Changing the mood of an RPG session

[Civil War Man]

Anyone who has had any experience as a GM can tell you that their carefully laid plans rarely escape from their players intact (or, in some cases, even recognizable). Without careful control, a single player can completely change the mood of the game. In my experience, this has mostly been turning a serious game into an incredibly silly one (I would be interested in hearing tales anyone may have of the opposite). So, for those with a lot of experience in gaming or GMing, what are some of the things that have happened that drastically altered the mood of a game?

For me personally, I was in a Hunter one-shot. We didn't get to pick what type of Hunter we were. It basically got assigned to us during gameplay. I ended up becoming an Avenger, which for those who don't know basically choose something as their weapon of righteous fury and can from that point forward kick ass with it.

There were some definite hints of rampant silliness when I handed over my character sheet. I was a homeless guy named Al. I had Patron 5 (Translation: The voices in my head are really persuasive) and Destiny 5 (Translation: If the Apocalypse happens, I probably caused it).

I start the game bumming some food off of one of the more serious characters, when some NPC gets hit by a truck. Then, he stands up, obviously becoming some grotesque horror. Then this happens.

GM: Okay, what do you all do.
(other players say what they're doing)
Me: I attack him.
GM: Okay. Do you have any weapons?
Me: All I have is a sandwich.
GM: (long pause, then a sigh) Roll Dex plus Melee.

At that point, it was hard for the game to be remotely serious from then on as I carved my way through horrible monsters wielding sandwiches coated in cleansing holy flames.

[Academia Nut]

I'm afraid that the only possible reply to something like that is to post this relevant VGCats comic

On that note though, some situations just descend into silly by nature. The Dark Heresy game I played pretty much descended into gales of laughter when the first thug started exploding.

[weemadando]

Sometimes you just have to roll with it.

If they want to go nuts - make sure that you go one further.

[Joviwan]

My friend was DMing for his birthday, because it had been forever since he had DMed a game. It was supposed to be a serious, low level adventure, but he made a fatal mistake; he invited a friend that had never played with us before.

What started as a quest to find the slavers and end their tyranny turned into an anticlimactic battle against a horde of backflipping circus sheep. That breathed fire. A half-hour after we found our quest.

My friend gave up soon after and we took turns playing Bushido Blade.

[Lusankya]

For one MURP thing, in which everyone was playing a high-school based Mutants and Masterminds game, every single group turned what was originally a perfectly innocent game into a XXX-rated porn fest.

[KlavoHunter]

I'm afraid that the only possible reply to something like that is to post this relevant VGCats comic

No, THIS is the relevent VGCats comic.

[darthbob88]

Our last D&D session was the usual dungeon-crawling, smash the undead kill-fest. Until we realized that this mindless undead we were smashing up just wanted some coffee. It devolved from there. My personal favorite moment was when we divvied up the loot and found a knife and cauldron that allows any sacrifice made with the knife to become very good coffee.
Party:"Are there any drawbacks to this?"
GM: " You have to sacrifice somebody using that knife, so to get coffee you must kill people."
Party: "Well, yes, but are there any drawbacks?"

Not to mention the time our warlock scared his "minion", Chuckles the One-Eyed Bitch, back into service after Chuckles drank a large quantity of coffee.
Chuckles: "You're not the boss of me anymore!"
Lock: "Oh yes I am."

[The Yosemite Bear]

"I use my pyrokeniesis to set their pamphets and books on fire."
-strangely the supervillian group had no problem pulling off their bank heist, and the local police are still trying to figure out who is responsible for the string of spontanus human combustion of mormon missionaries, and jahovah's witnessess.....

this was the result of them inturrupting our game session of Champions I'm sure of it....

[Edi]

These days I so rarely get to have actual RPG sessions that I have one ironclad rule about somebody starting to fuck things up or derail them into silliness when I'm running the game: "Either get with the program or pick up your dice, rip up your character sheet, get the fuck out and don't come back."

