You ever have a player do something so unexpected you just break down laughing?

So, my players are going through Basic Fantasy RPG's Tales of the Dancing Dragon Inn, using my homebrew system we're testing.

The characters are at a door, and every single one of them succeeds in rolling to detect the smell of troglodytes on the other side of the door. They discuss what to do, and in the middle of it, my wife has her character just knock on the door. I couldn't stop laughing for 2-3 minutes.

I rolled that the monsters were unreasonably prejudiced against the characters. So one troglodyte answers the door and announces that he hates door-to-door salesmen. The players try to explain they're not salesmen, but have a free soup pot to give away and they're looking for an elf.

One player uses levitate to hold the first troglodyte still while they continue to explain they have nothing to sell, but they're still fixated on giving away a free soup pot (that they found during the first part of the adventure). It continued downhill from there.

I try to keep from laughing out loud, especially when it involves things that not everyone should know something hilarious is going on yet.

I find that when the players are in a situation where there's no clear adversary particular thing to do or worry about, and I provide details about who and what is there (and usually a map of where things are, and counters to show where the PC & located NPCs are), that the players tend to generate their own antics that can get pretty hilarious, especially when there are one of more antic-prone players. Players sneak and snoop about, try to befriend, question and seduce people (leading to suitor contests), and some players intentionally or not end up providing mysteries which the others tend to start to pursue, often in creative ways.

It can get particularly funny when there is a creative trickster PC who knows even a single magic spell that they can cast covertly - I've several times had that lead to most or all of the rest of the party investigating mysteries just because I'm describing what they observe which is really the result of a tricky PC spellcaster manipulating them for fun or other reasons. Players pranking other players can be quite effective and funny even without magic. There was a PC who thought that a particular coin type was annoying, and another PC friend of his teased him by taking and leaving those coins when the other PC wasn't paying attention. The teased PC started believing that there was a trickster spirit monster who dealt in that kind of coin haunting him, and the other PCs also didn't know what was going on since the teasing PC was doing it in notes.

One of my best longtime players is very creative and has always been into trying to manipulate NPC reactions, and is generally up to something wacky more often than not. He gives other players ideas too, so I've rarely been able to predict what will or won't happen, and is probably the main reason why my GM style and game preference is setting up a situation and seeing what happens.

Quote from: Skarg;946673Players pranking other players can be quite effective and funny even without magic.

One of my best longtime players is very creative and has always been into trying to manipulate NPC reactions, and is generally up to something wacky more often than not. He gives other players ideas too, so I've rarely been able to predict what will or won't happen, and is probably the main reason why my GM style and game preference is setting up a situation and seeing what happens.

I don't even want to think of them pranking each other. As it is, they are really good about coming up with different social bonds for the characters (competing in strength, character A hates character B's race so much he learned their language so as to insult them better, and what not).

The funny thing about the door is, they've been through lots of doors. Just this time, for some reason, it went weird.

Quote from: Tod13;946631You ever have a player do something so unexpected you just break down laughing?

As a player I humiliated myself and made the entire group crack up so bad they couldn't continue the session for thirty minutes.

Scene: NYU, I'm aged 18. Playing Shadowrun for the first and last time. I'm some sort of hacker character, whatever the setting calls them. We're doing a generic run and my moment to shine has come, but I've been an awkward teen dealing with older alpha-geek types the whole time and I've got some built up trepidation working against me. I'm repeating myself a lot because I feel the pressure of having brought the session to a halt so we can do my cyberspace stuff. I'm fixating on the term 'jack in', sometimes scrambling it as 'jack on'. I'm jacking into this, jacking on that, sounding dumb. Finally I get the information we need, but it'll take time to decipher it off-site.

Me: Uh, so, uh, do I have some kind of disk or something in my gear, like a... a container for data or whatever we have in this future?

GM: Yeah, sure, you've got some kind of data container you whipped up earlier, but you're going to have to 'escort' the data from the computer into the container.

Me: Uh, ok, so I jack off into the container.

Mortifying.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;946702As a player I humiliated myself and made the entire group crack up so bad they couldn't continue the session for thirty minutes.

Scene: NYU, I'm aged 18. Playing Shadowrun for the first and last time.
Mortifying.

OK. That's a reason, maybe even a good one, to hate Shadowrun, that I've never heard before. LOL

The first door encountered in a game usually sets the tone/play-style for the rest of the campaign. Sometimes a door is simply just a door.

Quote from: Tod13;946631You ever have a player do something so unexpected you just break down laughing?

...

Oh yes, yes indeed.  Have told the tale before but it bears repeating.  In a campaign we started in 2006, still kick'en, had an inherited character Alanoc.  Male Druid, acquired a female bobcat companion.  Somehow over the years it became a running joke when the pronoun sipped to she for said Druid.  We do a fair bit of joking and ribbing of characters at the table.  Really no reason for it except fate.  Well 6 years or so into the campaign, said Druid has an acorn acquired from some dryads (Caverns of Thracia) that I figured comes from some off-spring of the world tree/tree of knowledge/ tree of life/ etc. (you get the picture).  I mean how else is that Minotaur so smart.  Anyway I digress.  Said Dryads entrusting this precious acorn to the Druid.  No some adventure later, when we were getting into a retooled G1-G3, said druid ends up in the dark woods (near G1) seeking allies as the group is pursued.  The Druid seeks and finds the fey court of the woods (not hard after all he has that acorn).  The player on his own decides to entrust and gift this acorn to the fey.

