In a more light-hearted note, I've been thinking of a few side-trips to some comical demiplanes such as the Demiplane of Outdated Monsters (idea stolen from the Order of the Stick)
A demiplane filled with monsters like flumphs, norkers and axebeaks that no one ever uses
.
But the one I'd really like to do is the Demiplane of Cliches:
It should have a certain "Galaxy Quest" level absurdity to it. Here are a few of my ideas so far:
-Wizards have to wear pointy cone hats with stars and moons on them or else their spells don’t work ("How can you be a wizard if you don't wear a pointy hat?!")
-Every drow is a renegade good ranger who escaped the Underdark
-A mirror of opposition that creates duplicates with Van Dyke beards (ala the evil universe version of Spock) or long handlebar mustaches that they will twirl
-When PCs are deciding what adventure to pursue, a train suddenly appears and railroads them to the location (grabbing them and forcing them on the train if need be). A giant monster (e.g. a tarsque) will appear running alongside the train licking its lips in anticipation if they decide to jump off the train
-Meeting random people in a tavern causes them to immediately become your friend and want to join your party. Warning: any person that joins your party that has no name or a generic name, will die shortly thereafter
-All vampires sound and act like Beli Lugosi (“Blah!”)
-Monsters will never leave the room they are in, even if they are starving and the next room is full of food
-The most seemingly inconsequential thing the PCs are given turns out to be the thing that takes down the great villain. There is actually a store in town that only sells junk (for outrageous prices) but anything that is bought there turns out to be the villain’s only weakness. ("Arrg! A paper clip! My one Achiles' Heel")
-In a dungeon, PCs encounter the actual Monty Hall (look him up if you don’t know who the real person is) who offers them a choice of what’s behind Door Number One, Door Number two or Door Number Three (Make it so that either Monty is invincible or the PCs can only open one door no matter what they do)
-Minions of the Big Boss will always die JUST before revealing critical information. They will do this even if the PCs don’t ask him for the information or if they repeatedly tell him to shut up
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Any other beloved/dreaded cliches that can be added?
Ideas Needed - Humorous Plane of Cliches
I have never run across the last one. (Apparently not a lot of orphans in the campaigns, I've played)
The rest are golden and I could kick myself for not thinking of the Law of Impractical Female Armoring
The last one is a nod to Harry Potter, Eragon, Star Wars, and all hero tales where the bad guy kills the protagonist's parents/guardians.
Not really cliche, but it is humor. One of the monsters I thought up (more for roleplay than mechanics) is the Censorship Mephit. Nobody knows who created these things, but most sages are quite certain they're the result of "a wizard did it".
They have quite a few annoying abilities, such as being able to make black censor bars (fields of inky blackness) appear over the nipples, buttocks, and crotches of naked creatures (even those who lack nipples or genitalia, such as elementals). Also, they cause a loud "beep" or "honk" noise whenever someone verbally issues a profanity. This is a supernatural ability, and the profanity will be completely cancelled out by the sound no matter how many decibels said profanity is uttered at, but strangely, the beep/honk is never loud enough to cause hearing damage or physical pain/sonic damage.
Among the words bleeped out include those subjective by culture-- for instance, it'll bleep out the words "Fire" and "Magma" when used by an Ice Paraelemental, Qorrashi genie, or ice mephit (considered profanities in their cultures about equivalent to the word "hell" in ours). Sending someone a censorship mephit is considered far, far more insulting than sending them an elemental mephit.
Another idea I had was mephit mimes. >_>
I liked it. You did remind me of one thing I was going to include in a comedy dungeon - a scroll of Remove Curse; however instead of lifting a curse, I would pass the player a note saying that he was now unable to say any profanity and would have to say "Diddely" (ala Ned Flanders) instead; with a pretty substantial penalty if he didn't comply in character.
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The "mime mephits" made think of the bad pun "enemy mime" which made me think of a mirror of mime opposition. Any person who looks in the mirror has a mime copy of himself appear. I think I'll have the mime's imaginary weapons do normal damage.
To further the bad joke, perhaps the only way to defeat the mime of opposition is with standard mime cliches like creating (i.e. miming) a strong wind that he has to walk against or locking the mime inside an invisible box.
I'm not sure if you guys have played the Neverwinter Nights fan series of modules called Penultima, but it poked fun and deconstructed these frequently used tropes in kind of a Terry Pratchett Discworldian way. Despite being mostly humorous, it was surprisngly deep and epic, given the stereotypes some justification. In the second Penultima series, Penultima Rerolled, there is a floating, grandfatherly celestial ball of light that can sometimes answer questions and resolve plot holes (called the Advent, he acts like one of those mysterious generic celestial patrons who cannot directly act). He helps guide you against a group of stereotypical adventurers coming from the past (arrogant fighter, whimsical bard, etc) each with a special die like a d6, d8, etc.
Some tropes kinda polked fun in this series include:
-Taverns and weapon/armor/magical item being the only places that really exist in a town, because that's the only place adventurers ever really go in a town.
-Generic benign gods of light and goodness
-Drunken barbarians/fighters alternatively yelling at wenches to bring their beer and hitting on them
-Random encounters with generic evil creatures like orcs popping out of nowhere for no good reason
-Dice having power and shaping the luck of adventurers standing against the forces of destiny
-Generic magical items with no call sign of the maker on them
Later on, it's revealed that main villain is
Another mephit I forgot about-- the singing telegram mephit. Yeah, this REALLY personifies "lower planar natives/evil elementals/genies send them to people they hate". (I came up with this one while thinking of what manner of things *as far as underlings sent by an allied dignitary* would annoy Cryonax the most, and this was one of the things I thought up of since I envision him as greatly disliking music (a trait he likely shares with Ogremoch... although Ogremoch probably hates it even more... Far, FAR more...) The three types of mephit I've mentioned thus far tend to have rather short lives. They often end up being swallowed whole (chewing would give them far too merciful a death) by lower-planar beings, evil genies, and princes of elemental evil who get annoyed by their very presence. (Also, they're considered too 'lowly' to deserve the privelage of being tortured to death-- they're not worth the time and effort wasted)
Oddly enough, slaadi NEVER eat censorship mephits. Supposedly, the slaad consider them to be unpalatable, somehow.
