Daniel Thrace |
As the subject explains, post some moments in a game you have had as a GM or even as a player that got a strong reaction afterwards, especially if you were surprised how much it was enjoyed.
I'll begin with a recent Pathfinder game I gm'd for some friends. Anything on PRD is available to play so everyone jumps into the Advanced Race Guide for PC's. The character was a Grippli Bogborn Alchemist (small froggy creature). Anyway, his primary diet was bugs and insects. The party was traveling towards their next adventure hook. I had a couple "random" encounters prepped and was looking for a good place to spring them. I have the group stop for lunch and as he often does the Grippli went foraging for bugs. He does well and sees a nice rotting stump. As he investigates closer two giant centipedes pop out. Combat went well, the centipedes were killed, mostly eaten by him and the pack lizard. The mission continues. Afterwards we were discussing the game and the player surprised me by saying how awesome the centipede fight was.
Stuff like that makes me love games like this.
DungeonmasterCal |
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I ran a 10 year long 2e campaign that ended in 2000. One of the major characters was my friend Tam's ranger, Diana. Her backstory included leaving her homeland to escape her abusive lover, another ranger.
At one point I ran a couple of adventures where he showed up and joined the party. The roleplaying was awesome between her and "him". But soon he showed his true colors and turned on her again, so she told him to leave under threat of death.
A year and a half later (in real time) I'd run a few adventures that made them think he was somewhere still around. Sure enough he was, as he showed up in the nick of time to save Diana and the rest of the group from a pack of ghouls. He sacrificed his life so they could escape.
6 more real time months go by, with lots of gaming. At the end of a particularly harrowing adventure, they faced off against a wight, who they discovered was her former lover. He told her he that, "I swore I would love you until I die, and I have!" He attacked, and after a really good combat segment, she killed him for good. Tam, the ranger's player, actually broke down and cried because she was imagining the emotional agony Diana would be going through after it was all over.
Yeah. Pretty proud of that one.
Aaron Bitman |
You know, some of the most awesome moments I've seen involved players choosing an ALTERNATIVE to combat.
Back in the 1980s, during the first truly successful campaign I ever ran, in BECMI, I wrote an adventure right after the cleric, during promotion, picked up a "Speak With Animal" spell. The party investigated mysterious killings in a castle, found a hidden network of tunnels accessed by secret doors, and tracked down the monster that had killed people in the castle. The party could have chosen to fight and kill the monster, and the adventure would have proceeded just fine. Instead, however, the cleric did what I had hoped he would do by using the "Speak With Animal" spell to talk to the monster, finding out that the monster was just an animal, forced to kill by the REAL main villain of the adventure, who starved the animal to keep it killing. The party brought the animal out to the main part of the castle, and upon seeing the kitchens, the animal charged into the food, sending the pots flying and the cooks running and screaming.
Much later, the player mentioned that as a favorite moment.
In the 1990s, I ran a 2e campaign consisting mostly of adventures from "Dungeon" magazine, including "Old Man Katan and the Incredible, Edible, Dancing Mushroom Band". Years and years after the campaign was over, the player told me he had forgotten just about everything about that campaign, except for one thing:
And then there was this story. I got compliments for that one, during AND after the session.
Te'Shen |
I might be violating the spirit of this, since I was the player, but I was part of a Vampire the Masquerade game that included rotating storytellers. It was around 2000... that's all I'm certain of at this point. I played a 14th generation clanless vampire, which is somewhat disadvantaged.
A year down the road in real time and a couple of years down the road in game time, hunters turned their attention on one of the more powerful members of Nathaniel's coterie/seethe who had been somewhat reckless. Most of the coterie's truly dirty dealings had been kept from Nathaniel so he had an inkling, but no real knowledge, of how bad the guys he ran with were.
Then the spiral begins. First, Nate looses his servant/wife to another coterie member. He gave her some of his blood, and compared to Nate's weaker blood, it was just a better heroin. Then Nathaniel gets drawn into the fight when hunters kidnapped Naomi and left a (purposeful) trail of clues that eventually lead the vampires into an ambush at a church. Nathaniel and one other vampire, a snake oil salesman with a politician's smile, went. There were six apparent hunters, and the man who spoke for them taunted Nathaniel and tossed Naomi's blooded undergarments at him.
Nate lost it. He flew into a rage, cutting down hunters with his silver broadsword. The leader retreated to the second floor, where Nate caught up to him. The hunter just smiled a sickening smile while Nate cried, "You killed a child... A CHILD! May God forgive you, because I cannot." With one swift stroke Nathaniel separated the man's head from his shoulders. He went to the crucifix at the front of the church, dropped to his knees and began to pray for his lost daughter.
