Your most memorable pen and paper moments

The Game Room
1

I’m itching to hear some amusing p&p rpg stories and interesting characters!

I’ll start off with a few.

Dark Heresy:

Some friends and I had just started a campaign, and we got our second mission, a pretty straight forward find and kill the heretics type of thing. As I was quite new to the whole p&p thing I meticulously asked and recorded all details about travel time, how much time had gone between meals etc, forgetting a bit about the grimy setting of the game. We went to a bunker supposedly full of heretics or mutants. I figured I hadn’t releved myself in quite a while, and, being a simple-minded character of a primitive jungel world, squatted down to do the number two. The “leader” of the ragtag bunch of misfits, a mad, racist fire and brimstone preacher carrying quite an impressive array of deadly weapons, urged me to stop what I was doing. I then proceeded to suck the poo back up into myself, to everyones horror. The GM awarded me with a couple of insanity points.

Pathfinder:

I played a crossbow wielding sorcerer/assasin/traveling theatre director/pimp, banished by angry theatre-lovers to a scolding desert city. I negotiated to get my business back on track, but actresses/prostitutes was a bit too expensive for my pockets. After some time I got an idea. I had the power to change my apperance, and the power to hypnotize people, so I leased an office space, bought some cheap, slutty womenswear and changed myself into a hot, lusty elven maid, a rarity in a southern desert city. The clientelle consisted of upstanding friends of a rich man I’d done certain jobs for, so I could charge quite a fee. I led them into a room, hypnotized them, waited for some time and left them with a feeling of satisfaction.

DnD:

The group was fleeing from a wyrm after a big battle and we were riding on sentient eagles.Happily for us, one of the characters died. The character had been given several passes on death before, because the player was such a nagging bitch, and most of the group were quite annoyed at both him and the GM. We killed the wyrm, the most annoying character got killed, and it led to my half-dragon halfling monk’s new order of suicide bomber goblin drunken masters riding dire eagles. Two on the back, one in each claw, dropped down on foes while breathing fire and pucnhing people with zen fists.

2

I do love these kind of threads - I’ve even started one or two in the past. Let me see if I can dig up some links…

3

Its been a while but the most memorable moments were my first AD&D campaign as a player and my first campaign as a DM.

My first campaign as a player was with a bunch of other newbies and we everything was new and exciting. We were all orphans raised by monks in a monastery and had an NPC cleric along for the ride (with cameo appearances by a high level monk who gave us quests from time to time). We helped each other do our level ten quests after which we did the Giants/Drow/Lolth module and it was epic. We were literally sweating by the time we killed Lolth (temporarily).

Unfortunately, it turned out that the monastery we all came from was actually a cult of male drow who were trying to overthrow the drow matriarchy that would proceed to rally the forces of underdark in a campaign of conquest of the surface world.

I’m sure my experience is nowhere close to being unique but this is the campaign that hooked me.

4

My suggestion: distill your moment of awesome into a single sentence.

For example: Backed against the edge of a deep canyon, we escaped a horde of two-dimensional undead through the use of flying camels, illusions of barricades, and a perfectly-timed grease spell.

5

From a one-shot I’ve run:

Chased by a Nazi biplane over the jungles of Africa, the stuntman stood on the wing of his own plane, lassoed the Nazi pilot out of his plane, fell backwards over the wing (looping the lasso over the wing), and engaged in fisticuffs with one hand while holding onto the lasso with the other.

6

The most memorable experience I recall wasn’t a single event, but instead it was a whole campaign. I had worked out with the DM ahead of time that my Chaotic/Evil rogue was basically a psychopath (he was also impersonating a nobleman, lawful/good and a paladin). We’d have all sorts of adventures but party members would mysteriously die. The DM and I worked together in secret to make the story such that no one knew what was going on, until it happened to them (and after that they were sworn to secrecy), but there were all sorts of vague hints about ghosts or demons or other stuff that were haunting the party. It was a pretty intense campaign and it really played on the fact that in the past I ALWAYS played the good guy, helping out other party members even at the sacrifice of my own characters. But not this time. :stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

7

Ah, so many. I miss gaming.

