@@whatswiththisnewhandlesthingbiology. You can build your entire academic career, describing all the pathogens and parasytes you can encounter in raw water.
@@whatswiththisnewhandlesthingOh, the others are wrong. It was nothing as smart as describing the science of it. I described the cup and pans needed to do the task. Also, how to position the cups and pans, so that the open side was pointing up, to avoid the water falling out.
My friend was in the starting tavern, he said "I look for someone powerful" rolled a 2, and found a mirror. Now, anytime my players roll low on perception, even if it makes no sense, even if there wasn't one there before, a mirror appears.
One of my favorites is The Countdown Puzzle. When they enter, the doors on either end of the room close. They are magically protected, and cannot be busted open. Then, the lights go out, and in in a spiral pattern is 20 numbers from one to 20, with 20 glowing blue. In the middle of the room, a glowing button on a stone plinth surrounded by a thin channel of glowing water. The number 20 stops glowing, and instead 19 glows, then 18, 17, 16, and so on, and make sure you call out each one. At 10 seconds, the room lights up yellow, and the numbers turn yellow. At 5, the room and numbers turn red. At 3, an alarm starts blaring and the lights start flashing. If at any time, the players press the button, the countdown resets back to 20. The channel of water has symbols of weapons around it, and arrows pointing to the water. If they put their weapons in it, it enchants the weapons. Thing is, that's the entire puzzle. Despite the alarm and the lights and the flashing, if ever they begrudgingly let the countdown go down to zero, the doors open, and the lights come back on to normal. This will drive paranoid players BONKERS.
I love putting a door covered in doorknobs and a cryptic story with hints how only one will work and the others will basically nuke the party. The trick is that they all work, and every time I've done this, it causes any 45 minutes of trying to figure out the clues
My Players came to a savanna city. The kingdom they were in was in turmoil; the former king had seemingly died in an accident. His Brother was trying to keep the population from panicking. On top of it all, the Crown Prince was missing, having last been seen near the location of the accident. They figured Prince Admir was not worried about finding the Crown Prince, but he still permitted them to investigate. Three sessions later, they find the location of the accident; the King has fallen from a cliff and was caught in a stampede of wildebeests. One of my players looked at me. "This is the Lion King." I gave him DM inspiration.
I have a DM right now who does this sort of thing constantly. So far we've spotted the Monty Python and the Holy Grail three questions skit, Hungry Hamburger from Yugioh, the Velvet Room from Persona, and the main plot is Castlevania (the netflix adaption).
On the first ever one shot I ran for my family, I put a rock covering the entrance to a cave in their way. The way to get past it was to ask politely. After a combat, they came to a normal door within the cave. The barbarian tried to pull the door open, and it didn’t budge, so the paladin pushed him aside and said “please open”. This caused a trap on the door to go off, casting hail of thorns on the two. After that, the paladin rolled a nat 20 investigation on the door, so I looked them dead in the eyes and said, “Upon closer inspection, it’s a push door.”
honestly turning the story of the pokemon games into a dnd campaign NOT based around the capture of monsters to serve you actually does kinda work. and its not like it wouldnt be within DnD lore to allow things like elemental powers. 4 planes and 4 mixed planes = 8 elemental powers. making the remaining ones is the fun part.
My personal favorite is the Absolutely Normal Object. First, make them paranoid with a few trapped doors and hallways and pitfall traps, then, in the next room, put a single object of furniture. It doesn't matter what; it could be a desk, a chair, a door, a cup, a signpost, a chest, whatever. What matters, is how you describe it. Remember, this only works AFTER you've made them paranoid. When they enter the room, describe how the object is perfectly normal, and is just... sitting there, in the center of the room. If they ignore it, ask "Are you sure?" If they are, roll some dice as they walk past, and make a show of asking who walks past and in what order. If this doesn't get them to investigate it, they weren't paranoid enough. Next, upon every single action they do to it, it will react how a normal object would; Not at all, only breaking if they damage it. It is of the utmost importance that you do not show ANY emotion during this. Even a hint of a smile could tip them off. Always make sure to make it seem more suspicious with your word choices; "It Seems to be a perfectly normal chair, to you at least." "Its left front leg is ever so slightly wobbly when you jiggle it, but that could definitely be just normal imperfections in the woodworking." "It falls to the ground with a clatter, denting slightly from the impact, just like a normal chair would." When they've exhausted all their actions looking into it, and possibly even dissassembled it, absolutely nothing happens. Then the rest of the dungeon goes on as planned. If your players are rightfully paranoid by now, this will drive them ABSOLUTELY NUTS. There is no secret to the Perfectly Normal Object, but every instinct in their bones says there's something wrong with it. Every way you phrased it, despite being 100% truthful, has lead them to believe that there HAS to be SOMETHING about it. But while you know there's nothing, THEY don't; They could have easily failed the investigation checks, or not looked at the right spot on it. But no matter what they do, they'll never find ANYTHING, because in all reality, there's nothing to find.
My party navigates the tower of a wizard who specialises in illusions. They reach a room and the door locks behind them, I have them roll wisdom save, they all fail. I collect their character sheets (I would sometimes do that to award inspiration or add something to their inventory, so they aren't suspicious this time). Then I shuffle the sheets and give them back at random, explaining that they are a different character now. My players had an absolute blast, trying to do magic (they couldn't), enjoying their new physical traits - like that player who became a Tortle and spent a few minutes just spinning around on his back - while the only player good at puzzles solved the sudoku on the door. As soon as the door opened I had them give each other their own sheets back and explained how the illusory feeling of swapping bodies, an illusion so strong that it affected all their senses to make them believe they were one another, slowly faded away. Really proud of that moment
Player on the receiving end here. Once, I examined a door to check for traps. Finding none, I opened it to discover . . . another door. And another. And another. There were something like 10 doors (I lost count) all stacked into the same entryway. The last 2 had trap triggers.
An artificer stopped by kids house and messed with the ring. Hmm 🤔 Let's give it a mod 2. Ducktective mode. Search duck extraordinar. Goes in circles around your feet.... Looking at the ground with a magnifying glass quacking excitedly.
Perfect prank ring have them find a ring. Don’t tell them what it does but as long as they were it a duck will always spawn and follow them and now they go the rest of the campaign wondering why there’s a duck it doesn’t do anything. It just stares but if you want to take, it further, have it on the rear chance spawn a goose and the goose just causes inconveniences
I did face a variant of the 'deck of -not- many things' once in a campaign and we pretty much had the same reaction... only this one was just enchanted with a protection spell so it didn't degrade.
