What are the Best Running jokes in your D&D campaigns #3 

That the wizard in the party doesn't bathe. He just uses prestidigitation, which has been established to make him smell sterile like a hospital.

I have never heard "Ostentatious" pronounced as "Ostentanious" in my life, and now that's going to be one of the running jokes of the channel.

Everytime the paladin has used divine sense they sense a celestial. The party has a find familiar that is celestial.

The Wizard’s player made a joke about the NPC but misspelled it: “So he was sitting there, bbq sauce on his tiddles”

I always introduce my character as “I’m Elmatath, my friends call me Crashous.” He hasn’t let anyone call him Crashous yet.

The running gag in the game I'm in is "birds cant see glass". This includes all races and monsters with bird-like features as well as glass in all forms. This is how the DM explained why people hate Kenku in the world. Its not them being vagrants/vagabonds. Its them constantly walking or running into windows. Most taverns have signs outside saying "No bird people" because they can't help but go into hysterics when they see a glass of water or a wine bottle.

My group has many running jokes, like how whenever someone get a low number on an attack roll they immediately fall into a puddle of mud, even when there should be no way mud can form where we are... there's still mud to fall in. But our favorite running joke is that anytime are party does something chaotic or goes overkill killing an enemy, a random villager just happens to be in the line of fire and dies. They all look identical except for a sticky note on their forehead with number on it. This is because they all come from the Luckless family, a family so unluckily, they die all the time!

In my dnd campaign we went to a "cheese bar" so I ordered a cheese champagne and my sister ordered a cheese whiskey They gave us the same thing, so my sister rolls a perception check and sees 2 barrels , they are labeled cheese and *cheese* in italic So now every time something bad happens my sister screams " IT WAS THE CHEESE I KNEW IT"

We play on roll20, and when a monster is slain, I typically put an X on it and send it to the map layer. Instead of leaving it on the token layer. Eventually, we started saying. "He's been sent to the map layer!" Or "send him to the map layer!" Instead of saying,"He's dead." Or "kill him!"

The group I DM for has a running gag with one player "Don't pee on the dragon." Context the group was 6 players lv.5 and around 6 NPCs (Don't ask). They came across a sleeping adult black dragon and one player (Rogue) decided to sneak up to the sleeping dragon, climb the dragon, and woke it up. It used its Frightful Presence ability and the Rogue rolled so low that they peed their pants on the back of the dragon. The group hasn't let that down yet and I don't know if they ever will.

We had hired a group of guards to watch our stuff while we entered a haunted manor. There were 4 of them all named a variation of Steve. Throughout the next several sessions we established that the four Steves were brothers and had aspirations of greatness. They would sometimes get involved with combat. We would do everything we could to prevent their deaths. During the final boss fight two of them even managed to score critical hits on the enemy spellcaster, AND the boss. Since then every single guard who scores a critical hit or does close to max damage, we announce another relative of Steve has been found

In my CoS campaign, we had two: 1. Our party ended up underwater in a magic lake. We fought some sharks underwater and afterwards our ranger was confused whether or not the lake was really a lake or an ocean. Every time some brings up a lake, that joke returns 2. Our changeling rogue had a 6 in con. Whenever that rogue is about to get hit with a ton of damage, his player just shouts “Six con baddies!!!”

In high school I was part of a Pathfinder campaign, and the most relevant running jokes we had were, 1. this one only applied to one of our players who was a fighter class. Whenever he rolled low on a physical attack, the joke was he got his sword stuck in his cape again. 2. Whenever someone rolled high enough to completely destroy an enemy, the DM always liked to say that "they've been reduced to a red stain."

In our current Candlekeep Mysteries campaign, we got a number of trinkets. One of them being a mechanical crab that doesn't move when you look at it. This crab has since become the equivalent to The Game. We always forget about it until someone brings it up, and then we notice it doing an amusing pose like a crab rave freeze frame, or attempting to graft the parts of real dead crabs to itself in dominance.

My buddy Sam is a busy guy. He misses an adverage of about 1 in 3 sessions due to life stuff. As such, it's always his turn to do the recap. Every. Single. Week.

My party has a joke that one of the players (I’ll call her Estrella because that’s her current character’s name) must always have a phobia of curtains. This is because in our first campaign we were exploring an abandoned castle, but instead of doors separating the rooms, it had curtains. This made Estrella very nervous, as pretty much anything could be behind these curtains, and we soon picked up on this and said that her character (at the time, a dwarf cleric named Angelica) had a phobia of curtains. Skip eight months, we’re onto our second campaign and come across another place that has curtains instead of doors, and as the DM is describing it, everyone looks at Estrella, who just sighs and says “Did I forget to mention that this character has a fear of curtains as well?”

One of my friends decided to do a character named gregory, he was just a regular person... Except that he was a 2-foot tall goblin and decided to give himself a sawed-off shotgun. Gregory could now move around just by shooting. They eventually acquired an enchantment that AUTOMATICALLY RELOADS the shotgun. They can fly from pure kickback, and ended up killing an entire cult of about 100 people that lived in the sewer, hereby dubbing them: the shotgun man. We have made a vow to always mention the shotgun man atleast once per campaign, like saying that a guard has somekind of recollection of a small figure blasting the heads of a bunch of random people off. The goblin just so happens to be chaotic evil too... So, we had fun.

