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Message: <blockquote data-quote="[OMENRPG]Ben" data-source="post: 5600136" data-attributes="member: 6677983">Cool thread idea!I've had many excellent experiences, especially as a GM, as I had been blessed with some of the most committed and skilled players (many of whom were actors and writers.) GM: As a GM, my first 4e campaign was entering its ninth month or so, and the party were reaching mid paragon. They had been looking for certain magical artifacts and had received information regarding a certain fallen temple of the Bael Turath Empire, and that one of the elements of this artifact might be within. So, after a fairly long adventure to simply reach this place, they repelled down a large sinkhole into the earth where the ruins of this temple had collapsed down. The undead remains of the demonically influenced Bael Turathians were defensive of one of their highest training academies for its warlocks, and the party struggled for several days in game time through the massive compound, defeating traps and monsters and the like. After a pretty epic dungeon crawl, the players were thoroughly enjoying themselves and the non-linearity of the dungeon's design was one of my proudest moments. But the real kicker came in at the end, when they were terrified to find that one of the main antagonist groups had been waiting for them with the artifact, and led by an extremely powerful and evil cleric, ambushed the party at the final chamber. It was an excellent fight all around, and I can remember the faces of each of the players staring intently at me as they were poised on my every syllable. It was so quiet when I paused that one could hear a pin drop (even on carpet!) and I felt that I had mastered my craft as the GM.Finally, the battle seemed as if the PCs were about to lose, although the bad guys were terribly wounded as well. I thought it fitting that one of the "big brother" helper types (a DMPC, I know I know, cliche, but they found him in character and wanted to "keep" him, who could say no?) sacrificed himself to distract and battle the BBEG so that the party could escape. In all of the epic combat, the ruins collapsed, the party escaped with the artifact, and they mourned the loss of their friend. What was so touching was that all but one of the players were crying in real life, and I myself was nearly emotional and at letting one of my favorite characters of all time go. Player: As a player, my friend was GMing a Star Wars Saga game, as he is a huge SW fanatic and will GM only that. But, really it is to his credit as he is one of the best I've ever sat at a table with. So anyway, we were all sitting around, and in his own SW timeline (post Legacy roughly 300 years, if anyone cares), and I had made a scoundrel/engineer jawa character. He had many cybernetic implants and had escaped with the aid of his family at a young age from the oppressive rule of the Hutts. His family was wiped out, blah blah blah, and therefore had an extreme hatred toward the Hutts and those who kept Jawas as slaves. Part of our in-game decisions (he was not really a "party-leader" by any means, in fact, I didn't participate in much combat as I piloted and repaired the ship and all of the equipment) led us to attempting to gain alliances from various power groups outside of the Galactic Alliance in an attempt to bolster a new war effort (no clone army, you see.) Well, my character was naturally opposed to this, but was reasonable and intelligent enough to be convinced that at the very least, the monetary aid provided for by the Hutts would be of great service to the upcoming war effort. My character promised to be polite, and we entered onto a very large party on Nal Hutta where most of the major Hutt family elders and their progeny were meeting for a great council that only happens every so often (you know, that old chestnut.) I should say, as a side note, that my character had an insanely high skill bonuses for making explosives. I, as a non combat optimizer, had simply been looking to become good at technology and engineering and the like, but due to the overlapping of skills in SWSE, that also meant that I could make killer bombs. Our party was fairly wealthy, and having figured this out several months prior, my character had purchased large quantities of detonite and various other custom explosives, to which he was toying with. Upon entering the party, the Hutts were adorned in their full resplendent slug-like pageantry, complete with dozens of Jawa slaves. My character began to boil at the injustice of it all, and, after several Hutts commanded him to fetch them some thing or another, he became outraged and stormed out of the party during the negotiations. As he returned to the ship, for the next hour or so while the rest of the party continued their diplomacy, I strapped together something around 100 kg of detonite and some other missiles and plastic explosives, using the RAW to create a chain reaction bomb.Due to my exceedingly high rolls (with the help of some force-points), I had a simple, remote-detonated, large bomb that equated to something like 856d6. I waited calmly for my party to leave, and then remote-piloted one of our smaller throw-away speeders to park outside of the structure. Once the time was right, and our ship was fairly far away, I flew the speeder up to the top of the building, had it flip its contents onto the roof of the building where all of the galaxy's most important Hutts resided, and clicked the detonator. My GM reasoned that due to the Hutt's complete surprise, their overall lack of agility, and the impressive size of the bomb, was enough to leave nothing but a charred crater several hundred meters wide and a dozen meters deep, effectively handi-capping the entire Hutt syndicate for the rest of our campaign. Fortunately, they had said "no" to our negotiations anyway. When the players asked why I would kill so many Jawas in the process, I deemed it was for the greater good, and essentially putting them out of their misery. (And yes, I received a handful of dark side points for this, slipping dangerously close to my tipping point.)Good times!</blockquote>

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