h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am currently DM (Dungeon Master) for three groups, all set in the same world I have created for them. There are some great (and some beautifully daft) stories that emerge from them, and I have tackled issues including kleptomania, privilege, post natal depression, identity crises and drug addiction through the storylines developed. And then there are the daft developments, which are just as fun.
Maybe I am barking up the wrong treeman, but it seems to me this is the kind of community that fosters a fair few roleplayers. I thought it might be entertaining to recount some of our favourite incidents. Just recently, I had a great moment with a group who are pretending to be a travelling circus in order to pass through potentially hostile territory, and having to put on actual performances to make it stick. The shaman in the party had reluctantly agreed to play the role of a stage mystic, aiming to spot people in the audience who looked ill and then weave some bullshit around basically diagnosing their ailments. Then he rolled a crit for his Insight check.
So I revealed (completely off the top of my head) that in a moment of deductive genius, she had intuited that the captain of the guard's wife was pregnant with someone else's child, and that he did not know about it...

I put up with a fair amount of role-playing in college psychology , not to mention some actual stage roles.

The traveling circus you mentioned makes me think of "Station 11," my favorite sci-fi novel of 2014. After the great pandemic wipes out 99% of the world's population, most entertainment that people get to enjoy is provided by traveling circuses, bands, stage groups, etc.

And in real life, there will be fewer traveling circuses now that Barnum & Bailey Ringling bros. has gone out of business.

I played D&D for about 20 minutes in 1975. My mother brought me a boxed set back from the Edinburgh Festival. Excited, I opened the box and there was.....a book and a dice.

I found a group of kids who were playing regularly, became a wizard and 20 minutes into the adventure a column (a pencil was used I believe) crushed my wizard to death (no saving throw).

I didn't play again.

I do fancy Munchkin though. Sort of takes the widdle.

I'm often 'invited' to take part in role play in my work life. I decline - 'I hope that this doesn't disrupt your plans too much, but I won't be taking part in this session'. I absolutely 'k*n HATE role-play as a training tool.

However, role play on those occasions when I dress up as a Swedish plumber, 'Heluu Mrs. I have curm tou fixe yure plumbinj with thes huuge tuul thet uy hev en muy pukett.' .............

PP.

I don't mind being asked to roll play with a Danish.

Maybe Brigitte Nielsen

A Danish is basically a flat roll topped with jam.

I tend not to push too hard on the "in character" element. It's more about telling a story together than some kind of acting exercise. In fact, when I have tried giving characters accents, it has tended to go poorly and be dropped fairly quickly.
My favourite incidents tend to come from critical successes and critical failures. I designed a set of D&D encounters that was underwater. The characters had a spell so they could breathe, so the main effect was to make it 3D. It made some of the powers kinda interesting (anything lightning-based had to be rather fudged, for instance).
Then a player used an ability called 'Call the Crows', on an enemy about 25-30 ft underwater, and crit failed. There is now, in my world, a cluster of hundreds of drowned crows that will wash up on someone's shoreline within the next couple of decades (depending on currents) and confuse the hell out of them.

I played a bit in high school. One day a rich preppie kid, Seth W. who repeatedly ran for (and some times won) class president, asked if he could play with us. The DM, (and our future class valedictorian) Mark L., hesitantly agreed. As he worked up a character for Seth, he suggested he just use his normal name for simplicity's sake. Throughout the game, Mark kept rolling for some unstated purpose at seemingly random times and would seem disappointed after each roll.

Finally, we discovered what was triggering the rolls. It was every time someone mentioned Seth's name in game. The underworld god Seth summoned Seth W. to the 667th level of hell and placed an unnamed curse upon him.

Further into the game Mark was again occasionally making mystery rolls until a roll indicated to him that it was a full moon. Something mysterious happened to Seth W. He was suddenly unable to wear his armor or wield his weapons. He also lost the power of speech and could only make croaking sounds.

Mark had turned him into a ware-frog.

That reminds me of one of my first ever sessions as a player. I was a half-orc bard (allowed by the DM against his better judgement) who I played as a drummer from a warband.
Right at the start of the campaign, we were given a secret mission, enforced by us submitting to an enchantment that would trigger unspecified dire consequences if we spoke of it to anyone. We were to go to a goblin lair and retrieve something.
We got to the lair, some of my buddies started trying to blag their way into the lair. This confused me, mostly in-character but also a bit out-of-character, so I said, "Why are we talking to them? Aren't we supposed to be killing them?"
I kinda meant it to be an aside, not for the ears of the goblins, but the DM interpreted it as revealing our mission, and my tongue turned to stone! For the whole of the rest of the mission, I couldn't say a single intelligible word. This was a bit of a problem because, as a bard, almost all of my abilities were dependent on chanting. I had to resort to staying out of trouble, and occasionally wielding my drum-stick as a club...

>werefrog<

Speaking of , we should be hearing the Spring peepers any day now. The gazillion inches of rain we got this weekend have pushed water levels up -- just what little frogs like.

Perhaps we should try it here running a game and discussing it here

I think that that would leave me more confused than I already am, but do it if you want to.

Never played it but it would be a way to learn about it. Following the other players

You do *not* want to follow me. Heaven knows how far astray I would lead you.

Been talking to Prof to long to worry about that.
And seen things and had to do things that might make your beard grey

I had forgot about Prof. Well, go ahead and play if you want. You might want to lock me in the attic while you do it, though.

That sounds an interesting offer thanks. As it is just approaching 02:00 here we must talk later if that's

Sleep tight!

I'd consider offering to help, but I am already running three groups (as I said in OP), and it takes quite a bit of my time.