Running jokes in your campaign

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

A couple of running gags in Champions campaigns past...

 

The PC heroes could never eat out (didn't matter whether it was a sit-down restaurant or a fast-food place) without a super-battle taking place wherever they were eating.

 

One brick could not go through any outdoor battle without picking up a Chevy van and smashing an opponent with it. Just Chevys. He would superleap across the map to get to the Chevy van, pick it up, and superleap back to his opponent.

 

Whenever my players don't know what to do next, they eventually say, "We go to Paris, France." It was a running gag for over a year before I finally made an adventure which required them to actually go to Paris.

 

When faced with a massively dangerous opponent, at least one player is likely to say, "I go Desolid." Without fail, that player's character doesn't even have Desolidification as one of their powers.

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

In my early GMing days in the '80s: Bill and Ted would occasionally show up in every game I ran (Superheroes, D&D, Sci-Fi, whatever), usually during a fight. They would stick their heads out of the booth, look around, and one of them (usually Bill), would say something like "Sorry, super-dudes, wrong place!" and they would leave again.

 

In a Star Wars game I ran: during every big fire-fight, no matter who was shooting at whom, 2 droids (an Astromech and a Protocol unit), would cross the battlefield without taking any hits or interfering with anyone's aim.

 

In an online Champions game that got aborted: Several NPCs would have names from television shows. Three of the first were taking from the guys' "alter egos" on Seinfeld. A.J. Pennypacker (Jerry) was the head of Omnicorp International. Art VanDelay (George) was the Mayor's Chief Advisor on Superhuman Affairs. And Dr. Leo Von Nostrum (Kramer) was a well-known parapsychologist.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

"Sorry' date=' super-dudes, wrong place!"[/quote']

 

[OzMike]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

The Dreaded Location 13.

 

My character Snapback (highly skilled rapid healing pistol dude), in every campaign I've played him where hit locations are used will get hit in location 13 in every combat, defined as the "groin-type area" for our group. Shot by a sniper? Location 13. Kicked by a street punk? Location 13. Haymakered by a brick? Location 13. Tasered? Location 13. Bitten? Location 13. Flame Thrower? Location 13. Grabbed? Location 13. Falling 10 stories out of a tall chinese pagoda only to land on a spike? Location 13.

 

Sometime even twice. And once 3 times (two snipers and one fall out of a chinese pagoda).

 

Made me/Snapback wait with dreaded anticipation every encounter for the dreaded location roll. And people wondered why my character tried to end fights quickly and cleanly by shooting people in the head as quickly and often as he could.

[transmetahuman]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

The Dreaded Location 13.

 

My character Snapback (highly skilled rapid healing pistol dude), in every campaign I've played him where hit locations are used will get hit in location 13 in every combat, defined as the "groin-type area" for our group. Shot by a sniper? Location 13. Kicked by a street punk? Location 13. Haymakered by a brick? Location 13. Tasered? Location 13. Bitten? Location 13. Flame Thrower? Location 13. Grabbed? Location 13. Falling 10 stories out of a tall chinese pagoda only to land on a spike? Location 13.

 

Sometime even twice. And once 3 times (two snipers and one fall out of a chinese pagoda).

 

Made me/Snapback wait with dreaded anticipation every encounter for the dreaded location roll. And people wondered why my character tried to end fights quickly and cleanly by shooting people in the head as quickly and often as he could.

Have you priced adamantium cups?

[Metaphysician]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

Hmm' date=' well, in the Ancient Aberrant campaign I'm in, probably the biggest running "joke" is how regularly our characters end up wandering outside of time, despite not actually being powerful enough to really be able to travel time. Typically this is caused by letting certain party members try anything unusual without supervision. . .[/quote']

 

Two other running jokes I was reminded about. . .

 

1. Antiquantum rocks falling from the sky and hitting one or more PCs, typically in response to OOC insanity

 

2. Gangrel dice. Anytime somone rolls abysmally ( "14 dice pool and I *botch*?!" ), they got Gangrelled.

[The Arc]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

In my Russian Dawn campaign I have a Mickey Mouse Clock. One of those big alarm clocks. The first time one of the players encountered the clock it was a bomb that blew up half the police station he was in. Later on in the adventure another Mickey Mouse Clock turned up. The players just couldn't help but wonder if that second clock might be a bomb as well. I'm going to have that clock show up from time to time. Some times it might be a bomb, some times it won't.

:0)

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

I don't know; I tend to go with the "once is funny, twice is cute, thrice is annoying" rule. Running jokes are only funny if they are used correctly, or else morphed into new incarnations periodically, otherwise it just gets tired.