Not something I have done but an idea I want to do: The Mimic Museum Like Ripley's Believe It or Not mixed with Madame Tussaud's wax museum. The story behind it is that a local artist/bard wants to do a project based on various stories and accounts of adventurers, but as they were hearing these stories, they realized that every single person has a unique story about encountering a mimic. This gives them the idea of creating molds of different forms of mimics in wax and displaying it along with the stories. It became a huge success, attracting customers and angering other businesses. One day, an adventuring party will get a request from someone working at the museum. They say that someone decided to release an actual mimic in the Mimic Museum to hurt customers and ruin business, and ask for the party to capture and release it safely for a substantial sum. The twist is that the requester actually works for a rival business and requested this knowing that the party's gung-ho/murderhobo nature will lead to destroying priceless items in the museum. And the mimic they are pursuing? It's just a stray cat that got released the night before.
DM here. I had a simple bounty mission for players to seek out and capture "a merchant selling bad cursed items." When they encountered and incapacitated the merchant they would go to check his wares only to realize the meaning behind "bad cursed items." With gems such as Dagger of Breaking Wind, Vambraces of Foul Breath, Boots of Foot Oder, ect. They still don't read the posted quests thoroughly sadly...
Just saying if later in the campaign a big bad delt in undead..... That battered body of a beholder..... Would probably pop back up for some reason...... .......
One of my favorite trolls I ever did was I named the Tabaxi Govenor of the island city Dawn Fluffles as a reference to SAO Abridged. The moment my players heard his name in passing they all froze for a moment expecting him to be a bad guy. I had an evil wizard disguising as him to throw them off further XD
How to troll with some added paranoia: have player try to open a door in a dungeon. Right as they go to open it, loudly say “Wait! Which way do you turn the knob!? And do you push or pull the door?” Randomly roll some dice behind your screen, then let the players harmlessly pass through the door. Your players are now scared of doors.
The whole time my players party were in Anhk'arel in Call of The Netherdeep they had recurring fights with one actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf. He just kept coming back over and over. Players could have killed him off permanently after the first encounter but paid no attention to the "actual cannibal" song in the background telling them exactly what to do. They never truly finished him and he's still out there... Somewhere...
Running an isekai campaign in which their consciousness was placed into the body of someone in a parallel dimension. In one large town they came across a dock worker that looked exactly like one of them, not as their character but their real world self. They went to say hello to him wondering if it might trigger something, which he just said hello back to them. It resulted in them following this dockworker around for a bit just doing his job until he had someone fetch the town guard because 5 people were very obviously lurking around the docks and following him. They skedaddled before the guards arrived delaying their objective by an in game day to avoid any other suspicion.
I tend to just roll random dice behind the screen while my players are coming up with a plan for the boss fight, they always start panicking, sometimes I’ll even ask for their passive perceptions
Mimic Infestation. Anything could be a mimic. Cue players constantly being paranoid about basically every single tree, rustling bush, or piece of gear they come across when really there was only a mild handful of them.
Asking for perception checks and dex saves or rolling initiative from players on a battlemap only for it to be something like chewingas “ambushing” them in a snowball fight or sneaky foxes trying to jump up at them.
My personnal favorite is to put a grandma in their direct environment. EACH TIME THEY FREAK OUT. They do it without failing because i conditioned them to do so and to be warrie of each and every grandma they encounter. Because in our first campaign i knew it was walking on eggshell all the time they could turn into murderhobo at the smallest occasion and I really didn't want that to happen so what i did was simple if they even try to attack a NPC i would transform this NPC into a level 10 cleric not too overpowered but still an impossible challenge for them to surpass and when they attack the grandma because she didn't want to follow them to safety (There was a dragon in the vincinity of the town and she leaved out of time so the mission was to convince her to follow them to the town wich they couldn't convince her to do so and in the end they tried to knock out the grandma and failed but i make it seems like they killed her) so after that I started the combat by making her use a shape earth spell that way she was in no way in danger and next action i tried to use the god intervention to my surprise it work i make it so she asked for help and she received a planetar the planetar put them in their place and after they tried to make amend for what they did i reward them and after that they understood that action will cause reaction big or small no matter but a reaction
One of my groups actually found a way to troll me. I did a prequel session, to wartime. Two of the PCs had veteran backstories, so this one shot was a way to help them flesh things out a bit more. They had a couple of NPC soldiers with them as backup. In the previous campaign, these same players got picky about enemy names in initiative. I just had them as “Thug (insert number here)”. So they forced me to name them Mikey, Tony, Tommy, Johnny, and Zeke. They named this group of foes “The Italians.” Tony was particularly troublesome for them. This is important. Anyway so back to present day, they bring soldiers that they name Michael and Antonio. They’re running from some enemies when one of the soldiers falls and gets stuck. The next interaction is how they troll me with a running gag from the previous campaign. Me: And one of the soldiers falls and gets stuck on a failed check. Paladin: which one? Me: you named them. Paladin: Michael or Antonio? Me without realizing: uhh… Antonio Both of my players in unison: FUCK TONY!!! Me suddenly reliving the flashbacks of all the times they named an enemy “Tony” just to reuse that gag. ------ Additionally, I have a running gag with all my players that any time they ask a random nonhostile NPC their name just to get at me for my inability to come up with names on the fly, I now will always answer with: Nerevarithilandoraniratahnelenkashinoramalvahan. And yes I’m able to verbally say this.
I was running a curse of strand and decided that I would throw a really de buffed false hydra at them, so I started by saying you are suddenly in a sewer you each have lost blank amount of hitpoints, after investigating the sewers they were in the town square and I lied to them by saying what sewer? You never went into the sewer. I gaslite my players by teleworking them around and taking health from them before the wizard cast silence cause there was an annoying noise and then the false hydra fight started
I sneak extra monsters onto the map, usually when no one is looking. though, I did put a room with an orc and a chest. it was a wax orc and a fake chest. the party took a long time and many resources to figure that out.
My Players kind of trolled them selfes. They fought a vampire witch and her demons, after they beat her, her gas form flees to her coffin (Pathfinder 1.E) to revive. My players found the coffin and gathered around it, making a complex battle plan, buffing up and stuff. Took them about 5 minutes irl, all while I sit behind my dm screen and holding in my laughter. When they opened the coffin I made epic dark battle music on, only to tell them, der are the slowly rebuilding remains of said vampire inside. I could not hold my laughter in, after that.
I actually just created one. I was looking through monsters and came across a Gazer which without a Beholder master (according to the lore) it might attach itself to a magic user or otherwise follow them sometimes mimicking them in a mocking manner. They will find it. It will not be aggressive. And since two of my three players are spellcasters it will find them and mimic and mock them at every turn. It's going to follow them and mimic them until it annoys them so much they kill it.