Now your thinking where is Xanther going with this.  Not the fey were incredibly impressed with this.  Not sure the players got that this acorn would grow into a tree the fruit of which would yield ambrosia (basically Longevity + Raise Dead Potions) after a couple hundred years.  OK maybe they did.  The fey grant said Druid a boon, that is a "Wish" that is in their ability to grant.  I don't like reality changing wishes or ones that stretch what magic could do.  So me (and they fey) are thinking he'll want massive gold or a powerful magic item or serious ability score increase.  Maybe even a kingdom.  As GM (and fey king) getting ready for the ask, and how to deal with it in a fair way that also doesn't' kill my campaign.

So the player, (one who loves to play good hearted but light fingered thieves, since the 70's) chooses......a sex change. Yes, I guess a ongoing joke came true.  Well after the laughing and toasting to such a request, I had to adjudicate what a faire king would do.  Clearly this blew their collective fairy minds.  Humans are supposed to be greedy, materialistic, petty and general bores.  To say this earned the undying gratitude of the fey) not just an acorn in exchange for some fairly easy magic for them,; but more so the stories they can tell for generations.

Then the player had to convince the rest of the party, who were not their, that their trusty pal Alanoc was now the fair Conala (that's Alanoc backwards).

Quote from: Tod13;946631You ever have a player do something so unexpected you just break down laughing?

Had a player in a Champions game pull a Daffy Duck and forget his PC could fly until after they fell 30 stories. The entire table was in stunned silence for a couple seconds then everyone broke out laughing. We didn't let the guy forget that one for years.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;946755The first door encountered in a game usually sets the tone/play-style for the rest of the campaign. Sometimes a door is simply just a door.

That's part of what was so funny and unexpected. They'd been through dozens of doors, even doors where they knew someone/something was on the other side. I've never in my life (almost 50 here) had someone knock on a door in a dungeon.

I think the tone for our adventures was set when we were teaching one friend using DwD Studios' BareBones Fantasy. Her character liked water and "would swim any chance she got". She cannonballed into a giant filled bathtub... inside a keep that had been abandoned for years. That was one surprised water elemental. :eek:

Quote from: Tod13;946631You ever have a player do something so unexpected you just break down laughing?

That's basically my entire DCC campaign.

Isn't that called just "playing the game"?

I've got a Stupid, Stupid, Stupid! page on my website giving some examples of this.

My favourite has to be in the Tower of Lead, a Gloranthan tower full of Vampires. One PC went in and saw a hole in the wall, so he looked in only to see a basilisk staring at him, which killed him and he had to use Divine Intervention to come back. He was not happy. From that point on he was paranoid about looking into holes or around corners, in case the same thing happened again, so he used a little mirror on the end of a stick to check things out. The party came to a door with a small grill in and he used his mirror on the pole to check in the room, all he could see was a large throne room with a dias with three empty thrones. Feeling safe, he proceeded to check the door to see if it was locked, it wasn't, then was about to open the door and charge in, as there must be something valuable around the thrones. Then he saw me giggling away hysterically and thought there might be something wrong with this picture. Someone else peered through the small grill and saw a vampire on each throne and about a dozen vampires in the room.
If only I could have controlled my giggles ...

Quote from: soltakss;947476I've got a Stupid, Stupid, Stupid! page on my website giving some examples of this.

My favourite has to be in the Tower of Lead, a Gloranthan tower full of Vampires. One PC went in and saw a hole in the wall, so he looked in only to see a basilisk staring at him, which killed him and he had to use Divine Intervention to come back. He was not happy. From that point on he was paranoid about looking into holes or around corners, in case the same thing happened again, so he used a little mirror on the end of a stick to check things out. The party came to a door with a small grill in and he used his mirror on the pole to check in the room, all he could see was a large throne room with a dias with three empty thrones. Feeling safe, he proceeded to check the door to see if it was locked, it wasn't, then was about to open the door and charge in, as there must be something valuable around the thrones. Then he saw me giggling away hysterically and thought there might be something wrong with this picture. Someone else peered through the small grill and saw a vampire on each throne and about a dozen vampires in the room.
If only I could have controlled my giggles ...

Why were you giggling, then?

Quote from: AsenRG;947489Why were you giggling, then?

DM killed a player's character with a basilisk looking through a hole.
Player starts using mirror to look into everything before going in for real.
DM runs a vampire module.
Player looks into a room filled with basically insta-death vampires, using a mirror, and sees nothing.
Player decides to enter "empty" room.

Quote from: Tod13;947499DM killed a player's character with a basilisk looking through a hole.
Player starts using mirror to look into everything before going in for real.
DM runs a vampire module.
Player looks into a room filled with basically insta-death vampires, using a mirror, and sees nothing.
Player decides to enter "empty" room.

Yeah, but because of his giggling, he didn't enter;).