This is why I game

[Merkuri]

A couple weeks ago in our weekly game (played online via OpenRPG) our group found an item that the DM described as a "rust-colored bag filled with small, soft objects". I don't think that there was anyone in the group who didn't know what this was, but one player who was playing an irresponsible always-looking-for-trouble tiefling decided immediately upon finding the bag to pull out one of the soft objects and pop it in his mouth.

The game pauses for a moment while we all ponder what exactly happens in this case. The DM makes a few careful reads of the SRD entry for bags of tricks, then announces that the soft object the tiefling is chewing on is warm, furry, and explodes with blood when he bites down on it, nearly choking him.

The tiefling spits it out, and the small furry object grows alarmingly into the corpse of a bear.

Since we were playing an online game it's hard to gauge the reaction of everyone else, but me and the tiefling's player (we live in the same apartment and were playing from two computers in the same room) were rolling on the floor laughing. We spent a few minutes in the game discussing how the tiefling just crushed a bear to death with his teeth.

The DM said that he decided on this reaction because you need to throw the things 20 feet to activate them, otherwise, the tiefling would've had a pretty bad migraine. And this is where the quote in my sig comes from... the tiefling's player said, "Strangely I think I'd be okay with having a PC die by a bear exploding out of his head."

Only in D&D do such things happen. Moments like this are why I play roleplaying games instead of just sticking to computer games or the like. Where else do you get a chance to spit out an entire bear corpse?

So what funny, awesome, or just otherwise "this is why I game" moments do other EN Worlders have?

(I know that threads like this crop up every once and a while, but I love hearing everyone's stories, anyway. )

[fuzzlewump]

A few years back I had a group I played online with where I played as a bard/arcane archer. He was pretty terrible, but all the characters had special powers and mine was basically do a ton of damage every encounter or so if I hit. Well, we're fighting the BBEG and he casts Blindness on me, effectively disabling me completely and the party as a whole is being torn down. Seeing the end coming, and even though I was blind, I made a last ditch effort to take him down. I made the listen check and could pinpoint his square, so activated my special high damage ability and I let the arrow fly and rolled a d20. It came back as a 20. Now, of course in 3E, this doesn't guarantee a critical and chances are I wasn't going to get it since I was blind. Second d20: another 20. My blind arcane archer let loose an arrow of destruction that tripled my special attack damage and, by DM description, caught the BBEG right between the eyes. My character hears that the sounds of battle are subsiding and vaguely questions, "is it over? Have we won?"

[Lord Mhoram]

I have two moments that I alway list in my "Reasons I play"

My wife was playing a paladin of Athena (the goddess of Tactics in our world). He got to high level 18th or so, and had never made an alignment mistake... the character was heading for sainthood pretty much... and my wife tells me "I want you to do the fallen paladin thing with Thonolan." I was stunned, fallen paladin for this guy. So I pondered and stole a bit from a Donaldson book I ran and away I went.

I set up a plot, a mission from his temple, that made him choose chaos or evil. He chose chaos, and lost his paladinhood. The temples would not admit him for possible questing to retain it. He had fallen, he was a high level ex paladin, he turned his back on the faith ect ect ect.

So The Wife plays him as totally demoralized, with him hating life and her loving every minute of it. He ends up hooking up with a mercenary unit made up of neutrals, and while he is head and shoulders better than anyone there, he kept refusing leadership... leading was his old life. He still held to some of his religious principles (chastity, and honesty) but he drank a lot, and got into fights. We played him this way for a few months, enough for him to gain a few more levels. He really became freinds with a number of the NPCs, and they really liked him.

Then the merc captain tells them of a really sweet assignment that he just got. They go there, and it is a temple of Ares (who Athena is at war with effectively). They were going out to guard a strike force that would assault a temple of Athena (the merc captain took this as much to twist the emotional knife in Thonolan). Thonolan says "No.". The captain and he have words, and he pulls out his sword and slaughters the captain. "I am in command now, and this is not going to happen". The priest that was working with the old captain orders an attack on them, and Thonolan kills him in self defense. His dying breath he summons an minor avatar of Ares (I used a modified DDG write up for the avatar).