The thing is, if you let it slide one time for someone, then the next guy is going to think he'll be downright fucking hilarious by pulling some asinine shit and it devolves from there. Another good approach is that if and when there's in-game dialogue, what comes out of the player's mouth comes out of the character's mouth unless the player clearly specifies OOC before making the comment and states when OOC stuff ends.

If it's a mistake that results in the whole party getting killed, too bad. Roll up new characters everyone and thank that smartarse there. Rinse and repeat as many times as necessary until the fuckers actually get the point. If somebody just doesn't fucking get it, goodbye and good riddance.

[Hotfoot]

I think my players in the Dark Heresy game figured out pretty fast what the tone was when they started joking about the Emperor's dick in front of an Imperial Guard Lieutenant and very nearly got a party member with a structurally unsound laser burn in their head.

[Raj Ahten]

I think my players in the Dark Heresy game figured out pretty fast what the tone was when they started joking about the Emperor's dick in front of an Imperial Guard Lieutenant and very nearly got a party member with a structurally unsound laser burn in their head.

That is what the issue was? I thought it was mainly about unsubtle investigations by a party member into the Guard. (This is far more entertaining btw, though not to my character).

As far as trying to keep a good tone in my own games goes, I find the best thing to do is to nip foolishness off at the bud as soon as possible. Luckily I have never really had disruptive players in my games, so saying 'no' to my PC's is usually enough.

My most troublesome player I ever had was a munchkin who cheated on dice rolls quite a lot and wanted to kill as many people as possible. Luckily (I guess you could say) the party was made up of a bunch of mobsters in that game, and so my problem player pretty much made the campaign. The rest of the party basically ended up using the munchkin as an intimidation tool, and it was very amusing to watch how they attempted to clean up his messes.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, I think in that instance the character was trying to draw attention away from the idiot running his mouth rather than try to make a joke, and the DM response wasn't considered heavy handed at all.

Of course, ironically, PC in fighting would be considered fitting with the tone of the game anyway.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Realistically playing, I have a half giant/half daemon character in Arduin AD&D 1st edition rules, who is the about as innocent as a child (well technically he still is a child, and no that's not very innocent) However because my character's bloodline, I automatically have an "Evil" aura despite not being evil. one time I threw a fully armoured Paladin out of a bar, and was upset that he skipped and skidded allong the cobblestone streets rather than bouncing....

...I was also upset that the tavernkeeper made me fix the hole in the wall, the place was stuffy, and could have used more ventillation....

[Block]

Yeah, I think in that instance the character was trying to draw attention away from the idiot running his mouth rather than try to make a joke, and the DM response wasn't considered heavy handed at all.

Of course, ironically, PC in fighting would be considered fitting with the tone of the game anyway.

Dude, fuck off. Every post you've made since has been an insult. We get it, you didn't like the action. Big fucking deal, shut the fuck up about it.

[Jade Falcon]

I made the mistake of running a WEG Star Wars RPG with one of the players being an old schoold AD&D dungeon crawl type. Whereas anytime someone was killed weapons etc were looted and he wanted to sell them in the local starport store and nothing else.

[Civil War Man]

I made the mistake of running a WEG Star Wars RPG with one of the players being an old schoold AD&D dungeon crawl type. Whereas anytime someone was killed weapons etc were looted and he wanted to sell them in the local starport store and nothing else.

That's nothing. I once played in a Star Wars game where I was some kind of reptile species that looked like velociraptors (I think it was Tiss'shar). He was a Jedi, if you were to define Jedi as possessing a lightsaber and being more Force sensitive than a small concrete brick.