The Baatezu and Yugoloths sometimes employ singing telegram mephits into their armies. A couple dozen of them (at minimum) are released after being instructed to or bewitched to sing particularly insidious, repetitive, catchy songs-- the kind that easily get stuck in one's head. Usually this is only done when said army intends to fight from a distance, as none of the fiendish races have much better chances ignoring the mephits (and avoiding their effects).
Tanar'ri employ them as well, but not for warfare (too organized for their tastes). Instead, they prefer to leave one or two of them in an environment where they'll cause a ruckus-- a royal banquet, the wedding between two rival merchant clans, etc. Why? Because the Tanar'ri absolutely relish the chaos this causes as the participants search desperately for the source of the terrible noise, or accuse each other of being the cause. Generally, this only occurs as an answer to a cultist's prayer, and only certain demon princes employ it (mainly those whose portfolios include diplomacy).
-The preferred method of travel for witches (at least with a more traditional bent) is and always has been the broom. Reliable and multipurpose, it is also iconic enough that very few non-witches want to use it. Janitors, however, were quick to catch on to this general trend and fix up their own version of it. Now most such enlightened sanitation personnel travel using the standard Acme Magic Flying Mop.
-Magic hands. No, not those kinds of magic hands. The literal kind. Mages have always been one for wiggling their fingers to channel arcane forces through their hands. From the basic mage had to the staggering clenched fist, spells named after and shaped into hands is a staple of any respectable wizard. In fact, it is required by wizard's guild law that every graduating apprentice shows mastery of the mage hand spell. Meanwhile, the famous mage Bigby recently settled a legal dispute against a relatively new sect of explorers from the prime called the Pathfinder Society. With many saying Bigby gaining the upper… er- hand, the Society cannot by planar law use his name on their products. However, others would say that the Pathfinder Society did not come out under Bigby’s crunching thumb. He lost the patent to his powerful force hand spell. This development allows the Pathfinder Society to make generic brand derivatives of the famous Bigby name-brand force hand spells.
-Hats and robes. Traditionally, a wizard, just like any other occupation, has its own traditional uniform. A wizard has always been required to have a long flowing robe, the nice hat (preferably pointy), or preferably both. But lately some new upstarts have been taking to wearing what they call “plain clothes”. This name is strange, considering that this attire usually includes trench coats, dusters, satanic signs, ankhs, revealing clothing, bottles of booze, and/or ever pervasive cynical sneers.
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Random Number God as a Chaotic Neutral supreme diety. Worshippers of him are in hope of the "Rolling of the divine 20".
Oh, yeah, don't forget the gamer's "cliche" of parody spells. Lemee see, ones I can think of off my head:
--Perverted versions of Bigby's Hand spells, most notably "Bigby's Groping Hand".
--Burning Hands (sets caster's hands on fire, causing burn injuries)
--Calm Emotions (this one causes a green halo to momentarily surround the caster's head. Unlike the normal version of the spell, this one makes all targets STONED.)
--Melf's Acid Trip (yeah, this one's pretty cliche as well)
--Phantasmal Fart
... Hold on.
*Does a search to plagarize some*
Oh, wow, this must be an old article-- 2E-based list... Oh, wait, it's all over the internet.
--Bigby's Assertive Finger
--Cure Smoked Ham
--Dalamar's Whoopee Cushion
--Darkness, 15 micron radius (15 microns is about the size of a very small newly-split amoeba, BTW)
--DeeP Pocket Lint
--Delayed Blast Flatulence
--Detect Self (I've seen this on more than one site)
--Detect Visibility
--Evard's Black Testicles (yeah, I thought of that one at one point as well)
--Explosive Familiar
--Find Floor (somatic component: falling on face)
--Find Hand
--Fleshskin (self, only)
--Forget Spells (self, only)
--Hold Self
--Hornung's Gas
--Invisibility to Inanimate Objects
--Invisibility to Self
--Locate Self (again, seen this on multiple sites)
--Mail of the Banshee (victim gets letter saying "Waaaaaahh...")
--Melodramatic Phantom Defenders
--Mordenkainen's Lubrication (yeah, seen this on multiple sites as well)
--Mordenkainen's Unfaithful Wife
--Nahal's Banana Peel (appears under random ally's foot)
--Protection from Halitosis
--Protection from Normal Oxygen
--Putrefy Offal
--Rectum of Retention
--Remove Hand (self, only)
--Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Gas (seen this on multiple sites, too)
--Teleport With Lots of Errors
--Tenser's Slipped Disk
--Transmute Head to Butt
--Transmute Rock to Stone (reversible)
--Wall of Normal Air
There are also a few amusing entries on DnDWiki (not a place I'd suggest for serious D&D bits, however)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Babble_Fish_(3.5e_Creature)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Baby_of_Wonder_(3.5e_Equipment)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Quadrimurfractiphobia_(3.5e_Flaw)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Hobo_(3.5e_Class)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Evil_Sucking_Thing_of_Doom_(3.5e_Creature)
"Tranmute Head to Butt" - I work with a few people who have been afflicted by that spell
Although we are steering into "comedy" rather than "cliche" (which is fine), there are a number of things that I have for humous effect (can't remember if these were original ideas or stolen)
-Lumber hulks - look like regular umber hulks except that they wear flannel, suspenders and tooks. They frequently break out into song "Oh, I'm lumber hulk and I'm OK; I sleep all night and I work all day"
-Dancing sword - sword is normal except that it makes the weilder start tap dancing continously
Well, some of those comedic spells are cliche. I mean who HASN'T thought of Bigby's Groping Hand spells, or "Locate Self". I can think of a few that are NC17 rated as well (a cliche one that comes to mind is Mordenkainen's Magic Missile. Oh, and let's not forget Mordenkainen's Lucubration.)
