Best campaign moments

[Blade of Desecration]

This was inspired by a thread back at the WotC boards. What were your favorite moments in you campaigns? Were they comic or dramatic? Was it a single line, or a whole situation? Did your DM or PC do something amazing or hilarious? Share the madness that is the game.

[Nightcloak]

Great idea!

So many memories...

Well, I've told the boholder-lich and rogue roulette story already, so here's a quick one for now.

During a dungeon crawl, the party found a Wizards spellbook. The Wizard was pretty excited about that (I introduce third party and Forgotten Realms spells into my game this way). The player himself was even more exited when I handed him a prop:

A hand made "book" of 18 pages yellowed and browned with age, tied in twine, and burned a little.

You would have thought it was Christmas morning. During the next break, while a couple players went out to the porch for a smoke, the Player/Wizard started flipping through the book. I feel almost guilty for what happened...

"Oh, this is great! Page 1 is something called "Continuous Missles", page 4 is a 9th level spell called "Duplicate", page 12 is an Improved Mage Armor, and page 13 is... what the hell, it says: "trap" - roll 10d6 and ..... oh @#$%!"

[Blade of Desecration]

Originally Posted by Nightcloak

Great idea!

So many memories...

Well, I've told the boholder-lich and rogue roulette story already, so here's a quick one for now.

During a dungeon crawl, the party found a Wizards spellbook. The Wizard was pretty excited about that (I introduce third party and Forgotten Realms spells into my game this way). The player himself was even more exited when I handed him a prop:

A hand made "book" of 18 pages yellowed and browned with age, tied in twine, and burned a little.

You would have thought it was Christmas morning. During the next break, while a couple players went out to the porch for a smoke, the Player/Wizard started flipping through the book. I feel almost guilty for what happened...

"Oh, this is great! Page 1 is something called "Continuous Missles", page 4 is a 9th level spell called "Duplicate", page 12 is an Improved Mage Armor, and page 13 is... what the hell, it says: "trap" - roll 10d6 and ..... oh @#$%!"

Rotfl, thats hilarious! I really wouldn't want to be that wizard though.
Something similar to that, which are also extremely fun, are explosive runes poems/letters.

Dear elected official: This is an assassination note. It is written entirely in explosive runes.
P.S. There are also beads from a necklace of fireballs enclosed for a bigger boom. Goodbye!
Yours truly, friendly neighborhood assassin.

[Nightcloak]

Originally Posted by Blade of Desecration

Rotfl, thats hilarious! I really wouldn't want to be that wizard though.
Something similar to that, which are also extremely fun, are explosive runes poems/letters.

Dear elected official: This is an assassination note. It is written entirely in explosive runes.
P.S. There are also beads from a necklace of fireballs enclosed for a bigger boom. Goodbye!
Yours truly, friendly neighborhood assassin.

BOOM!

Neat trick.

For fun, I went and found that prop. Maybe some pictures will help inspire others who read this thread. Sorry for the quality, it would appear I forgot to put ranks in Knowledge (Digital Camera).

[MarkCsigs]

Simply amazing! I love props and I think they add a lot to the game. Tell me, how did you yellow/brown the pages so well? I've done similar stuff with maps before but they've never come out looking that good.

--Mark C'sigs

[wolf70]

So many moments, so little time to type.

The party was attempting to sneak across a river in enemy controlled territory. There is a guarded bridge less than a hundred yards upstream. The guards have already been tested by members of the party attempting to cross without the proper papers (looking suitably harmless so as not to get arrested of killed). Everyone is playing smart and speaking in character.

There are woods screening the banks outside of about a 100' clear zone. The party is doing a great job of approaching unnoticed and hiding in the woods. As they scope out the opposite bank of the river, they see a small cabin hidden deep in the trees and well-camouflaged, with a small hidden inlet with a dock and a small boat on it. This seems to be what they are looking for, so one of the characters swims across and successfully avoids attracting the attention of the guards. He scopes out the cabin and boat and returns to the bank on the opposite side of the river from where the characters are.

