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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 4907170" data-attributes="member: 447">Two from me, one as a player and one as a DM.I was a player in a convention game (a small local convention) some years ago, and the scenario was somebody's homebrew 2nd Edition thing called "Hunt the Tarrasque." Seems that Big Boy had been awakened somehow, and the Knowledgeable Contact who kicked off the scenario had three guesses as to who'd done it. I'm sort of improvising what was said here, as it was a long time ago (2nd Edition was of fairly recent vintage at the time; the Complete Psionics Handbook had just been published).DM: "Group 1 might have done it; they're overall nasty people with a nihilist agenda."Me: "Nope, that's not them."DM: "Group 2 might have done it; they've been threatening some dire move against the Local Nobility for some time now."Me: "Nope, that's not them either."DM: "Well... um... Group 3 might have done it, but it's not bloody likely; they're just selfish creeps who basically look out for themselves."Me: "Yep, that's them, where do we find 'em?"Group 3 was a party of NPCs that included a 1st Edition monk ('cause the DM really liked them), and they very nearly cleaned our clocks in a slam-bang session that went way, way, way over the allotted time slot ("No, don't waste charges on me, resurrect the paladin! He's the only one of us with a chance against that pit fiend!").But it was them, all right.Some years later*, I was running a Ravenloft module that took place in Azalin's castle (it was less Ravenloft-y than dungeon-crawl-y, sadly, but we still had a good time). At some random point within the castle is a shadow dragon -- I still don't know why it was there. It was a completely pointless encounter, but my players went for it with gusto. While rolling initiative, one said those fateful words:"We're not supposed to do this, but we will anyway."* And yet, not long enough ago that this one has lost any of its "classic war story" quality. We still crack up about it from time to time.In the ensuing chaos, the shadow dragon generally roughed up the PCs, but he didn't stand a chance, really. He flew through a blade barrier but otherwise his retreat went well (though the mental image of the flying wizard with one magic staff in each hand, jet-fighter style, stays with me), and I thought I'd wrapped up the encounter, when the psionicist effortlessly located the dragon's hideout. The PCs charged in and finished him off. The same player was fairly glowing with victory."This is his lair! What did we get?"I told him to start rolling dice. He went along, gamely at first, but got really into it when he figured out he'd been right all along."The dragon doesn't have a hoard! We weren't supposed to fight him! Bwahahaha!"Stopped the entire game to roll up the dragon's hoard. (It was quite a haul too.) But they weren't supposed to confront the shadow dragon, all right.</blockquote>

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