One I remember from a defunct site is "Race Dead" (races two or more corpses)
On a similar subject, let's not forget the PETD (People for the Ethical Treatment of Dragons). They're idiots (the kind just BEGGING to be Darwined) who splash red dye/paint on fighters walking through the city wearing dragonscale armor. They tend to be hippies (the aggressive kind, not the peace peace love love bong bong kind) who INSIST that chromatic dragons only harm sentient creatures out of self-defense, and that they only eat sentient creatures when their food levels are low because humanoids and monstrous humanoids have overhunted all the yummies in the area.
I don't care how many humanoids they've eaten, doesn't the notion of of wearing the skin of a sentient being make you queasy? I mean, would you wear this:
Slick Leather Jerkin: Enchanted armor made from humanskin. The base form can be leather, studded leather, or hide. The enchantment requires a human who betrayed others so consistently with their lies that their skin itself absorbed their oily frauds. The natural waterproofing of mundane human leather is improved by the enchantment, adding +10 feet to the wearer's swim speed.
Or would you deal politely with someone wearing it?
That would be a funny confrontation if the wearer of the humanskin jerkin was a sentient bovine-man and it occurred while a character was weathing leather armor.
The only way to really get where you're going is to walk in a circle. Straight lines only cause you to repeat an encounter or three (hey, gotta respect the Rule of Threes).
Every town has a "Ye Olde Typical Tavern" and nobody leaves without getting into a fight.
-Tenser's Sexual Transformation
-Elves only live in forests and use only bows to attack. Their man are kind of feminine and their woman are super hot. They are also always attracted to humans.
-Time of the day, lighting, and weather effects change locally for maximum dramatic effect.
-Wizards are also required to have a long wizard's staff with huge precious stone on top.
-Important npcs and adventurers are required to have titles that begin with "The ..", such as "Titrek the Gyrator" or "Kacca the Unclean". If they don't have one they should make one up, as they won't be allowed to use adventureres accomodations otherwise.
There's always someone hiding behind the curtains in a palace, whether to spy or assassinate.
The old man with a staff or crappy-looking weapon is a combat master and will beat you within an inch of your life.
There's always a surprise in the supplies closet.
Thieves can master the skill of Pick Own Pockets with a +5 to not notice they're doing it.
Spells
Transmute Ooze to Goo (Reversible)
Charm Self
I appreciate that some effort went back into the theme of cliches; but I've dug up the notes I've collected for comedy ideas (I've got to consolidate my stuff on to one computer) so I'll list them here
[Note: I didn't record if I lifted these or they were original ideas - so apologies if I stole from anyone here]
-An astral whale falls into a color pool and ends up falling on an crushing a horde of monsters that had the PCs cornered (Douglas Adams tribute)
-Sarah Pawling - a modron that went rogue
-Demigod of mediocrity
-Demigod of whining
-Demigod of deja vu; every five minutes, he looks at the PCs and says "Haven't we met somewhere before?"
-The Egyptian god Thoth has defaulted on his student loan and the PCs are sent to collect
-New faction called the Defeatists; motto: "Whatever, I'm sure we didn't have a chance of winning anyway"
-Cerberus is a three-headed French poodle or chiwawa (sp?)
-Dire gummy bears
-Beholder that has lost a contact lens
-Besmeller - basically a beholder but instead of eyes, it has noses
-Misplacer beast - can't remember where it put its car keys
-Gelatinous cube stuck in a round hole
-Snowman golem- named Frosty, has a magical top hat (warning, he is NOT nice; your choice if he can pull nasty surprises out of the hat)
-Beanbag golem - one cut and he leaks out
-Gingerbread golem
-Golem made of strudel (I had mine speak like Swartzenagger)
-Were-chickens
-Bugsbear Bunny - huge monster with surreal powers and a weird sense of humor
-Mind flayers and Chthulu beasts in a huge copyright/trademark battle
-Keith Lichards - the undead guitarist (come to think of it, maybe the Rolling Stones really are...)
-Fight with Vecna where he keeps running into things or making mistakes due to lack of depth perception
-Mr. Roper the roper (think how much more amusing "Three's Company" would have been with a landlord with tentacles)
-Mickey Wererat Club
-Indiana Gnome
-Kobold that turns into the Incredible Hulk
-Ronald McKing, the Monarch of Burgers - a demon who is always selling fatty food. If a PCs agrees to being "supersized" the PC will turn into a massive blob of fat. The demon has a cure for this condition (but it will cost you)
-Boots of Elvis-kind - makes one wiggle one's hips (but a +2 to CHA towards women you meet)
-Ioun kidney stones - after flying around your head for a minute, they fly into your urinary track and disable you with pain
-There is a dungeon where the floor is covered with fog. There are a LOT of rakes under the fog waiting to be stepped on
-Clan of halflings called the Buckstars that are building coffehouse EVERYWHERE. Are they just businessmen or is there something more sinister going on?
Quasi-comedic
-Ring that allow one to phase through metal. Unfortunately, the ring is made of metal and immediately falls off. (Might be usable over a thin glove)
-A love potion is spilled into a baker's dough. A romantic comedy adventure for low-level PCs where they try to undo the damage cause by the people that ate the muffins from the batch
What about the Armoire of Invulnerability? It's the best protection you can have...
--Don't forget that all female warriors wear metal plate or chainmail bikinis, and wear their luxurious, salon-style hair down. They're always bedecked in makeup.
--Female humanoid (definition: resembling a human) monsters who are partially or completely nude are always young and have perky breasts. Ugly monsters and old lady humanoid monsters always dress conservatively. For instance, nighthags never wander around topless.
--Graz'zt's face must be of average/mediocre beauty/handsomeness/sexiness at best. (exception to this cliche: 3.5 dungeon magazine renditions of Graz'zt, where he has a young *as in college-age*, uber-handsome/sexy face. (I think the rendition is perfect except that he should look as though he is in his LATE 20's rather than 18-19 age range)
--When drawing Graz'zt or a neuter humanoid monster in a Planescape book or accessory, you score bonus points if you can make it appear as though naughty bits have been rendered upon first glance. Popular examples include the imp in Hellbound book 1 p. 5, and one of the pictures of Graz'zt (though I can't seem to find it this time around)
All fiends are attracted to their opposite-sex offspring. Creepy, but hey, they're fiends, they're supposed to be creepy, right? Right?! lol
The butler/porter/manservant/jester/adviser did it.
