Great games you've been in

[SpiderMonkey]

This is an extension of a great thread about terrible games:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=79401

I'd like to discuss its converse: games in which, at one moment or another, you really felt like you were "there" or just tapped into emotion on a level you don't normally get to.

For me, it was during a Marvel game using the Saga rules (great session, awful rules). It was a solo game in which my character was tracking down a strange villian who was utilizing dream-powers to rape college girls in their sleep.

I found out that it was a mysoginistic gamer (??!!!) who felt alienated and had volunteered for a program that would expand his lucid dreaming. The experiment got out of hand, tapping into what Jung would call the collective unconsiousness, and the villian began abusing his new-found power. When my character finally tracked him down in the real world and confronted him, I felt a wellspring of emotion: disgust, righteous anger, fear, and (to a smaller extent) even pity.

I guess the DM figured that both of us actually knew people like this, and it would provoke an immediate response; I was literally trembling after the session, and I've never had an experience like that before or after. Good stuff.

What about you?

 

[Creamsteak]

I really enjoyed my one day in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil with a 14 person party. Greatest hack-n-slash and braggery I've ever participated in. And the people were fun to play with to boot. Not to mention that me and the paladin/cleric player were able to reveal the fiend-servant party member who had been in the group since the beginning entirely through dialogue...

And Piratecat's game at Gencon.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Ya know, I think this thread deserves to be longer. And since I don't have any players right now, I can't post in the "Great game groups" thread. As for terrible games, well, I'm not going there.

Anyhow, years and years ago (too many, really) when I first came to college, it was from playing nothing but OD&D in high school. We'd had a few first ed. books that we'd use for ideas, but that was it. I only ran in Mystara (then known as 'The Known World' or 'The Gazetteers'), and the other DM only ran in Greyhawk. So we had some rather limited experience with the whole scene.

Anyhow, this was about the same time 2nd ed was just out, and WW was also really starting to take off. I didn't like 2nd ed compared to the D&D box sets (note to Diaglo: yes, yes, we know!) There were way too many rules, goofy restrictions like level limits, and it seemed that everyone else had these munckined-out characters with even more ridiculous rules tacked on.

So, I started trying out other games. The first Call of Cthulhu game was one of the most fun games I was ever in, even though I look back on it now and there wasn't much too it. We went off some kidnapped girl, she was hung out as bait by her werewolf kidnappers, we (well, ok, I) got torn apart. It was the first time I'd had a character brutally killed in a game (in high school D&D there always seems to be a Res around somewhere), and I loved it. So after that, it was almost nothing but Call of Cthulhu for me for a long time. This was a high-mayhem group; the game was run like a bad day in the trenches, and seeing six or seven sessions made you a veteran character. Still, after years of D&D, I had a great time- even if my string of dead characters and botched roles gave me a reputation as the unluckiest person in the club (and this was against some tough competition, too).

Anyhow, I go through that and some other various games and and it rolls around to '94 or so. A lot of the Cthulhu people have moved away and things are sort of in a lull, and I take a room near a guy in the dorms that had made the occasional session. We get to talking about gaming history and I find out that he, like me, would only run Mystara stuff, and that he's getting a group together. He does 2nd ed, but still keeps a lot of the old flavor rules and stuff- like dominions, for instance. So I figure I'll give it a try, and this was the campaign that got me back into D&D.

The other players (or at least the early ones; our DM pretty much let in anyone) were all great, the DM was great- funny, good at characterizations and descriptions, tough without being cruel. He could really make the setting come alive, and since it was one that I'd been reading and running, but not playing in, that made it all the better. The DM could be a bit railroad-ish at times- particularly when it came to running modules, which he usually did. Unlike other railroad DMs, though, he got us as involved in the setting as possible, as opposed to deciding that the written books were law which could never be changed. Even from early levels, we were dealing with nobility and powerful people who could've smote us with a glance. There was never any big metaplot "chosen ones" reason for it or anything like that, it was just accepted that was how the world worked. The game was high-magic, fairly whimsical, and completely over the top, but it was a blast. If it had been another game where we were villagers killing orcs for better equipment, I probably would've passed, and wouldn't be playing 3rd ed now.

 

[NewJeffCT]

My great game experience was a campaign that ran for about a year of real time and also game time. It was in 1998-99 and was set in the Kingdoms of Kalamar. I had been out of gaming for several years after I got out of college and ended up hooking up with a new group for the start of this campaign. We had a large group of gamers and the DM was masterful in getting everybody involved and balancing the high and low maintenance players.

It was a low magic, very dark and gritty campaign and it was a lot of fun. The DM was terrific and did a wonderful job creating a dark atmosphere where the PCs were slowly sucked in to something big – an epic campaign to save the world from 300 years of Darkness. He had a lot of plot twists, but looking back, it was generally a fairly simple story with a few twists made great by some awesome villains, colorful NPCs and a lot of good teamwork in a large group of players (usually 8 or 9, but sometimes 10 gamers).