Ares know full well who Thonolan is, and talks to him, and tries to convince him to join the ranks, and get his powers back as an anti-paladin. Thonolan thinks hard about it, and turns him down. They fight, and Thonolan wins, killing the avatar of Ares- Which will keep him from manifesting on this prime for a time. Thonolan choose to fight as a passive suicide and didn't think he would win.

The onlookers are in awe.

Athena appears and tells Thonolan she is so proud of him. My wife, looking totally confused stammers "wh... what?".
And Athena explains that she purposefully put him in the position to lose his paladinhood, because as an ex paladin he could get close enough to get Ares, who would try to recruit him, and he held true to her, even after she seemingly abandoned him. My wife was totally flabbergasted at this turn of events, that the whole thing was a tactic, but it was so perfect for the goddess and the character, she loved it. So Thonolan was returned to paladinhood, and was sainted.

And my wife got a fallen paladin plot for the "perfect paladin".

[Lord Mhoram]

And as a player:

Side note - this character predates Drizzt by a number of years.

At this point in my gaming evolution, I had been a hack&slasher most of my gaming life. It was only recently before this happened that I truly got into the idea of being "in character", role assumption, that sort of thing. I still was something of a powergamer, but it was now always within the constraints of the good characterization. A new GM started a closed ended game, and wanted mid/high level characters. We were to investigate a Dwarven nation that everyone had lost contact with. I didn't have a character of appropriate level so the GM let me build one. Out came Obsidian- Drow fighter, but he was raised by Dwarves, from the age of a few weeks old. He was Lawful Good, and though of himself as a Dwarf. Now, this world knew about Drow, so he was hated/hunted, reviled and such, and always felt like an outsider, even at home.
We get to the town which became our home base and there was a statue to a local demigod in the town square, overlooking the main inn and general store. He had ascended, and this area had been his home in mortality. There was a legend that if somehow you could get inside the statue, you would find the "greatest treasure ever known". This Demigod was a half orc/half elf.

The adventure happens. A rather exciting mystery, but does not bear on my story. After we had ascertained the problem, and why, we were headed out to leave, but got lost in the Dwarven caves, and after hours of searching came upon a door to a small suite of rooms. A chapel, bed, and study. In the study were two windows, that when we looked out of them, we saw the villiage inn and store. We realized that we had found our way into the statue. At this point everyone starts ransacking the place looking for the treasure. Obsidian just looks out the window. The GM, taking each of us in turn telling us what we find- nothing. Obsidian keeps looking out the window, and the GM with a small smile keeps describing the interaction of the people, families moving about and such...
One of the other players, frustrated, cries "Where is this Greatest Treasure Even Know", and Obsidian (adopted drow child of Dwarves) said "Right here." and gestured out the window. He turned and said "This is the greatest treasure, acceptance by your fellow man & family. This god was a half orc, half elf- everyone reviled him, everyone was disgusted by him. That is what is here- community".
All the other players looked disgusted.

Possibly my greatest moment as a player. I had a true sense of transcendence of self- much like the one or two times doing theater in school when everything just came together. It is part of why I play.

As a postcript, we found a chapel to the demigod later, who gave everyone a minor wish. Obsidian wished for a received a grand, silver, bushy beard. :-)>
__________________

[slwoyach]

I'd say that would be the campaign with the wanderer/fighter/duelist who managed to make 11th level before killing a NON-PC, a one-handed (thank you bag of devouring) human then bugbear then elf fighter (reincarnate followed by wish), a priest who spent 2000 years as a statue, a fat human fighter who wanted to make a meal of every dragon type, a human rogue who's only skill seemed to be the ability to spot everything without effort, a halfling priest who loved daisies, 13 year old wizard prodigy, and an oger who used a door as a shield.

[megamania]

Strange things from my games-

Experimenting with my expanded Deck of Wonders. Thinking the card creations would be in their control. Having issues with a Huge Fire Elemental they use the card depicting a Red Dragon. Now they have a Fire elemental AND an angry dragon to deal with at the same time.

1/2 Orc with a STR of 6 (he was a mage) whom did a final blow on a -9 Bugbear Captain using a Falchion. The imagery was him trying to full this huge weapon over his shoulder using his own body as a lever. It worked however.

Big battle with a 12 level paladin vs 5th level characters. Rogue looks at the situation and decides to sit down and eat lunch because there was no way to win that fight and figured a paladin wouldn't strike down a halfling eating his "last meal".