The Redundant Department of Departmental Redundancies. They're so good at their jobs they named it twice.
Bumbling/absent-minded wizards. "Now, what was the name of that spell again?"
I had the PCs needing to learn a command phrase to get past a magically warded portal. So they followed the apprentice and overheard him say "Now, what was that phrase again? Oh yes, Abracadabra"
It turned out that the phrase to get through the portal was "Now what was that phrase again". If someone just said "Abracadabra", it unleashed a Lightning Bolt
The players were both bitter and amused when they learned the truth
In 2E, have incubi use the following line on female PCs: "Time to make your save vs. Rod, Wand, or Staff!"
Also, for every single aberration or strange anomaly on the plane, a wizard did it.
Also, the following races should exist there:
--Half-fiendish creatures (including half-fiendish plants and microbes)
--Half-elementals
--Half-dragons (including plants and microbes)
--Half-elves
--Half drow
--Half golems
--Half-undead
--Half-Slaad
--Half-modrons
--Half-oozes
--Half Celestials
--Half-ghosts
--Half.. um... lemee see, what's the most nonsensical?
Hmmm..... Ooh, half plant, and half warforged. No, no ,no! Half salt-quasielemental slugs! Also, half-earth elemental, half stone-eating lichen (like those ones they have to keep spraying off of Mt. Rushmore) Also, Half-Modron, Half Slaad, LOL.
Oh, and each and every one is the product of a sexual union. Yup.
--All creatures love gems, even those which would have no use or see no beauty in them.
Oh, and on the outer planes (and not just Limbo), you can heal wounds by simply not believing in them.
Monsters are attracted to and only kidnap really, really attractive women.
^^attractive YOUNG HUMANOID women.
Internet cliches:
--Rule 34. Don't worry, this won't go beyond PG 13.
1. A pic of Mordenkainen, Elminster, and Raistlin, entitled "The Wizards Threesome"
2. Just think of all the horrible tentacle demon hentai you could make with the 3x monsters alone (though admittedly, hentai tentacle demon hentai involving a flumph would be quite amusing. Oh, and for anyone wondering, yes, there is Cthulhu tentacle hentai out there-- I hope this post doesn't attract the spam-bots...)
3. Porno mags always-- ALWAYS consist of elven or drowish porn. The elven porn is always one of the four forms: No, FIVE!: 'nilla het porn, lesbians, gay porn, girl-on animal, or wildshape on wildshape (or maybe wildshape on polymorph). Yeah, I went there. Drow porn is ALWAYS exclusively het bondage with the female being the dom. No orc porn exists.
Here's some cliches (or at least inside jokes)
--The explanation is usually that a wizard did it.
--Retirement home for 20th level adventurers (sadly I did not come up with this one)
--All crossbreeds have one human parent. The father is always the stronger of the two races of the union.
--Every single hamlet has a nearby evil-looking tower, temple, fortress, etc. Any that don't have a nearby natural cave full of orcs or kobolds.
--1/3rd of all hamlets are in ruins (look at all the villages TSR, WoTC, Paizo, and RPGS have gone through over the years)
--Every other innately immortal, fiendish villain who doesn't have his own Abyss layer is a son of Graz'zt
--All druids who get married only marry rangers, and vice-versa. The ranger is usually *but not always* the guy.
These are from the "1000 bad adventure seeds" thread on the WotC board.
15) Roll initiative.
26) Inevitable assasins, instead of murdering, have taken up such odd tasks as demanding owed payments for services, pouring water into jugs and other empty containers, knocking over glasses of juice, and boring holes into wood; due to an error in the universe that is randomly replacing the first letter of their primary command with other combinations.
33) A Scroll of Musical Behavior has accidentally been used, afflicting an entire town with a curse that causes them to break out into song and intricate dancing at the slightest provocation. Find a way to reverse the curse before the residents try to flee and wind up infecting the rest of the nation!
38. Teach an ogre called Fifi how to spell his name.
39. Fifi doesn't speak common.
40. Nobody in the party speaks giant.
41. All the libraries dictionaries have been lend out. The only person in the land who has one is the evil Lord (and librarian) Dragmar who only wants to lend it to you if your ever-so-proud-and-popular bard makes an appearance at his 'evil-slumber-party'.
42. In drag.
47. A local lich has been tired of living for all these centuries and sends out a reward for the first person to find his phylactery.
48. Panic in the high-level-retired-adventurers-retirement-home! Somebody seems to have cheated with bingo and now the old folks are wrecking the place!
50. Two cloaked men in a dark bush ask you in a hushed voice to buy some lube for them.
75. Convince your mother-in-law to like you, even though you run with a bunch of "ruffian layabout adventurers" and "always wear that hideous armor."
81. Residents of the local retirement community have been found with their souls removed. Residue from their behinds has been found to have a Moderate Necromancy aura. The Church of Pelor wants you to investigate.
86. In this dungeon, you may only bring a quill and one blank book with a light blue cover. The doors will not open until every party member has successfully written, in their own words, a 5-page answer to this prompt: "Compare and contrast Destoyesko's Prime and Gruumishment with Chieftan Shus' The Gore-Axe. Use at least 3 quotes from each book, and provide page numbers." You've never heard of these books, and they're nowhere to be found in the room. Oh, and you're naked!
93. The Pc's are hired by Obox-ob disgusied as a fat humorous wench at the Rat Hat inn
99: Run meaningless errands for high-level NPCs so that they have no excuse not to get off their fat, lazy arses and actually do something. (This is particularly appropriate for Faerun).
115. Local illithids are vanishing and later being found dead, horribly mutilated. The local seafood restraunt is having a daily lunch special "Calamari! All You Can Eat for 2 gp!"
Solve the mystery.
118. The RIAA is trying to charge minstrels everywhere royalties! Help defeat their evil scheme!
119. An angry dust bunny has taken the local potion shop hostage! Summon an elemental from the quasiplane of vacuum and go Dust Buster on its fuzzy rear.
126. Help a beholder find his lost contact lens. It may be in shag carpeting...
131. It's spring and time for animals to shed their winter coats. Here's a razor, shave all of the dire bears in the county to collect their fur. Oh, and you will want to avoid the hill-giant dire werebears as it is full moon and they get cranky.