Having reached Chicago and accomplished whatever it was we were trying to do after an entire storyline of trying to run from the mafia, my unabashedly self-interested cyberpunk character who had no real connection to the other PCs called up said mafia and sold them out. (I’m not always an utter bastard, but when I am, watch out.)

Same game: Another player says that her character is walking into a room with her pistol “like this” and indicates that she’s holding it barrel up with both hands around chest-level. She rolls a botch. GM asks, “Did you have the safety on?”

D&D: Someone in the group had insisted on playing an “evil paladin” :rolleyes: and was going around being obnoxiously EEEEEEEVIL, regardless of whether doing so made any sense. He winds up getting tossed into jail for some EEEEEEVIL (and stupid) act. In character, I turn to my friend, and casually observe, “Maybe he needs to go sleep off some of that evil.” (There was much snarking between my friend and me, in or out of character.)

8

I’ve got dozens, many of which I’ve related before - but here’s one.

Our home continent, the place we’d done most of our adventuring, was being invaded by a foreign power that had harnessed the secrets of ancient artificers - they were essentially advancing with an army of mecha, tanks, and apparatuses. We were fairly high level, but unlikely to turn the tide against so vast a force on our own - as most of us were warrior types. We had some NPC spellcasters hanging about, but still not properly powerful enough to deal with the force.

But we did have access to teleport. And we had encountered a particular species earlier in the game - so I used my Ranger skills and the NPC Wizard’s teleportation to round up three rust monsters. We buffed the hell out of them with spells, named them Larry, Moe, and Curly, and turned them loose in the mech army.

It was glorious.

9

I love the rust monsters vs. the Mecha army–that’s brilliant!

Another moment: When we began the campaign in which we played ourselves (knowing we’d turn into White-Wolf-brand supernaturals in the first session), we knew our fictional selves would begin play on the day our real-world selves were beginning the campaign, and our fictional selves would be in the same location as our real-world selves, and our fictional selves would be sitting down for a gaming session; what we weren’t expecting was that our fictional GM would be murdered in front of our eyes, and that we’d begin the campaign by roleplaying our reactions to his death.

10

I may have posted these in one of the past threads - forgive me my repetition if I have. :slight_smile:

I almost always play good characters. Really good characters - paladins and the like. I just enjoy being knightly and heroic and sincerely good. However, sometimes, I get the urge to play really bad characters, if only because it throws my fellow gamers for a real loop, and reinvigorates my gaming mojo.

I have two such evil characters to share, with an amusing connection between them:

The first was in a one shot All Flesh Must Be Eaten game. The idea behind the game was “What if characters roughly equivalent to the ones in Mallrats got trapped in the mall during a zombie outbreak?” I ended up getting the “comic book expert” character, a la Brodie Bruce. My friend T? The manager of “Fashionable Male”.

Now, before the start of the game, I went over my plans for my character in depth with the DM - that I saw Brodie as an intensely selfish, if charming guy, who absolutely is out for himself above all others (as demonstrated repeatedly by his actions in the movie) and that he is almost supernaturally impulsive. The DM agreed.

Game starts, and during the character establishment period (read: no zombies), me and T’s character were predictably at each others throats. Then, yay, zombies! We and the other players all hole up in the comic shop, and being the foremost expert on all things zombie (yay horror comics), the group agrees to follow my lead in regards to plans to secure the mall. We ended up splitting into three groups of two, and of course the “random” straws had me and T as one of the teams.

Our first objective was weaponry. We hit the mall’s wall-hanger swords and cutlery store, and for objective two, were to check the mall theater’s exits to be sure they were secure. During this part of the adventure, I was totally agreeable, and “Brodie” and “Fashionable Male” seemed to actually be bonding in the crisis. Finally, we got to the theater, which was completely dark, and completely away from all the other characters. I offer to take the rear guard (so far, all the zombies had attacked from the direction of the food court), and offered T point. He took it. As we worked our way down the aisles, I asked the DM via note if T was paying attention to me. He made a check, it failed.