[Novem5er]

Wow, some good moments posted here! I especially like the fallen paladin story. I hope someday to have great story moments like that.

I have a priceless moment from just two weeks ago. It's admittedly lowbrow, but still hilarious:

They players had just defeated a group of bandits and had "knocked out" the last one instead of killing him, with the intention of interrogating him. One of the players, seeing that the fight was done, got up to use the restroom while the rest of the group discussed the best way to restrain the bandit and how to question him.

Our Barbarian players mentions a cruel, but effective rope technique that his clan uses on their enemies. It involved tying the prisoner's hands behind his back and then looping the rope between the legs and tying it around his *ahem*. Any struggle results in a painful tug.

I said, "go for it", and it was done. I describe how the bandit woke up and started struggling at his bonds, only to yell out in shock and pain.

The Barbarian, excited that his rope trick is getting results, yells out "It's PULLING ON HIS @&#@!!!" . . . just as my missing player steps back into the room.

The look of shock and confusion on his face was just priceless. What did I miss, and do I really want to know?

Lowbrow, but priceless.

[Lord Ipplepop]

There are actually two things that keep me interested in the game every time I stop to actually think about it... and both happened with the same group.

1) I rolled up a bard (not a huge thing) and the DM- realzing my acting ability and my love of "role-playing" during the game- asked me to allow my bard to be slightly (?) nuts. As it turns out, my bard had a personality that split 5 for 1: A human bard, a human paladin (with no special abilities), a gnome illusionist (with bardic spells), a gay haberdasher (with no adventuring skills at all), and an extremely nerdy young adult with NO skills period. Any time he was pout under stress of any kind (combat, seeing undead, falling down a cliff, eating a piece of raw chicken, whatever) he had a chance of switching personalities. I had more fun playing that character becuase I had no clue what was coming next, and it gave me a chance to realkly expand my role playing abilities... of course, I used my Feat adds to buy off a few of the personalities as time went on.

2) a very impish wizard who handed my bard a sheet of paper on which was written, "I learned how to cast Explosive Runes today". My bard opened and read the paper, only to have the stinkin' thing explode in his face.
We all had a decent laugh over that one.

well, then there was my step-son's female cleric with the 8 dex and 16 con. He decided that he would play the female Friar Tuck character whose motto was "Eat ,Drink, and be Merry... for tomorrow we Eat, Drink, and be Merry again". Every time the battle would be over, and a character was in severe need of healing, the cleric would complain about having to put down her freshly poured mug of ale (she poured it out of the flask into a mug to drink it) to heal said party member.
You have to love the imagination of youth who don't realize something is impossible. lol

[shilsen]

Last session in our 4e game, where the PCs reached the culmination of their competition with an NPC playwright-cum-gladiatorial-arena-owner, whom they had challenged to a play-off. They wrote and performed a play, while he was doing the same, and the creators of the better play won (and got a pig which the PCs had turned into a minor god, but that's another story).

So what we had happen last session was the performance of the play, which turned out to be a combination of a Bollywood musical and blood sport, where the PCs (lacking any theatrical skill) acted their crazy little hearts out while simultaneously dealing with paid hecklers in the audience, changeling assassins disguised as dancers, gnome arcanists sneaking around backstage and zapping people, and the explosive downsides of filling the corpse of a former PC with fireworks and setting him off on stage.

It was awesome!

[Rechan]

This game was also played online.

The group needed to go to The Keep. Well, I reminded them that, "None of you know how to get there." One of the PCs asks an NPC, "So, know anything about The Keep?" "Well, no, I don't. I haven't been up there since I was a boy. Now, the elven woman in the town square, the one that sells flowers, she should be able to tell you. But be nice to her; she's a little 'special'."

So, the Charisma 8 Druid (who is a bit nuts) walks up to the girl and says, "I say hello to her in some sort of elven manner. Like 'You look like flowers that bloom in winter.'"

She responds, in a slow but chipper voice, "I like flowers."

He said, "I... am stunned by that response. I offer to let her hold my toad." The druid, mind you, has a giant toad that rides around in his backpack and tells him to kill things. I say, "She looks very uncomfortable." "I beg one of the more charismatic players to come and talk to her."