We did the Pathfinder Campaign Emerald Spire. There were ALOT of player deaths. My character personally died 2 or 3 different times. Ever since whenever something becomes brutal or alot of deaths we say, "People die in the Spire." And someone always repeats it with confirmation.

Our Dragonborn has a vengeance quest against the Welcomers, who's members have only one ear. He has no ears . . . . So any reference to ears leads back to the same jokes. Our warlock even forgot and gave him a piece of jewellery to warn him of enemies near (a magic mouth spell on an EARING) The jokes have become so weird and elaborate the it is now cannon that the dragonborn has a bag of ears. This resulted from listening in at a window by "pressing his ear against the glass" and descriptions of him placing an elf ear (cupped in hand) against it 🤣

"Enjoy the festival..." Started as a line I kept constantly saying at the start of one of my campaigns during a festival. Our group's motto that reminds you of the fact that there is no such thing as a quiet festival in d&d.

The horny dragon our dragonborn bard banged kept coming back to save our lives

Our group mostly plays D&D, but once in a while I'll run a superhero game as a change of pace. The players sometimes have a little trouble adjusting to the different expectations of the genre. At one point, a player yelled at a supervillain, "We're going to kill you!" The other players pointed out that this is not a thing superheroes typically do. "Oh, right. (ahem) We're going to take you to jail!" Ever since, "I'm going to kill...I mean, take you to jail!" has been a running catchphrase.

Dm here. My wife is playing her first character in this campaign. A sorcerer, with a nature motif, elf reflavored as a naiad. Her character is bit more wild and does not have common manners of the ‘civilized folk’ which has made for some interesting moments in the game. Our best running joke comes from a session before the actual campaign started with the rest of the group, to teach her the rules and let her get a feel for her character. I had no idea that after this session a bag of goblin hands would be the groups go to item for the whole campaign. She’s decided that in order to show proof she’d completed her mission she would cut off an arm from each goblin. Now each session one player will ask how bad the arms are getting and remind her she should really throw those away now, meanwhile the other player the Rogue/Bard wants to weaponize them. An example being to light one on fire using an eternal flame they found and throw them at their enemies. What a creative group.

I had a quest for a group I dm for here and there with a running punchline that still gets said to this day almost a year later. The quest was to subdue a nest of goblins that have been pillaging caravans. These goblins had psychic powers and compound eyes that allowed them to see great distances and even invisible objects. The quest was in a frosty mountain pass with an equally cold swamp below. In this uniquely magical region, there’s a species of frog tailored to this environment called Sneutz that are medium in size and bear thick fur. They’re also fairly docile and easily trained so the goblins used the Sneutz as mounts. After the quest was said and done, the party was quite intrigued by these furry frogs with unique abilities and asked more about them. With a grin that could shake the heavens and dismantle the hells I asked them the question, “oh, you mean the mind goblin thieves Sneutz?” Absolute pandemonium

9:50 I WAS A PART OF THIS CAMPAIGN!!! I was in the Rime of the Frostmaiden and Dragonlance parties, playing as a Dragonborn Hexblade named Vasya and a Kobold Artificer named Kyle respectively. The quote was usually used in Rime when two party members, a Kobold Artificer named Teo and a Dragonborn Fighter named Korin, would come up with stupid and out of this world ideas with my Hexblade that would seem to never work. Some particular examples include: Flooding a cave with gasoline and setting it on fire Stealing a headless golem and turning it into a mech suit "The PK Grenade", where one of us would take Teo, tell her that one of the enemies insulted her, and chuck her into said enemy as she goes into a blind rage And making an underground city fly using a bunch of magic, diplomacy, and an endless amount of dynamite

In every one of our campaigns, there is always at least one point where we go to a town and get kicked out of a tavern because of the fact that our group is well-known for getting into devastating bar fights

Running jokes are always some of my favorites. It's always something you don't write in that was a mistake or something like that. Queue Jamie, the Androgenous. We were playing Third Edition D&D. Jamie was a halfling adept. I had given the players access to NPC class cohorts to handle the things that adventurers might not want to deal with mid-dungeon, such as handling their horses on the outside of the dungeon so they don't get eaten by wandering monsters or stolen by wandering bandits. Someone to help the fighter don his armor and clean it at night, someone to help make scrolls for the casters, craft useful alchemical items, etc. My players decided they didn't want to use them for such mundane means and instead kitted them out for combat. The adepts were using wands and staves, the warriors were using bows and swords, and the experts were picking locks, disabling traps, and the like. The player that had Jamie as his cohort was the party healer. Jamie was incredibly lucky. Jamie also had hardly anything filled out on Jamie's character sheet so Jamie's only pronoun is Jamie. The party was routing a fort that had been taken over by a tribe of orcs. They wiped out the trash mobs and were fighting the big bad of that arc when the big bad realized he wasn't coming out alive so he decided to book it. Jamie wasn't having it. The Orc cast feather fall and jumped off the tower of the fort attempting to run. Jamie jumped after him and managed to grapple him mid-air and carry him out of the are effect of the spell, riding him down to the ground. The orc died on impact and Jamie hardly took any damage. Jamie also took an adult red dragon's breath weapon to the face, failed the save, and stared down the dragon. I rolled a lot of 1's on that one. When they were facing off against the big bad of the big bads, a Son of Gruumsh, a demi-god, they were facing down a purple worm. Jamie got swallowed and managed to crawl out of its mouth and survived with just a few HP left before the party was able to kill it. Thus the trials of Jamie, the Androgenous. The players were always joking about how Jamie must be a god. I made Jamie a deity that day.

