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What works? What rocks? What has made your 3.5/Pathfinder RPG/d20/OGL game session(s)awesome? Share by listing your tips, techniques, actions, experiences, etc. [This thread obviously insprired by the "things that suck" thread, but in reverse to compliment or help others.]
Take this opportunity to share good ideas that other gamers might have in common, or could learn from to help make their game session great!
Playing the Curse of the Crimson throne adventure path, and the player's actually care about the story, the npc's and the game world.
I made a Knight/Warblade for a new campaign I play in. The first session we were up against the Bbeg of the session and I needed an 18 to hit, I hit three times in a row rolling max damage two times killing the bad guy.
The longest campaign I played in I played a paladin from level 1 up to level 23, and it ended in my character defeating a demi-god in single combat, he was at -8 HP at the end of the combat (still standing thanks to the diehard feat.)
Killing a dragon in one round using a harm and a quickened magic missile spell.
When the egocentric CN bard one of my player's played sacrificed himself to save the group from a white dragon. The dragon had snatched him and he new he would be dead in one round so he used his wand of fireballs and blew himself and the dragon to smithereens rolling near maximum damage. One of the best scenes of redemption I have seen in a game session.
The climax of one of my long running campaigns when the pc's ended up having to kill the king they had served for 15 levels and four years of real game time. The campaign ended with the once good king corrupted by a demon. The pc's had to kill the king to save the kingdom. The look on the player's faces when they realized the real villain was the king they had loved and trusted for years was heartbreaking.
The on going love story between the npc bard and the pc cleric of my epic campaign. The cleric constantly choosing faith and duty to his god above love. Some really deep rp moments here.
The on going love story between a dryad and one of my pc's in the same epic Campaign, they even had a child.
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Rolling my first 20-20-20 in over 7 years of gaming! I always DM, and finally after dozens or 20-20-19 or 20-20-18, I rolled that elusive triple 20!
Sad part is that it was the guys brand new character and he ALWAYS dies.
What else has made my year of gaming is so awesome? My girlfriend loves that I get to hang out with the guys, and that I have fun. I think it might be because I play hockey with the one guy:P Also we have all begun to play Pathfinder and I got 2 people into gaming with our group after their usual DM just up and left.
This year looks bright as I am just entering into running the 3rd module(The Armageddon Echo) and next Wednesday I am beginning The Legacy of Fire AP with a second group! Should be great!
Thanks Paizo for all these great times and products!
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>I really enjoy it when the DM makes bbq chicken wings, serves coffee, or offers snacks like pop corn.
>I really enjoy nights when there is no "end time" that is preset. The occasional Saturday-night-until-whenever game appeals much more to me than the weekly 6-10pm that I run.
>I really enjoy when the players at the table know how to drive the story forward through roleplay. Especially when it is all in extended character roleplay dialogue.
>I really enjoy moments when players get so in-character that they have side-bar roleplaying interactions with other players. Sometimes, players will ask for a break just to chat on the back porch in-character with another PC/player. Truly fun.
>I like when the game master impresses me with good portreyal of NPCs. And, as you might imagine, I really enjoy games where we, as players, feel completely "free to move about the cabin" in terms of where the party chooses to take the adventure.
... more to come...
I like it that my players have made their own forum, where they discuss the events in the game. I especially love it when they share their paranoid ideas about the plot, and when they think up outrageous schemes of solving the problems in the adventure or of adding new intrigue to the game.
I like it that 3 of my players have been my players since 1988.
I like it that I started my campaign world long ago with 3 countries and a small map, and now have a large world-size map with a lot of countries, cities, characters and history. I also like it that my players recognize these countries, places and characters and storylines, and that the campaign world still keeps growing.
Fighting the half-white dragon frost giant jarl and his four berserker bodyguards, we downed the jarl due to a smite evil from the paladin but were on the ropes battling the bodyguards. The paladin had gone down to -9 due to a crit from a rather large greataxe but been quickly healed by the halfling shadowdancer to positive hp before restoring his own hp via lay on hands. The archer took a crit from a charging bodyguard and was hurt when I finally got to unload a firestorm and rolled an average of 5 pts per die before vulnerability, cooking 3 of the berserkers in their tracks. The last frost giant fell quickly afterward. Definitely felt we'd been through a major fight, and I was happy to have claimed a few souls that night!
