I’ve been into TTRPGs (Tabletop RPGs, like Dungeons and Dragons) for some time now, starting during the COVID-19 lockdowns (I think around 2022). I’d always known I’d like TTRPGs, but apart from playing a few short sessions of The Dark Eye, a German TTRPG, I’d never played them much. During the pandemic, I watched Amphibia, and something in it motivated me to find a group and play online.
Now, after a couple of years, multiple longer and shorter adventures, and two campaigns—experiencing both as a GM (Game Master) and a player. So I’ve collected various funny moments.
The Imploding Bag of Holding
This happened in Pathfinder 2e: We had helped a group of elves drive away a green dragon and afterward gave them tips on how to deal with it if it returned. Fast forward a few sessions and in-game days, and we received a letter saying they had successfully vanquished the beast when it came back. As a reward, they sent us a Bag of Holding—a magical object that can store a certain amount of items without expanding in size. The bag was completely filled with gold pieces.
One player’s character was curious about how it worked and tried to put in another coin… Let’s look at the rules for the Bag of Holding:
If the bag is overloaded or broken, it ruptures and is ruined, causing the items inside to be lost forever.
So, they put one more coin into the bag—and it imploded. The player ended up owing each other character in the party about 250 gold pieces (which they never repaid).
The Fight for the Rotten Fish
Another Pathfinder 2e story, same party, same players and characters:
We were in a tavern and (quite untypically) got drunk after finding a rare drink called Valhalla. Whenever you drink it, you hear Vikings shout Valhalla in your head. We followed the typical rules for drinking in PF 2e.
We got pretty drunk, and with one critical failure on a saving throw, my character was one stage away from death. One character—the same as in the previous story—decided to annoy my character (they didn’t like each other) by using Mage Hand, an invisible, floating hand, to move a piece of rotten fish toward my character. My character barely noticed.
So, I used my Mage Hand to intercept it. We rolled opposing checks, and my hand slapped the fish out of the other character’s hand, causing it to explode mid-air and fill the room with an absolutely vile stench.
One character, a human woman, had just returned from the toilet (her player had also just come back from the toilet and had been AFK before that). She returned just in time to hear the GM narrate how my character was nearly dead and slapping away a floating, rotting fish.
She was not pleased—neither the character nor the player (as we had something important to do the next in-game day).
Don’t Counterspell the Boss’ Teleport
This happened in Dungeons and Dragons:
We had just returned from a side quest for a woman who had been turned into a Medusa and now lived alone in the woods, lest she petrify everyone around her. We were told that the tears of an Ettin (a two-headed giant) could cure her. So, we went there, made some Ettins cry by beating them up, and returned to the woman. There, we found her dead, slain by one of the henchmen of the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy, usually the main antagonist).
This henchman appeared and disappeared regularly to take important objects, and in this case, he wanted the Medusa’s head for something. We had some dialogue, and he was about to teleport away (he was way more powerful than us but had no intention of fighting). My character, being a law-obedient ex-investigator and criminal hunter, had no intention of letting him go, so I used Counterspell to nullify the teleportation spell. It worked after rolling a die (as the spell used by the henchman was powerful and couldn’t just be counterspelled like that)…
Angered and probably annoyed, he attacked us. We quickly learned just how strong he was. He nearly wiped out our Paladin in one turn. While the rest of the party fled, my character swallowed their pride, knelt in front of the bad guy, apologized, and begged for mercy. I rolled a natural 20 on the d20 (the highest possible number, which usually means something special), and he let us live.
The GM later disclosed that only a Nat20 would have led to success in this case.
We fought him much later and eventually killed him. He was pretty annoying, as he made himself invisible and kept teleporting around the battlefield, from roof to roof, while half the party fought his minions in the streets.
Fireball Mishap
Another D&D story, and my most embarrassing one:
The classic story… a misused Fireball…
We had invaded a Gnoll cave since the Gnolls there had kidnapped nearby townspeople. A player had just joined the group with their new character (it was Session 1 for them…).
The GM mentioned the stench of waste inside the cave, and we fought in a room filled with waste—from which disgusting creatures kept emerging. I wanted to end the fight quickly, as we were running low on resources and had barely managed to get deep into the cave. So, I cast Fireball.
I thought waste referred to random garbage and didn’t consider excrement, feces, rotten meat, bones, etc.—so I didn’t think about methane. I was taken aback when the entire room exploded.
Luckily, everyone survived the explosion—or rather, the first explosion.
A short explanation about the new character: they were an artificer (a sort of magical craftsman) with nice armor that had an unstable core, which might explode if enough damage was dealt to the player. None of the players knew this. So, the room exploded, and everyone was happy we survived (or at least I was happy—and all the enemies were gone too!). However, the new player interjected:
Hey, GM, about ‘The Core’…
We could hear the GM having an “Oh no” moment through the microphone. They rolled a d6 to see if the core would explode. On a 6, the armor would explode; otherwise, the core remained stable.
The die landed on a 6.
The new character exploded, effectively getting annihilated, and our Paladin was dropped to 0 HP. The Paladin survived with the help of a quick healing potion. The artificer was gone, though. RIP Jyorg.
Review by the player of that session: “This was the most fun I’ve ever had with D&D.”
Near-Death by Underwater Implosion
We were fighting a Leviathan inside the Plane of Water (a universe where only water and underwater caverns exist). Since the Leviathan was invisible, I used Control Water and its Part Water aspect to create a 100 ft cube of air, which made fighting it much easier. However, in D&D, these spells require concentration. As long as you concentrate, the spell keeps going. But if concentration is broken—by taking damage and failing a concentration check—the spell stops.
Things went well until they didn’t. After a few turns, I took an absurd amount of damage (I had been doing well at avoiding damage or maintaining concentration due to various abilities and magical items) and failed my concentration check.
The spell stopped, and water poured in. Let’s do some math:
We could comfortably dive there (especially with magic), so water pressure couldn’t be too high. Let’s assume the pressure at 100 ft of depth: 43.3 psi + 14.7 psi of surface pressure, so 58 psi.
The force of the water gushing in is roughly pressure × area of one side of the cube: 58 psi × 1,440,000 in² = 83,520,000 lbs (~83.5 million pounds). The cube would fill within 0.2 seconds. This would kill anyone.
We expected a TPK (Total Party Kill) until the GM found one line in the spell description:
The water then slowly fills in the trench over the course of the next round until the normal water level is restored.
One round is 6 seconds, so the water was gushing in much more slowly than in the above calculations, which changed the force. We didn’t do the math for that and happily accepted the GM’s ruling that we didn’t take any damage in this case.
Pre-Ordained Nat20s
This happened at a TTRPG event in my city. I played a Halfling Paladin, a holy warrior wearing heavy armor. We infiltrated an underground cave system to fight whatever creatures plagued the nearby mining town.
We wanted to infiltrate by sneaking… but heavy armor makes sneaking difficult. In D&D, you roll two d20s and take the lower (worse) result to determine success. So, I jokingly said, “Watch me roll two Nat20s.” I accidentally dropped both dice while shaking them onto the table—and I rolled two Nat20s.
The GM ruled that I auto-succeeded on every stealth roll for the rest of the adventure, as moss and oil had lubricated my armor so well that it somehow, magically, muffled my sounds.
Oh, and the Paladin was a Nature Paladin, who values the natural world above everything else. We fought sentient plant-beings, and my character effectively genocided them—which, in hindsight, was pretty odd and funny.
I might write another one like this when I remember more funny stories and odd moments. There are certainly a lot of those.