Memorable Moments in RPG's

[DamonJynx]

Please everyone think of those moments of RPG Gold and share them in this thread! I'll start with two. One from an old D&D campaign and one from my current Elric campaign.

1. A barbarian prostitute who's pimp is a blind fighter is traveling about the Forgotten Realms in the company of a rag-tag band of neer'do'wells trying to stop someone from raising the dead God Bhaal. She gets bitten by a natural werewolf, who passes on the 'curse' of lycanthropy. This PC's totem is the wolf, it's a match made in heaven. So I convince the player Paul to embrace this 'gift'. Some of the most fun I've had as DM was the battle of wits as I tried to unmask his true nature. Definitely one PC you don't want to annoy at that time of the month...

2. A Deathbringer Cultist states he's going to enter the house and kill everyone he meets to stamp out the Blue Assassin cult. He enters, ends up killing everyone, except 2 small children. His PC could do it, but the player couldn't bring himself to do it. He agonised for over a week on how to resolve the internal conflict, eventually deciding to keep them alive and indoctrinate them into the cult via a judicious amount of BS.

Absolute Gold as far as I'm concerned and why I enjoy RPG's so much.

What are your "Gold" moments?

 

[Simulacrum]

Griffin Island:

Soldier Port is under siege from an unholy alliance of the region's leading pirate captains and Halcyon Var Enkorth's orcs. The PCs are among those manning the walls. They slip out one night to make a foray behind enemy lines, and they position themselves athwart the road from Ockless to see what horrors Halcyon Var Enkorth is sending their way.

Next day a caravan comes by - just a few ox carts guarded by a few orcs, one of them a low-axled covered wagon. Some top notch stealth skills later, and a bold PC is slitting open the canvass and slipping inside to. To his absolute horror, inside is Gork Trag, a SIZ 23 mummy and former orc hero whose tomb they have raided on a previous mission. I start counting slowly but loudly, in a "react now before I get to 5 or you are screwed" kind of way. Brave PC sreams something unrepeatable and immediately dives out the hole he has made, and thanks to a good jump roll, ultimately lands on his feet as a bunch of orc guards converge on him. As his friends try to help him get out of the fix, Gork Trag wrenches himself out of his seat and climbs out of the wagon after him, and everything is going to hell in a handbasket. At this point the mediocre sorcerer in the team levels his crossbow, rolls an 01 then a 20 for location. Gork Trag crashes to the ground, the bewildered orcs run for it. The Players have never forgotten it.

 

[BFalcon]

AD&D (player): Party decide to clear out some Troll-Holes near Cormyr... load up the Druid with flasks of oil, make sure she's wearing all her flame-resistance magical items then with a lit flask of oil in each hand, she jumps into said Troll Hole...

Just as the Cormyr patrol arrives to arrest the party (having seen us "throw" a burning figure into the Troll Hole), the Druid climbs out of it and asks the sergeant what the matter is...

Cyberpunk (GM): couple of solos (hitmen) hit the bar where the group is questioning an employer about a mission with all kinds of fun hardware (the first the party know is when one of the party members (facing the door) notices the first solo pulling a mini-LAW out of his trenchcoat and levelling it at the PC's booth - needless to say the party scatters and a firefight ensues...

Things settle down into the usual snapped shot here and there and then counter-shot, etc. The group's own Solo pops up from behind the bar, points to his forehead, between his eyes and says "Go on!! Right there!!!". Enemy Solo pops off a single shot, getting over 40 on the to-hit roll, basically putting the round exactly where the solo was pointing...

Player was still laughing about that character death the last time I spoke to him... and that was years after the event.

D&D 3E (GM): Party going through Waterdeep's City of the Dead on a misty, cold, dark night... (perfect for a GM)... party spend half their ammo shooting at various "mysterious figures that loom out of the fog" as they walk around... needless to say, lots of gravestone statues are now missing various limbs or have nicks of stone out of them... :lol:

 

[DamonJynx]

Another one...

D&D 3.5e: Running Sons of Gruumsh a low-level adventure (4-5) heavy on melee combat. The group create a party of Spell Casters - notoriously useless in melee. I rub my hands with glee. Then shake my head in frustration. A couple of the wizards focus on Summoning Spells, particularly Summon Undead 1. As I run published adventures pretty much as written, I was screwed. My melee loving Orcs never got near enough to hit the bastards as there was a constant wall of undead in the way! And when I had ranged attackers they just summoned undead behind them!

I should've thrown a couple of Warmages at them, that would have sorted them out!

 

[Loz]

Too many to choose from.

The one that continually sticks in my mind is from my Winter King mini campaign in Sweden earlier this year - but then it was packed full of gold on so many fronts.

The character is a freed slave who have fallen in love with the beautiful Ceinwyn, betrothed to Arthur. During a lengthy downtime, Ceinwyn teaches the ex-slave to read and write (and in a wonderful bit of character development, the player put ALL his improvement rolls into his Read/Write to reflect this). The romance, very chaste, starts to develop. The player's Love Ceinwyn passion grows.

