All-Time Classic Roleplaying Game Moments

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Some good fun, here.

I got a reputation as a game master of being fair but very, very odd. For a while my favorite game to GM was something called The Morrow Project where the characters are part of project to rebuild the US after nuclear war, only nothing works out the way it should. I’d set up one of the polities near where my players woke up to have been based on a messianic clergyman’s response to the war, and finding that the Seneca Army Depot had been spared destruction. When you add in that the Seneca Army Depot had been located in Romulus, NY, it was easy to understand how and why there was a Holy Romulan Empire running around. But my players were more than a little disturbed at the idea of Star Trek tech coming in to harass them.

I also enjoyed running Paranoia. My favorite backstab of all time was while three members of the party were busy trying to figure out how to fill in the ‘R&D Device Test Use Report.’ These three were: A - the schmuck who had used the silly thing; B - the party’s R&D weenie; C- the party leader who’d been told to make sure all paper work was filled out completely and in a timely manner. While they were doing this, the one party member who wasn’t involved in trying to fill out the form, the poor chap who had to maintain the inventory for PL&C was busily erasing like mad on some piece of paper.

He, once done erasing, wrote a quick note, and brought it to the attention of The Computer.

The three working on the paperwork were interupted by announcement from Friend Computer: “Will self-confessed traitors A, B and C please report to the nearest disintegration chamer for termination? Failure to comply will result in immediate termination.”

It took five minutes for me and the other guy to stop laughing enough to explain what had happened to the poor clones.

22

Not for another month or two. We’re not officially open yet, but when it does, I’ll post the address.

23

Not so much a moment as a character…

The swashbuckler that I’ve repeatedly mentioned over in the quotes thread, Victor, that I play in a friend’s homebrewed system, has haphazardly adopted a secret identity. He is… The Crimson Mask! Basically, when he remembers, he wraps a piece of red cloth with two eyeholes around his head. Officially, this just contributes to the idea that he’s a crazy fop, since it’s obvious who he really is.

He’s had some good exchanges with NPCs, though, playing it up.

NPC: “We’ll need your help on this dangerous quest…”
Victor: “Hmm… I may not be able to help you, but I could contact… The Crimson Mask!”
NPC: " Uhh… whatever."

Sort of like Quickdraw McGraw’s ‘El Kabong’.

24

Best line I’ve ever heard in a game:

Our party was being shaken down for bribes from the local guards. We’re trying to tell them we have no coin.

Me: “I open my belt pouch and show them it’s empty.”
My Friend: “Yeah, I open up my breeches, and look! Nothing there!”

Gameplay stopped for about 20 minutes.

25

Years ago, in a first-edition AD&D game, I was DM for the module “The Assassin’s Knot”, or something like that. Two of my frat brothers were playing; they weren’t a typical “good” party. Their approach was to be two assassins moving in on rival territory, their cover was as investigators looking for the local assassins. The plan involved getting into the waterfront stronghold, they wanted to use two potions of Oil of Etherealness to slip in undetected.

They rowed a small boat just offshore, made sure they had their provisions together, and began their final preparations. This meant using the potions.

One says to the other, “Ready?”

The other nods in assent. Both players make drinking motions, to indicate using the potion. I ask, “Do you drink the potions?” to clarify.

They both say yes- then before I have a chance, it dawns on them what they just did. Oil of Etherealness is meant to be rubbed on the skin and clothes- it is not a drinkable potion. Their eyes went wide.

One said to the other, “What are we going to do?”

The reply: “I stick my finger down my throat and puke up the oil.”

“yeah, me too.”

They “recovered” enough of the potions to use them. I was being generous- after all, it took me a while to stop laughing.

Another game; I was playing a fighter called “Black Rider.” The DM was a Tolkien-phile and a big fan of dragons, so we met them often. This session we tripped a random encounter, and a blue dragon came out of the sky to dive-bomb our party.

