homeless drug addict. Additionally, instead of spending the rest of their lives in the other dimensions, the party is only separated for two years before being kidnapped by a devil and escaping back to the moral realm.
* RidiculouslyAverageGuy: Chadwick Strongpants is feared by all villains. We never really know the reason, since he's completely average, but the criminals end up felling themselves with friendly fire out of fear of him. The other players suggested that he might be so aggressively normal that [[AntiMagic reality became more average around him]].
** Downplayed with Ben's favorite character/class, Human Fighter. While fighters are definitely not average in-universe, they are essentially normal people without magic in a universe where pretty much everyone else has some supernatural powers (Fighters have the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Archer subclasses, and can take feats to gain magic, but their spell casting pales in comparison to even half-casters like Ranger or Paladin). They're also the most common character/race combination on [=D&DBeyond=].
* RocksFallEveryoneDies:
** Ben hasn't done this so far, but he briefly fantasizes about doing it in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdCdQJxBDA "The first time I ran a D&D game"]] when one of the players correctly guesses all of his plot twists.
** In an early video, an adventuring party is wiped out by being [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus suddenly stepped on by a giant foot from nowhere]].
* TheRoleplayer: Ben is a combination of the roleplayer and TheLoonie, because he loves to roleplay as characters who are funny. He will often play the most ridiculous character that the game master will allow. Unlike many loonies he does not do random things to disrupt the game. Everything he does is something that would make sense for his character to do. His characters have included detectives without any actually investigation skills, a secretly evil high school girl, a guy with levels in every character class because he keeps getting kicked out of groups due to his annoying voice, and a DumbMuscle warrior who thinks that he can use magic by making weird noise.
* RuleAbidingRebel: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXBy8E_GOtI The GM Took Away My Addiction Because It Was Breaking His Game]]", despite playing a human smuggler Ben never did anything illegal. The others often made fun of him, joking that if the Empire arrested them they'd let him go for having a clean record.
* RuleOfCool: Ben believes this is the reason the GM from "Black Market Blues" integrated a black market into his story, despite being a blatant case of ArtisticLicenseEconomics. He believes that the GM added a black market because it added a sense of allure and intrigue to the plot, and didn't focus on making sure it made sense in the context of the story. Ben eventually concluded that the town was doing this in-universe.
* RulesLawyer: Discussed. Ben makes a point to differentiate between Rules Lawyers and what he calls Rules Traditionalist. Rules Traditionalists generally just wants everyone to have fun, and thinks the rules are the best way to do that. Rules Lawyers, on the other hand, are not interested in following the rules. They're interested in ''exploiting'' the rules.
* RunningGag: Ever since an encounter during a ''Tomb of Annihilation'' run with an aboleth with a split personality that happened to meet the party face-to-face with the friendly personality, Ben always ends up depicting aboleths as [[AdorableAbomination Adorable Abominations]].
** Whenever a player or DM tries to trick the other players or monsters (to varying degrees of success), he says "It was a ''[[LargeHam DECEPTION!]]''
* SayMyName: When Ben played ''D&D'' for the first time, the party was fighting the necromancer Malrath, and Ben made cookies when it wasn't his turn. They got a bit burned.
-->'''Ben:''' MALRAAAAATH!!!!
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Occurs on occasion.
** Ben's party at one point goes to a town where a Drow couple is murdering humans (which Ben's character is). Cut to Ben packing up his bags and the party leaving right away. They [[ChangedMyMindKid come back three sessions later and defeat the drow couple]], but only because [[{{Railroading}} they needed to so the plot could advance]].
** At the start of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1_lLxaH0fo "Dungeon Bebop: 12 Cartoon D&D Sketches"]], Ben's party has this reaction when they walk into a room and are greeted by a fire monster.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0HA0FtHUOs "The Xanathar Guild"]], at one point the party opens a door while searching through the guild and finds the mind-flayer Nihiloor inside. They immediately close the door, declare that they will never go in that room, and leave without fighting him. This actually makes Ben cry because there was a lot of block text he wouldn't get to read to them.
** In "Detective Clancy", Ben lost the first Rogue character he played as when he entered a room ahead of the rest of the party, and a white dragon suddenly appeared, so the rest of the party slammed the door shut and ran, leaving him to be killed by the dragon.
** In "DM.exe has crashed!" one of the players asks Ben for a blank character sheet after the samurai gets into a stand-off with several cops. The player had been previously playing as a baron, but the samurai who got in trouble was part of the same house, and thus wore his family's insignia during the stand-off. This leads to the baron's house getting swept up in controversy and the samurai being dishonored, which is what led the player to decide to make a new character and abandon his baron character.
* SeenItAll: During the covenant campaign, the players are exploring a literal dungeon, as in a place where prisoners are kept when suddenly a prisoner tells them that he is actually the warlord that have been hunting for and that somebody switched bodies with him and threw him in his own dungeon. The players immediately believe him because of all the crazy stuff and betrayals they have already gone through.
* SelfDeprecation:
** Pretty much OncePerEpisode, usually based on either his [[FailOSuckyName failure to name stuff ahead of time]], or other peoples' drawing compared to his. It's especially notable in regards to his role in most groups, where he makes it out to sound like the other players are always out to get his character (with him justifying it by showing that his characters are annoying in-universe) yet if you [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn9CY6Ob1uM&list=PLz3eRfQfVDYM-QrDH7vc94t-aCX2Yk29V&index=3&t=0s seen the videos of the sessions he's played in]], most of the other players usually are quite entertained by his characters antics.
** Even his avatar is a case, being drawn notably rather portly while his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuUlqk-S6EM real-life self]] is rather skinny.
* ShoutOut:
** To the official 5th edition D&D. sourcebooks and adventures:
*** His Xanathar Guild video is about ''Waterdeep: Dragon Heist''.
*** Last Orders at the Yawning Portal takes place in Undermountain, a dungeon described in ''Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage'', and features an NPC from ''Dragon Heist''.
*** His [[TabletopGame/TombOfHorrors Tomb of Annihilation]] videos are about ''Tomb of Annihilation''.
*** In the second Malikar video, he uses the Ogre Howdah, an enemy from ''Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes''. The creature in the Spires of Lynn also carries some resemblance to the Allip, an undead from the same book.
*** The two ''Hero of Parnast'' videos are based on two Adventurer's League modules called ''Uninvited Guests'' and ''Bad Business in Parnast''
** The sentient dreamlands otter in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sufhijLw5zc the WORST solutions]] is named [[Disney/{{Zootopia}} Otterton]].
* SignificantAnagram: "''[[LateToTheRealization Tar'hogar! Garathor! Tar'hogar!]]''"[[note]]"Tar'hogar" is an anagram for "Garathor". The party's benefactor and the villain that's been stalking them are one and the same.[[/note]]
* SpoofAesop:
** The episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIMG_oaQMME "Captain Morgan || Cocaine solves all problems"]] ends with one.
--->'''Ben:''' So remember kids: Do drugs! They make your problems go away!
** The "Everyone has to die now" video ends with "If you hit your head against a wall long enough, eventually it will come crumbling down."
* SoleSurvivor: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I&t=80s "D&D Story: PEE IN MY BUCKET! The Adventurer's League Game"]], Ben and his party (three other players) went into the forest to rescue twelve crewmen of a crashed airship. Ben is the only one who made it back to the city alive; ten of the crewmen fell to their deaths trying to get to the ground, and neither the last two nor the three other players in Ben's party survived the eighteen day march back to civilization.
* SoundOfNoDamage: In a few videos ben uses the onomatopoeia "tink" for when weapons do no damage.
* SpoiledBrat: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAAFidggBXM Power Balance Issues]], he talks about a player one of his friends DM'ed for. The guy complained until the DM couldn't take it anymore, and just gave him all he wanted, and of course, that just made him complain more.
* SpringtimeForHitler: In a group adventurers league GM for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6H7Gxc7aI&lc=z23extvwbsudhp2ucacdp43aovvjicpv1czmnlrz20hw03c010c.1569866017807789 last orders at the yawning portal]], the head GM decided to make the session a contest by having the [=PCs=] get points for every clue the table uncovers, and the table with the most points at the end of the session wins. Ben didn't like the idea of 'competitive [=DnD=]' so he decided to intentionally go very slow with his table and even side detour for the sake of making sure his table came in last in protest. [[spoiler: Low and behold, his table didn't just win, it won in a ''near CurbStompBattle!'']]
* StupidGood: No other way to describe the baby seals who guarded Malikar.
* SubbingForSanta: Ben speculates that he wouldn't do a good job if he was in this position; he imagines himself giving a boy half a burrito as a present (half of which he ate on the way), calling the boy the wrong name, and then criticizing a girl for not being materialistic enough.
* SuperWindowJump: In the Malikar storyline, the party ends up doing one after setting a dynamite trap for Orcs and trapping themselves on the second floor with said trap.
* SpaceBase: In one game that Ben was GM'ing the used a temple to transport themselves to a city on the Moon, well before Ben intended for them to do so. [[DidntThinkThisThrough He didn't write in]] [[YouCantGoHomeAgain a way for them to get back]].
* SpeakIllOfTheDead: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFiISQJDxW8 D&D Story Animated: Breaking Into The Castle]]", the [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot Rogue Samurai Ninja]] in the party fell down a flight of stairs in front of some guards. He [[PlayingPossum played dead]] to avoid getting hurt by the guards, but the rest of the party only hears the guards say that he must be dead. While the rest of the party is crying and frowning, [[BirdPeople Flynn]] said that he "was kinda a jerk".
* SplitPersonality: The aboleth in the Tomb of Annihilation Ben was running. It spent the entire floor telepathically taunting the players the entire time. By the time they get there they see its other side, Whimsy, a child-like and sweet aboleth that gives them free treasure, and the players opt to leave it there. When Ben apologies for the AntiClimax, the players comment at least it was that way instead of the other, because they would have horribly died if they saw his good personality through telepathy only to find the monster when they got there.
* StrangerBehindTheMask: After the W.O.R.S.T. party suspected Ottie Otterton of being an evil mastermind (for no discernible reason), Ben reveals the mastermind behind the magic-draining evil fortress of [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Fantasy North Korea]]--with Ottie's silhouette at first--to be...Some Other Guy! That none of the party knew!
* {{Swashbuckler}}: Antonio de Castilian Maximiliano, the self-proclaimed finest Goblin Swordsman in all the land! He lives up to his boast too!
* SweetSeal: The upper most levels of Mount Celestia are populated entirely by baby harp seals because of their IncorruptiblePurePureness. They make [[TheGuardsMustBeCrazy terrible guards]] but somehow they are able to keep [[BigBad Malikar]] imprisoned there anyway.
* TagalongKid: Wallace, the Hero of Parnast. The player characters immediately hated Wallace due to his uselessness but the module had no option to refused to take him along and the players hated him even more after [[spoiler:[[DudeWheresMyRespect his hometown gave him all of the credit for what the players did and completely ignored them]].]]
* TakeThat: Ben was less than impressed with the proscribed method of getting into the Fane of the Night Serpent[[note]]Surrendering to the cult and giving up all their weapons and items to become slaves[[/note]].
* TakingYouWithMe: The ChaoticStupid samurai character threatens to do this by detonating all of his grenades during his confrontation with the police, but he gets tackled before he can do it.
* TalkingWeapon: In the Malikar campaign, the players collected way too many talking weapons. These include a defective sword of warning that keeps saying "IWarnedYou" whenever any bad happens no matter how small, a [[BladeOnAStick glaive]] named Barathorne that talks too much, a sword of ice and fire named Greg, and the evil Mournblade.
* {{Technophobia}}: In a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1jAfNUOaT4 "Tabletop RPG Story: The WORST Detective In the World! From Dresden Files RPG"]], one of the player characters is a monk who is afraid of modern technology. [[AndIMustScream The others make him drive the car]].
* TeensAreMonsters: Trixie Starbright.
-->'''GM:''' Ummm, Ben? I don't think you're playing an... average high school girl like you'd said.
-->'''Ben:''' You.... didn't go to the same high school that I went to, did you?
* ThatOnePuzzle: In "Terror of the Deep" Ben talks in-universe about how the Gears of Hate puzzle from Tomb of Annihilation was so difficult that even as the DM running the game it was confusing to him. The puzzle consisted of a series of rooms that could rotate on gears connected to each other. Ben resorted to making map tiles he could rotate to run the puzzle. Even with this aid, he still went into the game not knowing how to solve it, hoping that his players could figure it out.
* ThatWasntARequest: When a group of players enter a dream world and run into a sharply dressed otter man, they immediately decide they are going to take him home with them to the real world, whether he wants it or not. A player almost says the name of this trope when he protests.
* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: Ben likes to give quests like "Helping poor little Timmy find his red wagon", "matching a dress that goes with the noble lady's hair", or "'''STOPPING ZALTHADAR THE GOD EATER FROM CONSUMING OUR WORLD AND ENDING ALL OF EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT!'''"
** In the Cocaine video, he talks about a game he ran with Dingo from ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'', Jess from [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3HyvfrwscLKtE_NmOQfWGw JessJackDaws]] and Logan.
-->... He's cool.
* ThisIsGonnaSuck: Ben says this in the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6H7Gxc7aI Last Orders at the Yawning Portal Tavern]]'' video when he finds out that the D&D Epic is going to be competitive, with each table scoring points for completing parts of the story, and thinking that this would cause tables to go though the game too quickly without roleplaying for the sake of getting the most points.
* TimeTravel: At one point a dwarf in one of the parties assumes they traveled back in time. [[WrongGenreSavvy They didn't]]. They traveled [[SpaceBase to the Moon]].
