D&D General The official Brag On Your Players thread

[CleverNickName]

I'm home, sick with a chest cold. Help me feel better with some wholesome feel-good vibes about your friends. Tell me a story about your players, and something awesome they did in character (or out-of-character).

Here's mine.

Background: we were rolling up brand-new characters for the start of a year-long campaign. We used the 4d6 method, and I have a house rule that says you can reroll your stats if the total of all your ability bonuses and penalties is +4 or lower.

So anyway, one of my players rolled fairly well, except for a natural 4. I reminded him that he could reroll his stats if he wanted to, but he shrugged and said "nah, I'm good. It's just a number anyway." Then he put it in Dexterity, of all things, like a boss. Other players told him that was a bad move, dex is one of the most important stats in the game, etc., and he just shrugged and said "yeah, but I'm into it. I've got a cool idea about how my character mangled his leg in a tunnel accident."

And so begins the tale of Tili Anvil-Born, the dwarven cleric with a steel leg brace.

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So brag about your players. Tell me a story about them being awesome.

 

[prabe]

It's not exactly like that--it's not about a player accepting that stiff a disadvantage--but I have a player in the two campaigns I run who takes extensive notes on the sessions, and posts them where people can see them. Campaign 1 is 42 sessions in, and the notes run to 489 pages in Google Docs; campaign 2 is 9 sessions in, and the notes are 69 pages long through session 8 (the amanuensis is working on session 9, next session is this coming Wednesday). It makes my life much easier, because I improvise a lot, and the sessions are every other week, and all I have to do is go look at the notes to find what I did four or fourteen sessions ago. I wouldn't be able to run these campaigns anything like the same way without the notes.

 

[Bitbrain]

My players gave me a standing ovation last session.

It may not seem like much, but I was in a pretty bleak place (emotionally speaking) at the time, and the sight of them looking down and smiling at me did a lot of good and helped me get through the next week.

 

[pogre]

I have a group of decent human beings who cooperate to make the game a positive experience for everyone at the table. Seems like a minor thing, but something I have really come to appreciate over the years.

Plus, they bring snacks! I have big table and yet sometimes I have to move tons of snack just to lay down more scenery!

 

[Jediking]

I've run for the same group for nearly 4 years now - five players who have careers, fiances/girlfriends, family lives, other hobbies. Plenty of other things to spend time and energy on in this wide world of ours.

But (nearly) every single Tuesday, they decide that rolling some dice and playing make-believe with bad accents is the best choice they can make, and we have been consistent and are now on our 3rd extended campaign. So I feel something must be going right.



On a more "player" note, one guy is always a "Neutral-Good" character who really tends to go scorched-earth on perceived evil doers. He is currently playing a Human Light Cleric who had lost her family in a fire, and now views flames as a cleansing way to die. And she sure likes to cleanse others.

 

[Shiroiken]

Probably the most noteworthy thing that comes to mind was in my first 5E campaign. I was running a Greyhawk campaign using a series of awesome adventures that I tied together into a fairly cohesive story. During one of the adventures, they rescued a female wood elf ranger who was captured by giants (she was the survivor of a failed scouting mission). After the adventure, I decided to have her stick around as a love interest to the high elf PC (eldritch knight archer), and gave her PC type stats.

Several sessions later, they're in the Hall of the Fire Giant King, and the party is trapped by a patrol of giants. They're hidden behind a secret door in a passage, but the hall is the only way out. Resources are low, and a long rest is impossible, as some of the giants know about the secret passage. The NPC offers to move to the other side of the secret passage, create a diversion, then run back into the secret passage, giving the others time to escape as they chase her. With her stealth, she could evade capture on her own, and would (theoretically) escape afterwards.

The distraction didn't work, as the giants managed to roll better initiative (-1 vs. +9) and killed her in one round (dead dead, not unconscious). The party burst out of the secret passage and attacked with everything they had. It was a furious battle, and I couldn't figure out why. After a few rounds, I heard one of the players say "hurry up, we've only got a few rounds left!" They were attacking the giants in a near suicidal run... so the Paladin could cast Revivify on the NPC! I was amazed at how much they cared for her; despite not being a PC, she was "one of their own."

It's not exactly like that--it's not about a player accepting that stiff a disadvantage--but I have a player in the two campaigns I run who takes extensive notes on the sessions, and posts them where people can see them. Campaign 1 is 42 sessions in, and the notes run to 489 pages in Google Docs; campaign 2 is 9 sessions in, and the notes are 69 pages long through session 8 (the amanuensis is working on session 9, next session is this coming Wednesday). It makes my life much easier, because I improvise a lot, and the sessions are every other week, and all I have to do is go look at the notes to find what I did four or fourteen sessions ago. I wouldn't be able to run these campaigns anything like the same way without the notes.

We had someone who tried this, and it didn't go well. The lag on loading the documents was awful! I've usually been a careful notetaker, so I always appreciate it when a player takes really good notes.

 

[Seramus]

Brag on your players? I get confused when people say you shouldn't try to be like Critical Role because they are professionals.

But my players are like that all the time.
That's my normal.

 

[Quickleaf]

Infiltrating a lizardfolk warcamp to assassinate lizard king and his disguised night hag advisor.

Party slips in through the swamps via water breathing, then wizard casts Mordenkainen's private sanctum while underwater but near ruins where recon reported the lizard king and night hag to be. This prevents the night hag from escaping to another plane.

Invisible gaseous form paladin backstabs lizard king dead. But it's a decoy!

Wizard nukes the night hag after blocking her physical escape route. Night hag is dead.

Real lizard king flees on quetzalcoatlus. Rogue rides hasted druid wildshaped into giant eagle, catches up to real lizard king, who tries to teleport-grapple rogue. Rogue shakes him off. Lizard king floats down to ground safely. Rogue dive tackle kills him (and flays his corpse as a trophy).

Total party win.

 

[Stormonu]

I had gotten to the point in my life where I was feeling like playing RPG games was a thing of the past. Been there, done that - put the t-shirt in a drawer somewhere.
A coworker got the D&D bug and I tentatively offered to DM a game, expecting he'd switch to the local FLGS group. Almost a year later and the expanded group I'm playing with has been a joyous blast as we burn through Ghosts of Saltmarsh - it's been years since I've enjoyed a good game of D&D and I am thankful for my enthusiastic crew who makes it a delight to see the game through the wonderment of a group of players encountering all this stuff for the first time.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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