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I actualy have two.
One was seven years ago, when at a now closed FLGS two guys and i decided to spend the entire weekend running games for whoever wanted to play. I ended up running 6 one-shots and not sleeping much. But when seven of those guys showed up several months later with a few drinks and chocolate candy and thanking us all, and that because we showed them this amazing new worlds they are now friends and game regularly with at least 20 more people. The three of us swelled with pride. The chocolate never tasted that sweet again.
The other time was when we got into a huge discussion about d20 modern. Again at the same FLSG. A friend and i were pro modern, and were trying to explain all others that the system was awesome for what it was made to do. Of course, others disagreed. Quite vehemently. So a friend whipped out his copies of d20 modern and d20 future and asked me to gm them right then and there. So i did. I ran that session more then eight hours until all my ideas were exhausted, and, also the store had to close. So, next thing you know, three guys (the unbelievers) approach me and say this "Thanks man, you showed us that modern could be awesome."
Two of the proudest moments of my gaming life.
Let's hear some of yours.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I ran a high-level PFS scenario, and two PCs died from curses on the way home. The next day, I was informed by my local Venture Captain that the deaths were being contested. After much discussion and even getting commentary from James Jacobs, I ruled that the (badly-written) curse didn't work the way it seemed to at the time, and I reversed the deaths.
The proud part is that the entire process stayed civil, with no flame wars or (to my knowledge) hurt feelings, and the resolution was (again, to my knowledge) satisfactory to everyone.
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My PCs remember all of the names of the important NPCs in my Sunday game.
Every one of them.
: )
My buddy and I ran a head-to-head dungeon at GenCon years ago on behalf of Bard Games. Two parties of 10 players each descended on opposite ends of a dungeon- one bent on destroying an artifact and the other side committed to bringing it back for study. Once the two parties arrived in the central chamber, a huge PvP-fest ensued... everyone involved had a great time (or so they told me)... it was a monster to GM, but such a cool unique experience. It was for the Talislanta system. Having 20 players bunched around a huge table made it hard to run, but they managed to wheedle the ranks down fast enough to make it manageable. ;-)
Two things come to mind- I'll try to keep them short since I know I can ramble on and on for hours.
1. I was hired by a friend-of-a-friend to help run a D&D game for local kids at a library by my house. It was some sort of a hobby day or something, and a bunch of kids had signed up to come learn how to play D&D. It was supposed to be me and two other guys with like a dozen or so kids, so we'd each get a good-sized party. I was super nervous and I was looking for ways to speed up play (since we'd likely only have a couple hours) so I went and made a dozen characters- at least one of each 3.5 PHB character class, so that the kids wouldn't have to slog through all of the character options and they could just get right down to playing. Well, I showed up at the library- but neither of the other DMs did. It was just me and twelve kids. (I had never run a game of more than four, and never with more than one new person.)
But I took a deep breath, pulled out every single character sheet, handed them out (I had the perfect number) and rolled with it. The scenario I had planned went out the window (nothing I prepared for accounted for that many players) and it pretty much was only a three-round combat, but I gave each player a moment to shine and tried my best to give cool descriptions to everything they did. By the end of the session, every kid was having a blast. So much so that the following year, twice as many kids had signed up! (Luckily, I was the one put in charge of getting other people to help, so my buddies were more than happy to show up.)
And, to add icing to the cake, the other two guys' money went to me instead. :-)
2. This is the one I could ramble on about for hours.
Tl;dr version- I ran the Age of Worms campaign and it was awesome.
Longer version- I ran my first entire campaign, from 1st to 20th level, all with the same group of 3 players. That alone is a significant feat. But not just that, I expanded on the modules at every opportunity- I added in extra class features, custom magic items, collectibles, additional costumes (essentially), and tied the entire thing together in a huge bow at the end. It's certainly my crowning achievement as a DM, and is the campaign I'm the most proud of by far.