132. One of said bears has fur that can make a Cloak of Extinguish Flames.
133. It turns out the tarrasque is really just cold. Knit him a colossal sweater out of the bear fur and put it on him.
134. A wizard has placed an enchantment on a local road that causes all animals to move fast and gain +10d6 trample attacks. Help the kuo-toa get across the road.
142. Cloud giant bodybuilders plundered the countryside of oil and fake tanner. Get em to stop.
154. Welcome to the elemental plane of randomness. You see a (rolls d20) wooden door. It is (rolls d20) locked and stuck.
204) You open a door to a dungeon and find a beholder, a mind flayer, three carrion crawlers, a gelatenous cube, two ghosts, a clay golem, and about half-a-dozen other monsters that wouldn't hang around with eachother. They must be up to no good! Terminate with extreme prejudice! Don't ask questions!!!
222. A Dragon ate a troll and it left a messy stool behind.
The town hires the party to dispose of the mess.
265: Find something Elminster isn’t an expert on.
266: Find an attractive, powerful, goodly female spellcaster that Elminster hasn’t slept with.
276: someone stole the cookies from the cookie jar find out who it is. (and it ends with apparently it was Vecna who masterminded the loss of his hand to his lieutennant to secretly steal cookies from jars for over a thousand years!)
280: Navigate your way through a goblin encampment, an orc encampment, and a kobold encampment without killing anything...
282. A evil high level Bard with 30 ranks in perform(Mime) has taken control of the local tavern. Release the hostages from invisible boxes, while defending yourself from the Bard’s invisible lasso attacks.
291: Put the world's largest and most powerful Headband of Intellect on the Tarrasque so you can engage it in a philosophical debate about the moral and ethical implications of consuming everything in its path.
293: DM, due to his lack of knowledge of the history of characters throughout books, interprets from DMG entry on Kas Artifact that Kas was a god serving Vecna. He plans to have the party "help a group fix their temple" and end up helping them ressurect Kas. Little does the DM realize that Kas was never a god. He was a mortal turned into a Vampire after betraying Vecna due to being trapped in Citadel Cavitius. He was turned by the dark energies and eventually banished from the multiverse during Vecna Lives (2nd of 3 epic adventures from 2nd edition) and only exists as a Vestige now (as from Dragon Magazine). HE NEVER WAS A GOD (DM made him ridiculously powerful with stats made up on a whim). In addition the DM poorly mixes 3.0 and 3.5 which allows old loopholes and tricks plus new titanic combos that should never have even existed.
294. The PCs get drunk and are attacked by "pink kobolds" only they can see.
296. A female sexual predator is on the loose. Find the brassierre of binding and use it. (actual quest I'm working on).
300. As you are about to restock on items you realize that you lost your wallet back in the elemental plane of fire. Return their before it is burnt to a crisp.
306) As the serving wench brings you your salad, you realize you should have taken elvish as one of your bonus langauages because it arrives as a Slaad.
307) The DM's wife is home! Everybody out!
309) A dingo ate my mini!
317) Ted seems to have lost his thumb. Retrieve it for him. Vecna who is also looking for his lost appendages says that its been cut into two. One piece is in the possession of the Lady of Pain, while the other with Lord Ao. To make things worse, the Dark Powers of Ravenloft feel cheated. Find the thumb and set things straight without forcing the fourth revision of the rules of the universe. Sidequest: Vecna wants to become a Greater Deity in the process. Can you do it?
325) An awakened chicken can not cross the road. Find out what is behind this evil plot.
332. The pary wizards grandmother likes cucumbers help her kill a zombie using her holy cucumbers!!!
This happend to me seriously......
343) You must avert a flame war. Kill all the clowns in the world for the dark lord of Sorrows, Emoigoth, so that he can destroy Hippieyegas the goddess of Happiness through the great plains of endless parodies, and beyond the flaming planes of pants.
356) Start an adventuring store. You do not provide items. Simply adventures for npcs to accomplish. Their reward? A thank you card made by another npc's quest.
366. After a few too many adult beverages you are out in the backyard of the inn shooting arrows at a stuffed baby deer you found earlier. The place goes quiet except for your laughter. You turn around to see the shocked faces of the townsfolk, the crying eyes of a little girl, and her pissed off necromancer father holding her hand. It was her favorite stuffed animal, and its name was Bambi.
382. Your drunken and dissolute king has been convinced by a highly chaotic wandering bard with an insane Bluff check that not only is there a fabled item set known only as "The Lingerie of Lolth" but this slightly magical black lace garter may in fact be a part of it. Your task: Find a loremaster willing to ruin their reputation by pandering to the fancies of your deluded king, find a wizard or artificer powerful enough to craft the rest of the items of "The Lingerie of Lolth," and keep the Queen's spies from finding out.
406: You run into a creepy tavern called The Bowels of Vecna
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Here's a couple I came up with:
You learn that the quest item you need to continue your quest is owned by a wizard who hangs out at the Harmonium faction center in Sigil.
He agrees to give the item to you on one condition: a few days ago, he accidentally lost his magic ring down the portal toilet. He'll only give you the quest item if you go dumpster-diving on the Paraelemental Plane of Ooze and retrieve it for him.
The trolls and otyughs are angry that the freegans have stolen half of their bit. Convince the Freegans to stop dumpster diving.
Cursed and/or intelligent magical weapons. Alternately, cursed and/or intelligent magical items that are not weapons.
Remember Lilarcor?
I really should change the title of this thread as it's strayed very far.
33) If I had any kind of singing voice, I would be tempted to play out a village of people forced to continually sing.
I might curse the PCs with such an affliction (forcing a major combat penalty if they don't sing and a minor bonus if they come up with some clever tunes/lyrics)
25) I could see a low-level or comedic side-adventure involving a PC or helping a friendly NPC trying to impress his snooty mother-in-law. Very little risk of death but huge risks of offending her delicate sensibilities
119) I love the idea of a dust-bunny vs. vacuum elemental war
Some additional, dumb ideas/puns I've come up with:
-Lich put his magical energy into a villager. The villager's name? Phil Actery
-While nothing will ever compare with the "head of Vecna" campaign; I have, in more light-hearted adventures, dropped mention to thing like the hangnail of Vecna; the earlobe of Vecna, etc.