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First time ever -- in nearly 30 years of gaming -- using Rope Trick in the following manner: We had a "prisoner" who would have loved to escape so we levitated him up about 100 feet, and put him in the rope trick. He was safe from the battle we were about to fight and he couldn't escape; well, he could, but not w/out taking 10d6 landing damage.
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Using Dagon's picture in the FCI to illustrate to the Players what an Aboleth looks like ("Here, guys, lemme show you a picture of what comes out of the water...")
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An albino Treant
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Playing a gestalt Warlock/Paladin Hellbred (I almost never get to play a PC and I've been infatuated with this character concept since FCII arrived from preorder)
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Orchestrating an Underdark war of five armies: drow, illithid, PCs, duergar, undead myconids & derro
-W. E. Ray
This is from a while back in the campaign. Well, most of my players are HUGE fans of Firefly. In the course of their quest to find 3 magic keys, they went to a town called Beestone that was famous for their beeswax candles, honey, and mead. It was ruled by an evil aristocrat called the High Chandler, and his guards were gulgars mounted on yrthaks. One of the PCs is named Max, and he gave me permission to add a little bit to his backstory. So the PCs go to the local tavern to hear what's what, and there's a bard on stage and he begins to sing the Ballad of Max!!!
Max....the man they call Max!
He robbed from the rich and he gave to the poor
Stood up to the man and gave him what for
And you'll love this man when you know all the facts
The Hero of Beestone, the man they call Max!
Our Max saw the waxxers backs breaking
Saw the waxxers were droppers
And he saw the High Chandler taking
Every silver and leaving 2 coppers
He said "You can't do this to my people
You can't crush them under your heel."
Max strapped on his hat
and in 10 seconds flat
Stole everything there was fit to steal.
He robbed from the rich and he gave to the poor
Stood up to the man and gave him what for
And you'll love this man when you know all the facts
The Hero of Beestone, the man they call Max!
And here's what separates heroes
From common folk like you and I
The man they call Max
Turned round his Yrthaks
And let that money hit sky
He dropped it on our houses
He dropped it in our yards
The man they call Max
Dropped coins by the stacks
And headed out for the stars
He robbed from the rich and he gave to the poor
Stood up to the man and gave him what for
And you'll love this man when you know all the facts
The Hero of Beestone, the man they call Max!
The town also sold beeswax candles shaped like Max. It was a funny episode of the campaign.
I think one of the high points so far in 2009 gaming was in Kruelaid's Z-Day PbP where my character decided to toss a lit propane tank (think giant molotov) at some zombies following the bus the characters were speeding away in. Of course, the momentum of the tank meant that it kept up with the bus, and we were about to hit a group of stalled cars in the road, which meant it would end up right back in the bus, lit and all. My character leapt out of the back of the bus, grabbed the propane tank, set it down after gaining a bit of road rash, and hobbled off while the others crashed and then escaped to our boat. Definately a memorable scene!
The funnest thing we experienced in my group was a while back. We were running through Red Hand of Doom (I was DM'ng and PC'ing). While fighting the last boss there (dont know how to do the spoiler alert thing), we were looking at a complete TPK. The ranger was low on hp and his wolf dead, the Pally was unconcious, and the barbarian was in rage and low on HP (in a couple rounds he would have come out of rage and fell unconcious). Then, on the barbarians turn, he says fuggit, then does a power attack, and crits with a greataxe. Then rolls 12, 11, 12 for damage. So, yeah, no TPK.
I was running a small group (a Valenar Elf Ranger, Human Exotic Weapon Master, and myself as a Kalashtar Psion) through Whispers of the Vampire's Blade in Eberron.