* TooDumbToLive: As mentioned below, the player in a ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' campaign proved to be this, as his method of trying to flush out a monster was to set an entire ''room'' on fire. Including the door. ''Without leaving the room''. He had previously used dynamite to collapse a cave, and pulled the same idiocy - standing ''in'' the cave he intended to collapse while setting off the dynamite.
** The Tiefling Sorcerer cast Darkness during a fight. While this would be a humble mistake, he apparently had a habit of using spells only had vague idea about. ''Darkness'', at the best of times, causes everyone to be on equally bad footing, but since dragons have blindsight, it doesn't need sight to fight, something the players do. Darkness is really only useful to cover escapes, and since they were on a ship, there wasn't anywhere to escape to.
* TotalPartyKill: Occurs in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVHyY4SVNc0 RPG STORY TIME! Deadlands: For A Few Idiots More]]" and in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgxhNwPEJUA Everyone died in Call Of Cthulhu.]]" In both instances Ben is the GM, and the people playing were TooDumbToLive.
* TooManyHalves: Ben describes a chimera as "half goat, half lion, half red dragon."
* TownWithADarkSecret: In the holiday one off with ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' and Zee Bashew, the players are clerics of Pelor who are invited to a festival to Pelor, but for the last three years people have been mysteriously disappearing on the night of the festival. [[spoiler: They were shrunk down to the size of mice to be sacrificed to an immortal cat monster, and the players are the latest victims.]]
* TwoHeadedCoin: One of the ten items an adventurer should always carry with them according to T the Writer in his channel invasion of Puffin Forest.
* UnfortunateNames: Originally intentional, though they came to regret it. The group that took down Malikar was named the Turtle F*ckers. This becomes a problem when the angels wants to praise them from the heights of Mount Celestia, but no one wants to say the name out loud.
** Ben makes a correction in a later video that the name was actually Turtle Molesters and that he didn't mean for the video to sound like he was saying Fuckers.
* UnknownRival: Done completely by mistake in his Renaissance-ish D&D game. He'd so carefully woven the villain and his motives into the background of events that it wasn't until the big reveal at the end that he realized the players had never met him or heard his name. Even in the video describing it he's only referred to as "another guy".
* VaguenessIsComing: The defective Sword of Warning starts every day by saying that something bad ''might'' happen. Whenever something bad happens, it says "I warned you."
* VerbalBackspace: Prospector Jenkins.
-->'''Jenkins:''' Prospector Jenkins, grim servant of death.\\
'''NPC:''' Huh?\\
'''Jenkins:''' Pro-prospector Jenkins!
* VillainBeatingArtifact: Because [[EvilWeapon the Mournblade]] has soul-destroying properties, it is the only weapon capable of interfering with Malikar's ResurrectiveImmortality.
* VoiceChangeling: Disguising his voice is one of the useful skills that Detective Clancy has. At one point, he uses this skill to interrogate a prisoner by making them think he is beating up a woman when he doesn't talk.
* VomitIndiscretionShot: In one game the entire party fails its constitution roll and vomits when they enter a sewer.
* WellDoneSonGuy: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6H7Gxc7aI "Last Orders at the Yawning Portal Tavern"]], the party bard reveals that his father was one of these right before beginning a dance-off against TheFairFolk. He loses, and his father's ghost appears just to belittle him.
-->'''Bard's Father's Ghost:''' Son, you're a disappointment to the family. And you always will be.
* WhatDidIDoLastNight: Due to unlucky dice rolls, Aligaros keeps waking up in jail with no memory of what he did when he drinks.
* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Ben's Gautor accent sounds like a vague mix of Russian and German.
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: Captain Morgan's solution to every problem is cocaine. It usually works.
* WhoWouldBeStupidEnough: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frcxo_3x6OY In this video,]] when the dungeon masters are discussing the Obelisk Encounter, they say that it is really unlikely that anybody would try to push the obelisk over, releasing the powerful monster inside. Naturally, Ben's table ends up being the one to do it.
* WordSaladTitle: The title of the channel doesn't seem to have anything to do with what his videos are about.
* WoundedGazelleGambit:
** Trixie Starbright throws herself down some stairs and ''breaks her own arm'' to cover for her friends returning to the boys' dorm, but describes her "attacker" with features shared by her rival for Class President.
** Ben does this again with his Detective Clancy character, who happens to be disguised as Trixie Starbright, when he is interrogating a prisoner. Since the prisoner is blindfolded, Ben uses his character's voice mimicry ability to fake beating up himself if the prisoner doesn't talk, and it works.
--->'''Trixie:''' It's hard to think anyone would do that! I just-- [[BlatantLies I don't want to go spreading rumors or anything]].
* WrongGenreSavvy: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWwHKYPSjc D&D Story: The Hero of Parnast]]", when a rural village leader asks the party to hunt game for a feast, the party's tiefling automatically assumes the village is a CannibalClan.
* YouMeddlingKids: this line (followed by listing all the weird pets the party had collected) is used by the villain in ''The Hero of Parnast Part 2'' and ''Too Many Pets''
* YouDontLookLikeYou: Ben is a tall, skinny, black-haired guy. But for some reason, he uses an avatar that's short, fat, and brown-haired.
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[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/skjermbilde_2019_03_20_kl_194543.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Picture taken from his official youtube channel [[note]]left to right: Ben himself, Michele, [[EvilSorcerer Malikar]], a recurring player character, [[MasterOfNone Abserd]][[/note]]]]
''Puffin Forest'' (originally titled ''Puffin Forrest'') is a Website/YouTube channel where the creator, Ben, describes his experiences with TabletopRPG Games as well as with other things in his life. His channel can be found [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUpkp-6fXuG9dqfoJ99XTmw here]].
----
!!''Puffin Forest'' provides examples of:
* AbsurdPhobia: Ben's character Aligaros, being the DumbMuscle, is afraid of libraries.
* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdCdQJxBDA first game Ben GM'd]] takes place in one. It's big enough that [[spoiler:an otyugh, a giant tentacle monster, lives in it]]. But [[RealityEnsues it turns out]] that [[VomitIndiscretionShot sewers are gross]].
* AccidentalInnuendo: In-Universe. The GM of a ''Franchise/StarWars'' campaign [[https://youtu.be/VsK6KFojRDo describes lightsabers as "extending"]] and [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything start emitting white light after touching]].
* ActionGirl: The episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHVO0NxQ5oQ "An Abserd-ly Difficult Mission"]] gives us Langderosa, a dragonborn fighter with a stat-block that Ben describes as "abusively long". She leads a raiding party against a human town, and [[SingleStrokeBattle cuts a player's head off with one stroke]] during a blood duel.
--> '''Langderosa:''' Haha! You call that an attack? I'll show you how ''real'' warriors duel.
* AchillesHeel:
** Ben is surprised to find out that Krakens are weak to magic in 5e. Despite their high saving throw bonuses, they do not have magic resistance, the Immutable Form trait or even legendary resistance, meaning that even a low level polymorph spell can hit them hard.
** Gods in Ben's setting are extremely resistant to all damage ''except'' psychic. While it takes a lot of damage to kill them, doing so with psychic damage is the easiest way.
* AdorableAbomination:
** The aboleth with the SplitPersonality from ''Terror of the Deep''. Ben draws it more like a cute whale thing than what aboleths actually look like, and its cutesy, friendly personality ends up talking to the players a lot more than its evil side. A similar adorable aboleth also appears in ''Too Many Pets'', although considering the latter campaign takes place in Waterdeep which the ''Tomb of Annihilation'' module merely references, it's unlikely that it's the same Aboleth. Another story ends with the party finding a trinket with ''another'' adorable Aboleth inside it (which may explain how the party got the Aboleth pet in ''Too Many Pets'').
** The immortal cat monster from the holiday one off.
* AffablyEvil:
** The party that fought Tar Hogar/Garathor. The DM himself considered them [[NeutralEvil Pure Evil]], but Ben was still very affable and friendly.
** Ben chose to play Sauron in the ''Lord of the Rings'' game as a polite and cheerful company CEO since he had no idea what Sauron's canon personality was like, and also because it helped keep the team of villains together.
* AlcoholInducedIdiocy: Captain Morgan volunteered for a ridiculously dangerous mission because he was high out of his mind on cocaine.
* AllJustADream: Subverted in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sufhijLw5zc The WORST solutions]]. After a trek through the Dream Lands, one of the players lampshades this trope, and states that it's a good thing Ben won't do that. In the background, Ben is seen tearing a page out of his notebook.
* AllThereInTheManual: Several of Ben's videos are from adventures based on official modules, and reading these modules can provide some additional insight. Sometimes this justifies Ben's mistakes (the Waterdeep module doesn't actually have a stat block for Nihiloor, you're supposed to use the monster manual Mind Flayer stat block. Nihiloor's portrait is also right next to the Nimblewright stat block), other times not so much (The Fane of the Night Serpent contains a section specifically called "Getting into the temple").
* AlphaBitch: Trixie Starbright, who is also a BitchInSheepsClothing.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Ben's thought process on what alignment his own characters are depends on what they're holding - if it's dynamite, they ''will'' be Chaotic Evil, because StuffBlowingUp is too fun to resist.
* AndTheAdventureContinues: 500 years after the Malikar and Covenant campaigns, a new story begins. Since the party gained the Boon of Immortality, we can be certain they'll be around to witness it. When the new campaign starts, one player decides to keep playing as his old character, though there isn't any info yet on where the other old characters are.
* AndIMustScream: It is revealed at the start of the campaign after the TimeSkip that the gnome monk Michelle spent 500 years completely alone, unable to be seen or heard due to losing control of his powers. Meeting the new characters is the first time since then that anyone has been able to see him.
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Humorous variant: A DM accuses Ben of not knowing how alignment work. When Ben asks "How does alignment work, then?", the DM can't come up with an adequate explanation. [[note]]Alignment in D&D is mostly subjective, but a common interpretation is it mostly depends on ones intentions. [[/note]]
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking:
** The Covenant was forged to protect the Prime Material from incursions of planes like [[LawfulEvil Hell]], [[ChaoticEvil Pandemonium]], [[DarkWorld the Shadowfell]] and ''[[LawfulGood Mount Celestia]].'' [[invoked]]
** When describing the fallen world in the ''How every D&D Universe begins'' video, he mentions "Evil, disease, [[OurGnomesAreWeirder gnomes]] and death".
* ArtEvolution: Compare Ben's earliest videos with his recent ones and see how much he has improved.
* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E "Black Market Blues"]], there is a town where both the local government and police force sanction the black market. It's the primary source of income for the town, yet the town council doesn't make it an open market [[CircularReasoning "because then we'd lose the black market and nobody would make any money."]] When Ben points out the logical error in this, the town's Inquisitor tortures his wizard character.
* AscendedExtra: When the W.O.R.S.T. are exploring a DreamLand, DM Ben makes the mistake of describing one of the surreal sights, a dapper FunnyAnimal otter pulling a cart, in a bit too much detail. The party immediately interacts with him, and since he was intended to be window dressing Ben has to improvise a name ([[ALizardNamedLiz Ottie]] [[Disney/{{Zootopia}} Otterton]]), and they then essentially kidnap him. He helps save the day and becomes part of the campaign in the real world. [[spoiler:Then the party decides, for literally no reason, that he must be secretly evil.]]
* AssuranceBackfire: When their ''D&D'' characters [[https://youtu.be/2mr1fXAR4Sc get transported to New York City]], Ben's character reassures the now-human Dragonborn that being human isn't so bad.
-->'''Ben:''' I'm a human every day! Now you're [[PunctuatedForEmphasis just! Like! Me!]]\\
'''Zod:''' Oh my god... the horror...
* AtrociousAlias:
** The players characters in the Malikar and Covenant storyline got themselves stuck with the name "The Turtle Molesters/Fuckers". They later changed it to The Turtle Friends.
** The successor party was named the Warriors Of Really Shitty Timing, or WORST.
-->If you have a problem, what you need is... the WORST solutions.
* AxCrazy: Two so far.
** Prospector Jenkins, Grim servant of death!! [[spoiler: He throws dynamite for fun!]]
** Crazy Mike! [[spoiler: He's owns a toy store, and holds children hostage to force their parents to buy toys at his store.]]
* BadassNormal: Antonio de Castilian Maximilianos. He's [[spoiler:actually a completely normal goblin. The players just had really bad luck with the dice]].
* BackFromTheDead: After being slain by monsters, the Goddess pulls the soul of Ben's cleric back from the afterlife and restores him. [[DeathSeeker Much to Ben's disappointment]].
* BalefulPolymorph: The final villain of the Covenant campaign is defeated when [[spoiler: the players accidentally use an artifact to turn him into a potted plant, which also turns the warforged hero into a human. They then get rid of him by banishing him to [[PlaceWorseThanDeath California]]]].
%%* BatmanGambit: [[FunWithAcronyms W.O.R.S.T.]] thinks Otterton is pulling this on them.
* BeatStillMyHeart: During ''Fane of the Night Serpent'' a player walks in on Ras Nsi's throne room right when he is killing somebody who failed him by ripping out his still beating heart.
* BestialityIsDepraved: The episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUOyaevNQJY "D&D Stories: funny moments from my campaign"]] reveals that the party from the Malikar and Covenant storylines is called "The Turtle Fuckers". When Will's character Michele asks Ben to tell the story of how they got that name, he refuses to animate it.
