Funny moments in RP

[Michael Jotne Slayer]

I am doing a Moonhunter light of the "Most defining moment in your RP history". It is difficult to define the most important moment in your past gaming experiences, not to mention quite
scary. But one can always mention a few "funny" moments that have been mared in your mind trough the years. This is not to undermine Moons topic which in my point of wiew is more rewarding to figure out.
I myself yearn after finding or re-discoverying that moment.
Anyway, here it goes.

I remember when I was playing and not GM´ing. The party were venturing trough a valley. We noticed a few goblins on the top of the hill and stopped to see what was going on. Then as we observed, they put a big helmet on the boss and fastened a speartip on it. Then they kicked him in the behind to provide speed down the hill. We just stood still and watched this strange ritual. He came right into the party and his spear-helmet was pinned to a shield. He got loose and ran away,... and that was that.
Well maybe you would have to be there.
I hate it when the genuinety of the moment is lost. Oh well.

[Ancient Gamer]

Funny moments are important. Depending on the scenario, if it is appropriate, I try to make the players have at least one big laugh during the evening.

Two scenarios ago, during my post apocalyptic thingy, the fun moment was when the party was hiding in the shattered tube of a fuel tanker truck, trying to get shelter from a sandstorm. They spent the night in there, and awoke as the sandstorm was abating. Screeching and banging sounds suddenly echoed through the tube as someone outside slowly approached the entrance.

Then four children from the party's village appear (they are out looking for the children) but the children are not well. Their skin is all pale, their lips have withdrawn from the teeth and the eyes are all white. With horrible screams the children attack, and the party has to fight.

Then one of the partymembers pierce one child with his spear, nailing the child to the floor, steadily keeping his spear against the metal. The child has just thrust a steel fragment into the gut of the player and is attempting to begin his feeding (and infection of the player).

With a little GM acting I created a nice piece of slapstick humor and a mid-combat relief before continuing the slaughter of the children. Also a bit of "have to be there" humor, but I can assure you we laughed.

The previous session (sword and sorcery) the humor was on behalf of all the strange people the party encountered on their wild flight through a Venice-ish city. Pigeon loving old women and couples arguing over familiar details (for us old men with angry wives) kept the players smiling througout the evening.

Humor is important, often depending on the situation (you have to be there) and an important tool a good GM should not neglect.

[Scrasamax]

During a Vampire: The Masquerade game many years ago, one of the players was out hunting, and instead of having to chase her victim down, he walked up to her, and asked if she was a hooker.

"You'a hooker?"

"I most certainly am NOT!"

"You look like a hooker?"

"I am not a hooker!"

"Are you a cop? Sure you're not a hooker?"

By this point, the rest of the group was laughing hard enough to break up the game, and it was all I could do to keep up the Gomer Pile drunk trying to proposition a vampire.

"C'mon, twenty bucks, you look like a cheap hooker."

At this point said vampire failed a self control check (Called for it since her player was quite agitated) The vampiress attacked the NPC, and killed him in the process of feeding. "Are you a hooker?" became a running gag for many months afterwards.

[Ria Hawk]

Yet another VTM moment, this one from a LARP I'm in.

At the time, I was playing a Daughter of Cacophony, which, while it is badass later on, is somewhat pathetic in early levels.  A group consisting of two Malkavians and a Tzimice was going to go check out some weird happenings at a local cathedral.  Well, the Malks could make themselves invisible, and the Tzimice could change his appearance.  I was voted lookout, because I was the most respectable looking.  The Malks got in while the Tzimice distracted the cops gaurding the building.  Now, normally, this would not have cause a problem, only the Tzimice fed only from public servants.  Failed a control check and jumped the cop.  That was a mistake, as the cop was tough enough to get away.  So I had to get in to do damage control.  "I'm terribly sorry, officer.  My... associate suffers from mental illness, and hasn't had his medication today."  "Obvi-*expletive deleted*-ously!  Get him outta here!."  "Of course."  In a whisper as I shoved hjm down the sidewalk: "What is your major malfunction?"