The dragon wouldn’t land, it prefered to slash and use its breath in great sweeps. We were getting pummeled, and I was out of ammo- with notheing better to do, I had my character grab at the dragon’s tail as it passed. I rolled a natural 20, and the DM ruled that I was holding firmly onto the tail- after a strength roll. The dragon immediately began to climb, and soon separated from the rest of the group.

The DM asked me what I wanted to do, and I grabbed my sword in one hand while holding on, and attacked. I think I just got its attention. The dragon breathed its weapon back across its body, and a moment later Black Rider was a crispy falling object, leaving behind a smoke trail.

26

There’s something about the % dice and Star Frontiers…
On the odd occasions that we did play SF, we used a house rule about “critical fumbles.” If you were firing a weapon and rolled a 01 or 02 (or possibly it was a 99 or 00, I can’t recall which was the bad end of the scale) the weapon had jammed, shorted out, or suffered some type of catastrophic failure.

In the case of a laser rifle hooked up to a “power backpack”, a 02 meant the power cord had shorted out, and melted, rendering the powerpack unusable. On a 01, the pack itself shorted out, and would explode in 2 rounds.

During the Seige of Volturnus, one particular player had such a run of cold dice that he blew up three power backpacks, during the first engagement of the war. He was, however, strong enough that the GM decided he could throw the smoking powerpack about half as far as a traditional grenade.

He took out more badguys with his defective equipment than he did actually firing his weapons. And singlehandedly destroyed a Sathar Warbot, turning the tide of the battle in favor of the PC group. (A big honkin’ combat robot, armed to the gills with heavy weapons.)

The same character, a few gaming sessions later, managed to blow up himself, the turret mounted rocket launcher he was firing, and the poor schmuck who was acting as his loader, while fending off the attacking horde of pissed off mercenaries that a rival corporation had hired to rub out our group.

Truely, we had met the enemy, and he was us.

[sub]Oddly enough, his name was not Eric.[/sub]

27

I was GMing a Ravenloft 2nd Edition rules A. D. &D. adventure, once, with about the ditziest female player imaginabe in the group. The group had just been transported by the mists of Ravenloft, and found themselves standing in front of a huge wall. The group is supposed to walk through this wall into the particular Ravenloft Domain for their adventure. Most of the players went along with roleplaying this, one’s character leaned against the wall, and sank in, when they found they could not go backwards through the wall, they went forwards, and most of the others, sans ditz, followed.

Ditz, decided to see if she could scale the wall. (Side note: she’d stated the game would have to “be fast” because she couldn’t stay up too late.) She got out her rope, and a grappling hook, and despite my descripction of the hook “seeming to go through the wall” put one foot on the wall. (She stubbornly insisted on this course of action with her character, stating she “wanted to have fun” in a high speed loud voice, even when her boyfriend tried to talk her out of it, and the rest of the players groaned.) When she got stuck, she put the other foot, on, and basically became embedded in the wall, sideways, and unable to walk through. (Even one arm was stuck.) This wasted 20 to 30 minutes of game time, and seriously annoyed everyone and spoiled the creepy mood I’d set with the eerie dreams etc. the players had dreamnt.

I rolled, and determined that the player who’d preceded her into the wall “caught on” that something was wrong based on the wisdom of the character. (Palidan) The problem was solved by me bending the rules a bit (they were supposed to be unable to really sense anything except a cold dampness, and the sound of stone grating) to allow the palidan to “feel” her hand in the wall on his shoulder, and to reach back over his shoulder without moving backwards, pull her in and drag her along.

This chick continued to disrupt the story line (she’s used to chaos, and no linear games) throughout the evening. This was a nice module I was using, not a strict linear encounter, but a series of connected “triggered” events a la “When they step into the room a ghost speaks” plot.

It was from Dungeon Magazine issue 31, from September/October 1991. The module was “Bane of the Shadowborn” by William W. Connors. A classic. (Yes, I have the magazine in my lap atm.) I’d modified the scripted plot somewhat to give more of a spooky, poingnant feel to the atmosphere, to make things more horrifying. I also added some script to make it creepier. (I like to give my player’s characters permanent phobias of varyng degrees from time to time grin I don’t make the adventure impossible to beat, just memorable and a good story, with decent loot and sometimes fantastic loot.)

