Do anything cool recently?

[EricNoah]

Whether as player or GM, what have you done lately that you thought was kind of nifty?

My 2nd level elf fighter got to stand on a bar in a tavern and attack bad guys with his two-bladed sword. He had just jumped out of an upper story window to get down to the ground-level entrance before this. Also, I used a quasi-hero-point-thingy our DM uses to shout words of encouragement to a fallen comrade to get him back on his feet. Despite the fact that I rolled poorly all night, I enjoyed doing those couple of cool things. That makes RPGs pretty special in my opinion.

 

[darjr]

I ran a fighter that did nothing but non-lethal damage. Went several hours without a single kill, then we ran into a cube. I didn't hit it once but went in after folks that got caught.

Ran a game where two opposed, otherwise honorable characters, deeply dishonored themselves in their conflict. The game ended in a huge arena style battle to the death between the two while recovering their honor. No, there was no player conflict.

 

[Storminator]

I had a priest of the Silver Flame attack my PCs (all goblins) with Word of the Silver Flame. In addition to the blast of damage, the Lord of Dust imprisoned inside the Flame spoke to them and offered two of them Warlock pacts.

Going to have very interesting ramifications for my campaign . . .

PS

 

[MJS]

Cool stuff above ^

in a tournament last weekend, I played the gorgeous elf magic-user, and while flying and mirror-imaged above a dracolich's lair in a volcano, I cast "Hold Undead" from a scroll, which was a DM misprint, and the dracolich blew both its MR and saving throw. The fighters did the rest...

I also got to play a civil war Cthulu game, and got to turn on my party in the climactic battle, possessed, then un-possessed, and then a touch insane. Good times.

lastly, but not least, I mapped the freaking TEMPLE OF THE FROG. There wasn't much left of that eraser, but a party of 4 successfully completed the mission. My Cleric read a Dispel Evil scroll which the kept the froggies at bay just long enough for us to grab the chest and escape -

 

[Rune]

Ran a game of Dungeon World for my wife last night. Her ranger, her cougar, a knight and his squire were making a mad descent down the slick spiral stairs lining the wall of a collapsing tower with nothing but a plummit into void on the inside of the spiral. All while being harrassed by the tower's ghostly master. As chunks of the wall fell all around, the ranger soon found herself in an uncontrolled slide down the steps, but managed to grab a rope bridge that spanned the gap.

Unfortunatelly, the knight was also sliding toward a fall to the death, but with much more momentum. Looking quickly, the ranger spotted a step above that had been cracked from impact with a chunk of wall. One well-placed bow-shot later, the stone fell into the knght's path and he had a huge chunk of stone to crash into instead of void.

While the cougar took the squire to safety across the bridge, the knight held the ghost at bay with an enchanted blade and the ranger decided to parley with the ghost. Without the relic that the knight had taken, the ghost (bound both to the tower and the relic) would meet oblivion in but a fortnight. The knight, however, could not return the relic, for it was vital to a ritual of healing that must be used to end a malady affecting the folk of his homeland.

The ranger convinced the knight to return with the relic in a fortnight and the ghost agreed to let them go. I didn't see that one coming.

 

[Celebrim]

Recent cool stuff.

Possessed a PC with the ghost of a vengeful witch, eventually leading to the player assisting in the lynching of a freeholder by a pitchfork wielding mob. Player was actually disappointed when he was un-possessed; apparently acquiring spell powers in exchange for a loss of agency is considered a fair trade.
PC's fought a dragon on the deck and eventually in the hold of a ship. Dragon had been summoned by a jealous god to kill one of the players.
PC's aboard a pirate ship engaged and boarded an enemy ship during a large naval engagement, eventually forcing the ship's surrender amidst the backdrop of burning and sinking vessels.
Successfully pulled off a dream sequence where not only did the player not know it was a dream, but player realized afterwards that it made perfect sense for it to be a dream.
Ran over a PC with a runaway ox cart driven by murderous unseelie fairies.
Had a house cat take two PC's on a boat trip on the Astral Sea via the border city of Ulthar in order to lecture them on what starks were and why they were important.
Successfully pulled the badger game con on a PC, leading to a duel with a professional assassin whose modus operendi is instigating judicial trials of combat.
And most importantly, players finally figured out that the theft of the hymnal was related to the organist mentioned in the BBEG letter to his apprentice and that this was important and they finally realized they should try to figure out who the organist was!!!

 

[Henry]

Whether as player or GM, what have you done lately that you thought was kind of nifty?

As a GM, I ran an encounter last session that the players found very fun.

Summary: Several ships at dock in Absalom (Pathfinder's version of Waterdeep or Greyhawk City) had been seemingly cursed; the PCs, employed as local troubleshooters, followed a trail of investigation involving smashed cargo, containers will all their nails removed, uncanny accidents, and ships and vehicles falling apart at the seams. The clue that caused the greatest confusion was the transparent feces (yes, transparent feces) found on several scenes. A high knowledge roll revealed this as a sign of Fae creatures.