-Show of hands, has anyone had their PC's attacked by gazebos?
-I once had my PCs have a brief but unfortunate encounter with a demigod of flatulence
I have included one NPC in my campaign that the PCs continually frustrate. He isn't evil; he's just a man who is trying unsuccessfully to climb up the social ladder. But the actions of the PCs often bringing his plans to naught.
E.g. My PCs had a fight in a warehouse where, at one point, they ended up tossing kegs of wine laying around at the villain. They later noticed that the wine was supposed to be delivered to the hard-luck NPC. There wasn't enough time to replace them before the big party he had planned for that evening.
Later, my PCs did a random teleport to escape a dungeon where they were in WAY over their heads. The spell dropped them in the middle of a fancy banquet the NPC had set up to impress some important people.
Nothing the PCs did to the guy was malicious or illegal (at least not intentionally so), but it always cracked them up when they would sneak away and hear this poor guy shouting out his catch phrase of frustration. Eventually, I had the NPC go insane and try to trap them in a death trap dungeon. The party couldn't figure out why all the traps malfunctioned until they got to the last room and saw who was behind it all.
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Semi-serious request for feedback:
-I was toying with the idea of a quick visit to a Demiplane of Wordplay based on the following puzzle:
PCs are teleported into a room with solid stone walls, no exit and an anti-magic aura. The only things in the room are a table and a saw. How do they get out?
A. They saw the table in half. They then place the two halves together to create a "whole". Using the hole they created, they can escape.
Can anyone else think of some similar set-ups? This example seemed too complicated until they get the knack of how to operate on this demiplane.
It would be great if it was a multi-step process to get to this final step. E.g. Perhaps some wordplay on "sight" creates the "saw" they use in the last step.
I'm wondering if on the planes there's a battlefield of the Edition Wars of the Codex of the Absolute Truth of the Way the Multiverse is Supposed to Function...
I really should change the title of this thread as it's strayed very far.
Not really. My last post included a bunch of cliches, and my first post included several 3x cliche inside jokes (for instance, the incomprehensible crossbreeds joke is a jab at all the half-breeds in 3x, in particular, a jab at the Wizards website article where a wizard created a fiendish tendriculos by hiring a demon to have sex with a normal tendriculos or mundane but slightly enhanced kudzu vine (I'm not kidding on this one! except that the kudzu vine is an exaggeration). It's also a jab at the main villainess in Bastion of Broken Souls, who, I kid you not, is half-tanar'ri, half-baatezu. Considering that fiends are spiritual creatures, it should not be any more possible for a tanar'ri and baatezu to conceive anymore than it would be for a fire elemental and ice paraelemental *presuming they used spells to make themselves temporarily immune to one another's energy long enough for the birth of the offspring to occur* to conceive. Just so everyone knows EXACTLY where that silly idea of half-modron half-slaad came from.
Show of hands, has anyone had their PC's attacked by gazebos?
There was a killer gazebo one in that wizard's topic, along with "kill pun-pun"
Another cliche-- An Osric or homebrew "Dungeon Crawl Classic" that includes the following elements:
--glowing magical swords
--The NPCs always die somehow
--There are one or two portals/plane shift traps/what have you in the campaign that lead to other planes, but entering them will immediate-kill the party, no save
--The NPCs all talk like someone from the Renfaire. Lots of half-assed thee's and thou's, possibly combined with a southern drawl or cockney. Beware.
--The magical-beast type monsters all possess incomprehensible qualities that Darwin would have wiped out the moment they came into being, such as poorly camouflaged eggs (*glares at the Kapuk from 2E*), a gem in its forehead, or an incompatible body structure (e.g. a broad-framed animal with long skinny legs, which can make turns, make great leaps, etc.)
--The magical sword is always of +2 enhancement.
--All enchanted weapons are swords.
Can anyone else think of some similar set-ups? This example seemed too complicated until they get the knack of how to operate on this demiplane.
It would be great if it was a multi-step process to get to this final step. E.g. Perhaps some wordplay on "sight" creates the "saw" they use in the last step.
There's a similar classic one that involves drinking the (bed)springs and use of the pun "holy" instead of "whole" to walk through the wall.
Vampires spell their names backwards in an attempt to fool everyone else.
In the same vein, there could be a land where every single person and place is an awkward anagram of "Gygax"
^^Yes, YES!!!
Also, every quest seed begins in one of two forms:
--In a bar
--As a request (or geas) by a powerful NPC or metallic dragon
--The NPC that tags along with the party is always either fodder or a double-cross
Some more humor I thought of:
--Calm Emotions causes some sort of green visual effect (flash, corona on caster's hand, etc.) and makes the recipient stoned.
--The final opponent is a druggee mage *w. dreadlocks and an enchanted bong* possessing, at the very least, the following spells in his spellbook:
--Addiction
--Cause Fear
--Color Spray
--Confusion
--Daze
--Daze Monster
--Deep Slumber
--Delayed Blast Fireball (for when the druglab explodes)
--Dimension Door
--Eyebite
--Feeblemind
--Fog Cloud
--Ghost Sound
--Glitterdust
--Hallucinatory Terrain
--Horrid Sickness
--Hypnotic Pattern
--Insanity
--Leomund's Secret Chest (to hide his stash)
--Magic Circle Against Law
--Mind Blank
--Mind Fog
--Mindless Rage
--Nightmare
--Otto's Irresistible Dance
--Prestidigitation
--Prismatic Eye
--Prismatic Sphere
--Prismatic Wall
--Protection from Law
--Pyrotechnics
--Rage
--Rainbow Beam
--Rainbow Blast
--Rainbow Pattern
--Ray of Clumsiness
--Ray of Dizziness
--Scintillating Pattern
--Shadow Conjuration
--Silent Image
--Sleep
--Stinking Cloud
--Tasha's Hideous Laughter
--Touch of idiocy
He also carries a smokestick of Dire Hunger (hey, there aren't any munchies spells for the wizard in any canonical 3x sources other than Illusory Feast...)
