Your Funniest Tabletop Story

Kinda figured it sounded familiar. But I'm not about to kick him for a reference or something - he was a fun fellow and I think that was what counted.

So my friends and I are playing this very loose tabletop rpg that another friend came up with that is informal in every sense of the word. No initial character stats, GM makes shit up as she goes along, there’s no turn order outside of combat, and we can literally be whatever we feel like being. We still roll for things like perception, speed, strength, etc.

Anyway, my friend’s character is trying to do one of the simplest things possible: look up at the sky to find a particular constellation. Unfortunately, my friend kept getting hilariously low rolls (as in, less than 5) and kept looking at the ground instead, to the point where their character, as the GM put it, was “lying facedown and screaming into the dirt.” I finally broke the loop by having my character put their character on his shoulders. All of this, just to look at the fucking sky.

Fucking hilarious man. Kind of reminds me of one part in my own campaign where a character managed to epic fail at chopping up wood. Several fails resulted in the character smashing the flat of the axe on the wood.

Ratman player laughs his ass off in response.

Just today the guy playing the Rat assembled quite the...thing. Picture if you will a huge antiquated gatling gun that shoots yellow lasers...operated by a mechanism identical to an old steel organ. The faster he turns the lever, the faster the gatling gun fires...and the music is also dreadful.

That reminds me of Critical Role's Bunions and Flagons one-shot where Grog was pretty much making Vax roll for everything, including standing up and facing in the same directions as Vex and the others, which required a ton of Dexterity checks.

"You don't see anything because you're staring at the wall like a nerd."

That reminds me of a moment in an otherwise serious campaign:

We were all trying to travel overland in a foreign country but we kept botching our navigation rolls. 6s, 7s, and 2s across the board. After we finally roll higher than a 10 we find out we've been going the complete opposite direction of where we were trying to go, and forgot we had a map the whole time.

So we break out the map and roll a 13, a 17, a 19...and a 1. Now, the thing about navigation rolls is that you only roll once per in-game hour at most and the DM house rules that in any situation that requires teamwork you go with the lowest result of everyone who is helping if it makes sense. So in an hour's time, you want to know how the DM justified that one? The guy who rolled a 1 pulled out the wrong map. The house rule is questionable but we go with it sometimes because it's funny sometimes.

So two things from my very first Pathfinder (and DND-esque game in general) session ever:

1. We came across a goblin towards the beginning who said "What's the password?" I answered "what's" and he let us through.
2. I had to leave the room for a few minutes to go to the bathroom or something. (Can't remember the specifics, this was like 4 years ago.) While I'm away, the other players were playing for me as we were exploring the area we were in. My character (a halfing Sorcerer) finds a shield and wants to keep it, so they roll Stealth (we were sneaking around). They roll poorly and I make a stupid amount of noise as I drag it around in hostile territory. The weird thing about this is that it's part of my long list of Never Live It Down moments in my group despite being the only one that wasn't my fault.

edited 23rd Dec '17 7:36:43 PM by Karxrida

We're playing Starfinder. Everyone else in the group has played these sorts of games before, but I'm completely new to this. I say this because I'm gonna forget names of things here.

Our party was on an abandoned ship that had sent out a distress call, trying to figure out what happened there. We ended up in a fight with...a big plant cat thing (I forget the name, we've been calling it Kirby McPlantface) that, due to convoluted circumstances, turned into "the most pathetic battle ever". The fight started with one of our party accidentally punching another one in the face, and it went downhill from there. Our strongest guy was trying and failing to fight off its vines, my character was searching a body nearby and trying not to get noticed, the guy who got punched was throwing a temper tantrum in the corner, and our other strongest guy was too busy vomiting to shoot straight.

We are truly a well-oiled machine.

I recently played a high-level Oracle in Pathfinder (spontaneous divine caster). I was unfamiliar with my spells (never having played a divine caster, or any spellcaster of that level in any D&D-like system), and didn't know the party well (because we were playing a one-shot).

In the first battle, I cast Holy Word ^note an area-of-effect spell that affects every non-good creature within range. The rest of the party ^note mostly neutral on the good/evil axis was not impressed.

I dunno, that seems pretty in-character for the average Oracle to me. They usually aren't to friendly or helpful to ANYONE.

I don't see why that would be a commonality to Oracles, regardless of mystery or anything else.

I feel like that's more descriptive of Inquisitiors than Oracles.

