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For anyone who has ever played a Tabletop pencil and paper game, going off the rails can be one of the funniest things for the players while one of the most frustrating thing for the GM. So, what experience do you have with it?

For instance, in a mostly ocean campaign with small islands everywhere, my party was attacked by these sea-creatures who had enslaved a giant turtle that they had then attached to our ship via a giant chain. This was meant to be our boss fight, with us fighting the turtle and eventually killing it. Well, we didn't know that, and our party's first reaction to a giant turtle? Let's make it a pet. So we have all our characters that can speak the aquatic languages rolling diplomacy and trying to convince the thing not to sink our ship. Since we rolled unnaturally high on it, the turtle became our friend who escorted our ship through the sea. The DM, expecting us to fight this thing and kill it, decided to end the game that night, since his plans for the campaign had been stopped by our bleeding hearts. Our response to his wanting of us to fight it? "But it's a turtle, we can't just kill it."

The campaign ended a few weeks after, in which the entire party was competing for the turtle's affections and seeing who it liked best.

So, what's your off the rails story?

I maintain a strong policy of not leading PCs by the nose, after some bad experiences with a GM who just did that. This frequently has the unfortunate consequence of things... not going as planned.

In the past, I would often write up detailed, elaborate Dark Heresy plots that fit into a grander scheme. That practice very quickly got shot to pieces, as PCs would do the exact opposite of every eventuality that I had planned for. Eventually, I just gave up writing detailed missions, and now instead just keep a few basic set-up details around and say "go". The plot writes itself with very little input from me.

Hmm. Off the rails...

So we're playing D&D, 4th edition, not that that matters. A couple of us have decided to rotate in new characters, in my case because my wizard had a very good IC reasons to want to stay behind for a while after our most recent adventure. So I've got my hybrid sorcerer/warlock changeling, and the other guy has his Githzerai avenger, and we've just linked up with the party very recently. Our cleric has decided that he doesn't trust my character. Okay, fair enough, he knows I'm a changeling, when they encountered us to begin with I was posing as a bandit at the time, after all. Anyway, we're in this particular city's sewer system, creeping up on an arms deal in progress. Chance (my changeling caster) takes on the appearance of one of the thugs we'd plastered earlier and goes running ahead, shouting about how they were attacked, and he managed to escape and just generally feeding these guys a line of bullshit. They buy it, the party ambushes some thugs who head out to take a look based on my story, and I try to take out the kingpin.

I proceed to get my ass kicked. Hard.

So I'm on the ground under zero health, bleeding. I wake up a few times, but keep failing saves on the bleed effect I've got on me, so I keep getting knocked back under zero again. The cleric patches me up to consciousness again, then says he'll heal me if I swear an oath of loyalty to the party. Chance tells him to get bent, and that this is SO not the time, and we can talk about this after the fight, now bloody well heal me so I can get back to the fight that is still going on. So he knocks me out like a light again.

The instant the fight is over, the Githzerai avenger that I joined the party together with charges halfway across the battlefield and fucks the cleric up. Doesn't kill him, but has him heavily wounded and on the ground holding a big two-handed sword overhead and looking at my now-awake character for a yea/nay on whether to kill him outright. Did I mention this avenger is a mute?

Right about that time, the City Watch shows up. I should probably have mentioned that they'd hired us to mix it up with the criminal underground here in the city. And they showed up just in time to watch one of the party member's beat the hell out of and nearly kill another one of the party members. Well, that deep-sixed the GM's entire plot plan for the next while, which was to have us working closely with the Watch...who no longer trust us. Whoops.

Chance, of course, said 'fuck these assholes' and vanished. X number of guards arrived with the Watch commander. X+1 left with him.

That cleric spent the rest of that campaign looking over his shoulder, wondering if Chance held a grudge.

-------DARK HERESY--------

While my abortive Dark Heresy campaign didn't precisely go off the rails in that the players fucked the storyline, it sort of...kept missing the rails entirely. Those lucky bastards blithely tapdanced their way through so many potential minefields that it was getting silly. Then I burned out on GMing and the campaign dribbled to a halt, but eh, such is life.