Also, his potions are enchanted mushrooms. >_>
--Also, just to scar the players, there's a location they end up with that turns out to be the anime tentacle penthouse. Lots of creatures from the Far Realm are there, many illithids are there, and several of each are there: beholders, darkwater tentacles, flumph, grell-- Dagon is there, and Cryonax is there, along with many nubile human, elven, and drowish chicks-- and a few elven males as well. Also, an avatar of the Elemental Eye ... Plus Cryonax is likely busy with Frigidora and Dagon busy with Olhydra. Hell, Olhydra has pseudopods, so she could, you know...
Also, doesn't Zuggmtoy have hyphae? (fungal roots/filaments) If so, she can use those in a three-way with Dagon and Olhydra >_>
Come to think of it, Juiblex also has pseudopods....
Oh, and the penthouse is on the back of a draeden.
The players won't be leaving with their sanity... (then again, neither will anyone who reads this post)
I'll avoid comment on your second idea (MUST drive away visual!), but your first comments parallel something I did.
The only difference was that I had a hippie dragon whose breath attack was a huge ganja cloud and who would wax philosophically about things of no importance once the PCs were pacified. (I think I toyed with the idea that he followed a band on skeleton musicians called the Grateful Undead - but I backed away from that one).
Oh, yeah, I remember originally when I planned on posting the druggee thing, I was going to make it a druggee red dragon as well... Obviously he wouldn't have dreds, though (and he'd likely be named Puff)
(I think I toyed with the idea that he followed a band on skeleton musicians called the Grateful Undead - but I backed away from that one).
LOL, sounds good.
Some of my stuff from other threads. First, the fetishes from the glossary I made in the Pandaemonium topic with humorous applications: (remember that one can only have some of the fetishes below-- e.g. Anthropomorphophilia, if they are of a different creature type.)
--Animal Play: Sex acts where the submissive partner is (sometimes elaborately) treated like a quadruped animal. (known IRL as ponyplay, puppyplay and dogplay)
--Anthropophilia: Attraction or arousal to humanoid/monstrous humanoid type creatures, despite not being a humanoid/monstrous humanoid oneself. Generally, those capable of having this fetish are quadrapeds and other non-bipedal, non-humanoid-shaped creatures, including sentient objects.
--Automatophilia: Golems, homunculi.... also living constructs (modrons, innevitables, etc.)
--Carnephilia: In the D&D world, this refers to an attraction to flesh-based beings. Elementals, sentient objects, and Living Constructs are generally the only types who possess this fetish.
--Dracophilia: Dragons, of course. Does NOT include dragons when polymorphed into the same creature type as the partner, and creatures of the dragon subtype are not eligible for this fetish.
--Elementaphilia: Should be fairly obvious. (this can get particularly hilarious if you try to picture a sex act involving Yan-C-Bin, Chan, or Olhydra, in their normal forms with another creature. Since you know, they're just ambulatory heads...)
--Gigantophilia: Attraction towards those one or more size categories larger than the fetishist.
--Magiphallophilia: Fetish for magic rods, wands, or staves (I sense a 1/2E joke coming in!)
--Magiphilia: Fetish for magic or users of magic. This may include a wizard who undergoes climax every time he completes a spell casting.
--Nanophilia: Arousal to subjects one or more size categories smaller than oneself.
--Polymorphophilia: Arousal from performing sexual acts while under a polymorph effect, or arousal from having sexual relations with a partner under the effects of a polymorph effect.
--Transpolymorphophilia: Arousal from polymorphing into the opposite sex (funny to witness NPCs become victims of erhem, "traps".)
--Xenophilia: One with a fetish for aberrations, but is not themselves an aberration. (hentai tentacle porn would fall under this.)
--Zoomorphophilia: Someone who prefers to perform sex acts while in wildshape or to perform sex acts on a partner who is in wildshape. (the latter would be more amusing, actually)
Also, some humorous quotes.
Yeah, of course I'm an "Indep"! Why would I believe in any stupid system thought up by the dull brains of dumb mortals?~~A rather mistaken juvenile Efreeti when asked what Faction he belongs to
"Yanny"?! Hsssss, you're one of The Wind B****'s lackeys, aren't you?!~~Yan-C-Bin to a verbally abusive adventurer
...Clearly you have me mistaken for someone else...
Frigidora, kill him.~~Cryonax, to a Cornugon attempting to bribe him with Thirty of his "most nubile fiendish concubines" in exchange for sparing his life
Did you hear about the dwarf who tried to pee out a fire elemental?~~The first half of a common juvenile Efreeti urban legend
Hmmph... Fleshling males are so pathetic... No wonder the woman is rarely ever the elemental parent of a half elemental...~~Frigidora after witnessing a frost giant opponent suffer an inadvertent groin shot
Yes! Did you hear that "splotch"?! And look at those splatter clouds! Such distance! I think I broke my old record!!~~Ben Hadar boasting to his servants, after smashing a Spitter scavenging around in his palace
Here's a list of some of the humorous 3x books out there.
Dog Soul- Balok's Book of Banter - Battle Cries
Dog Soul- Balok's Book of Banter - Insults
Dog Soul- 16 1/2 Magic Codpieces
EN Publishing: Bride of a Portable Hole Full of Beer
EN Publishing- Chainmail Bikini
Healing Fireball - The Sages Must be Crazy (traps, spells, etc. for pranksters)
The Le Games- Treasures of Malevolent Magic
Mongoose- Encyclopaedia Arcane Blue Magic
Mongoose- Quintessential Temptress
Silverthorne Games - Book of Oafish Might
Skirmisher Publishing- Nuisances
For Pathfinder:
Rite Publishing: 101 Malevolent Magic Items
I wasn't going to post this but since this thread got bumped: I just had a campaign where the PCs followed clues to a fabled Horn of Arctic Cold. The first time they used it, they found out that it was an ordinary horn except for one feature that causes the horn itself to freeze and to stick to the lips of the person using it.