I then decapitated T’s character.

The whole damned game went silent - the idle chatter, the chuckles, the cheeto bag crinkling…all of it. T stared at me in shock. I looked at the group, and said:

“What - you honestly think Brodie Bruce, given a day of pure anarchy, without restrictions, honestly wouldn’t kill the douche from Fashionable Male?”

After a few moments, everyone laughed (even T), agreed that it was totally in character, and the action stood. Alas, poor Brodie was so caught up in his victory that he didn’t hear the zombie crawling down the aisle…

T and I then got to play a bumbling pair of drug dealers caught in another part of the mall. :wink:

The second evil character story takes place in a 3.0 Forgotten Realms campaign. My DM was usually very opposed to evil characters, but allowed me to roll one when I presented a very detailed synopsis of his character, and assured him that I would not do anything evil against the party unless he was forewarned and able to plan for it. Alas, T (yes, the same T as above) heard I was playing an evil character, and decided he wanted to play one too, and our DM (whom I love, but was a doormat about such things) decided it was only fair.

Alas, the play style between us was so different. I was the epitome of Neutral Evil - I had no moral compulsions in any direction, but was not going to cause chaos for the sake of chaos - I had plans and schemes and working with the party served those schemes. T also played a neutral evil character, though I beleive it was more stupid evil - picking random fights, stealing anything not bolted down, and in general, much more open about his dickishness.

It was getting on everyone’s nerves, but there was nothing we could do against it at that time. Finally, though, we came to a combat sequence where hald the party (the goodies) were trapped across a stream of lava horribly outmatched, and the two of us on the dark side were on the other side of the room, with no enemies, after the bridge we’d crossed collapsed. The party bard threw across a rope, which T grabbed…and then he tried to pull the bard into the lava. He failed, but managed to get the rope burned up instead. More enemies started pouring into the combat, the rest of the party doomed, and T just laughing.

I passed a note to the DM - “What would it take to coup de grace T?”

The DM wrote back - “He’s distracted, but not helpless…but I’ll allow it on a natural 20 - otherwise, you’re in combat with him.”

I rolled. Natural 20.

My dagger pierced the base of his skull. The room went quiet. I coughed, said “What? He was in the way of my plans.” I grabbed the rope he had from his pack, and threw it across to the bard. The party lived, minus one stupid evil thief. The DM let T roll a new character, with the rule that he was not allowed to play evil ever again.

And T never again let his characters get in front of mine. :wink:

11

AD&D: Temple of Elemental Evil with some “house rules”.

The temple’s high priest manages to summon Iuz in the inner sanctuary/shrine. (I tried to give them all kinds of hints that this ceremony was something they needed to interrupt, but they kept getting sidetracked and distracted by other things in the area.)

The heroes are caught flatfooted, panic, and flee. I had Iuz “toying” with the group as they try to flee the complex. (Chasing after them, taunts, killing a couple henchman NPC’s in a gruesome manner.) I decide to give them a break, and have Iuz fall behind. (I expected them to keep fleeing.)

However, they set up an ambush. I figure “oh well, it’s their funeral”. They drink their potion buffs, cast spell buffs, and get ready to pull out all the stops. When Iuz storms into the room, initiative is rolled. Party ranger gets first shot. Arrow of Demon Slaying, Crit/Crit (crits were house rules. AD&D didn’t have a crit system.) One (temporarily) dead Iuz.

Talk about a memorable evening.

12

The AD&D v3.5 group I’m running now are fighting against the rise of a monotheistic church bent on converting or destroying all followers of other religions. Recently they received advanced notice of an impending surprise attack on a neutral town, but could not convince the locals of the danger as they perceived them as just a bunch of whackos (the downside of being the motley group of races and classes that they are), so they decided to distract the incoming forces by presenting a more immediate threat: a new church. The Church of Bender.

