Greatest Moment While DMing

[jdrakeh]

Cool stories, keep ém coming!

Agreed! All too often, these 'greatest moments in DMing' threads seem to be characterized by people who don't get it bragging about how many PCs they have killed at once (or, conversely, how horribly they killed them). It's nice to see a thread where "greatest" means doing something fun for the players

 

[hong]

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=121800
http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=1708579&postcount=31

 

[EricNoah]

The ender for my first Planescape campaign was one of the best ... I had secretly consulted with each PC about an individual encounter they had and offered them various choices. When the last big battle came around, some decided to join the bad guys while others decided to stay with the good guys. Oh, and the long-missing wife of one of the PCs showed up, charmed by the bad guys to fight the good guys (including her husband -- fortunately his first awesome move was to cast protection from evil on her, thus keeping her from being mentally manipulated!). The PCs battled each other to the death. I never had another session that was literally heart-pounding.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

One of the coolest moments had to be at Gen Con 2006. A convention game I was running had all litorian PCs (lion men). In the midst of a huge, tense fight with a troupe of lightning blasting mageblades, people in cages to rescue, and a horrible, horrible black scorpion-clad stunted dramojh that was trashing the party, one of the PCs died.

Four of the players around the table all keened in mourning at once. I still get this frisson of awe and wonder when I remember that moment. Mind you, I just set this up. The players did it, really.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

My story is also a 'I just set it up'. This was GURPS Space, with some homebrewed elements. Right at the start one of the players wanted a Tribarrel Laser. He had the cash, but it is a very illeagal weapon. So I told him I'd give him like a 1% chance to find one on the black market without it being a sting operation. He decided to go for it, and rolled a 1. That was sweet, especially as it took a few sessions for the rest of the players to find out what the shocked look on my face was about. (He kept it secret until they were off planet.)

Anyway, an adventure or so later I decided to confront them with something they'd actually need it for. An ancient Martian Tripod sort of thing that they dug up and activated. But wait, they'd left the big gun back at the ship, several miles away! Fortunately, one of the other characters was a psionic and had just enough 'juice' to 'port back to the ship, grab the gun and 'port back to the group with it, falling unconscious as he arrived. The rest of the gang had spread out and kept the Tripod busy, despite being outgunned, until the psi could do his thing. (Which was not guaranteed to work.) All's well that ended well when the owner of the gun got his hands on it and peppered the Tripod to oblivion. There was much cheering as a really good team effort saved the day!

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

You said greatest moment, so that's what I'll share.

Gen Con Indy '07 in a private meeting room at the Canterbury...
We had two after hours games running at the same time composed of a bunch of industry freelancer friends. I'm standing at the head of one table with authors that have written for WotC, Paizo, Goodman Games, Mongoose, and other 3rd party publishers. At my table where I'm running a playtest of Prisoner of the Castle Perilous sit Lou Agresta, Russell Brown, Matt Conklin, Dave Hall, John Ling, Greg Oppedisano, Greg Vaughan, and Brendon Victorson and these guys are getting handled by stuff that's pretty average in my home games. The rest of the group is sitting at the table next to us where Nick Logue is running Tim Hitchcock and others through a sick and depraved adventure he's pulling right of his ass.

Standing there at the head of the table and basking in the surealness of it all was hands down the greatest moment of DMing for me. It wasn't about the adventure iteself, it was about the people I was in company with and running a game for.

 

[shilsen]

I've had many really enjoyable moments as a DM, but here's one which was particularly satisfying, partly because it was so different from the usual great moments, which are usually action-packed:

In my first Eberron campaign (predating & overlapping with the current one in my sig), the PCs had just made some interesting discoveries and were talking about it before going to bed. Eventually they did turn in, and then 30 seconds later (in real time), two of them sat up simultaneously and went, "Oh - crap!" as something else fell into place. And then they mentioned it to the others, and discussed it, and started writing a letter to let someone know about it. And a couple minutes into the letter, someone else went, "Wait - remember the time when ...?" And another PC went, "Damn! Now that makes sense!" And they started rewriting the letter with the new realization. And then five minutes later, someone else went, "Oh my god! I just realized that...." They spent 45 minutes of real time just working through one thread after another, working all the way back to the first session of the campaign, realizing how everything they had encountered tied together into a complex - and horribly worrying - whole. I just sat there without having to say a word, grinning from ear to ear (esp. when, once in a while, someone would stop, look at me, and go, "You bastard!" ). It was beautiful.

 

[Roger]

A player was running an elven female character.

"An elven diplomatic envoy arrives. Apparently harm has befallen your husband, the prince."

Some surprise there, but it was all good. There was a ritual to reincarnate the prince, as is elven custom. So, dragged out the 3.0 Reincarnation charts and took a stab at it. Yeah, he might have ended up as a badger. That was not detrimental.

He rolled up dryad. Huh. Time to freestyle a whole lot of mythology about male dryads out of nowhere.

It went pretty well. He recognized his wife but when he tried to speak, only dead leaves came out of his mouth. The adventure was a success.



Cheers,
Roger

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Shilsen may I ask what dastardly scenario you had gotten your players embroiled in?

 

[Aholibamah]

Fast forward a year (in real time), and the ranger and the rest of the party are exploring the ruins of an old castle. A wight attacks them, and during the fight, the ranger realizes the wight is her ex lover! He isolates the ranger and is making his move to kill her, hissing "I told you we'd be together!" As she feels her life begin to drain away, she thrusts her sword into him and kills him.

Afterward, the player tells me that was the most emotional encounter she'd ever had, because of the way I'd handled the whole affair. I was extremely proud of the job I'd done, because the look on her face when she found out the wight was her lover was priceless--genuine shock.

...Dude. That's the coolest. I like a lot of the others too (dead leaves coming out of the mouth...that's creative). I agree, keep 'em coming!

My favourite moment in recent gaming was my D&D pcs in 1970s Earth going into the villain's room and seeing a tall grand figure in a cloak turn to face them and begin to speak to them ominously. They actually spoke along with the being until they realized it was just a projected image on a movie screen. (I didn't so much trick them as just described what they saw) When they finally realized it they all gave me the finger.