Edit: there's a second one below the first. My Friday group, whenever we enter a dungeon, almost always start chanting "Cult of Down! Cult of Down!" Meaning if any path slopes downward, includes ladders/stairs to go deeper, or (if no other indicators are present) curves South, we often take those paths first. One of the DMs in this group intentionally put an evil trap three crossroads Down of one dungeon's entrance to mess with us for doing so. Another one: one player character just keeps adding titles after every significant boss fight, and having an NPC lackey introduce him by the full title for every new NPC we met

From our DM the most frustrating thing he would say was “perhaps”. “Can we trust this NPC?” “Perhaps”. “Will my crazy idea work?” “Perhaps” Are we going to die?” “Perhaps” Now he has us all doing it to the point that we say it more than “You can certainly try”.

We had a Kenku in one game who (this was well before Mordenkainen's came out) Communicated through interprative breakdancing. Oddly enough my Barbarian was the only member of the party who could roll insight checks high enough to understand him. The DM took it as a running gag and every now and then in a campaign we will see a kenku, or even just a random person dancing, and we are forced to roll insight checks to understand if they are actually speaking to us. It's a hoot.

My characters have a tendency to be very unlucky in very specific scenarios. My first character, a Human Paladin, got constanty swallowed by giant toads, that the BBEG send after us, and kept failing the checks to free himself. After he died I started playing a Kobold Artificer, who got into a rivalry with our Rogue/Ranger/Druid. Whenever he is really pissed off by me, he casts Primal Savagery and keeps critting constantly. I have an Armor Class of 22, but I can never escape his anger.

climb checks in pathfinder are our running joke of something to dread to do. we fought a blue dragon ancient, giant spiders who have web alteration, a djinn who eats souls for wishes. but a 35 ft muddy wall in a gulley nearly killed us because we kept failing the climb check at the top of the near shear wall. as luck would have it, we had to leave our rope in the collapsed temple to a frost deity. it still kills us more than the other creatures in the campaign long climb checks.

I was GMing an Edge of the Empire campaign when one of the players said that they hopped off the ship. I was pretty drunk and told him to roll athletics. He fails, falls on his face, and gets a mouth full of sand. The rest of the group thought it was hilarious and have been hopping on and off the ship for the past three years.

The Morteming jokes were the best joke. Especially the second Mortem. May Mr. Mortem continue to Mortem for many years to come!

"Hashtag Vegepygmy Moment" everytime somebody does something that's a little dumb, but not like super mega dumb. We call it a "hashtag Vegepygmy moment". This is because in session zero when we were talking about our characters, I showed the AD&D vegepygmy monster, and said "look at this silly guy" and everybody started chuckling, and then it was followed up with a meme about low intelligence, and then I replied with the titular running joke. And now it has stuck.

PANR has tuned in.

I'm a rune fighter with dark vision. I famously joke that I'm going to use my dark vision that all humans have

Every tavern is just called “the prancing pony” it’s a franchise

Reminds me of my psyker in dark heresy. I often joke that his best stat was insanity points. During a trip in a swamp, my character was lookout. He spotted bubbles in the water. What did he inform? -"It's a shoe!" The others, not gonna react on the crazy psyker ranting about shoes, we were therefore all almost murdered by the massive sheatfish which the arbiter, who couldn't swim, had to kill with a knife underwater. Since that, he often referred to enemies as shoes. Like the cybernetic Ogryn we ran into in a sewer system. Once, he got hold of some weird whistle in a bag. It was evidence. He tried blowing it, but trying to be smart, kept the bag on. The warp doesn't care about silly things like plastic and summoned the flesh-hound of Khorne. But it was gonna take a few turns, so my psyker realized what was gonna happen and in an exasperated voice yelled to the party. -"WORSE THAN A SHOE!!!" Everyone ran faster than they'd ever ran before. We got away in time. Once in world of darkness, we needed to show a bunch of scared civilians out of a dungeon we'd cleared. We were all explaining how we were helping, except one of us who were sleeping. So we described how he was bunny hopping, pointing and saying -"THIS WAY, THIS WAY!!!" Constantly. It's our default for his characters behavior if he's asleep. One of us often has a few mispronounciations. Probably thinks faster than his mouth. But in scion, we got the glorious event. "Walking down from the raised section of the pirate ship, the dread captain himself slowly walks down the steps.... the dread captain.... BLACKBIRD!!!" Upon where it became an immediate running gag that it was USA's stealth bomber the blackbird, but with a black beard tucked on and with a sabre.

Valley girl succubus: "oh my gawwww" she says as she violently throws one of the party members through a wall.