Another one, this time while I was playing a homicidally insane Malk: in a graveyard, I get jumped by a zombie.  This zombie comes very close to kicking my ass, and only didn't due to a judicious retreat.  As I've previously said, this character is homicidal, and she's been having a bad night.  So I go and by six bottles of cheap whiskey and a fireplace lighter.  I go back to the graveyard, pour whiskey all over the d**n zombie, set it on fire, and bolt.  As a side effect, I set the entire hill on fire.  It amused me greatly.

[CaptainPenguin]

The Irritating Head Monk
An Exalted moment of great class-
Two of the characters had just recently been sent down a secret passageway through a mountain from the Lamasery of Clear Air, a monastery with a bunch of monks and such. The head monk, one Blossom of Silence, a Sidereal, was big into long silent pauses and sipping tea.
Sain Kranji, a piratical sea-lord and Solar, bursts into Blossom of Silence's room, and demands to know where the others are.
Long silence. Sip of tea.

Sain demands once again.

Long silence. Sip of tea.

Getting increasingly impatient, Sain demands a third time.

Long silence. Sip of tea.

Finally, Sain says: "Do you have some sort of strange speech impediment that requires 20 minutes of absolute silence before you say anything useful?!"

The Embarrassing Admition of the Pirate
Another Exalted moment-
Nova Raku, a Solar, and two pirate compatriots, Carlos and the bearded guy, are making their way through a treacherous reef inhabited by mutant shark-folk called the Baruka Reef.
During the course of this journey, a storm occurs, and they are thoroughly wrecked, surviving only through Solar charms and convenient rocks.
Nova is standing somewhere or other, preparing to batten down. Carlos and the bearded guy are clinging to a rock.
Suddenly, a huge tidal wave rises up above them.
Just before it smashes down on their heads, the bearded guy says:
"I love you, Carlos!"
{Addendum: They survived, and there were no pirate hook-ups.}

The Scooby-Doo Moment
Third and final Exalted moment-
Nova Raku and Feathers of the Raven, a Lunar, are exploring the semi-illusory mansion of a Fair Folk Noble. The halls are deserted, except for Nova and Feathers. They come to a standstill in their puzzle-solving.
Nova spots a clue.

He says: "Let's go, gang!"

Replies Feathers (sarcastically): "Jinkies."

Nova: "I said, let's go!"

A fist is applied to Nova's head.

Feathers: "I'm the ONLY ONE HERE!"

The Infamous Sandwich-Sex Fiasco
From an earlier game-
One of the characters, a rather hapless chap, happens to be in the wrong pub at the wrong time, and gets very, very drunk (Not at all a strange occurence in this game).
He is abducted by... the Dwarf Conspiracy!
The Dwarf Conspiracy is a vast (diagonal-wing, Orange Party) conspiracy undertaken by an organization of dwarves (obviously) who believe that there is a catastrophe coming to destroy the world. Thus, they abduct members of everything in the world and mate them to produce a sort of dwarven Noah's Ark. Unfortunately, they are not the most competent of dwarves, and never quite get it right (elf-on-cougar action, hilarity ensues).
Anyway, our drunk friend is abducted by the Dwarf Conspiracy after he passes out.
He awakens groggy and out-of-it in a dank cave.

GM (myself): "You are lying in a dank cavern. Water drips from the ceiling and walls. In front of you, there is a soggy-looking sandwich."

Our Friend: "I want to eat the sandwich!"

GM: "No, you don't."

Our Friend: "Yes, I do!"

GM: "Okay, you eat it, but there is some mighty strange mayonnaise on that sandwich."

[Caitriona]

I only remember one funny sentence while RPG.

Rhadoon: "Oh, yes, our children... Er, what were their names..?"

[Michael Jotne Slayer]

Uber Nemesis Boss never dies kinda NPC:

"AHA, I see you have survived my evil designs once again, no matter, now I shall send my trusted right hand upon ye!"

PC:

"Your right hand comes off?"

[Ria Hawk]

Some moments from my D&D game that I ran for a year:

After running through a spontaneous dungeon crawl, I was giving the players the list of loot that they had gotten.  On this list was "thirty-seven pieces of art, to be determined later" because I was too tired to do it then.  I forgot that one of the PCs had a fixation on dwarves.  (Female elf, btw.)  "Can one of the pieces of art be a dwarven thong?"  Me: *gnk*    *sigh*  "Sure, whatever."  She kept that d**n thing for the entirety of the campaign.