Anyway, there was one point where the party was in some space station in some location I can't remember. It was basically a big mall/resort area, and everyone was doing their thing. I was hanging out at a bar with the party's resident generic Corellian smuggler who totally wasn't Han Solo in any way, and then an Imperial warship shows up and stormtroopers start boarding. We try to keep a low profile, but then some of the stormtroopers barge into the bar. We dispatch most of them pretty quickly, though one was giving me a hard time (I was doing poorly on all my rolls, and the smuggler wasn't shooting because I kept getting in the way of his shot). Eventually my lightsaber is knocked out of my hands, and which point I say "Screw this shit", rip off the stormtrooper's helmet, and clamp my jaws around his head. A couple rounds of struggling later, and then there's a sickening crack as I rip the trooper's head clean off his body (translation: Lots of 6s). The generic smuggler character barely succeeds his "don't puke" roll, and we eventually escape using the old "the human dresses up like a stormtrooper and pretends to escort the big scary alien prisoner out" trick.

Why do I mention this story? Because I was so proud of this gruesome decapitation that I kept the severed head as a souvenir. I then went on to start skinning the people we'd kill in firefights and making leather. Human leather. Made the game very interesting when we were captured by the Empire and the Imperial officer was shown what they managed to take. I got my own personal cell.

[Block]

I think my players in the Dark Heresy game figured out pretty fast what the tone was when they started joking about the Emperor's dick in front of an Imperial Guard Lieutenant and very nearly got a party member with a structurally unsound laser burn in their head.

That is what the issue was? I thought it was mainly about unsubtle investigations by a party member into the Guard. (This is far more entertaining btw, though not to my character).

As far as trying to keep a good tone in my own games goes, I find the best thing to do is to nip foolishness off at the bud as soon as possible. Luckily I have never really had disruptive players in my games, so saying 'no' to my PC's is usually enough.

My most troublesome player I ever had was a munchkin who cheated on dice rolls quite a lot and wanted to kill as many people as possible. Luckily (I guess you could say) the party was made up of a bunch of mobsters in that game, and so my problem player pretty much made the campaign. The rest of the party basically ended up using the munchkin as an intimidation tool, and it was very amusing to watch how they attempted to clean up his messes.

And no, the issue with the lieutenant not liking us was Feil's thing about the emperor. We had to not go back to base because of what Ripp did to further provoke said lieutenant, and making him think that there was some sort of investigation into the guard.

[Jade Falcon]

That's nothing. I once played in a Star Wars game where I was some kind of reptile species that looked like velociraptors (I think it was Tiss'shar). He was a Jedi, if you were to define Jedi as possessing a lightsaber and being more Force sensitive than a small concrete brick.

Anyway, there was one point where the party was in some space station in some location I can't remember. It was basically a big mall/resort area, and everyone was doing their thing. I was hanging out at a bar with the party's resident generic Corellian smuggler who totally wasn't Han Solo in any way, and then an Imperial warship shows up and stormtroopers start boarding. We try to keep a low profile, but then some of the stormtroopers barge into the bar. We dispatch most of them pretty quickly, though one was giving me a hard time (I was doing poorly on all my rolls, and the smuggler wasn't shooting because I kept getting in the way of his shot). Eventually my lightsaber is knocked out of my hands, and which point I say "Screw this shit", rip off the stormtrooper's helmet, and clamp my jaws around his head. A couple rounds of struggling later, and then there's a sickening crack as I rip the trooper's head clean off his body (translation: Lots of 6s). The generic smuggler character barely succeeds his "don't puke" roll, and we eventually escape using the old "the human dresses up like a stormtrooper and pretends to escort the big scary alien prisoner out" trick.

Why do I mention this story? Because I was so proud of this gruesome decapitation that I kept the severed head as a souvenir. I then went on to start skinning the people we'd kill in firefights and making leather. Human leather. Made the game very interesting when we were captured by the Empire and the Imperial officer was shown what they managed to take. I got my own personal cell.

That was actually pretty funny. I remember playing a game of Shadowrun and getting a certain weapon add on custom made since I was playing a sadistic assasin type. I scoped my target out, waited till he was in the wet room in his apartment and then fired a rifle grenade....with a white phosphorous charge, which also had the properties of a sticky bomb.

[loomer]

I once played an entire adventure using a rock in a sock as my weapon. At the end, I had it enchanted. I was going around as a rogue beating people with a +1 sockrock.