Up to this point, the players are all whispering to each other, since the characters are and everyone is into it. The players begin whispering to the player of the character on the opposite bank, who very LOUDLY says, "WHAT???" The player really just didn't hear, but since everybody was speaking in character he almost fell out of his chair when he realized what he had just done.

The soldiers on the bridge hear the shout and mobilize. They spot the majority of the party and head that way. The party then swims for it. Meanwhile, the PC across the river bolts into the cabin, spreads his caltrops and hides behind an upturned table. When the party reaches the other side, several of them ready the boat while two more go into the dark interior of the cabin to retrieve the character inside.

At this point, they hit the caltrops...

Now THAT was a LOT of fun!

DM

[Nightcloak]

Originally Posted by MarkCsigs

Simply amazing! I love props and I think they add a lot to the game. Tell me, how did you yellow/brown the pages so well? I've done similar stuff with maps before but they've never come out looking that good.

I'll put how I do it in the GMF Members Creations Thread.

This prop is almost two years old, which probably helps.

[DungeonmasterCal]

I have several I'm pretty proud of, but this is probably my favorite. I really like my players to come up with detailed backgrounds for their PC's. In a campaign I ran for nearly 10 years, one of my players had written the reason her ranger had left the "corps" was to flee an abusive relationship by a fellow ranger.

Now I try to make time "in game" coincide with "real time". So two years later, her ex-lover showed up. The ranger's player was very surprised by this. I ran him, as an NPC, for several adventures, and during the whole time, he tried to show how much he still loved her and how much he'd changed. She wanted nothing to do with him, and he eventually attacked and tried to rape her. She and the rest of the party chased him away, thinking that was the end of it.

Now, about 6 months further on, the party, while exploring the tunnels beneath an ancient and ruined city, are attacked by a pack of ghasts, led by a wight. Just as things begin to look their grimmest, her ex-lover charges in and dives into the fray. The last words they hear from him are, "Run! Get out while you can! I'll hold them off!" They get out of the sewers, and wait and wait, but he never appears.

2 months later, her character has gone off ahead of the rest of the party to scout the location where they are supposed to rendezvous, when she is attacked in the ruins of a wizard's tower. Fighting in the darkness, she can't make out her foe clearly. During a lull in the combat, the creature steps into a pool of moonlight, and in a harsh, gutteral voice says, "I swore I would always love you, and that we would always be together. If I can't have you in life, then we'll be together forever in death!" She gets a good look at the creature; her ex-lover, now a wight, who has stalked and tracked her since his fall to the undead monsters in the sewers.

The player actually screamed, and nearly burst into tears at the shock. And when I say player, I don't mean her character. She was so caught off guard by this that we had to stop the game so she could calm down.

Yeah... I'm VERY proud of that one.

[themind]

Off and on I have been running the Maure Castle adventure that was revised in Dungeon Magazine. On the second level, the 5 PC's come across a Gnoll Cleric. In the seocnd round of combat, the gnoll casts Word of Chaos, affecting 3 out of 5 of the PC's with confusion for 4 minutes. The Cleric then escaped with Word of Recall, hoping the PC's kill each other. Which they very nearly did.

It ended up the sorceror, the Cleric/Geomancer, and the rouge were affected. The other 2 fighters were able to keep the rogue stuck in a room for the entire duration, and realy had to worry about the other 2. So for 4 minutes, they were wither running away, fighting each other , or whatever. It came to a point where the cleric cast harm on the sorceror bringing him down to 1 HP. The next round, the sorceror acts normally, and teleports back to town. He then runs to the temple to get help. Along the way, he rolls to attack the closest person, which ends up being a commoner. So he uses disintigrate on the poor fellow.

The clerics at the temple were confused. He'd run in yell for help, run putside, run back in, throw a fireball at the alter, plead for help, etc.