* BearsAreBadNews: In "Miscellaneous Monsters and Bears of Sand" a PC lied to a guard that they were hunting sand bears, monstrous half bear half scorpion creatures. One of PC's didn't realize that sand bears weren't real and was later killed by a manifestation of his fears in the form of a sand bear.
* BigBallOfViolence: In "Too Many Pets" when a player finds himself fighting against a dog headed hag, the rest of the players and enemies are shown fighting in a big cloud in the background.
* BigEater: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldXiylzEyPM "Adventures In The Real World: Christmas Shenanigans (also, thanks Dingo!)]], Ben reveals himself to be this. His favorite part of the holidays is the food, he feels tempted to crash holiday parties so he can eat their food, and at a game of White Elephant he picked a giant ham as his present (which the others at the party considered the gag gift).
* BigFun: Ben always draws himself and any character he plays as noticeably fatter than everyone else. Also can be a FatBastard when he is playing an evil or jerkish character. He actually isn't fat in real life. Also frequently combined with FatIdiot since Ben enjoys playing dumb characters.
* BirdPeople: Flynn, the Aarakocra bard. He's the target of quite a bit of FantasticRacism, even from his own party.
* BitchInSheepsClothing: Trixie Starbright, one of Ben's RP characters, is not above using a WoundedGazelleGambit to make others suspicious of her rival.
* BittersweetEnding: The ending to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o My players LOSE the final fight!"]]. While the party failed to kill [[BigBad Malikar]], they succeeded in preventing his plot to destroy the world and inadvertently sending him to Mount Celestia [[note]]A land of LawfulGood, filled to the brim with paladins and angels[[/note]]. The [[AdamAndEvePlot fighter and his drow elf companion]] ended up in the Beastlands[[note]]a wild paradise dimension[[/note]], the sorcerer ended up in Arcadia[[note]]a dimension of law, [[PerfectPacifistPeople peace, and harmony]] where diseasees don't exist[[/note]], the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing ended up in Ysgard[[note]]The realm of [[WarriorHeaven immortal heroes where brave warriors go to test their skills]][[/note]], and the Monk escaped the tower and was greeted as a hero. However the party members are permanently separated from each other, and because the Monk had no idea that the people in the tower were transported to different dimensions he believes that his friends died and that Malikar will return. He lives in fear of this, the rest of his life, [[PassingTheTorch and when he is old he gives]] [[VillainBeatingArtifact the Mournblade]] to his son. The next campaign retcons these events because the players wanted to continue using their old characters so Malikar still survived, but the party was reunited sometime after being scattered and got to go on another adventure. The next story after also ends in a bittersweet note because the heroes are given the gift of immortality, but part ways and never see each other again.
* BlatantLies:
** In the job interview video, Ben tells several extremely obviously lies to the interviewers.
** Ben claims in one video that there are no stats in D&D for a house-cat. When someone else tries to point out the cat stat block in the Player's Handbook, Ben punches them in the face.
* BornUnlucky: Ben has all kinds of bad luck and it is hilarious. When he runs games they often do not go as planned, and when playing he often gets terrible rolls. This turned to his advantage when he went to the Stream of Many Eyes and played a game where the goal was to get low numbers with the dice instead of high numbers, which he has had a lot of practice with.
* BoringButPractical: In the "DM.exe has crashed" video, the whip paladin goes to get a search warrant for the school. It takes a while, but it was a lot more practical than the samurai's preferred method of holding the entire school hostage.
* BossInMookClothing: Antonio de Castilian Maximiliano, a Goblin Swashbuckler who manages to parry all the party's attacks and fell two players before the rest retreat. [[spoiler: Ultimately a subversion; while one PC accuses Ben of making him a "3rd level bard, 5th level fighter, 8th level swashbuckler", Ben reveals that Antonio is just a normal Goblin with normal stats and Ben's rolls were particularly lucky this time.]]
* BrownNote: The Omega Pun is a pun so powerful that it can kill even gods that here it and only a true PungeonMaster can safely learn it.
* TheBusCameBack: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 "A Most Abserd Character"]], Ben made a [[MasterOfNone useless multiclass]] adventurer called Abserd. He was last seen being handed over to an evil wood elf by his own party, but he returns in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHVO0NxQ5oQ "An Abserd-ly Difficult Mission"]] as the town's mayor.
* CallBack: Calling back to a notorious aboleth encounter outlined in, "Terror Of The Deep!", "The Xanathar Guild" ends with the party finding a magical stone with an aboleth inside it that introduces itself with, "Hey guys, how's it going? I don't really get a lot of new friends in this stone", in the same way as the aboleth in Acererak's tomb.
* TheCameo: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1_lLxaH0fo "Dungeon Bebop: 12 Cartoon D&D Sketches"]], Blue from WesternAnimation/BluesClues is exploring a dungeon with Ben. They skidoo into a picture ... [[DidntThinkThisThrough which contains an evil monster]].
* CannibalClan: Averted two times. The first, in the first Parnast video, was because one player was WrongGenreSavvy, and assumed the village were cannibals because they would be "happy. to have [them] ''for'' the feast". The other was in the second Malikar video, and more understandable. Two players had killed a large amount of guards and stuffed their corpses in the kitchen. The two players that hadn't been present later tried to hide in the kitchen, and you can imagine the rest.
* CannibalLarder: Two player characters mistakenly think that they have found a cannibal larder when they enter a kitchen in a bad guy's fortress with pieces of dead bodies stuffed everywhere. Actually what had happened was that two other players characters had hidden in the kitchen and killed all of the guards that entered and then did their best to hide the bodies.
* CatsAreMean: The villain of the Holiday One Off is an immortal monster that happens to look like an ordinary cat and loves to hunt humans.
* ChaoticStupid: The video "DM.exe has crashed!" leans this way, with the LawfulGood paladin being the only rational player character in the group. The story involves the group having to break into a school to investigate it, and the paladin's decision is to get a warrant to search the school legally and avoid conflict. While she's off taking care of the warrant, the others all decide to break into the school and cause a bunch of trouble. One character with the power of invisibility was knocking out teachers and breaking walls. The thief disguised himself as a student and conned students out of their money, which ended with him getting beaten up by students once they caught on to his cheating. The druid defends the thief by setting one of the students attacking him on fire. The samurai's solution to calming things down is to whip out his gun, and shoot it into the ceiling, which leads to a stand-off with the police, and him throwing magic grenades at the cops.
* ChekhovsGun: A seemingly insignificant detail Ben gives in the Job Interview video is one of the interviewers asking him how small the batches of protein he had worked with were and Ben responding by pinching his fingers together to show how small. Ben is shocked when he got hired because of how poorly the interview went. It turned out that question was the most important question in the entire interview.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: One of Azrael's complaints in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHKNbvCoDks "D&D Story: Too many betrayals!"]]. The Covenant Campaign had eight [=NPCs=] betray the party, back-to-back across two sessions. While Ben can justify each betrayal individually, all these occurring so quickly has eroded player trust.
--> '''Azrael:''' "Never trust Ben's [=NPCs!=] Every single one of Ben's NPC's is ''evil!''"
* ChurchMilitant: In the Deadlands one shot, the players were attacked by a group of magic wielding reverends.
* CoolOldGuy: Halaster Blackcloak, lord and creator of Undermountain, one of the greatest mages Faerûn has ever known... And also avid bowler.
* CoolPet:
** The party that Ben GM's for in the Parnast story has a giant flying snake, a bear wizard, a psychic raven with a third eye, and a twin pair of mephits dressed in baby clothes.
** In the ''[[https://youtube.com/watch?v=RrYkSM4OG4U Too Many Pets]]'' video he talks about how he has a problem with players trying to keep every cute monster they meet as pets. He also explains how the party added a ghost dog detective and a demon dog to their collection of pets. The same group has several more strange pets that he doesn't explain how they got.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUOyaevNQJY "D&D Stories: funny moments from my campaign"]], the party in the Malikar and Covenant storylines is shown to have a flying whale named Bernard and a giant spider named Bitey.
** A group of NPC adventurers in the Covenant storyline called the Dream Team that the players hired to do a minor quest for them had a pet hippo.
* {{Corpsing}}: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsK6KFojRDo A Star Wars campaign podcast fell to pieces]] because of the GM's in-depth description of [[SomethingElseAlsoRises everyone's lightsabers extending]] [[AccidentalInnuendo before emitting beams of white light.]] The GM was also the only one able to keep a straight face, as he was the only one who ''didn't'' get the innuendo.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: When Ben played as Sauron in an evil The Lord of The Rings campaign, because he had no idea what kind of character Sauron was he ended up roleplaying him as a corrupt executive who ran the team of villains and their armies like a company.
* CoveredInGunge: The first D&D game that Ben GM'd takes place in a sewer. One of the party members, a blond elf girl, falls into the sewer and gets covered in poop. [[CombatTentacles It only gets worse for her from there]].
* CowboyCop: This is Detecive Savage Rage's character. He is too badass and cool to follow any rules and he thinks that being a cop allows him to do anything he wants.
* CreationMyth: Parodied in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlT4H1qKp7c How Every D&D Universe Begins]]".
* {{Crossover}}: Dingo from ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' makes occasional cameos and crossovers. He also participated in a livestream with Zee Bashew from the ''WebAnimation/AnimatedSpellbook'' series and Dingo, featuring Dingo's boyfriend Felix as the DM. Ben also did a channel invasion with T the Writer, where each of them made a video for the other's channel.
* CursedWithAwesome: The players in the Malikar-campaign, except for the monk and the fighter, are sent to a random plane of existence. Miraculously, they all ended up on the good side of the great wheel (the other fighter and his drow companion went to the unsoiled wilderness of the Beastlands, the sorcerer went to the utopia of Arcadia, and the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing went to the eternal battleground of Ysgard), which contains places like the Nine Hells, the Abyss, Hades and Limbo. They can never return, but they were pretty lucky all things considered.
* CutenessProximity: One player who fighting a group of hags was unable to fight when he saw that the hag he was fighting had the head of a dog and tried to ask the other players to switch opponents with him. In "DM.exe Has Crashed!", when a new player joins the group during a battle, one character is distrustful of the new character, until his player see a picture of what the new character looks like - an adorable little girl wearing a bear skin wielding a giant wooden ladle - and he decides to trust her immediately.
* DarkerAndEdgier:
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKZcWZM-EXw Pokemon Tabletop Gangster]]", the GM hoped to have a light kid-friendly game. Then he [[PoliceBrutality gave the players temporary control of NPC security guards]].
** [[https://youtu.be/QN5lVdwvufc Trixie Starbright]] inhabited the same game's world - the poor GM just couldn't catch a break.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Way too common in D&D.
-->Ben: Take a moment to flesh out your backstory and figure out who your parents are - [[DeathByOriginStory they're dead]]! Did you have any friends - also dead! What village did you come from - [[DoomedHometown burned to the ground]].
* DeadpanSnarker: Dingo from ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' is this when she makes a cameo.
-->'''Ben:''' You guys get snow? In Canada?\\
'''Dingo:''' ... Yes. Yes, we do.
* DeathSeeker: In one campaign, Ben got sick of playing his cleric character and wanted to swap them out, but the other players and the DM thought his healing was too important and refused to let him retire the cleric. Ben's solution to this was to start roleplaying the cleric as simultaneously being reckless and selfless, charging the deadliest looking enemy in fights and never healing himself, hoping that he'd get killed and the party would have no choice but to accept the swap. Unfortunately the one time Ben managed to get him killed, everyone else was so distraught that the DM brought him back to life through divine intervention, much to Ben's annoyance.
* DescriptionCut: Used several times in "Whoops! Guess everyone has to die now!" to juxtapose the expectations of the module (sneak in, make a deal with an NPC, quietly make their way to the head priest) with the realities of just how far OffTheRails they'd gone (ringing alarm bells, a ''dead'' NPC, heated battles in the halls, etc.).
* DetectiveAnimal: The players in ''Too Many Pets'' name the ghost dog they befriended Sherlock Bones after it helped them solve a mystery.
* DidntThinkThisThrough:
** In "Everybody Died in Call of Cthulhu" a player character killed himself by setting everything in the room he was in on fire, including the only door out of the room. This same player character had in a previous game collapsed the entrance to a mine with dynamite while he still in it, which Ben let him live from.
** In "The Hero of Parnast: Part 2", the group wanted Wallace out of the group as swiftly as possible, so at the end of the adventure, [[spoiler: they sent him ahead on a mount with the villain in tow. They realized too late that this would, again, [[DudeWheresMyRespect cast Wallace as the true hero of Parnast]].]]
** In "Read your spell BEFORE you cast it" a player cast the spell Darkness on a dragon without reading what the spell does. Instead of making it so that dragon couldn't see them, it made it so they couldn't see the dragon.
** In "PEE IN MY BUCKET!" a player cast the spell Flaming Sphere, while they were on a wooden ship that was stuck in some trees, which set the ship on fire, and resulted in most of the remaining crew falling to their deaths escaping from the flames.
** Ben himself in '[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdXZA2bdR_k Whoops! Guess everyone has to die now!]]'. He wanted to DM an Adventurers League, which resulted in him having to DM for an already in progress campaign for a module he hadn't read yet. As a result, he had to skim through most of it, resulting in him skipping how the party is ''supposed'' to get into the fortress and only finding that out ''after'' the party had already gone in guns blazing. The end result? What ''should'' have been a simple stealth mission turned into a massive blood bath that [[spoiler: contrary to the title, the party barely survived.]]
** In "D&D Stories: funny moments from my campaign", the party rogue cut's off the blacksmith's hand arbitrarily. For the rest of the story the blacksmith refuses to do work for the party again, and only the inexperienced blacksmith's apprentice will work for them.