I started penalizing her for it once it became apparent she wanted to run amok, and do her own thing, and not advance the plot. (She’s bad about this with other games, she’s not beaten Fallout yet because of it.) She had the nerve to say “I think the game was too strict, and too linear, and people weren’t free to do what they wanted!” and bitch and moan after that. I’ve not GM’d for her since.

28

Not a moment but a quote from a recent gaming session.

Other player: What am I going to do when the demon discovers me?
Me: Play dead! Maybe it doesn’t like live food. :o

29

I now bring you the saga of Medrin the Mediocre. Medrin was a half-Elven multiclassed Mage/Cleric in AD&D2.0. He wore armor most of the time because Mages were hunted in the particular campaign world… only the Mageslayers could use Wizardly magic openly. He was dubbed ‘the Mediocre’ because his stats were all average, apart from Wisdom and Intelligence.

We had a PC playing a Mageslayer in the party. :rolleyes:

Said Mageslayer would often invoke the ‘Detect Thoughts’ spell, scanning those around him. As a wizardly sort, I could recognize when he would cast this spell. I would invariably tell the GM : “My character begins thinking : ‘Happy Puppies, Happy Puppies, Happy Puppies…’” when I saw it being cast. “Happy Puppies” became our group’s catch-phrase for resisting mindreading.

The most memorable moment for Medrin was an encounter with a Dragon. Now, it was a big adult dragon, and we were low level when we stumbled into its lair in a very large old citadel. However, it had already been injured. An NPC fighter in the party charged up, jamming his sword in its scales, before being swatted away, leaving his sword behind. The rest of us were likewise ineffective in hurting the dragon… until I hit upon an idea. The Dragon was horribly horribly injured… I only needed to do a few points of damage… so I cast ‘Heat Metal’ on the sword still stuck in its hide.

Down went the dragon … onto a party member, but we later managed to pull him out.

30

I’d also be interested in playing. Looking forward to the link.

31

The first time I played Call of Cthulhu, I had just started attending a gaming club on campus. I didn’t know anybody there, so I joined a starting group clean as a whistle. I put together an archaelogy professor who thinks he’s hot shit, but who’s only still employed because he has tenure. The GM starts the session by telling me I’m lecturing a class, and one of my students shows up late.

I scowl, speak in a loud huffy voice, and bellow, “Mr. Smith! I’m glad you could take time out from your busy schedule to attend class!” The GM started to stutter a reply and I hollered “Sit down! You’re disrupting class enough as it is!” Everybody else just sort of looked at me in silence. They told me later they thought I was an actual college professor.

I read Lovecraft, but I didn’t have the rules, so I played the campaign totally green to what was really going on. At some point, our party discovers a spell scroll, which I commandeer. I manage to decode it, and it’s a Summon Dimensional Shambler spell.

Sometime later in the campaign, we stumble across the secret enemy’s hideout, and they send a shoggoth after us. We scatter in all different directions. I wind up back in my house and lock the doors. The GM tells me no one is home the next morning. The help has left during the night. I try to call the police, my phone’s not working. It’s overcast outside, and he says “Make a Listen Check.” I hear tekelilil tekelilil and decide it’s time to fight fire with fire. I read the scroll to summon the Dimensional Shambler and succeed! The GM asks me “Do you have the Control Spell?” I ask “What Control Spell?”

That was it for me.

32

While managing Halifax Town in Championship Manager we got a 0-0 draw at Bolton Wanderers in the FA Cup third round… we lost the replay 3-0, though…
Does that count?

33

As I was reading all the other stories, I realized I have quite a few …

While playing the D&D “Mighty Fortress” module, which is set in Three-Musketeers-Era France, my character (a thief and a whore, and rather proud of her abilities for both) seduced and robbed all three of the NPC Musketeers in one day.

