Ba Bum Bum Bum Ba-*BOOOOOM*

During my years of high school, I ended up meeting several people. One of them gladly was an incredible GM, and started up a game of (no-Jedi allowed) Star Wars RPG. Fun mechanic for picking your starting race, where it was either random chance..or human. My random chance happened to be a huge lizard that naturally did fairly well fighting (best blaster skill in the bunch). Someone else ended up being a large sentient plant--thankfully the lizard wasn't a herbivore.

So there we are, a group of rebel spies running around a starbase looking for information on some Imperial general or such. I don't recall for sure. It may have actually been Papa Smurf, but with this GM, I tend to doubt it. So store after store we poke our heads in, buy a few trinkets, and try to weasel some information out of the owners. By the end of the row, not only do the Imperials know that they're being looked for (and consequently send a squad of stormtroopers to find us) but we've got a _ton_ of junk onhand. Backpacks are marvelous things.

Talk to the last shopkeeper, and what happens but the squadron of stormtroopers marches into the other end of the way, all of the patrons discreetly making their way into the nearest establishment to buy..something. Anything. The 'troopers know we're rebels, we know they're not, everyone should've seen enough Star Wars to know the logical next step is a firefight.

Several rounds go by without anyone hitting anyone else, or even come close. Not much time game-time I suppose, but with all the die rolling and talking and planning and everything, it's been a while in real life, and I get tired of it. Not only that, but the blaster charges are starting to run low. I hand my gun to the plant and start pulling this junk out of my backpack...

Me: I throw the little black box down the corridor.
GM: Ok...
*rolls die*
*rolls another die*
*rolls another die*
*rolls yet another die*
*repeat*
GM: The black box hits the ground in the middle of the stormtroopers and rolls over onto one of its faces. You hear.. click--ba bum bum bum bum bu-bu-bu-bum, ba bum bum bum ba-*BOOOOOM* All of the stormtroopers get blown against the wall and crumble to the ground.
Me: What /was/ that thing?
GM: Let's just say...it was a defective jack-in-the-box

Now, he didn't /mean/ for it to be defective. He meant for it to just be a regular boring ol' jack-in-the-box. But I got _really_ lucky with his die rolling. When one situation seems completely hopeless, don't just keep shooting at the stormtroopers. Start throwing jack-in-the-boxes. You never know, one of them may just be defective.