The Thread in Which We Share Fond Gaming Memories

[Wolf1066]

Playing D&D years ago, one of the players was a first-timer - the nephew of the DM's girlfriend - and fairly young compared with the rest of us. The youngling was also a budding "powergamer"/munchkin and was upset that he wasn't starting out with a magical weapon. His mantra, as we all set out on our adventure, was "I wanna magic sword, I wanna magic sword."

Every time we found treasure he repeated his mantra and got us to cast detect magic on every pile. Finally, this resulted in a sword glowing ethereally in response to the spell.

The youngling/munchkin set up a litany of "minemineminemine" and pounced on it.

He had his coveted magic sword at last.

Youngling: "What does it do?"
DM: "You can't tell, 'detect magic' only identifies it as magical, not what the magic is".
Youngling: "OK, I hit that tree with it. What happens?"
DM: "Nothing."
Youngling: "Nothing? Didn't it even cut it?"
DM: "Of course it cut it, it's a bloody sword. I mean nothing special happened."
Youngling (utterly crestfallen): "Awwww!"
DM (very tritely): "Well, obviously, it's not a 'Sword of Tree-Slaying'!"

Magic times - I was secretly hoping it would turn out to be a cursed sword at around -2 to hit/damage something really common...

Another "would-be-a-power-gamer-if-he-actually-had-something-powerful" was the guy who was not as discriminating as the example above - he'd settle for any magical weapon.

And so fair pounced on a mace that glowed when "detect magic" was cast, eschewed his trusty sword in favour of his new-found magical weapon and set forth with gusto.

It took him quite some time playing to realise that he's hitting with vim and vigour but not getting as far as everyone else was in despatching opponents. When he finally queried it, the DM informed him that he was only ever doing one HP of damage with every hit - the magic on the mace was a curse. It was cursed to only ever hit a glancing blow - "yes" (quoth the GM), it's (nasty pause) "A grazing Mace". (GM then starts humming a really off-key rendering of "Amazing Grace").

So many great times in games - I could go on all week.

 

[Henry]

So very many, but two stand out:

One year in the early 90's, several friends of mine and I spent an entire weekend in his Antebellum house, in freezing temperatures in a snowstorm, trying to stay warm in blankets near a fireplace, while we played D&D and studied Twilight 2000, trying to figure out how to make characters for it. (That first edition was REALLY confusing to us...) Damned good times.

Second time was a D&D game I ran where the PCs fought waves of demons trying to liberate a whole planet in Spelljammer from the forces of evil. It was a great mishmash game involving D&D, Boot Hill Firearms, and an avatar of the God of War, and a lot of death and near-death PC experience. The players had a lot of fun with that one, because I threw out every rule of "balanced" gaming and they still came out on top.

 

[IronWolf]

... and studied Twilight 2000, trying to figure out how to make characters for it. (That first edition was REALLY confusing to us...) Damned good times.

Still have the first boxed set! Ah - I remember playing a bit of that in my early college years in the dorm.

 

[Wolf1066]

Playing AD&D for the first time, decide on a Drow elf as the GM said that was one of the options, on a whim choose female which is beneficial as I get 3 spells at 1st level - darkness, fairy lights and fairy fire. Read up on what they do - nothing terribly impressive, I can plunge an area into darkness, make will o' the wisps that I can direct and make something glow a pretty green. Oh, well. At least it's better than what a male Drow can do.

So we're in this village populated by superstitious moronic villagers who hate/fear strangers and detest/fear magic even more. Someone is murdered and our party's Dwarf is arrested on suspicion. Villagers come to the inn looking for us.

It's dusk so I cast fairy lights which seem to lure the villagers off on a wild goose chase out through the forest so I slip out of the room to make my stealthy escape.

Oops, one of the yok-errr-locals is waiting on the landing guarding the door in case the lights were a ruse - it seems that they did have that much intelligence between them. He starts advancing.