***************************SPOILER ALERT*******************************
Anyone who has played that module before probably realizes how infuriating it can be chasing Lucan and Grilsha, because they ALWAYS seem to have a means of escape. They got away when the party caught up to their coach, disappeared in the confusion after the masked ball in Zilargo erupted into violence, slipped away on a stolen skiff while the party was fighting off sky raiders on an airship, and even ran off in the midst of a battle with warforged on the lightning rail. By the time the party got to the the final showdown in the hobgoblin ziggurat their nerves were shot and they were fed up. They were determined not to let Lucan get away again, at ANY cost.
So they fight their way up to the top room of the ziggurat, and there stands Lucan. A short monologue later, and Lucan attacks the party viciously. Grilsha, who has been up to this point invisible, blasts the party with her scroll of fireball...deadly in a small room like that. My Psion, on low hp, fries Grilsha with an Energy Ray, and the Exotic Weapon Master and Ranger smack Lucan down to negative hp. He immediately reverts to gaseous form and starts drifting towards the back of the throne he was previously seated on. Behind the throne is a large metal grate covering a hole in the floor...and Lucan drifts down the hole.
Screaming obscenities, the party attempts to tear the grate cover off of the floor...and with amazing rolls, succeed. They snag a grappling hook on the leg of the heavy throne, and the Ranger leaps down the hole. He gets to the end of the 50ft. rope, and in pitch blackness I tell him he feels no bottom.
Him: "O.K., I let go."
Me (eyes widening): "You let go?"
Him: "He's not getting away AGAIN!!!"
The hole was approximately a 400 or 500ft. drop (don't have it in front of me), all the way through the ziggurat to the bottom-most rooms.
I tell the player this, and his face falls. We have never had a PC actually DIE in a campaign before (at least not without being almost immediately resurrected), so we were kind of stunned. At fifth level, there was no way we were going to be able to get him brought back to life.
We prepare to get on with things and continue man-down, but then the player pipes up..."Hey, I have a potion of feather fall!".
Drinking a potion is a full round action, which means six seconds. Here we are moments later on the internet, trying to calculate the terminal velocity of a falling Valenar Elf, to see if he has time to drink the potion before he splats.
The verdict? He has JUST, and I mean JUST, UNDER six seconds. Like three hundredths of a second, or something else as ridiculously low. So I let him burn an action point, and he slows to a crawl JUST in time!
'Course when he landed he had to fight the otyugh all by himself, but that's another story!
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I had some really fun times recently during...
>Last sessions use of Tinkered Tactics' Combat Tiers Family Pack for aerial combat and attacking the PCs with Hellwasp minis whos statistics were converted to v.3.5. It was an awesome battle with droning buzzing, flinging darkness spells, slinging magic and stinging save vs. poison throws that caused mayhem!
>The other campaign I play in where I am a player with a 13th level Priest who began as evil but was converted to good, but still loves the female assassin in the party. Woah - that story is wicked cool as he is taking on the nasty arm of the church in which, for many years, he acted as a inquisitor/justicar/exterminator of the "faithless" The excitement is the feel of leading reform of mighty institutions.... a lot of fun.
>My recent experience GMing OSRIC 2.0 for a group of seasoned players. They had so much fun - and so did I. It was fun and liberating playing first edition again. I loved rolling the d6 for initiative and the fast pace of the game. It wasn't as much a trip down memory lane (although it was) as watching the core essential DNA of DND be played out with simple sophistication (if you'll accept this dichotomy!?).
One of my all time favorite events happened in a Scarred Lands setting we played in years ago. We wound up in an ancient sealed off tower and came across a particularly powerful succubus. One by one she dominated the party, and the players all role played under her control accordingly, which made things kinda creepy for those of us unturned. It was getting down to the wire. My rogue ambushed her from a hidden spot and landed a powerful sneak, but not powerful enough, as she had our party brute chop me down. Finally, the last player standing was the jovial bard, who rarely took to armed combat. He ran up on the succubus and landed a CRIT! He ended up rolling just over what we needed to drop her and saved the day! It was the first time we all jumped up and cheered at the gaming table. We still talk about it to this day.