My favorite moment: There's a part in the campaign where the players can each be given a custom magic item by a very powerful mage, tailored to be something that would be useful to the character. I spent the entire campaign up until that point preparing for that session- all of us had been gaming for years by then, with various groups, and each of us had cool characters and cool magic items we had used in previous campaigns. So, going behind each player's back, I did some research and found each player's favorite magic item they've ever wielded. Then, I made a 3.5 version of each of their favorite items, tailored it to fit their current character, and found a way to fit it into the campaign world seamlessly. The best part- nobody knew what I was doing, so when the big reveal came, every player at the table was completely speechless. If I had to choose one session that I feel the most proud of, that would be it.
The fact I ran a game... I'm new to GMing. PFS I mean, I'm curious as to whether I should try and make a campaign...
one of my first experiences as a GM was when a group running in a game store was getting too big to run as one solid group.. GM was a friend of mine and we hung out alot so during the week between games he briefed me on things, had me sideline my character with off screen work and take over running half the party on a new split objective.
A few weeks later the group came back together for what amounts to an endgame scenario and since I already know whats coming I kinda just have to play dumb and fight along. We win the fight with a couple casualties out of the 14 or so players at the table, about what I'd expected, and then the doublecross happens. The "wizard" who had hired us and even helped us at times reveals that he's really a black dragon. Not only that, we've just helped him gain unspeakable power, and we who survived will be rewarded by becoming his leutenants in the new order. At this point the DM asks us all for our character sheets or at least copies of pertinant info. I was proud as hell that I'd kept the secret well enough while still dropping hints during the adventuring, and didn't meta game at all during the last fight. When it ended I was just happy that my powerful as hell character had gotten himself killed rather than become an objective for the next campaign
Asta
PSY
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I love Cthulhu gaming. All my best moments as a GM come from either Call of Cthulhu, or Trail of Cthulhu.
This is one of my best moments as a keeper.
While running the epically good 'The Dying of St Margaret's' one of the PCs when insane. The investigators where about to descend into a cave system and encounter the climatic revelation of the investigation. I asked them to step outside and we took a moment to decide the effects of her insanity. After some ideas from my players that didn't really work, I realised what I should do. "okay guys, the adventure to this point has not actually taken place on a remote scottish island but in the heart of London, you are about to descend into the tube system and will be heading off into the tunnels. However, I will initially be describing it as though your in Scotland. Improve around your surrounding, the beach is the pavement, the seat a busy road, there are people about ect."
With that we called back in the player of the insane investigator and went on with play. I describe how the PCs walk on down the beach towards the cave. Just as their about to head down into 'the cave' I describe a crowd of men in business suits walking up out of bowels of the earth, with a blast of hot air. The player completely flips out, she has no idea what is going, and the other dead pan it perfectly. As they descend, more and more elements of London, such as the tiled walls of the tube station and the concrete floor of the station platform all sneak into the description. The players keep deadpan, they think well, and improvise around stuff like waiting for the next train to pass before heading into the tunnel.
When the train appears, it is a huge metal worm with mouths in its side, which vomits forth hundreds of men and woman in suits. After the train is gone, the investigators head of into the tunnels to face the source of all their troubles, and decide on how exactly it is that they fail to stop it, and their is little more to play on with regards to the insanity.
The player of the insane investigator was actually rather scared an confused by the end of the adventure, not really understanding what had happened to her. once we explained she had a good laugh about it, but I feel relatively confident in saying that I genuinely frightened that player.
My proudest moment as a DM, has to be the time I had a player jump up from the table and throw his hands in the air in frustration(and some good-natured profanities) when I revealed that the reoccurring villain that had been tormenting his PC for the duration of the campaign, was actually his PC's half-sibling(think Will Scarlet to his Robin Hood as in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). Completely unintentional story rip-off, I hadn't seen Robin Hood in well over a decade at that point.
