DM: Applejack finds an empty carriage for hire, ready to be pulled by four earth ponies.
Applejack: Giddyup, fellas!
SFX: (JUMP!)
Applejack: I gotta get the heck outta Dodge!
Rainbow Dash: Oh, come onnnnnnn…
Rarity: Was that ABSOLUTELY necessary?
Fluttershy: That was bad…
Twilight Sparkle: I can't believe this…
Pinkie Pie: Okay, that was actually pretty good!
DM: So, yes, if you were wondering what was the pun around which the town and this whole scenario revolves… THAT was it.
Twilight Sparkle: Was it worth it?
DM: YES.
Welcome to a bunch of people groaning and grumbling, the anthem to bring in the new year.
When you're naming something, ideally it has to be catchy, memorable, and descriptive. Just saying it should evoke some kind of feeling or image or memory; the maximum power of language in general. Pony tabletop settings are really really good in that department, because you can make people and places as literal as you want and it still fits. But regardless, sometimes a name crystalizes around an entirely different concept... and as a DM, you kinda have to just go for it. Because yes, it IS worth it.
I had a campaign where the Dwarven paladin had a bad habit of rolling 1s and throwing her weapon. We would randomize who she threw it at, but it inevitably hit whomever had the lowest hit points. On more than one occasion, that knocked them out. So, we started calling it "Last Rites"
I've never seen the 'critical fail on a natural 1' house rule fail to end up being completely ridiculous. We had a ranger who managed to shoot himself in both feet in one combat, and in another he accidentally took down the NPC we were supposed to be protecting three times (until the cleric was out of cure light spells to bring him back up and we failed the mission).
I thought Dark Sun had a decent one in 4E as long as you also used the rule giving players enhancement bonuses to PC attacks and defenses at set levels. You could reroll the attack, but the weapon would then break. Metal weapons were slightly less likely to break. It gave players an option that was occasionally worth the trouble.
In my campaign I allowed rerolls at a cumulative penalty of -2 (ie, if you failed that you could roll again at -4). It worked fairly well, though in retrospect I should have made the penalty be for the whole session to discourage repeated attempts. Or maybe added fate points.
Best, or at least best remembered one, was probably the enemy 'Naught Ciis' I made in a game for a villain of a character (who was an expy of Daring Do, 'Gentlepony Adventurer') in a book the PCs were reading. If that counts.
Worst I cannot remember as I tend to delete them from my memory, and am rather good at that as my memory is crap.
I do remember a situation with a bad one, where our bard said it, and accidentally triggered his at-will 1st level power 'Vicious Mockery' due to how bad the pun was. He killed a commoner due to it. Then the guards who asked him what he did. Eventually we started clamping his mouth down when he said, "I only said-" and that continued. We realized by the end of the session that due to that none of us remembered the original pun.
"Who's sending you off on these missions?"
"There's a point what's your name?"
"I am but a messenger."
*In unison* "There you go, he's Butter Messenger."
And, of course, thereafter:
"A messenger..."
"Is it Butter?"
"No it's a different one."
"Is it Lard? Are you Lard?"
"What? ...No?"
"I'm going to try following Butter to see who he's working for."
"It's Butter Messenger."
"Wait, it's actually Butter?"
"It's actually Butter."
"Yessssssss"
"Thank God Butter survived."
*Grabs Butter and threatens to punch him*
"WHAT DO YOU WANT!"
"A messenger, Sire."
"Is it Butter?"
"No, sir."
"Well...show him in anyway. Huh. Dresses the same, walks the same, talks the same. I can't believe it's--"
"OOC! Don't you dare finish that!"
Oh, just remembered another one. It was in the Rise of the Runelords campaign, in which we had to fight a crazy wizard who turned himself completely into living mithral. After defeating him I couldn't resist to exclaim:
"I hereby declare this area a
demithralized zone!"
In my Fallout setting, Stable 45 is a stable whose Overmare managed to suffer a fatal heart attack only days after sealing it. Thus the social experiment there was not be carried out. The Stable lasted a long time without any devastating incident. When it eventually opened to the outside, trade was established and a little town sprung up around it.