 

The only real running joke that I can recall as being used exactly the same way without variation was in a Mage campaign many years ago my character was an Adept of Matter, his sanctom sanctorum was a semi truck (the trailer was significantly bigger on the inside than on the outside), and he had a sidekick.

 

Both my character and the sidekick were coffee afficianados and my character would go out of his way to buy gourmet coffees, stop for coffee at cafes, and so forth, and the sidekick would get some too. However, no matter what kind of coffee the sidekick drank in the truck, whether he brewed it himself or bought it and brought it in, turned out to taste exactly like SANKA.

 

So my character would talk up how great the coffee was, and the sidekick would be like, what? it tastes like crap! After a while he caught wise and stopped drinking coffee, but then everything else started tasting like SANKA too.

 

The final joke was the sidekick finally just got fed up and replaced all the coffee on board with actual SANKA while my character was off doing things. Coming back my character sat down to drink some good coffee, and spat out the SANKA with a howl of "This stuff tastes like crap!".

 

The sidekick responded with "what do you mean, its Guatemalan, premium blend. Tastes great!"

 

The joke had to end at that point, but the pay off was good.

 

The joke itself was weak, but the reactions and attempts to get around the reality bending were funny. The sidekick was played to great effect as a straight man, which is why it worked.

[CandidGamera]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

The last HERO game I ran was a Angel/Witch Hunter Robin inspired occult-investigation-slash-superbeings mix, and one of the (PC) characters was a gunslinger - from the future.

 

His running gag was references to movies and pop culture that hadn't yet happened.

 

"This is worse than when Keanu won the Oscar for Julius Caesar.."

 

There was an NPC with them who was an emotional vampire. Basically, surrounded by an area that subtly fed on the emotions of those around him. As a result, most people didn't care enough to notice him. (Invisibility, Always On, Bright Fringe). It was joked that he was the perfect NPC, because like many NPCs that adventure with the party, he was often unintentionally forgotten.

 

"Good thing the four of us were here.."

"Five."

"Oh, Damper! Didn't see you there."

[Valerious]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

Several years ago in a Shadowrun campaign, one player had an Ork with a crazy high body score, as well as multiple cyber/bioware enhancements that made this guy nigh impossible to kill. Sure, you could give him deadly wounds and put him down, but you could bet that after the combat he'd be back on his feet in no time, usually more quickly than others who had much more mild injuries.

 

This lead to the player being somewhat, well, reckless in combat. When the foes were no big worry, this was fine. But against tougher foes, he'd often go down. He soon became our resident "red-shirt", the guy who was killed(okay, being given a deadly wound isn't necessarily fatal in SR) to prove the situation was dangerous.

 

So to this day, when it becomes clear a combat is dangerous, someone will remark, "This would kill Steve."

[zornwil]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

In our current campaign there are a few but the one that comes to mind is the running jokes related to the baloney replicator. Basically, the base's very-nice-and-only-a-little-mad inventor, Gere-luce, built a food replicator, but he's very pragmatic and plebian in tastes, so he just programmed it to make baloney. The various dietary habits of the Justice Squad are peculiar and contrasting enough, so various references to the baloney machine have continued on. Basically, though, most of the JS are quite fine with baloney, and those who aren't are quite fine with going elsewhere for food, so the base's baloney machine has remained such.

[lemming]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

And of course, Gere-luce wanting to install big red buttons into everything he builds.

[Steve]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

This originated in an old Call of Cthulhu campaign set in the 30s. One of the characters had their own plane that could be used to fly the group around to wherever they needed to be in the world. One day the GM came up with this gem, to show that they shouldn't be using the plane in that scenario.

 

"You see twelve disreputable-looking men with shotguns standing around the plane."

 

It since morphed into a similar saying on other campaigns, changed to suit genre.

 

"You see twelve disreputable-looking Zhodani with assault weapons standing around the ship."

 

"You see twelve disreputable-looking elves with enchanted longbows standing by the docks."

 

You get the idea.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

It was once my honor to become the running gag in our Call of Cthulhu campaign. When rolling up my character (a scholarly professor), I wound up with the highest sanity score of all the characters. I knew this was a good thing, and was happy about it. Little did I know...

 

In our first adventure, we encountered a living mummy. The GM called for us to make our sanity rolls. I confidently rolled the dice and -- blew the roll. Badly. Very badly. On D100 I'd rolled a double-nothing. Fortunately, my sanity score was high enough that the GM ruled out a "critical failure" result. Unfortunately, I maxed out the sanity loss dice anyway. The GM consulted his charts and the result was that the Professor fled as rapidly as possible in the opposite direction -- right into a brick wall. Knocked him out cold. At the end of the scenario the other characters got some sanity back because they defeated the monster. I didn't because I was taking a nap.