I say "OK, fairy fire on the guard - "You're cursed!" "

DM's jaw drops and she sits there staring at me for a full minute. I savour the moment then quietly say, "OK, so what's the guard's reaction?" knowing full well that the DM can't possibly have the guard react any better than she did - given she prides herself on having an IRL IQ of over 120 and the guard can't even count to 100 (or possibly 20).

She didn't even make a pretence at a reaction roll, just said "he's running around in circles, glowing green and yelling "I'm cursed, I'm cursed" in blind panic."

"Fine," says I, "I'm down the stairs and out the door."

It's moments like that, that make me appreciate how my players must feel when they catch me completely off-guard with something from out of left field.

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

I was DMing a bunch of fellow Navy guys na dmy wife through the adventure series that starts with Sunless Citadel. They'd made it all the way to Bastion of Broken Souls and were getting ready to make the expedition to the planes.

The halfling psion, as a prank, slips the ogre fighter/cleric of Kord PC an elixir of love. The first thing the ogre sees is my wife's character, a half-elf druid/master of many of forms.

The ogre's play really has fun with the whole thing. The ogre brings her freshly caught fish and dumps it on her doorstep. He fills her room at the inn with flowers. And, the druid, being chaotic neutral, decides what the heck, and wild shapes into an ogre just for him. That causes him to continue even after the potion wears off.

Just before setting off to face Ashardalon, they even get married.

 

[theskyfullofdust]

Before there were tieflings, somewhere in the late 80s, I was in a game with my original D&D character (human wizard) and he was in a church trying to uncover a corrupt and evil priest; which he managed to do, only for his henchmen to bolt the door and the priest to cast silence on my wizard.

Knowing that it was death to remain in the church, my character ran up to the altar and jumped off, through the stained glass window, and managed to escape.

An excellent moment for me, and saved my character's life (he's still alive, living it up in Greyhawk City, retired and teaching younger adventurers all about magic).

 

[Zaran]

The first time my group played 4e I did a little adventure for our new first level characters. It was an attack on a fortress full of goblins led by the Mighty Maltos , all-powerful wizard, who is as dreaded as he is infamous!

They managed to get into the fortress and fight their way up the mountain in which the fortress is built against to the tower where the wizard plots his world domination. They enter the tower and the wizards shadow looms over them from above. They look up at this great entity that is about to turn them into bits of burning death and it's a little halfling! So they go running up the stairs towards him while he starts pulling out decripit skeltons from his Bag of Holding and uses them as a shield. The first skeleton gets killed by someone, I don't remember who, but this gives the Dwarf fighter the chance to go charging through the minions and use his daily power, Brutal Strike I believe, on the halfing. Well, of course he rolls a crit and me being a newbie 4e GM I was just using the 4th level Human Mage instead of a real solo. He cuts the little guy into a quarterling with one swipe! It was the funniest thing and fit so well with the all the fake hype of the wizard that it made since that he would go down like a chump.

I realize today that he should have made the dwarf do a reroll but since I was just using the human mage's stats straight from the MM I didn't know about the Halfling racial ability. I don't regret it a bit though.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Back in 1982, we had recently started what turned out to be a 10 year campaign. My PC was an AD&D wizard. The rest of the party was 2nd level except, of course my slow-advancing wizard (2500 XP to 2nd level ). In one dungeon we encountered a pit we needed to cross. Our thief was able to climb across, but whenever we threw a rope to get everyone else across, something in the pit cut the rope.

With everyone else too scared to do anything, my wizard lowered herself into the pit and started exploring the bottom of it. When she had one of her toes sliced off, she found that there was a +1 sword of sharpness in the pit covered with an invisibility spell. After she pulled the sword from the pit, the rest of the players started fighting over who would get the sword. It being the first magic item the party had found, the arguement became somewhat heated.

As each PC took the sword, it lept from their hand, inflicting damage upon them. Only my wizard was able to hold the sword safely. The DM had decided that with everyone else being too chicken to do anything, the sword had found them unworthy of weilding it and chose my wizard instead. The DM was even kind enough to allow my wizard to use the sword without the non-weapon proficiency penalty.

