Arrow! Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true King under the Mountain, go now and speed well"
DM: “Okay, fine. But after this you can’t use it again.”
There’s a moment when it can add tension. You find three silver arrows in an old fort, hole up for the night, and then hear the horrible howl of a werewolf ring out.
Or you’re lost in the desert, trying to ration your water until you can find an oasis.
I’ve played Westmarches games where you do a little pre-adventure “we need to go X hexes so we’re wanting Y supplies to get there and back”. But its more a cost of failure than a drama element.
Listen here’s the thing – I don’t know what you kids are up to, but I do know one thing: laws are threats made by the dominant socio-economic, ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just a promise of violence that’s enacted and police are basically an occupying army, you know what I mean? You guys want to make some bacon?
“I hit the bones with my sword”
“They fall over, defeated”
“This was a fairly trivial encounter”
“The wizard casts a spell. Save verses Newt.”
CHA means the Mummy falls in love with you when it shows up
“You feel strangely compelled towards the text and begin to read it in a sonorous chant”
“Up pup pup! Check my character sheet, I’m illiterate!”
“You said you were playing a journalist who could speak seven languages.”
“A photojournalist! I’m illiterate in all of them.”
All my friends got married and now half the table is spouses with a few spots reserved for a cameo from one of the kids
Naming my main character “Alexander” and every time I visit a city I tell the DM to refer to it as “Alexandria” going forward.
It was called “Earth” because we needed to distinguish it from Sky and Water, which were totally different things.
I mean, the first part seems to be the root of the problem. By the time you’re talking about booting this player, the game is already on life-support.
I’ve had games disintegrate because of out-of-game beef between players. But that signaled the collapse of the whole social group, not just the D&D table. So much of D&D is just an excuse to hang out with your friends. If your friends hate each other, there’s not a lot about hanging out that’s attractive.
I always see these “how do I ditch this annoying player I absolutely hate”.
I rarely see anyone consider why this person was in the group to begin with. Is this the younger sibling or always-around cousin of the DM / game host? The best friend of a person you don’t want to lose from the table? The next door neighbor you roped in specifically because you wanted more than two other people at the table? The kid at the comic book shop you invited in because they were giving you puppy-dog eyes for weeks prior? Someone you otherwise enjoy being friends with except when they’re playing this particular board game?
I mean, yeah. Its trivially easy to ostracize or freeze out a person from a social group. But there’s usually a reason this person was included. And friendly players / skilled DMs can often find a way to make the game fun for more people. Once your solution to a frustrating player is to invent an elaborate way to boot them (in my experience) the table doesn’t last very long afterwards.
Deep rectal itch
I counter with Bigby’s Vibrating Finger
Warlock
Bard
Wizard
Laughs as I cast Tenser’s Transformation
If Diviner Wizards could force reroll on the random encounter table, it would be the most powerful class in the game.
Druid: “Okay, can you explain what has happened?”
Druid Spell Target: “Oh, absolutely. But you need to do me one favor, first.”
Druid: “Anything, just name it.”
Druid Spell Target: “EXTINGUISH ME!!!”
5 hp left, but I’ve got 30 AC. What are they going to do? Roll 20s?
Ah, balls.
humanity is so crooked they’ll basically kill a man for being too good while praising and pardoning a criminal
That’s also something of an allegory, in so far as Jesus’s great offense involved claiming to be “King of Kings” in defiance of the secular laws (which the Pharisees and Romans had co-mingled with the regional religious faith). This was all taking place during a historic armed and militant uprising of Jews against Roman occupation - one that failed shortly after the crucifixion.
So then you have Peter and Paul effectively reconciling with the Roman government and creating a kind-of religious third-way for the Jewish state. One in which you could be both a good Jew and a loyal Roman citizen, because you just tell yourself things look like shit now but when you die everything gets reversed.
Eventually, the cult of Christianity becomes so pervasive that even Romans start believing in the post-death reversal of fortune. And this climaxes in the Roman Civil War in which a general paints all his shields with the crucifix to prove how he’s God’s Favorite Underdog and wins. And then Constantine says “Why wait until you’re dead? What if Christianity gets its heyday on Earth starting now?” Kicks off the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. And effectively forms the bedrock of modern Catholicism as a globe-spanning 1700 year old organized church.
If they wanted a creation or a god, they could just come up with their own.
I mean, they did. And then Joshua showed up with his horn and his seven day parade march.
DM: “You enter a room. There are three dead bodies lined up along the wall, each with a mysterious sigal etched into their foreheads. Also, you see a clown.”
Player 1: “I sense motive on the clown.”
Player 2: “I talk to the clown.”
Player 3: “Omg, my parents were killed by clowns. I wrote the DM 300 pages of fiction about it. I draw my sword and prepare to fight!”
DM: “Damn, why aren’t these players interested in my clues?”