The PC was a swashbuckling crime-fighter, wielding her father's heirloom rapier against evil-doers. The villain was a high ranking criminal officer of a powerful crime syndicate, that was plaguing the land. On multiple occasions this criminal exploited the PC's weaknesses, but never outright killing him. Lying cheating stealing, and everything in between to set up the PC for failure and embarrassment, all the while trying to steal away that precious heirloom weapon to no avail...
In a climactic battle, the PC finally got a fair fight against this villain, who had been a thorn in her side for nearly a year's time(real time). As the PC stood over the defeated villain, ready to land the killing blow, she asked why on earth this villain tormented her so much.
The villains answer? She wanted the rapier the PC carried, since it was the only thing she remembers her(the villain's) father by... The PC then realized they had the same father. Due to the PC's stoic, good nature, she could not bring herself to kill the villain.
That's the only time I ever took "YOU BASTARD!" from a player as a compliment.
The other time was when we got into a huge discussion about d20 modern. Again at the same FLSG. A friend and i were pro modern, and were trying to explain all others that the system was awesome for what it was made to do. Of course, others disagreed. Quite vehemently. So a friend whipped out his copies of d20 modern and d20 future and asked me to gm them right then and there. So i did. I ran that session more then eight hours until all my ideas were exhausted, and, also the store had to close. So, next thing you know, three guys (the unbelievers) approach me and say this "Thanks man, you showed us that modern could be awesome."
I had once decided that I hated 3.X... until someone sold it to me by playing it with me for a long time. Now I like it so much, I could never go back to 2e. Even when I play Basic D&D with my kids, I keep saying "In 3rd edition, we could do this so much better!" That's kind of like your story. I often wished that I could like GURPS, because I love what it is in theory, although I hate all the details. I'll bet that if I had met the right people, they could have sold me GURPS in the same way.
My proudest moment as a GM? It's hard to say. Maybe it was the time I told the player that the party would meet the next party member, but the player had no idea who it was, despite the hints that I inadvertently dropped. I told that story here.
Or maybe it was the time the player, normally pragmatic and disliking when roleplaying got in the way of doing the job in the adventure, actually trusted an evil dragon rather than the paladin party member, despite the clear messages as to who was trustworthy and who wasn't. Link.
Or maybe it was when I taught my 4-year-old son to play D&D. Not a simplified version of it, but the actual, complete, D&D Basic rules. I wrote several posts on it in this thread I also wrote about it in this post and this post. Since then, he's played through an abbreviated version of _Horror_on_the_Hill_, completed _Palace_of_the_Silver_Princess_, and started on _The_Lost_City_.
My proudest moment will be closing out a 4-year weekly Rise of the Runelords campaign. It is the longest consistently-played campaign of anyone I know. I never met a side-quest or tangent I didn't like.
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Your proudest moment is closing a long-running campaign?
Hundreds of thousands of campaigns start, and then peter out when folks lose interest.
Only the proud few make it to a predestined conclusion.
A lot my games don't finish as well. Although it is discouraging to prepare for a game and then have it die out.
Hundreds of thousands of campaigns start, and then peter out when folks lose interest.
Only the proud few make it to a predestined conclusion.
+1. (Actually, ulgulanoth's post was a "+1" so I guess I should say "+2".)
I have yet to run anything longer than a 64-page module in its entirety. The only campaigns I've successfully run are hodgepodges of different adventures. If I could even run even a 128-page module / trilogy of modules in its entirety, I'd be proud as heck. An entire AP? I'm sure there are hundreds of people on these sites who can claim to have finished a half dozen APs, but for some of us, it's a great accomplishment.
Tough one. I have a few candidates.
1.) The second campaign I ever ran was called Thanatos, and was essentially Chrono Trigger crossed with Lovecraft - time travel and unnatural horror. The first session the players got stuck between cities after dark, when the Thanatos and their Nyxspawn kin came out. According to the compliments I got from my players the mood was extremely evocative and perfect for the horror setting I was going for.
