In 31 years of role-playing games, never have I had a Player group make a mutual defense treaty with a goblin tribe in order to A) Stop local settlement raiding and B) Form a unified multispecies army to storm a megadungeon in order to defeat another larger goblin tribe.

I foresee fun times ahead with my Labyrinth Lord group.

So go ahead and tell us when your own Player groups have done something that has pleasantly surprised you?

In my Marvel Super Hero campaign, while investigating a major conspiracy two of the characters, both reformed villains, decided that the only way to get to the bottom of things was pretend to have gone bad and get themselves recruited by HYDRA. And just to keep it authentic, they chose not to tell their team mates.

I never saw coming. It took the campaign in entirely new directions over the course of the several sessions. But damn it was fun!

I don't think i can list them all.  INsane motherfuckers always go off and do stuff I have not thought about...

Similar to yours, my online Steel Isle Group defeated a large patrol of the Trine Guldana, a hobgoblin/gnoll/gartier tribe ...and then found afterwards they shared an enemy in the Trine Vexchian.  

Trine Guldana, since they lost, agreed to ally with the group and run patrols south of the SouthField district of Steel Isle Town, and is part of the groups widening alliance.  Now, the Trine Guldana looks at visits from the Steel Isle Explorers as a holiday and makes a big feast.  I love when the players create the plot so well.

Quote from: LordVreeg;582688I don't think i can list them all.

Yeah same thing. In a way I GM because of this. I just love to be surprised by the players.

Some examples include players freeing an Otyugh in a dungeon that was kept as a garbage dump by the inhabitants of the place and, instead of slaughtering it, they keep it as a pet and name it "Oscar". It became a "hench-thing" for the party and stuck with them for the rest of the campaign, leading to a lot of ... interesting role playing moments, to say the least.

Or when two players at Vampire, one playing a Malkavian everyone believed to be a Ventrue, the other a Lasombra, invite a third character, a Toreador, to make him sit on a chair that springs stakes all over its surface, then bonding the Toreador over the next three nights, growing their coterie, or the Patsis brothers, a garou and a mage, who went on a murder hobo rampage in Paris that killed off two dozens NPCs, much of the PCs at the time, and changed the dynamic of the sandbox forever before they were killed for good.

That happens all the time. It's something to be embraced, IMO. It's the nature of RPGs. Once you start to sabotage that freedom of choice to run your "pet story" on the PCs is when you lose your way as a GM, I think.

In my current Terracide campaign, the PC agreed to undertake a mission for their former patron: she asked them to return to the space habitat at Omicron Eridani, find out who was in charge of the mysterious "Omicron Project" and what the purpose of the project was, and to please "keep a low profile."

Upon arrival, they found a heavy-handed project manager driving morale among project personnel into the dirt, so they did some social engineering and started a full-blown labor riot. Then they offered to rescue the project manager from the angry mob (which they had incited) and returned to their patron's base of operations.

"Here's the project manager. What do you want to know?" Patron: "What happened to keeping a low profile?"

This pretty much completely altered the course of the campaign, and in the long run, put the PCs in the driver's seat.

Needless to say, I didn't see that coming and I've been extemporizing since then.

Is this a place to talk about players who surprise you in a bad way too?

In my Golden Age campaign last night, I had a setup for an adventure, where one player character's boyfriend requests her team's help to find his missing uncle, a small-town sheriff that he thinks has been kidnapped.  The character being a speedster, I'd anticipated she might zip over to the town to get a cursory glance and then come back and call together the team; but no.  Instead, the player decides its perfectly ok to be the ONLY PERSON PLAYING for the next TWO HOURS, and didn't give the slightest indication of wanting to call up anyone, until I basically used a trumped-up plot hook to bring the rest of the party over by chance.

Jesus.

RPGPundit

Last Saturday, we arrived at a player's home for D&D and she asked our help with a specific household chore. What ensued was twenty minutes of five exasparated geeks trying to install a heavy-ass three-hinge windowpane.

We all surprised each other by eventually succeeding.

Players always surprise, but NPCs also have their moments.

I was GMing for an evil aligned group who decided to stop off at a farmhouse on their way back from a dastardly deed to indulge in a little light necromancy, slaughter, and robbery.

The fat farmer with a crossbow who had been out hunting returned to find his son turned into a zombie and I don't even want to go into what happened to the jolly rosy-cheeked wife.

First to go was the half-elven assassin in the rafters, who missed his shot after the farmer clubbed the revenant descendant into the rich brown soil of his holding. Missed his shot, and the farmer rolled an open ended maximum twice, pinned him to the ceiling by his upper mandible with a deerbolt.

Next up was the surprised necromancer, plugged through an overturned table by another combination of extremely unlikely rolls. The one that got the berserk cropper was the fighter, who ended up limping, cursing and sobbing off into the sunset with a head under his arm.

I had nothing to do with it, I even showed the group the farmer's stats afterwards so they could do the maths themselves. Just sheer unvarnished bad karma, which as anyone will tell you is a bitch. I guess the equivalent in D&D terms would have been two level eighth PCs put down and a third severely wounded by a first level NPC.

Fear fat farmers with crossbows would be the moral really.

Quote from: The Traveller;583039Players always surprise, but NPCs also have their moments.

I agree. My NPCs surprise me all the time. In role playing. The characters I came up with and interpret myself as GM. I know that might sound nuts, but it happens. When the NPC finds him/herself in a situation you had not thought about when you created him/her, and reacts on the spot in ways you did not anticipate, it's awesome.

Fear all critical rolls and systems where crossbows bear any resemblance to reality.

It's what I run for.

Quote from: Benoist;582693Yeah same thing. In a way I GM because of this. I just love to be surprised by the players.

Same here but no "in a way" about it. It IS why I GM.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;583088Same here but no "in a way" about it. It IS why I GM.

+1 but I also run to see characters develop.

Quote from: Benoist;583044When the NPC finds him/herself in a situation you had not thought about when you created him/her, and reacts on the spot in ways you did not anticipate, it's awesome.

Funnily enough it was more of an awesome Pulp Fiction TPK than many an epic battle against divine powers, just for pure wtfness. I tend to play both sides of that card though, important NPCs are as bulletproof as anyone else, which has caused plots to hop the rails several times.

Quote from: LordVreeg;583067Fear all critical rolls and systems where crossbows bear any resemblance to reality.

Truth. These guys were very good though, even if richly deserving of their ignomious fate, it would have been a one in fifty thousand thing if the odds were added up. The gambler's fallacy showed its teeth there I can tell you.

Quote from: MGuy;583123+1 but I also run to see characters develop.

That's part of the same thing, in my book.