The town had been attacked a few times, but the residents managed to survive the raids through smart planning (having a Stable door that still works is awesome) and establishing relations with neighbors (they pay a local raider gang in food to patrol the area for trouble). Stable 45's name was shortened to 45 by caravans, and then rewritten as "Fortify" to make it stand out less as a Stable and more as a town (the townsfolk learned not to advertise their Stable). Fortify stuck as the official name of the town ever since and remains a decent settlement in the wasteland.
The name of the town that is the players' home base in the campaign I'm writing/running is Greenwood, which is meaningful for the following:
- tribute to Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms which is the de facto world of D&D 5th ed (not that any of my players have ever heard of him...)
- the town is located near the Greenwoods, an enchanted forest that stays lush and green throughout the year. The inhabitants of Greenwood have struck a bargain with a druid of Greenwoods to cut down a specific part of the forest that always grows back overnights. This forms the primary trade of Greenwood and is the source of its wealth.
In general, names of (important) cities/towns/people/other in my games tend to signify or else hint at deeper meaning and/or relation to the story/plot at hand. The amount of times my players pick up on this is still countable on two hands.
Never did figure out that chase sequence, in universe.
That carriage was built for endurance, not speed-to go long distances at a walk while carrying goods and passengers, not to evade pursuit.
Rainbow should have been kicking it to pieces in seconds, and we know canonically that Pinkie can match Rainbow's speed. Or Twilight just teleports onto it, or it to them minus its pullers. Basically only Rarity and Fluttershy would have been UNable to singlehandedly halt the carriage.
Pinkie only matches Rainbow's speed when properly motivated. She does not often get mad; it seems that anger does not unlock her hidden power (which makes sense given her Element). IIRC, Twilight has only been shown to teleport short distances, useful for evasion or bypassing obstacles but not so much for raw speed.
Rainbow, however, should have been able to catch up...unless she was worried the stage drivers would physically intervene on Applejack's behalf. One pegasus versus five strong earth ponies, one of whom is visibly in a panic while the others may think they have reason to be ungentle, can result in a badly injured pegasus before backup can arrive.
Twilight's used teleportation to evade pursuit twice (in "Ticket Master" and "Dragon Quest"), and while in both cases we have no idea how far she teleported, both of those teleports were very likely farther than the distance from Twilight to Applejack.
On the other hand, I cannot think of any time that Twilight has teleported into or out of a moving vehicle, or any time that she teleported an object but not herself, or any time she teleported anything that wasn't very close to her. So I would agree that Twilight lacks the ability to teleport the cart to her, or to safely teleport herself to the cart. She might have been able to grab he cart telekinetically before it got too far away, but I can't imagine it would have been easy (and it sounds quite rude).
Hm, let's review. Last Roundup is S2E14: obviously need to keep it fair by only using Pre-Alicorn Twilight to determine what she could have done.
Difficult teleportation of self: S1E3, blind teleport from alleyway to home to evade pursuit, with Spike. S2E3, teleports offscreen and telefrags a ball in the process.
Teleportation or levitation of large objects: S1E6: Levitates multiple huge objects, with difficulty. S2E3: Effortlessly locks Rainbow in place by the tail. S2E8: Levitates multiple huge objects without difficulty (repairing a stone dam, disguised as Mare Do Well)
Yeah serious case of Forgot Her Powers, I still say.
Even if Twilight could have caught up just like Rainbow, she too might have been thinking "not safe to arrive by myself". If Rainbow and Twilight communicated that they were holding back for the same reason, they might have realized it and gone ahead together, but they did not, perhaps too caught up in the chase.
You might outrun your friends applejack.
You might outrun your responsibility.
You might outrun your every fear.
But you will never, her my words, never, outrun the cringe.
In my upcoming campaign (yes, still haven't started, life, ick) there's a place I think the party will soon have reason to travel to - a hub for all of the nation's arcane magic users. It's called the Seer's Tower. It's in the major city of Shakagho. This is the kind of stuff you can get away with when all your names are written instead of spoken aloud...
We play in a chat room. Not the ideal venue, but it's all we've got. And it enables me to make puns which wouldn't even be recognizable as puns if they were spoken. If it was an in-person campaign, they'd just think I said we were going to the Sears Tower, but in chat room form, it takes a while to sink in. And that's delightful.
