Moments in DM'ing

[wedgeski]

DM'ing is for me a set of simple pleasures. Seeing faces around the table light up as a small piece of the story drops into place; hearing the laughter of a shared joke; watching the game get "all business" during a difficult encounter; sitting back and observing a cool piece of roleplaying; hearing how my players discussed tactics after they left the table for the week.

Those are the times when I understand exactly why I love this DM'ing lark so much, and they never, ever get old.

Yesterday I successfully pulled the old "transparent gelatinous cube with skeletons in it" gag on my group. This is the first time in 25 years of DM'ing that I've ever managed to do it without anyone getting wise, either in character or out. I played it straight, rolled all the Perception checks, gave them plenty of time. There was confusion, then there was revelation, fear, and laughter. A perfect little moment.

Prior to that I roleplayed a dwarf in the throes of bereavement after losing his pet hog. In a rare conjunction, the character came out exactly as I imagined him in my head... a cheesy, theatrical display of grief. It put smiles on everyone's faces. An enjoyable moment.

After the session, one guy actually patted me on the back and said, "Good job." I wonder how many players out there appreciate just what it means to the DM when they do that?

So, DM's and players, what moments have stuck with you over the years?

 

[vagabundo]

Good Times...



Yeah it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when my players all give a round of GG - Good Game - at the end of a session.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

DM'ing is for me a set of simple pleasures. Seeing faces around the table light up as a small piece of the story drops into place; hearing the laughter of a shared joke; watching the game get "all business" during a difficult encounter; sitting back and observing a cool piece of roleplaying; hearing how my players discussed tactics after they left the table for the week.

Those are the times when I understand exactly why I love this DM'ing lark so much, and they never, ever get old.

I think you pretty much nailed it.

I've actually spent so many years running games, with no other DMs around who are capable of making anything last very long, that I haven't played D&D in years... I often lament that I don't entirely "get" what drives the players' devotion to gaming, because I don't see how it could ever be as satisfying as my own experience.

As a DM, it's a total package experience. It's a week of laboring over the details of the adventure and the campaign to see it come to life for four hours on a Monday night. It's an exercise in organized multi-tasking, the challenge of managing numerous monsters and NPCs, plot developments, cool ideas, story hooks, PCs' expectations, immersive descriptions, compelling interaction and stats, stats and more stats...

But most of all, it's the little rewards you referred to above. The items that are unique to the DMing experience. The moments you share with your group, moments that no one who has never played a tabletop RPG could ever truly understand, no matter how eloquently you attempt to describe them.

 

[Rechan]

A few moments come to mind.

Back when I was a newbie DM on my first adventure, the PCs were en route to a place. While making camp, the group split to go hunting. Two PCs walk into an abandoned mine, and find a dwarf skeleton under a collapsed roof, with a jeweled stick sticking out of its ribcage. The thief takes the stick and they leave. During the adventure, the group felt nervous about that; on the way back, they discovered they had unstaked a dwarven vampire. That realization was priceless.

Later in that same campaign. I had done a lot of scripting. Well, the PCs were involved in a murder mystery. On the fly, I set a red herring in front of them. And they ran after it with all their might; it ate up a session or two, and really made things interesting. I was very satisfied I managed to pull that off the cuff so well.

In another game, the players were cleaning out a colony overrun with demons. I wanted to make the place scary, but the PCs were blowing through the encounters. So I threw a curve ball; the PCs started vomiting black sludge, gallons of it. And when they stopped, the vomit attacked them. This resulted in a hard fight where two PCs almost died. One player told me that lethal vomit was the most memorable encounter he'd had to date.

Recently, I was running KotS. I wanted a little more roleplaying. The PCs needed to find someone who knew where the Keep was. They were told that "the special elven woman who sells flowers knows that way". The PCs walk up to the mentally deficient elven woman and the scene plays out marvelously; I played her well, the players couldn't contain their laughter, and everything just clicked.

 

[megamania]

If anyone ever asks me again why I prefer DMing vs playing I will direct them here.

You have nailed the reasoning to DM to a perfection.

I have had days where we stopped playing and all sat back and were stunned at how an encounter played out or how crazed but accurate the role-playing was.

Kudos.... you deserve a "well done" green dot counter thingee-a-ma-gigger.

 

[possum]

I was GMing a Knights of the Old Republic game for Star Wars saga, and my group was searching the undercity of the planet-wide city of Telos for stolen thermal detonators. Upon reaching the desolate wasteland that is the undercity, they are attacked by the zombie-like rakghoul monsters. A bite by these creatures has a good possibility of transmitting the disease, causing the infectee to transform into one of the beasts in a few minutes.

They're fighting them and one of my Jedi gets criticaled on the bite. Everyone knows what's likely to happen, as they've played the games and I made quite sure that they did.