In our TTRPG group the running jokes are: • _"Spirit of Helen"_ - after a girl who was playing with us for a while and then left, might come back later. She sometimes had exceptionally bad luck with dice, then she had exceptionally good luck with dice, and immediately someone else had bad luck - as if she sapped luck from them. Now when we have bad luck with dice all session long, we call it "spirit of Helen is with us today" or "you've been haunted by spirit of Helen". • In Warhammer game: _Warp rifts everywhere._ Happen all the time (I think our GM was confused at first about how psyker powers work, and then he made it just a feature of the space hulk we're on), one was opened accidentally by my Dark Angel Librarian, then GMPC Space Wolf Runepriest berates my character with "I suspect you might be a heretic" tirade, next session he accidentally opens another rift. • In Fallout game: _sombreros._ It just so happened that one of the original party members was a custom protectron wearing a sombrero and talking like a cowboy from old Westerns. Then he domesticates a pig-rat we name Piglet and fashions him a mini sombrero. Then comes another dude, ranger in a big hat. Then comes yet another dude, traitor of Brotherhood of Steel, wearing a gas mask and a sombrero. Then our supermutant finds a sombrero and decides to wear it. My character is the only one wearing a helmet. May be I should wear a sombrero too... • In Star Wars game: _caf collection and "the kitty-cat"._ Our party includes a Jawa Engineer played by the same dude who plays the protectron in Fallout, and the first thing he decided to build/fix on our decrepit spaceship was a caf machine. He's trying to collect caf from all over the galaxy, for now his most precious sample is Black Bantha (it's like Black Elephant coffee, but Black Bantha caf). My character is a Togorian Berserker - very large, tough, but surprisingly chill cat-like humanoid. His name is an anagram to a common cat name in our country. After the party realized it, they refer to this 2.5-meter-tall sharp-clawed beast as "the kitty-cat".

Our best running joke is this one : one time our party encountered a bridge and a bard on it. Bard said pay me a silver coin and I'll let you pass this valley safely. We didn't and bard disapeared in a poof. We crossed the bridge and get embushed by bandits. We ran an other time to a another bridge with the same guy on it. This time we payed him a silver, then he told us to go around the valley because the bridge is a mimic. One of our member didn't believe it and touched the bridge, which was indeed a very large and sticky mimic. From that on we were afraid of bridges

The layers of hell were attacked by a primordial entity and turned into a never-ending drag race.

Player: "Can I cast [insert spell with range of touch] on myself?" Another Player, without fail: "Rule #1 of D&D, you can always touch yourself"

Ok, running joke from when I was a DM: “He chipped a tooth!” Started when I had a group of Wererats attacking the party an decided to hit them with the lycanthropy dilemma. One of the wererats went for a bite attack and rolled a Nat 1 so I declared that he missed his bite and chomped down so hard he chipped a tooth. This happened another time in the same battle and I stated it again “He chipped a tooth”. Later in another battle, an enemy rolled a Nat 1 on a sword swing, I told my players he rolled a Nat 1 and one of them declares through laughter “HE CHIPPED A TOOTH!” From then on, anytime an enemy rolled a Nat 1, either i or a player would state “He chipped a tooth.”

Played a coastguard campaign as a Gnoll ranger and we were traversing a cave during a tidal period and had to roll an athletics or swimming check. Everyone but my Gnoll passed multiple times. Then and every time there was water everywhere during that one shot he would get trapped, fall, and fail almost every check in any body of water. To this day me and my partner have the saying of” Gnolls can’t water.”

Party nearly got TPKed early into a curse of strahd campaign by a bunch of swarms of bats, so my playgroup also holds immense fear of the squeaky night fliers

Our DM has a name that rhymes with CONstitution. So every time I’d do Stunning Strike, I’d joke “Save ‘em, CON!” As the DM rolled the Constitution Saving Throw. I honestly don’t know if anybody in our group laughs at that, but they haven’t told me to stop yet 😂

Late as hell, but mine's probably the "CEN" or "Crowspawn Earring Network". There's this one ruler in my campaign called Marissa Crowford, who in thirty years in power has managed to have nearly 100 daughters with noblemen across the continent (which, of course, makes no sense). Her daughters are coloquially known as "Crowspawn". Considering she's got so many kids in positions of power there's a shit tonne of suspicion on them at all time, from both the NPCs and for a long time, the player characters, especially since if you tell one Crowspawn something they seem to all know it very quickly. The party eventually learned that they all had long rage earrings of whispering, which made the party even more suspicious up until one of my players decided to actually play one. At which point they found out that there's nothing sinister about it and that they actually just use it to gossip, argue and post the fantasy equivilent of memes. They basically have discord. Now if a player ever has a Crowspawn as a character, they're subjected to near constant brainrot from their legion of annoying sisters and it's become a running joke that if they run into one, they're probably upset because on an arguement that's happened off screen.

The funniest moment in one of my campaigns: the party was resting in a town, unaware that they were being followed by a group of high-level spies / assassins. One of the party members, an artificer golem with a human conscience, temporarily regained his human form and spent a night in a luxurious brothel. In the morning, he stepped out onto the balcony and shouted to the whole town, "People, love each other." The twist was that his golem was of a royal kind, and his speech had a suggestion spell attached to it. The spies never made it out of the town.

The dwarf is a mermaid with a glowing foot, the halfling pees holey water, and toasters occasionally appear out of random pockets

I was running Lost Mines of Phandelver. (No real spoilers as the story isn't really relevant to this story.) one of the treasures after the first area of encounters is a golden frog statue. one of my players decided to investigate it. Me: "You suddenly notice a frog sitting on it". Little did I know that, with that single sentence, I created a god. Bartholomew the Frog God. Same player had a character IN A DIFFERENT CAMPAIGN that worshipped Bartholomew. Now in the LMoP campaign, they carry the frog with them everywhere they go, even having a goblin "employee" (payed a small amount) carry him around. I fully intend to actually have bBartholomew return as a god that had been trapped in the statue for centuries, but I think it would be just as funny if he was just a normal frog.