[Losonti Tokash]

I was in a game where I was playing a monk and the other PC was a barbarian. We'd managed to kill a succubus who happened to be the concubine of an orc king and he was naturally angry at us. Then the barbarian (who, being an alcoholic, was fucking smashed), said something about not having to worry about getting any STDs. So I punched the barbarian in the face at least 4 times before anyone had a chance to respond. Fortunately I had only chosen nonlethal damage or else I would have killed him in a single round.

I was trying to stop him from making it too off the wall, but instead created a situation where a monk had totally flipped the fuck out on his partner.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I do recall one game of old marvel, where a PC tried to pull a superman, (throw a nuclear bomb far enough away that it would detonate "Harmlessly" ) and failed so badly at something that was impossible that it destroyed most of New York.....

....we kept new york being destroyed and it being "So and So's fault" as a consistant part of our campaign for a long while...

[The Yosemite Bear]

oh another point was actually roleplaying a very evil house cat, in Call of Cthutlhu RPG

lets see what did I do to the humans....

chased down, killed in dreamlands and brought back the dead body of that thing in the walls that was destressing the professor so much....

Sat on top of the books of Forbidden Lore when someone wanted to consult them.

Let the rest of the party see my dreamlands self.

jump into the lap of the humans that had picked up phobias and san loss. (especially if they already had seen me kill things in dream state)

demanded lots of pettings

[Stark]

If a GM makes no effort to control the game, of course it'll go to shit with shit players. There's absolutely no reason why people doing dumb shit should even get an airing: idiots fucking up the game by being retarded or 'funny' get killed and everyone else moves on. If you let dumb shit happen, it's your fault, not the player's, since you're the GM.

But then, most people want stupid shit in their RP anyway, so it's not a problem. Complaining about being soft is just lame.

[Raj Ahten]

And no, the issue with the lieutenant not liking us was Feil's thing about the emperor. We had to not go back to base because of what Ripp did to further provoke said lieutenant, and making him think that there was some sort of investigation into the guard.

Well, we may be even screwed from something I did early on. (well, at least may character may be done for). Lazarus called the mission bullshit where people could hear him. He doesn't know what type of people he is dealing with. The inquisition bosses could very well have him liquidated for that alone.

All these sorts of things are quite typical in RPG's PC's make mistakes, things get a little harder, and if it didn't happen, I'd be very, very suprised. But really, in the Dark Heresy game any mistakes anyone may have made are relatively minor (no one has been killed because of them, and the mission hasn't been comprimised as far as we know.)

Perhaps the biggest, most avoidable mess up I've ever seen was in a D&D game. We were outside an army encampment, and the rogues and such went in to scout it out. The fighters then decided it would be a good idea to follow them in and look around themselves, despite having no infiltration of bluffing skills whatsoever. The first thing they did once getting into camp was to improperly salute an officer and get thrown in the brig. The mission went from a raid to kidnap an enemy officer, to a rescue mission. Before it was all over the enemy commander (who was a mage) had turned several people into small mindless animals after a desperate break out attempt that involved the party's rogues taking down fire giants in single combat. Not a pretty situation at all.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

On the subject of players doing silly shit that gets the party killed, a recent RPG session involved the group hiding from a hungry dragon roaming the skies, searching for prey. After a few tense minutes, the dragon started to glide in the opposite direction. At this point, one of the players (who shall remain nameless unless he chooses to identify himself) decided that it was a good idea to begin throwing rocks and shouting at said dragon, despite being separated from the rest of the group and having no weapons or armor (not that they would have helped). At this point, he starts riding toward the rest of the party's hiding spot at a full gallop, apparently hoping for them to rescue him and slay the nasty dragon. Naturally, they did no such thing, and watched as the dragon swooped down, snatched him up, carried him to a high place and ate him. After the session, we all asked what the hell he was thinking and all three other players remarked that if the dragon hadn't killed him, they would have done it themselves.