The PCs finally caught sight of their quarry...

Gremlins. (Thank you, Pathfinder Bestiaries, for being fonts of inspiration.)

An infestation of Gremlins had come in on one ill-fated cargo ship, and started spreading through the city. They figured this out and traced the trail straight to The Beast, the largest medieval man-powered freight crane in Golarion, in Absalom Harbor. I ran it as a floor-by-floor battle, as dozens of gremlins round-by-round loosened bolts, cut ropes, broke chains, and attempted to bring the crane's inner workings crashing down around the PCs' ears, as they frantically worked to find and kill as many gremlins as possible (aided by the workers and engineers).

The enemy was not a physically serious challenge; instead it was a race as the gremlins progressed to increasingly worse damage (leading to hazardous effects mechanically similar to traps). I had fun pulling Bugs Bunny tropes, damaging PC weapons, making PCs fall down greased flights of stairs, and ducking chains flying at their heads at high velocity. Had the PCs not stopped them in time, the damage would have caused many workmen deaths and left the crane inoperable for months. They emerged victorious, celebrated, and compensated, and told me they had a great time -- and desired to never see transparent poop again.

 

[dmfubar]

In Pathfinder, I created an ancient king's cairn and sent the player's on a quest to retrieve a dragonbane spear held by the king's spirit. The party, 6 adventurers, of which the only tank/clerical support is a single paladin (everyone else is a support class), made their way to the cairn and found the entrance, a granite doorway with a bas-relief of a dragon lanced through the chest with a spear. The rogue (a sniper archetype... no trap-finding) decided to pick the ancient keyhole. From the dragon's mouth issued a frigid cloud doing damage to the rogue and monk who was aiding him. The rogue took a moment, then tried to force the door... repeat frigid breath. Then the monk, noticing the diamond gemstones in the dragon's eyes, fired an arrow trying to knock one loose. No breath, but a lance of coldness shot out and struck the paladin. That's when the rogue (he had never looked or asked to check the trap itself), at the sorcerer's suggestion took a closer look at the bas-relief and one engineering check later, realized the wings and the spear moved. He pushed down on the wings while the sorcerer pushed the spear up (and in) and the door opened.

As a GM, I was very happy with this beginning to the adventure. No one in the party has been up against traps, but after some intense use of wands of curing and paladin lay on hands, they are being a bit more careful as they move through the cairn itself. Though, we did leave off with the Paladin dropping unconscious during a battle with Skeletal Champions. Luckily for the hapless group, there was only one opponent left at the time, and he was down to single digits on hit points. I should also say that the reason the paladin went down was aided a great deal by the halfling sorcerer's continuous use of fireballs with no regard to who may be within the spell's radius. I know he hit the poor paladin twice, and this was not the first time that it had happened. I expect there will be words upon the paladin regaining consciousness.

 

[Dioltach]

Last weekend I ended the session in our Wild West campaign by chasing the PCs through a tunnel and into the Happy Hunting Grounds. As we finished up, I left them with the question, "So who do you think are the hunters, and who are the hunted?"

 

[Razjah]

The past few sessions of the "Shadows Over New York" Dresden Files game I'm a player in have been awesome. We found three Dark Gates (Warcraft style) that lead to Hell, and have a legion of demons trying to get to the mortal realm, in a dresdenverse style MIB type place, that were being blocked by inventions of the living Nikola Tesla- who is a redcourt infected with sponsored magic SCIENCE!- but Tesla's "inventions" are actually elaborate thaumaturgies that build on each other. The inventions he made, including terminators, are a house of cards. Destroy one system and everything goes down.

We found a way to get to Hell, via a house in Amityville, NY which was where the events of the following films took place: the Exorcist, Halloween, Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, and Psycho (in this world Bates was never caught and ran amok around this house). There we found Bates' dead body with his knife. The knife magically appeared in the hands of one of the PCs right before we opened a portal to hell. The knife switched the PC and Bates' souls, leaving us with Norman Bates... in hell... with on PC being Daughter of Aphrodite.

We managed to fight off demons, and close the three portals (destroying them). We had help via another demon, Shiva, that my PC made a deal with to get her to assault the 6th level of Hell where the gates were. From there we journeyed through Hell about 4 miles to a Hellmouth that opened up under One World Trade Center. Then we had some crazy adventure trying to the Bates' soul out of the PC body, the PC soul out of a 16 year old suicide attempting person who went to the house to kill herself and tried to use the knife, and the poor girl's soul out of the knife. Oh, and Terminators built by Tesla and under the control of his evil shadow government organization bosses were coming after us. The PC in the 16 year old managed to blow up Tesla's facility while the rest of the party was captured and interrogated. Then we were finally able to get the body's and souls back in their right places. We also blew up the Amityville House in a awesome soulfire powered ritual that God compelled on my PC via the sponsored magic debt mechanic.

It was awesome and we still need to hunt down Tesla's bosses.