** Later in that episode, when the party was ambushing Orcs in a Church Steeple, they forgot until after they set the explosive trap that ''they'' were in the building. Cue a SuperWindowJump and broken legs for the party members.
** In one of the real life videos, Ben was surprised that nobody recognized him from his show at a gaming convention. Then he remembered he had never shown his face in his videos...
** In the first Covenant campaign video, it is revealed that the monk lost the Mournblade because he thought that a sandbox in a public park was a good place to hide it.
** When Ben got to play in an evil The Lord of the Rings campaign where the player characters were villains brought back from the dead, he eagerly chose to play as Sauron only to realize that he had no idea how to roleplay as Sauron or what Sauron's abilities were and thus he had to make up Sauron's personality and guess his abilities, which may have explained why nobody else picked Sauron.
** There is also the GM who told Ben that he trusted him to know how the game worked so he would sign off on whatever character Ben made without checking, not considering that this was Ben he was talking to, who of course brought a ridiculous character to the table.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUA5aCOF3y0 DM.exe has crashed! || Attack at the school]], an idiotic samurai player tries to calm down a bunch of frightened students by firing a pistol, which of course has the exact opposite effect and ends with him in a confrontation with the police which he keeps on making worse with one bad decision after another, eventually resulting in him getting thrown in prison.
* DisguisedInDrag: Ben's character Detective Clancy disguises himself as Trixie Starbright then the party is infiltrating a party to act as one of the other party member's date.
* DistinctionWithoutADifference: When a player wants to frame Wallace, and another player protests, they try to argue that they are not really framing him, but when they try to describe what they want to do they end up admitting that they really are framing him.
* DistractedByTheSexy: One of the ten items an adventurer should always carry with them according to T the Writer is a scroll covered in either nonsense or a picture of a naked woman, which the player drops on the ground so a guard will pick it up and examine it while the players sneaks up on them.
* DivineIntervention:
** When one of the party members tries to rescue a child from the sewers she falls in and gets attacked by a tentacle monster. How do the rest rescue her? By summoning a literal angel! No, it's never explained why they didn't use the angel to rescue the child directly.
** When Ben finally a character he was tired of playing killed, the DM railroaded him into continuing to play the character by ruling that his goddess intervened to bring him back to life.
* TheDogWasTheMastermind: During a campaign, the players kidnap a well dressed otter man they met in the dream world and bring him to the real world, but they later start to suspect he is actually the BigBad of the game and tricked them into kidnapping him, without any evidence at all. It isn't confirmed if they are right or wrong, but it seems unlikely since Ben's players are very unpredictable and it would be hard for Ben to plan something like that, and plus Ben didn't seem to have even planned for them to talk to the otter man.
* TheDreaded: The Chadwick Strongpants somehow has a reputation as a ridiculously powerful hero, such that when he approaches bad guys panic and end up [[FriendlyFire accidently killing each other]], thus defeating themselves without Chadwick having to do anything. [[spoiler:Chadwick [[JokeCharacter doesn't actually have any powers at all.]]]]
* DrowningMySorrows: The Gnome Monk Michele turned to drugs and alcohol after defeating Malikar, because he couldn't bare to face the fact that the rest of his party allegedly died.
* DumbMuscle: Ben's fighter character, Aligaros, who always tried to use his axe to solve problems and kept getting arrested because he thought getting blackout drunk nightly was a good idea. When Katya convinces a revenant to leave by talking to it, he comments it was like she used an axe, but with her mind. Creating the RunningGag that he should use his mind axe to solve the problem. [[spoiler: Which resulted in him taking a level of Psion in order to have an actual Mind Axe ability that he sat on for ''months'' JustForPun.]]
* DungeonmastersGirlfriend: Averted with Ben's brother Will. Ben gives him no special treatment, and when he doesn't bother to create a character Ben teaches his brother a lesson by [[JokeCharacter creating one for him]].
* DyingDeclarationOfLove: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M6dRjOsbew Taking An Arrow to The Heart In D&D]]": Lemmy makes one to Thrognar when the latter was shot in the heart ... and immediately backtracks when it turns out that [[SubvertedTrope Thrognar will pull through]].
* {{Eagleland}}:
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mr1fXAR4Sc That time our characters went to New York City]]", Ben portrays New York City as being on a large United-States shaped island labelled "FREEDOMLAND". This island's land is colored with the American Flag.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqFS1YSVJ4 a collaboration]] with ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'', Ben describes a Call of Cthulhu game he was GM for. In this game, [[{{Expy}} Dick]] [[ComicStrip/DickTracy Tracy]] and [[PunnyName Justin Case]] break into a dorm room in an all woman's school. When the women in the dorm corner the two detectives to find out what they're doing, Dick Tracy tried to bullshit his way out of this. Dick Tracy argued that [[InsaneTrollLogic America being a free country means they can go anywhere they want]] while Justin Case waves a miniature flag and hums the national anthem. [[spoiler: The college girls critically failed their intelligence check and believed it, so the two could steal everything not bolted to the ground. After that, they got a 1% bonus to their success chance when eating apple pie.]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: In early videos, Ben's character, Aligaros, as always depicted as having a hat signifying a ranger or maybe a bard. Later videos identified him as a Fighter.
* EarlyBirdCameo: The monk from the Malikar video was played by Ben's brother from a later video.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Malikar from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o My players LOSE the final fight!]] makes a clear distinction between being evil and being a jerk. He doesn't like instant death traps because he thinks they're unsporting, and chastises one of his henchmen for making inappropriate comments to his prisoners and making them uncomfortable.
* EverybodyCallsHimBarkeep: Ben generally doesn't give us the names of the characters, or even the [=NPCs=] in his videos. The literal barkeep in the Xanathar guild video is named Durnan.
* EvilSoundsDeep: Deconstructed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KttVzzfNc30 Unleashing Evil in Dungeons & Dragons]]: The evil entity sounds so deep and demonic that Ben shuts the door immediately.
* EvilWeapon: In the Malikar campaign, the players had to find the pieces of a evil sword called the Mournblade that had the power to destroy souls, which they needed in order to make sure Malikar wouldn't come back after killing him. The Mournblade can talk and only cares about killing things, not caring if it is being used for good or evil.
* ExplainExplainOhCrap: The moment when the players realize that they are still in the building that they are about to blow up.
* {{Expy}}:
** Ben's wizard character, Doctor Solomon, is a [[DirtyCoward less heroic]] version of [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings Gandalf]] that [[DraggedOffToHell sends his enemies to a nightmarish hellscape]].
** Ben's detective character, Detective [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude Detective]] Savage "[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Savage Rage]]" Rage, is [[Film/KungFury Kung Fury]].
** When Ben GM's for a Call of Cthulhu game, one of the players plays a detective character called [[ComicStrip/DickTracy Dick Tracy]].
** Ben's [[MasterOfNone multi-class]] [[TheFriendNobodyLikes adventurer]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 Abserd]] at one point went to a school called [[Franchise/HarryPotter Swogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry]].
** In the dystopian ICONS campaign, the players based their characters on Franchise/SpiderMan, [[ComicBook/LukeCageHeroForHire Luke Cage]], and [[Manga/FullmetalAlchemist Edward Elric]].
** Unintentionally on Ben's part, but one of the [=NPCs=] in the Malikar and Covenant campaigns was an elderly Tortle wizard. The party just called him [[WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda Oogway]] and refused to listen to him when he tried to tell them his real name.
** When Ben GM'd for a Mutants and Masterminds game, the party involves a lot of this. In addition to the ICONS Campaign party, he also had a party that consisted of Venom, Lucy from [[Manga/ElfenLied ''Elfen Lied'']], Kuma from [[VideoGame/OnePiece ''One Piece'']], and a combination of [[{{Franchise/Batman}} Doctor Freeze]] and Nick Fury. He also described a Final Fantasy party he GM'd for which included Mercy from [[{{VideoGame/Overwatch}} ''Overwatch'']] and [[{{Series/Dexter}} Dexter the Serial Killer]].
** In the new campaign after the TimeSkip, when a player decides to switch character part way through since his reputation had been ruined by another character's actions, he makes Shredder from ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles''.
* EyeScream: How an unfortunate NPC is killed in "Secrets Of The Skeleton Town."
* FakeUltimateHero: Chadwick Strongpants is a super hero who somehow has a reputation as TheDreaded, which causes enemies to panic and defeat themselves through FriendlyFire when he approaches, but it turns out that his actual power is [[spoiler:nothing at all. He is a completely average guy.]]
* FallenHero: When Ben learns that his party is pure evil, he likes to imagine that the GM will use those characters as villains for another party's adventure.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: The nation of Gautor in Ben's setting. The players called it Fantasy North-Korea.
* FantasticRacism: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3bTwyEbq14 We were betrayed in our D&D campaign]]", the party is extremely patronizing and dismissive of the [[BirdPeople aarakocra]] bard Flynn. When they have a feast they locked Flynn outside in a hurricane. When their patron Garathor betrayed them Ben punched Flynn in the face for pointing out [[CassandraTruth that he distrusted Garathor previously]]. Later on, in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFiISQJDxW8 Breaking Into The Castle]]", the Lord of a city wants to execute Flynn for writing a satirical song about him and Ben is more than willing to hand Flynn over. A dragon saves Flynn, much to Ben's disappointment.
--> Aligaros: "Now we're just down to three party members."\\
Flynn: "Excuse me, three party members?"\\
Aligaros: "Aww! He's so cute with those people clothes he's wearing. He thinks he's a person!"
* FelonyMisdemeanor:
** Ben's Star Wars Edge of the Empire's party reaction to learning he had never actually seen the original trilogy of movies, especially as they had been playing a Star Wars game for the past year.
--> Other Party Member: "Ben, of all the secret things you could have revealed about yourself, that was the worst. There's absolutely nothing else you could have told us that would have gone over as poorly. If you said 'Hey, [[AxCrazy I'm keeping a pile of dead bodies under my house]],' we would have gone like 'Okay, cool, right. Everyone has [[ILoveTheDead their fetishes]]'. But not seeing Star Wars... Jesus Christ, dude! The fuck is wrong with you?"
** Wallace taking the credit for the players' hard work after he was completely useless to them is treated by the players as being worse than if he had killed their families.
* FishEyes: In many episodes, when a character is feeling stupid or suffering SanitySlippage (usually Ben), they will be shown with eyes pointing off in different directions randomly.
* FiveTokenBand: [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3HyvfrwscLKtE_NmOQfWGw Jess]], WebAnimation/{{Dingo|Doodles}} and Logan in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIMG_oaQMME cocaine video]] played as an aasimar (celestial-touched humans), a bird person (aarakocra or kenku) and a reptile (lizardfolk, kobold or dragonborn).
* FlatEarthAtheist: One episode has a guard who insists that magic isn't real, because he has [[NotHyperbole literally]] never been outside.
* FlatWorld: The Malikar campaign and its sequels apparently take place on a disk shaped planet as seen in a few video where the world is shown.
* FluffyTamer: The party in "Too Many Pets" end up befriending a ghost dog, a shadowbeast that's enchanted to look like a small corgi, a bird butler, and aboleth, and a gold dragon (who they employ as an accountant).
* TheFundamentalist: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c9-gFB3a_k&t=2014s "D&D Happy Holiday One-Off"]], all three members of the party are zealots for Pelor. Cauli and Urson harass a little girl to find out if she believes in Pelor, and when asked to give a speech to the town Cauli talks about how Pelor will smite all non-believers.
-->'''Cauli:''' But if you don't believe in Pelor, let him come down and smite you from the inside out!\\
'''Urson:''' For he is a vengeful God!\\
'''Cauli:''' From the inside out, so your eyeballs will liquefy and your bowls shall explode!
* FrameUp: The characters in "The Hero of Parnast pt 2" discover that someone is attempting to frame Wallace for a series of crimes against the town, but almost go along with it because of how much they hate Wallace.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes:
** The in-universe reason for why [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 Abserd]] was able to acquire a level in every class. He's not evil, but he has a supremely annoying voice so every group he joins ends up kicking him out. Sure enough, at the end of the mission the rest of the party willingly leaves him as a hostage to an evil elf so she'll release the person they came to rescue.
** Wallace from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWwHKYPSjc "The Hero of Parnast"]] is treated like crap by the entire party due to being [[RailRoading rail-roaded]] into the party despite having no useful skills whatever, yet he ends up taking credit for their actions.
*** Taken UpToEleven in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HjGNQGsBVM Part 2]], in which the party (except the one who'd just joined) wanted to frame Wallace for the crimes being committed in Parnast, even after the villain is revealed. [[spoiler: Made even funnier by TheReveal that ''all'' of the members of the party were ''LawfulGood''.]]
---->'''PC:''' Swear to God, Wallace, if you don't stop talking, I will reach down your throat, rip out your intestines, and then ''strangle you with them'' just to get you to shut up!
** Ben himself in 12 short D&D sketches. A new player would rather sit in an armchair filled with broken glass and rattlesnakes than sit next to Ben.
** And done again in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2M9wVlO5Fk the Breath of the Wild Co-Op video]].
--->'''Ben:''' ...and he's the only friend who hasn't installed good enough locks to keep me out of the house. That must mean he ''likes'' me!
** And again in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Z1_raOH40 his tips for getting into D&D]], in which he posts "Facebook keeps having your account accidentally block me..." to a friend's post about the game.
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdCdQJxBDA The first time I ran a D&D game]], Ben's notes says [[KillerGameMaster Kill EVERYONE]].
