By this I don't mean like "oh no my high level character is permanently dead this sucks" I mean because the story itself is so sad? Also, would you say if this happens it means the DM must be a pretty good storyteller?
No, but I would like to. It's kind of like with comics. Games are not really the best medium for that type of total inner immersion that is necessary for such sympathies. Generally people are either elated or angry.
Yep. Carrion Crown book 2. I was the GM and I didn't cry, but I got really choked up. Had I not been actually telling the story at the time, I would have cried. The rest of the table was in tears.
IIRC, I used a number of suggestions from the community that really enhanced the tragic nature of the story. I don't think good storytelling produced the response, but rather a really heart wrenching story that the all of us (PCs and GM) were invested in. Granted the GM has to "not screw it up", which I think is a much lower bar than "pretty good storyteller".
Just out of curiousity what about about it made people cry? (post in spoiler in case people haven't played it yet)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I never have but I've made a player cry once.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
By this I don't mean like "oh no my high level character is permanently dead this sucks" I mean because the story itself is so sad? Also, would you say if this happens it means the DM must be a pretty good storyteller?
No, and if I started to read a story that began to lean that way, I'd stop. I don't play escapist RPGs to feel bad.
Same thing goes for movies, books, and television shows. While emotions are fine to have tweaked, I'd rather leave negative ones like sadness and rage off the table.
At one point I had a couple of my players in tears. I'd been running a storyline involving a large-scale war with an orc horde, and they'd been drafted into the kingdom's armies, but as part of a special forces unit (Wierdoes With PC Levels Platoon, essentially; a man riding a tyrannosaur had no place in the regular army.) The lord marshal was the king's brother, a reckless man of little competence, with most of the work being done by the PCs commanding officer, the King's Protector Saul Verkorren, a paladin struggling with the dual duties of guarding the lord marshal and the king's daughter, whome he believed had the king's permission to fight in the special forces unit, albeit in disguise (this turned out to be an epic failure of Sense Motive on his part.) Long story short, the army walked into a massive ambush and Saul was only able to save the princess, not the king's brother. When the horde was finally routed , due to a surgical strike by the PCs and a bunch of terra cotta warriors they dug up, the King was looking for someone to blame for his brother's death, and decided that it was Saul's fault for letting his daughter on the battlefield in the first place. The PCs had a strong friendship with Saul by this point, but the king decided that they, as Mercia's newest heroes, should officiate his discharge ceremony; the skald marching him across the courtyard to a slow drumbeat, the oracle stripping all his medals off, etc. As low-level PCs in a strongly feudal setting, I don't think it occurred to them to tell the king to go sod himself.
By the end, a couple players were crying at the injustice of it all. They were completely caught off guard a couple weeks later when Saul showed up as an antipaladin and wreaked havoc. He'd never been a perfect fit for paladinhood, alas, and only a bloodyminded sense of duty kept him at it. Once it all fell apart a couple demons found it easy to fully turn him against the world that he felt betrayed him.
To each their own, but that would feel to me like painting without using half the colours.
No, and if I started to read a story that began to lean that way, I'd stop. I don't play escapist RPGs to feel bad.Same thing goes for movies, books, and television shows. While emotions are fine to have tweaked, I'd rather leave negative ones like sadness and rage off the table.
I totally agree. My only defense is that some colours are really, really unattractive.
By this I don't mean like "oh no my high level character is permanently dead this sucks" I mean because the story itself is so sad? Also, would you say if this happens it means the DM must be a pretty good storyteller?
Ill give you a name and that will be all you need to know of you know who it is.
Mollymauk Tealeaf
Long may he reign
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I homebrew all the campaigns that I run, and I do it in a world that I created from scratch, and I have been working on this world for nearly 10 years now. One of the players has been helping me build this world, so he's 1) highly invested, and 2) highly knowledgeable. In the very last campaign I ran, he played a Bard, and in the VERY FIRST session, he got up in the middle of a major city's agora and began telling a story called "The Exodus", as told from the point of view of the Silver Dragons who inhabit the area. The way he performed it in-character was phenomenal. I was so moved that I had goosebumps and my eyes were welling up. My eyes are getting watery right now just typing this. It was so powerful and I *&%$ing loved it...
/hats off to my buddy Gregor.
|
Carrion Crown Book 5. Our Alchemist, who lost her father and grandfather years ago, leaving her with an abusive mother, met her grandfather again. Except he'd been turned into a Nosferatu. Neither of them recognized each other, until they were face to face. "What happened 5 years ago?" was such a powerful line.
It didn't happen to me, but I know one story that may be able to make the cut, though in a heart-touching way, not the sad way: The Five Fathers
Oh yeah.
Especially in L5R.
Hardest-hitting one just sort of happened- and it's a little bit of a cheat, because it's not over yet, but... it can't end well.
The following sort of coda (assuming neither character is killed before the current campaign ends) was mostly written by the player of my character's love interest, and I subsequently edited some other stuff in, mostly dealing with my character's response to the situation at the end. Beware- florid melodrama ahead.
Hatsuki walked along behind her daughter, feeling the sun on her shoulders as she went. It was a beautiful day for sure, but as they all had since that day, it felt too bright. It made her want to slink back into the pleasantly cool shadows. They felt… welcoming. And that was… concerning. Not terrifying. She had come to know it, and it fed on that.
“Don’t run too far ahead-!” Hatsuki’s call to her daughter cut off as, for an unsettling moment, she couldn’t remember her name. What was her name? Why was she following this child? The little girl turned to look back at her curiously, wearing a smile.
His smile. The smile that warmed her heart when she saw it on her daughter and made it race when she saw him. That’s right, she was their daughter. Ayame. How could she forget something like that?