Then the other shoe dropped. A side door opened. "See what kind of monsters they are. Isn't it just as I've said." In walk Naomi and yet another hunter. Nate tries to tell her that these were wicked men, but Naomi says that she watched the whole thing on the closed circuit cameras, that the way it looked we were the aggressors. The other vamp who'd been trying to lurk in the background tried to jump the new hunter and Naomi manages to burn him with a cross (which in the setting takes something special). He then turns on her which immediately cause Nate to interpose himself between Naomi and his companion and threaten his companion. There's a brief, sad discussion between Nathaniel and Naomi. Then the monsters need to take flight as law enforcement shows up. It was all part of the trap.
We realized later, the hunters had planned for multiple outcomes. The first group of hunters were all HIV/AIDS carriers who volunteered for a suicide mission. We didn't have a chance to clean up the site because of the prompt arrival of law enforcement. The closed circuit camera tape showed us moving inhumanly fast, flashing fangs, and being not dead after running into a hail of gunfire. The tape was promptly handed over to the police by the hunters in an attempt to reveal vampires to the world. And, they had a potential new hunter with spiritual ability.
The characters countered this, somewhat, by the burned vampire using magic (obfuscate discipline) to invisibly steal the tape, and another used some mind control (dominate discipline) and contacts on the force to alter reports just enough.
So in the end, it was pretty tragic for the character. He lost his wife, his daughter, and gave up on his coterie. It may have been a bit cliche and melodramatic, but at the time, I really enjoyed the game. The storyteller's pacing and delivery were perfect to build suspense and frustration. I haven't felt so into a character in a long time.
MagusJanus |
I ran an adventure where the PCs were fighting their way through a flying castle as it plummeted from orbit. They spent all of their time fighting from the ceiling because the motion of the castle was too fast for gravity to work properly. They managed to get to the end and restore the link to the Plane of Air.
They described that as pretty awesome, especially since they had to avoid windows and such due towards the end since the building was burning up on reentry.
Haladir |
I got a compliment from one player walking out the door on Monday night. It was a mostly non-combat session, where the PCs were mainly investigating and negotiating. Anyway, the players met with a crime lord to barter for information. After a so-so Diplomacy check, the crime lord said that he'd trade... if one of the PCs could beat the current champion of his knivesies ring.
So, a game of knivesies happens, and it was BRUTAL... and a whole lot of fun! The PC barbarian won, and afterward, he and the loser clinked their flasks of potions of cure moderate wounds and went out drinking.
As he was walking out the door to his car, the player told me that it was the most fun one-on-one combat he'd ever played!
Deadalready |
I'm really big on bringing pathfinder outside of d20 rolls and to that end I often aim for real world puzzles to solve, letters that need to be decrypted, mini games taken from my other board games, quizzes, puzzles and the like.
One scenario I had them investigating the hideout of a eccentric steampunk wizard.
Through notes throughout his workshops they worked out he loved word games and they eventually made their way to his inner sanctum with a giant vault door embossed with all 26 letters of the alphabet. As they touched the door the letters of the alphabet would systematically light up briefly before moving to the next letter. A second after reaching the letter Z the person who touched the door would take a few d6 of lightning damage.
It took multiple goes but the players eventually worked out they needed to speak out a word starting with the lit letter to unlock the door and had to have a word ready for every letter of the alphabet. It was pretty funny to see them fumble their words at the last few letters.
They told me they really enjoyed that game.
~
Another session they had just defeated the big boss and gotten nearly no treasure the entire dungeon for their efforts. Luckily around the boss's neck was a key that they fit into an appropriate pedestal. After much whirring and clanking, the sides of the room opened up revealing all manner of treasures. I had prepared a board with post it notes stuck to it and on each note was something like "pink boots, wood staff, rainbow cloak, black stone, rope belt and so on".
I told them to roll initiative because the boss's body was now starting to leak poisonous gas and they had to pick their own rewards off the board in their initiative order. Once everyone grabbed one item I rolled a d4 and unless they could make the difficult fort save, took immediate constitution damage.
Thus began a frightening game of greed vs safety, the players quickly realised that I was adding another d4 every round and having 3d4 of con damage was enough to scare the last person off.
After they had escaped to safety, I had the players roll percentile dice and revealed what they had collected by using the Ultimate Equipment guide, for example the "rainbow cloak" rolled a 23 and became a +1 resistance cloak.
The loot was a bit hit and miss but the players really enjoyed the process of something different.