Also, at least you weren't like my Oracle who ended up killing more players than the DM. On accident. Too add insult to injury, I was built as a heal bot with the Healing Mystery.

edited 11th Jan '18 3:27:29 AM by Karxrida

Well, I didn't use another area spell after that.

I´m new to p&p games, but my group recently started an Aborea campaign. The first boss we met was a ghost and my character couldn´t withstand the horror, so he ran away and waited outside the dungeon, while hugging a squirrel for moral support (wich he tamed specificly for that purpose). But the part i actually find funny is when we played the next round a week later my character introduced himself as the "slayer of the shade of the bloodrocks". Since the other players didn´t notice fast enough and i won my luck roll, now everyone in-story thinks my character destroyed that ghost all alone and the other players are angry at me^^

We're currently finishing up Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, but I remember back during a... shall we say, demon-heavy segment about mid-campaign, we are offered the ability to summon demons by a powerful ally to help us if needed. Our DM, in-character as our unholy "friend" making us the offer, symbolizes the magic gem we need to summon help by putting a red d20 in the middle of the table. One of the players who is of the right alignment to consider using it picks it up and puts it by his side without thinking about it.

A few minutes later, the player's adorable little two-year old son comes in the room and sees the red shiny thing by his dad. He picks it up to look at it, resulting in the following sentence being uttered as his father takes it away.

"No, honey, you can't play with that. I need it to summon demons."

There is a pause before we all crack up realizing what our friend had casually said to his toddler without thinking about it. Considering one of his son's first words was "dice," I'm sure he just took it in stride.

edited 20th Apr '18 10:28:22 PM by Doryna

I don't recall coming across that. Then again, anyone trying to summon demons would have faced an angry Barbarian (my character).

We have a DM who likes to give out worthless magical items. He describes them as "Awesome!" but when we finally get them, they turn out to be completely useless, as far as game stats go.

Case in point: One player wanted a magical shield. So he got one. But the magical shield he got turned out to be a "Shield of Expression." It was a shield with a face engraved upon it that would express various emotions, without granting an extra bonus to AC or having any other sort of defensive magic beyond that of a normal shield.

The player griped: "Great, I've got a giant emoji!"

Another player received a magical helmet. Again, it doesn't grant any combat or defense bonuses, nor does it have any other magical powers. All it does is turn the wearer's eyes glowing red.

edited 24th Apr '18 4:06:57 PM by pwiegle

That helmet could be legit useful with a good Bluff and some creativity.

There's a lot of options in WotR apparently. Our DM takes great pleasure in telling us after each module what we missed if it's not too spoiler-iffic. Interestingly, the character who took the die (an arcanist) had gone from lawful good to true neutral not much before. My character (a monk) and our resident paladin were especially worried about them after that...

For the record, when his son was much younger, I also have a picture of him asleep in his baby carrier with a stuffed Cthulhu on his head. Clearly, they are raising this child right

edited 24th Apr '18 10:16:40 PM by Doryna

Actually that sound like a pretty good idea, to many RPG stick to give their weapon more power to hit that it feel samey after a while, they a moments when a good cosmetic award feel good.

@pwiegle The rules specify that a magical weapon, shield or armor with a special ability needs to also have an enhancement bonus of at least +1 (note that it needs to be masterwork to be enchanted in the first place). So useless items like you describe are against the rules (though I get that a +1 item just doesn't cut it at high level).

@1796 Well, yes, but a few things to keep in mind.

First and foremost, Rule 0 applies.

Second, you can define those as cosmetic effects instead of special effects (which are pretty strictly defined in the rules anyhow - we all know the tables).

Third, if you take a quick walk to the fridge, it makes sense. Why would you need to pop a defensive bonus on something just to make it have what is essentially an illusion effect active?

In Shadowrun, getting into Manhattan is a bureaucratic headache. Getting around is even worse because it's become a patchwork of jurisdictions. The best way to get in for a shadowrunner is through the Terminal district, which is the closest equivalent to the Barrens. Our team goes in via the Hudson River, stealing a small boat every time. We also make sure to put it back when we leave; we're professionals, after all. We're also bonkers, so we've decided that we steal the same boat every time. We imagine that the guy who owns it has gotten used to this.

Do you at least top off the fuel tank? Because one of these times you're going to get halfway to your destination and run out of gas.

Of course we refuel it. It's a small overall expense and we like to think that the guy isn't siccing the cops on us because we take care of his boat.