I am sure that this thread has been done before many times, but I've not seen one recently, and I love a good, funny story.

What are the silliest things that you GM's do to mess with your group?

I, for instance, love to take a lot of scrap paper with random text and stuff on it and make a giant pile under the notes for the session, so a 6 page session may have 30 pages there in a big, intimidating stack. Then, as the PC's make choices, I'll go through and randomly remove two or three sheets at a time every time they make a big decision or when they do something random. I'll ask them before they leave a room if they want to search any more, and when they say no, they leave and BOOM, five pages gone.

It's always funny to see them get worried that their somehow messing things up, cause I never tell them what exactly is getting removed. Sometimes they figure it out and play along, but it's still fun. In the end they always find it funny and it makes for a nice joke for new players!

As a filler link between two story arcs, I once had my PCs transport a few hundred rabbit-like creatures from Naboo to a pet store on Eriadu. On the first night of the voyage, they chewed through the little improvised gate that the mechanic threw together and ran amok on the ship.

Got a Mandalorian warrior or a dark-leaning force sensitive who takes themselves too seriously? Make 'em wrangle some bunnies.

Just started GMing online the other day - a duet with a close friend who's helping me learn the ropes. We're playing knight-level pre-Clone-Wars FnD, and taking turns to GM.

Relationships like ours mean a lot of teasing, which is why I sent his character on a resource acquisition mission for the Jedi Council. Translation? I sent a trained Jedi Knight to get coffee, because Obi-Wan is hungover.

In all fairness, he HAS encountered a Death Watch bombing en route - so there may be a plot here somewhere.

9 hours ago, evo454 said:

I, for instance, love to take a lot of scrap paper with random text and stuff on it and make a giant pile under the notes for the session, so a 6 page session may have 30 pages there in a big, intimidating stack. Then, as the PC's make choices, I'll go through and randomly remove two or three sheets at a time every time they make a big decision or when they do something random. I'll ask them before they leave a room if they want to search any more, and when they say no, they leave and BOOM, five pages gone.

It's always funny to see them get worried that their somehow messing things up, cause I never tell them what exactly is getting removed. Sometimes they figure it out and play along, but it's still fun. In the end they always find it funny and it makes for a nice joke for new players!

Oh I'm doing this next time. But instead, I am going to take an old notebook with old notes in it and rip out the pages.

For me, It's not so much silly, but every few sessions in all my campaigns, I will hand out everyone's character sheets, and just before we are about to begin, ask them to pass them back in and instead hand out a pregens I made to everyone's particular taste and style. From there, we play a one-shot that is linked to the current story and whose relevance will come in to play later or otherwise show them a different point of view in the current arc.

We have a group that rotates GMs. During a campaign run by another GM, he and I surprised the other players one night with a one-shot where I took the GM's chair and everyone took on the roles of the sidekicks in the main story. A vornskr, an astromech, a drug-addled wookiee, and a stowaway ewok no one knew was on board had to chase down some tiny thieves that had taken a sith holocron while the main characters were off-ship on another adventure.

Which leads to a running gag I had strung through a number of adventures, the ewok that kept popping up. First as an opponent in a Hutt's fighting pit, then stuffed into a compartment on a fenced Y-wing, now a force-using stowaway nestled in one of the escape pods on their current ship.

On occasion one of the players will do something (anything works really), and I'll take on a deadpan serious expression, pick up my pencil, and write a random sentence or two in my notepad. They wonder what I'm writing down. They wonder how their action may have been significant. Gets them every time. An alternative to this is to roll a d6 (or whatever), visibly count out to the person whose "number" rolled up, and then write down the random notes.

In a Deadlands campaign once, I introduced the "pale chip" Fate Chip without any pre-warning. The players were, of course, familiar with white, red, and blue Fate Chips and the black Legend Fate Chip. The first time one of the players did something heinous or evil-ish, I gave him a pale chip. It stumped them and they began watching what they were doing more carefully.

In a similar fashion to what kaosoe described above, I began a Rolemaster campaign with mid-level pre-gen characters and an introductory adventure to teach them how the system and magic worked. It was a very deadly scenario wherein the characters faced higher level foes and threats. After the PCs had made their real characters and were progressing along, they eventually ran into the same mission their introductory pre-gen characters were on. They remembered how deadly it was, and they became instantly more focused and invested in the adventure. And they found the corpses of their pre-gens where they lay slain. (I think I may start my next SW campaign this way too.)

9 hours ago, Vorzakk said:

As a filler link between two story arcs, I once had my PCs transport a few hundred rabbit-like creatures from Naboo to a pet store on Eriadu. On the first night of the voyage, they chewed through the little improvised gate that the mechanic threw together and ran amok on the ship.

Got a Mandalorian warrior or a dark-leaning force sensitive who takes themselves too seriously? Make 'em wrangle some bunnies.

That reminds me so much of the Gizka scenario from KotOR.

Eh, just let them walk into jokes.

NPC: "Did yous guys cause that explosion in Sector 7?"

PC: "Which explosion?"

NPC: "Which explosion!? How many explosions are you causing down there?"

15 hours ago, Shaheed the Gand said:

Eh, just let them walk into jokes.

NPC: "Did yous guys cause that explosion in Sector 7?"

PC: "Which explosion?"

NPC: "Which explosion!? How many explosions are you causing down there?"

Is that NPC Agent Simmons?

On 8/23/2018 at 10:54 AM, Tramp Graphics said:

Is that NPC Agent Simmons?

Exactly