This page is a collection of funny things that have happened in role playing campaign I've been in over the years or that friends of mine have told me about.  They're really only of interest to me and those others involved but maybe other people will find them funny as well.

AD&D - Fantasy

This is something that happened in a campaign a friend of mine was in.  I did not personally experience it.   Somehow this party ran into the god Thor and my friend managed to insult Thor.   Thor threatened him and my friend not liking the tone in his voice told him to. "Blow it out your magic hammer, Thor."  At this point Thor took his magic hammer and hit every other character.  Unfortunately for the sake of just desserts this missed my friend but devastated the rest of the high-level party.  This was the same smart-ass who insulted the demon in Stormbringer.

Another incident that occurred in a campaign my friends were in was the creation of the muleatov.  A wizard had a mule which he loaded up with oil flasks.  This mule came in handy when they were fighting a dragon who tried to flame the poor mule.  Kaboom, no more mule, no more dragon.  At least that's how I remember it being told to me.

Call of Cthulhu - Horror

The party was wandering around inside a deserted mansion when one of the players opened a closet door.  On the other side of the door was a 10 gauge shotgun trap.  Boom!  Near maximum damage.  Dead, dead character.  One of the other players ran over immediately and said that he was looting the corpse.  I looked more closely at the map on which the miniatures had been placed and noticed that the looting character was the one who had actually opened the booby-trapped door.  I corrected my mistake saying, "Oops, looks like you're the corpse and the formerly dead guy is doing the looting".  Turnabout is fair play.

Champions - Superheroes game

This was in the early eighties when I was still in my late teens or early twenties and a friend was running a Champions campaign.  The campaign had some pretty good characters and one player who was a wiz at squeezing any set of rules he was exposed to until they squeaked.  (That wasn't me).  He used the rules to create characters with super-powerful abilities like the one who had a dagger with a massive killing attack that only worked in complete darkness...but who had another item that created a pool of complete darkness.  What did I come up with?  The Battering Ram and Tentacular.  The Battering Ram as his name suggested could run fast and smash into things.  Not too bad.  Unfortunately he also had an arch-enemy and a herd of dependent sheep.  One mission the party was supposed to be assaulting this remote Arctic base surrounded by a minefield.  Who has to show up due to a GM dice roll?  The Cattleman, Battering Ram's arch-nemesis.  He shows up in a helicopter and flies around flinging sheep out into the minefield meanwhile taunting Battering Ram over a loudspeaker while the Battering Ram, who can't fly of course is rendered helpless with rage at this act.

My other memorable character was Tentacular.  Tentacular had four fairly powerful abilities that should have made him an asset to any team.  Unfortunately each attack had limited daily uses, only activated on a 11 or less on a 3D6 roll and (wait for it) were completely random.  That's how you can afford four powerful attacks in one starting character.  So he could flash, entangle, energy blast or use a HTH killing blow attack but he couldn't choose which one to use.  Which led to spectacles like Tentacular trying to knock down a door and rolling flash over and over again.  Not a great character.  But for a blast of nostalgia you can  view the actual character sheet including backstory for Tentacular circa 1982 or so right here.  Note the classy typewritten character sheet.  You don't get that with these modern systems!

Dragonquest - Fantasy

A fun, but flawed system.  I played a long sequence of warriors wearing half plate and armed with hand and a half swords who died in the first scenario.  Finally I got one who lived long enough to gain some notoriety.   (This was a character with a Will of 5 who got scared by oxen, which in the system were technically ugly enough to cause Willpower rolls.  I ran screaming from one once...)  I was gifted with a magical banner that made my character more powerful and we were hot in battle with a powerful foe when another player said, "Make your death curse, Oliver."  "Huh?", I eloquently replied.  At which point he dashed the two components of universal solvent, something borrowed from The Fantasy Trip, to the ground which disintegrated everything in a two hex radius, including of course myself, my horse and the enemy.  But not the banner.  Later that character was brought back through powerful magic and was rendered ugly enough by himself to scare people.  (He got some really ugly demonic armour..)  This was the same character who got the ability to gain  con points, stats points and healing from drinking the blood of friends, enemies and innocents respectively.  I only killed and drained one character though and he was retiring the character anyway!  He still hasn't forgiven me.

This same campaign saw an ugly incident of wish fulfillment.  One of the players was playing a giant character and during a battle he attempted to trample an enemy who was also being fought by another character.  The player for the giant rolled a fumble and the other players all chanted, "Hit nearest friend!", which he obligingly did.  Then he rolled for the hit and got a critical!  Then we all chanted for the worst possible result "Crush hip" which he obligingly rolled.  Wham!  Nice bunch of friends, eh?

The same player had a different character in a different scenario where we were once again crawling around underground.  A stealthy character was crawling along the ceiling of the same cavern when through some mischance he dropped his belt pouch.  He yelled "Look out below" and the character on the ground tried to catch the pouch.  He didn't unfortunately (or maybe he did) but either way the two parts of the universal solvent in the pouch got mixed together when the vials broke and poof!

Another amusing incident from that campaign was when we were searching for a treasure that we had heard was the weight of a small boy.  Well we were wandering around underground again and discovered a small cork channel market.   We took it with us and then someone voiced out loud, "The weight of a small buoy?" and we all leaped on the poor thing and tore it to shreds.  Of course the DM was rolling around on the floor laughing at us and was probably very glad we didn't run across a small lad wandering around underground.  Who knew homophones were so dangerous?