Star wars homebrew loosely based on west end games D6 system. Players were a team of Alliance special ops targeting a key imperial officer for assassination. Team is given the option of carrying a small experimental, dangerously unstable explosive about the size of a credit card with enough explosive to level about six city blocks. Only one team member opts to carry this extra bit of gear.

Team makes contact with target in a city on a mid-rim planet. Part of the team moves into the hotel where the officer is staying and acts as a kill team, while another part sets up an observation post across the street. Kill team horrifically underestimates the extent of the target's personal protection and promptly turns the hotel into a laser festival. As expected, police arrive and begin to systematically sweep the building for the miscreants. At one point, the kill team is trapped in a supply room with a window across the street - they shoot the window out and manage to hook up a zipline to a room in the building across the street. Team member one zips down the line at full speed, fails to dismount, and shatters his ribcage upon landing. Team member two begins to zip down the line, unfortunately fails his agility roll, and gets stuck at the midway point, dangling several stories above the street. Failing a strength check, team member two plummets to the pavement below, somehow rolling well enough to avoid being killed outright by the fall. Still, having fallen from great heights, the GM (me) opts to kill him with a speeding hovercar smacking into is semi-concious face.

At this point, the target is getting hustled out of the hotel in the direction of the starport, and the observation team decides to leave the original kill team to make do on its own and gives chase. The game goes on for about half an hour, featuring a wild speeder chase to the starport. At the climax of the chase, now-deceased team member two suddenly remembers a key detail - he was the one carrying the explosive. So, after having established the explosive as dangerously unstable and highly experimental, the GM decided it was not very likely that it could have survived a multi-story fall and a high speed impact from a vehicle without detonating. GM opts to rewind and instead describe how team member two's fall caused the explosive to go boom, leveling the surrounding arrea, killing the target (not to mention the entire strike team), and numerous civilians. The alliance quietly investigates the matter and kills any program or organization or individual career remotely associated with the debacle.

One I recall was a Battletech campaign where I was trying to fit in a new non-MechWarrior PC. His unit was raiding a Jade Falcon occupied world, so, being a spec ops type, the idea was for him to slip out during the initial commotion. Once in the capital city, he decides he needs to blend in better, but most of the shops are closed (night) and he does not have much Clan currency anyway. Breaking and entering seems too likely to attract attention, so he tries to mug a random guy in an alley for his trench coat. Rather than use his needler, the player wants to play with his vibrokatana because it is cool. This turns out to be a poor choice when trench coat man has throwing knives, and the player discovers that he is not, in fact, a ninja and cannot reliably deflect them with his fancy sword. The PC does finally pull his needler before things escalate from “stabbed” to “dying on the pavement,” but rather than just take the guy’s stuff and leave, he tries to recruit him. I (the GM) initially scoffed at this, but the PC did have one incredibly valuable and otherwise entirely unattainable thing to offer: a ride off planet. This leads to trench coat man taking him to meet several other shady underworld types, which ultimately resulted in a team of them assisting the PC (whose stated mission had been ground reconnaissance) in a raid on the local spaceport. They went after a generator to take down perimeter defenses before the ‘mechs came in. All in exchange for a ride off that rock. Of course, the player never bothered to clear this ride with the force commander or dropship captain.

well aside from munchkining:

Playing a cat in choasium's call of cthulhu at a con with actual white wolf/chaosium staff running the game. (cats are immune to san loss and quite powerful in dreamlands even if very killable in reality). Mixture of acting like a normal cat, and drving the rest of the party insane (dropping the corpse of a rat thing at people's feet was good)

"These aren't the Druids you are looking for": Our party's clerical staff not only got us wanted by the local soldiers, but our other mage chose to dominate/charm/suggestion the patrols the wrong way. Also we had two characters that were hard to miss, we had a pratchett quoting druid that liked to live in galapagos turtle form, and my "former" evil mage who had been polymorphed into a kid, and was still resentful for having to relive childhood amoung common inbred, supersticious folks who made him do lots of physical labour chores. Oh and our thief being the most obvious troll of a thief ever, literially robbing all the bar patrons blind and than using their own property as collaterial in front of them.