On a separate occasion, the party had tracked down where a group of evil cultists was setting up a gate, because they were starting an army of gibbering monstrosities from beyond the bounds of the rational universe.  (Byakhees, for the CoC fans among us.)  My players found the clearing where the gate would appear, staked it out one night, and determined that the cultists could only come through one at a time.  There were many of them, and they didn't know what kinds of fell powers the cultists had.  So they spent the entirety of the next day digging a pitfall where the gate would appear, lining it with spikes, and disguising it crudely.  (You couldn't see through the gate.)  Night comes, the portal appears, the first cultist steps through, falls into the pit... and screams something incoherent about a trap.  Ten seconds later, the portal vanishes.  Party's Rogue: "You mean that they can hear what happens on the other side of the gate?!  Party's sorcerer:  "Ah... I knew that."  All: "THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU CAST A SILENCE SPELL, IDIOT?!"

Same campaign, but I was taking a break from the GMing, and was playing that night.  We were trying to kill a greater vampire lord.  Who has, by the way, mind-controlled our fireball-happy sorcerer.  So, after twenty minutes of dodging fireballs while trying to get up onto the roof vamp boy was on, the paladin and the druid fall back and discuss something.  Paladin: "What would happen if we dumped forty-seven gallons of holy water on him?"  GM: "Ah... screaming and dying, I would imagine.  Why?  Where are you going to get forty-seven gallons of holy water, and how are you going to get it up there?"
*Points at druid* "She creates water approximately four feet above his head, and I simultaneously bless it.  At this level, she can create forty-seven gallons a day, and I can bless a small lake."  GM: "..."  (This did not, in fact, completely kill the vampire, but it did hurt him severely.)
Later, tracking the same vampire to his lair, we come across an alchemical laboratory.  The paladin picks up a bottle, sniffs it, and takes a gulp of the contents.  He promptly belches a massive fireball.  So we keep that, and my fighter picks up a similar looking bottle for later use.  So we find the vamp's lair.  Paladin kicks the door down, and my fighter immediately fires two crossbow bolts into the now very startled vampire.  The halfling monk gets between us, and kicks him four or five times in the head.  Then the paladin uses up the rest of his firebreath potion, breathing fire all over the vampire.  I take my bottle, and throw it at the wall behind the vampire's coffin, and it turns out to be a concentrated fireball.  (The monk, during all of this, is sublimely unconcerned, because we've hit the point where area affect spells cease to matter to him.)  Then the monk throws a stake he picked up earlier... and triple criticals, sending it straight through the vamp's heart and pinning him to the wall.  Whole combat: seven seconds, game time.  The GM was rather stunned.

In a modern game I was in, the party had to talk to a boy who was being stalked by evil bad things.  We sent our two most respectable people: a screwball doctor, and a frighteningly intelligent eight-year old.  The kid was scared, and the doctor kept making things worse.  So the eight-year old tasered the kid, had the doctor drag him down to our car, and tied him up.  When the kid came to, needless to say, this did not incline him to trust us.  This resulted in the line "Does anyone besides me see the problem with the antisocial, drinking-shooting-smoking gun-running former gang member being the only one who managed to diplomatically handle that situation?"

[Ancient Gamer]

Years ago I was running a "Stealth Campaign" in which the players were members of a mafia family turned legitimate. At the very last session they were sneaking into the keep of a powerful wizard that had opposed them on several occasions. Suddenly the wizard came to the window under which the PCs were perching. Panicking (it was a powerful wizard) two players threw each their bag full of "Talmarin Oil", a high explosive mixture, at the mage, forgetting that they were, like, 9 feet away. I just smiled and suddenly the two players realized what they had done and then the desperate pleas began. I, being a nasty GM, held them responsible for their actions and, after rolling the fifteenth dice, could safely claim that "It was raining pieces of meat, fragments of bone and disgusting red particles of blood". On the plus side they also killed the enemy

After the initial shock we all laughed good and long, even though the ending had a bitterness to it (Players often come to love their characters after a certain period of time).

Now, before you think of me as a nazi-GM, I must add that the players clearly stated that they were 9 feet away mere seconds before the arrival of the mage. They KNEW what the circumstances were and forgot that the combined effects of that explosion would blast them all to kingdom come.

