Dungeons and Dragons is a gaming institution. So many youngins' gather in basements for good, clean medieval fun. They rattle away the hours being a goblin or a dragon. And apparently this pastime can last long into adulthood. Who knew? Just kidding, we're here in our questing best.

Redditor _Rangerspawn asked Dungeon Masters of Reddit, what is the most surprising thing your players have done in-game?

TIME TRAVEL PLANS CAN BE TRICKY!

I had a player wish for himself to be turned into a stone block. He'd been sent back in time somehow, I forget exactly how as this game happened in 1996, and was trying to find a way back. So he figured he could stand where the party was when he got sent back in time, wish himself to be turned into a stone block with a message chiseled on it reading "Wish for me to be turned into [character name]" His logic was they'd find the stone block waiting on their approach and his character would use his wish to change him back before being sent back in time.

So, I did that. Then I said to him, "Why didn't you just wish to go back to your own time?" He said, "Oh, I didn't think of that." And he was duly laughed at by everyone.

My players tend to do some ridiculous stuff to the point where I could probably fill an entire thread with their shenanigans, but the first and best would probably have to be weaponizing butter.

During the first session the party found themselves in a small town library trying to figure out what's going on. Among other things they found a book with 1001 uses for butter, just as a throwaway detail. They check it out as well and I think nothing of it.

After the session I ask for downtime actions and the party's mad scientist comes to me and says "I want to make explosive butter." I have him roll for it and he aces it. He then posts a picture to our facebook group along the lines of "chicken + stick of butter = [chicken shaped blast shadow] + cooked chicken"

The rest of the group runs with this and it leads to an ever increasing spiral of butter related weaponry and paraphernalia. Buying a cow to secure their own supply and hiding it in their basement. Adding some herbs and spices to the mix and creating the basting grenade. After building a BPG, a different player took a skill specialty in food-based weaponry.

This of course deserved an equally weird response in kind. See, this kind of abuse of butter didn't go unnoticed, namely by the butter deity herself, Paula Deen. She waged a campaign of harassment against the party for infringing on her domain, eventually culminating in summoning a skyscraper-sized sentient corn on the cob to crush them.

In the lore of this world, butter is now a highly controlled substance and the French have become the most formidable military power in the world. Even when telling non-butter related stories from this game, I can only ever refer to it as "Buttergame."

tl;dr: Players weaponize butter, antagonize Paula Deen, propel French to military supremacy

The entire party was about to die until they rolled to see if a players weasel familiar could remove the cork from a health potion and pour it into the wizards' mouths. He could and they all lived.

They turned the game into SimCity.

PCs are thrown in into a dungeon for witchcraft, get broken out by an agent of the king, who knows they are innocent. Wants them to take down the guy who's going around accusing anyone he considers impure of witchcraft; because he's "cleaning up" the kingdom, he has the support of a lot of nobles who are bigoted fucks. That's why the throne can't act too openly against him, and decides to employ the PCs; if they kill him, everyone will just assume it's out of revenge.

King's agent basically gives them directions to where they can find this guy, but they get caught up on the detail of some of the nobles being in with him, and decide they want more details. They ask for an example, I throw out the name "Lord Hobbes" at random, and now the quest is suddenly "Investigate Lord Hobbes for corruption while completely ignoring the guy who is actually responsible for all of this".

So now I need to make a map of Hobbes' mansion and grounds for them to infiltrate, stat out guards and such, and invent something to happen. Turns out Hobbes is being blackmailed into compliance and isn't that bad a guy, he tries to hire the PCs himself to go after Witchfinder Douchebag so I can get things back on rails, and then just to tie off this plot cul de sac, one of the Witchfinder's agents kills him. PCs finally go after the guy they were supposed to go after, save the day, and as a reward I have the king give them Hobbes' title and mansion so I can reuse the nice map I made as their base, and all seems well. Of course, now they are technically the rulers of a small town.

Immediately this becomes their primary focus, ignoring any and all other plot hooks. They want to improve the town (which I now also need to map in detail), invest money, collect taxes, pass ordinances, improve trade routes, etc. Adventuring is now just a way to acquire funds and defeat threats to the town, which starts growing at an alarming rate. Gaming sessions are now 70% discussions on trade, revenue allocation, and fiddling with the town map.

In one of my campaigns we had a knight who relied on mounted combat to be effective. He told me after creating his character that he had a contingency plan should his horse die, and all the details. His character came with a buff and mute armorer named Patsy and a little squire (whose name as far as anyone knew was squire). I was hesitant to add so many characters, but since one was mute I allowed it.

Eventually his horse is killed and he turns a side eye to me and goes "I activate the contingency plan". All the other players are so confused and dying laughing, as he begins to execute his backup. He pulls a backpack harness out of one of his packs and straps it onto Patsy's back, then climbs in and grabs his lance, and yells "Yah Patsy!" He practically piggybacks the rest of the game in order to get his mounted combat bonus.