During a game of Top Secret SI, my character got a little gun-happy and shot a hotel security officer rather than playing innocent and walking past. I botched my roll, and the officer shot back, hitting me in the head. I was alive but unconscious for the rest of the game–and another character threw my body at another cadre of security officers in order to escape. If I remember correctly, our party started with four agents, and the surviving two ended up trapped in an elevator, each only able to use one arm. They shot each other and the game was over. Our GM prided himself on the fact that no character had ever lived through one of his SI games.

We once played a game we called the Foundation Chronicles, a Vampire setup where the PCs were all the primagen of the city. I had to work late that night, so my Ventrue joined the game in the middle–after the other characters had already elected a Nosferatu Sabbat Prince of the city and handled the ensuing bloodbath. By virtue of having had nothing to do with anything bad that happened, I was elected Prince(ess) soon after arriving, and began rebuilding the hierarchy. (As a side note, this is the game where my “Put the Gangrel down … Do not wave the Gangrel in a threatening manner” quote came from.) The Malkavian primagen had the amusing delusion that he was James Bond. He was also a 4th Gen with a 6 Dominate. I made the mistake of looking him in the eye … and spent the rest of my reign as Prince thinking I was Miss Moneypenny.

I was also involved in a LARP Vampire game where I was Vice President of a security company, in charge of all the important personages in the city, including the Prince. My fellow security professionals were an Asamite, a Le Sambre pretending to be a Ventrue, and a Toreador … but we were, of course, bad people. There was a Caitiff who really wanted to work for our company, so we brought him into our office, sat him down, interviewed him, and announced he had the job, to his great delight. I’ll never forget the look on his face, though, when I pulled the beach shovel out of the backpack.

34

Back in the days of yore, during my first year of college (That’d be 1996-1997), I and my circle of friends had a lot of free time, and consequently, played a lot of D&D. This story pertains to the AD&D2.0 edition.

Well, most of the campaigns were run by myself or Josh, my roommate, but other people would occasionally get in on the act. This is the true story of Eric’s first GMing experience. (You know Eric, by now.)

The gaming group (about six of us in all) decided to give Eric a trial-by-fire. Using the rules for class creation in the DMG (well, abusing the rules) custom classes were created that had incredible powers and super-rapid advancement. Eric didn’t bother to check them out. After the party was gathered, we were perpetually asking if we could go ahead and total our XPs after each encounter or treasure find. This perhaps should have been a warning sign, but it went unnoticed and Eric kept agreeing, so we silently gained level after level. (It should be noted perhaps that this wouldn’t work on many people… )

Within about two hours, we encountered the beginning of the scene that was probably to be the climax of the first adventure. An old wizard in a tower (in the middle of a ruined city) greeted us and told us of the evil god that plagued this world and his undead armies, led by twelve lich generals. The wizard offered us a spelltome containing every spell in the game (we asked to make sure Eric was sure about this, then asked if we could go ahead and refresh the spells in our memory) and when we were done looking at the book, the wizard was struck by a beam that pierced the wall of his tower and killed him.

Standing outside was one of the lich generals and his division of the army. Now, according to the campaign plan, we were to run, seek the twelve ancient caches of treasure, then fight the god and his armies in the climax. Things didn’t go as planned. Thanks to the fact that almost every one of us had spellcasting ability as well as nice fighting ability, the lich and most of his army died rather quickly. Rather than sit through the boring cleanup of zombies and skeletons, we took the map of the caches and started teleporting around to them one after the other.

Eric was aghast. He threw a few hastily devised puzzles in our way, but the juggernaut was not to be stopped. Struggling for ideas for magical items to give us and quickly going into shock from our amazing powers, he gave us items of incredible power. With these, we officially became unstoppable. Teleporting to the evil god’s temple, the eleven other liches and their armies were destroyed with our items of mass destruction. The god turned out to have a shield that protected him from all combat magic and weapons, but with the ring we had (it absorbed cast spells and let the wielder cast any spell with the collected energy) he couldn’t hurt us, and we used the ring to fuel a Wish to bring down the shield and killed him. Well, almost.