There was much drinking.

13

Great stuff. I really miss gaming. I don’t know anyone here into p&p.

I remembered a couple of other “incidents”.

In a DnD campaign we had an npc paladin, bastion of all good, albeit a bit stupid. One of the players rolled the exact opposite, a witty and intelligent chaotic evil half-fiend with a big polearm, but lacking wisdom. All he ever did was making the rest of the party paranoid, by reading minds, sending us weird messages, doing random things and yell incantations on a hill in the evening. We all went for several sessions believing this character had some sort of intention behind this, some kind of cause. Well, we ended up in a battle with a dozens of werewolves, and the npc paladin takes a hit. The evil character then manages to taunt the paladin into attacking him instead of the werewolves, the paladin still believing he’s neutral. The paladin looses the powers bestowed upon him, the character kills the paladin, folds out his fiendish wings and flies off into the darkness, the rest of us reduced to dog food. The player then reveals that he was just jealous of the paladin.

The same group had a free form session, where the DM was god, and each player could decide one attribute/ability for their character. The same guy as above yells “I have full backing of the union!”

14

Same campaign as above: very early into it I wanted to give members of the monotheistic church a quirk that would not be obviously evil but would alert the PCs that something was strange about them so, on a whim, I decided that they used urine as holy water and drank it ceremonially.

Their first encounter with the church had them entering one of their temples to investigate a local murder they suspected a member of the church had something to do with and, following their alignments and not yet having any reason to commit any kind of blatant sacrilege or disrespect, they were coerced into drinking a small amount of holy water to “cleanse” them as they entered the temple. No one was happy about it, but one Ranger in particular took umbrage at it, though he too reluctantly complied.

Months later, in real and game time, they were finally able to confront head to head the man largely responsible for all of the horrible acts they’d been recently uncovering, trying to thwart and aiding in the recovery of: a silver-tongued Mindbender and his “pets.” The same man they’d previously interviewed in the temple.

The intent was to ambush him, but their ambush went astray when they discovered that the hooded figure that always followed him was a medusa. One glance and just who had who surprised and flat-footed was reversed. The rogue, who’d been hiding and was sneaking in for a backstab, was turned to stone almost instantly. Within seconds the parties best melee fighter, a monk, was dominated and fighting against them. Their lone advantage, two rangers with bows behind cover at a distance, were soon being flushed out by a chimera.

Eventually, the party won, but not without some losses. Despite their best efforts not to, they had to kill their monk friend. Twice, as it turned out. They had no means to turn their new statue back into their roguish ally. Everyone else was heavily injured and about out of spells and tricks. They’d finally beaten the big bad guy responsible for all sorts of horrible, terrible evils upon children and other innocents.

Worn out, bleeding from a dozen wounds and limping on one good leg, the Ranger walked over to the dead body of their months-long enemy, spit on his corpse and said, “That’s for making me drink piss.”

We had a good howl about that one.

15

Gandhi drank urine.

16

My first game ever, the DM was a bit of an idjit, but the other players were cool.

It was MERP; after I’d rolled three values over 90 in my first four stat rolls, the GM called two other people to stand witness for the rest of the rolls so he wouldn’t be accused of “giving me made up stats”. I got all values over 90 except two. You could use a “history point” to trade your two lowest rolls for 90s, but then those 90s had to be assigned to your class’ primary stats.

GM asks what class do I want to play. I say “the magic stuff looks like it will add another layer of complication, let’s keep it simple: a warrior.”

GM stares blankly for several seconds before blurting “but you’re a girl! Girls can’t be warriors!”

One of the other players grabs my list of rolls, places it under the GM’s nose and says “dude, with these stats she can be anything she fucking wants to. And since we’re all supposed to be siblings leaving the farm, the rest of us bloody well know it; we reserve the right to tease her about it and put her down, since bros will do that, but we know she can kick our asses singly or collectively. And if you truly believe that ‘girls can’t be warriors’, remind me to introduce you to my sister, She Who Has a Blue Belt in Taekwondo.”