Paranoia - Sci-Fi/Humour

When I first started running Paranoia all the players were more or less completely ignorant of how the system worked.  One of the players had gotten ahold of some hand grenades which he was using on his foes.  I was doing all the rolling so they weren't really aware of the damage done.  But all they could tell was that the grenades weren't doing much PLUS it was hard to hit anyone with them.   So what did one player do?  He ran up to his opponent (a robot I believe) with a grenade in each hand, pulled both pins somehow and held both grenades up against the robot.  That's when I finally rolled decently.  Bye-bye robot and character.

Powers and Perils - Fantasy

An inherently silly system, but fun.  I still get warm feelings thinking about the party of ubermensch straight out of Hitler's wet dreams wandering around the countryside with their wagon full of cheese.  (Which they needed to feed themselves since it possessed the best weight-food value rating and they ate like elephants).  There was one puny little character that didn't have supernatural physical stats who was normal sized.  There was the fight with the pack of lions where the lion cub got around behind the uber-shaman and hit him.  If we'd been using the rules correctly he would have been killed automatically.  Fortunately for sense's sake we misread the rules and let him live.

The other really amusing thing that happened was when the NPC daughter of the Greek Emperor (I think that's what she was) was stuck in an elevator with that same shaman.  This was the elevator that consisted of an open basket within a huge cave.  Some goblins then cut the rope which let them fall.   They fell hundreds of feet and the shaman managed to shape change into a bird.   The daughter tried to do the same but failed miserably and hit the ground going at terminal velocity.  Fortunately she was one of these uberpeople too so she wasn't killed.  Just knocked unconscious.  Unfortunately her chain armour it wasn't as tough as her and disintegrated on contact.  Again, it turned out that I'd misread that rule and she should have been killed.  It was more interesting the other way though. 

Rosie's Cantina - Old West

Rosie's Canteen was a glorious free form roleplaying system set around the eponymous canteen set in the Old West.  It was something a friend of mine did at our old con in Winnipeg, WinGames.  A person liked by few was playing a gun runner who had a wagon full of dynamite.  A clumsy character in a second story window overlooking the wagon was trying to attack someone else with a stick of dynamite.  The character (it might have been played by me but that was a long time ago) tried to throw the lit stick of dynamite at the enemy in the room but fumbled his throw.  Random rolls for direction and distance, oops right out the window down onto the wagon.  Kaboom!   No more gun runner.

Rune Quest - Fantasy

1) The RQ3 party I was running found the old channel marker buried in the mud near Corflu in the long scenario from the River of Cradles book. They hauled the glowing, floating orb back to Pavis where they paid the local Lhankor Mhy's a lot of money to get it analysed magically. The result of the test (which of course was to reveal two magic properties)? "It floats and it glows!" The players in that campaign still bring that one up. What happened to the orb? It's the proud showpiece of the Zola Fel temple in Pavis which offered to store it for them.

2) That same party recovered some crystals from a broo treasure trove and played Russian roulette trying to attune the crystals.  I asked one of the players if he really wanted to attune a particular crystal and despite the strong warning the gods issued he still tried it!  They were overnighting at Sun Dome temple in Sun County and that night the templat guards came a running when they learned of the chaos monstrosity with 12 pt aluminum scale armour (the character belonged to the Zola Fel cult) that was in the guest barracks.  The character in question surrended to the authorities and was sentenced to execution by a volley of Sun Spears.  The ogre who claimed to be his father showed up with a Lunar escort offering to take him with them but the character refused to go with him.  After a failed DI attempt by his sole friend among the party he was fried at noon.  (This was the same guy who got his body tattooted with Gbaji riddles by the self-same ogre father and tried to cover them up with red dye.  Didn't work so he had himself skinned by a blindfolded Xiola Umbar.   Ouch!)

3) This one happened to me.  I was playing a troll Xiola Umbar who had a trollkin follower.  The trollkin died and I felt obligated to DI for him.  This was stupid because of course I managed to use up all of my power in the process.  The character had to live from then on with a very "grateful" trollkin dancing around her chanting, "A trollkin lives a charmed life!" and a power of one.

There was another player in the same campaign who DI'd for his dead warhorse and got it back for the same price.  I think the same player used up most of his power on another occasion by DI'ing to harden some iron armour.

Stormbringer - Fantasy

When I ran Stormbringer (a long time ago) a party was exploring a dungeon when they came upon a maddened demon that had been imprisoned for a very long time.  One of the players teased the demon by saying, "I can go in, and I can go out", stepping in and out of one of the cells and waving his arms at the demon which just got angrier and angrier.  Another character went a little closer to tease the demon some more and was torn to pieces by the angry demon whose arms were a little longer and stretchy than the second or even the first character realised.

Universe - Sci-Fi

Another fine SPI RPG.  I used to get bored really easy (I'm better now honestly)) and I was playing a character who didn't have anything to do.  We were on this primitive planet and as a joke another payer and I equipped this robot with some tentacles and tried to set it up as a god.  It worked beyond our wildest dreams and the locals started worshipping the robot.  When we asked for sacrifices they wanted to sacrifice virgins.  We figured we were going too far, so I playing the new god Cthulhu asked for sacrifices only when the sun was at it's highest.   I was trying to get the concept of a solstice across to them but unfortunately they interpreted that as meaning every noon!  We got out of the god business after that.

All remembrances are the fault of Oliver D. Bernuetz and any mistakes are due to his faulty memory.  c2001.  Last updated October 08, 2014