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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GameGuru4" data-source="post: 855839" data-attributes="member: 9188">Never really gotten choked up during a tabletop game, but at LARP?  Hoo-boy.  This story is from a Vampire LARP and it sums up "getting emotional at a game" for me...I was playing a female character for about 9 months and there were some striking similarities between the plot things happening to her and things happening to me in real life.  The man she loved was killed for unjust reasons (in her mind - hell as the player I knew damn well they were justified) and at the same time the girl I really cared about (probably my best friend) basically stopped talking to me.For years of game time (months in real-world time) she spends all her effort working on either revenge against those that did it to him, or getting magical help to try and bring him back.Eventually she gets him back, by having his wraith shoved in another vampire's body by a wraith-lord in the area, but it's taken about 2.5 years of her life to do it.  It's then that she (and I, the player, simultaneously...) realizes that she just doesn't care about him like she used to.  She's had to withdraw too much from her emotions to deal with his death in the first place.So she's a follower of Lillith, aka a Bahari.  She decides she must do a grieving Bahari ritual so she reseaches one and finds what she thinks is one (turns out she was wrong) so she walks a pentagram 3 times on the floor of the Elysium (gathering of vampires) then slices her arm open to cleanse it of her grief.  Then she walks the pentagram 3 more times and does likewise to her right arm.  I'm role-playing the living <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> out of this, mouthing passages of the Revelations of the Dark Mother to myself and everything.  I actually memorized a couple pages of the book and such to make it totally realistic.  Then, with both her arms slit (but not bleeding, she's a vampire...) she walks the pentagram 13 more times.  Every time someone gets in her way she screams at them to move and any time someone asks her what she's doing she tells them to leave her alone.Most people do, but one continues to prod her until she starts to cry as she walks the pentagram, telling him to just leave.  She must do this for her own sanity.  She won't hurt anyone.The pentagram makes him leery especially since the city has been attacked by a couple demons recently.At one point when walking the pentagram her legs grow weak and she falters.  I RP this and actually fall as the player, barely catching myself on the handle of a door.  I'm working to lift myself up, trying to act like I'm fighting back vomiting and intense pain (physical and emotional).  My eyes are closed as she tries to gather her inner strength.  Suddenly the player of the prodding character says "hey, dude...hang on a second" - I thought for a second he was talking in-character, but it wasn't his IC voice so I look around and realize the security gaurd for the building is there (we play on-campus) and he needs to lock the doors to the building (that I'm leaning against).  The other player says "let the man do his job" in a sort of laughing voice, I say "oh <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />, I'm sorry" and I back off to let him lock the doors and move on.  Then the people in the scene with me say "continue breaking down now" and it takes me a good 30 seconds to get back into character that much.The scene continues, she manages to make it 13 times around, but only just, then she slices cuts into her cheeks and forehead, pukes up a ton of blood, and passes out in the center of the invisible pentagram she was walking.THAT was emotional.  Probably the second-most emotional game moment I've ever had (most emotional is in the continuation below).  I was so in-character that I, for a moment at least, had lost contact with the outside world.  I think that's just...cool.So, to continue the story...It was around that time that I, the player, finally gave up trying to reinstigate a friendship with said girl (another parallel).Then my character (post-ritual and after stern talking to "do not walk pentagrams in the Elysium" by the Seneschal...) and the man go their separate ways, but she decides a couple weeks later that she's nothing without him or the quest to get him.  She has no drive.  She needs him, even if she must force herself to love him again.So she goes to Elysium to look for him.  She finds the Seneschal and asks to speak with her alone to see if she knows where he is.  She says she doesn't, sees that I'm visibly upset (in-character) and asks what's wrong.  Seeing as we're alone, she decides maybe this can be a way to get some direction in her life (unlife? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-P" title="Stick out tongue    :-P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":-P" />) if she can't have love or the want of it anymore.So I and the Seneschal have a very emotional scene where I explain basically the entire love story to her, and I actually started crying in-character a little bit.  Considering that I, the player, only cry in the most grievous of circumstances, this was a major step in my ability to roleplay.  The character would have cried, and I could FEEL that.  The crying was totally natural.THAT is the most emotional moment in a game ever for me.And for those interested in the end of the story...The Seneschal had no advice for me or paths for me to walk.  So she went to find her true love and make it work somehow...  She goes to find him and on the way feels a GREAT sense of loss for some reason.  Later she is near this magical box plot-device thingy that's known to eat demons, and she can feel him inside of it (ST ruling since it was True Love), and she feels her wraith-lord friend in there too.  She asks the person with the box (a PC) how they got in there - she counters asking how I know they're in there.  I tell her I just know, she asks me how I know, this goes back and forth a few times until I tell her to just open it up and let me take them out.  She says opening the box is a bad idea...I tell her to just shut up and do it before I kill her.  She does it, and I get sucked into the box, or rather my spirit does leaving my bloody husk of a body to explode behind me.  So she died, but at least she got to be with her love and her wraith-lord (probably her best friend).   In terrible agony for the rest of time, trapped with billions (yes, literally) of demons.  Rather poetic, in all.Now, this character was a munchkin's dream.  I had uber-powers, I was 7th gen (one of the 2 or 3 lowest gens in the chronicle) and all that.  I'd been playing the character for 9 months and was deeply attached to her because of the parallels to my own life, and she was just a blast to roleplay.  I as the player knew perfectly well that if that box opened it was time to report to character gen, but I made that girl open the box anyway, since it's exactly what she would have done.I miss that character an awful lot.  My two most emotional gaming moments, both with her.*sigh*So, long story, I know, but hopefully someone enjoys it.</blockquote>

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