It was cool for my wizard, but became a nasty bit of tension in the group for a while, especially since we didn't find another magic weapon until the party was around 4th level.

 

[Wik]

My favourite moment was way back in our 2e days - around 1995 or so. We had a small party, and yours truly was playing a 3rd level human wizard. My partners in crime here a halfling thief who would joke about finding his brother so they could make a "wholeling", and a dwarven fighter that took great joy in being a stereotype, apparently.

Our GM was in middle school with the rest of us, and rabidly read the Dragon magazine advice (as did we all) and felt that any game that was merely "hack and slash" was for "beginners". He also had full control over the campaign, and handed out very little to us... my mage didn't even have very many good spells, to the point that I regularly only used Enlarge to make my teammates better, or the occasional Affect Normal Fires. I used my crossbow a lot.

Anyways, we were exploring this wilderness area, and found a large stone bridge crossing a very deep chasm ("it's at least two hundred feet deep"). So, we cross, and after some discussion, we encounter one of the GM's "Pet monsters" that always seem to win. We'd had enough of fighting these guys (I think they were tieflings? Memory fades on the point), and we weren't going to do it again - GM plans or no. So we try to cross back, and head on back to town, where my mage had set up a lucrative side business using his grease spell to make french fries (yes, we owned our very own burger stand... and this was not played for laughs).

The GM told us it'd be better to keep heading forward, as his prepared adventure was "awesome". But his idea of "awesome" generally meant us surviving by the skin of our teeth with little to no treasure. Remember, this is mid 2e, where it was apparently bad GMing to give PCs treasure or magical items - at least, that's how it read to us.

So we try to cross the bridge back to safety. The GM, trying to deter us, mentions that we see a Dragon in the distance, flying towards the bridge. "He doesn't seem to like you guys trying to cross this bridge" our GM intones. "Maybe this is a bad idea."

"I'm going to fight it," I say. I don't know why I said it. I think it was, before I consciously knew it, that I was being tired of the "railroading", even though I had never heard the term. Or maybe it was because I hate getting told what to do.

"With what? What spells do you have?" The GM asks.

"Web, and two Enlarge spells" This "web" spell sounded like it could be fun.

"Yeah, maybe you should run."

"Hell no." I had drawn my line in the sand. Give me liberty, or give me death!

My fellows are cowed. We're in the middle of the bridge, and an open target. They want to run back - to the "safe" side of the bridge. Hell, they'll even run to the GM's side of the bridge, and fight the monsters that always beat the crap out of us. But I say "screw that" and hold my ground. My 3rd level wizard is gonna take on this dragon, damn it!

Dwarf and thief hide behind me, scared like little girls.

It gets close - I hold my ground. It gets closer, flying straight at us. I hold my ground, getting ready. "When I say run, run" I say, quietly.

Then, I say "run" and cast my web spell - at the creature's wings... anchoring one wing tip to the other wing tip, to the tail. The GM is stunned for a moment, his eyes going wide. But, to give him credit, he rolled with it. The dragon starts spiralling in the air, while my group dashes off the bridge (to the "safe" side of the chasm).

We barely make it to ground before the bridge explodes into shrapnel, and the Dragon takes 5d6 damage from the impact. It then falls 200 feet, to the bottom of the chasm - another 20d6 damage. But it's still alive, and the GM looks at me. "He's really angry, now."

"No problem."

The PCs help me roll some boulders off the cliff - boulders that I enlarge just as they're about to fall... and smack the stunned Dragon... for another 20d6 damage each.

one dead dragon later.... the GM informs us that we might be able to find a path and carry on with our quest. But the party says "wait. We just killed a dragon... that means there must be a lair somewhere.... let's look for that!"

We found the lair, the GM randomly rolled the treasure, and we came back to town rich... and each a level higher (since you could only level up one level at a time). We used the cash to add an extra floor to our lucrative burger tavern. The campaign became very urban-focused after that.