 

Things grew worse from that point on. In every investigation, the Professor managed to blow his SAN roll and either bugged out or fainted. His sanity score began a steep decline, but at least he was entertaining. In every subsequent scenario, the Professor became jumpier and more cowardly. In one scenario, the Professor elected to wait in the car while the rest of the crew went inside the spooky-looking building to investigate. He saw something that required a SAN roll anyway, blew it, ran inside the house to "help" the rest of the team, ran into something else that required a SAN roll, blew that one, ran outside, jumped in the car and drove away as fast as he could.

 

The final blow inevitably came. We were investigating a mystery and something happened that required a SAN roll. The ordinarily meek and fearful Professor became serenely confident and unafraid. This was rather unbsettling to the other players because this could only mean that something truly evil, mean, wicked and nasty was happening. The rest of the scenario had the rest of the crew trying to discover what had happened to the Professor and how to stop him (He'd been possessed by something intent on introducing nuclear warfare to a world not ready for it).

 

Even I stood up and cheered as they finally executed the plan which sent the evil something-or-other back to wherever it came from, leaving the Professor a gibbering, drooling, mess. The men in white coats had no trouble getting him aboard the bus to the Laughing academy.

 

I have never before nor since had so much fun playing such an inneffectual character.

[Tech]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

First, a couple of old running jokes that ran their courses:

 

A superheroine in her civilian ID was a nurse. During her nursing career, a crazy old man in one of the hospital rooms would call out, "Nurse! Nurse!" This happened repeatedly for many sessions until finally one of the players finally said, 'Hey, isn't that guy out of the hospital yet??' A couple episodes later, he got hurt because he was too close to a supervillain/superhero battle and ended up back in the hospital. Now, as the player was getting a little tired of this NPC, I let him fade away. However, a few years later in an episode run by a different GM, a different player running a detective character has someone come into his office. The guy asks the detective, "Can you find people?" to which the player responds, "It depends on what you mean." The GM pulls out his trump card and the guy responds to the player character, "I need your help. I'm looking for a nurse!" The player running the superheroine groans and puts her head on the table while everyone laughs.

 

A relatively well-to-do PC has a chef named Jacque that cooks for him. However, he's french and refers to everyone and anyone that he doesn't like with this line (in a bad french accent): "You must be a slum-mah!" Even when he shows up a couple times near the scene of a battle, he insults the villains with: "You ah all super slum-mahs!" The chef never got creamed or attacked interestingly enough.

 

More recent:

 

Before Multiform existed, my brother created a multiple-formed character. However, the character was always green colored. Every few episodes, he would be walking along when he sees a woman with her son. The son points at the hero and says, "Mommy, is that a spaz!?" To which the character said, "You'll get yours, kid." Even in the most unlikely of places, that kid would show up and point at him, always referring to him as a spaz.

 

Even more recent:

 

A nameless boy asks a few heroes for their signatures, to which the heroes were more than willing to give out to a fan. One hero has this same boy ask for not 1 but 3 signatures. The hero gives his hero signature to this seemingly superfan but mere seconds later, runs over to another boy and loudly has this conversation: "Hey, hey! I'll give you 3 of his signatures for one of Lee's!" (Lee is a different hero) The hero, standing nearby, is superbly deflated while all the players get a good laugh.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

Vans.

 

It's a running gag in one of our campaigns (the one I play Meeb in) that vans get destroyed every adventure. Either we had on that gets smashed, or the bad guys have one or two that get disabled or smashed.

 

When one player who had missed a few session came back, when recapping the adventure the first thing said in recap was "we took out two vans".

[NestorDRod]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

Dang! Susano beat me to the Hadji Taxi reference. The best part was that the signature phrase had to be spoken in an (usually) atrocious Hindu accent.

 

One running gag that comes to mind came to be after I got my hands on an old Champions adventure that had been featured in an issue of Space Gamer. The adventure included Cardboard Heores for all the principals, including a set of UNTIL and VIPER agents.

 

But that wasn't what started the gag. One of the cardboard figures was of a homeless drunk that had been included as a bystander and potential hostage, named "Harry the Bum." Well, Harry soon became a fixture in every combat played, whether it was on a street corner, high-rise, or out in the country. You'd set out the figures for everyone on the map, then place Harry in some convenient corner to witness the battle. That damn figure got more action than any other hero in my collection.