************

The last session I GMed was a typical "Defend X from unknown and mystical forces" scenario. This time I had two players, so it was one of those intimate sessions. At the very end of that scenario the PCs were rushing to warn their employer of his imminent death. Unfortunately they encountered the entity out to assure his death, in the attic, and they panicked. First one PC jumped down the hatch and into the first floor hallway, accidentally twisting her ancle. Then the second PC followed, but he fumbled and fell headlong down the hatch, hitting the head of the first PC with his shoulder. As a result both PCs fainted and the puzzled employer discovered their prone bodies mere seconds before the horror descended from the attic...

One of the players claimed it was the funniest ending ever and laughed and laughed and laughed. The female player did not agree and found it to be the dumbest ending she had ever had the misfortune to experience. She also claimed it totally ruined one of the best weekends of RPGing ever.

I had fun though

Hmmm... It shows I am a GM. These funny moments are primarily "The GM laughs his arse off" funny moments 

[Taurren]

Have you ever had one of those moments when someone who should have known better, did something really stupid?

Here’s the scene ….
The party is comprised of 5 players who individually have over 5 years of rpg experience each.  The average party level is 4th.  They are trying to make their way back to civilization after spending a month exploring a primitive jungle and the lost ruins they had discovered.

They stopped for a night’s rest, and set up a rotating watch.

The archer in the party had the middle watch and decided to climb a tree and find a suitable perch so that he had a good view of the surrounding area.

Here’s what happened …
The archer spotted 2 orcs who were sneaking up to the sleeping party members.  The archer silently strung his bow and knocked an arrow, but decided to wait and see what would happen.

The 2 orcs successfully snuck up on the sleeping party.

The 2 orcs put a cloth over the head of one of the cleric and hit him over the head with a club.  He failed his save and was knocked unconscious.  The other sleeping party members failed to awaken.

The archer, fearful that there might be more orcs nearby, refused to sound the alarm, just yet.  Standing firm in the face of the party’s shocked looks and strident cries, he told them he had a “cunning plan”.  (Yes he watches too much Black Adder.)

The 2 orc’s, picked up the unconscious party member and quietly left the clearing.

The archer took aim at the spot where the orc’s slipped into the jungle and prepared to fire when they returned.

A minute passed.  Then another.  A further minute passed as sweat began to trickle down the archer’s back.  After a full 10 minutes had passed, the archer scampered down a tree and informed the rest of the party that he had fallen asleep and that cleric was now missing.

Dumb.  Very Dumb.  Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.   

Eventually they found the cleric in an orc cooking pot.  Aside from some wrinkled skin, and the smell of parsley and nutmeg that clung on him for the next few days he made it out in 1 piece.

[Ancient Gamer]

Awww... You should have fried the cleric!

They would never have forgiven him

[LithTheBlade]

Funny moments? I hope stupidity counts as funny.

A couple years back, my mother, my uncle, my father, and myself were running through a "Find the (x) to save the world" type campain, it had been my first one. MY mother was a warrior, and my uncle had taken a thief, I wanted to be able to sneak around, so i took a thief as well. We ran into a group of goblins and easily killed them, but there was a door behind, without warning my mother takes her PERFECTLY ROLLED WARRIOR and shoulder rams the door down... Two thieves, and she breaks down a door, a door that just HAPPENS to be trapped. I'm sure someone at least knows what a pedndulum is. And what happens when you put a massive blade on it. Need less to say and my mother stumbled into the room, trying to keep ehr blanace, the pendulum swung down and cut her in half. My uncle looked at me in charachter and laughed his ass off saying, "Perfect warrior huh? Seems to me that certain warrior lacked common sense."

[Ancient Gamer]

Good one, Lith!

[Wulfhere]

A few years ago, I was running a game of D and D where the party was exploring a cavern area.  While they were lowering one of their number into a sinkhole, the party was attacked by a giant spider.  I asked them each "What is the first thing that you do?"

Ranger: "I grab my bow, nock an arrow and let fly!"
Wizard: "I step up and strike the thing with my quarterstaff!"
Dwarf:  "I draw out my greataxe and strike!"
Cleric:  "I pull my mace and attack."
Me:  "So, who's holding onto the rope?"
All: "Oops."
Rogue:  "Eeek!"