2.) Much later in Thanatos, the party was going up against an ancient imperial Zarusian capital of Dantalion (my very-altered Kingdom of Zeal) with intent to take out its rulership. They had already traversed the lands to build allies to aid in the assault and forged an alliance between the non-imperial humans, elves, orcs, and dwarves in the area. The battle force was to hit the imperium head-on while the strike force - the four PCs, the DMNPC Healer, the still-mortal Saint Cuthbert, and Dahlver-Nar the Binder - broke into the city and went after the rulers.
What followed was the most involved session of awesome moments one after another. The party moved and acted in immense cohesion, the battles were engaging and everyone was enthusiastic and engrossed. Each of the players got a moment of pure awesome: the Dwarven Crusader got his one-on-one duel with the Zarusian Queen, the Warlock got to face-blast an Inquisitor Erinyes of Gargauth who had spent much of the early part of the campaign turning him evil (and been time-hopping along much like they had, causing trouble all over the timeline), the Swordsage managed an epic throwdown in the battle against the Pyroclastic Dragon who was the true force behind the throne, and the Psion got to break the city by shattering all the soul-reservoirs around the city (from whence the elite of Dantalion were drawing their Incarnum) all at once. And at the end of this, the party still ended up debating amongst themselves about whether or not to save Dahlver-Nar from getting dragged into the Void along with the Dantalion soul-flood (and closing the gaping hole in reality it created) and change the past as a result. I've never since managed to get players that involved both individually and as a whole, nor so attached to a specific NPC that they'd be willing to throw themselves into the vestige-strewn nothingness and rearrange the future to an unknown degree just to save him.
3.) Savage Tide. Big D's Temple in the mist. I managed to equally terrify and nauseate my party with some of Olangru's antics. It was a sheer rampage of demonic DM glee.
I'm challenging myself to complete an adventure path I am running, just to say I finally ended a campaign. My interest waned a long time ago, but we're so close to the end, I need the closure, lol.
I had a 2 year long Star Wars campaign end right before the LAST session. The players literally left off right outside the big bad Sith Lord's chamber door, one single encounter left, and we haven't got back to it. Still hurts even to this day.
I'm not normally a dm, so my moment isn't as skill based as the other players.
However I ran the Sunless Citadel for a group of novices. I roleplayed Meepo, complete with voice. They loved it and still talk about Meepo to this day.
I just thought of another proud moment I had as a DM. I was running "Rudwilla's Stew" by the great Chris Perkins, in "Dungeon" magazine issue 45. It's been a decade or two since I ran it, so my memory of the details is fuzzy, but it went something like this...
In the adventure, a noble (I think it was a duke) sent the PCs to gather ingredients for a stew which was delivered to a tribe of bugbears annually as part of a peace agreement. When the PCs delivered the ingredients to the house of Rudwilla, who was to cook the stew, they found...
The question surprised me. Up until then, I had been working under the assumption that the enemy simply had some old grudge against Rudwilla, and that the encounter had nothing to do with the bugbears at all. But suddenly, the muse of DMs must have paid me a visit, because normally I'm TERRIBLE at improvising. I had the enemy say "The duke is a good man, but he's making a terrible mistake in keeping this treaty! He doesn't know the bugbears like I do. They're bloodthirsty savages, and they multiply like rabbits. Years from now, when they're stronger and more numerous than we are, do you really think that they'll honor any agreement?!? This Duchy MUST strike the bugbears NOW! It may already be too late!"
This speech deeply impressed the player, and then, when the party delivered the stew to the bugbears, those monsters looked a lot scarier than they otherwise would have. And because the reasons for the treaty were put into question in the PCs' minds, the whole adventure seemed deep and thought-provoking.
And this is a good example of why I can't rate adventures. When an adventure SEEMS good when I run it, maybe it's just because of clever adventure design, but maybe it's just because things happened to fall into place. Maybe the same might have happened in other adventures, had the wind been blowing in just the right direction when I had run them.
For my moment I was gming a game where my brother was playing four characters and he wanted to go after a drunk guy to find out where he was and the paladin wanted to return the key ot his house after he gave it to them in a drunken stupor.