One time, we had a huge combat and thought we had three PCs killed (not to mention a plethora of caravan guards) and there was a very somber and depressed atmosphere around the table the rest of the day and the whole next week. Luckily, the DM had planned for this possibility and, by divine intervention, we were discovered to be a party of prophecy and the dead were brought back for us and we went on our way... the group was a lot of fun to game with as well. We had our moments of humor, but we all showed up on time and gamed.

 

[diaglo]

I'd like to discuss its converse: games in which, at one moment or another, you really felt like you were "there" or just tapped into emotion on a level you don't normally get to.

read the Story Hour in my sig.

one particular moment came to mind towards the middle of our adventures. the cleric in our group and i were at bitter odds over a moral issue concerning an evil spirit. it was pretty intense.

after the session i was still pumped.

but i had let the moment take me so much at the time that i wasn't sure if the cleric's player was upset with me or if he was also just caught up in the moment. for me, i always try and play like i'm there. so when you and the other players and DM are all hitting on the same cylinder...some times it gets confusing.

turns out we were just that much into it. no blood, no foul.

 

[EricNoah]

My first Planescape campaign -- different than anything I'd ever done before, the setting was so great and the players really dug into it. http://webpages.charter.net/ericnoah/noahrpg/log.htm

 

[JesterPoet]

While I've played in MANY great games, I think the one that stands out for me is a Little Fears game I played about a year ago. It was HEAVILY roleplay oriented. We all played children, generally around 10 or 11 years old. I played a kid in a wheelchair, just to try something a bit different.

Our GM, Adam, created an element of fear that I have never felt before. He apparently based the storyline loosely on the game Silent Hill (which I've never played).

Each character had a phobia, and we had to give a detailed backstory as to where the phobia came from. Mine was a fear of water, after falling into a lake while on vacation with my parents. It's what put me in the wheelchair. One girl had a fear of guns, after seeing her friend shot... another girl had a fear of being left alone, after being snatched by a stranger. I can't remember the last one.

I could never do the story justice. To simplify it immensly, our train (which we were traveling on with our parents) stopped in Silent Hill, and the adults got off to see what was wrong, and never came back. Eventually we left the train and wandered the abandoned town, occasionally coming across the most horrifyingly frightening abberations I have ever had the joy of imagining. The game culminated in us "remembering" and coming to terms with the horrible things we did that brought on our phobias, and having to come to terms with it.

Adam worked hard to maintain the game's serious tone, which is no small feat with our group (especially with me around). Though we broke character occasionally, (i.e. "We're all gonna die, let's experiment with our sexuality), it was pretty rare. In fact, I think the few times we did break character with a silly comment, it really was becuase the tension had gotten so thick it was REALLY freaking us out. It was kind of a "release valve"

I was literally spooked to get in my car and drive home alone after each session. I loved it.

There are games that come close, but I think that's the best I've played.

 

[Wombat]

My best game was my second Ars Magica campaign. We had really gotten the hang of the rules and the possiblities and we just went to town.

The game started with myself as SG and four players; two other players were added later on. Each player created the standard Magus and Companion, along with 2 Grogs (all this terminology makes sense if you have the game; otherwise I point you towards RPGNow, where you can download the entire set of rules for free!). Most importantly the players truly got into character.

The game lasted four real-time years, but over 45 game-time years. Only one of the original Companions and a handful of the original Grogs were still alive at the end of the campaign, but they were, by then, background characters, no longer physically vital. One of the Magi had died, but the others had become seriously powerful, as well as seriously eccentric. Equally, each of them now had "children", apprentices who had become Magi themselves, some of whom who had, in turn, trained apprentices of their own.

We kept a "graveyard" for the Covenant. Each character who died had a small entry on a list that we constantly updated. Some entries were simple: "John the Large. Custos. Died 1193". Others were much more elaborate: "At this site lies the mortal remains of Dalton d'Erdelle, master swordsman, famous wit, having passed 39 mortal years in this veil of tears. It Wasn't His Fault. God rest him." Every few sessions one of the players would read out the entire list, again reinforcing the sense of community that we all felt.

Storylines were both short and long. I ran solo adventures for characters when the players wanted to explore some aspect of these characters. When one of my players had to go to Taiwan for a year, we sent regular letters back and forth -- his charcter went on a long mystical pilgrimmage and returned years later a decidedly different person, but with a deep backstory to explain it.

Players wrote letters to NPCs and kept ahold of the ones they recieve in return. They got involved in quirky experiments. They even, after one very long session (9+ hours straight), I packed up and went home ... only to meet one of the players the next day with a long document -- the charter of the covenant, along with a long series of amendments. Yes, the players had continued the game FOR SIX MORE HOURS AFTER I LEFT!

As a group of friends and gamers, we had a truly amazing experience. When the game finally reached an appropriately apocalyptic ending, one of the Magi sacrificed himself for the good of the greater whole, another broke down in tears over the power of the last episode, and all of us shook hands and hugged when the game was over. We then toasted Gelwich Covenant, had a communal meal, and talked about our favourite moments in the game.

To this day, now nearly 8 years later, we often speak to each other of The Game.

It was glorious.