Half of the purpose of my first campaign that I ran was to create a scenario in which an antagonist Professor Oak gloats at you and stops you from achieving your goals by saying "Now is not the time to use that."
It worked. Got that in the seventh or so session, and spent the entire first six sessions elaborately setting up this scenario. :)
I guess 2016 is the year of the pun, especially if Spud is involved. We need a session of FiD tomorrow so the puns can start flying again, otherwise we have to wait and for spud that's 7 days, and we all know 7 days with no puns makes one weak...
In real life, let's be honest.
How many people saw Pinkie's frigging Voice of The Demonic Legion coming? Holy ccow, the sound engineer cranked up the reverb for that...and then it was gone, leaving soiled underwear in its wake.
Man, this is even worse than the time Rainbow Dash got it in her head that orgy was short for organize, and put those posters all over town for an orgy party in AJ's barn.
They had to tear it down and burn it, leading to the apple family gathering to raise a new one.
In a steampunk setting the PCs were slow to understand that the NPC computational engine expert Brigham Barr was being manipulated into an attempt to take over the entire (teletype linked Babbage engine) internet. It turned out that this was a cunning plan by the fiendish and supposedly fictional Fu Manchu, a known evil genius. When confronted he gloated, "Soon everyone who uses a computing engine will know the names Fu and Barr!"
In my Eberron campaign, I had the group meet a Warforged who was scavenging parts to build a God. His chest opened up to reveal an assortment of magical items. His name? Chester.
I, too, ran an Eberron campaign a while back. Long story short, during a calm point in the campaign my players passed the time by helping out a less-than-stable artificer with testing and maintaining his magic items (this was after the 5E update, so I made a major arc out of how fundamentally changed magic items were). After shooting off a bunch of wands, some of which performed normally, others not at all, others exploding with weird magic and trying out a bunch of malfunctioning items (low-level 3.5 ones that hadn't been updated), they tried a couple of potions that the artificer was cooking up. After the first player got a weird illusory cosmetic effect applied to his character's hair, the second got one that had been marked as an experimental Potion of Levitation. At this point I'd been sitting on this line for a long while and had some trouble delivering it with a straight face, but after clearing my throat I managed to relay the results of that potion:
"You're having some trouble keeping it down."
I could hear crickets around the proverbial table (Skype conversation, really). However, now it was the third player's turn to try a potion: I quietly PM'd them that they had got a perfectly brewed cup of coffee. Of course, they couldn't stop laughing, and the other players had similar reactions when they tried that "potion" as well. The lesson, of course, is to always have a plan B in place in case your jokes don't fall through.
Your best and worst puns in your group.
Both sides gets a prize.
Worst I cannot remember as I tend to delete them from my memory, and am rather good at that as my memory is crap.
I do remember a situation with a bad one, where our bard said it, and accidentally triggered his at-will 1st level power 'Vicious Mockery' due to how bad the pun was. He killed a commoner due to it. Then the guards who asked him what he did. Eventually we started clamping his mouth down when he said, "I only said-" and that continued. We realized by the end of the session that due to that none of us remembered the original pun.
"Who's sending you off on these missions?"
"There's a point what's your name?"
"I am but a messenger."
*In unison* "There you go, he's Butter Messenger."
And, of course, thereafter:
"A messenger..."
"Is it Butter?"
"No it's a different one."
"Is it Lard? Are you Lard?"
"What? ...No?"
"I'm going to try following Butter to see who he's working for."
"It's Butter Messenger."
"Wait, it's actually Butter?"
"It's actually Butter."
"Yessssssss"
"Thank God Butter survived."
*Grabs Butter and threatens to punch him*
"WHAT DO YOU WANT!"
"Is it Butter?"
"No, sir."
"Well...show him in anyway. Huh. Dresses the same, walks the same, talks the same. I can't believe it's--"
"OOC! Don't you dare finish that!"
XD
But that's not a problem, because I have...
PROTECTION FROM ELEPHANTS!!!
(Our DM had to get himself a drink after that one.)
"I hereby declare this area a
demithralized zone!"