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Oh yeah, don't mention unfinished campaigns...i have them all stored and sometimes whip them out to read. One of the rare we actually finished while i was the Gm was Age of Worms, that i painstakingly converted to Pathfinder, filling an entire A4 notebook with stat blocks and revised items. To this day, that notebook is one of my prized possessions. I let nobody touch it.
The hardest thing that i had to do was actually convert Dragotha and Kyuss. And my party ended up killing them pretty easily. The anti-paladin killed kyuss with a single full attack (his cleric cohort used touch of evil on kyuss and actualy rolled a natural 20 on the caster level check to penetrate spell resistance. And that was it, from 600 something hp to -105 or some such.
MY favorite DMing moment.
I have so many, but this one is my favorite.
I ran a 10 year long 2e campaign that ended in 2000. One of the major characters was my friend Tam's ranger, Diana Brownsparrow. 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 now we'll be together forever!" 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.
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I actually had a few moments listed but then I realised that one is, by far, my favorite... and it is about the player enjoyment not the game itself.
Recently, I got invited to a party at my players' house (they are a couple). There were a lot of folks I didn't know there. As I'm being introduced to some of their closest friends, I get this reaction from two of them...
Friend 1: "Justin? OH! You're the DM, right?"
Moi (ever so smooth): "Uh... yes. I am."
Friend 1: : Just beams at me and the way she said 'DM', it was like an honorific that garnered respect :
Friend 2: "The DM? We've heard a lot about what you've run them through!"
Putting this in perspective - none of these folks were gamers. Apparently, for months, my players had been relaying our adventures like it was a novel, sharing the stories with their friends. Consequently, I was treated like a minor celebrity as the 'author' of the adventures.
That's a big feather to me - knowing my players like the game so much they actually talk the ears off non-players about it.
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Earthdawn Tears. For generations the humans, trolls, t’skrang, windlings and the like of Barsaive huddled in underground shelters called kaers. Long had Cheryl’s troll’s grandmother told tales of the old world. Already ancient for a troll, she was to be witness to the coming out into the world that the group lead. After a few harrowing adventures they came across a flying longboat near the ruins of Parlainth. Recently taken ill, the group invited the grandmother to take a tour. I described the sunset, the ruins below, the howling of monsters distant and the utter joy on the grandmother’s face. I described one last item to distract them all, then had them turn back to see (my acting out) her head slowly sink to her chest, eyes closed, still smiling. At a silent table, Dawn and Cheryl sniffed and wiped eyes. Phil wiped one eye while letting out a nervous laugh, and Jim just managed a low-breathed “man, you suck.” That was so cool.
Mothman Shivers. During a multi-session Alternity fueled session of Dark*Matter in which the heroes went on the Killing Jar adventure, there were plenty of creepy moments and tense exploration. I had thoroughly immersed myself in the module, pulled out the best of X-Files effects and descriptions. It was during one particular exploration of an old civil war mound where I had dimmed the lights and described it all in painstaking detail by candlelight. They came to the inevitable open grave room and just when they had thought all was still, I described a bone-scraping sound. I turned the lights on to end the session, but seeing Scott’s wide eyes and everyone rubbing the goose bumps off their arms in silence was super.
Coffee Can. My northlands barbarian saga set in my homebrew D&D world and the ice realm Kaloria was already Die Hard on crack. With orcs force breeding half-orc spies, nearby human nations of fell repute preparing to join forces to wage war on the territory, to wiping out their home village in session one with an avalanche it was a tough one. After facing terrible prejudice from the town where the barbarians were ‘camping’ in a warehouse, the group set out for real treasure in an ancient race’s lost caverns. In not more than an encounter across a mostly open white plain, the group came across a dark knight in full plate standing still in the distance. They called out, but there was no answer. One of them stepped forward and I leaned down behind my DM screen where I had an empty coffee can waiting. I shouted into it with my best evil voice “Halt trespassers! Thou shall turn back…now!” It echoed quite well, as I sat up to an entire table of shell-shocked faces. Classic.