 

Another one that I just recalled was used sparingly but with great effect. Its origin goes back to an ancient D&D game where one of the players was fighting orcs. Suddenly he turned to the GM and says, "I try to distract my opponent by yelling out 'Look! The Comet Kohoutek!'". The GM was not amused but rolled a Saving Throw anyway, to no effect. After some back-and-forth, the player tried again. "Look! It's the Winged Victory of Samothrace!" The GM rolled his eyes, but went ahead and rolled a Saving Throw... and missed abysmally. The orc turned around and got smacked.

 

This story did the rounds and became a stock phrase to use when a distraction was needed. The crowning moment, though, was years later when Susano, playing Mr. America, was felled by the blast from a Viper agent's rifle. Stunned, with the agent standing over him, he realized he couldn't dodge the next attack.

 

Remembering my telling of the story, he turned to me and said, "I point behind the agent and shout, 'Look! It's the Winged Victory of Samothrace!'" I rolled the agent's INT roll, and rolled 18. The agent lost his Phase looking over his shoulder ("Huh?"), giving Mr. America the time to recover from being Stunned, stand up, and send the hapless agent to La-La-land.

 

A powerful phrase, indeed. Use it wisely.

[Lamrok]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

In our current campaign there are a few but the one that comes to mind is the running jokes related to the baloney replicator. Basically' date=' the base's very-nice-and-only-a-little-mad inventor, Gere-luce, built a food replicator, but he's very pragmatic and plebian in tastes, so he just programmed it to make baloney. The various dietary habits of the Justice Squad are peculiar and contrasting enough, so various references to the baloney machine have continued on. Basically, though, most of the JS are quite fine with baloney, and those who aren't are quite fine with going elsewhere for food, so the base's baloney machine has remained such.[/quote']

 

The "Food Fabrication Unit" is actually broken. It was supposed to be able to create anything, but it got stuck on baloney and no one has complained.

 

The existence of the "The Cheese Dimension" (a dimension created entirely of cheese) is one of my favorite running gags. Sammy (our ever hungry shapeshifter) is always looking for a trip there.

[Wormhole]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

My namesake character, Wormhole, can be expected to make some kind of cameo appearance in just about any campaign I GM or co-GM, doubly so if the campaign involved a transdimensional junket of any kind. Bradley being the trickster he is, it's hard to say whether he's there to assist you in some subtle way or play some elaborate prank on you. Once, a PC walked into his hotel room just in time to see Wormhole clean out his mini-bar and disappear. Another time, he appeared during a combat sequence, passing through the battle field like the Energizer Bunny through one of those old commerials, and disappeared again without interacting with or getting hit by any of the combatants.

[Marcus Impudite]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

Both a running joke and a neat idea I've considered ripping off...

 

At the beginning of new campaigns, a GM I played with a couple of years ago would sometimes ask the players of female PCs if they'd signed their "DID (Damsel In Distress) Release Form." It was explained that if they said yes, then they were giving him permission to put their character in at least one of of a number classic damsel in distress situation at some time during the campaign. He once even went so far as to create the actual form in Quark Xpress. My current GF was one of the rare female players to check the box giving consent for an encounter with an ATB.*

 

 

 

 

 

*ATB= Amorous Tentacled Being

[Steve]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

My current GF was one of the rare female players to check the box giving consent for an encounter with an ATB.*

 

 

*ATB= Amorous Tentacled Being

 

[zornwil]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

The "Food Fabrication Unit" is actually broken. It was supposed to be able to create anything' date=' but it got stuck on baloney and no one has complained.[/quote']

 

Oh, right, thanks, plus also IIRC Gere-luce likes baloney just fine and from his perspective he sees no reason to fix it. Spectrum doesn't complain just because she eats out, anyway (well, prior to marriage, now of course she eats at home whenever possible).

 

The existence of the "The Cheese Dimension" (a dimension created entirely of cheese) is one of my favorite running gags. Sammy (our ever hungry shapeshifter) is always looking for a trip there.

 

Heh, yeah, that is a good one - and one that came later in the game, too.

[zornwil]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

In all my supers campaigns, there's been a J. Hell character. It started with Jimmy Hell in the Boston campaign, who also lived on into the South Carolina campaign (but was changed around a good bit), through to Jonas Hell in the current campaign. These are plot-device characters as J. Hell is always a parody of a pulp/noir type detective, in over his head and needing the PCs' help. Hell always turns into a sort of running joke for the PCs, as he's the type of guy the characters (and players) like to make fun of (as they should, really). He tends to get left behind as the campaign takes on a life of its own and as the supers get more powerful as well. It's not really a running gag per se, but was reminded by Wormhole.

[Marcus Impudite]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

Yeap,

 

And it wasn't all that suprising to me, I've seen the poster of Hokusai's The Dream Of The Fisherman's Wife she has on her bedroom wall.

[Southern Cross]

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

 

Words fail me.....