Also in AD&D me playing the too dumb to actually be evil half ogre, being the most normal member of a party at a con. With three Drow outcasts (Drizzt was too popular than), Greenwood in the party as a teenage female monk, etc. My half Ogre actually gained the ability to turn undead after the reputation of what he did to the others spred through the monster network, and my having a barrel of healing mead (which I liked the taste of), made my fighter the party's "Other Cleric"

Largely homebrew Star Wars d20 game. The party I'm part of is sent to negotiate with the Trade Federation prior to Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's mission there. Well, Nute Gunray fails to successfully bluff my Jedi and my response is to use Affect Mind, telling him to be truthful with us. He fails his save and spills the beans about Darth Sidious. Naturally, my character concludes it's time to arrest him. Short fight with battle droids later and he calls in droidekas. Not wanting to deal with more combat my character once again decides to use Affect Mind, getting Gunray to order the droidekas destroyed. One hilarious conversation later and we've got Nute Gunray and Ruune Hako captive and being transported back to the Republic. This, of course, has prompted the DM to redesign the Affect Mind power so that it isn't nearly so game-breaking.

This character is very big on attempting to refrain from fighting by just peacefully talking things out. So on our next session we've been sent to arrest another member of the Trade Federation. Upon arrival we find two dead Jedi, Clark and Gable (the DM has a sense of humor and found our previous derail hilarious). Lightsaber wounds. Pretty easy to guess what killed them. We encounter Darth Maul... And my character promptly convinces everyone to put away their weapons so that we can peacefully talk to Darth Maul, in hopes of coming to an agreement that is beneficial for all. He winds up talking to Darth Sidious himself and is given a datacard that will give him the necessary information to contact Sidious at a later point. I don't think the DM saw this coming, though I don't know just where she originally planned this story to go. Now my character is hiding information from the Order and is on fairly good terms with a Sith Lord and his apprentice.

My Nightmare Lands attempt. Sadly, if players won't form the emotional connections you hope, the Nightmares that have them drawn into Ravenloft won't form.

well I tried to post this yesterday when everything went down for hours.

In a super-hero campaign our group was framed, so we went underground to clear our selves. the big problem was that we had one member of the group with a public ID. So we decieded to fake her death, Well while under time constraints the two that went to the morgue to find a dead homeless person grabbed one that was three inches too tall, male, and definatly wasn't a mutant. So when the burning the body inside the heroines car (which somehow doesn't damage tthe dash or the upulstry (stupid mage). We created even more intrgue and controversy. This resulted in the rest of us deciding to double down on the X-Files ness, and those of us with all concealing coustoumes (my character the Highwayman (who looks like the original stig in coustume and steve mcqueen outside) pretending to be Men in Black), phonecalls and personal visits to local journalists, Theories involving some rip-off of Scientology, aliens, CIA, and everything else we could throw into the mix.

By the time this was done we had completly forgotten about clearing our names, and had infact dug ourselves into a hole so deep, and muddied the waters so bad no one knew what was true or not. Worse still, the local sociopathic TV reporter who created the Supervillian that framed us in the first place as a ratings stunt, forfilled his destiny and became a national TV personality (probably works for FOX)

although in that same above mentioned super hero campaign had one of the best bits of actual role playing being done by the guy playing a fan-servicy mutant, when the other half of the party/group was busy not faking her character's death but creating her new idenities, sure my character has the disguise kit, and the false IDs left over from his back story of being a former undercover cop. I could have just made the rolls and created a new civilian ID for her. Nope, the GM made us Role Play the damn transformation into a new person both as a super and a civilian....

he/she even got in some buddy cop bits, with the proud mutant asking the team's designated "Batman" (Normal with insane amounts of skills and contacts), for lessons in self defense.

White Haven wrote:While my abortive Dark Heresy campaign didn't precisely go off the rails in that the players fucked the storyline, it sort of...kept missing the rails entirely. Those lucky bastards blithely tapdanced their way through so many potential minefields that it was getting silly. Then I burned out on GMing and the campaign dribbled to a halt, but eh, such is life.

