Hello fellow DMs! So here's the thing: I love my players (some groups more than others but still), but every now and then they just don't get it, and it's kind of cute and funny. Give us your latest story about those times!

Here's mine.

So, the players are on their way to explore a haunted mansion where a mysterious killer is hiding. Along the way, they discover strange marionettes in the woods depicting the victims. They investigate them but find few further clues, then move on.

A bit later, their dwarven cleric, who stayed behind a while at the tavern, comes running along to catch up with them. He sees the marionettes and rolls to investigate.

Cleric: "One...minus one...zero."

Me: "As you peer at the puppet's leg, you notice a name, not carved, but grained into the very pattern of the wood. It reads 'Edric'."

Other player: WHAT? How did he find a clue we didn't? He rolled a zero!

Me: *shrugs* He did.

They never figured out it was a total red herring...the cleric had just had a bit too much ale. Luckily, though, they also managed to forget about it about ten minutes later, so at least they didn't waste time I guess. :-)

 I have one of those thieves that starts out trying to pick-pocket every single NPC in sight.  About his third/fourth robbery attempt, he picked the pocket of the cook.  Partly because I wanted to deter this crime streak a little, I told him congratulations, he successfully stole an onion.  He was thrilled.  That onion is now his most prized possession, and a running joke in the party.  We never have a session where the onion is not mentioned.  I love these guys. XD

My players were investigating a haunted house (Death House from Curse of Strahd, although I called it Durst Haus, like Wachter Haus later in the adventure, or Richten Haus from Ravenloft). On the top floor, they find a creepy doll, and one of the players decide to investigate it. He rolls pretty average, so I say that "You swear its eyes followed you through the room" (This was because its eyes were black spheres set into round beads, making it look like its eyes follow you)

The players, of course, freak out, and the player who investigated it says he wants to stab it, but then the rest of the party freak out too, and tells him that's a bad idea. Putting on my best Evil DM face, I say "Too late, you already said it". I then take out the Monster Manual. The players are terrified at this point, screaming at each other in fear. I flip to "D" for Demons and Devils, and start describing how the player's character in shock takes his dagger from behind his back, and pierces the doll's head in a swift motion. Then, I take a pause for dramatic effect, and tell them:

"Nothing happens", and I shut the manual

I was running Storm King's Thunder for my group. They had reached a point (I want to say they were at about 5th level or so) wherein they were going to be witnessing a siege of a Sword Coast village by a marauding band of pillaging frost giant pirates. The party did not know yet the size/scope of the frost giant war band; they were under the impression that it was a few random giants who stumbled across the area. It was an unfortunate circumstance where they acted without full knowledge of the scope of the situation, and I decided to let things play out.

At this point, they had met a certain NPC who had agreed (based on services they had rendered earlier) to allow them to rent griffon mounts while they were in the area. They were stoked. I was stoked. It was a good time. Then they decided it was time to ride their epic flying mounts into combat against a pair of frost giants in the low-lying hills around this besieged town. Roll for initiative.

So the combat was going surprisingly well, because my players were clever and I wasn't playing the frost giants as particularly clever. Also, the dice had not particularly been with me up to that point. The party wizard was playing it smart, keeping high out of reach and blasting the giants with firebolt and his new favorite toys, fireballs. Then he decided to help out the barbarian by getting closer to one of the giants and casting hold person. To everyone's surprise, the giant passed his saving throw. But he knew magic had been used against him, and by whom.

On his next turn, the giant picked up one of the ample large stones in the area, took careful aim, and shotput-style chucked it at the wizard. To try to mitigate the effect of this, I rolled a d4 to see if the attack would be made against the wizard or the griffon mount he was riding. Even number. ::Wince:: Wizard it is. I made the attack roll. ::Wince:: Natural 20. And no DM screen to facilitate turning it into a normal hit.

The 5th-level wizard took 8d10+6 bludgeoning damage, and for that roll, the dice were with me. More than double his max hit points. Instant death. The party roared with rage, and the combat came to an otherwise satisfying conclusion as they avenged their fallen comrade. As they saw the rest of the giant's invasion force en route to mop up, they knew there was little time for anything formal. The wizard was a pulped tangerine underneath a giant rock too large even for the barbarian to push off of him, and there was no cleric in the party. They simply stood looking down at his body, none sure of what to say or do. As the giants closed in, their chances of escape diminishing, they knew they would have to leave their friend's corpse behind.