The town had been attacked a few times, but the residents managed to survive the raids through smart planning (having a Stable door that still works is awesome) and establishing relations with neighbors (they pay a local raider gang in food to patrol the area for trouble). Stable 45's name was shortened to 45 by caravans, and then rewritten as "Fortify" to make it stand out less as a Stable and more as a town (the townsfolk learned not to advertise their Stable). Fortify stuck as the official name of the town ever since and remains a decent settlement in the wasteland.
- tribute to Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms which is the de facto world of D&D 5th ed (not that any of my players have ever heard of him...)
- the town is located near the Greenwoods, an enchanted forest that stays lush and green throughout the year. The inhabitants of Greenwood have struck a bargain with a druid of Greenwoods to cut down a specific part of the forest that always grows back overnights. This forms the primary trade of Greenwood and is the source of its wealth.
In general, names of (important) cities/towns/people/other in my games tend to signify or else hint at deeper meaning and/or relation to the story/plot at hand. The amount of times my players pick up on this is still countable on two hands.
That name is from old manga/anime called "Koko wa Greenwood."
That carriage was built for endurance, not speed-to go long distances at a walk while carrying goods and passengers, not to evade pursuit.
Rainbow should have been kicking it to pieces in seconds, and we know canonically that Pinkie can match Rainbow's speed. Or Twilight just teleports onto it, or it to them minus its pullers. Basically only Rarity and Fluttershy would have been UNable to singlehandedly halt the carriage.
Rainbow, however, should have been able to catch up...unless she was worried the stage drivers would physically intervene on Applejack's behalf. One pegasus versus five strong earth ponies, one of whom is visibly in a panic while the others may think they have reason to be ungentle, can result in a badly injured pegasus before backup can arrive.
So it could have happened as depicted.
On the other hand, I cannot think of any time that Twilight has teleported into or out of a moving vehicle, or any time that she teleported an object but not herself, or any time she teleported anything that wasn't very close to her. So I would agree that Twilight lacks the ability to teleport the cart to her, or to safely teleport herself to the cart. She might have been able to grab he cart telekinetically before it got too far away, but I can't imagine it would have been easy (and it sounds quite rude).
Difficult teleportation of self: S1E3, blind teleport from alleyway to home to evade pursuit, with Spike. S2E3, teleports offscreen and telefrags a ball in the process.
Teleportation or levitation of large objects: S1E6: Levitates multiple huge objects, with difficulty. S2E3: Effortlessly locks Rainbow in place by the tail. S2E8: Levitates multiple huge objects without difficulty (repairing a stone dam, disguised as Mare Do Well)
Yeah serious case of Forgot Her Powers, I still say.
They should try painting them red for extra speed.
You might outrun your responsibility.
You might outrun your every fear.
But you will never, her my words, never, outrun the cringe.
(And not just because I used this while actually in Dodge City. pretty much every tourist does, I think.)
It worked. Got that in the seventh or so session, and spent the entire first six sessions elaborately setting up this scenario. :)
... I'm gonna go sit in the corner now
How many people saw Pinkie's frigging Voice of The Demonic Legion coming? Holy ccow, the sound engineer cranked up the reverb for that...and then it was gone, leaving soiled underwear in its wake.
They had to tear it down and burn it, leading to the apple family gathering to raise a new one.
Molestia approves of this error.
I lived.
FUBAR, on the other hand...
FUBAR is a good one but my favorite is SNAFU, it's a clever way to be sarcastic and official sounding at the same time.
Oh you want to know what a SNAFU is?
Situation
Normal
And
Fucked
Up
Situation normal: all f*cked up.
... Well, mostly by accident.
Now it's 2016, college might give me a heart attack by the end of the quarter, and I failed a meme... sounds like my life hasn't changed much. Woo!
I hope you all have a great new year.
"You're having some trouble keeping it down."
I could hear crickets around the proverbial table (Skype conversation, really). However, now it was the third player's turn to try a potion: I quietly PM'd them that they had got a perfectly brewed cup of coffee. Of course, they couldn't stop laughing, and the other players had similar reactions when they tried that "potion" as well. The lesson, of course, is to always have a plan B in place in case your jokes don't fall through.