My group of Transformers TTRPG players consists of mostly people who are only passively familiar with the franchise beyond the live action movies. But one of them is a big fan, so I like to allude to things that he recognizes but his character doesn't. This constantly leads to him shouting in frustration because he understood whatever reference but can't do anything about it. For example, last session they visited the colony planet of Caminus. The planet is led by The Mistress of Flame. She's a fiery orange color with a cape that seems to be made of flame and wields a massive hammer, more ancient in appearance than anything anyone in the party has seen before. Said player recognizes immediately that this is the Forge of Solus Prime, one of the artifacts of the Thirteen Primes. The Forge is capable of crafting any item the wielder can imagine using any raw materials, but only if that wielder is a Prime. The player who figured it out is now trying to decide what to do with this information because, again, he doesn't want to metagame, but that could be a useful item, BUUUUT the other party members will definitely try to take it from her by any means necessary if they know.
I remember they were exploring the ruins of a long abandoned temple. They reached a hexagonal room that had 5 entrances , one on each side except for one. On the center of the room, there was this orb, that when touched brought them back in time to when the temple was still in it's entirety. This time, though, there were 6 doors on the room. The extra one was a mimic.
So my first ever time dming I scared the shit out of my players by having them trip a trap in the dungeon we were in. They hit either a pressure plate or a trip wire i can't remember and then suddenly there was a loud ticking. Naturally the whole party panicked and ran into the next section of the dungeon and slammed the door behind them they stood on the other side of the door waiting to hear the explosion but nothing ever happened. There was no bomb it was just a ticking to freak them out lmao
How to give homebrew specialists a headache (I’ll go first and hope someone will contribute) -a valley tudo inspired combat system with real world accuracy -bringing Amazo into a DC Comics themed campaign -those “20 minute combo” characters
Recurring villain named "The Rat King" Always some throwaaway encounter. But he is always an urban legend that in the early levels people are talking about. He will sh*t in your mouth.
Oh this is easy. Have them roll perception or stealth and if they low roll... nothing happens. I just give a little hmm and write something down. I also like to do things like time fuckery. Last session I just removed a minor monster at random from the fight and claimed it was never there.
One of my dungeons had an identical map layout to the FNAF 1 pizzaria, just flipped. In place of animatronics there were statues that the party had to build together in order to open an escape
I did the classic "troll at the bridge scenario," except the troll had the mind of a 5-year-old and only wanted one dollar to pass. The characters didn't know what a dollar was, and the troll scoffed at their silver and gold. They spot a fisherman up the river a little and ask him if he knows what this troll wants. The fisherman whipped his line out of the water and dangled a dollar bill in front of them saying "I caught you a dollar." The rouge perfectly missed the sleight of hand check to get it, so I got to say the line. "Oh! You gotta be quicker than that!" She tried again, got the dollar, gave it to the troll who was happy as a clam and let them pass. The moans and groans from the party were everything I needed.
Ancient toothless Mimic with legs. The thing was so old that all it's teeth fell out and it would make old man noises. The first time someone opened it they got gummed and slobbered all over as grandad tried to eat them, it was highly uncomfortable for the player involved but hilarious for everyone else. Because the mimic was effectively harmless the party moved on and forgot about it, until it showed up in another room and gummed another player. Eventually the party figured out this thing had legs and was really good at walking quietly. They tried to kill it but I intentionally made it unkillable with rapid regeneration. Grandad mimic was ultimately left behind as the party finished their mission and left the crypt.
Give them an item that " one-shots" enemies and give them a bunch of enemies that session, next session have an NPC identify that the thing they used actually teleports enemies to THE FINAL BOSS of the campaign, don't forget to tell them they can only teleport kobolds, and all the enemies last session were, you guessed it, KOBOLDS, tada, you've made several people PISSED! That's what you get for ruining my campaign Dylan!
PUNS! recently had my players have to find 4 NPCs who were missing. Jonah, Jakob, The Bard called Jangles, and Jaime (Pronounced like the Hai-Mey), they were asked to find these people by the man Schmitty. Only one of my players got the joke and I had to explain it to the others, but that's normal. They didn't even get the joke of doctors Howard, Fine and Howard.
Random graffiti"beware mimic infestation" "shadow assassin HQ""here be trapz"always poorly spelt to distinguish from real signs, always the work of bored teenagers, alWays daubed in wet red stuff… 😂
Sometimes I’ll say (like Matt Mercer) “you most certainly can try…” even though I know it’s completely possible to do the thing their asking just to make them paranoid
I had two really good trolls. One is a little insensitive by today’s standards, but the other one is one of my favorite ways to put the players in a new campaign setting. The party finds a rowboat in the middle of nowhere. It has a metal box affixed to the back, situated so that the opening is facing away from the back of the boat. On top of the metal box was a button. For some reason, when players see this, their first inclination is to sit in the boat and push the button. If you haven’t guessed yet, the box is a jet thruster, and the button an ignition switch. This causes the boat to go warp speed in the direction it was pointed. Now, most players at this point think to themselves “well, pressing the button turned the box on, maybe hitting it again turns it off.” }:) NOPE! It just reinitializes the initial thrust causing the boat to GO FASTER. By the time the players get off the boat, they are three continents over.
I have a strange obsession with Jar Jar Binks from the Star Wars prequels. My first ever ttrpg character was heavily inspired by him with his voice and general mannerisms. So when it came time for me to DM a Star Wars 5e my friends knew there was an ever-looming threat that Jar Jar could appear at anytime. I tried to keep them on their toes but when their quest brought them to Naboo, they knew it was inevitable. What they didn’t know was how I would introduce him. Now for added context, Jar Jars life after the prequels is relatively unknown in current canon except for the fact that he at some point becomes a disgraced clown living on the streets due in large part to his role in helping the Emperor take power. This a fact my friends knew well, but I wasn’t strictly following current canon, and there was still a 10 year gap between the setting and when we learn that information for it to happen if I wanted to. Needless to say. It was really funny hearing them work it out as I was introducing the Mayor of Theed to them.
There was a flesh golem thing in the Frozen Sick one shot. By the time they got close to it, it terrified my players. Even more so when it broke down the door and chased them. Pretty sure it ended up destroying itself, but I included an undead researcher that scared them even more. Might make him the BBEG. If you face that golem, it's in rough shape. Totally doable. If it wasn't in rough shape though....
imagine a ring, that creates a duck whenever you want. your group is hungry in a forest? make a duck. if there is a way to give orders to the duck, even better. you suspect a trap ahead? order the duck to try to activate it. the duck would have been your meal anyways.