Arthur betrays Ceinwyn for Guinevere. Ceinwyn confides in the ex-slave. The character is now called upon to make a Love Ceinwyn roll to either keep his own love secret (which is the dutiful outcome) or blurt it out.

'Make a Love Ceinwyn roll' says I. 'You really need to fail this one, if you want to keep your true feelings secret.'

Player rolls and Crits. He has the option to spend a Hero Point but decides not to. Whilst comforting the distraught, betrayed Ceinwyn, he tells her that he loves her. Ceinwyn stares at him, eyes wide, bursts into tears and runs away.

Poor ex-slave is now distraught himself. That single dice roll changes the whole course of the adventure and leads to a bloody war. How does it all end for Ceinwyn and the ex-slave? Ah, now that would be telling...

But this was utterly, utterly priceless stuff and one of the finest roleplaying experiences of my life.

 

[tarkhan bey]

Many years ago, whilst playing MERP. My character(a Dunedan Ranger named Halbrand) was taking part in an expedition in the early fourth age to clear out the Mines of Moria.
Of course, there just had to be another Balrog. After fleeing for some time the party finally found itself trappede and turned to fight.
Halbrand let loose with his single Mithril Arrow. I rolled a 99, 98, and a 97 and wound up scoring a +20 critical hit on the beast. Even my luck had its limits that day though, I rolled an 80( IIIRC). The arrow took it through the eye and it was going to die in several rounds. Of course, it didn't realise it was dead and inflicted a TPK on us for the sheer audacity. :roll:

My gaming group, over the years, have actually invented an adjective to describe my roleplaying style in combat situations. It's referred to as 'Trask-like'. This comes from a Twilight 2K character called Colonel John Trask who managed to survive the entire 'Last Submarine' campaign without actually getting wounded while all around were falling by the wayside. In a game of post holocaust survival I took the survival part very literally. :lol: 'Pulling the strings of fate from his bunker' is another.

 

[PhilHibbs]

There's the game where I joined in an ongoing session, the party were fighting some assassins in the inn they were staying in. So the GM drops me in as another person staying in the same inn, I hear the commotion outside my room, open the door, appraise the fight, draw my cutlass and spectacularly disembowel myself all over the combatants.

 

[scoutdad]

AD&D Gold: Waaaay back in the day, we had a player [Steven Hailey] with the most dreadful luck. Through sheer imagination... he managed over the course of nearly 7 years of weekly play sesions to have the same character re-incarnated 21 times! TWICE in one session!!!

The poor guys latest character, a dwarf of large stature was the only member of the party slain during an ambush deep in the depths of the Ogre stronghold. Out of pity... the DM [me], allowed the parties mage to find a scroll with the reincarnate spell on it.
The spell was cast and the dice rolled (behind the GM screen) and the results applied. A note was passed to Steve who immediately began workin on a new character sheet. After a few minutes of searching the throne room for more loot, the party was surprised by a lone ogre charging into the room, waving his hands in the air, and yelling at the top of his not inconsiderable lungs.
what does the party do? Attack! The mage cast a lightnin bolt, the fighter perpper him with arrows, and the thief begins trying to work around him for hte inevitable sneak attack. As the Ogre drops dead - Steve wads up the new character sheet and asks why a out of a whole party of adventurers - no one ever learned to speak Ogre???

Classic!!!!

 

[DamonJynx]

AD&D Gold: Waaaay back in the day, we had a player [Steven Hailey] with the most dreadful luck. Through sheer imagination... he managed over the course of nearly 7 years of weekly play sesions to have the same character re-incarnated 21 times! TWICE in one session!!!

As the Ogre drops dead - Steve wads up the new character sheet and asks why a out of a whole party of adventurers - no one ever learned to speak Ogre???

Classic!!!!

What can you say...

 

[mwsasser]

Wow... PhillHibbs and Scoutdad really made me crack up. Those are just awesome.

Back during a late 80's session of ad&d we once escaped from some nasty caves into a ruined castle courtyard to find a draco-lich between us and the exit. Everybody freaked out except for my 17th level ranger with his dragon-slayer bastard sword (specialized of course).

After winning initiative my ranger stepped up to bat and amazingly critted twice the first round doing no little amount of damage thanks for his girdle of giant strength. Imagine my character's surprise when the rest of the party led by the thief ran out through a hole in the wall. He'd convinced them to leave the sucker ranger to die so they could escape. Still, it was a good fight even though my ranger eventually died several rounds later....and the party fled and left the draco-lich alone with it's remaining 3 hit points.

 

[Dan True]

I once played in a Dark Heresy group, and we were sent as a team of Inquisition acolytes to protect a new theme park to lift morale in the lower levels of a Hive City. It needed to be protected from several powerful gangs which intelligence indicated had leaders that had been in earlier contact with the Inquisition.

