This thread is dedicated to those moments in game where the players come up with something so off the wall but at the same time is so clever that you are left with no choice but to run with it and see where it goes.

Ill start us off by telling a story about the last time i ran dark heresy with my group. It was the 2nd time we had ever played with our current group of acolytes and they turned what was going to be a standard blow the crap out of some guy and loot his base encounter into a close ally who modded their car and weapons.

Going into a little bit more detail, the acolytes were on their way back to the scintilla with their newly appointed "permanent loaned ship" when it came time to set it to auto pilot and hit the stasis pods until they landed. But when they woke from their stasis, their pods had been ejected from the ship somehow and their ship was gone along with the crew and its cargo. They had somehow ended up on an old mining world that had been sucked dry about 20 years ago. So after a bit of investigation they find out that they had crash landed their ship had been hauled off by raiders who control the southern territories of the planet. They figure that they might need a little extra fire power so they can get their ship back without being blown to bits in the process. So they head over the an old scrap yard and rig up an old jeep so they can load it up at the old military base and make their way to blow the raider base to hell.

At the military base however, was a tech priest who had taken refuge their and lives with the security bots and over the years had gone a little insane. He believes that the raiders are always watching him and are constantly trying to steal his research about the effects of grafting warp creatures flesh onto human bodies. He lets them in because they politely knocked on the front door instead of blowing it open with their bolters and they talk for a bit. When he finally becomes comfortable enough to take off his robe, the cleric notices and recognizes a piece of skin on his chest as that of a creature from the warp. He politely says that he can no longer be in his presence because its against the emperors will to allow such heresies to be in his presence.

This triggered his insanity switch and he seals the exit before the cleric can leave and he starts to spout off how they must be spies sent from the raiders to get his research, to which the group psyker and tech priest who were fascinated with this guys set up attempt to calm him down due to a fear of getting blown to bits and also a need for his equipment, which a fire fight might destroy.

It came down to when the insane tech priest gave them the ultimatum of "prove to me that you aren't a spy or you all die" to which the psyker responded with shooting himself in the hand with his las pistol and swearing on his blood that they weren't spies sent by the raiders. After a roll of a 1 on the players charm test and a double 0 on the tech priests opposed fellowship test, the group now has a new best friend who has an intimate knowledge of everything in the army base and a tech use skill that could rival Zeus's skill with a lightning bolt who modded their old jeep into what i call the A.W.M. The Acolyte War Machine! Fully equipped with a Las Gattling Gun in the front, a 360 degree bolter mounted on the back, Mechanical Arms, enough stummers to make it quieter than the most skilled ninja, tank treads, a hydrolic system that can launch them 10 meters into the air, and a customized driver seat that uses the group tech priest as the power source.

It should be noted that i didn't give them anything that they didn't already have access to after they were going to kill him, they just made a very useful friend in the process who just happens to know the complicated workings of the warp and how to create warp spawned flesh capable of an endless variety of uses.

All in all, i thought it was an amazing night worthy of going down in my groups hall of "Night that will go down in famy, not go down in infamy, just famy"

That is impressive. I don't normally see groups willing to talk, or even knock politely, and when the cleric decided to diplomatically leave instead of trying to put a hole through the heretek, very unusual, but that would be a welcome change. I don't think there was anything in there that really seemed too far out, although you might want to consider giving them a couple corruption points for letting an obvious heretek live.

I have stories of players going completely off the reservation and throwing my plans for a loop, one involved the entire party stepping outside for a "smoke break" (only one of the five smoked) and they would step inside as a very specific question, then go back to talking. By the end of it they ended up giving me an in game month long plan to kill an entire base of 10k enemies, in one night. They are recorded in my campaign journal as "The Party of the Bloody Hand" and has been added as a historical event in my gaming universe.

Artanyis said:

I'm cool with groups doing their own thing IC, be it excessively violent or not, but I tend to draw the line at "we're all going outside to talk in private, kthxbai."

The purpose of playing an RPG is to have fun telling a story together , it isn't to be all "players vs GM." If a group pulled that crap on me, I'd just start playing X-Box or something and inform them I cancelled the game since they didn't seem interested in playing with me . Seriously, plan whatever crazy hijinks you want, but do it at the table. At least let me listen.

The corruption might come later due to actions that my players have told me they might be taking place in. I was actually planning on having the cleric have some sort of "wake up in a cold sweat" kind of thing for basically feeling guilty for basically turning a blind eye to something so obviously heretical.

By no means was this a sort of thing they were doing to play against me, it was just something clever that happened to take place on the spot. I think it made the session much more fun for everybody involved even though we are usually a kick in the door and shoot everything kind of group. It was a nice change of pace for most, if not all of us.