Honestly the Mimic Coin of Greed, a Mimic in the shape of a gold coin that eats gold coins and can reproduce by mitosis. Sometimes o like to make them think the gold they are pickpocketing might have 1
Not a dm, but the dm let me do this. In an Icewind Dale campaign, I played as a cleric of Auril. I pretended like my character was going to betray Auril, but I was actually loyal. Using private messages between me and the dm, I sabotaged the party a lot. I secretly healed enemies. A few times, I aggroed a couple of enemies to ambush the party during a long rest. I purposefully failed some stealth checks. I got the rogue in prison after I told law enforcement of their plans. I once succeeded on a Wisdom save, but pretended I failed as an excuse to attack the sorcerer. I had many other tricks for sabotaging the party that I don’t remember right now. It culminated when after the party had killed an adult white dragon, and took a long rest, I ressurected it using a high level spell scroll, and then started riding it while spamming magic at the party while the DM and I revealed everything. Everyone was so shocked. It was really close, but they came out on top. To this day, I’m shocked that my DM allowed this and so glad too, because it created an unforgettable experience for everyone.
Giving them seemingly great magic items but they have a downside: Glove of Fire: Unarmed strikes deal 2d6 Fire damge extra. Cant hold wood or other flammable objects
As a way to punish people for just attacking chests to test if they were mimics, I had some particularly spiteful nobles and other people who REALLY didn’t want anyone else to have their treasure occasionally have trapped chests that, upon being struck with enough force to deal damage to the chest, would activate the trap, instantly detonating the chest to deal a moderate amount of damage, but more importantly, destroying all the treasure inside. The trap wasn’t that difficult to disarm, just insert some gold coins or something else of a similar shape. Oh, and I made it that mimics had evolved to control their heartbeats enough so they could appear to be dead to any spells that only work on or detect living creatures. I got tired of people just hitting chests or trying to use Eldritch Blast to immediately detect mimics without putting any effort in or even rolling anything.
I had a rogue who would roll to loot everything he could. Would never share anything with the party. So, usually by the time they were done with a dungeon crawl the rogue was generally laden down with gold. In one dungeon I decided to put an Aurumvorax near the end. What is this monster you may ask? A creature that eats gold. When it attacked, it was focusing solely on the rogue. He had a choice. Abandon his loot, or continue to be the singular target of the Aurumvorax. He finally ditched his bulging pack, tearing up as the beast chowed down on his gold, as he and the rest of the party fled. He now makes sure everything is divvyed up properly.
I had a weird encounter table that my players were able to see and one of the options was XORN in all caps, when they eventually got the event I gave them one of the nicest monsters they ever encountered, dude just wanted some rocks
I've hit my players with the unlocked door trick. Players wake up to find a kobold distance making off with their weapons, and most of their gear. They track sound kobold the a cave, send familiar in to scout and sees and sound dragon sized nest and large amounts of various skeletons. After abit of probing they enter safely, get to the back of the cave to find a stone slab door with an archway with "Only the brave shall enter, only the wise may leave" craved in draconic while growing red. They push the door open, see all their stuff and alot more as they found a dragon small hoard. Players get greedy and start looting - the door slams shut with the same inscription on the archway. They start to panic and looking for a way out even considering climbing a very small fissure in the roof. They all try "Open Sesame" and the likes, detect magic, "Door gives off a magic aura and seems to have no hinges". Barbarian finally bull rushes the door and it opens like a door should.
One of my tables has a BBEG Changeling Genie pact warlock, only by mentioning the SMELL of the cigars she smokes, they start getting paranoid of everyone around them, I've already sued a friend NPC and even another player to infiltrate the party and steal the eng goal from them, now they live in paranoia. and she sent the cigars around the realm, as gift for common people, soldiers and many more, now they cannot go anywhere without feeling the "characteristic" smell of her enemy. she might be here, she might be there, she might be you, she might be me. hard to know.
DMing for 20 years, another fun story I had everyone roll for a new campaign. Got everyone excited with high level game, after created, I took up their heroes and passed out everyday normal humans working miserable jobs in a small town, gas station, janitorial, bus driver, homeless, and forced horrible situations upon each player. So then I “accidentally” exposed one of them to a medicine man who felt bad and gave him some special pot to relieve stress. It took the group to a new and special world and they felt powerful. Also tossed in a super hot princess, who was Lady Fierna of Hell. So the more drugged they became the longer they could stay in the special world, harsher the drug the longer the effects and then I started overdosing the players, made them addicts, and at the end of the campaign trapped the heroes that were still alive in an illusion in hell as the planes drifted apart. 😇
if a player asks something OoC and i don't wanna spoil something i say "if you do [redacted]" or some variation but always adding [redacted] to it. I also gender bent a PC with a cursed doll that i later connected to a hag. they currently have a bean that contains the spell wish [60% chance of monkey pawing it]
i got a tiwst on a mimic idea a mimic jewerly case that can only store one small ring and if you try to open it it just very cutely nips at you if ti lieks you but if it doesnt like it it just snaps and kinda clamps down on your finger. but heres the thing you only need a difcaly roll of 2 dextrary or contuion roll to bascly compltely aviod being stuck with the jewerly case mimic being suck on your main weapon hand or secdary weapon hand untill you roll aobive 2 on dextray or contaion rolls. also falling rolls doent do anyting other then 1 pont of nonlethel damage and haveing it stuck in youe main ewapon or secdaory weapon hand for a round.
I gave my players an encoded book. I printed it for them. Took them two months to decipher it. It had a ten page recipe for boiled water.
How do you even stretch that out ten pages?
@@whatswiththisnewhandlesthingbiology. You can build your entire academic career, describing all the pathogens and parasytes you can encounter in raw water.
Go into the science of it. How, and why. Just do not mention the words “water,” “pot,” “heat,” or “boil.”
@@Владислав-ы9м5у “Raw water”
@@whatswiththisnewhandlesthingOh, the others are wrong. It was nothing as smart as describing the science of it. I described the cup and pans needed to do the task. Also, how to position the cups and pans, so that the open side was pointing up, to avoid the water falling out.
My friend was in the starting tavern, he said "I look for someone powerful" rolled a 2, and found a mirror. Now, anytime my players roll low on perception, even if it makes no sense, even if there wasn't one there before, a mirror appears.
*gives DM Inspiration*
One of my favorites is The Countdown Puzzle. When they enter, the doors on either end of the room close. They are magically protected, and cannot be busted open. Then, the lights go out, and in in a spiral pattern is 20 numbers from one to 20, with 20 glowing blue. In the middle of the room, a glowing button on a stone plinth surrounded by a thin channel of glowing water. The number 20 stops glowing, and instead 19 glows, then 18, 17, 16, and so on, and make sure you call out each one. At 10 seconds, the room lights up yellow, and the numbers turn yellow. At 5, the room and numbers turn red. At 3, an alarm starts blaring and the lights start flashing.
If at any time, the players press the button, the countdown resets back to 20.
The channel of water has symbols of weapons around it, and arrows pointing to the water. If they put their weapons in it, it enchants the weapons.
Thing is, that's the entire puzzle. Despite the alarm and the lights and the flashing, if ever they begrudgingly let the countdown go down to zero, the doors open, and the lights come back on to normal.
This will drive paranoid players BONKERS.
