We here at Fanboy Report take pride in our geekiness. We love comic books, we love video games, and to complete the geek trifecta, we love Dungeons and Dragons. And in hopes of making you love all those things too, we have gathered together to sift through our most painful and embarrassing tales from the table for your amusement.
If you haven’t played a tabletop roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons before, don’t worry, the concept is pretty simple. A group of friends work together to create an imaginary world and characters and then send those characters on adventures. One member of the group is the Dungeon Master (also known as the Game Master), their job is to be the ultimate arbiter of what happens, usually by rolling some multi-faceted dice.
And that’s pretty much all there is to it. If magic and fantasy aren’t your cup of tea, there are plenty of other types of tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons in a multitude of genres. You can be a superhero, a stormtrooper, a vampire, a member of an Ocean’s 11-esque heist, basically anything imaginable.
With many a year of roleplaying experience shared amongst here at Fanboy Report, it took some work to parse through our many stories to decide on which truly were the funniest. There were broken hearts along the way, especially when we decided to limit it to only stories from Dungeons and Dragons, but in the end we have brought you only the best.
So without any further ado, let’s go ahead and dive into Fanboy Report’s funniest Dungeons and Dragons stories.
“I’m Going Back for my Legs”
In a war-torn kingdom, there was a group of beleaguered heroes making their way across a great ocean. A Human ex-Paladin, a Dwarf Cleric, a Half-Elf Rogue, and Kylwyn, a Human Wizard with a loyal hawk familiar named Shiva. The group was only a few day into their journey when pirates attacked the shipped and captured our heroes.
They were taken back to the pirate stronghold for ransom and managed to orchestrate a daring escape. A horde of pirates chased after them, and the group was forced to enter into an ancient ruin in hopes of finding another way out and evading their former captors.
The ruin had apparently been home to some very untrusting owners in the past. Every room was filled with a new trap or puzzle to deter intrusion. Scythes sprang from the walls, pits lined with shards of glass sprang open, and a host of giant spiders had apparently taken up residence in some of the less trap-filled portions of the dungeon. However, our heroes were able to overcome each of these obstacles with relative ease. Until . . .
The party came to a smallish square room with a pool of clear liquid a few feet deep that covered the floor. Some poking with long sticks revealed that the liquid was actually a powerful acid capable of disintegrating acid in seconds. An open doorway awaited them on the other side.
The plan seemed so simple at first. The Rouge lassoed a rope about an old chandelier hanging from the ceiling and swung across the gap after making his Dexterity check. The Paladin followed, easily making his check. Even the diminutive Cleric cleared the gap, though only because the Paladin caught him when he swung just short of the ledge.
Then it came time for Kylwyn. He let his hawk familiar fly across first and then took hold of the rope. Dexterity Check. Crit fail.
Kylwyn begins to plummet towards the acid, barely holding on to the rope. He twists towards the ledge and friends, and the Paladin pulled him to safety, or well, most of him. From the mid-thigh down, Kylwyn has only the skeletal remains of his legs. The poor Wizard immediately passed out from the shock of his injury.
The party looks him over and realizes they can’t save him. Kylwyn will soon die of his wounds. But, what are they going to do with the body? They are in a stony corridor, there’s now way to bury him, and they can’t just leave him for the spiders to eat.
All of a sudden Kylwyn bursts awake. He grabs hold of the Paladin who is carrying his limp form and speaks his last words,
“Take care of Shiva, I’m going back for my legs!”
Kylwyn then pushes himself from the Paladin’s arms and hurls himself back into the pit of acid.
Needless to say, there was no longer a reason to worry about what to do with the body.
“Oh, Well this is just Rubbish”
It was the first session of a brand new campaign. A collection of young heroes had been assembled. A group of mighty warriors and wizards each with different skills and abilities that perfectly complemented each other in and out of battle. And then there was the last member of the group, Reinhard Chantry.
Reinhard. F*cking. Chantry.
Of course, he never introduced himself as just Reinhard Chantry. No, you see Chantry was Human Cleric, who believed he was his god’s gift to the world. Perfect at every hing he did. Incapable of failure. Chantry had spent years and years studying every book he could get a hold of. When he wasn’t reading, he was telling anyone who would listen about what he had read. He was a scholar, a holy man, and an educator, in his own eyes.
And so every time he spoke with someone, he made sure they knew just how multi-talented he was. Always he introduced himself as “Dr. Father Professor Reinhard Chantry the Loquacious”.
A few hours into our first session of dealing with a suspected vampire attack on a village and it was clear that everyone was going to hate the annoying and talkative Dr. Father Professor. But despite being annoying he hadn’t really done anything to hurt the party.
Skip forward to when the group had defeated the vampire behind the attacks, and everyone has begun searching the body. What did we find? A piece of parchment covered in strange runes and some sort of map. We all knew what this meant, a secret treasure. People were pumped, ready to go, the glint of gold gleaming in their eyes.
But we didn’t know where to begin. No one could understand the strange language on the map. Well, no one except for a Dr. Father Professor, of course. Chantry volunteered his services for deciphering the script. Reluctantly, we handed over the document. Chantry was beaming, glad that al of his scholarly skills would finally be of use.
He looked at the document.
The DM asked him to make an Arcana check.
Crit fail.
He’s got no clue what the runes mean. But of course he couldn’t just admit that to us, no that would be too easy.
Chantry squinted at the map, frowned, furrowed his brow.
“Hmm, oh, well this is just rubbish.”
He proceeds to crumple the map up and toss it over his shoulder into a nearby stream, ruining the ancient parchment.
The look of horror on the party’s faces was only surpassed by the one on the DM’s as he realized his entire plan for the campaign had just been destroyed.
“Roll to See if You Know How to Fly”
We were at the climax of our campaign. Our group’s mission was to retrieve a small box that supposedly contained some vast arcane power being held by an evil king. We had secretly crossed the border between our countries, infiltrated his kingdom, and made it all the way to his heavily guarded treasury. Along the way we had fought off undead and demons, survived a dozen different trap filled dungeons, and fought off an army of giants. And not once had we lost a party member.
So there we are outside the treasury. We know the box is inside. We pick the lock on the door and wind up engaged in battle with an illusory black dragon. Of course, the sounds of our fighting finally alerted the guards to our presence. We managed to defeat the illusion and bar the doors tight just as the guards arrived to slaughter us all.
A quick search of the gold filled room, accompanied to the sounds of the guards using a battering ram, found us handfuls of various magic artifacts and the chest we were looking for. The only problem now is figuring out how in the Nine Hells we are going to escape with the box.
As our heavier party member placed themselves against the increasingly shattered door, the rest of us took a quick count of our resources. We looked through the magic artifacts hoping one would be powerful enough to defeat or distract the guards when we found it. A Wand of Mass Polymorph.
Our wizard quickly used a fireball to blow out the wall of the vault, revealing a near 50 story drop from a sheer cliff face to a frozen ocean. He then took the Wand of Mass Polymorph and with a flick of his wrist had wings sprouting from each of our backs. Already celebrating our victory and ingenious escape, the party leapt from the room.
That’s when the DM said a sentence I still have nightmares about to this day.
“Roll to see if you know how to fly.”
Of our group of six brave heroes who had survived countless horrors and were at their greatest moment of triumph, only two were able to figure out the trick to flapping their new found wings.
It is said that the evil king still keeps the broken bodies of the other four on display in his throne room.