My character simply raises his hand, much to the dismay of the npc speaking, and usually just asks, "Why?". The acting involved is always funny

I started laughing so hard at the Mortiming story that my lower back on my right side began to hurt

Yeah, so I play my party’s only cleric Esther, she’s a reborn,she was a Tiefling before she died and has a British accent so now, every time anyone talks to me, they call me either the antichrist or the British child. Esther was 17 when she died and was 4’8”.

In my current party, the last three towns we've been in, we've had to run away from the town due to extentuating circumstances. First was a law that meant all adventurers will die, the second was because we stole a wagon, and the third was because a really important person was going to kill one of our party if he found out we were there.

"If you roll an 83 on a percentile die, Ember will blow up." It came from one of my groups' first campaign, one of the PCs, Ember, was a suit of armor that was also a wild magic sorcerer. I think it happened like once (and it was actually cool bc he got his magic boosted for a minute), but even though we've since switched parties and are in a different campaign now, every time a percentile has to be rolled, someone will bring it up. Personal favourite Morteming moment: Me, as the dm, forgetting the word 'pond'. In two different sessions. English is my only language.

Ever since I ran my urban fantasy campaign, two have been popping up over and over. THE DEAGLE WITH THE +1 (expressed in shock to unexpected loot with magical properties) and "Can I run over a guy with my car, non lethally". This has lead to players immediately trying to determine the damage and asking if nonlethal can be delt the moment vehicles of any kind are introduced as a system into my campaigns, regardless if they are airships, or just horse drawn carriages. They are gonna ask.

My paladin has a habit of running out of spell slots and yelling " I CAST WARPICK!"

After the first session no one thought it a good idea to get an axe for anything. The first actual shopping session the dwarven artificer decided to ask how much an axe would cost. Using the PHB cost they were very confused how a simple townsfolk could afford an axe. From there on out the entire economy of the world was based on axes.

In my group we have a running joke, to say "For Grandpa" whenever anyone is about to do something that could be conceivably bad or ridiculous. One of the players lost her grandpa during the campaign and it hit her hard, the campaign obviously took a hiatus while she mourned. She returned eventually and we picked up the game where we left off and right before she had her wizard do some crazy stunt she said the words, "For grandpa" and rolled her dice getting a natural 20. It was clearly a therapeutic moment for her and she has encouraged all the other players to invoke "for grandpa" for lucky rolls. At times it feels like less of a joke and more of honoring her family member but it always gets laughs from the group and smiles from her whenever "For Grandpa" is used.

"Just say it's a nature check" For some reason I always roll exactly 16 on those... (18 after bonusses). Never worked on other things though...

One of my players who has had very… creative names for his characters. Names such as Brad and Dave, actually his simple average names are a fun contrast to the other player’s complex names like Marumi or Azrail. Anyway, one of his characters, Aegis, he couldn’t think of a last name for, so we just said “it’ll be a placeholder for now” and literally made his last name placeholder. Then, my brain did it’s normal thing, and got working. 3 years later, a stand in last name has developed into something so important to the lore as to have landmarks on a map named after Placeholder. Now every time my players and I see placeholder in any other piece of media we collectively loose our shit

Our Bloodrager shouting at the start of his turn "TAKE THEM ALIVE!" proceeds to roll a critical and bisected the guard in half with his greatsword. Now every time we one shot a mob the table utters "Take them alive!"

It was a RuneQuest Campaign, the Party were fighting a band of Broo (Chaos Goat Men) Their Shaman was described as a huge naked beast armed with a staff covered in enchantments. He was a tough bugger until he fumbled, dropped his Staff and one of out group manged to kick it away out of reach. The GM reacted, telling how the Broo 'pulls out' a two handed mace as a replacement. Group responds, 'Where from? His Naked' there's a pause.. 'From his Arse! His a Broo!' So that become a running joke when ever anyone needed something..

Long one, but damn good one: First campaign I ever played, first session. We were infiltrating a random dude's house. Our artificer cast disguise self to look like the guy who lived there(and was a suspected cult member). Then he T-posed, flew onto the dude's balcony, floated in front of a window for a bit, stared inside intensely, got back down and asked several neighbors if he'd given them an extra key for the house in case he'd lock himself out. Somewhere in the process I commented: "The neighbors are probably all watching and thinking "what the fuck is Jürgen doing?" We all decided that Jürgen was a good name. Another player also entered the house disguised as Jürgens wife because she had also found out there were cultists in that house. The two PCs both didn't know that the other was their disguised buddy so they tiptoed around each other while trying to search the house. Meanwhile my PC was chilling with Jürgen, not knowing who he was. My party started yelling at each other over a network of magic rocks(we call them rockie-talkies) because they were both panicking at the sudden apperance of "their" spouse, Jürgen got wind of what was going on so he headed home. Simultaneously, Jürgens real wife also headed home for unknown reasons. Now there were Jürgen, his wife and two party members pretending to be Jürgen and his wife in the house. None of them knew about the others. The inevitable confrontation lead to an epic 1v1 between Jürgen and our artificer disguised as Jürgen before the rest of the party arrived. Jürgen, who took out our healer twice and nearly killed the artificer, was later revealed to be the mayor, the cult leader and the only blacksmith of the local town. We named the campaign Rise of Jürgen and he became an absolute legend. Whenever we bring him up, we say "We're all Jürgen deep down".