* FunWithAcronyms: His second campaign creates a new team name, which Ben accepts under the assumption that it can't be worse than the "Turtle Molesters/Fuckers" from his previous campaign. The group ends up calling themselves W.O.R.S.T, which stands for "Warriors of Really Shitty Timing".
* GenreBlind: The GM running ''TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles'' said this to Ben.
-->'''GM:''' You don't have to ask my permission for anything. Whatever you make, I'll sign off on without checking.
* GenreSavvy:
** One party member [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdCdQJxBDA in Ben's game]] exhibited this trait, much to his frustration.
** It also makes [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsusuVm001Q running a mystery and surprising the party]] very difficult.
--->'''Ben:''' My villain didn't even manage to get in [[EvilGloating one line]] before he figured it out. ''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis Not! One! Line!]]'' [[OffTheRails Everything was ruined]]!
** And in the finale of the Covenant campaign, after the players successfully recovered the Covenant, instead of handing it over to the angel who sent them to rescue it, they figured out that the angel was actually the BigBad and wanted to destroy the Covenant in order to make sure the war between heaven and hell will continue.
* GenreShift: "Secrets of the Skeleton Town". It's a ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' one-shot, a game where the focus is investigation and SurvivalHorror (in comparison to D&D's HighFantasy shenanigans). The story is very creepy and Ben really nails the narration.
* GiantSquid: The Otyugh.
* TheGMIsACheatingBastard: Discussed in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRIr4-oYj1A Should The GM Cheat in D&D?]]". The conclusion he came to is that it shouldn't be used to invalidate player choices, and if used at all it should be used consistently.
* GoodIsNotNice: This comes up sometimes.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c9-gFB3a_k&t=2014s "D&D Happy Holiday One-Off"]], the three players interpret Pelor as being this. For context, in canon Pelor is a Lawful Good God.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E&t=106s "EVERYONE in town shops at the black market"]], the party's Paladin Relthorne impaled a local assassin through the chest without provocation.
* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy:
** When a samuri ninja adventurer falls down the stairs in front of two guards, he [[PlayingPossum plays dead]]. The guards fall for it, despite the attempt being pretty weak.
** In another video Ben discusses how useless guards usually are and has an ImagineSpot where a man asks a guard for help with a friend who has been turned into a dog, but the guard doesn't believe in magic because he has never been outside, ever.
** Malikar manages to escape from his prison on Mount Celestia because the guards are innocent baby seals who he gets away from just by asking to go to the bathroom, though his freedom is short lived as he immediately sprains his ankle and is captured again.
* HalfHumanHybrid: It's a subtle detail, but in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWwHKYPSjc D&D Story: The Hero Of Parnast]]", Wallace's mother is a tiefling.
* HappyEndingOverride: The first Covenant campaign video, which continues where the Malikar campaign ended. The players wanted to continue the story, so the ending of the previous campaign was retconned. The other players didn't change much, but the monk ended up as a homeless drug addict, obsessed with his failure. He also lost the Mournblade.
* HeelRealization:
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE&t=8s We Became The Villains In Our Own Campaign]]", Ben and his party [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin discover that they are the villains of their campaign]]. Deep into the campaign they discover that their have been unintentionally causing a lot of harm in the world [[note]]They saved a ship only to get it's crew killed by [[SuicidalOverconfidence summoning a]] [[KrakenAndLeviathan kracken for them to fight]], [[VanHelsingHateCrimes they killed zombies]] [[PoorCommunicationKills that only wanted to warn them about an impending danger]], and they helped [[EvilSorcerer a guy]] retrieve black crystals that he needs to summon his [[EldritchAbomination dark master]] to take over the world[[/note]]. The GM confirms this by telling the party that they are pure evil and [[MoralEventHorizon beyond redemption]].
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soc4GrlymzY "My Failed Game Attempt"]], Ben mentions that he had five games he was GM for crash and burn. He comments that someone who didn't know better might think he was a terrible GM ... and then he proceeds to panic.
* HelloInsertNameHere: When Ben asks a forest dragon for his name, the dragon states that he is nameless. Ben then proceeds to name the dragon [[Film/TheNeverendingStory Falcor]].
* HiddenBadass: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0HA0FtHUOs "The Xanathar Guild"]], the Bartender turns out to be a level seventeen fighter with magical weapons. [[BigDamnHeroes He saves half the party from a troll]].
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: In the Tomb of Annihilation campaign that Ben ran, the Ras Nsi is killed with his own FlamingSword after a player cut his hand off in a duel with him and stole the sword.
* HorribleJudgeOfCharacter:
** Ben and his party (minus [[BirdPeople Flynn]]) were too trusting of Garathor. When Flynn asks how they can trust him, Ben states that Garathor has [[BlackCloak an honest face]].
** The GM's that Ben plays with tend to be this as well. One gives the players temporary control of Security Guards (said guards proceed to [[PoliceBrutality beat two vandals to a pulp]]), and another tells Ben he'll approve Ben's character without reading it (Ben proceeds to create a character that probably wouldn't have been approved otherwise).
* HumanityEnsues:
** Happens to the non-human characters in one story where the party got sent to New York City.
** The Warforged character gets turned human by accident at the end of the Covenant campain.
** A character who hasn't yet appeared in the animated videos but Ben has mentioned a Q&A was a Druid who was a dog who got turned human by drinking from a magic spring.
* HumanityIsSuperior: When player statistics were released for 5th addition D&D, it turned out that Humans were the most selected race for player characters. In-game, Humans also receive either +1 to every stat or an extra feat.
* HungryJungle: The jungle in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I "D&D Story: PEE IN MY BUCKET! The Adventurer's League Game"]] counts as this trope. It's infested with undead humans and undead four armed gorillas, and the vines are highly lethal to climb.
* HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: In the Holiday One Off, the disappearances are caused by a monster that prefers to hunt humans, which the town offers as sacrifices.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** The In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6kEVfU93gc "M&M Story: Chadwick Strongpants"]], the group paladin told the gnome monk Michele that he can't be chaotic good because he robbed a homeless man for his clothes. Michele pointed out that said paladin [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil owned a halfling slave]] [[MeatShield who he used to disable traps]].
--->'''Michele:''' Glass houses, that's all I'm saying. Glass houses.
** One GM Ben played with punished the party wizard any time he cast a spell that the GM regarded as "breaking the game" (i.e. anything that wasn't a healing spell). When Ben asked him why he couldn't just talk to the player about his issues with this, the GM responded without any hint of irony "[=GMs=] aren't supposed to interfere like that, it's rude to mess with the player's autonomy." Ben also noticed that the same GM's magic-using [=NPCs=] weren't subject to the same penalties as players when a villain hit his character with a no-save, 100 points of damage spell for a OneHitKill.
** Ben mentions that he doesn't use miniatures, because he finds them too expensive (which is a valid concern). Then, in the very same video, he tells a story about how he once bought 7 copies of the Player's Handbook (and a monster manual) on a whim because he wanted to impress younger players, and also admits that he impulsively buys new dice that he doesn't need.
* IAteWhat: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I&t=80s "D&D Story: PEE IN MY BUCKET! The Adventurer's League Game"]], Ben's Party tries rescuing the crew of an airship that crashed in the trees. This crew was exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated. To alleviate the last problem the party peed in a bucket, cast a purification spell on it, and gave it to the crew to drink. Hilariously, clerics like Ben and the one who had the pee-idea have the spells "Create or Destroy Water" and "Create Food and Water", meaning that if they took a long rest, they could prepare those spells.
* IdiotHero: Ben really enjoys playing IdiotHero characters.
** Aligaros Ashuin: A fighter with a fear of libraries who things that all problems should be solved with an axe and treats his BirdFolk teammate like a pet.
** Detective Savage Rage: A stupid police detective who has no investigation skills and thinks that being a police officer means he can do whatever he wants.
** Detective Clancy: Another detective who has no investigation skills but is completely convinced that he is the world's greatest detective.
* ImTakingHerHomeWithMe: Ben's players have been shown in many videos to have a tendency collect a ton of pets and followers due to wanting to take any NPC or monster they take a liking to with them, sometimes going as far as outright kidnapping [=NPCs=] that they like.
* IncorruptiblePurePureness: Baby harp seals are so cute and innocent that they are immune to evil and so are used as guards on Mount Celestia. Too bad they also [[GoodCannotComprehendEvil cannot comprehend evil]].
* IncrediblyLamePun: The [[AC:Omega Pun]] is an extremely exaggerated example of this trope. It's apparently so powerful that anyone who hears it takes enough psychic damage to ''kill a god''. Knowing the pun would, according to Ben, be like having a nuclear bomb in your head, and only the legendary Pun Warrior can take it. Said pun warrior is ''not'' one of Ben's players.
* INeedAFreakingDrink: Melthat has this reaction after [[{{Expy}} Dick Tracy]] completely [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsusuVm001Q figures out his sinister plot]] [[EpicFail before he can even say one line]].
--> Dick Tracy: "Oh I ... I wasn't supposed to figure that out, was I? Dick Tracy, world's greatest detective!"
* {{Jerkass}}: Many of Ben's characters and the characters that he ran games for were huge jerks. Aligaros was a racist who openly said that his Arakocra teammate wasn't a person. His Trixie character was a massive BitchInSheepsClothing who would do anything to be popular. The players characters from the Hero of Parnast story verbally abused Wallace just for being an unwanted TagalongKid and allowed him to get hurt when he got taken hostage.
* JokeCharacter:
** Abserd! When Ben was a player in a one-shot campaign where he could create a level 14 character, he decided to make a character with every single class. Abserd only had one level in each class, and so was bad at all of them. Not helping this, Ben played Abserd as an annoying person to justify why he kept getting kicked out of groups.
** Chadwick Strongpants! Ben built him up as a great hero feared by all ne'er-do-wells, but he has no powers or interesting backstory events at all. This character was created by Ben to punish his brother Will for not creating a character or giving Tabletop [=RPGs=] a chance.
* JokeWeapon: In the Captain Morgan video, a player created a sword by casting a spell on a bag of cocaine,
* JumpingOnAGrenade: The paladin player does this after the idiotic samurai player throws a grenade at the police.
* JunkRare: Happens in-universe with Barathorn, the sentient dwarven glaive. He's a +1 Glaive of Stabbing, which is decent for a low level party, but the party at that point had gathered practically every magic item in the DM's guide, so they didn't really need it.
* JustForPun: One of Ben's players in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqFS1YSVJ4 Crossover with Dingo Doodles]] played as a character named Justin Case, with a cousin named Justin Time.
* JustifiedCriminal: Defied in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E "Black Market Blues"]]. The Game Master clearly intended for the town and it's black market to be this, but Ben is unconvinced. He goes so far as to say that the townsfolk deserve to be enslaved for failing to find an honest source of income. The main problem is that he overshot so far that it came off as the town deliberately instituting an absurd law just for the pleasure of breaking it.
* KillerGameMaster: Ben can sometimes be a Killer DM
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b87D1eGSp0 Miscellaneous Monsters and Bears of Sand]]" Ben killed two of his players and forced the others to retreat by having them fight a permanently invisible beholder. To be fair, the beholder was from a module.
** In the first Malikar video, he admits that he sometimes adds in monsters just because he thought they looked cool, without concern for CR.
** In the video about the first time he was a dungeon master, he has an annoying player character killed for complaining about the story and being too GenreSavvy, but it turns out to only be an ImagineSpot.
** Something similar happens in ''Last Orders At The Yawning Portal Tavern''. When a player makes an IncrediblyLamePun that nobody found funny, Ben has the monster [[LamePunReaction instantly kill the player's character]], but then he changes his mind and declares that the character is ok, but the monster has instead [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou killed the player ''in real life'']], so the player is now metaphorically dead to them.
** During the Covenant campaign, Ben realizes that he may have gone too far when a player points out that the party got betrayed no less than ''eight'' times in only two sessions, causing them to be suspicious of all of Ben's [=NPCs=]. This probably explains why in the next campaign, the players suddenly came to the conclusion that Ottie Otterton must secretly be the BigBad without any evidence.
--->'''Ben:''' I mean, I hate my players as much as much as the next DM, but I think six would have been fine, but eight, eight's a bit much even for my game.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Out of universe, we can definitely see why the players of the Parnast campaign would hate Little Wallace, but in-universe, they basically treated a child horribly just because he wanted to help. They had everything that went bad coming.
* LastSecondWordSwap: "You're the turtle..."
-->'''Michele:''' Friends! Turtle Friends!
* LawfulStupid: "Black Market Blues" leans this way with a plot involving a town's black market. Magic items are illegal in the area, so the local black market sells those magic items. However, it's eventually revealed that the town's leaders knew about the black market, and let them do as they please because the town's economy depended on its success. However, Ben questions why there was a need for a black market when the government supported it. He asks why the town didn't just change the laws to legalize magic items so they could be sold in a regular market. The inquisitor Ben questions gets locked in CircularReasoning, saying they can't change the laws and legalize magic because that would get rid of the black market, and they can't sell magic items in a regular market because magic is illegal.
** The Modrons also act like this, true to D&D tradition. When someone steals the Covenant despite the sign saying "No touching", they conclude that someone stole it without touching it, and solve the problem by putting up a sign saying "No stealing".
* LegionOfDoom: Ben once played in a Lord of the Ring campaign where the players are several villains brought back to life including Sauron, Saruman, Smaug, Gollum, Shelob, and the Balrog. Ben playing as Sauron ends up being the one to convince the other villains to cooperate with each other.
