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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ErisRaven" data-source="post: 7649250" data-attributes="member: 4941">Self-generating gamesI once completed a long-running campaign in my gameworld, with the announced intention of taking a break and running something else. It ended well, all but a couple of players went home.That's when weirdness happened.Two players were sitting around BSing about what would happen to their epic-level characters after. One, who had died in the final session quipped that he was halfway to heaven by now. "Oh, no," I replied off-handedly. "You knew the devil's true name, and you owed him a debt. You're a gemstone on his mantel shelf now." I didn't have anything planned about that, it just seemed like the sort of thing the devil in question would do (He was all about conserving his resources). The player thought this was pretty cool. "What about me?" said the other player. "Can I be on the shelf too?"I blinked.So I wind up running the two of them for half-an-hour that night, through the process of discovery in their new space.They told the rest. And other friends.The next thing I know, I've got a new, bizarre campaign. It was the best campaign I ever ran, and the players invented it on the fly. They brought all their beloved retired characters that had no true end point. Invented their own reasons to be on 'The Shelf', and I just facilitated. It was four sessions in before character sheets happened. Seven before they mattered, and found a way to convince the demon to get one of them out of the gems.By the end, they'd unraveled a plot by the lichlord of the planet to elevate himself to godhood. They'd freed the devil from Hell, and elevated him instead. They destroyed the lichlord, freed those who were enslaved by him, and several of the character established themselves as rulers. One descended and took the Devil's place. Two ascended and became divine minions. They literally reshaped the face of my campaign world.The campaign ended six years ago. The players are still around, and occasionally, they will spontaneously pick up a forgotten thread of that campaign and we'll spend a night with it. The only thing about it that makes me sad is that I've never been able to come close to that magic in another game since. Best damned thing I will probably ever run.</blockquote>

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