She stepped up and took Ayame’s hand gently, smiling down at her. “Let’s go find your father.” As they walked forward together, she felt a pang of guilt at calling Tanoshii that to her, as she always did. But that pang was valuable when she felt something so rarely these days.
Maybe it wasn’t too late.~
She studied her face in the mirror that night. When she was younger, she’d been well known for her beauty, something that she’d even become annoyed about everyone noticing by the time she was a young adult. Now… she was just another face in the crowd… In fact, no matter what the general appearance of the crowd was, she was just another face in it. She could have sworn, when she’d gone to the Unicorn provinces, her face had shift just slightly to look vaguely foreign.
She knew the signs by now, the darkness that had seeped into her soul. It had gone too far. She could barely remember Tanoshii these days and felt simply numb toward him. Even her precious twin had steadily become someone she felt little toward.
There was only one person she could turn to now… The only one who wasn’t becoming just another person indistinguishable from the mass of humanity for her.
She took out a piece of paper and began to compose a letter.
~
She met him at a quiet location, some distance from her home. Somewhere they wouldn’t be disturbed. Where it would take Tanoshii a long time to find where she had gone, and he would already be gone by the time her request was finished. She held the most important implement for it hidden in the back of her obi. She could feel its presence, almost painfully.
When he arrived, she had to emerge from the shadows first, the darkness almost clinging to her, her own form almost flowing out from it amorphously. For Choudai, it was easy to tell himself that it was just her natural grace, but he knew there was more to it. He had been there.
The woods where she met him weren’t so different from the ones back in Naishou province, not really.
It didn’t just bring back memories of the night she’d been hit by a bolt from that monster, though. It brought back all the memories from there. Choudai. She could still see his face in her mind even when he wasn’t there, smell his cooking, remember their rare moments of happiness together where it felt like they could have just run away and lived a quiet life running a little restaurant in some place where no one would know them…
She could see his face clearly in the real world now, and it was a relief that, for all that she had grown cold and numb, he could still make her heart flutter and race. She rushed into his arms and held him tight for a moment, taking him by surprise. As his arms wrapped around and held her in return, he felt something hard at her back. “Hatsuki-chan… what…?”
She stepped back and took a deep breath after a moment, composing herself and bowing to him. “Choudai-kun… I have something to ask of you.”
His stomach felt like it clenched a little bit. This meeting was too mysterious… whatever she called him for, it was no light matter. But the answer to whatever she asked, especially if it was important, had always been simple, “For you, anything.”
“… A few days ago, I forgot Ayame. I didn’t know who she was, or why she was with me,” she said. He could see her jaw clench as she tried to control her tears. “I’m fading away, my love.”
He knew. He had become more aware of what it meant over time, but he’d always blamed himself for her getting hurt, back when they had confronted the shadow creature. Now that guilt went deeper. If he had done something… anything different, she would be vibrant and sharp-tongued as always, not barely there and in tears as she had to watch herself slowly sink into oblivion. There was a deep pain in him as he sensed the conclusion of where they were going here.
“I don’t want to forget you… I don’t want to forget our daughter. There are so many things I’m already forgetting… It’s hard to hold on even to myself...” She clenched her fists and then reached behind her back, pulling out a cloth-wrapped knife, handing it over to him. He hesitantly accepted and unwrapped it, the light hitting and sparkling off the edges of a crystal blade. “Choudai-kun… I can’t ask this from anyone else. I need… I need you to kill me before I lose everything.” She couldn’t help the tears that fell now, that seemed to evaporate into shadow before they hit the ground. “I… want to protect my next life… so I can be with you again…”
He couldn’t speak, closing his eyes against his own tears that threatened. He felt like he’d messed up a lot of things. But this, her sincere request, wouldn’t be one of them. He steeled himself, leaning his head forward to press his forehead against hers, his arm coming up behind her to brace her... and forced his arm to extend before he could really feel it or think about what he was doing, before he could stop himself.
There was no pause as the blade descended into her kimono and slipped between her ribs. The blade entered her heart and broke his The stab was disturbingly clean, and life began to fade from her eyes almost immediately. Still, she smiled, gripping his shoulders with fading strength. She could feel him, feel her lover for him. “Thank-...” Her last word was cut off as life faded entirely from her body and it slipped to the ground.
He knew there was no point in easing her fall logically, but did so anyway, her body as solid in his arms as it had ever been, the soft smile she wore in death on a face as beautiful as when he’d first met her.
It wasn’t too late.
Not this time.
The part of him that would always be in the Painted City wanted to lie down and die beside her. Use the knife on himself, or his wakizashi. The part of him that would always be in Naishou wanted to set fire to the forest down around them both, burning all of the shadows away. The part of him that would always mourn her wanted to leave his mask- the one she had designed for him- with her.
The part of him that would always love her stopped him from doing either.Ayame had lost her mother, and wouldn’t understand why.
He couldn’t afford stupid romantic gestures when he faced that reality. Their daughter would need him.
Despite the tears flowing down his face, Bayushi Choudai’s voice was calm and steady.“Until our next life, Hatsuki-chan.”
He left no trail as he took his leave, and he didn’t look back.
I just saw episode 15 of Dimension 20: Fantasy High. If you aren't familiar, some cast members from Collegehumor play a game of 5e set in a modern world with fantasy elements. While it isn't a game i'm playing, I find that i'm fully invested in the game as if I were.
One of the best parts is how the PCs interact with various adult NPCs in the world (they are high school students), especially their parents.
It's an excellent show. I highly recommend it!
I know this is kind of an old thread but the whole concept of the attic whisperer makes me want to cry: an abused kid who dies and is unable to pass on to the afterlife and is crying all the time. Seriously, who WOULDN't find that sad? I don't even get why they are evil. Yes, they can steal people's voices but that's mainly just because they are searching for help.