Just got a hilarious thought for a Demiplane of Drugs. The bestiary includes:
The monsters include the following:
Meth Bugs
Myconid
Face-Eating Dogs
prismatic series with Living Spell template
Drugdealoloth
Darting Peripheral Shadows
Gas Spore, Blue (full of nitrous oxide instead of pathogenic spores)
Pink Elephant
Slaad (any)
Skeleton template
Hash Elemental (air)
Crack Elemental (earth)
Meth Elemental (fire)
LSD Elemental (water)
Heroin Elemental (water + earth)
Tanar'ri, Crack Fiend
Radiance Quasielemental
Scintillating Frog
Talking Exploding Cat
Waterpipe Dragon (breath weapon: ganja breath-- the bane of barbarians everywhere!)
Badideaoloth (whispers really ill-advised suggestions for activities for the intoxicated to do, such as shave, operate a wagon, cop a feel on the Lady of Pain, or pick up that rattle snake and pretend they're the Crocodile Ranger)
True, but it still makes for a good way to create tension between between protagonist and antagonist...
Althoughhhh... a little twist would be cool hmmm
Okay, I can't resist anymore.
This is something I've been wanting to bring up for a LOOOONG time.
What is with Graz'zt's Thong of Crotch Scanning +2? I think you know what I'm talking about-- In case you don't (the image doesn't have very good lighting-- it's like that in the book as well, but no, it's NOT NWS, because you can get a clearer view of the thong in one of the 2E books, and it's quite clearly a thong... if you stare at it long enough.)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2247/2290939552_613d12d02c.jpg
There was a 2E Planescape where he's wearing the exact same thing-- red with that metal weight on the end, positioned just in the right spot so that at first you wonder if it's a weighted piercing >_>. That thong makes you perform a double-take when you first see it (I don't recall which book it's in, though)
...Actually, in the Planescape books, I noticed several doubletake-worthy imp pics as well (their tails are positioned in a way that it looks kinda like they're jutting out from a specific part of their anatomy when you first see it out of your peripheral vision... Yeah, there's enough doubletake-worthy pics in the PS books that I'm starting to think it was intentional by that specific artist. I mean none of the 3x books are like that, or hell, even the other 2E setting and non-setting books. There's just too many for it to be pure coincidence...)
You just know he uses that for lame pickup lines (e.g. "what, you like what you see, don't you?" to chicks and either the same thing or "jealous, much?" to guys)
Alright, I couldn't help myself, but we're getting into pure juvenalia here, so prepare yourself. I've editted or minimized some of the horrifying ones and just listed how they're spread (which can be horrifying enough)
The hilarious ones I've left untouched for the most part. I hope everyone particularly enjoys the last one, here.
Fire Crotch: This clap-like infection is contracted from fire native creatures when your Fire resistance is less than 25.
Loth Herpes: Should be obvious. It's just one of a dozen STDs you can get from them (oh, those only include STDs that make up NORMAL species of Yugoloth skin/mucosal/etc. flora) I'll spare you the details because all yugoloth-spread diseases are incredibly disgusting (this one is actually very tame by comparison)
Argent Sclerosis: Frequent sex with extraplanar living constructs can result in this. It causes a progressive hardening of the affected parts, along with a permanent metallic discoloration.
Madness Ulcers: Let's just say this is a form of herpes you get from Obyriths, and eventually the herpetiform ulcers spread over the entire body. Oh, and gibbering mouths, eyeballs, or exquisitely painful tentacles tend to form within the ulcers. Sometimes a combination of tentacle + mouth that starts repeatedly biting the victim's skin. It usually takes more than a month to kill the victim.
Hag Warts: This nasty-ass infection results from having sex with nighthags. The victim develops brownish green, unsightly warts in the geniatory area, or, rarely, around the lips or inside the mouth. For the most part, it inflicts CHA damage (if it only affects the geniatory area, then the damage to Cha only applies when the victim is nude) Characters who fail two fort saves in a row suffer permanent discoloration to the area of the breakout even after the wart has healed.
Genitalis Dentata: This disease is contracted by sexual relations with a Slaad, Windscythe, or other indigenous native of Limbo or Pandaemonium. The victim takes 1d4 points of temporary constitution damage, which begins to heal after a week. However, by then a horrible transformation has taken place, giving the victim a sharp pair of teeth... but not in their mouth. Any character about to lie with the victim, and notices the condition beforehand must make a DC 25 Will save or flee in terror.
Characters who see the victim naked but did not plan to have sex with them need merely make a DC 15 Will save.
Genitalis Illumina: Unrpotected sex with Celestials can be a bad idea as well. Genitalis illumina causes no ill effects other than a permanent light or continual light spell upon the genitals. Characters have to fail two Fort saves in a row to get it, and it results in a permanent circumstantial -4 penalty to CHA (or maybe worse if you think it should actually be -6-- of course clothing won't be enough to obstruct the illumination). Dispel Magic can suppress the effects for 1d4 rounds. It causes a psoriasis-like condition to fiends which results in some discomfort and possible cracking, though the skin looks a lot more silvery than what you'd see in mundane psoriasis. Lawful evil fiends are usually executed on site for this disease, but ironically, Tanar'ri spare their afflicted bretheren-- they've been punished enough, and why slay the butt of jokes for centuries to come? We're talking free entertainment, here. Hilarious entertainment. Kostchtchie is an exception-- he kills those afflicted for getting more action than he does. Graz'zt and Malcanthet are known to make such victims into naked palace guards-- they provide energy-free illumination.
-Every villain has one or more of the following; a beard or thin mustache, black hair, a black outfit with skull motifs, a black horse, a maniacal laugh.
-In order to even fit, all armor worn by women must cover no more than a typical bikini.
-Law of inverse ninjas in effect. If one encounters multiple monsters, they are individually weak, but a single monster is always tough. Beware solitary kobolds; they WILL have class levels.
-All taverns are run by either retired adventurers or the thieves' guild.
-In order to use rogue skills, you must be wearing leather, be good looking, and have a scar.
-Dwarf characters must wear heavy armor and wield either hammers or axes, regardless of class.
-Any thieves' guild, wizards' school, or similar organization is populated entirely by orphans.