Crazy, hilarious, or awful things that have happened in D&D campaigns

As an online DM I had my regular game, sure, but I also had a grab bag of scenarios that I came up with for "pick up" games when I was looking for new players.

One of them had the tavern erupt in a big bar fight, only to end at the end of Round 2 with the bartender wishing the fight to end by writing in a journal with a powerful artifact which, inevitably, would somehow wind up in the hands of the random level 1 players. I would spend the rest of the game messing with their wishes.

In another pick up scenario, I would whisper to a player, "You are a Doppleganger, here to kill the others. Get someone alone, kill them, replace them, and have your real character enter while they play the Doppleganger." You can imagine how that went.

Another pickup scenario involved the tavern (it's always a tavern in the pickups) progressing into a poker game with the PCs, a barkeep and a halfling. The table gets overturned, a giant wyrm breaks through the floorboards and attacks them. After a a round or two, the halfling's initiative roll would quietly disappear. Eventually the barkeep - because the players never figure it out - calls attention to a few details, which reveal the wyrm to be a card from the deck of illusions. The halfling made off with their money.

Ohh, then there was the other pickup game that led characters to fall in love with an NPC and then help a cow give birth to triplets. That one was always fun.

 

There's always one, if you're wishing on the fly.

 

The way that it worked, whatever you wished for would come true through a set of elaborate coincidences. So if you wished for wealth, the moment you finished writing, the door would open, and someone would enter to reveal that your grandfather died and left you a hidden fortune. Or an NPC nearby would reveal themselves to be a wizard and cast a spell, and it would all look like it somehow would've happened if you had never wished for anything.

So it was a lot of crazy random fun happening for one session, and no matter how many times I ran the scenario, it was always as surprising to me as it was to them.

 

I was DMing a game and a guy made a bad roll and his mule got stolen when he left it in the road in a thief-heavy town. Turns out all his stuff was on the stupid animal and he actually got so mad it happened, he got up and went home. I mean... it's just a game.. and if all your equipment is on your mule... might want to put it in a stable rather than leave it standing in the road...

 

I played a barbarian in a LARP and was hit with a weakness spell. I RP'd as if I thought the spell did nothing, and struck the caster with a pathetic damage of 1 (instead of 5). He hit back, so I threw myself down the hill. I guess my fall was convincing so it looked like I was really knocked high in the air. I landed on a hill and there were dry leaves covering the ground so I got a lot of distance in the air, plus more distance from sliding/tumbling on the ground.

I tried to get into the acting side of it. There were theater people staffing the game, so competition was tough. I almost took it a bit far when I jumped in 4-foot-deep water to fight a…goblin, I think. And the time I jumped on an actual campfire was too far. But it was a hell of an entrance, and I had work boots on. The fire went out when I jumped on it, and smoke was billowing around me. They had to pause the game though… in part because my claws were on fire. (The barbarians could earn a wolf form.)

 

That's awesome!

I wonder what the DM was thinking.




DM: (thinking) A girl player, finally! How can we make the only girl in the room feel welcome? I know, we'll molest her character!


[30 minutes later...]


DM: "That's the fifth girl to leave our group. Guys, what went wrong?"

Bob: "I don't know. I thought she'd be a keeper since we cancelled 'Porn Hour.'"

Tim: "Yeah, and I didn't tell any fart jokes. What gives!"

DM: "You can tell one now."

Tim: "It's no fun without a halfling for my orc to fart on."

Bob: "Yeah but... now that she left, does the halfling's death even count?"

DM: (consults manual) "Yes."