I gave the guy a grin that almost met at the back of my head. And yes, I got to play a warrior whose Str and Con were her lowest stats… both 90s :smiley:

17

In a Champions game back in college, we had fought down one of the team’s archenemies who was laying helpless on the street. Our superstrong Brick character (think The Thing from Fantastic Four) decided to pick up a delivery truck and slam it on the enemy to finish him off. The GM said, he’s helpless, you don’t need to roll. But Noooooo, said the PC, I want to see how bad I hurt this guy, what do I need to hit (on a 3d6 - roll+attack score-defense score +/- modifiers)? The GM said, just don’t drop the truck and you’ll hit him, whereupon the PC proceeded to roll - you guessed it - a 3.

The GM looked at the PC and said - “You dropped the truck.”

18

A wonderful one-shot game I played a few weeks ago involved Britain’s finest, on a zeppelin, facing off against Martians: Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, HG Wells, Nellie Bly, and Lillie Langtree joined me, Sir Harry Flashman.

Naturally I bribed a steward first thing to put me, Ms. Bly, and Ms. Langtree in adjoining luxury suites. Just because I could, and because I was Flashman, I also bribed him to place Holmes and Watson in the same cabin. “Yes sir,” he said, “I’ll get them bunks.”

“No, no,” I insisted. “They would prefer single beds, side by side. As if they were an old married couple.” The Holmes and Watson players glared good-natured daggers at me.

Later, though, we needed to interrogate a prisoner. “Ah!” said Dr. Watson. “I know just the place: Sir Flashman’s cabin is spacious and well-insulated from adjoining rooms; we may conduct the interrogation there!” I protested, but my petard was truly hoist, and so I sheepishly led them in and put those silken scarves tied to the bedposts to a slightly different use than I’d originally intended.

19

Last year, in my first roleplaying campaign ever, the DM dropped a few hints that the clerics of the city’s largest temple had lost their magic and were trying to hide it. Our party responded by breaking into the temple, throwing an ale party for the temple guards (with musical accompaniment by a barbarian with max ranks in Perform-keyboard), stealing some research notes and casting Detect Magic on a whole room full of clerics. The adventure culminated with the barbarian who started the party dropping a thunderstone (alchemical flash-bang) on his own foot, deafening himself and being chased through a series of halls and doors Scooby-Doo-style in a frantic search for an exit. When he finally made it out, chased by every sober guard in the temple, he got kneed in the head and knocked out cold by the city guard captain who came out of nowhere in a black trench coat and cowboy hat. We ended up nicknaming the character Captain Falcon-Batman.

The campaign was later revealed to involve a Majora’s Mak-style time loop. We broke into that temple with almost the exact same plan every iteration and it somehow always managed to accomplish our goals.

20

In a one-off Battlestar: Galactica game, set on Caprica during the Cylon attack, the party is trying to get to a prototype spaceship and use it to escape the planet before the bombs hit. We’re all playing pre-generated characters. I was an executive with the company producing the ship. One of the other characters was the chief engineer. I convinced the party to detour to my character’s apartment to get my wife, but when we get there, the top of the building is in flames after being clipped by a crashed Viper. My character’s physical stats are pretty poor, and I can’t pass the con check to get up the smoke-filled stairway to my floor of the building. The engineer is doughtier, and can pass the check. He agrees to go up and find my wife.

“But he doesn’t know where your apartment is,” says the GM, “with all the smoke up there, he’ll get lost.”

“Well,” I counter," we’ve been working together on this project for a couple years, right? I’d have invited him over for dinner a few times, maybe he comes to my monthly poker game. He probably knows where my apartment is, and its layout, pretty well."

The GM thinks it over for a minute, and agrees. The engineer is able to make his way to my apartment, and find my wife. But she’s stuck under a collapsed support beam, and the engineer can’t lift it.

“Hang on a minute,” I say, “If he’s been over to my place before, surely he knows where I keep my collection of antique fulcrums!”

The GM didn’t buy that one.