History WebVideo / CounterMonkey

** The "Botchamania" video features an entire ''TabletopGame/{{Spycraft}}'' party whose attempts to board a train resulted in two team members dying thanks to their rolling several {{Critical Failure}}s in succession. And this was even with Spoony trying to help them out by fudging things in their favor, giving them extra chances to succeed, etc.

* ExecutiveMeddling: [[invoked]] Spoony thinks this was in effect in the book for "The Apocalypse Stone". To summarize: A devil who's pissed off at the party sets it up so they enter a friendly-looking tavern and eat some pork buns (or rather, [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies LONG pork buns]]); however, the text encourages the DM to fudge things so the players don't actually eat them. The fudging doesn't make sense ([[VoodooShark and would actually make the players more suspicious]]) and completely contradicts the rest of the story (which has the devil leave a note for the players where he reveals the buns' "secret ingredient"), so Spoony figures an editor threw in the text without the original writer's knowledge because they didn't want to ''actually'' have the party members be tricked into cannibalism.

* ForWantOfANail: The eponymous "Leaping Wizards" encounter was supposed to have the full party of 6 with a Wizard, three MagicKnight GameBreaker Clerics, a Fighter and a Thief, ambushed by three Level 1 Wizards armed with quarterstaves and with Magic Missile as their one spell. Spoony changed the spells because he knew the encounter was a joke, and the party laughed when he had the Wizards attack them. But by simply changing their spells to Sleep, Charm Person and Ray of Enfeeblement, and getting some lucky rolls, two-thirds of the party is put to sleep, one of the two left is Charmed to attack his ally (and subsequently knocked unconscious to stop him), and the last one loses enough Strength that he becomes encumbered and is unable to run as two of the Wizards surround him and start beating him over the head while the third attacks the sleeping party members and the Charmed party member is unconscious. End result, two of the sleeping party members end up dying.[[invoked]]

** Comes up twice in rapid succession in the WebVideo/D20Live[=ConBravo=] 2012 vid. When Roo blasts the FinalBoss (who has previously been shot up with cannons and powder rifles) with a fireball, someone in the audience brings up "is there gunpowder in the wounds?" After a mass OhCrap from everyone pondering this possibility, it's decided that while there probably is, it wouldn't do much than just sting and crackle since it probably mostly burned up in the initial battle that caused those wounds.

** Spoony also says that the eponymous module in "The Apocalypse Stone" is this, considering how the campaign is apparently unbeatable and also not only destroys the entire setting its played in, but all other dimensions in it as well. In the video he describes an occasion he used it to kill some incredibly over-powered PlayerCharacters.

* GoodOldWays: Spoony's favorite edition of ''D&D'' ever was the second one. Many of his videos, particularly "3d6 in Order," make more sense when viewed as CultureClash between different editions. He even admits that {{Honest Rolls Character}}s don't really work in later editions of the game, before continuing to explain just how much any other method of character creation irks him.

* HonestRollsCharacter: Noah is a big proponent of these, saying that in the end, a character with truly random "3d6 in order" stats is much more fun to roleplay than one optimized through either the "4d6 drop low, assign at will" or point-buy system. He eventually made an entire video on the concept, appropriately titled "3d6 in Order." However, he ultimately admits that it doesn't really work for any version of ''D&D'' after Second Edition. [[GoodOldWays He still insists you're a cheater if you use any other system, though.]]

** The ''TabletopGame/LegendOfTheFiveRings'' group Noah played with in "They Duel. It's What They Do" certainly seems to qualify. They convinced Noah to join their ''[=L5R=]'' game, and he explained to them that he didn't know the cultural norms of Japan in general or Rokugan in specific. When his character commits some ''faux pas'' (wielding a katana despite not being a Samurai, and not knowing proper procedure for SacredHospitality), rather than explaining things, the Crane duelist used this as an opportunity to challenge Noah's shugenja to a duel. Really driving it home is the fact that even after he'd won the duel, the Crane player gleefully [[NoKillLikeOverkill kept rolling damage]]. It's unclear if they specifically set him up for the fall or simply saw an opportunity to screw with him, but regardless Noah's subsequent RageQuit from ''L5R'' is quite understandable.

* KillerGameMaster: Spoony laments that most of his sessions end with his players dying gruesomely. This is chalked up more to bad luck than evil intent, though Spoony has admitted that he's a "harsh" DM generally. However, this is due to him wanting the players to overcome a genuine challenge so they feel a sense of accomplishment for it. In a few stories Spoony averted this by actively trying to help the players when they were getting screwed either by atrociously bad luck ("Botchamania") or by one player going OffTheRails ("Vegan Steve & The Djinni of Jengai Fomogo").[[invoked]]

* MicDrop: Spoony doesn't like the resurrection mechanics or death saves in D&D [=5e=]. When he brings up that it's ostensibly to make the game faster, he brings up the rulebook for First Edition D&D, and reads from it: "When a character reaches zero hit points, the character is slain." He then drops the book and says "How's that for fast, motherfucker?"

* ThePowerOfRock: In "Tandem's Last Ride", [[SpoonyBard Tandem The Spoony]] sings an Music/IronMaiden song to break the CompellingVoice effect of [[Literature/AliceInWonderland the Caterpillar]].

--> "When I read the words 'Cyberpunk 2077', I ''squeed''. '''Nothing''' makes me squee!"

** "Circle Strafe" is a giant middle finger aimed at dragons fighting [[TooDumbToLive stupidly]], doing things like landing on the ground and directly engaging the six guys with [[{{BFS}} giant buster swords]] rather than staying at a distance and hammering them with breath weapons and spells. He specifically calls out "''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' not only for doing this, but for de-mystifying dragon battles, which he feels should be dramatic, epic, and FinalBoss-tier fights every time.
** During his review of D&D 5th Edition, Spoony spends a few minutes insulting the way later editions try to avert {{Permadeath}}, complete with a mocking, sniveling voice directed at the players who can't handle the idea of their character even coming close to dying.

* AnAesop: At its core, "Shadowrun: The Code" is basically a lecture on TheGoldenRule (which Noah calls [[TitleDrop "The Code"]]). He explains this using baseball as a metaphor: If a batter hits a home run and then smugly watches it go over the fence before running the bases, he's just blatantly disrespected the pitcher, and should understand that the pitcher is going to nail one of his teammates with a fastball as payback for the first batter being a prick. Likewise, the main story of the video is about a ''Shadowrun'' game that went OffTheRails because the players acted like violent sociopaths for no good reason, turning what should have been a routine robbery into a needless bloodbath. As payback, Noah sicced a nigh-unwinnable boss encounter on the players when they tried to escape, killing several of them and (one hopes) teaching the players a valuable lesson in the process.

* TheMoralSubstitute: "Roll for Initiative, Jesus!" has Spoony examining a Christian-themed UsefulNotes/D20System game. He notes that it largely sticks to Old Testament figures like Moses and avoids statting up Jesus, presumably because, as he jokes, the average adventuring party [[LordBritishPostulate would try their luck at killing him just to see if they could]].

* BleachedUnderpants: In "The Dirtiest Book in the Game" (discussing the Book of Erotic Fantasy), Spoony points out that while the list of adventure hooks all have something to do with sex, they're fairly mature and serious[[note]]except maybe for the one where a sorcerer hires the party to retrieve his stolen pleasure golem, which Spoony says could make for a good comedy plot[[/note]] and not at all explicitly pornographic, and thus could be easily be used in a "vanilla" campaign.