Epic Moments in Role Playing Games

[Lalalei2001]

I found this on a website, but it's so awesome and epic I had to post it. Credit goes to ThePessimist at Comic Book Resources Forums

'I'm a bit of a writer, a published playwright in fact, so that when a buddy of mine decided to DM a DnD campaign he let me chip in on the writing- he had final say but he'd listen on ideas. We decided to do what at a glance looked like a sterotypical Half-Vampire-Dri'zzt-Clone-Undead-Hunter but actually used him to explore deeper themes like Revenge vs Justice, Forgiveness, and what exactly is the Soul.

One of the prouder moments I had with that character was using a Wish to figure out once and for all whether or not he actually had a soul, because nothing short of that would give a definite answer. The other PC's got kick-butt weapons or some new really handy gear, I got the world's equivalent of an angel telling my PC that the gods of light considered him at best a soulless parody of a mortal.

Even the God of Justice, who the PC's mother served faithfully and the PC has dedicated all his successful hunts to, sees him as nothing more then a usefull pawn to be used against the gods of darkness. Obviously this made Kuhl very sad and bitter, but he decided to at least stick by his mortal friends. This ended up leading to the 2 most epic moments our little group had ever seen, and they both happened in the same session.

The group of PC's were hired by a church of the gods of light to investigate a distant site that may house a legendary dark artifact. The PC's get there, and find that it's a legendary lost Great Temple to the God of Undeath. Three sessions later we've finally cleaned it out and tucked away in the farthest room we found the artifact. The cleric and paladin both believe it's dorment, the temple is so huge, and everyone is so bushed that we set up camp right there. Big mistake.

My PC experences a dream where the God of Undeath reveals that a being that is both alive and undead can only exist as an extension of a god's will, that he considers the PC his grandson, and commands him to kill his friends.
"No, I Refuse."
"Sure, Your Mind says no. But your Body. . ."
Kuhl snaps out of his vision to find out that he's been trying, and is extremely close to succeeding, to kill his friends for the last 20 minutes in game time. I'm not talking "Oops, Out of HP" kill, I'm talking "I'm going to gut you like a fish and dance with your entrails" kill.

He's eventually restrained and agrees to remain chained up for everyone elses safety, but I decided Kuhl wouldn't leave it just at that. The first night they make camp outside of the temple, he picks the locks on his chains, stealthily steals both the cleric's and the paladin's holy books along with everyone's holy water, writes a note to the effect that he's got one more thing to do at the temple and if they decide not to wait for him he'd understand, and sneaks out of camp.

By the time the other PC's figure out he's gone Kuhl is back at the temple and making arrangments to lay the biggest blessing on the dark altar he can muster. First he had to read some holy scriptures and pour holy water on himself, which has burned him like acid since day one. So this little speech is being given by an albino half-dead freak covered in acid burns in front of the altar of the largest temple to the God of Undeath this world has ever had.

"I hope I have your attention, because this might save your life. Morash, you said I exist only because you will it so and you see me as your grandson. I believe you, I really do. If you tell me that you let it be so solely because you wanted a family I might even believe you.

So here's a message from your grandson. You hurt me so deeply I'm not sure even you know how deep, but before you hurt me I was afraid of what I was. I still want to kill the man that was my father, but before I was so afraid of him that I'd probably never bring myself to face him. Now everything has changed. I will kill him and I now say that without fear, without emotion, just a statement of fact because of what you do to good and decent people like my friends. Like I wish I was.

If you put every single undead in all the planes of existance between me and you it may just barely buy you enough time to leave the planes and never return. Maybe.

You can't have me. Ever."

Then a lowly undead hunter universly despised by the gods of light named Kuhl used about a gallon of holy water to bless the heck out of one of the most evil altars in the mortal realm. Our DM stopped, gave me about 500 RP XP because "an Undead Hunter taking a swing at the God of Undeath makes perfect sense" and immedietely declared a break.

Then he came back with this little gem.

"It's unfortunate that no mortal will ever learn the true implications of what happened that day.
The God of Sunlight demanded that this soulless husk be struck down immedietely for daring to read from his sacred words.
The Goddess of Nature continued her complaint that this unnatural thing was allowed to exist in any sort of natural sense.
But what the God of Justice saw would change everything.
For the first time he saw someone who believed in Friendship so strongly he betrayed them so they would not feel a god's wrath.
For the first time he saw someone who held Hope in his heart so strongly he continued to stand against darkness even when the gods would belittle him.
And for the first time he saw someone who believed in Justice so strongly that he'd rather face the utter annihilation of a god then harm a single innocent.