I love putting a door covered in doorknobs and a cryptic story with hints how only one will work and the others will basically nuke the party. The trick is that they all work, and every time I've done this, it causes any 45 minutes of trying to figure out the clues
My Players came to a savanna city. The kingdom they were in was in turmoil; the former king had seemingly died in an accident. His Brother was trying to keep the population from panicking. On top of it all, the Crown Prince was missing, having last been seen near the location of the accident. They figured Prince Admir was not worried about finding the Crown Prince, but he still permitted them to investigate.
Three sessions later, they find the location of the accident; the King has fallen from a cliff and was caught in a stampede of wildebeests. One of my players looked at me. "This is the Lion King." I gave him DM inspiration.
I have a DM right now who does this sort of thing constantly. So far we've spotted the Monty Python and the Holy Grail three questions skit, Hungry Hamburger from Yugioh, the Velvet Room from Persona, and the main plot is Castlevania (the netflix adaption).
@@TheMightyBattleSquid Ask him when they're going to fight the rabbit with cr7 stats?
@joshuagross3151 Funny enough we already did. A player who tried to pet it lost a hand.
@TheMightyBattleSquid I'm surprised it didn't take his head off.
On the first ever one shot I ran for my family, I put a rock covering the entrance to a cave in their way. The way to get past it was to ask politely. After a combat, they came to a normal door within the cave. The barbarian tried to pull the door open, and it didn’t budge, so the paladin pushed him aside and said “please open”. This caused a trap on the door to go off, casting hail of thorns on the two.
After that, the paladin rolled a nat 20 investigation on the door, so I looked them dead in the eyes and said, “Upon closer inspection, it’s a push door.”
honestly turning the story of the pokemon games into a dnd campaign NOT based around the capture of monsters to serve you actually does kinda work. and its not like it wouldnt be within DnD lore to allow things like elemental powers. 4 planes and 4 mixed planes = 8 elemental powers. making the remaining ones is the fun part.
My personal favorite is the Absolutely Normal Object.
First, make them paranoid with a few trapped doors and hallways and pitfall traps, then, in the next room, put a single object of furniture. It doesn't matter what; it could be a desk, a chair, a door, a cup, a signpost, a chest, whatever. What matters, is how you describe it. Remember, this only works AFTER you've made them paranoid.
When they enter the room, describe how the object is perfectly normal, and is just... sitting there, in the center of the room. If they ignore it, ask "Are you sure?" If they are, roll some dice as they walk past, and make a show of asking who walks past and in what order. If this doesn't get them to investigate it, they weren't paranoid enough.
Next, upon every single action they do to it, it will react how a normal object would; Not at all, only breaking if they damage it. It is of the utmost importance that you do not show ANY emotion during this. Even a hint of a smile could tip them off. Always make sure to make it seem more suspicious with your word choices; "It Seems to be a perfectly normal chair, to you at least." "Its left front leg is ever so slightly wobbly when you jiggle it, but that could definitely be just normal imperfections in the woodworking." "It falls to the ground with a clatter, denting slightly from the impact, just like a normal chair would."
When they've exhausted all their actions looking into it, and possibly even dissassembled it, absolutely nothing happens. Then the rest of the dungeon goes on as planned.
If your players are rightfully paranoid by now, this will drive them ABSOLUTELY NUTS. There is no secret to the Perfectly Normal Object, but every instinct in their bones says there's something wrong with it. Every way you phrased it, despite being 100% truthful, has lead them to believe that there HAS to be SOMETHING about it. But while you know there's nothing, THEY don't; They could have easily failed the investigation checks, or not looked at the right spot on it. But no matter what they do, they'll never find ANYTHING, because in all reality, there's nothing to find.
My party navigates the tower of a wizard who specialises in illusions. They reach a room and the door locks behind them, I have them roll wisdom save, they all fail.
I collect their character sheets (I would sometimes do that to award inspiration or add something to their inventory, so they aren't suspicious this time). Then I shuffle the sheets and give them back at random, explaining that they are a different character now. My players had an absolute blast, trying to do magic (they couldn't), enjoying their new physical traits - like that player who became a Tortle and spent a few minutes just spinning around on his back - while the only player good at puzzles solved the sudoku on the door.
As soon as the door opened I had them give each other their own sheets back and explained how the illusory feeling of swapping bodies, an illusion so strong that it affected all their senses to make them believe they were one another, slowly faded away.
Really proud of that moment
Picturing the party barbarian, some huge guy, spinning in circles giggling because he thinks he's a tortle
@@Mothbahls138 even better, it was the party sorcerer, very gothic and edgy character
Player on the receiving end here. Once, I examined a door to check for traps. Finding none, I opened it to discover . . . another door. And another. And another. There were something like 10 doors (I lost count) all stacked into the same entryway. The last 2 had trap triggers.
I would totally have put a detective hat on that duck and called it Ducktective.
An artificer stopped by kids house and messed with the ring.
Hmm 🤔
Let's give it a mod 2.
Ducktective mode.
Search duck extraordinar.
Goes in circles around your feet.... Looking at the ground with a magnifying glass quacking excitedly.
How about a hat on a platypus secret agent?
if i was your dm not only would i let you i'd give the duck a +2 to the persashion roll(can't spell) and about a 10 -12 years old mentaltly
This film is the sacred trove of wisdom passed from DMs to DMs. It's 1 AM and I can't stop laughing. I fucking love this channel.
Who wouldn't like a ring that lets a duck follow them anywhere? Someone with anatidaephobia.
Perfect prank ring have them find a ring. Don’t tell them what it does but as long as they were it a duck will always spawn and follow them and now they go the rest of the campaign wondering why there’s a duck it doesn’t do anything. It just stares but if you want to take, it further, have it on the rear chance spawn a goose and the goose just causes inconveniences
I did face a variant of the 'deck of -not- many things' once in a campaign and we pretty much had the same reaction... only this one was just enchanted with a protection spell so it didn't degrade.
Not something I have done but an idea I want to do:
The Mimic Museum
Like Ripley's Believe It or Not mixed with Madame Tussaud's wax museum.
The story behind it is that a local artist/bard wants to do a project based on various stories and accounts of adventurers, but as they were hearing these stories, they realized that every single person has a unique story about encountering a mimic. This gives them the idea of creating molds of different forms of mimics in wax and displaying it along with the stories. It became a huge success, attracting customers and angering other businesses.
One day, an adventuring party will get a request from someone working at the museum. They say that someone decided to release an actual mimic in the Mimic Museum to hurt customers and ruin business, and ask for the party to capture and release it safely for a substantial sum.
The twist is that the requester actually works for a rival business and requested this knowing that the party's gung-ho/murderhobo nature will lead to destroying priceless items in the museum.
And the mimic they are pursuing? It's just a stray cat that got released the night before.
