Moments in DM'ing

[Wombat]

GMing is now in my blood.

Moments that I have loved: having an NPC enemy from one campaign "voted back in" by the players because they wanted another swipe at him (and still losing to him -- and loving it!); running a session, due to massively going off into the stratosphere by a single player, that was entirely based on the first sentence of my adventure guidelines (5 hours of improv -- and they never knew it until the end...); having players go "whoah" when a known enemy appears, due to previous encounters; having everyone join in a tear-inspiring laugh over a reference to a game from a year or more ago; the look of accomplishment on a player's face when he "did the right thing"; having all the players at the end of the campaign shake hands, hug, and even hand out small presents to each other and tell me how f****** cool that campaign was.

Yeah, I love to be on this side of the screen.

 

[Nebulous]

A favorite moment of mine was during 2e several months after the party had killed Grishog at the end of Tallow's Deep. They were camping out in the woods during a thunderstorm and get ambushed by none other than the revenant Grishog, who was several shades more poweful than his mortal goblin self. The revenant nearly choked the fighter to death, and the encounter ended with them hacking the revenant to pieces, burning the pieces, casting some into the ocean, burying others, and taking a small piece with them. The look on their faces when their old enemy showed up was priceless.

Personally, GMing is 110% more satisfying than playing.

 

[wedgeski]

This is exactly what I was hoping to get out of this thread. Keep 'em coming!

 

[MichaelK]

I know my game is going okay when I can stop doing or saying anything and the game keeps going on its own inertia. I have fond memories of moments where I leave the table to organize everyone's dinner and the players continue to roleplay in character discussing the situation they're facing and what they should do about it.

I loved the moment when the players were about to go into war and one of the characters teleported back to their home village to propose to their girlfriend, in case they didn't make it through the war alive.

When the players meet an NPC they haven't seen in a while and their reaction isn't "Who?" but "Ilmata, we haven't seen you in so long. How is your son Aaron going?".

The best thing about DMing though, is when all your plans fall through but things somehow work out anyway. I was starting a game once and had all these plans of how to first bring all the characters together. The most farcical comedy of errors occurred where they kept just missing each other, always for logical reasons or because a dice-roll didn't go as expected.

Finally without any intervention on my part, every single PC managed to get themselves arrested. The PCs met, but not in the elaborate way I'd planned, instead they all found themselves in the local police lock-up.

 

[MichaelK]

Personally, GMing is 110% more satisfying than playing.

Amen to that. Though I'd say more than just 110%, there's just no comparing them.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

I once ran a mystery where the PCs arrived at a monastery and traveler's stop in the middle of nowhere, and people started dying. There were about fifteen people there, and by the end of the session, no one knew what was happening. I ended the game on that note.

But the game didn't end there. For the next four hours, the players went over every last word spoken, every description, every little nuance, examining it for clues and trying to figure out what was going on. They were so engaged, they couldn't help but keep thinking, talking, discussing it.

That's the fun of a good DM story.

Also, I enjoy fun moments in online gaming, when you can pull everything together, like Something Old, Something New (See my sig, and check out page 12).

 

[Bullgrit]

Reading this thread has revealed to me why I burn out so quickly from DMing, lately. In decades past, I could DM for years on end. Long campaigns, short campaigns, few players, lots of players. It was the moments, like mentioned in this thread, that kept me going, wanting to DM again and again, more and more.

But in the past few years I can't go more than a dozen game sessions before I burn out. It's because I'm no longer getting these moments. I get anti-moments -- moments that leave me thinking, "What the hell just happened? That wasn't fun at all."

Bullgrit

 

[jcayer]

I have 2 great DM moments and a what the ?!?! player one. This group is made up of old school gamers who hadn't played in years. I dragged them all in when 4e came out.

The second night we played, we got to the magic gem they were supposed to recover and without hesitation, the warlock I was playing, as DM, betrayed the PCs and took the gem. None of them ever imagined that would happen. For weeks, they grumbled about it. To this day, a year later, his name still gets a response.

The second took place in a large tower. The players were on the top floor and ran into a dragon that had broken down the wall and was using part of the floor as a lair. The fight started going poorly for the players, so they retreated to the hallway, readying attacks for when the dragon crashed through the door. Instead, I told them it sounded like the dragon was flying away. As they sat there, dumbfounded, I had the dragon crash through the ceiling on top of three of them. What a great moment, they totally loved it, and I was extremely proud for the improv/tactic.

The final moment, talk about players throwing a curve ball at you. They run into a slave caravan floating down a river on several pontoons. My intent was they would fight the slavers, and at the end, a new ally would join the fight. Just a way to introduce him. So what do my players do? They flag down the slavers, and buy the slaves. Needless to say, NOT what I had planned nor expected.

 

[weem]

I have had many such moments over these many years of DM-ing... but I will go with a recent one...

I reached a point in my campaign where the players split up to accomplish separate tasks to help with one goal - like a large skill challenge that would happen over the course of a few games. Each player was to have their own game (with the other players playing NPC's if they wanted to play along) - so each SAT for the next few was a game that followed the story of a specific player.

So this particular game followed the Dragonborn Fighter as he returned home. His clan was basically wiped out and his kind (politically) were in a state of chaos.

To cut to the chase he ended up squaring off against one particular (evil) clan leader before the council of elders, etc. This was a fight to the death.

I had no qualms with him dying - I rolled out in front of everyone, didn't pull any punches or fudge anything. It was a quick fight, each of them putting out good damage but the ending was great... the player was near death (as was his opponent) when he rolled... natural 20! Total damage? 33... I showed him his opponents HP's on my scrap paper... 33 exactly. I then described the very cinematic end to this persons life - someone who had overseen the destruction of this players clan, so it was a very exciting end to that particular game

 

[Gilladian]

Just recently I had a very satisfying situation; the PCs were questioning a dwarf NPC salesman about the whereabouts of a young girl who had been kidnapped. The PCs were a pair of litorians (lion men), one of whom was played by a 12 year old, Kyle.

It was SO much fun watching Kyle's litorian growl, pick the dwarf up, shake him, demand an answer, threaten to bite off his toes(!), and then reluctantly put the dwarf down on command from the other litorian. They must hve gone through that cycle about 3 times before the dwarf finally broke down and told them everything he knew... now every time Kyle starts to say anything, it is met with "put the dwarf down..." from the rest of the group, followed by gales of laughter.

Kyle's gone from being "the player in training" to "the kid who can roleplay".