The Evil God’s essence fled the Prime Material Plane. We’d ‘won’ the campaign in about four hours of play time. Eric was obviously ready to call it a night. But we weren’t quite through yet. Following the essence of the evil god to the Abyss, we found that it had a more real form there, and destroyed it again. Eric was still desperately trying to bring this charade to an end, and he really hadn’t gotten a hold of the idea of DM absolute authority. The Evil God’s father, another evil god, shows up, thanking us for destroying his son who had betrayed him or some such. At which time I replied, “What makes you think you’re getting out of here?” Heh. He didn’t.

Nor did any of the other string of celestial beings that Eric threw at us afterwards. After about five to six hours, Eric had had enough and just stopped it, proclaiming that we were the new gods of the universe and that the campaign was over. Then someone asked how much experience we got for killing the Gods. I never laughed so hard in my life. Eric, to his credit, gave us a total. And that’s the story of how we all got 227th level.

He did eventually GM again. :wink:

35

I run a campaign set in a historical fantasy setting (approximately 60 BCE, but with magic and monsters). We’ve had a few amusing moments.

In one adventure, the characters were sent to Persia to seek out an artifact sword. They happened upon the tomb of Cyrus and decided to go a’plundering. They pass by several statues and paintings detailing Cyrus’s exploits, like the conquest of Babylon, and so forth, blissfully ruining the tomb and smashing statues. (Yeesh, you throw one gargoyle encounter at the party, and from then on, every statue bites the dust!)

Unfortunately for the group, the tomb was already looted by Alexander the Great several hundred years before, so there’s not much to be found. However, Cyrus apparently was awoken by the desecration of his tomb…

The half-ogre fighter made his way into the room with Cyrus’ body, and saw that Cyrus’ eyes glittered with dark light and that his rotting corpse was sitting up, looking at him. Cyrus demanded to know the reason for the intrusion into his tomb.

Half-ogre: “Uh, we have come to, uh, heap praises and give homage to your achievements, your majesty!”

Cyrus croaks, “Acheivements? Like what?”

Half-ogre (having obviously paid more attention to the smashing of statues than what they depicted: [not thinking of anything, eventually wanting to pick a fight]: “Having your tomb sacked by Alexander the Great?”

(Needless to say, that started a fight.)

On another occasion, the party learned from a druid in Gaul that some Scythian warriors (a little old for the time period, but I made them a ‘lost tribe’) had taken unusual interest in an old Celtic ‘legend’ about “The Devourer” and had been acquiring statues about this legend and taking them home to the steppes. The party investigated, travelling a long way that lasted over more than one session of play. Eventually, they were in eastern Germania and had been wandering around aimlessly, trying to find the route.

Half-ogre: “Why didn’t we ask for a map?”

Rather airheaded female gnome: “Yeah. Oh, wait. I have a map!”

The gnome, the party’s druid, was given a map at the beginning of the adventure by the druid NPC… with the exact route to take.

On said trip through Germania, they happened upon a random encounter. My random encounters often become their own adventures.

Gnome druid takes tiger animal companion out hunting. Meets friendly but nearsighted treant.

Treant: “Helllllllllllllooooooooo.”
Druid: (happy to deal with a treant) “Hi!”
[they converse happily about the woods and trees and animals]
Treant: “It’s niiiice… to talk tooo sooooomebody newwww… You’re niiiicer than my friiiiiend.”
Druid: “Oh, who’s your friend?”
Treant: “A purple cowwwwww.”
Druid scratches head, knowing that the treant can’t see well.
Druid: “I’ve never seen a purple cow. Tell me about it?”
Treant: “He’s biiiiiig… and puuuurrrrpppleee… and he has clawwwws and scales…”
Druid: “Uh oh.”
Treant [looking over gnome’s shoulder] :“Ohhhh, there he is!”
Druid [cowers and whimpers]

Turned out to be a behir. They’re basically purple six-legged dragony things (but they hate dragons). Druid runs. Behir pursues.