One of the other players asked "is Patsy okay with this?" And he responded "Patsy has long dreamed of this day"

One of the early plot hooks was an excommunicated priest having a vision of an angry bear guarding a cave. They got into a debate reminiscent of the swallow-coconut debate in Monty Python about whether a bear can properly be said to be angry. They eventually decided to look for the bear, not to investigate the vision, but to see what an angry bear looks like.

Session 1. First session all of us have ran in.

Save my daughter says the sad villager

OK says the party

Goes through the dungeon.

Sees girl

"I firebolt her"

Me: "what... What?"

"yup"

The girl was an illusion and the mission was a trick to get the party to unearth an ancient evil. They figured out one half, the girl was a trick. Still unearthed the evil.

But the whole party including myself was very surprised to see the coward sorcerer shoot a firebolt at a child instead of the skeleton boss.

"I would like to sniff the door handle."

"You don't detect anything unusual."

"I would like to lick the door handle."

The party had to fight a powerful Merrow that had a talisman they needed. Instead of fighting him, they tricked him into marrying a baboon that they polymorphed into a beautiful mermaid, getting the talisman in exchange. It was so absurd that I had to go along with it.

This was far from the most surprising, but it was the most recent.

They'd driven a brother duo of dwarves from town (really duegar in disguise). Then they decided, that instead of following up on my elaborate plans for an Underdark-conspiracy campaign, that would instead fight the city council over the dwarf brothers abandoned forge...so that they could work an elaborate real estate scheme.

I'm trying to figure out which Underdark race would make the best realtors, in an attempt to get the campaign back on track.

Rather than kill some hired thug that attacked them, they subdued him, tied him up, and questioned him. They gave him a name (Jimothy), and let him go, telling him that he was a good strong lad who'd be better-suited to a job in construction than this murdering business.

I threw in a cameo of him later, happy in his new job.

Our DM always did custom campaigns. There would be special items made up by him and he would make unique classes for each of us to play. He was really good at it and our group played for years and had some awesome adventures.

One time I was leaning a little to hard into my chaotic evil side and long story short my team sold me to a group of devils from one of the planes of hell. They took me to this ancient relic thing that would transform me into a being of hell (what i got was based on my role from a percentage die so out of 100, 1%-95%being terrible 96%-100% being i might get something good). I had a one time use item where i could pick my roll, some mystic scroll about deciding fates. So i chose 100%. The dm turned me into a fallen archangel. Boys o boys did i knock that campaign off course when i showed back up.

Via a combination of spells, alchemy, and teamwork, they enlarged the wizard's raven familiar, shrunk the gnome, glued the gnome to the raven, and had the raven fly along city walls while the gnome lobbed spells at the guards.

My players once pooled all of their cash at about level 4 to buy a tavern and retire instead of following the plot any further. That was it, campaign over. They decided to play medieval fantasy Its Always Sunny.

Failed the simplest puzzle I have ever made, instead choosing to trial and error their way across a floor covered in pressure plates.

PLAYER: "I cast Death Spell."

ME: "Great. Do you target the Cultist swinging the golden ritual sickle, or the one holding the screaming baby?"

PLAYER: "I target the baby."

Me: "..."

Recently they were sneaking through a goblin nest when the ranger felt the foot of a sleeping goblin gently rest against her. It was meant to warn the players that the hollows surrounding them were filled with goblins and that they should continue to be careful.

She says "I reach out with both hands and choke it to death".

... wha... what?

A high roll later, the rest of the group see the ranger do this and proceed to pull bone daggers and other small weapons and follow suit. Now they are crawling in and out of dirt holes, murdering sleeping goblins left and right.

Normally their rolls are cursed but not this time. No low rolls, several natural 20s and a few minutes later they have brutally murdered ~50 goblins and are covered from head to toe in blood, high-fiving each other for being the good guys.

They became obsessed with a random loom I threw in as flavortext.

Our sorc crit failed his arcana check on it which convinced him that it was The Loom of Great Portent.

Demonic rites were performed on it to help them make decisions and carted it around everywhere they went.

They started a band called the Loomineers. Their secret society was called the Illoominati. The Fellowship of the Loom to outsiders. Loom puns for days.

I gave my players a little more free will than a typical story arc, just to see what would happen. They inevetibly went evil, ransacking every town becoming a roving band of bandits, torturing key NPCs for info. When they got to a major city they couldn't walk through the main gate because of the bad reputation they gained, so they snuck in, took the king hostage, and launched him over the walls from a catapault claiming the city. When they finally met the main antagonist of my story arc instead of killing the Dark Lord, the Dark Lord joined the party because the party gained an incredibly evil reputation.

It was a hilarious story arc.

It was only surprising the first time, but I had a friend who always played a cleric.

Every single time, his character would buy the largest mount he could get (an elephant, usually). Then he'd ride it to death, make dry rations from its meat, animate it, fit it with heavy barding and travel around in comfort from inside its (now padded) rib cage.

Basically a cross between an RV and a tank.