As the ghouls are defeated, he rips the torn section of his tunic off and makes a tourn. out of it. He's actually going to try and cut his infected arm off. Another member of the party examines a human skeleton nearby, finding bite marks on the collarbone and a self-inflicted blaster shot wound in its skull.

Thankfully, a Jedi-medic in the group pulls out her medical scanner and takes a blood sample from the infected arm before the other guy can cut it off. It shows no sign of Rakghoul DNA, meaning the victim's safe.

 

[Tharian]

I think that as a DM, one of the best moments I remember was from way back when I was in high school, probably even as a freshman, and had the chance to DM a session for a couple of friends on a Boy Scout campout.

We were huddled in the tent with a small Coleman lantern on for light and the two had their characters rush into what was supposed to be a small room but turned out to be the entrance to a large cavern where a hideously ugly and very, very large green dragon raised up and roared.

The players, having just turned pale at the description, had their character turn and run the other way. I had them roll the dice to help determine if they were watching where they were running. Since they (the characters) had closed the door behind them as they entered and they (the players) rolled poorly, I described the sudden stop the characters had as they ran into the now shut door with a loud clap of the hands.

The players froze for a few seconds. Then after a quick muttering of something I won't repeat here, they ended up falling over on their sides and just howling with laughter as they re-enacted what had just happened. They decided that their own characters were a bit too dense for that world and let the dragon have its way with them. They promptly rolled up new characters and we started all over in a new dungeon.

Man that was fun. I remember being worried that I had taken things too far when I had the PCs run into the closed door, but the players' laughs (and remembering of it years later) made it so much more fun.

 

[Noumenon]

When the players stole the pearl from Harley Stroh's Tower of the Black Pearl and (spoilers)
[sblock]the tower started flooding as they raced up the stairs carrying their dead comrade ahead of the rising water, and they went back through the room with the hundreds of lit candles for every hero of the realm, and I gave the little detail "a trail of smoke rises from one of the candles as you rush through the room" and one of my PCs put two and two together and relit the candle right there, bringing the sacrificed PC back to life, and then they went up the last ladder as the water rose over the top of the candles and left their flames twinkling under the surface... [/sblock] I try to let the players have some freedom, but really my favorite DM moments are when things work out exactly the way I visualized, only in "real life detail" because we ran them turn by turn and the players made the choices themselves.

 

[Oryan77]

The best moments for me are really the player moments. I enjoy it when a player does something cool in the campaign and it was because he took interest in what I presented to him in the game. Last session the Wizard PC made an attempt to use the Prestidigitation spell to create a phony holy symbol when an NPC accused him of being a spy and asked to see his holy symbol if he was truly a priestess of Lolth like he claimed. He thought of doing this right off the fly and I thought it was a great idea. I wanted him to succeed so I allowed him to cast the spell with only a bluff check, but he rolled terrible & my opposed check rolled extremely high. I even gave myself a penalty cause his trick would be convincing, but it didn't help.

Off the top of my head, one thing I did that I have always been proud of as DM was when I tricked a PC into making a deal with a Pit Fiend. The PC agreed to perform a task (help sentence a man to death for killing his family, only the PC was fooled into thinking he was guilty when he was actually innocent), and in return, another PC would have his hand returned to him (it was cut off due to a cursed magic item).

After completing the task & being ashamed after realizing what she did, the PC told the Pit Fiend, "Now give him back his hand". The party had the severed hand in a bag that another PC was carrying, so the Pit Fiend simply made that hand vanish from the bag and appear in the palm of the injured PCs other hand. The Pit Fiend replied, "There, he has his hand. I thank you for your services. I hope we can make arrangements like this in the future." Then he teleported away.

 

[kitsune9]

DM'ing is for me a set of simple pleasures. Seeing faces around the table light up as a small piece of the story drops into place; hearing the laughter of a shared joke; watching the game get "all business" during a difficult encounter; sitting back and observing a cool piece of roleplaying; hearing how my players discussed tactics after they left the table for the week.

Those are the times when I understand exactly why I love this DM'ing lark so much, and they never, ever get old.

Yesterday I successfully pulled the old "transparent gelatinous cube with skeletons in it" gag on my group. This is the first time in 25 years of DM'ing that I've ever managed to do it without anyone getting wise, either in character or out. I played it straight, rolled all the Perception checks, gave them plenty of time. There was confusion, then there was revelation, fear, and laughter. A perfect little moment.

Prior to that I roleplayed a dwarf in the throes of bereavement after losing his pet hog. In a rare conjunction, the character came out exactly as I imagined him in my head... a cheesy, theatrical display of grief. It put smiles on everyone's faces. An enjoyable moment.

After the session, one guy actually patted me on the back and said, "Good job." I wonder how many players out there appreciate just what it means to the DM when they do that?

So, DM's and players, what moments have stuck with you over the years?

All the moments you described is what I live for when I sit behind the screen.