I'm gonna use this. This is genius! I love mimics and the party knows it, so this is perfect.
DM here. I had a simple bounty mission for players to seek out and capture "a merchant selling bad cursed items."
When they encountered and incapacitated the merchant they would go to check his wares only to realize the meaning behind "bad cursed items." With gems such as Dagger of Breaking Wind, Vambraces of Foul Breath, Boots of Foot Oder, ect.
They still don't read the posted quests thoroughly sadly...
The local vampire is named "smiley fangs" yet no players have wanted to take him on. Lol
Rocks fall, Beholder dies
Just saying if later in the campaign a big bad delt in undead.....
That battered body of a beholder.....
Would probably pop back up for some reason......
.......
Short John Coppers
Long John Silvers
Thank you! I never would have gotten this on my own
One of my favorite trolls I ever did was I named the Tabaxi Govenor of the island city Dawn Fluffles as a reference to SAO Abridged. The moment my players heard his name in passing they all froze for a moment expecting him to be a bad guy. I had an evil wizard disguising as him to throw them off further XD
How to troll with some added paranoia: have player try to open a door in a dungeon. Right as they go to open it, loudly say “Wait! Which way do you turn the knob!? And do you push or pull the door?” Randomly roll some dice behind your screen, then let the players harmlessly pass through the door. Your players are now scared of doors.
Love the room of dizzying
The whole time my players party were in Anhk'arel in Call of The Netherdeep they had recurring fights with one actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf. He just kept coming back over and over. Players could have killed him off permanently after the first encounter but paid no attention to the "actual cannibal" song in the background telling them exactly what to do. They never truly finished him and he's still out there... Somewhere...
Running an isekai campaign in which their consciousness was placed into the body of someone in a parallel dimension. In one large town they came across a dock worker that looked exactly like one of them, not as their character but their real world self.
They went to say hello to him wondering if it might trigger something, which he just said hello back to them. It resulted in them following this dockworker around for a bit just doing his job until he had someone fetch the town guard because 5 people were very obviously lurking around the docks and following him. They skedaddled before the guards arrived delaying their objective by an in game day to avoid any other suspicion.
Many made me smile. The wizard and eggs made me chuckle. But the armor and the butten, oh my, that made me belly laugh.
I tend to just roll random dice behind the screen while my players are coming up with a plan for the boss fight, they always start panicking, sometimes I’ll even ask for their passive perceptions
Mimic Infestation. Anything could be a mimic. Cue players constantly being paranoid about basically every single tree, rustling bush, or piece of gear they come across when really there was only a mild handful of them.
I’m about to have my party of pirates meet a ghost ship that happens to be a mimic filled with lesser mimics inside
@@clintonperkins9846 Mimic-Shipson?
Asking for perception checks and dex saves or rolling initiative from players on a battlemap only for it to be something like chewingas “ambushing” them in a snowball fight or sneaky foxes trying to jump up at them.
My personnal favorite is to put a grandma in their direct environment. EACH TIME THEY FREAK OUT. They do it without failing because i conditioned them to do so and to be warrie of each and every grandma they encounter. Because in our first campaign i knew it was walking on eggshell all the time they could turn into murderhobo at the smallest occasion and I really didn't want that to happen so what i did was simple if they even try to attack a NPC i would transform this NPC into a level 10 cleric not too overpowered but still an impossible challenge for them to surpass and when they attack the grandma because she didn't want to follow them to safety (There was a dragon in the vincinity of the town and she leaved out of time so the mission was to convince her to follow them to the town wich they couldn't convince her to do so and in the end they tried to knock out the grandma and failed but i make it seems like they killed her) so after that I started the combat by making her use a shape earth spell that way she was in no way in danger and next action i tried to use the god intervention to my surprise it work i make it so she asked for help and she received a planetar the planetar put them in their place and after they tried to make amend for what they did i reward them and after that they understood that action will cause reaction big or small no matter but a reaction
One of my groups actually found a way to troll me.
I did a prequel session, to wartime. Two of the PCs had veteran backstories, so this one shot was a way to help them flesh things out a bit more. They had a couple of NPC soldiers with them as backup.
In the previous campaign, these same players got picky about enemy names in initiative. I just had them as “Thug (insert number here)”. So they forced me to name them Mikey, Tony, Tommy, Johnny, and Zeke. They named this group of foes “The Italians.” Tony was particularly troublesome for them. This is important.
Anyway so back to present day, they bring soldiers that they name Michael and Antonio.
They’re running from some enemies when one of the soldiers falls and gets stuck. The next interaction is how they troll me with a running gag from the previous campaign.
Me: And one of the soldiers falls and gets stuck on a failed check.
Paladin: which one?
Me: you named them.
Paladin: Michael or Antonio?
Me without realizing: uhh… Antonio
Both of my players in unison: FUCK TONY!!!
Me suddenly reliving the flashbacks of all the times they named an enemy “Tony” just to reuse that gag.
------
Additionally, I have a running gag with all my players that any time they ask a random nonhostile NPC their name just to get at me for my inability to come up with names on the fly, I now will always answer with:
Nerevarithilandoraniratahnelenkashinoramalvahan.
And yes I’m able to verbally say this.
I was running a curse of strand and decided that I would throw a really de buffed false hydra at them, so I started by saying you are suddenly in a sewer you each have lost blank amount of hitpoints, after investigating the sewers they were in the town square and I lied to them by saying what sewer? You never went into the sewer. I gaslite my players by teleworking them around and taking health from them before the wizard cast silence cause there was an annoying noise and then the false hydra fight started
A flock of geese , empowering ring of farts
I understood that reference. "I see no duck!"
I sneak extra monsters onto the map, usually when no one is looking.
though, I did put a room with an orc and a chest. it was a wax orc and a fake chest. the party took a long time and many resources to figure that out.
My Players kind of trolled them selfes.
They fought a vampire witch and her demons, after they beat her, her gas form flees to her coffin (Pathfinder 1.E) to revive.
My players found the coffin and gathered around it, making a complex battle plan, buffing up and stuff. Took them about 5 minutes irl, all while I sit behind my dm screen and holding in my laughter.
When they opened the coffin I made epic dark battle music on, only to tell them, der are the slowly rebuilding remains of said vampire inside. I could not hold my laughter in, after that.
I actually just created one. I was looking through monsters and came across a Gazer which without a Beholder master (according to the lore) it might attach itself to a magic user or otherwise follow them sometimes mimicking them in a mocking manner. They will find it. It will not be aggressive. And since two of my three players are spellcasters it will find them and mimic and mock them at every turn. It's going to follow them and mimic them until it annoys them so much they kill it.
My group of Transformers TTRPG players consists of mostly people who are only passively familiar with the franchise beyond the live action movies. But one of them is a big fan, so I like to allude to things that he recognizes but his character doesn't. This constantly leads to him shouting in frustration because he understood whatever reference but can't do anything about it.