Suddenly, the socially inept gnome artificer (8 CHA) piped up. "Well, we may have lost a friend today, but let's not forget the last thing that probably went through his mind . . ."

The rest of the party waited. The terse anticipation was palpable. "His regrets?" "His hopes and dreams?" "That he would want us to go on fighting?"

The gnome gave a small shrug.

"The rock."

We were playing the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. The players have defeated the pirates, and captured their wizard, wanting to interrogate him. They also discover a secret room behind a trapdoor that's filled with weapons to be delivered to the Lizardfolk. Now they're arriving in port.

The Rogue decides that they want to hide the wizard, so they can interrogate him before the authorities do. So, he picks up the wizard's unconscious form, takes him to the trapdoor, and drops him in. I tell them that this kills him instantly, as they have just dropped an unconscious guy headfirst into a room filled with sharp objects.

The players are approaching a house surrounded by beautiful flowers. One of the characters does a nature check which reveals that these flowers are very special and almost extinct because anything that touches them kills them. I emphasize this point.

They have the option to walk around the flowers which wouldn't take super long or they can try and figure out how to cross the flowers safely.The players talk amongst themselves for an exceedingly long time and decide to just tromp through the flowers. They kill all the flowers and are then confused why the owner of the house is upset and refuses to help them. 

I apologize in advance for the slightly scatological content of this post.  I’ll try to keep it relevant.

My party just finished TOA, and they decided what to do from there.  They’re terribly clever players, and they got through TOA using their creativity and imagination.  They finished TOA at level 11.  Most recently, I gave them some nice hooks to continue their story.  These are grown-up adult players with children and everything.  When given their choice of story hooks, they decided to do the following.

The party leader has a dinosaur that he captured and tamed in Chult.  They decided to buy horses and riding dogs in Baldur’s Gate, along with some wagons.  What will they do with these animals and wagons, you ask?  They decided to gather their excrement and sell it as exotic fertilizer to the farmers east of the city.  They even ran into some kobolds, which they promptly dismembered and added to their stockpile.  We spent almost a whole session preparing, and we’ll likely spend our next session implementing this plan.

I’ve always been a “yes, and” kind of DM.  If it’s not fun, then I’m not doing my job.  They’re certainly having a lot of fun, so I can’t feel too bad about it. Sometimes, though, I wonder...

Quote from NaivaraArnuanna >>

Hello fellow DMs! So here's the thing: I love my players (some groups more than others but still), but every now and then they just don't get it, and it's kind of cute and funny. Give us your latest story about those times!

Here's mine.

So, the players are on their way to explore a haunted mansion where a mysterious killer is hiding. Along the way, they discover strange marionettes in the woods depicting the victims. They investigate them but find few further clues, then move on.

A bit later, their dwarven cleric, who stayed behind a while at the tavern, comes running along to catch up with them. He sees the marionettes and rolls to investigate.

Cleric: "One...minus one...zero."

Me: "As you peer at the puppet's leg, you notice a name, not carved, but grained into the very pattern of the wood. It reads 'Edric'."

Other player: WHAT? How did he find a clue we didn't? He rolled a zero!

Me: *shrugs* He did.

They never figured out it was a total red herring...the cleric had just had a bit too much ale. Luckily, though, they also managed to forget about it about ten minutes later, so at least they didn't waste time I guess. :-)

 I'm running a demon themed campaign, not too much horror, but I saw a really cool Creepy Doll stat block in Plane Shift Innistrad and I wanted to use it. The party (classic build: cleric, rouge, wizard, fighter) came across a child's corpse after raiding a Drow slave house. She was still holding her doll. The wizard recognized the child as someone from the main settlement, Oooo, and the sentimental halfling rouge picked up the doll to take back to the girl's parents.

1 hour later, the rouge felt her head hurting. Seconds later, she collapsed, and the doll crawled out of her backpack and promptly possessed her. After she was quickly exorcised, the doll managed to slit the wizard's throat with its scissors. Luckily, they killed it and paid a handsome sum to resurrect the poor old wizard. They forgot about disposing of the doll though...