4 SKELETONS & Rowan Can’t Hit Anything

I got two running gags in a game of mine My character is everyone's wingman I set up a sentient murder robot with an assassin with an arm that transforms into a sniper rifle and he set up a battle maniac surprisingly wholesome gymbro with a dominatrix The second running joke is my character is only able to flirt when he's injured or close to death

Our party of 5 were setting up an ambush to catch some thieves in the act of stealing precious mining equipment. The "thieves" ended up being a Large Spider Crab Monster that our DM had expected to be quite the challenge. But we'd had a few hours to prepare, and I had asked the fated question: "Does this count as loose earth?" Not seeing anything wrong with allowing me to dig a 5x5 hole in the ground in front of the entrance, our DM chuckled as I proceeded to cast a Minor Illusion over the hole, probably thinking to himself that the Large 10x10 miniboss would simply walk over it. As soon as Crabulon stepped a claw through the fake dirt, I cast Enlarge/Reduce, opting for Reduce, diminishing it's size to Medium, causing it to fall straight into the pit after a failed Dex Roll. We proceeded to absolutely bully Crabulon: every time it tried to escape the hole it had to roll an athletics check as we were actively trying to kick it back in, to which Reduce gave disadvantage to. When it did eventually escape it barely made it 20 feet away before being lassoed by our Artificer and put into another hole created by yours truly. I dug the pit another 5 foot deeper the next turn, and then the next, all the while we were pelting it with ranged attacks (the Artificer even threw his robot cat in there with it for extra carnage). After we made crab soup, our distraught DM went on a very deep forum hunt to determine what counted as "loose earth" to find out if my shenanigans were within the rules. After some soul searching, he agreed that whilst it had worked this time, he would take extra care with any "loose earth" conveniently lying around me in the future. Now every time I'm at an impasse and am running out of options, my Gnome will slyly ask the DM: "Say, that patch of brown I see on the map, that wouldn't happen to be some loose dirt now would it?" to the groans of the DM and the laughter of my teamates.

Our running gag is that every time we do combat, we use an online tool, and so, i paste a 1000ft big picture of gobbo from joecat just outside the arena. Every. Time.

In the very first campaign I ever played, (very slight Wild Beyond the Witchlight spoilers ahead! You have been warned!) our party went to a traveling carnival to find a portal to the Feywild. After an hour and a half, we finally found the portal and went through. The first thing we saw was that we were standing on a bridge over a huge casm (about 100 feet or deeper). The catch about that part is, there was a thick fog below us, so we couldn't tell how far down it actually went. Our DM told us that there were large gaps between the wooden planks making up the bridge. Also along the sides were these large mushrooms that were growing beside the bridge that looked big enough for one of us to fit on top of it, although it might not support our weight. Before we can do anything, our biggest party member, a 250 pound Dragonborn shouts, "IM CLIMBING THE MUSHROOMS." He was joined by three other party members, a small drow elf, another dragonborn and an even smaller Tiefling bard. We all watch in horror as the mushroom breaks underneath their feet and all three go plummeting down into the casm, instantly dying. The the other three party members left standing on the bridge, (me included) had no idea what happened. The DM didn't even let them make death saves. This was our first five minutes in the Feywild. Ever since that incident, everyone always compares our choice to a literal or metaphorical jumping off a bridge. My character especially likes to bring up the incident. The funniest thing about this situation is, as we're watching these party members descend into the fog, the original drow elf of the party turns to me, and pulls a bundle of rope out. She looked at me for a minute before speaking in the most unimpressed, monotone voice, "We had rope."

Not sure if this counts, since the campaign hasn't started yet, but... One of my players wanted to have their character be cursed (a la Fool's Gold), and while looking over the curse chart during session zero we (being me, the player in question, and the other three players who attended--the final player had a schedule conflict) discovered that one possible curse was "when you fail an investigation check, you find a live octopus instead of what you were looking for". So naturally all the players voted for that curse. They also decided that it is the same octopus each time. This being a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon campaign, the octopus is actually an Octillery. Meaning there is now an NPC whose sole purpose is to be a running gag, as they are randomly teleported to the party when the cursed character fails their roll.

-All the gnomes that my forever DM has in his campaigns have a Southern accent. -For my very first one shot, I used a generic boulder JPEG to block off an area, and form now on I use it at every opportunity.

My gaming group occasionally encounters Larry the Bandit. It's always the same Larry, and he remembers us. He tries to warn his fellow highwaymen about us, and he always gets ignored. "Stand aside and let us pass." "Guys, you REALLY should do as they say!" "Shut up, Larry."

Our campaigns have a recurring character that shows up in pretty much every universe we run. His name is Chet, the mind flayer. He shows up selling random trinkets out of the back of his car (think an old station wagon). He shows up to give our group random… things. One player got a 3 foot USB cable. Another got a teddy bear. I got an empty glass jar. No matter how USELESS or mundane the items are, they always manage to become a crucial plot point and save the party from doom in one way or another. So you’d better protect that glass jar with your life, because there will come a time when you need that exact jar for something.