Long story short, they end up negotiating with the behir. The behir threatens to kill the party unless they get rid of a certain local red dragon. Random encounter snowballs as the red dragon demands the party kill the behir. Figuring they have better odds against the behir, they engage (and win), try to take on the dragon (and flee) and end up with the dragon’s young pursuing them and disguising itself as the treant, travelling with them for several days before failing a will save on a sleep song by a satyr, ruining the disguise.

Party finally kills the young dragon with the help of some satyrs and such. They regroup and start going through treasure.

Half-ogre: “I wish we were near a town. We’ve got all kinds of stuff we’re never going to use. Like this arrow of dragon slaying…GODDAMN IT!”

36

To which I must add The Head of Vecna.

37

Sadly I haven’t rp’ed a lot in my life. Certainly not as much as I would like. There was one time thought when I was visiting my sister and her husband. My brother-in-law was running a Call of Cthuhlu campaign that was nearing a climatic point and not really having much else to do right then I was going to just observe. Well, when we got to the gaming site was had some time and decided to roll up a character for me and find a way to work me into the the game. Well, to make a long story short the characters were captured by the bad guys. These bad guys were about to summon a big nasty from another dimension (par for the course CoC wise-and I actually think it was they were actually opening several cross dimensional gates acrost the world so as to trigger an apocolypse type event. The characters were all tied naked to stakes around the point where the portal would open apparently as welcoming snacks. The party needed a distraction of some sort so some of the more skilled of the party could get free and try to prevent the end of the world (as well as us becoming lunch meat). My character and another man in the party decided to provide that distraction. So we started loudly, and crudly offering ourselves to one another. Ended up with both of us screaming “F*** me! Oh. Fuck Me!” at the top of our lungs in an upstairs meeting room at the Ohion University Student Union. Got some odd looks from passerbys. Well, the GM (my brother-in-law) decided that was suffiecient to distract the cults and allow the others to escape and prevent bad things from happening. I guess the indicent is still talked about amoung those who were there.

38

I was DM’ing an AD&D tournament game at Gen Con, um, mumblety-mumble years ago. A sub-plot in the third round of the tournament had to do with a magic sword that had been found by the group in round two. It seems it was a sacred item to an evil cult, who had sent an assassin to kill Balkin the gnome (it’s new owner) and take it back. The assassin’s clever plan was to pose as a victim of the bad guys of the adventure to win the party’s trust and get them to let him join their group.

Looked like it was going to go off without a hitch. The assassin is found bleeding & without equipment, lulling them into a false sense of complacency. They’re happy to let him join their quest. Then he asks for the loan of a weapon, since all of his were taken. Short pause, then Balkin’s player asks me, “Say, didn’t I find a magic shortsword last round?”

DM says: “Yes …” (thinking: Did I let something slip without realizing it?)

Balkin: “Well, do I still have my old shortsword?”

DM: (pausing apparently to think, actually to make sure I have enough self-control to respond with a straight face) “Well … sure, why not?”

So Balkin arms his murderer, and everyone goes happily along … Later, as the party starts a tough combat, the assassin sees his opportunity, and as Balkin charges into battle …

DM: “The old man charges in right behind you, then stabs you in the back. You take 24 points of damage.” (I start to go on to the next player in the initiative order.)

Balkin: “Wait! He stabs me in the back?”

DM: “Yep.” (Start to go on again.)

Balkin: “With my sword?!”

I couldn’t help myself. “That’s right. It’s ironical–and very sharp.”

:smiley:

39

Which must be one of the greatest moments in roleplaying history. I admire the DM for being able to keep a straigh face while all this is going on.

40

A friend of mine had developed a live action RPG. We basicallywent out one cold day into the park near his house and bashed each other with padded weapons.

Anyway, he asked if I would play some NPCs as well as my PC and I agreed.

The best was a goblin that had been taken captive by a couple of orcs, tortured and driven insane. The purpose of the character was to give false clues as to what was going to happen.

I giggled insanly, spouted random information and occasionally shouted “red fishes!” This was a hint that the other stuff were red herrings.

Afterwards, several people told me it was the high point of the game.