I enjoyed that greatly, cause it was the first time I had ever used Word of Chaos, it worked so perfectly.

[ChaosEvoker]

Originally Posted by DungeonmasterCal

The player actually screamed, and nearly burst into tears at the shock. And when I say player, I don't mean her character. She was so caught off guard by this that we had to stop the game so she could calm down.

Yeah... I'm VERY proud of that one.

That....is awesome....

I'll try to come up with one of my own here in the next few days

[Evilhalfling]

Best moment was ending my 2nd ed campaign, It lasted 4 years took 4 years off (for colleage) and the resumed. The two remaining characters were a Paladin and wizard, with a new cleric and gnomish companions.
They journied to the Abyss - a layer owned by Kali. She was the patron of Hextor (she gave him multiple Arms). The paladin had deadened his own skin, for protection. It had turned gray and lost feeling. The cleric sacrificed his life to close a portal that was letting demons into thier home plane, the others had to jump through a random portal. They ended up in a Its A Wonderful Life world where they had never existed. It was mostly overun by demons, with a few last stongholds of humanity. The mage shrugged and prepared to plane shift to his home, an enchanted tower that he had concieved and built - he carried the final ingrediate he had needed (the soul gem of ghost archmage) The paladin grabed a random horse and rode out into the dawn to fight his way though the hordes, looking for the demon lord that he had once prevented from entering this world.
As he rode through the gates his horse sprouted wings becoming his first, long dead mount, a pegusus. As the sun hit his skin it changed to the Invulnerable gold of Heriounous, and he felt his god riding with him.

The End.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Originally Posted by ChaosEvoker

That....is awesome....

Thanks!!! That will always be my standout moment in that campaign, I think, and there were many, many great moments. I should also add that she ended up having to kill him to save her own life.

[Nightcloak]

Originally Posted by DungeonmasterCal

The player actually screamed, and nearly burst into tears at the shock. And when I say player, I don't mean her character. She was so caught off guard by this that we had to stop the game so she could calm down.

Yeah... I'm VERY proud of that one.

Originally Posted by Chaos Evoker

That....is awesome....

I agree with CE. It doesn't get any better than that. Talk about a moment in time.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Thanks again, you guys. I think that's my strength as a DM. I am no fool with the rules, but I'm more of an intuitive, seat of the pants DM when it comes to the mechanics. I prefer to create memories of the games that the players will always treasure (for good or ill... lol) rather than making sure they remember that 5 foot step.

A nasty trick I've learned over the years (I've mentioned this in another thread) is to find out what people are scared of in real life, and when they least expect it, spring it on them. Some examples are:

The girl who played that ranger in the above story was deathly afraid of snakes. Couldn't even watch them on tv. So in one adventure, the floor of a ruin gave way and she plummeted into a pit of (nonpoisonous) snakes. But it was enough to completely freak her out.

My brother is horribly arachnophobic, and once, while playing his dwarven cleric on a rescue mission to a Drow stronghold, found his beard infested with spiders of all sizes. He was so shaken up he had to drink three vodka shots to calm down.

Another player was scared of wasps in real life. His character, poking his head into a dark corner, brushed a normal wasp nest. Just the thought of the insects buzzing around his face made him go pale.

My sister played in one of my very early groups, and once while I was describing larval carrion crawlers hatching from the corpse of a dead man, she ran from the room and became ill.

So while I might not know the ins and outs of grappling right off the top of my head, I really try to set a scene, and I think I do a pretty good job of it.

[Blade of Desecration]

This one happened a while back. One of the other members of my and Mr. GR's gaming groups was DMing this one (it was his own campaign, not a jointly DMed one). Party consists of a drow paladin (me, using a variant I found online that was well balanced and didn't have quite as strict a code. I normally don't play paladins, but I was doing an example paladin to show player #3 how to RP one, since he always seemed to play them as smite happy maniacs) a Deep Imaskari wizard (Mr. GR), and a half-drow monk. This was a mostly Underdark campaign in the Forgotten Realms, and no, I was not playing a Drizzt clone. At this point, we'd come to Waterdeep after some stuff in Skullport. Now this problem stems from the fact that player #3 has occasional problems remembering certain aspects of his character (read: race). That and he had insanely bad luck.