For example, last session they visited the colony planet of Caminus. The planet is led by The Mistress of Flame. She's a fiery orange color with a cape that seems to be made of flame and wields a massive hammer, more ancient in appearance than anything anyone in the party has seen before. Said player recognizes immediately that this is the Forge of Solus Prime, one of the artifacts of the Thirteen Primes. The Forge is capable of crafting any item the wielder can imagine using any raw materials, but only if that wielder is a Prime. The player who figured it out is now trying to decide what to do with this information because, again, he doesn't want to metagame, but that could be a useful item, BUUUUT the other party members will definitely try to take it from her by any means necessary if they know.
Now,if the duck lays golden eggs,not gold eggs,that's truly trolling!😈😈😈
Nice episode.
Just pokemon I lost it when I heard that
It's actually pretty genius and I sort of want to put that in my campaign. Little side-boogie.
Just for future reference, I'm gonna tag the time 5:40
I remember they were exploring the ruins of a long abandoned temple. They reached a hexagonal room that had 5 entrances , one on each side except for one. On the center of the room, there was this orb, that when touched brought them back in time to when the temple was still in it's entirety. This time, though, there were 6 doors on the room. The extra one was a mimic.
So my first ever time dming I scared the shit out of my players by having them trip a trap in the dungeon we were in. They hit either a pressure plate or a trip wire i can't remember and then suddenly there was a loud ticking. Naturally the whole party panicked and ran into the next section of the dungeon and slammed the door behind them they stood on the other side of the door waiting to hear the explosion but nothing ever happened. There was no bomb it was just a ticking to freak them out lmao
My favorite videos to listen to while driving. Also. 1st!
For the dizzy room. The 2nd time we entered it i would have marked the door with chalk, paint, scratch, excetra so we knew where we came in from
"the duck ring" never ending supply of fresh eggs for breakfast yummm.
"Never touch a duck in the dungeon"
How to give homebrew specialists a headache (I’ll go first and hope someone will contribute)
-a valley tudo inspired combat system with real world accuracy
-bringing Amazo into a DC Comics themed campaign
-those “20 minute combo” characters
I learned some new funsies today.
(mwahahahahaa)
**Mustache twisting intensifies.*
I might have to steal that Duck ring idea.
The book of Goblin Karma Sutra with a curse spell that forces the player to read the entire book before releasing them.
As someone who's never played DnD, these videos are way too funny 😭🙏
Recurring villain named "The Rat King"
Always some throwaaway encounter. But he is always an urban legend that in the early levels people are talking about.
He will sh*t in your mouth.
Oh this is easy. Have them roll perception or stealth and if they low roll... nothing happens. I just give a little hmm and write something down. I also like to do things like time fuckery. Last session I just removed a minor monster at random from the fight and claimed it was never there.
One of my dungeons had an identical map layout to the FNAF 1 pizzaria, just flipped. In place of animatronics there were statues that the party had to build together in order to open an escape
I did the classic "troll at the bridge scenario," except the troll had the mind of a 5-year-old and only wanted one dollar to pass. The characters didn't know what a dollar was, and the troll scoffed at their silver and gold. They spot a fisherman up the river a little and ask him if he knows what this troll wants. The fisherman whipped his line out of the water and dangled a dollar bill in front of them saying "I caught you a dollar."
The rouge perfectly missed the sleight of hand check to get it, so I got to say the line.
"Oh! You gotta be quicker than that!"
She tried again, got the dollar, gave it to the troll who was happy as a clam and let them pass.
The moans and groans from the party were everything I needed.
Ancient toothless Mimic with legs. The thing was so old that all it's teeth fell out and it would make old man noises. The first time someone opened it they got gummed and slobbered all over as grandad tried to eat them, it was highly uncomfortable for the player involved but hilarious for everyone else. Because the mimic was effectively harmless the party moved on and forgot about it, until it showed up in another room and gummed another player. Eventually the party figured out this thing had legs and was really good at walking quietly. They tried to kill it but I intentionally made it unkillable with rapid regeneration. Grandad mimic was ultimately left behind as the party finished their mission and left the crypt.
Something i should invest in
made my players think the person they were helping was the final boss but it was his chef that was the bbeg
Give them an item that " one-shots" enemies and give them a bunch of enemies that session, next session have an NPC identify that the thing they used actually teleports enemies to THE FINAL BOSS of the campaign, don't forget to tell them they can only teleport kobolds, and all the enemies last session were, you guessed it, KOBOLDS, tada, you've made several people PISSED! That's what you get for ruining my campaign Dylan!
I just hide puns in the campaign that are clever enough to take some time to land, or so blatant that they're physically painful.
Duck ring? Worth it.
PANR has tuned in.
....I WANT THAT RING!
And if that duck isn't fuzzy or fluffy, imma be mad
PUNS! recently had my players have to find 4 NPCs who were missing. Jonah, Jakob, The Bard called Jangles, and Jaime (Pronounced like the Hai-Mey), they were asked to find these people by the man Schmitty. Only one of my players got the joke and I had to explain it to the others, but that's normal. They didn't even get the joke of doctors Howard, Fine and Howard.
Pun dungeon
Random graffiti"beware mimic infestation" "shadow assassin HQ""here be trapz"always poorly spelt to distinguish from real signs, always the work of bored teenagers, alWays daubed in wet red stuff… 😂
Sometimes I’ll say (like Matt Mercer) “you most certainly can try…” even though I know it’s completely possible to do the thing their asking just to make them paranoid
I had two really good trolls. One is a little insensitive by today’s standards, but the other one is one of my favorite ways to put the players in a new campaign setting. The party finds a rowboat in the middle of nowhere. It has a metal box affixed to the back, situated so that the opening is facing away from the back of the boat. On top of the metal box was a button. For some reason, when players see this, their first inclination is to sit in the boat and push the button.
If you haven’t guessed yet, the box is a jet thruster, and the button an ignition switch. This causes the boat to go warp speed in the direction it was pointed. Now, most players at this point think to themselves “well, pressing the button turned the box on, maybe hitting it again turns it off.”
}:) NOPE! It just reinitializes the initial thrust causing the boat to GO FASTER. By the time the players get off the boat, they are three continents over.
I have a strange obsession with Jar Jar Binks from the Star Wars prequels. My first ever ttrpg character was heavily inspired by him with his voice and general mannerisms. So when it came time for me to DM a Star Wars 5e my friends knew there was an ever-looming threat that Jar Jar could appear at anytime. I tried to keep them on their toes but when their quest brought them to Naboo, they knew it was inevitable. What they didn’t know was how I would introduce him.