Mindflayer Pirate. In the Forgotten Realms, my Moonsea campaign was as far away from the ‘Disney curse’ as you could get. Classic Realmslore fueled a host of high adventure and over-the-top combats. Still, when the group snuck onto a salvaging pirate ship with dreams of taking it for their own, things went south fast. A combination of poor intel (the captain was an illithid pirate – with mini) and terrible luck the likes never before seen, panic soon set in. Then one by one they fell to creative wording. When the last fell, I got up and casually turned off the lights and sat back down. I let them yell and blame each other for their plight for a few in the dark before getting up, turning the lights back on an announcing they were chained to the hull in cells in their skivvies.
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I'm not normally a dm, so my moment isn't as skill based as the other players.
However I ran the Sunless Citadel for a group of novices. I roleplayed Meepo, complete with voice. They loved it and still talk about Meepo to this day.
Ah, Meepo. I actualy allowed (as a joke) my players to literarily "bag him"... they wanted to make sure he will not get hurt so they put him in the fighter's bag... the "kobold in a bag" became a running joke for that party (disbanded years ago... alas). Sometimes I'll remind them that a living humanoid was in a bag they carried - occasionaly the pissed of Meepo would bite a PC reaching to grab something from his bag :P
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Proudest moment as a GM: Whenever I make a new bunch of people sit and try out D&D (though I guess it's PF now) for the first time. Mostly when I do so, I recruit 2-4 new players to the hobby. No greater pride than acutaly getting a bunch of people to see that sitting around a table and playing make believe is fun :D
Okay, chances are that no one cares, but just for the record, I was wrong about some of the details in that adventure "Rudwilla's Stew."
In fact, when I had originally improvised that speech for Hezra, I assumed that she was lying to get the PCs' sympathy. Only when I saw how effective that speech was did it occur to me to change the adventure so that she was telling the truth. I never did anything that committed me one way or the other.
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I'm sort of the apprentice GM of my group, we play Heroes Unlimited mostly. I ended up doing a six part stort arc that managed to wrap up loose threads that went back TEN YEARS RL, for a group of 12 players, all of which I've had in my RP group at some point or another.
It was like the entire summation of my hobby's life, seeing people I hadn't gamed with in years at the same place all intrigued.
The game climaxed with 3 sets of characters, on Easter morning beneath a cathedral where Mass was starting. All the PPE (Magic potential) of the city was being funneled to this point. One character had a confrontation with her epic skilled father, raised as undead, as the others tried to stop an aspect of Shuma-Gorath from bringing the true entity into the world.
It ended with a partially subdued nuclear blast in a different dimension, killing 3 characters, one of which was my mainstay for 7 years.
The crisis was dubbed 'The Second Nightmare' It was simply amazing, and the soundtrack involved was just as good. (Check out the song 'Dark Horizons' for the fight beneath the church tune.)
Then after 2 years or so, I watch Avengers and it steals my game ending. heh heh heh.
Ah, Meepo. I actualy allowed (as a joke) my players to literarily "bag him"... they wanted to make sure he will not get hurt so they put him in the fighter's bag... the "kobold in a bag" became a running joke for that party (disbanded years ago... alas). Sometimes I'll remind them that a living humanoid was in a bag they carried - occasionaly the pissed of Meepo would bite a PC reaching to grab something from his bag :PI'm not normally a dm, so my moment isn't as skill based as the other players.
However I ran the Sunless Citadel for a group of novices. I roleplayed Meepo, complete with voice. They loved it and still talk about Meepo to this day.
Way back in my game (like when that module came out); Meepo went bananas when the party actually damaged the white dragon. He was freaking out so much that one of my players punched him in the face (critical hit) and knocked him out in a single blow.
Why is it that we only remember the Meepo parts? lol
To this day, Meepo has the status of a legend in my garage/D&D room.
Ultradan