You might have noticed by now that our games tend to have a lot of in-jokes and running gags in them. Maybe it's the nature of the group, maybe it's the copious amount of Simpsons episodes we've all seen, and maybe it's some kind of chemical reaction from the pizza and pop we used to constantly eat at roleplaying sessions... I don't know. But I thought it would be a good idea to go through some of the most basic jokes so that my non-group readers aren't left scratching their heads and wondering what we're taking (for the answer to that, see question #2 on the What is This? page.)

HOME GROUP GAGS

The Hundred Metric Ton Marble - Possibly the funniest gag the home group has ever come up with, its origins are the thing of legend. Essentially, Cory wanted to fit an airspeeder into the already cargo-laden cargo hold of the Starflame. Even though there was room in the hold, the airspeeder would have exceeded the max weight that the ship could carry... but Jay was having trouble explaining this to him. Finally, in exasperation, Jay picked up a marble to demonstrate:
"All right, Cory, if you had a marble that weighed a hundred metric tons, that would be the only thing you could fit in the cargo bay. Even though it's only a marble and doesn't take up much space, you still couldn't put anything else in there because of the weight limit."
This example has since become standard roleplaying mythology, as Bryan and I quickly came up with a humorous story about a hundred metric ton marble which runs amok onboard a ship and terrorizes its crew. To this day, all you have to say is "hundred metric ton marble!" to send the entire group into hysterics.

The Space Fly - Another joke created by Bryan, the space fly is essentially an insect which flies around a ship and annoys the crew to the point that they all try to blow it away with their blasters. The fly is too fast for them, though, so they wind up breaching the hull and the ship is destroyed, leaving the space fly floating about through space to find its next victim. Yes, we have too much time on our hands.

My Attributing Everything Anybody Else Says to Bryan - This is a bit more complicated than most of the others. Basically, members of the group have noticed that I tend to attribute jokes thought up by other people to Bryan... despite the fact that Bryan didn't come up with them. This particularly happens with Joel. It's almost gotten to the point at which I do it consciously just to perpetuate the stereotype.

Various Will Sayings -Over the years, Will has accumulated a number of really stupid things that he has said in and out of roleplaying sessions. Among these are such classics as "We could blow the ship in half and use the front as an escape pod!" (during a mission on a nebulon, shortly after Will saw Event Horizon); "I'll bet the space marines respect me now!" (during the same mission, after Niku'a killed several xenomorphs with martial arts); "What about Durn Crainwick?" (one so complicated it will be explained below); and the ever-popular "Ow! Right in the eye, you moron!" (at night at Michael's house, when Bryan tried to wake Will up by shaking his shoulder and accidentally poked him in the eye).

"What About Durn Crainwick?" -This is another Will line, but it is much more complicated. During the Minos Cluster campaign in Jay's game (Star Wars), we were forced to break Drun Cairnwick, the leader of the Minos Cluster rebel cell, out of an Imperial prison. As the mission was going to be a hard one, and we'd been in the Cluster for a long time at this point, Jay told us we could look through the Tramp Freighters supplement for any NPCs who might be able to help us.
Taking his turn looking through the book, Will asks, "What about... Durn... Crainwick? Can we get him to help us?" Jay and I both took one look at the page in the book and, realizing that it was Drun Cairnwick himself Will was talking about, immediately set into him. "First of all," I said, "his name is Drun Cairnwick. And second, that's the guy we're trying to rescue!"

"My Name is Panic ('Cause I Never Do)" -Just to prove that I'm not biased against Will, I'll put one in here about Bryan. His third Star Wars character, a minor Jedi named Panic, would always claim that his name was "Panic, 'cause I never do." On Panic's first mission, we were infiltrating a derelict Nebulon, and the ship was filled with radiation. Attacked by Rad Troopers (that's Radiation Troopers, not 80s slang for really cool troopers) wielding force pikes, Panic's trash bag (cheap spacesuit, I'll get to that one) was ripped in a fight, and radiation started leaking in. Taking damaging effects from the radiation, Panic headed back to the ship to get his suit patched up while the rest of us continued on. But Michael would forever tease Bryan that Panic, who never did, had panicked on his first mission.

Trash Bags and Duct Tape -Most light freighters come equipped with basic (if cheap) accessories, including emergency space suits. We discovered quickly, though, that the space suits which came with most light freighters were extremely cheap and therefore not very durable. Because of this, they were dubbed "trash bags," and we found ourselves often forced to repair them at a moment's notice or else someone would suffer the effects of depressurization. Michael came up with a novel solution -- wrap the tear in the suit with industrial-strength duct tape, which sealed most rends up perfectly. It worked so well that all of Michael's characters from that point on would automatically carry a roll of duct tape on their space suits.

The Disappearing Act -This is actually a running gag in both groups, but since it started in the home group and I intentionally instituted it at school, I'll include it here. Since we have so many players at home, we can't always wait until everyone can get together to roleplay... as a matter of fact, most of the time it's "we're playing tonight, if you can come then great." Since Jay's missions tend to go more than one session a lot, this meant that a lot of the time characters would leave or show up in the middle of the adventure, as Jay refused to let characters be there as NPCs except on very specific occasions (i.e., if your character was about to die).
Eventually, we started coming up with funny "joke" explanations for this (which sometimes made it into the missions themselves!). In one famous example, Cory showed up after being absent for a while, in the middle of a mission which had been going on for about two sessions. Jay explained his character's sudden appearance by saying that we suddenly heard the Starflame's toilet flush and Mack walked out of the head -- where he had been for the last two weeks (in game time).
Later on, we came up with a standardized "joke" explanation -- when a player had to leave before the adventure was through, his character disappeared mysteriously, as if he had been "beamed" out on Star Trek. When a player showed up in the middle of an adventure, his character fell from the sky with a loud yell and landed among the other PCs (without being hurt, of course).

