RBDMs, what's the most RB thing you've ever done?

[Bagpuss]

I think the worst RBDM thing I did was in a Shadowrun game, where I poisoned a character so he appeared to be dead but was actually just paralysed and was totally aware of events.

It's inspired by the book/film The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis (recommended read), about voodoo practices and zombies in Haiti.

So the rest of the players saw the voodoo witchdoctor blow a white powder into the players face, saw him flail around blindly, have trouble breathing then collapse.

To keep the pretence as real as possible I took him outside and told him what had happened, and that he had no way of communicating with the rest of the party what had occurred. He was just to go back in and start working out his next character. I gave him a new character sheet and everything.

The rest of the party couldn't detect a pulse and contacted DocWagon to come and collect him in case they could revive him. That was fine but then they became worried that he might turn into a zombie they spend several minutes debating if they should get DocWagon to perform an autopsy to better understand what had happened or just shoot him in the head to make sure he didn't come back.

In the end they scheduled an autopsy, I took the "dead" player outside again to nominally discuss how we could work his new character into the campaign, and discussed the medics trying to revive him as the rushed him to the hospital, the pain of being shocked and still no sign of life. Until they pronoun him DOA and he gets taken to the morgue. I go through all the prep on cutting off his clothes, laying him out on the table and put in a fridge. I mention that the fridges are open on the other side of the door, and while he can turn his head to see the other bodies beside him and around him, he can sense them there, and go into detail about how cold it feels. Then we go back to the group.

The group search the witchdoctors place and find a sample of the poison which they take to the same hospital to get analysed and discover it's main active ingredient is Tetrodotoxin and that research indicates that it can put the victim in a coma like state virtually impossible to distinguish from death. At this point the party decide they better check on their mate.

The rushing the morgue just as the coroner is part way through the Y incision. Their "dead" friend wakes up moments later.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

So many to choose from ...

My best RBDM moment has to be one of the times I captured the PCs. They were on their way back form a dungeon with their spells and hp depleted, and they got hit by a group of high-level slavers. They were captured, stripped of their equipment, given drugs that erase spells from memory, stupor drug for the clerics and carted in cages across a huge desert outside of the known campaign area. Their cages were swept off a high cliff into a swamp, where they broke apart. The slavers wrote them off as dead and continued on with their equipment. They were virtually naked, low on hit points, and without their spells in a hostile unknown jungle they had never heard of where no one they met spoke their language. In the first combat of the game, Thog the half-ogre had to kill a 20' crocodile with his bare hands.

Ironically, 20 years later, this is the adventure that my former players want to talk about, the one they call "the best adventure ever." They really enjoyed the chance to attack challenges with just their ingenuity and basic abilities. Several said that their characters' actions during this adventure defined their characters for them.

I think what made it work was that they trusted me. They knew I wasn't going to permanently screw over their characters or ruin their fun. Several sessions later they arrived at the city where their gear had been sold off and managed to track down and recover their most important equipment. It also helped that I kept the "this sucks, we're helpless" part to maybe an hour of realtime, even though it took a month, game-time.

A year later, realtime, they managed to track down the slavers and engaged in a fearful retribution upon them. That was another of their most satisfying adventures.

 

[KrazyHades]

I gave the players what they asked for. It never ends well for them when I do that.

Sounds like a player would NEVER want to cast a Wish spell in your campaign

 

[scourger]

In a 2e game, an intermittent player brought (ironically, another intermittent player's) character back from an area where he was left for dead. Actually, he was. The replacement was a greater doppleganger who had consumed the brain of the fallen and been sent on a mission by the angry orc king to kill all the heroes for foiling his palns for conquest (from the module The Silver Key). Luckily, the replacement player was all about it and lured all the other PCs to their individual deaths. As each character fell, the other players were let in on the deal and joined in the carange. Best TPK ever.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I used a Nightwalker to shatter two weapons of legacy own by the primary fighters in the party in a single combat moments before having the 12 000 year old Dracolich show up to gloat.


Damned Wizard with her Time Stop and 2 Wishes....

 

[Evilhalfling]

Gave the PCs what they asked for.

A overconfident wizard returned to the "Isle of the Gods" which was explored in an earlier adventure, and personally invited the gods to his wedding (to another PC) Several Gods sent representatives.
His quote afterward was something like:
"I understand the both dragons, the Shipbreaker high priest, the cleric of hatred, that stupid bard, the CE baron and his knights, the similacrum of a PC, and even the devils that attacked us during the reception dinner with the dwarves. But what was up with the longship full of viking ratmen?

I also killed more than a few characters in a tsunami - a convention game that, unless early clues were followed, left the PCs Uncle/Father/Patron feining death at a cities harbor, still holding his intelligent sword. PCs are only told this directly after the ocean had pulled back. Did they have enough time to save him before the wave hit?
Both times I ran the game the answer was no.

 

[freyar]

In a 2e game, an intermittent player brought (ironically, another intermittent player's) character back from an area where he was left for dead. Actually, he was. The replacement was a greater doppleganger who had consumed the brain of the fallen and been sent on a mission by the angry orc king to kill all the heroes for foiling his palns for conquest (from the module The Silver Key). Luckily, the replacement player was all about it and lured all the other PCs to their individual deaths. As each character fell, the other players were let in on the deal and joined in the carange. Best TPK ever.

The bolded bit sounds like the best part!

 

[scourger]

The bolded bit sounds like the best part!

It was! Turning the players against themselves. I haven't been able to play that trick again, and it has been about 10 years.

 

[KrazyHades]

It was! Turning the players against themselves. I haven't been able to play that trick again, and it has been about 10 years.

Unfortunately some of my players are only TOO wiling to backstab...

they don't do it too often, thanks to houserulings. Once in a while we play full-out Neutral or Evil parties where the campaign is completely based around the players backstabbing one another . Alliances, pacts, etc...all formed and destroyed. One Cleric, for example, might make his way to the top position in his church, and use the forces of that church to take out the rogue who is slowly forming an alternative to the current thieves guild, or whatever. Much fun and plotting; nobody knows who to trust, including the DM

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Remeber, guys, RBDMs aren't flat-out tyrants...

I once shot a player with his own sidearm while in the CnC when he questioned an order.

Or was that something I saw on TV?