Our group is playing Pathfinder 2e. The first time a player used an ability that dealt persistent bleed damage for some reason another player echoed "persistent bleed." then another, and another. Now any time persistent bleed is said at the table everyone chimes in "persistent bleed." No one knows why this started, but we continue to keep the tradition alive.

We were casting "cloud of fog" in any remotely difficult situation, and it solved the problem half of the time

In my game world I have an NPC that reappears in nearly every settlement. If the party needs a general store, they’ll find the Gnaw and Lock Emporium being run by a goblin named Snobby Knobble Robber. My initial idea was for him to be a fence in a campaign that is still in the works. I’ve gone on to other campaigns, but I wanted to use Snobby. He is, therefore, to be found in any settlement, offering whatever wares the party might need.

My group (pre migration to a new DM) had a very controlling, beginner, DM, that added more custom rules and restrictions than the actual 5E books themselves. Think 5E + 4E + Homebrews. Once our party was skulking through a short tunnel (5 feet high) while tracking a group of bandits that gave a group spiders advantageous conditions to ambush us because “you didn’t look up”… the shortest among us was 5’ 7”. Now though… when the dice are against us, someone usually dusts off, “Of course! I forgot to look up!” Another is a situation that the DM wanted me to explain how my Rogue is detecting secret doors and later traps on a chain-pulley system, I told him that I place my tin cup against the wall, ear against the cup, and tap with the pommel of my dagger. Apparently the DM pictured something dramatically comical and his laughter sent us all into waves of laughter. Every now and then I’ll mention to him, “Hey, if it helps I have a tin cup in my mess kit.”

I'm always adding these far too late, but these make me think of these inside jokes we have in our group. Like "misting" an enemy when you accidentally overkill them. or having "a great view of your thumbs" when botching a perception check. (accompanied by the action of holding your thumbs over your eyes.) One of our favorites comes from one of our first games when the youngest guy in our group (22 when we were all 35+) decided to play the classic "elf ranger". We were traveling and when we stopped to take a long rest he opted to "be useful" and "go hunting". Since he had announced this the DM figured he wanted to act it out so he rolled for a random creature for him to encounter. He got a snow leopard. I don't remember if he was actually forced into combat or if he was trying to befriend it (he wanted a companion) or what, but at that point, we were all level 2, so he probably shouldn't have been trying. The DM did try to go easy on him, but the player kept botching all of his rolls. He ended up being left for dead by the angry floof with maybe 2HP left. After that we'd always make jokes that the player "might run into a snow leopard" or "ran into a snow leopard" or ask "Is it a snow leopard?" and he'd act frightened or traumatized. The DM even had the party encounter snow leopards a few times and he'd go into "fight or flight" mode. We've been playing together for almost 10 years now, and he still gives a far-off stare if you mention snow leopards. XD

We had a halfling rouge who the DM allowed to attempt to hide behind other party members. The rolled fine until their last attempt. After rolling terribly we were like, "Oh well" and finished the fight. People start moving their minis and he was like, "Oh wait. No wonder I failed that stealth check. The 4ft halfling tried to hide behind the 3ft gnome." We all look at the map and realized that no one checked to see what party member he moved next to. but the dice knew. which became a running joke if he ever failed a roll, "The dice know something we don't."

Ran a one-shot in ancient Rome the emperor/big bad was a bard named Coolius Weezer writer of the hit song "Buddy Laurel" as soon as the artifice rides into the fight on a giant spider summoned by the druid... the riff plays and the fight began

I have a good one from my group. This story is of my Kenku bard named Applause and how the group accidentally created KFK. KFK (short for Kentucky Friend Kenku) started when the party was split, with most of the party fighting ash zombies. Applause and one other party member weren’t near by the others and ended up being ambushed by twig blights. The blights surrounded Applause but weren’t doing much damage just yet. The other person decided that it was a good idea to use fire, having succeeded a check to determine it as a possible weakness. One problem to the plan though. Instead of using normal fire spells, they pulled out a flask of oil and splashed it into the group… I feel you can see where this is going. Before Applause could get out of the way, they lit the oil. The resulting fire damaged knocked Applause unconscious and the DM described that while disturbing, the air had a nice smell to it. As this was an Adventure League game and we were under level five, with no cleric, I would remake Applause. Using the K.O. from the fire as a plot point, I made him into a forge domain cleric. And so, KFK was born, and the hilarity of that day was cemented into the history of the gaming group. Now it’s a constant reminder to always, ALWAYS, watch for where your party is when doing potentially dangerous area effects.

Not just a running gag, but a bare fact: Since our first campain it happens that the same guy brings himself in dangerous situations. For example: Sneaking in a Skyrim themed campain into a Draugr grave and as an edgy rouge he was, beginning to sneakattack the skelletons laying in a great hall. Went good till the middle of the room where he Nat Oned. Guess who mopped the floor after 20 Skelly boys resurrect at once. Or later in the same Story: Setting the old Tavern on fire in front of every one just to run in the back to tell the evil guy we want to interrogate he has to leave because of the fire (1vs5 fight starts he survived suprisingly). Next time in a WH 40K only war setting: As Cadians in a special mission on a Hive Citys lower levels. After a fight against a Underground Organisation we found out there was an Ogryn enemy on the loo. He decided then, to throw two Fragnades over his locked door. Well, they showed little effect to the, now very angry, Ogryn which sormed out the loo and ripped our friend appart, left him die in agony (and stupidity).