Steve-O, in this instance I would agree with you. Usually I will allow players to talk to each other out of my earshot, because sometimes it would be very hard not to meta-game some of the information. This was one of those times, they told what they were going to plan, but I needed to not to know it so i could not plan for specifically that. Now, one of the players (who is no longer a player in my games, or even a friend for various reasons that never need to be discussed [back-stabbing prick]) was the one who had organized this endeavor, said later that he likes to play a little game called "f**k with the GM" I went off on him.

Now all the people I play with are good trustworthy people, and if they step aside to plan something, I make sure that they clear the idea with me first.

Since that time there has been no point in which the action of the players has thrown off the target of the game that completely, now, there have been times they have made me throw out entire sections of the mission, but never something like that.

I have one of these as a DH ref, and a few as a player.

The one from DH, I shall set the scene for you. A Hive World celebrating the Feast of the Empourer the major Universe holy day. A low dreg ganger bar, fairly large, 2 bar staff, and tables that can seat 12 people, mostly square-ish. The players charm their way in with Thrones adding to the effect. Take a relatively empty table and get some drinks. After small talking with those at the table and eyeing the place up they spot their quarry, a ganger leader, sat at a table with 12 henchmen. One player decides that he wants to go talk to him, so buys a bottle a "good" stuff and heads over to talk about some "business", shady sort of black market stuff. As soon as the player has confirmed the identity of the ganger leader, he attacks him with the table. In a single fluid motion stands up and flips the table onto the gang lead and a couple of his men. I didn't make this easy, first came the Str test to move the table, he rolls 01, next a WS test at -20 for an improvised weapon, however the gang member not expected to be pummeled by a table he has the suprise round. Next I decided that a large table would do d10+3 plus his str bonus, he only procedes to righteous fury with the table and explode on his damage dice to a total of 35 points of damage, so spliting the damage between the induviduals struck he managed to not only startle the gang members but take 3 out and hurt the gang leader and pin him under the table as the psyker in the group did fear aura to clear the bar. A well planned hard fight over so quickly although my players enjoyed it.

Now as a player, playing WW V:tM, we had been a group for about 5 years, and our ST decided that he would have an Arch-Liche(a powerful vampire with all the powers of a Mage from mage the ascension(for those that don't know these systems, the most powerful creature that could ever exsist in the gaming world)). There was nothing that as player's we could do that this liche couldn't do and couldn't do better and faster. So after the first session of playing along, doing this liche's challenges, I decided as a character that I wasn't going to play along with the liche anymore and if it wanted to kill me it should just get it over and done with, and to my surprise the other character's agreed with me. Our ST was not happy he came up with some Deus Ex to get us out of the Liche's pocket realm, and not have it kill the entire party.

As for the players vs the GM/ST/ref, this should not be the case but I have played in groups where it was the other way round the GM/ST/Ref saw it as them vs the players. The ref/ST/GM that we had that had this approach only managed one thing to make us a better party so good infact that we knew each others characters abilities and fighting styles better than our own. He never did beat us. We made sure that we engaged every encounter on our terms not his.

That fight in the bar is the stuff that I love about RPGs, it gives the players the chance to do the impossible and look good doing it. Even if it threw your game for a bit of a loop, something that epic is well worth it and unfortunately it doesn't happen as much as i wish it could. In one of my DH games my players were under cover and trying to infiltrate a heretic cell, they had a rocky start but soon recovered. (once they started working together) 2 of the 5 players were into the cell, but soon one was found out, the cell planned to kill him. I made a fairly beast NPC that was supposed to fight him / the party, but never got the chance, the one with the blown cover was a psycher, used chameleon and hid VERY well. The assassin was hidden on top of a near by building, watching. When we started the campaign several missions earlier the Inquisitor had given every member a special gift, something that was valuable to pretty much that player, something they would not sell, but would pretty much be useless to another player, and something they would likely never have gotten another one off, so a use only when you need it. The Assassin had 5 turbo-pen rounds specifically crafted for his gun, this is +2d10 to a single shot. He had 1 left, and used it here, killed the mini-boss in one perfect shot, aimed head shot with an accurate gun, using a turbo-pen round and mighty shot, one of the damages exploded TWICE totalling the damage somewhere in the 60s (68 before pen i think, I don't have my game notes with me so I cant tell you for sure) But that was the scene that really hooked that player, thats what he had designed the character to do, move, hide, take a single shot and kill someone that would not be good to face directly. Now there were other impressive heroics in that mission, but a perfect sniper shot doing more than double the damage needed to kill completely though critical.

Its a beautiful cinematic in my head. "A large man in a cloak walks out onto the landing platform in the warm dark of summer, the full moon lighting it up almost like day, he finally spots his target, the psycher, and throws his cloak off revealing a heavy stubber where his left hand should be, he opened his mouth to speak but the crack of a supersonic round filled the void and his head exploded like a ripe melon and he collapsed to the ground. 600 meters away the assassin ejects the spent cartridge from his gun."

Now, this did actually cause a problem becuase they were supposed to question him... but oh well, they figured it out anyway.