r/dndstories

So my party explored a mine. They came across a deep hole that led to an underwater cave, that held a diamond worth around 300GP.
One of them, a monk decided to climb down and get the daimond, not knowing a Merrow lived in there.

The monk got the diamond (mind you, it was the size of a fist) but the Merrow made a suprise attack and the monk dropped the diamond.
Now...in order to keep it from sinking and losing the diamond, he decided to swallow it.

Yes...he swallowed a diamond and made a succesfull CON-save.

Some time later he wanted to throw up so he could sell the diamond. He triggered an acid reflux but failed his CON-save, causing the diamond to get stuck in his throat.
The wizard had a familiar, a white bat named Bubbles, who was around the same size as the diamond.

Yes you feel it comming...the monk decided to grab the bat...shove it down his throat to trigger a reflux and pry the diamond loose.
Somehow he managed to do so and threw up the diamond.

Bubbles is now traumatized...he questions his life choices that led up to this moment and is reconsidering his position within the party.

I didnt have words for this action btw

I’ve been running a game of HoTDQ for a party called The Hovengers (I had to rename Greenest to Hovil) for about six years now, and we’re still in Castle Naerytar. Why? Partly because there are six players and scheduling is hard, partly because I keep thinking up side quests to add in! Here’s a story of one that didn’t go at all how I expected.

The party is in Waterdeep, and are looking for jails and dungeons. Bree, a halfling monk, knows that her father has been taken prisoner somewhere. Using the sending spell, they’ve learned that her father is in a stone cell, but he has no idea where, because he was essentially teleported into it. They learn that there is a large manor house in Waterdeep that apparently has dungeons underneath it, and go and try to investigate.

They find that the citizens of Waterdeep come to this manor with problems they want solving, and they exit holding a piece of paper which they appear to read in confusion, but then leave looking happy. The party takes a number from an attendant and sit in a little waiting room, waiting their turn to be seen. Now that they’re inside, they distract the attendants and manage to sneak off to investigate the dungeons. They find some interesting stuff there, maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime! But that’s not what I’m here for today. While they’re speaking to a prisoner, his eyes glaze over and he says “The Council of Waterdeep want to speak to you, now” and guards show up to take them upstairs.

The party enters a long hall with beautiful stained glass windows all along the left side, the early evening sun streaming through them, and enormous double doors at the far end, through which they are told is the “receiving room” where the Council of Waterdeep will speak to them. As they walk down the hallway they discuss their strategy. They want to know about what they found in the dungeons, they want to know where Bree’s father is, they think maybe they might be able to learn something about the Cult of the Dragon. They steel themselves, push open the double doors and-

There’s a sensation of a whirl of motion, and they find themselves stepping into a long hall with beautiful stained glass windows all along the RIGHT side, the LATE evening sun streaming through them, and enormous double doors close behind them. The players at the table all go “WHAT?!”, and I reach into my little folder of secrets and pull out six pieces of paper. I give each player a note that is written in their own handwriting. On the note is written:

“I, <character’s name>, declare that all former issues I reported have been addressed to my satisfaction. I further renounce any right to the memory of this audience, along with any desire to reclaim it once the memory has been lost. I write this in my own hand as a record of my agreement, with the other Hovengers as witnesses, and leave personal information as proof that it was I myself who wrote it:

<a secret that the character has never told anyone else in the whole world>”

As the players read their notes and compared them, I think it’s fair to say they all just about lost their minds. Not only did the characters have no memory of writing these notes, neither did the players. Because, technically, they didn’t write these notes.

Flashback to a few weeks before this session, I reached out to my players with a request. “You know how in the past I’ve given you so-called handwritten notes to give you guys information, but they have always been typed out? I think that ruins the vibe a bit, so I’d prefer they were actually handwritten, but I don’t want them all to be in my handwriting! So would you mind each writing a note for me? I promise there will be no obvious spoilers, but also don’t share what I ask you to write with each other, just to limit how much information is being given out ahead of time.” I claimed I’d be giving each of them different notes to handwrite, but instead I gave them all the same note. And when each of them had dutifully written out the note, I scanned them into the computer, opened an image editing software, and painstakingly rearranged the words they had written into the order that I needed. The note I’d asked them to write was irrelevant, but constructed to read like something that could feasibly be important at some point in the far future of the campaign.

Now, this is all very cool, but I had a problem. I know my players, and this is a mystery being dangled in front of them. “What did the Council of Waterdeep tell us? How are the issues going to be addressed? For God’s sake, what issues did we even report? Why did we agree to lose the memory of this conversation? etc etc etc”. So I had a contingency plan: I actually asked them to write three notes. The first was rearranged into the shared part of the note above, the second was rearranged into the secret, private part, and the third note was in case the players went “fuck this”, turned right around and barged back into the room again. In that event, they would have the same experience of a whirl of motion, they’d have the same notes in their hand, but with a bit of extra text at the bottom:

“DO NOT TURN AROUND. DO NOT RE-ENTER THE RECEIVING ROOM. GO TO THE NORTH GATE, AND CONTINUE YOUR MISSION. BELIEVE ME, BECAUSE I AM YOU. THE MISSION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MEMORY.”