The rogue walks up. She says, "Would you like to buy a flower? They smell good. Unless they have a bee in them. Bees are evil, because they sting. But bees help make more flowers, so that's good. I guess bees are unaligned."

Utter. Silence.

The barbarian's player finally pipes up, "Wow, you know, I think her and my character with his Int 7 see Eye to Eye."

I got a headache from laughing so hard.

The rogue proceeds to hit on her (because he is utterly goal driven to get to The Keep). He asks her what flower sh elikes the most, she points to one and says why, and he says, "I'd like to buy it. How much?"

"Three for a copper."

"How about this gold piece?" says the rogue.

Her eyes get very big. "... that's a lot of flowers!"

Again, silence.

I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

[Rechan]

This didn't happen to me, but I love telling this story.

You have your adventurers standing outside a room full of goblins. They're trying to decide what to do. Finally, the mage looks up and goes, "Just send in the minotaur. He's expendable."

The minotaur looks at the dwarf and asks, "What does expendable mean?"

The dwarf, without missing a beat, says, "Handsome. Strong. Good with the women."

With a roar, the minotaur kicks in the door, charges into the room, swinging his axe and bellowing, "FACE ME, I'M EXPENDABLE!"


I was running a campaing where everyone were wandering gypsy con artists seeking their lost caravan. One of the characters was a swashbuckling elf that slept with everything. He just couldn't help it.

While they were at a party trying to disrupt some espionage, I noted that there was this really, really smoking elven woman. Naturally, the swashbuckler made a bee line for her. They go off.

I write a note, and hand it to the player. "You wake up. You are a girl."

The resulting session was all about tricking the fae that had stolen his manhood into giving it back.

[Vayden]

This afternoon, for whatever reason, as the party was wading into the first room of Yuan-ti from the 12th-level section of dungeon delve, I had one of the Yuan-ti say "It is a strange and fortunate day brothers! We have no need to go and find sacrifices for the Emerald Dawn today! The sacrifices have come to us!" All perfectly normal villain patter. Then for whatever reason, I had the second Yuan-ti Abomination respond "Brilliant! We can stay inside and catch up on our Soaps today!"

Next three rounds of combat consisted of the Yuan-ti and the PC Cleric of Cyric arguing over whether or Joan was really a whore, or if it wasn't her fault because it was her robot double who was hypnotized to cheat on Bobby. Some strange fit of madness I guess.

[pawsplay]

I played an abjuration specialist in an AD&D game. I had played a streak of dashing, amoral players, so I decided to play something more whimsical, less moody or scoundrely. I rolled up my stats and had one good score, Wisdom, but I was not interested in a cleric. I noticed that even with a mediocre Intelligence, he could qualify as an abjuration specialist with his Wisdom and still be a pretty good caster. What did a high Wisdom look like? I decided to make him fairly Chaotic, and from there hit upon the idea that he was very wise and insightful, but also unpredictable and not very logical. It did not take long the for the other players to react very strongly to him. Eventually, just about everything he did caused the other players to either erupt into laughter or to start complaining about his odd behavior.

He was just plain nuts; he ran around in white robe with a pair of light blue mittens. He was known only by the name Mister Mittens, and frequently conversed to and from his mittens as though they were puppets. The right mitten was fearful, nervous, and sensitive, and spoke in a falsetto. The left mitten was aggressive, cynical, and prone to offering very severe advice in a growling, snarling voice. No one was quite sure if he was delusional or was just acting out. He had a propensity for flaming spheres. While adventuring in Castle Amber, after braving many dangers through a combination of cunning and wild audacity, he was distracted by a patch of white tulips. Falling behind the group, he bent down and impulsively, sniffed them.

The GM said, "You're stopping to smell the flowers? In this castle?"

I shrugged. "I guess so. I already called it."

So he did, whereupon the white flowers drained his blood and turned into red flowers. He became a vampire. The GM decided to enlist me to continue playing him, secretly, as a vampire. The campaign ended before anyone else found out precisely what happened.

So my attempt to create a more whimsical, light-hearted character ultimately ended up as a deranged vampire, hiding among his former comrades.

[Sparafucile]

This one's a little gross. . . but the story was too funny not to share.