"This Thing Has a Stun?" -Yet another one which has passed over to the school group, although amazingly enough the guys at school came up with this one on their own. Back home, this was originated by Daniel, who was playing his Star Wars character Jag for one of the first times. Faced with an enemy we wanted to take alive, Bryan's character told Jag to put his blaster on stun. Jag replied, "This thing has a stun?"

Starr Addictions -Michael decided when he made his second Star Wars character, Blades Starr (Ramierez's cousin), that every member of the Starr family should have some sort of addiction. Ramierez had been addicted to cigarettes, so Blades was addicted to alcohol. Taser Starr, in Will's game, was addicted to... something (I don't remember... we try not to think about Will's game too much). And Trenton Starr, in Joel's game, is addicted to sugar, or something like that.


SCHOOL GROUP GAGS

The Napkin of Power - This is yet another gag which came about from watching a movie (this happens a lot with the school group). We were watching the infinitely bad Masters of the Universe movie and MST3king it for all it was worth. In one scene, a teenager is sitting down to dinner in his kitchen, when all of the villain's henchmen (about two of which were actually in the show, I believe) burst into his house. Faced with a mob of unruly and alien thugs wielding swords and axes et al., the teenager promptly throws his napkin at them (!) and shouts, "Get out of here!"
Of course, we picked up on this right away and started making up jokes about the "napkin of power," which would disentegrate anyone it is thrown at. Since then, anytime we're faced with an overwhelming foe someone will shout "I throw the Napkin of Power at them!"

"You Cactus Bastard!" - Yet another one which came from watching something on tv... this time it was an episode of Outlaw Star. The episode dealt with a mind-controlling cactus which was forcing people to eat bad ice cream to test its powers (and this is my favorite anime!). The cactus takes Jim hostage, and Gene shouts, "You cactus bastard! You're behind all this, aren't you?" David and I thought it was so funny that we went around saying it over and over again for the next week. It has since become a common expression of contempt.

The Chain-Fed Ballista -This one was started by Arthur... for some reason, he wanted something that was like a machine gun in Realms, so he asked David if Mourn could have a chain-fed ballista. Of course, what Arthur really meant was a chain-fed arbalist, but it didn't really matter, because David (and everyone else, for that matter) immediately told him that 1) you can't belt-feed any sort of crossbow weapon... it's a matter of simple physics, and 2) what could he possibly use a siege engine for anyway? Of course, this became a classic running gag, as the legend of the "belt-fed ballista" spread throughout the group.

Condescending Pat -This one I actually stole from a couple of friends of mine who don't roleplay. Whenever one of them said something really dumb, the other would respond by patting them on the head and saying, "condescending pat." I picked up on this, and started using it around the guys in the group. Soon, we had turned it from just a simple pat to condescending whack, stab, machine gun, and all the way to condescending tactical nuclear strike (my personal favorite). And, of course, the group favorite, condescending chain-fed ballista.

List of Condescending Things:
Pat
Slap
Whack
Punch
Baseball Bat
Machine Gun
Tactical Nuclear Strike
Chain-fed Ballista
Shinkoyu (character from Soul Hunter)
Napkin of Power
Hundred Metric Ton Marble
Scissors of Death

"The Squirrel's Got a Knife!" -Yet another that was started by those same two friends who don't roleplay. In this case, I was talking to them outside one of the buildings on campus when one of them noticed a squirrel (those things are rampant down here). She pointed it out with the exclamation, "that squirrel's got a nut!" (Because the squirrel was holding a nut between its paws.) Being the slightly moronic person that I am, I thought she had said, "That squirrel's got a knife!"
Eventually, I introduced this one into the group as well, and it became a common exclamation when someone failed a spot check ("You see a squirrel with a knife!")

Ninja Squirrels -This one sprang out of the previous one... as running jokes are wont to do, the "squirrel's got a knife!" joke evolved into this one. First, it was a squirrel with a knife that everyone saw when they failed a spot check. Then, it somehow became a squirrel with a katana. Finally, it became a ninja squirrel. Then we came up with yet another gag about the ninja squirrels -- the ninja squirrels were everywhere, they were trying to take over the world, they would appear and threaten our characters all the time. It became quite a popular gag, especially in Justin's game of Wheel of Time. The exclamation, "Look out for the ninja squirrels!" became far more common than you would think among our group.

The Badger -This is one of those that just happened. Justin's Dragonstar character, Ashimar, has a wolverine familiar, and early on in the game it became a running gag that it would cause all sorts of trouble for all the other players. Eventually, the others took to calling it a badger (as an insult, I assume), and the name has stuck ever since.

Electric Lyre Orchestra and the Near-Rotten Tomatoes Bag of Plenty -It all started when Chris decided that his Dragonstar bard, Lothar, should have an electric lyre (this goes along with Chris's usual sense of humor... random and bizarre). Chris, a fan of Death Metal bands(his favorite is Fear Factory), began playing metal tunes on his electric lyre while the others were busy doing other stuff. This annoyed the heck out of everybody, especially when he did it around NPCs, but there wasn't much they could do except force him to stop.
After a few missions, when Justin's character was first introduced, Chris was playing a Fear Factory song to some terrified peasants on a medieval tech world. Justin decided that he should be in the crowd, throwing rotten tomatoes at Lothar. (Later, David shocked Chris with a taser and the villagers thought he was possessed. But that's a different story.) The next mission, Justin decided to make it a tradition that he would always carry near-rotten tomatoes to throw at Lothar anytime he started to play. So I gave him a Bag of Plenty which only holds near-rotten tomatoes.

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