DM: Alright, you come up amongst some shacks in the slums.
Me: I put up my hood, and put on some gloves.
DM: There are some kids playing around outside. There’s also a guy leaning unconscious against a shack wall, obviously starving to death.
Me: I'm gonna walk over, drop a few gold on the starving guy, and walk off towards a slightly wealthier part of the city.
Player #3: I'm gonna' walk over and watch the kids.
DM: They take one look at you, and run away screaming.
P3: Huh?
Mr. GR: Dude, you're half-drow, so you look like a full drow! Get out of there before they tell someone.
P3: Should I knock them out?
Everyone else: NO!
P3: Oh yeah, I'm lawful good, right.

Some time later and after a bit of other junk.

DM: You arrive outside of a tavern.
Me (after having used a disguise kit to make myself look like a surface elf): I walk in and order a drink.
Mr. GR: Same here.
P3: Same here.
DM: Oh god, here we go again. You look a frigging drow!
P3: But I’m wearing a hood!
DM: Yeah, and remember you’re also wearing a short sleeved monk shirt. They can see your
arms! They all start pointing and screaming!
P3: Alright, I’m jumping out the window.
DM: OK, but remember that there are people outside.
P3: I run around to the other side.
DM: People are streaming out of the door on this side, but there are still a few escape routes.
What you gonna do?
P3: I’m gonna jump through that window there!
DM: If you would please look at the map, you just jumped back through into the tavern again.
P3: Crap! I’m jumping back out and running!

He manages to get away from the mob, but is running through the streets. The other two characters have been trailing after him.

DM: Alright, they are still after you. There is a brick building here, with a large sign in fro with the Waterdeep crest on it. There are also plenty of buildings around. The street is empty.
P3: I'm running into the brick building.
DM: Why?
P3: To shake off pursuit!
DM: You just walked into a guard garrison. There are soldiers sitting all around.
P3: Uhoh...
Me (walking in): Where are the prison towers, I'm supposed to deliver this prisoner to them.
DM: They give you directions to the prison towers.
Me: I grab him and drag him out the doors.

We get just a little way down the street when...

P3: You know what? Skip that, I'm no one's prisoner. I'm marching back in there, and they either accept me or the don't.
DM: What!?
P3: I march back in there. I walk up to the closest guard and start singing "Why can't we be friends."
Me and Mr. GR: Oh god...

Be aware that alot of other stuff happened that day, to this same PC (this was all in one meeting), including Mr. GR having to pull him out of an indoor market where the monk had ende up knocking everyone out to make sure no one told the guards.


We still poke fun at him about it.

[Mr_GrinReaper]

You forgot about the part in the tavern where i turned him invisible so he could get away.... THEN he jumped out of the window....... I was loling so much, and whats worse, I had to pretend he was an enemy and send a summoned owl after him....

[Blade of Desecration]

Originally Posted by Mr_GrinReaper

You forgot about the part in the tavern where i turned him invisible so he could get away.... THEN he jumped out of the window....... I was loling so much, and whats worse, I had to pretend he was an enemy and send a summoned owl after him....

Yeah, that was kind of sad. In all fairness, we were all pretty tired by then, but still, what kind of a stupid move is it to jump through a glass window when you're invisible. Sometimes he really needs to think a little about his surroundings...

And remember, that meeting also spawned the gnoll line.

[ChaosEvoker]

@DMC
Seriuosly man, you need to host the next campaign for the DMF. I want to get the ever-loving crap scared out of me

@BoD (heh or CotDS, WHO KNOWS?)
Holy crap, that guy must have an IQ lower than that of retarded broccoli. Please tell me it washis first time playing the game (which in this stroy is BARELY an excuse)