My wife and I had a baby 6 weeks ago. A few weeks prior to that, we were running the climax to my campaign (I decided to stop DMing for a while, for obvious reasons), and before we settled down to play, my wife had apparantly been taking to one of the other players about a certain procedure (enema) that they often give to women in labor to prevent accidents, etc.

Anyway, during the final, tense moment that was meant to widen the scope of the campaign, the party was negotiating with a guardian Lammasu tasked with awarding an ancient artifact to those that were worthy.

Meanwhile, my wife is in the other room, on the phone with her sister (who has three kids of her own), discussing her own labor experiences.

After each of the party came forward and presented their case, the Lammasu decides to ignore the prophecy he was charged with, and awards the artifcat to them, with a stern warning and the foreshadowing of a new threat to the PCs (when I start Dming again).

Then, at the most climactic moment, my wife runs into the room and says, "Well, my sister just sh-t on the table."

Yikes.

[Rechan]

Sparafucile, I have to say that you're lucky to have wed your wife first, because that's my kinda woman.

[Ulrick]

I game because:

I like the fellowship from a group that works well together.

The bragging rights that come from completing a difficult encounter.

Its a creative outlet. I like telling stories and roleplaying.

Escapism.

And my favorite quote about D&D:
"D&D is writing "Dead" next to a god's name in your Dieties and Demigods book. "
--Pale Writer, Necromancer Games: 3rd Edition Rules, 1st Edition Feel messageboards

[Hussar]

Maybe not one of my most memorable moments, but certainly the most recent for me.

I've recently started playing (instead of DMing) in a weekly Shackled City game. The game has been going for a while, so, I got to start up a little higher level than first. Aha, says I, a perfect opportunity to continue a character from another campaign, a gnome binder with a new coat of paint to fit into the new campaign. Whee.

Anyway, early on in the new campaign, I bind a vestige called Dantallion. Now, when a binder binds a spirit or vestige as it's called, there are certain physical manifestations that result in that binding ritual. With Dantalion, you gain a mouth in your stomach that can talk, although you have no control over it.

Now, Dantalion gives out all sorts of knowledge skill bonuses and stuff like that, so, I figured that the mouth in my stomach was telling me things. Here my gnome is, sitting down, staring at his own crotch and having a conversation. My descriptions was, "Garwin appears to be talking to his stomach. At least, that seems to be the general direction he is aiming for..."

Well, the "talking to Mr. Microphone" jokes started rolling in. And it went downhill from there.

Like all gaming stories, it was funnier when it happened.

[Remathilis]

So we're in the Dread Crypt of Srihoz (DCC #25), and the PCs encounter a portal with a cryptic clue that every third thing placed in the portal goes to a different point than the first two (and then resets). Most of the PCs figure it out, but are unsure if they mean organic creatures or merely anything. So the Artificer takes the risk of hopping on his effigy-dragon mount (pretty much a medium-sized dragon golem) and rides through, triggering the dragon (mount) as 2nd and he (rider) as third. The artificer appear on a cave 200 ft above sea-level over a day away from the dungeon, taking him out of the game for now. He's the team's only trapfinder.

The remaining 5 PCs (wizard, ranger, 2 fighters, cleric) press on, blundering into the remaining traps and finding a secret passage that has hundreds of 2-inch holes in it (big enough for gaseous forms to pass). They only have 3 potions of gaseous form, and the wizard doesn't have it in his spellbook, so they decide on a second route, the wizard stares through the correct hole (found with search check) to study it, teleports three members of the party, and the ranger uses a potion to ooze through the hole, and all of them would appear on the other side ready for combat.

Buffs applied, potions drunk, the wizard grabs the two fighters and cleric and BAM! Rolls random mishap table, rolls 98%, which is similar location. They appear in a crypt, but an undead free one back on the mainland in the city they started the adventure in, (5 days away via elemental galleon). The ranger seeps through, doesn't see his friends, and using his gaseous form high-tales it OUT of the crypt post-haste, making several wrong-turns, until he finds his way out of the dungeon, back to the boat, and decides to call it lost and sail back home.

24 hours later, sendings are sent, and the PCs all regroup at the city they began the adventure in. They are currently deciding whether or not to go in there and finish it as a matter of pride or wait until they're 20th level and THEN go do it.

Srihoz hasn't laughed like that in thousand's of years.