Now for added context, Jar Jars life after the prequels is relatively unknown in current canon except for the fact that he at some point becomes a disgraced clown living on the streets due in large part to his role in helping the Emperor take power. This a fact my friends knew well, but I wasn’t strictly following current canon, and there was still a 10 year gap between the setting and when we learn that information for it to happen if I wanted to.
Needless to say. It was really funny hearing them work it out as I was introducing the Mayor of Theed to them.
I'll roll dice for no reason.
Hmmm 🤔....
🎲
😮
🧹
Let's not talk about that 1.
There was a flesh golem thing in the Frozen Sick one shot. By the time they got close to it, it terrified my players. Even more so when it broke down the door and chased them. Pretty sure it ended up destroying itself, but I included an undead researcher that scared them even more. Might make him the BBEG.
If you face that golem, it's in rough shape. Totally doable. If it wasn't in rough shape though....
imagine a ring, that creates a duck whenever you want.
your group is hungry in a forest? make a duck.
if there is a way to give orders to the duck, even better. you suspect a trap ahead? order the duck to try to activate it. the duck would have been your meal anyways.
Honestly the Mimic Coin of Greed, a Mimic in the shape of a gold coin that eats gold coins and can reproduce by mitosis. Sometimes o like to make them think the gold they are pickpocketing might have 1
Not a dm, but the dm let me do this. In an Icewind Dale campaign, I played as a cleric of Auril. I pretended like my character was going to betray Auril, but I was actually loyal. Using private messages between me and the dm, I sabotaged the party a lot. I secretly healed enemies. A few times, I aggroed a couple of enemies to ambush the party during a long rest. I purposefully failed some stealth checks. I got the rogue in prison after I told law enforcement of their plans. I once succeeded on a Wisdom save, but pretended I failed as an excuse to attack the sorcerer. I had many other tricks for sabotaging the party that I don’t remember right now. It culminated when after the party had killed an adult white dragon, and took a long rest, I ressurected it using a high level spell scroll, and then started riding it while spamming magic at the party while the DM and I revealed everything. Everyone was so shocked. It was really close, but they came out on top. To this day, I’m shocked that my DM allowed this and so glad too, because it created an unforgettable experience for everyone.
Is it possible to control this duck and if so can it be used to trigger traps?
Giving them seemingly great magic items but they have a downside: Glove of Fire: Unarmed strikes deal 2d6 Fire damge extra. Cant hold wood or other flammable objects
As a way to punish people for just attacking chests to test if they were mimics, I had some particularly spiteful nobles and other people who REALLY didn’t want anyone else to have their treasure occasionally have trapped chests that, upon being struck with enough force to deal damage to the chest, would activate the trap, instantly detonating the chest to deal a moderate amount of damage, but more importantly, destroying all the treasure inside.
The trap wasn’t that difficult to disarm, just insert some gold coins or something else of a similar shape.
Oh, and I made it that mimics had evolved to control their heartbeats enough so they could appear to be dead to any spells that only work on or detect living creatures.
I got tired of people just hitting chests or trying to use Eldritch Blast to immediately detect mimics without putting any effort in or even rolling anything.
I had a rogue who would roll to loot everything he could. Would never share anything with the party. So, usually by the time they were done with a dungeon crawl the rogue was generally laden down with gold. In one dungeon I decided to put an Aurumvorax near the end. What is this monster you may ask? A creature that eats gold. When it attacked, it was focusing solely on the rogue. He had a choice. Abandon his loot, or continue to be the singular target of the Aurumvorax. He finally ditched his bulging pack, tearing up as the beast chowed down on his gold, as he and the rest of the party fled. He now makes sure everything is divvyed up properly.
I had a weird encounter table that my players were able to see and one of the options was XORN in all caps, when they eventually got the event I gave them one of the nicest monsters they ever encountered, dude just wanted some rocks
I've hit my players with the unlocked door trick.
Players wake up to find a kobold distance making off with their weapons, and most of their gear. They track sound kobold the a cave, send familiar in to scout and sees and sound dragon sized nest and large amounts of various skeletons. After abit of probing they enter safely, get to the back of the cave to find a stone slab door with an archway with "Only the brave shall enter, only the wise may leave" craved in draconic while growing red. They push the door open, see all their stuff and alot more as they found a dragon small hoard. Players get greedy and start looting - the door slams shut with the same inscription on the archway. They start to panic and looking for a way out even considering climbing a very small fissure in the roof. They all try "Open Sesame" and the likes, detect magic, "Door gives off a magic aura and seems to have no hinges". Barbarian finally bull rushes the door and it opens like a door should.
One of my tables has a BBEG Changeling Genie pact warlock, only by mentioning the SMELL of the cigars she smokes, they start getting paranoid of everyone around them, I've already sued a friend NPC and even another player to infiltrate the party and steal the eng goal from them, now they live in paranoia. and she sent the cigars around the realm, as gift for common people, soldiers and many more, now they cannot go anywhere without feeling the "characteristic" smell of her enemy. she might be here, she might be there, she might be you, she might be me. hard to know.
DMing for 20 years, another fun story I had everyone roll for a new campaign. Got everyone excited with high level game, after created, I took up their heroes and passed out everyday normal humans working miserable jobs in a small town, gas station, janitorial, bus driver, homeless, and forced horrible situations upon each player. So then I “accidentally” exposed one of them to a medicine man who felt bad and gave him some special pot to relieve stress. It took the group to a new and special world and they felt powerful. Also tossed in a super hot princess, who was Lady Fierna of Hell. So the more drugged they became the longer they could stay in the special world, harsher the drug the longer the effects and then I started overdosing the players, made them addicts, and at the end of the campaign trapped the heroes that were still alive in an illusion in hell as the planes drifted apart. 😇
If they decide to try to bs me i just roll some random dice 😂 no encounters i just say keep going.
if a player asks something OoC and i don't wanna spoil something i say "if you do [redacted]" or some variation but always adding [redacted] to it. I also gender bent a PC with a cursed doll that i later connected to a hag. they currently have a bean that contains the spell wish [60% chance of monkey pawing it]
You should know better than to pick up a duck in a dungeon.
What is Star Magic?
i got a tiwst on a mimic idea a mimic jewerly case that can only store one small ring and if you try to open it it just very cutely nips at you if ti lieks you but if it doesnt like it it just snaps and kinda clamps down on your finger. but heres the thing you only need a difcaly roll of 2 dextrary or contuion roll to bascly compltely aviod being stuck with the jewerly case mimic being suck on your main weapon hand or secdary weapon hand untill you roll aobive 2 on dextray or contaion rolls. also falling rolls doent do anyting other then 1 pont of nonlethel damage and haveing it stuck in youe main ewapon or secdaory weapon hand for a round.
Be prepared for this thing to be adopted as a pet
@@derekeastman7771 yep and i have been with qute a few pets in the past.
Obligatory comment
Second
17th