Even the gods of light would never speak of the day in which the God of Justice found himself to have acted unjustly, but the restitution would resound in the halls of the gods of darkness forever.
No mortal can ever kill a god, all of creation knows this.
The God of Undeath watched as his mortal grandson poured holy waters onto himself, and he laughed at the foolishness.
The God of Undeath listened as his grandson spoke the words, and by the end he still saw it as nothing more then empty threats.
Then his grandson blessed his greatest altar, and the God of Undeath felt as though a spear had peirced into his heart.
Then he watched as his grandson's soul was born, and the light burned away his eyes forever."

 

[DungeonMaester]

Gamers, (esp. gammers who visit forums or other online resources. ) have been conditioned to have the attitude of "been there, done that" in which there is no character concept that isn't too much like something else. Looking deeper to what the character is about is where good roleplaying lies.

---Rusty

 

[Rabelais]

Well done!

Now for mine...

Once upon a time there was a Paladin dedicated to Aethena, Goddess of Wisdom and Justice. His name was Galen Atlanta. Through many adventures, his party worked to overthrow a dark god bent on world domination. The gaming group had a love hate relationship with Paladins but let me play one because I had a pretty good backstory developed for him. One of the players was playing a rogue. Between battles we would discuss ethics and philosophy, along the mercy-revenge-justice spectrum.

The other players would't really mock the conversation, but would groan whenever we started roleplaying it. Over the course of a couple of months worth of sessions we'd gotten pretty good at the give and take of law vs. free will.

Until...

Our party found itself on a ship full of pirates and slavers who were going to kidnap a bunch of schoolchildren. Our party fought our way onboard, freed the children and were trying to fight our way off again. We were all pretty low on HP, pretty much spelled out... there was no way we were going to win the battle, but we managed to create a bottleneck that would allow most of the party to escape. One of us though, had to stay behind to be the cork.

Galen volunteered. The GM gave me a moment to compose Galen's farewell speech. I thought it came off pretty well, so the GM gave me a +1 to all of the attack related rolls and checks. The party escaped with the kids, Galen fought bravely, until he was tackled by one of the pirates. Out of nowhere the Rogue blindsided the pirate.

I'll never forget this moment... He said. "Ok, you convinced me" He renounced the god he had been worshiping, and voluntarily converted to Aethena on the spot. We fought bravely side by side, but were finally overcome by the enemy.

Together, we broke the back of the Sinister Slavers, resuced the children, and saved the rest of the party from a certain TPK. The GM and players actually cheered, it was pretty Epic as far as I am concerned.

Best. Game. Session. EVAR.

 

[paradox42]

Great story! And congratulations on achieving that moment- it will never come again, due to the ephemeral nature of our hobby, but you may achieve even greater ones later.

My own Epic game has featured several such moments in its six-year history, with each character being given an "epic moment" to truly shine- but it does take a great deal of time and effort delving into the character to achieve them. Events like the party's fighter/tank getting to hear some of the first cries of his baby nephew, after having brought a soul for the child directly from the Gardens where they are grown; The party's Sorceress actually rescuing members of the race she hated for destroying her homeland from a horde of orc barbarians and their Epic necromancer/priest of the Death god/Mystic Theurge puppetmaster, after taking on and annihilating said army with her friends; the party's PC dragon taking her first flight as a recognized and properly Named member of dragon society with her recently-freed parents... these are the things legends are made of.

Gaming was, in my view, made for great moments like this. They are memories that last a lifetime, even though the events in question never really happened. It always feels a privilege to be a part of it, as a DM or player.

Hopefully the other members of your party will be able to experience such moments for themselves and their characters as the campaign continues. Again, congratulations!

 

[Aeric]

Most epic moment in gaming for me:

It was a Birthright game, 2nd Edition AD&D. There were two players and the DM. My character was Aeric, a paladin/cavalier, the son of a minor landholding noble in the Barony of Roesone. Over the course of the campaign, he rose from being a lowly knight-errant to the husband of the Baroness and leader of an international army fighting against the Gorgon (Birthright's equivalent to Sauron).

Towards the end of the campaign, the army fought a terrible battle in a major city. The city itself was practically demolished and there were heavy losses, including someone who had been a good friend and romantic interest to Aeric from very early on. That night, Aeric (who had lost his paladin status a while back but remained LG) prayed for her soul in the ruined temple of Haelyn (BR's equivalent of Heironeous). A priest found him there, and the two had a deep discussion of faith and the like. In the end, the priest turned out to be the ghost of the temple's head priest, who was sent to my character as one last test of faith. Apparently he passed, because not only did he get his paladin status back, but the ghost gave him the Sword of Roele (the world's only Holy Avenger) to use in the upcoming battle.