* LimitedAnimation: Ben uses very simplistic animation in his videos. Characters in his videos are nearly stick figures and move very little. Ironically, he has twice the amount of subscribers than ''WebAnimation/AnimatedSpellbook'' (who has better animation and more regular uploads, but shorter videos), ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' (who has rarer uploads, but better artwork), Jocat (who has better animation and consistent uploads), and more than 20 times the subs of [=JessJackdaw=] (who uploads rarely, but has better artwork). One thing he always takes the time to do, however, is animate mouth movements.
* LivingToys: When the player characters are shrunk during the holiday one-off, the monster hunting them is locked outside of the house they are in and so attacks them by bringing the toys in the house to life to fight them. They get attacked by toy soldiers riding a wooden train, and after escaping run into a paper dragon.
* TheLoonie: Or to use his own term, a "troll player". He loves to come up with insane characters like taking one level in every class, or (on two seperate occasions) detectives with no investigation skills whatsoever.
* LovecraftLite: How Ben ran a ''Call of Cthulhu'' games when he was the GM. At least until the TotalPartyKill.
-->'''Ben:''' The games resembled more like ''Scooby-Doo'' where the players would go out, solve the mystery, encounter some supernatural and then call it a day.\\
'''RP Player #1:''' Gee gang, it looks like Cthulhu is trying to enter our dimension.\\
'''RP Player #2:''' Zoinks!
* MaliciousMisnaming: The players in one campaign continually insist on referring to a wise old Tortle wizard as Oogway, no matter how much he tries to get them to stop. When they beg for his help in the finale (by that name) he's so annoyed he refuses.
* MasterOfNone:
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8 Abserd]], a level 14 character Ben created for a one-shot campaign, is this. He has every single class, and has so many magic systems that he has a character ''packet'' instead of a character sheet, but he is too low level in all of these classes to be able to use any of them.
--->'''Other player:''' How does he play?\\
'''Ben:''' He doesn't!
** For more elaboration: Making a character like Abserd is so CoolButInefficient because to multiclass, you need at least 13 in the class' core ability score; the only one you can afford to [[DumpStat dump]] in this case is ''Constitution'' (which no class uses), and Con determines your health and is ''never'' recommended to dump. Abserd does have a lot of skill proficiencies and cantrips going for him, and he can use any weapon or armour, but without a multi-attack or upgraded sneak attack for physical damage and no ability score increases or feats from levelling up, he is a poor physical fighter. He has a few third-level spells at a table where the real spellcasters have sixth-level spells, and his spells are easy to shrug off with a low spell save DC.
* MeaningfulName: The aforementioned Abserd, because he's an absurd character concept. Also works as a PunnyName.
* MeaningfulRename: After the party from the Malikar and Covenant Campaigns return to save the realm from a devil, they rename their group from The Turtle Fuckers to The Turtle Friends.
* MontyHaul: In the campaign against Malikar, Ben rewarded the players too generously, and this allowed them to buy whatever magic items they wanted, which made it difficult for him to reward them later. Barathorn the talking glaive ended up as a JunkRare item because they already had several magic weapons that were better.
* MoralMyopia: In the Deadlands one shot, a magic wielding reverend declares that the player characters are servants of the Devil because used magic to command snakes to kill him, but he was the one who summoned the snakes in the first place to try to kill them.
* {{Mordor}}: Whenever he talks about his home state of California, he describes it as this.
-->'''Ben:''' Look over there! That's almost, like, three trees! Where would you find that many trees in one place? I think two of them might even still be alive!
* {{Munchkin}}: In the post-timeskip campaign, Will wanted to keep playing the same character, and explaining the LegendFadesToMyth backstory as him actually having gone permanently invisible, and apparently the party are the only ones who can see him. Not only did he spring this on Ben with no warning, but invisibility is normally a spell that requires concentration, only lasts for 1 hour, and ends early if you try to attack. Permanent invisibility is a ludicrously powerful ability. It being ''unintentionally'' powerful is why Ben seems to have allowed it--Will seems to have no idea how to use invisibility in combat, going by his actions when "sneaking" into a school (break walls with boat).
* MurderSuicide: In "Should The GM Cheat in D&D?", describes and animates one such scenario as a warning to one possible way cheating can backfire.
--> Ben: "Maybe you have a dragon that flies up and goes 'Blah! Mega death face flames!' and [[TotalPartyKill it kills everyone]] [[SoleSurvivor except for one guy]] who walks away unscathed. He's not gonna be the one who grabs you by the scruff of the neck and flies with you out the hundredth floor window!"
* MyFriendsAndZoidberg: From "How I ruined my DM's Star Wars Campaign Podcast": "This DM decided to put together a team of his best and brightest players. Also he brought me along for some reason."
* NegatedMomentOfAwesome: The titular [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frcxo_3x6OY Obelisk Encounter]] ended up being this. After all the buildup about what a ludicrously impossible fight it would be, both sides had too much defense and healing for the other to do meaningful damage before the summon counter timed out. There wasn't even any experience or loot at the end.
* NeverMyFault:
** Ben does seem to have this attitude from time to time.
*** In one game, the players completely derailed the game using a portal to the moon ''he had placed there''. It's obviously impossible to plan for everything, but if he places the possibility for something to happen, he has to expect that that may happen. Golden Rule of Game Masters: If the players can do it, they will do it.
*** In a few other games, the campaign becomes less enjoyable for the players because Ben insists on following the module even when it's obviously poorly written. A key example is Wallace, who Ben foisted upon the part because the module had no provisions for a party declining to take him along.
*** In "Chadwick Strongpants", he complains about how his brother doesn't like tabletop [=RPGs=]. However in one session, the brother was stuck doing nothing while everyone was having fun. In the other session mentioned, Ben intentionally made a terrible character for his brother. With this in mind, the brother's dislike for [=RPGs=] seems more justified.
*** In several episodes where he's running from a pre-written adventure the parties get into hopeless fights because he didn't bother to read the setups or monster stat blocks ahead of time.
** The parties Ben GM's for aren't above this either. In "My players LOSE the final fight!", they leave one of their fighters paralyzed outside the villain's antechamber when they could have very easily given him the antivenom to restore his mobility. They lose this fight by one point, likely because they needlessly left one of their party members out of commission, and instead blame a different party member who couldn't make it to that game because he had to work late.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: In the video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE We Were Just Making Everything Worse]], the players have a HeelRealization when they think about all the things they accomplished in the campaign and realized that they had unintentionally caused several disasters. They caused the sinking of a ship they were trying to save, killed a zombie who was actually trying to help them and came back for revenge, and helped a villain obtain the means to cause the apocalypse by being too trusting.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: In a game he was running he accidentally created a Mindflayer Swashbuckler by getting two stat blocks confused and not realizing it until halfway through the battle. As the game as written included a gang boss who is an ordinary goldfish it didn't immediately strike him as out of place.
** Justified if you check the book. There is not actually any stat block for Nihiloor. He was supposed to use the Mind Flayer stat block from the Monster Manual, the book just contains some fluff and a picture of him... A picture that's right next to the stat block for the Nimblewright, a mechanical duelist.
* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: In "Deadlands: For A Few Idiots More", one of the players whines that the twenty KnightTemplar Reverends (in Salt Lake City) are Mormons. Ben says that they aren't Mormons exactly ... but doesn't say which denomination they are from.
* NoodleIncident: In the ''Too Many Pets'' video, Ben explains how the party picked up a ghost dog and a dog that turns into a shadow monster at night but doesn't explain the bird butler, the gold dragon or the aboleth.
** For reasons that Ben refuses to reveal or animate, the group of heroes out to defeat Malikar somehow picked up the nickname, "The Turtle Fuckers".
*** He has since revealed how they got the name in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73OAFbxIHYA this video]]. And he also explains that the name actually was Turtle Molesters, not Turtle Fuckers. Basically they used to have pet turtles traveling with the party, and had a running joke about where they applied those touch spells.
* NowWhat: Malikar apparently hadn't expected to actually defeat the heroes, so he wasn't sure what to do when he did. As they had succeeded in thwarting his current plan first, he was back to square one at best. He ultimately didn't have much time to consider it.
* ObligatoryJoke: Ben tracks the party with ''tracking down the location'' of a band of lycanthropes called ''The Wild Things''. He then immediately realizes his mistake and is disappointed but not surprised when they realize they're "trying to figure out Literature/WhereTheWildThingsAre".
* ObviouslyEvil: DoubleSubverted when Ben is an EvilSorcerer at the end of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE&t=8s We Became The Villains In Our Own Campaign]]". The [[{{Mordor}} desolation around his tower]] is because Ben wanted to save money on gardening, the Lava Sharks are [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter cute pets]], and the EvilTowerOfOminousness just has a very good view. Also he's [[HumanSacrifice killed people in that tower]].
* OffTheRails:
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19-I5xQV_Zs In one campaign he ran]] his players found a mysterious temple. He had planned for his players to come back to the temple later in the campaign but due to a lucky dice roll they learned how to use the temple's magic circle before they were supposed to and insisted on using it, resulting in them getting teleported to the moon without any way to get back.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsusuVm001Q In an another story]] a Call of Cthulhu game he ran was ruined when a player instantly guessed that an NPC they just met in a hospital was possessed by the villain, despite the fact that it hadn't even been hinted yet that the villain was capable of possessing people, and the NPC hadn't even spoken a single word yet.
** [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xgxhNwPEJUA Another Call of Cthulhu game]] was derailed into a TotalPartyKill. While everyone dying is not unexpected in ''Call of Cthulhu'', this one happened because of an [[TooDumbToLive idiot]] player setting everything on fire to keep a monster away and trapping himself in the fire, and the fire spread and killed the other surviving player.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdXZA2bdR_k When he ran Fane of the Night Serpent]] (part of Tomb of Annihilation) he accidentally skipped over the part of the book explaining how the players are supposed to get into the Temple. The players were supposed to either disguise themselves as the enemy, or let themselves be captured by the enemy and make an alliance with one of the villains, but what happened instead is the players had to fight their way though every single enemy, just barely managing to win after a very long and hard battle.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5C0rbcJDok In a dystopian ICONS campaign that he ran]], the heroes are sent on a mission to find out what happened to some people who were sent to recover a typewriter and never came back. The heroes find that they were attacked by bandits and incorrectly assume they are dead, and end up killing them instead by blowing up the bandit's base. It goes further off the rails when they find the typewriter and accidentally smash it, and discover a mysterious data disc inside which they were not supposed to know about, and they keep it for themselves instead of delivering it to the guy who sent them on the mission. After this he started running the campaign without rails and instead gave them several different plot threads they could choose to follow or ignore.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E In the Black Market Blues story]] he and his party are confronted by assassins when visiting a black market who are suspicious of the party's paladin. When talking their way out doesn't work the Paladin starts a fight with them and causes chaos in the black market and everybody gets arrest and the black market shut down. When they are in jail, Puffin realizes that it didn't make sense for the town to have a black market because [[OpenSecret everybody already knew it was there]] and was ok with it.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o Another campaign that he ran ended up going of the rails at the very end when the players fail to kill the villain]]. The players succeed in stopping the villain's plan but the final battle between the villain and the last player standing ultimately comes down to one last dice roll, which the player misses, ''by one point''. The standing player character is forced to retreat, and the rest of player characters get scattered across the universe and never see each other again although end up in nice places. Since they failed to kill the villain using the VillainBeatingArtifact he will eventually come back, and so it seems like a BitterSweetEnding, however it ends on a funny note because [[spoiler:the villain ended up on Mount Celestia, the realm of Pure LawfulGood where he is immediately captured and imprisoned for a very long time.]]
** Taken UpToEleven in "[[HeroicBSOD DM.exe has crashed]]!" [[https://youtu.be/WUA5aCOF3y0 which must be seen to be believed]]. The players break into a school because they were too impatient to get a warrant to enter legally and get into a fight, and an idiotic samurai player tries to defuse the situation by firing a gun, and it just gets worse from there, as he gets into a completely unnecessary standoff with the police, which all could have been avoided if they had just waited for the warrant.
--->'''Ben:''' I'm too busy handling ''[[ItMakesSenseInContext the child-hostage negotiation]]'' to pay attention.
* OnlyInItForTheMoney: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTNAmFuT7ak D&D King's Ransom"]], the adventurer party immediately asks for more money from the King. When he refuses to do so the halfling steals the King's clothes ... and his throne ... and all of his guard's armor.
--> Ork: "So ... money?"
* OpenSecret: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E EVERYONE in town shops at the black market]]. No, it does not make sense.
* OrgyOfEvidence: In one campaign when the players were investigating a crime, they insisted on continuing to investigate even though they already had enough evidence about who the culprit was, so the case would be iron-clad. Ben tried to get them to move on by having them find the culprit's diary proving that they did it, but this just made the players even more suspicious.
* OurElvesAreBetter: Discussed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J6OlsTSxRc "My favorite classes to play in D&D"]], when Ben notes that typical high-fantasy elves have all the benefits of being simultaneously old and young, with none of the downsides.
* OurGodsAreDifferent: Ben has only mentioned gods a couple time in his videos. The Lord in ''How Every D&D World Is Created'' is a JerkassGod who unleashes monsters upon the world for no good reason. There's also the god of Law who blessed the heroes with the Boon of Immortality.
** Gods in Ben's setting can also apparently be killed, but they're highly resistant to all damage except psychic, and even then it takes an immense amount delivered at once.
* OverlyPreparedGag: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8dXuGof7dc The Legend of the Legendary Aligaros Ashuin!]]", Ben wasted a character level just to get an ability he had to wait months to use just for a joke, which he never used again.