That the same one I burned a fate point in the first session to not get permasquished by some slumrats with shotguns shooting me in the grape?

Not really derailing, but a mechwarrior battle I ran shifted from a battle of mechs vs mechs to pilots firing pistols/rifles at each other through their exposed cockpit while sticking their mech middle fingers at each other.

Yeah. My bro is weird at creative, innovative twists to games.

The horror of losing marine tanks to Ork sluggas will never leave me.

Its really a huge pity we don't play together anymore......

Mr. Coffee wrote:

White Haven wrote:While my abortive Dark Heresy campaign didn't precisely go off the rails in that the players fucked the storyline, it sort of...kept missing the rails entirely. Those lucky bastards blithely tapdanced their way through so many potential minefields that it was getting silly. Then I burned out on GMing and the campaign dribbled to a halt, but eh, such is life.

That the same one I burned a fate point in the first session to not get permasquished by some slumrats with shotguns shooting me in the grape?

You mean the same one you burned a fate point in the first action of the first round of the first combat of the first session? Yeah, good times. Especially considering you were the defacto leader and the main person for talking who actually knew we were with the =][=, yeah, that would've taken the game way off the rails on a crazy train.

xthetenth wrote:

Mr. Coffee wrote:

White Haven wrote:While my abortive Dark Heresy campaign didn't precisely go off the rails in that the players fucked the storyline, it sort of...kept missing the rails entirely. Those lucky bastards blithely tapdanced their way through so many potential minefields that it was getting silly. Then I burned out on GMing and the campaign dribbled to a halt, but eh, such is life.

That the same one I burned a fate point in the first session to not get permasquished by some slumrats with shotguns shooting me in the grape?

You mean the same one you burned a fate point in the first action of the first round of the first combat of the first session? Yeah, good times. Especially considering you were the defacto leader and the main person for talking who actually knew we were with the =][=, yeah, that would've taken the game way off the rails on a crazy train.

That was a good game. Not just that shit with the fate point burn, but Ben;s GMing in general. If Ben invites you to a game, seriously get in on that shit.

Most off the rails but still coherent RPG I've played is called ENOC. It's action oriented game where each player is an agent of this super secret conspiracy to fight the evil Nazi conspiracy who try to pave the way for their new reich by use of black magic / magic / tech / nazi zombies AND zombie nazis. The basic premise is that all urban legends are true, or at least have some basis on the truth and the agents try to keep them out of public eye. It's seriously fun to play as a part of this illuminati like organization that has resources and connections all over the world.

This pretty much sums up the game: Our team was battling a group of neo nazis lead by a nazi vampire and a cyborg. My character was down to his last bullet and others in our group were badly hurt and the cyborg was still standing when my russian immigrant to the U.S pops out of cover squeezes the trigger and says "As we americans say .. adios tovarisch" blows away the cyborg. Hilarity ensued.

-Gunhead

D n D with loose rules... got half my party locked up in jail in first game session (due to shenaningans over who paid for pizza in reality), went through the GM's planned mission area backwards (and so avoiding 99% of the combat whilst finding 99% of the loot).

Befriended a Rock Golem sent to do battle with us... hey... now I have two mounts.

As part of the general locking people up episode my character now carries documents and items that allow me to either be an agent, double agent or double-double agent at will regarding the town watch and the group raiding the town.

And as the practising thief/assassin gnome... not once have I been caught red handed doing anything suspicious

Have also played a Shadowrun game in homage of the film Ronin that played out somewhat like irishmick's Star Wars effort.

Why assemble a crack team of crackers and assassins and attempt a precision hit when you can just muck it up and level several city blocks instead.

Not actually off the rails, but The Saint reminded me of one hilarious instance where the DM not knowing the rules regarding Transmute Rock to Mud resulted in a hugely powerful affect. Some sort of big-ass construct was guarding a door and so the party Wizard, IIRC, decided to cast the aforementioned spell, carving a mud tunnel into the room we planned on going into. The DM then related the screams and sounds of combat from the other side as the construct tore up the orcs or whatever they were on the opposite side of the door.

yeah, dig/transmute rock2mud is so easy to abuse. I especially killing a lich by mineing under his castle and causing the collapse of the heavily guarded room that held his phylacterly...

gravity is a stone bitch at times.

