The first one I can think of is when a Paladin (hey Wes!) in a new game I was running mistook a Cockatrice for a Basilisk. What's the big difference, you ask? Well, I already wrote about the hilarious results on my old blog back in the day, so I won't retread old ground. You can check it out here. Serious lulz.
I guess I'm going to go with a game I was running where the players were running an espionage/sabotage mission, each in separate area of a "dungeon" (they were actually inside a giant mechanical golem, but...nevermind that), and a player in my game, Valgyar the Monk, who was invisible, flying, and Bull Strength'd, decided he'd sneak/float up to a Minotaur that was standing at the edge of a ledge and push him off in a surprise attack. He could've just snuck by him, but the temptation was too great. I added up the ridiculous bonuses he had and realized it was like a +16 for a DC 15 attempt (3e rules). So I smirkingly said: "Sure, roll anything but a 1." (on a d20) However, this is the same player who played Marcass (the Carcass) all those years ago. Naturally, he rolled a 1. The Minotaur snatched him out of the air (canceling his invisibility) and beat the hell out of him. Oh, and all the alarms went off, alerting all the guardian monsters and ruining the sabotage attempt, and the other players had to rush through traps to get to him before he died (again). It was a ridiculous (and incredibly unlikely) failure that led to the entire carefully-crafted sabotage plan by the players to end up being a 3-hour straight up survival brawl (and near TPK) inside a giant metal golem/dungeon.
2 comments:
All of the ones I think of seemed really crazy at the time, but each time I try to write it out, it seems more slapstick, and not really "crazy".
I guess it was the time that Buster destroyed a bunch of crawling hands in a well, so he could reconstruct his friend's bones, That seemed pretty wild to me. We roleplayed the whole thing. Super fun.
I know. The whole 'crazy thing that's happened!' subject was not a great one, because as you said, things that seem 'crazy' to you just end up sounding slapstick when you tell the story. Basically even though the whole adventure I describe above got turned upside-down by one unnecessary die roll, it just sounds kinda *meh* when you write it out loud. I look forward to being done with these individual/specific "favorite PC/thing that's happened/dice/etc" ones are done and can get back to more general ones (favorite undead/edition/etc.).
The more general ones are more fun to write about because people can relate to them easily, and you don't have to put down a ton of background setting exposition just to set the scene. Like, you say "Otyugh" and people just know what you're talking about. Well, maybe not "people," more like "nerds" know what you're talking about, but that's good enough for me!
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