* OverShadowedByAwesome: In a ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' campaign, Ben picked character last, and wondered why no one wanted to play as the DarkLord Sauron. It turned out the other players were [[InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons Smaug]], [[GiantSpider Shelob]] and [[OurDemonsAreDifferent the Balrog]]. Apparently someone also thought playing as Saruman was cooler than Sauron.
* PaperTiger: One of the toys that the players are attacked by during the holiday one-off is a paper dragon. It attacks them with its breath weapon, and the players fail their save to dodge it, but it does no damage because its breath weapon is nothing but harmless confetti. They players decide to simply go around the paper dragon instead of fighting.
* PaperThinDisguise:
** In the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIMG_oaQMME Captain Morgan]] video, Jess' character was a bird person (aarakocra or kenku). Since her avatar on her channel is a Spectator (a diet beholder), Ben drew her as a spectator with beak and wings held on by strings.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz3DYa2IGYc Detective Clancy]] seems to [[ZigZaggedTrope Zig Zag]] this with his disguises. His normal disguise is a basket that apparently works most of the time... However, Ben ''always'' has them use the basket disguise even if it wouldn't be logical too. Case and point; the 'suspicious looking basket' climbing on the ceiling.
* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: Ben's character Detective Savage Rage is the worst detective in the world because he has no actual skill at doing detective work.
* PlaceWorseThanDeath: In the Covenant campaign the players discover a place that connects to many dimensions and are warned about a horrible place called California (where Ben lives). After the final villain is [[spoiler: turned into a potted plant they banish him there]].
* PlayingPossum: One PC uses avoids a fight with two guards by doing this.
* PoliceAreUseless: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mr1fXAR4Sc That time our characters when to New York City]], the characters killed several people with bows and arrows and somehow the police never caught them.
* PoliceBrutality: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKZcWZM-EXw Pokemon Tabletop Gangster]]", the GM gave four NPC Security Guards to Ben and the other three players to control ... said security guards proceed to [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown brutally beat two teenage vandals with metal flashlights]]. They wanted to use ColdBloodedTorture on the children, but the GM vetoed them at that point.
--> Guard #1: "You walked in on the wrong Pokemon University motherfucker."
--> Guard #2: "Growlithe, go for the legs! They're small, weak, and break easily!"
* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: Ben lampshades this continually when it comes to Pokemon's gangsters that "hold Pokemon against their will," as the players behave almost identically. (Ironically, he mentions the name "[[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite Team Plasma]]" without seeming to know anything about them, when this is in fact their in-game argument. It's decisively disproved.)
* ProtagonistWithoutAPast: Ben has a reputation for making player characters without any backstory, which he talks about in the video about his character Aligaros and the problems and hilarity it caused.
* PutOnABusToHell: A humorous inversion. [[spoiler:Malikar's fate at the end of the first Malikar Campaign video is to get sent to heaven, where he is immediately captured and imprisoned for a very long time, thus ending him as a threat for the foreseeable future.]] Played straighter in the end of the Covenant campaign, where the players banish the BigBad to [[spoiler:California after trapping him in the form of a potted plant]].
* PyrrhicVictory: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o My players LOSE the final battle]]. The [=PCs=] are unable to finish off the BigBad once at for all thanks to an ''extremely'' unlucky dice roll but are able to stop said BigBad from destroying the world. While the monk of the group ends up living in paranoia for the {{Big Bad}}s return, through [[RandomNumberGod luck of the dice]], most of the players end up in plains of existence that fit each characters personality/outlook while the BigBad [[spoiler: ends up in a plane full of being dedicated to fighting evil]].
* {{Railroading}}:
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYExETbLL1E&t=76s EVERYONE in town shops at the black market]]", the GM does this when Ben tries not to go with the rest of the party to the Black Market. A train horn plays while the GM pushes him out the door.
--> Ben: "All Aboard!"
** The module writers for a D&D campaign [[https://youtu.be/AbWwHKYPSjc foisted an NPC onto the party]] with ''no'' provisions for if they wanted to reject the help. [[spoiler: When they return to town, Wallace ''much'' worse for wear, Wallace gets heralded as a hero [[DudeWheresMyRespect while ignoring the party]].]]
*** Part Two underscores this, as the players desperately want to go away from Parnast, [[https://youtu.be/3HjGNQGsBVM but the module is having none of it]], to the point that Ben dresses as an old-timey railroad conductor while welcoming them aboard the train.
** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLXuKHkKxE We Were Just Making Everything Worse]]" when the players hear that the town they are in is run by a family that is killing humans, [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere they pack up and leave]] instead of confronting them but end up having to come back later to take them down anyway to progress the plot.
** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT9HgcufRQk Why Won't May Character Just DIE Already?!]] has two examples:
*** Ben had gotten tired of his current character and the group wouldn't let him change to a new character, so he decided to get his character killed in battle by being reckless and never using his healing abilities on himself. When his character finally died, the DM declared that he is brought back to life by his Goddess.
*** When the players succeeded in stopping the villain from completing his evil ritual, they suddenly fell through the floor and discovered the real villain completing the ritual right below them, and the guy they had just killed [[ActuallyADoombot actually wasn't the villain]], but a [[ContrivedCoincidence completely unrelated bad guy who just happened to look like the villain and was there at the same place and time conducting his own evil ritual]].
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVfGZPVqCNk In this video]] talks about why you should not punish players in game for out of game decisions. He once had a DM who hated magic spells being used to bypass puzzles and traps, and always punished the players who did this by having them set off more traps whenever they tried, hoping that they would give up trying to use magic to solve problems, instead of just telling the players out of game that he didn't like magic. This backfired and just cause the player to try harder to solve everything with magic.
** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXBy8E_GOtI The GM Took Away My Addiction Because It Was Breaking His Game]]". Ben's character is knocked unconscious with the force and finds that his addiction to death sticks is mysteriously gone when he wakes, and all of his death sticks, and only his death sticks, were all stolen. No part of this makes any sense.
** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g7xICOq4zA D&D Story: Journey to "Magic-North-Korea]]" Ben really wanted his party to try out the war machines from Descent into Avernus. However, they generally preferred to hoof it no matter the circumstances. Eventually he had to veto every other possible method of travel to get them to use a war machine.
* RazorApples: In the Halloween One Off, Moss warns trick-or-treaters that the Followers of [[ChaoticEvil Loleth]] are putting razor blades in candy. It's never confirmed if this is true or not, even though the party meets a trio of Loleth Clerics later in the story.
* RealityEnsues: The main reason why the players at Ben's Table didn't want to play Traveler. Spaceships are so prohibitively expensive [[note]]they cost 150 million dollars[[/note]] that people can only afford shares of a ship. Moreover, instead of starting the game as the character they want the players have to roll for life events. Thus the noble became a half-deaf exile [[note]][[CharClone his family was wiped out, he joined the army under an assumed name]], he was made deaf in one ear by cannon fire, and he was imprisoned for a time by pirates[[/note]] and the scholar became a disgraced outcast [[note]]he got caught stealing someone else's work, got kicked out from the university, and when he tried to do independent research on an alien planet his ship broke down and he ended up stranded there for years[[/note]]. On a more meta level, springing that kind of character creation on them with no warning certainly didn't help their enthusiasm.
* TheRealMan: [[HardboiledDetective Detective Savage Rage]], Ben's character in a ''Dresden Files'' game.
-->'''Journalist:''' Did... did you just make [[{{Expy}} Kung Fury]] from--\\
'''Ben:''' Yes, I basically just made Kung Fury from ''Film/KungFury''.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J6OlsTSxRc My favorite classes to play in D&D]]", Ben used to play his human Wizard - Doctor Solomon - as the TeamDad of the group who [[CoolOldGuy took care of the youngsters]] ... until he realized he was the youngest person in the group. [[note]]The elf was 256 years old, the halfling was 98 years old, and he was 76 years old[[/note]].
* ResurrectiveImmortality:
** In the holiday one off, the players fight against a cat monster that won't stay dead.
** The BigBad Malikar of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM96lCbhC3o this story]] has a variant of this. He is reborn after he dies, although with each death he becomes crazier. The players have to track down an artifact that can kill him permanently by destroying his soul.
* {{Retcon}}: Ben retconned the Melikar campaign because his players wanted to reprise their roles in that group.Instead of growing old and fathering a son, the Gnome Monk Michele became a homeless drug addict. Additionally, instead of spending the rest of their lives in the other dimensions, the party is only separated for two years before being kidnapped by a devil and escaping back to the moral realm.
* RidiculouslyAverageGuy: Chadwick Strongpants is feared by all villains. We never really know the reason, since he's completely average, but the criminals end up felling themselves with friendly fire out of fear of him. The other players suggested that he might be so aggressively normal that [[AntiMagic reality became more average around him]].
** Downplayed with Ben's favorite character/class, Human Fighter. While fighters are definitely not average in-universe, they are essentially normal people without magic in a universe where pretty much everyone else has some supernatural powers (Fighters have the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Archer subclasses, and can take feats to gain magic, but their spell casting pales in comparison to even half-casters like Ranger or Paladin). They're also the most common character/race combination on [=D&DBeyond=].
* RocksFallEveryoneDies:
** Ben hasn't done this so far, but he briefly fantasizes about doing it in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdCdQJxBDA "The first time I ran a D&D game"]] when one of the players correctly guesses all of his plot twists.
** In an early video, an adventuring party is wiped out by being [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus suddenly stepped on by a giant foot from nowhere]].
* TheRoleplayer: Ben is a combination of the roleplayer and TheLoonie, because he loves to roleplay as characters who are funny. He will often play the most ridiculous character that the game master will allow. Unlike many loonies he does not do random things to disrupt the game. Everything he does is something that would make sense for his character to do. His characters have included detectives without any actually investigation skills, a secretly evil high school girl, a guy with levels in every character class because he keeps getting kicked out of groups due to his annoying voice, and a DumbMuscle warrior who thinks that he can use magic by making weird noise.
* RuleAbidingRebel: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXBy8E_GOtI The GM Took Away My Addiction Because It Was Breaking His Game]]", despite playing a human smuggler Ben never did anything illegal. The others often made fun of him, joking that if the Empire arrested them they'd let him go for having a clean record.
* RuleOfCool: Ben believes this is the reason the GM from "Black Market Blues" integrated a black market into his story, despite being a blatant case of ArtisticLicenseEconomics. He believes that the GM added a black market because it added a sense of allure and intrigue to the plot, and didn't focus on making sure it made sense in the context of the story. Ben eventually concluded that the town was doing this in-universe.
* RulesLawyer: Discussed. Ben makes a point to differentiate between Rules Lawyers and what he calls Rules Traditionalist. Rules Traditionalists generally just wants everyone to have fun, and thinks the rules are the best way to do that. Rules Lawyers, on the other hand, are not interested in following the rules. They're interested in ''exploiting'' the rules.
* RunningGag: Ever since an encounter during a ''Tomb of Annihilation'' run with an aboleth with a split personality that happened to meet the party face-to-face with the friendly personality, Ben always ends up depicting aboleths as [[AdorableAbomination Adorable Abominations]].
** Whenever a player or DM tries to trick the other players or monsters (to varying degrees of success), he says "It was a ''[[LargeHam DECEPTION!]]''
* SayMyName: When Ben played ''D&D'' for the first time, the party was fighting the necromancer Malrath, and Ben made cookies when it wasn't his turn. They got a bit burned.
-->'''Ben:''' MALRAAAAATH!!!!
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Occurs on occasion.
** Ben's party at one point goes to a town where a Drow couple is murdering humans (which Ben's character is). Cut to Ben packing up his bags and the party leaving right away. They [[ChangedMyMindKid come back three sessions later and defeat the drow couple]], but only because [[{{Railroading}} they needed to so the plot could advance]].
** At the start of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1_lLxaH0fo "Dungeon Bebop: 12 Cartoon D&D Sketches"]], Ben's party has this reaction when they walk into a room and are greeted by a fire monster.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0HA0FtHUOs "The Xanathar Guild"]], at one point the party opens a door while searching through the guild and finds the mind-flayer Nihiloor inside. They immediately close the door, declare that they will never go in that room, and leave without fighting him. This actually makes Ben cry because there was a lot of block text he wouldn't get to read to them.
** In "Detective Clancy", Ben lost the first Rogue character he played as when he entered a room ahead of the rest of the party, and a white dragon suddenly appeared, so the rest of the party slammed the door shut and ran, leaving him to be killed by the dragon.
** In "DM.exe has crashed!" one of the players asks Ben for a blank character sheet after the samurai gets into a stand-off with several cops. The player had been previously playing as a baron, but the samurai who got in trouble was part of the same house, and thus wore his family's insignia during the stand-off. This leads to the baron's house getting swept up in controversy and the samurai being dishonored, which is what led the player to decide to make a new character and abandon his baron character.
* SeenItAll: During the covenant campaign, the players are exploring a literal dungeon, as in a place where prisoners are kept when suddenly a prisoner tells them that he is actually the warlord that have been hunting for and that somebody switched bodies with him and threw him in his own dungeon. The players immediately believe him because of all the crazy stuff and betrayals they have already gone through.
* SelfDeprecation:
** Pretty much OncePerEpisode, usually based on either his [[FailOSuckyName failure to name stuff ahead of time]], or other peoples' drawing compared to his. It's especially notable in regards to his role in most groups, where he makes it out to sound like the other players are always out to get his character (with him justifying it by showing that his characters are annoying in-universe) yet if you [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn9CY6Ob1uM&list=PLz3eRfQfVDYM-QrDH7vc94t-aCX2Yk29V&index=3&t=0s seen the videos of the sessions he's played in]], most of the other players usually are quite entertained by his characters antics.