If you read the spell fully it can only transmute to a certain depth. Obeying that will reduce a lot of the abuse.

We were playing Dark Heresy, and I got a brief gaming session with the GM to get used to my character and iron out the kinks.

I was playing as a member of the Adeptus Arbites who did contract kills against known criminals on the sly. For one such contract, he was supposed to kill a gangster who was rumoured to be able to dodge bullets.

I found out that he kept a schedule, regularly visiting the 40k equivalent of a McDonald's drive thru to grab a coffee in the morning. So I waited until he was stuck between two cars and gunned him down in his seat from behind a fence. Tossed the owner five thrones gelt and said "Sorry about the mess," before I left, too.

Don't know if it fully qualifies, but this is the recent history and current events (as of last night).

The PCs got a job from a wizard to set up a magical skull on the outskirts of a magical forest. Wandering into the forest, they enter The Fey Realm(tm), and in there see a cave that is a jungle path (like an optical illusion, where it's a vase or two faces). They decide to follow this, and then leave the path. {DM - Oh, I had that as a possibility, but I hoped they wouldn't do that. Now what?}
OK, they've now gone tens of thousands of years into the past, somewhere else in the world entirely (assuming it's even the same world). As far as they know, they then (go to/get arrested and taken to) an elven Mayan city, where after extensive questioning they get to meet the King Priest (no, not THAT one), at which point the PCs promptly summon a demon who commences to slaughter the king and all the nobles present. See, what the PCs didn't know is they were first taken by the rebels, who programmed their mage with the final words of summoning and then wiped the memory of the event from their minds.
Fleeing from the palace back to the prison to retrieve their stuff, they see a great undead invasion of the city from the outside (the rebels use necromancy). This is the point where I anticipated that the PCs would all sneak into the barracks, retrieve ther gear, play cat-and-mouse with the undead, and then escape.
Ooops. Wrong.
They decided to split up, with only the thief entering the barracks, and the other three stayed outside the barracks gate, and then, when they saw all the undead in creation bearing down upon the gate, decided to have a desperate last stand (except for the mage, who ran to warn the elves inside, and got arrested for his trouble).
Yep, they're all now captured by the rebels, three weeks of work making up the 3 floored barracks in tatters, and I have 1 week to work out what the bloody hell now.

Fuller account here.

Ryan Thunder wrote:We were playing Dark Heresy, and I got a brief gaming session with the GM to get used to my character and iron out the kinks.

I was playing as a member of the Adeptus Arbites who did contract kills against known criminals on the sly. For one such contract, he was supposed to kill a gangster who was rumoured to be able to dodge bullets.

I found out that he kept a schedule, regularly visiting the 40k equivalent of a McDonald's drive thru to grab a coffee in the morning. So I waited until he was stuck between two cars and gunned him down in his seat from behind a fence. Tossed the owner five thrones gelt and said "Sorry about the mess," before I left, too.

Man that's pretty OFF THE RAILS! You pretended to shoot someone in the back from ambush! AMAZING! How did the GM cope with this unforeseen turn of events? How did the party react to this narrative mindfuck?

In 93 we revisted the Dragonlance saga with the added bonus of original characters. Our band of merry sociopaths quickly decided that we'ld like to rule the world ourselves and the dragonarmies were the best way to go about it. Most early sessions revolved around getting rid of Verminard and making sure we were on top when the dust settled. When we learned of dragonlances and dragonorbs it was pretty much over for both the forces of light and darkness.

Stark wrote:Man that's pretty OFF THE RAILS! You pretended to shoot someone in the back from ambush! AMAZING! How did the GM cope with this unforeseen turn of events? How did the party react to this narrative mindfuck?

Whatever, bro. Apparently I was supposed to stab him or something. Gunning him down at a McDonald's drive through was the last thing the GM expected me to do.

yawn, and this compares to superhero's becomming the men in black?, or the party taking over krynn, etc...

of course there was the time we had insect and lizard folk party hunting and killing Gorean mammals.... not so much off the rails, as it was role reversals...