The whole affair ended up as a cat-and-mouse game where we were constantly visiting new locations and searching the areas, finding clues, huddling for trying to pierce them all together and then off to the other end of the hive because something new had happened.

It was a fantastic piece of investigation play, and I have rarely played anything better

We finally discovered that the theme park had been built by the chaos-corrupted son of the Planetary Governor, when I tried shooting a mirror in the "hall of mirrors"-room of the park, and out came a Horror demon ... that single demon almost took us down.

- Dan

 

[Mixster]

We finally discovered that the theme park had been built by the chaos-corrupted son of the Planetary Governor, when I tried shooting a mirror in the "hall of mirrors"-room of the park, and out came a Horror demon ... that single demon almost took us down.

- Dan

Bah, We kindda knew all along that the theme park was bad.

And the horror wasn't that bad, My psyker was immune to fire (too bad he was too busy pissing his pants to do anything about it).

I also really liked that the "boss fight" in the game was easier than the fight against that Horror.

But yeah, those two sessions were truly memorable, I especially liked, that non unlike a good crime scene, the prime suspect constantly changed from person to person, and that the plot was rather elaborate.

 

[GypsyComet]

One as player.

Playing in a convention Mekton game run by one of the R.Talsorian guys. I'm playing the REMF Mecha Mechanic, never without his 4-foot-long wrench and multi-tool. Little did we know that they were in the midst of playtesting Cyberpunk at the time, so imagine our surprise when our outpost is jumped by a dozen 8-foot-tall Solos in full cyber, meant to take us down. And take us down they did, one by one, while I was working on something cluelessly in the hangar. Every combat type went down with a whimper, his clock cleaned by the cyberstrikers. Then one of them found me. Against all odds, he missed his strike, or at least failed to incapacitate me. In a panic I returned the blow using the only thing at hand, my mecha-scale multi-tool. Two open-ended dice later, I got a solid hit on him and scored the only attacker casualty of the raid. With a wrench.

Then his partner got me...

 

[RandomNumber]

Griffin Island:
At this point the mediocre sorcerer in the team levels his crossbow, rolls an 01 then a 20 for location. Gork Trag crashes to the ground, the bewildered orcs run for it. The Players have never forgotten it.

I stopped by to see if there was anything in the forums about your new supplement (Age of Treason), saw this thread and then find you recounting one of my favourite RPG memories. I remember that session so clearly...

Another one of your sessions I remember well was when we were marauding in a sewer system somewhere in your campaign (was it Sorandib?) and were chasing or being chased by the sewer-dwelling Beggar King and his mob - the twist was that the chase was being conducted on clockwork-powered barges in the sewers. There was high drama and ship-to-ship combat as the chase unfolded... at the breathtaking clockwork pace of about half a knot... it was hilarious.

Cheers,

 

[PhilHibbs]

This post could go on a bit. Maybe I'll just post snippets now and then. It's doubtless the most popular and talked about of my characters in my roleplaying history.

Gribble was a trickster. He joined the party, as I was bored with my previous character, at the beginning of a Sun County game. We were all thrown together as a group travelling down the road with no particular introduction, we're just all together. We come across a well at the side, and there's this old half-blind beggar staggers towards us begging for coppers. Gribble strides forward holding a Golden Wheel, and flips it into the well. The old man leans over and tries to catch it, whereupon Gribble tips him in head first. As the party are about to react in horror, he says "He was an assassin, I saw his poisoned dagger, and you believe me", which henceforth became the standard key phrase for casting the Lie divine spell.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Gribble again. One of the "characters" in the party was the GM's NPC that he has created as a PC but never got to play... an Aldryami sorceror. Very annoying guy, but very useful in a tight spot.

We're all on boats, having run away from something or other, some Krarsht caves in the Rubble if I recall. It's night, and the Aldryami is asleep, so I ask the GM how big he is. "SIZ 10", to which I reply "Ah, nice. I have 10 points of Swallow. Gulp." Upon the elf's demise, the SIZ-diminish spell on the his familiar drops, and out of his backpack bursts a previously unseen Stoorworm. I know. It's silly. But anyway. Stoorworm. On a boat. Among remains of a boat, I should say. Angry. Not, fortunately, very good at swimming. Gribble reaches the shore and hits it at a dead run, but the Stoorworm starts making ground. Looks through spell list... "Become Pair of Smoking Boots" looks likely, so I try that. Stoorworm charges past, but sees that there is nowhere that Gribble could have gone, and back-tracks, sniffing, picking up the smoky aroma.

Back to running then. I plead the GM for a random encounter, so he rolls and Gribble sprints straight through a Yelmalion encampment shouting "Stop doing the 'Yelmalio polishes his helmet' quest you pervs", and just as the guards start to chase, a Stoorworm crashes into them.