It’s the heart of every D&D story: The player characters did something crazy and their whacky adventures in getting themselves out. That’s what tabletop RPGs are all about, no video game will ever let players embrace free will and agency like a pen-and-paper role-playing game, and we’d never want it any other way.
But it’s also where playing by the book stops and the real art of being a dungeon master (or any game master) begins. Can you think on your feet to keep the game running as the players carry out their crazy plans? Or will you panic and squash the fun?
In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about 19 of the craziest stunts players have pulled in their games and how they bent the systems to make it happen — or sometimes didn’t. Along the way, hear our best secrets for adlibbing and adjudicating some of the hardest situations DMs face.
2:00 That’s Just D&D
4:00 Stunt 1: Oblivious in Bloodstone 2
6:00 Stunt 2: The Sphere of Annihilation is not an illusion
11:00 Stunt 3: Down the Blue Hole in Weird New Jersey
14:00 Stunt 4: Vorpal sword tricks, and just how sharp is a magic sword?
16:00 Stunt 5: The Deck of Many Things and a 2nd Edition Wild Mage with BIIIG plans … that only kinda worked.
20:00 DMing difficult wishes
33:00 Stunt 6: Wishing a Storm Giant into an itty-bitty wizard body, and how we made it balanced (more or less) with level-appropriate benchmarks
40:00 Stunt 7: Hawk Hogan! Supporting a real Barovian hero’s wrestling obsession
43:00 Appreciating D&D 5E’s Wish limits and bounded accuracy
47:00 Stunt 8: Balancing cool: Could the players hotwire Baba Lysaga’s hut? Should they?
50:00 Stunt 9: High-level play and PC’s wielding god-like powers
53:00 Stunt 10: PCs inventing spells, powers and magic items
58:00 Stunt 11: Crazy at low-level: The Paladin that talked down a raging Brontosaurus and Oathbreaker Anti-Paladin with the power of faith
61:00 Stunt 12: Species tension with the old Human Wizard and the trouble it got him into
64:00 Stunt 13: Mad Wizard X 13: Abusing the 2E Clone spell
66:00 Stunt 14: The wizard who seduced the Bronze Lich
69:00 Stunt 15: Rifts mutant shenanigans: Robbing Fort Knox with Super Strength and taking the money to another dimension
73:00 Tips for adjudicating crazy player stunts
76:00 Why DM-player trust is not optional
80:00 Stunt 16: The players that stormed directly into Strahd’s castle … and won
82:00 Stunt 17: Player enterprise: Trying to start an orphan-run newspaper to spread the party’s legend
88:00 Stunt 18: The PC who tried to create a Venom suit … failed and became a Venom suit … then wound up being worn by another PC who had no clue.
93:00 Stunt 19: The Wizard that blew himself to molecules with a 1st Edition bouncing chain lightning
95:00 Final thoughts