And hey, if they still weren’t satisfied and tried again, then I planned to narrate them entering the room and having some kind of conversation. This time, they managed to convince the council to allow them to keep their memories, and so the players would remember it too.

So what actually happened when I ran the session? I gave them all the first version of the note, and five out of the six players went “oh hell no, we got to get the fuck out of here right now”. If I had had to bet, I would have put it at a 95% chance that they would go back in at least once, but I completely underestimated how terrifying the players (and to be fair, the characters), would find this experience. They had just encountered something that had the ability to erase memories. They knew that they could do it many many times per day, because they’d watched people go through the same experience on the way into the manor, and the number they took in the waiting room was in the hundreds. As far as they knew, this council had the power to ERASE THEM FROM HISTORY, such that no one would ever avenge their deaths because no one would remember them. And so they got the fuck out, out of the Manor, out of Waterdeep, and have basically done their best since then not to think about the unknowable power that ate their memories and told them they were satisfied with the experience.

If you read all the way through, thank you! I’ve been running this campaign for six years, but it is still my first ever campaign! Does that make me a novice DM? Who’s to say. If you like this idea, feel free to use it in your own campaigns, on the condition that you come back here and tell me how it goes in your game! This encounter is probably top three for me in the list of “times I think I knocked it out of the park”, so I’d love to hear more player reactions to it.

A colleague of ours wrote on the wishlist that he wanted to try a tabletop roleplaying game, so we chipped in to give him a one-shot from a commercial DM and joined as players. Some of us had already played DND, and I happened to know the DM, so I warned him about a gang of murderhobos coming. The DM set up a chat for us to share some rules and lore. His short format used pre-generated characters, so all we got upfront was a map with a human village, a forest, and a goblin settlement, along with a brief description of the tense situation between them that threatened to escalate into war. We assumed we’d either be raiding the village as goblins or fighting for the humans, even though the story was pitched as a spy thriller... After setting everything up, the DM casually dropped a photo of his cat, so naturally, the chat turned into a cat-posting session (we all have cats).

So... during the game, we got character sheets... of goblin children scurrying through the forest. We found a basket of little kittens... generated after our own real-life cats... but in a goblin settlement, cats are food, so where else would we take them? We realized we had to find their mother cat in the human village and make sure the whole family ended up in safe hands. It WAS a spy thriller. Never before or since have I seen our hobos turned into a crying mess over a picture of a generated kitten that was at risk of not finding a home. I'd never calculated my moves so intensely. We succeeded and left the game feeling both devastated and enlightened.

Later, I asked the DM wtf it was. It was his special game for idiots, because only few dare kill children and fuck kittens.

I can't help but be in disbelief that this is the campaign that introduces me as a player to the world of Dungeons and Dragons because- Because, well, really...

My wife and a small group of her friends recently dove into a D&D campaign set in the Sunless Citadel module. For most of the group, it's their first time playing, but they've been having plenty of fun. Now my wife, knowing I've expressed interest in also playing, invited me in as a guest/temporary player. The DM even kindly integrated my late arrival into the module by casting my PC as an unfortunate prisoner of the Kobold group, allowing me to join fresh without needing to catch up on the entire journey. That works for me, I'm just soaking up the vibes and learning how to throw the dice in the first place. "Excuse me, gents, while I brush up on my spells as you talk about serious, adventure-related matters."

Anyway, after my rescue, the party continues through the Sunless Citadel storyline, adopting NPC Meepo as our party's poor little pet/projectile weapon, finding the NPC ally, Erky, and protecting him with our lives, discovering what happens when you find a wayward wyrmling, etc. Eventually, we descend into Goblin Town and reach the Hall of the Goblin Chief, finding the Hobgoblin boss, Durnn. Now, seeing as I was a late addition to the party, I just read the room and our DM's telegraphed intentions. This was very obviously going to turn into a mini-boss fight, and I was ready to go, except- Except...

"Hey, DM, can I use this orb I plucked from that one room we were in earlier today?"

As it turns out, in one of the rooms (the Gallery of Forlorn Notes, per the module), the party ran into a mass charm effect from an orb in the room, and after everyone rolled successful saves, one of our two clerics picked up the orb and kept it. I think it's worth noting at this point, that the entire party, DM included, had interpreted this orb as being one that cast a mass fear effect. Per the lore, the effect intensifies when struck, and we're right in the middle of Goblin Town, soo...

Yes, if you see where this is going, you are absolutely correct. Our cleric pulled the orb out and struck it, causing the music to get loud enough to affect the surrounding rooms, too. Our DM then proceeded to roll the saving checks for Durnn and his guards and failed each one! Mass hysteria from the ringing orb overtook Goblin Town, causing every goblin nearby to just run for it, leaving our entire party just... standing there gobsmacked as chaos unfolded.

I mean, of course our PCs were just standing there. Everyone on the call was laughing themselves sick from the entire situation!

Finally - finally - we get under control, and our DM just says, "I don't think this was intended to be part of the game." ...No, no, it really wasn't, lol.

Also, Durnn apparently had a pet Twigblight in a jar nearby, and another party member adopted it as a spicy Baby Groot.

EDIT: Added some details, clarified others. P.S.: We also cleared out Durnn's treasure chest on our way out!