The whole party refused to believe the necromancer and the life domain cleric who always bickered were not married.

Our party was running Candlekeep before pivoting to other stories. During Mazfroth's Mighty Digressions, our wizard gets his turn against the Gingwatzims; "I throw a book at it!" Books have been an inside joke ever since. From a homebrewed book that acts as a +1 Improvised Weapon, to a mace made from books, and we even joke that his Magic Missiles look like small books flying at enemies' heads.

Funny enough, Barry, Larry, Gary, and Harry are the names of the 4 mule deer bucks that hang out in our yard. Now, the herd has expanded to include Terry, Jerry, Sherry, Mary, Kari, and Joe.

The Moonbeam incident sounds like a funny Wild Magic effect

Party had to "rapidly vacate the local area" after pissing off the wrong people. What followed was a mad dash through a cyberpunk desert city while evading security drones and a full-on drone tank. Our minotaur barbarian/warlock went full juggernaut through like... 3 buildings, several courtyards, two streets, alleyways and a farmer's market equivalent. Well, while he was running through the farmer's market, a chicken got caught up on his horns and was essentially abducted to the crew. So now there's a random space chicken hanging out in the ship, occasionally doing random crap in the background.

My first dnd campaign my dm was running humblewood. There’s supposed to be fights with a random bandit leader and bandit camp. He thought it was boring so now we instead have the kobold bandits and their leader who’s only character trait is that he’s the one with the funny hats and masks every time we see him… and he’s immortal but that’s fine (at first it was glasses but he made a new pair of stick frames before we found their camp filled with random magic headwear

I brought in the guy from the hell raiser movies who sold the puzzle box in the first place.”what’s your pleasure” was his line. I added. “You like money? You like travel?” He has made a few appearances over the last 20+ years. And every time. My long time players flip and either try to kill him unprovoked or just nope their way out of the raven he is in. 😂😂😂

Pickles. Its a year into this campaign and the third session our rogue hid in a barrel of pickles to avoid a 2 silver cost of travel. Running jokes of smelling like pickles. Finding pickles and acting like a sacred treasure. Things like that. Its been fun

Any time anything goes prone in our D&D group (my mom is the DM) it is instead referred to as them “Doing the funky dance” because the only reason a creature went prone was because my melee-happy Dragonborn Artificer cast Grease right below them.

our Monk was killing it in an encounter we had with apes and giant apes, he critted with every attack on one perticular giant ape and killed it in 1 round now we make jokes that the monk has a repressed hatred for apes and whenever we want to get some good luck going we go "Hey monk, There's still a Monkey!" and he will go beserk and attack whoever we dubbed "the monkey" kinda like pokadot man from suicide squad with the "ITS YOUR MOM" scene

In my first 5E campaign I played a homebrewed zombie class. ( Don't worry, if anything it was underpowered, I'd have been better off playing PHB Beast master ranger.) So a few sessions in we enter this town and the guards are wary of allowing a zombie, me, into the town. They ask for my papers to prove proof of ownership. My whole group is confused but apparently, in this frontier town, necromancy isn't technically illegal. However you must go to the morgue and register your undead servants, preferably buying a cadaver from the city to use in your work. My group promises to have me registered and speak to the mortuary assistant. We then spent the next 2 *hours* of real time trying to forge the paperwork to fake my registration, then eventually gave up. Turn out it's bureaucracy at it's finest: There is a 2 GP fee, 5 if buying a corpse, where you give the zombie a pendant to show it is registered and sign some paperwork. That's it! If we had just gone in there and paid the fee it would have taken MAYBE 10 mins of real time. So now, even to this day, if it looks like we are going to be doing some crazy over-complicated thing someone will throw their hands up and say: "Zombie papers!" In frustration.

in a heavily homebrewed campaign, my character has an ability that allows his to teleport, a lot, he uses it to dodge most attacks, and to gain advantage on his opponents. Though part of the trade off is that he is going insane. The running joke here is that he's not 'supposed' to exist, and is often hit or as of recently almost hit by lightning. To a point where it doesn't matter what the weather is, it's one of those "This guy is why the 'average' is so high" situations.

"Is there _Arsenic_ in the kitchen?" Finding a kitchen exploring a house? Finding a kitchen in a ruin that hasn't been used in centuries? Doesn't mater, it is always asked. This goes back to a campaign before I joined the team, where apparently they found only one thing of note in a kitchen - a dose of arsenic.

One of my favorite "Morteming" moments wasn't in a game, but my best friend has dyslexia. See, years ago back when they were visiting, the light in my room was a bit aged and flickering juuuust so slightly, and then this gem came out of their speech flaps: "This bug is lighting me. ...Wait. This bug is lighting me. This bug is lighting me. This bug is lighting me! THIS BUG IS LIGHTING ME! THIS LIGHT, IS BUGGING, ME! FUCK!!!" Still brings me joy thinking about it.

Way back in the days of 4th, one of my friends had a passion for playing dwarves and giving them the last name ‘stoneforge.’ Funnily enough, by some strange twist of fait, his character would die almost every session, and he’d arrive at the next one with a new stoneforge ready to go. Now, every time the DM needs to kill an NP for effect, they’re a dwarf named stoneforge.

6:27 >stuck in a location without any visible entrances >say ostentaneous >now you know where the exit is