** Even his avatar is a case, being drawn notably rather portly while his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuUlqk-S6EM real-life self]] is rather skinny.
* ShoutOut:
** To the official 5th edition D&D. sourcebooks and adventures:
*** His Xanathar Guild video is about ''Waterdeep: Dragon Heist''.
*** Last Orders at the Yawning Portal takes place in Undermountain, a dungeon described in ''Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage'', and features an NPC from ''Dragon Heist''.
*** His [[TabletopGame/TombOfHorrors Tomb of Annihilation]] videos are about ''Tomb of Annihilation''.
*** In the second Malikar video, he uses the Ogre Howdah, an enemy from ''Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes''. The creature in the Spires of Lynn also carries some resemblance to the Allip, an undead from the same book.
*** The two ''Hero of Parnast'' videos are based on two Adventurer's League modules called ''Uninvited Guests'' and ''Bad Business in Parnast''
** The sentient dreamlands otter in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sufhijLw5zc the WORST solutions]] is named [[Disney/{{Zootopia}} Otterton]].
* SignificantAnagram: "''[[LateToTheRealization Tar'hogar! Garathor! Tar'hogar!]]''"[[note]]"Tar'hogar" is an anagram for "Garathor". The party's benefactor and the villain that's been stalking them are one and the same.[[/note]]
* SpoofAesop:
** The episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIMG_oaQMME "Captain Morgan || Cocaine solves all problems"]] ends with one.
--->'''Ben:''' So remember kids: Do drugs! They make your problems go away!
** The "Everyone has to die now" video ends with "If you hit your head against a wall long enough, eventually it will come crumbling down."
* SoleSurvivor: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I&t=80s "D&D Story: PEE IN MY BUCKET! The Adventurer's League Game"]], Ben and his party (three other players) went into the forest to rescue twelve crewmen of a crashed airship. Ben is the only one who made it back to the city alive; ten of the crewmen fell to their deaths trying to get to the ground, and neither the last two nor the three other players in Ben's party survived the eighteen day march back to civilization.
* SoundOfNoDamage: In a few videos ben uses the onomatopoeia "tink" for when weapons do no damage.
* SpoiledBrat: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAAFidggBXM Power Balance Issues]], he talks about a player one of his friends DM'ed for. The guy complained until the DM couldn't take it anymore, and just gave him all he wanted, and of course, that just made him complain more.
* SpringtimeForHitler: In a group adventurers league GM for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6H7Gxc7aI&lc=z23extvwbsudhp2ucacdp43aovvjicpv1czmnlrz20hw03c010c.1569866017807789 last orders at the yawning portal]], the head GM decided to make the session a contest by having the [=PCs=] get points for every clue the table uncovers, and the table with the most points at the end of the session wins. Ben didn't like the idea of 'competitive [=DnD=]' so he decided to intentionally go very slow with his table and even side detour for the sake of making sure his table came in last in protest. [[spoiler: Low and behold, his table didn't just win, it won in a ''near CurbStompBattle!'']]
* StupidGood: No other way to describe the baby seals who guarded Malikar.
* SubbingForSanta: Ben speculates that he wouldn't do a good job if he was in this position; he imagines himself giving a boy half a burrito as a present (half of which he ate on the way), calling the boy the wrong name, and then criticizing a girl for not being materialistic enough.
* SuperWindowJump: In the Malikar storyline, the party ends up doing one after setting a dynamite trap for Orcs and trapping themselves on the second floor with said trap.
* SpaceBase: In one game that Ben was GM'ing the used a temple to transport themselves to a city on the Moon, well before Ben intended for them to do so. [[DidntThinkThisThrough He didn't write in]] [[YouCantGoHomeAgain a way for them to get back]].
* SpeakIllOfTheDead: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFiISQJDxW8 D&D Story Animated: Breaking Into The Castle]]", the [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot Rogue Samurai Ninja]] in the party fell down a flight of stairs in front of some guards. He [[PlayingPossum played dead]] to avoid getting hurt by the guards, but the rest of the party only hears the guards say that he must be dead. While the rest of the party is crying and frowning, [[BirdPeople Flynn]] said that he "was kinda a jerk".
* SplitPersonality: The aboleth in the Tomb of Annihilation Ben was running. It spent the entire floor telepathically taunting the players the entire time. By the time they get there they see its other side, Whimsy, a child-like and sweet aboleth that gives them free treasure, and the players opt to leave it there. When Ben apologies for the AntiClimax, the players comment at least it was that way instead of the other, because they would have horribly died if they saw his good personality through telepathy only to find the monster when they got there.
* StrangerBehindTheMask: After the W.O.R.S.T. party suspected Ottie Otterton of being an evil mastermind (for no discernible reason), Ben reveals the mastermind behind the magic-draining evil fortress of [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Fantasy North Korea]]--with Ottie's silhouette at first--to be...Some Other Guy! That none of the party knew!
* {{Swashbuckler}}: Antonio de Castilian Maximiliano, the self-proclaimed finest Goblin Swordsman in all the land! He lives up to his boast too!
* SweetSeal: The upper most levels of Mount Celestia are populated entirely by baby harp seals because of their IncorruptiblePurePureness. They make [[TheGuardsMustBeCrazy terrible guards]] but somehow they are able to keep [[BigBad Malikar]] imprisoned there anyway.
* TagalongKid: Wallace, the Hero of Parnast. The player characters immediately hated Wallace due to his uselessness but the module had no option to refused to take him along and the players hated him even more after [[spoiler:[[DudeWheresMyRespect his hometown gave him all of the credit for what the players did and completely ignored them]].]]
* TakeThat: Ben was less than impressed with the proscribed method of getting into the Fane of the Night Serpent[[note]]Surrendering to the cult and giving up all their weapons and items to become slaves[[/note]].
* TakingYouWithMe: The ChaoticStupid samurai character threatens to do this by detonating all of his grenades during his confrontation with the police, but he gets tackled before he can do it.
* TalkingWeapon: In the Malikar campaign, the players collected way too many talking weapons. These include a defective sword of warning that keeps saying "IWarnedYou" whenever any bad happens no matter how small, a [[BladeOnAStick glaive]] named Barathorne that talks too much, a sword of ice and fire named Greg, and the evil Mournblade.
* {{Technophobia}}: In a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1jAfNUOaT4 "Tabletop RPG Story: The WORST Detective In the World! From Dresden Files RPG"]], one of the player characters is a monk who is afraid of modern technology. [[AndIMustScream The others make him drive the car]].
* TeensAreMonsters: Trixie Starbright.
-->'''GM:''' Ummm, Ben? I don't think you're playing an... average high school girl like you'd said.
-->'''Ben:''' You.... didn't go to the same high school that I went to, did you?
* ThatOnePuzzle: In "Terror of the Deep" Ben talks in-universe about how the Gears of Hate puzzle from Tomb of Annihilation was so difficult that even as the DM running the game it was confusing to him. The puzzle consisted of a series of rooms that could rotate on gears connected to each other. Ben resorted to making map tiles he could rotate to run the puzzle. Even with this aid, he still went into the game not knowing how to solve it, hoping that his players could figure it out.
* ThatWasntARequest: When a group of players enter a dream world and run into a sharply dressed otter man, they immediately decide they are going to take him home with them to the real world, whether he wants it or not. A player almost says the name of this trope when he protests.
* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: Ben likes to give quests like "Helping poor little Timmy find his red wagon", "matching a dress that goes with the noble lady's hair", or "'''STOPPING ZALTHADAR THE GOD EATER FROM CONSUMING OUR WORLD AND ENDING ALL OF EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT!'''"
** In the Cocaine video, he talks about a game he ran with Dingo from ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'', Jess from [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3HyvfrwscLKtE_NmOQfWGw JessJackDaws]] and Logan.
-->... He's cool.
* ThisIsGonnaSuck: Ben says this in the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6H7Gxc7aI Last Orders at the Yawning Portal Tavern]]'' video when he finds out that the D&D Epic is going to be competitive, with each table scoring points for completing parts of the story, and thinking that this would cause tables to go though the game too quickly without roleplaying for the sake of getting the most points.
* TimeTravel: At one point a dwarf in one of the parties assumes they traveled back in time. [[WrongGenreSavvy They didn't]]. They traveled [[SpaceBase to the Moon]].
* TooDumbToLive: As mentioned below, the player in a ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' campaign proved to be this, as his method of trying to flush out a monster was to set an entire ''room'' on fire. Including the door. ''Without leaving the room''. He had previously used dynamite to collapse a cave, and pulled the same idiocy - standing ''in'' the cave he intended to collapse while setting off the dynamite.
** The Tiefling Sorcerer cast Darkness during a fight. While this would be a humble mistake, he apparently had a habit of using spells only had vague idea about. ''Darkness'', at the best of times, causes everyone to be on equally bad footing, but since dragons have blindsight, it doesn't need sight to fight, something the players do. Darkness is really only useful to cover escapes, and since they were on a ship, there wasn't anywhere to escape to.
* TotalPartyKill: Occurs in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVHyY4SVNc0 RPG STORY TIME! Deadlands: For A Few Idiots More]]" and in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgxhNwPEJUA Everyone died in Call Of Cthulhu.]]" In both instances Ben is the GM, and the people playing were TooDumbToLive.
* TooManyHalves: Ben describes a chimera as "half goat, half lion, half red dragon."
* TownWithADarkSecret: In the holiday one off with ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' and Zee Bashew, the players are clerics of Pelor who are invited to a festival to Pelor, but for the last three years people have been mysteriously disappearing on the night of the festival. [[spoiler: They were shrunk down to the size of mice to be sacrificed to an immortal cat monster, and the players are the latest victims.]]
* TwoHeadedCoin: One of the ten items an adventurer should always carry with them according to T the Writer in his channel invasion of Puffin Forest.
* UnfortunateNames: Originally intentional, though they came to regret it. The group that took down Malikar was named the Turtle F*ckers. This becomes a problem when the angels wants to praise them from the heights of Mount Celestia, but no one wants to say the name out loud.
** Ben makes a correction in a later video that the name was actually Turtle Molesters and that he didn't mean for the video to sound like he was saying Fuckers.
* UnknownRival: Done completely by mistake in his Renaissance-ish D&D game. He'd so carefully woven the villain and his motives into the background of events that it wasn't until the big reveal at the end that he realized the players had never met him or heard his name. Even in the video describing it he's only referred to as "another guy".
* VaguenessIsComing: The defective Sword of Warning starts every day by saying that something bad ''might'' happen. Whenever something bad happens, it says "I warned you."
* VerbalBackspace: Prospector Jenkins.
-->'''Jenkins:''' Prospector Jenkins, grim servant of death.\\
'''NPC:''' Huh?\\
'''Jenkins:''' Pro-prospector Jenkins!
* VillainBeatingArtifact: Because [[EvilWeapon the Mournblade]] has soul-destroying properties, it is the only weapon capable of interfering with Malikar's ResurrectiveImmortality.
* VoiceChangeling: Disguising his voice is one of the useful skills that Detective Clancy has. At one point, he uses this skill to interrogate a prisoner by making them think he is beating up a woman when he doesn't talk.
* VomitIndiscretionShot: In one game the entire party fails its constitution roll and vomits when they enter a sewer.
* WellDoneSonGuy: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6H7Gxc7aI "Last Orders at the Yawning Portal Tavern"]], the party bard reveals that his father was one of these right before beginning a dance-off against TheFairFolk. He loses, and his father's ghost appears just to belittle him.
-->'''Bard's Father's Ghost:''' Son, you're a disappointment to the family. And you always will be.
* WhatDidIDoLastNight: Due to unlucky dice rolls, Aligaros keeps waking up in jail with no memory of what he did when he drinks.
* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Ben's Gautor accent sounds like a vague mix of Russian and German.
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: Captain Morgan's solution to every problem is cocaine. It usually works.
* WhoWouldBeStupidEnough: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frcxo_3x6OY In this video,]] when the dungeon masters are discussing the Obelisk Encounter, they say that it is really unlikely that anybody would try to push the obelisk over, releasing the powerful monster inside. Naturally, Ben's table ends up being the one to do it.
* WordSaladTitle: The title of the channel doesn't seem to have anything to do with what his videos are about.
* WoundedGazelleGambit:
** Trixie Starbright throws herself down some stairs and ''breaks her own arm'' to cover for her friends returning to the boys' dorm, but describes her "attacker" with features shared by her rival for Class President.
** Ben does this again with his Detective Clancy character, who happens to be disguised as Trixie Starbright, when he is interrogating a prisoner. Since the prisoner is blindfolded, Ben uses his character's voice mimicry ability to fake beating up himself if the prisoner doesn't talk, and it works.
--->'''Trixie:''' It's hard to think anyone would do that! I just-- [[BlatantLies I don't want to go spreading rumors or anything]].
* WrongGenreSavvy: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWwHKYPSjc D&D Story: The Hero of Parnast]]", when a rural village leader asks the party to hunt game for a feast, the party's tiefling automatically assumes the village is a CannibalClan.
* YouMeddlingKids: this line (followed by listing all the weird pets the party had collected) is used by the villain in ''The Hero of Parnast Part 2'' and ''Too Many Pets''
* YouDontLookLikeYou: Ben is a tall, skinny, black-haired guy. But for some reason, he uses an avatar that's short, fat, and brown-haired.
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