The next morning, Aeric rode out at the head of the army, the Sword of Roele held high. It was overcast, but the clouds parted to bathe him in a ray of sunlight. The battle began, and the Gorgon himself appeared, astride his green dragon. Immediately my character charged with his lance, and critted the dragon, doing something like 54 points of damage to it (double damage from a charge + triple damage for critting with a lance). The dragon failed its System Shock roll and died right on the spot.

Aeric fought against the Gorgon in one-on-one combat, and managed to get him down to about 25% of his max HP total before the Gorgon killed him. However, his noble sacrifice was enough to turn the tide of battle; the Gorgon fled the field, and his army was slaughtered behind him. The war was over.

The last scene of the campaign was Aeric coming to his senses seated near the head of a long table in a great feast hall. Near him was his friend who had died in the city, along with his father and his mentor. At the head of the table was Haelyn himself.

All of this at 6th level.

 

[Stalker0]

The Legend Will Never Die!!!

 

[sniffles]

I'm sure I've told this story previously on these boards, but it bears retelling.

Several years ago I was involved in a Fantasy Hero campaign that ran for about 3 years. Our party started out loosely inspired by the Black Company books. They were members of a small mercenary army that specialized in both combat skills and magic. The founder/general of the mercenary group had recently disappeared, presumed dead along with most of his senior officers, while on a secret mission that didn't include any of the PCs.

In the wake of that tragedy the PCs took over as the senior officers of the company and accepted a commission from a master swordsmith to gather the ingredients for the mighty runesword he wished to forge. Due to some poor negotiation skills (read: bad rolls) on the part of the company's new commanding officer, we ended up becoming virtually indentured to our employer.

In the course of our searches for the various items he wanted us to recover, we stumbled upon information about the Reavers, who we looked on as powerful evil beings, but not gods. At the same time, these Reavers started reappearing in the world after a thousand-year absence. According to what we knew about them (which wasn't much), they had been at war with the gods.

People started turning to the Reavers as deities. We found a sleeping god in the ruins of an ancient lost city. We found a castle that seemed to exist outside the flow of normal time. We started running into all kinds of nasty portents about what was going to happen to our world. We learned that the Reavers and the gods we worshipped weren't really all that different, just opposing sides in a war that had been waging since the beginning of time - and all the mortal races were just their pawns or playthings. My character, a devotee of the Sun God, learned that her god was for all practical purposes dead, though as long as he still had worshippers he still wielded a little power in the mortal world. She found herself chosen as his avatar, and another character was chosen to be the Messenger of the Reavers.

Eventually, as a result of learning some of this information, our little merc company decided to fight against the Reavers and support the "gods". We began recruiting supporters to form an alliance against the Reavers.

But in the meantime we had to keep working for our employer, partly because he had the right to sell us as slaves if we broke our contract, and partly because we'd become convinced that his runesword might be a powerful weapon in the war against the Reavers.

In the course of his creation process he'd hired a master swordsman to advise him, and my character become somewhat romantically attracted to this character, although it never went very far with her religious obligations and the missions the company became involved in.

We also discovered that our swordsmith's ancestor had attempted to create a similar runesword, and in the process became so obsessed with success that he became a sort of lich. He'd been killing swordsmen to incorporate their blood into his unfinished blade. We wanted to prevent our employer from doing something similar, and also to direct his efforts more toward what we considered the "good" side of the titanic struggle that was brewing.

Finally the swordsmith was ready to begin the actual forging of the sword. We made our way to the ancient dwarven forge we'd cleared out for him to use and positioned ourselves to watch the final steps of the forging. As my character stood by in horror, we saw him plunge the freshly-forged blade through the heart of my swordmaster friend. There was nothing we could do to stop it.

Then the sword began to levitate, threatening anyone who approached it - it sent on of the other mercs flying across the forge chamber. Gradually we all began to realize with mounting horror that the only person who could touch the sword was my character. She took it reluctantly. It vanished immediately, but she knew she could call it if she needed it.

Now it was time for the final showdown with the Reavers and the gods. We brought all our allies to bear against them, even the isolated and dying Elves and the xenophobic Dwarves. My character was levitating through the battlefield with her new sword in hand, glowing with the brilliance of the sun, and yet somehow the Reavers couldn't see her. At least, not until she sliced one of the practically immortal Reavers in two with the runesword.

Then the Reavers all took notice of her. Her companions joined her, and together they brokered a deal with the Reavers to force them to leave our plane of existence for good and let mortal creatures live without fear of their depredations. Our actions shook the magical and spiritual foundations of the world; some of the gods left too, as part of the bargain.

That's the most epic story I've ever been involved in, and I still marvel out how my GM brought it all together.

This same GM is running us through a D&D campaign now that is loosely connected to that campaign, though we don't yet know what all the connections are beyond the reuse of some names.