What cool things are happening in your campaigns RIGHT NOW!

[Umbran]

We're playing Classic Deadlands...

Having done some legwork, the party tracked down and got into a shoot-out with a group of circus freak bank robbers.

Defeating the bank robbers, they donned the robbers' burlap-sack masks, and bluffed their way onto the bad-guy's getaway airship ("Hey, they've got a blimp!").

On the airship, they faced down the robber's acid-gun wielding mad scientist leader....

...who, realizing he was outnumbered, jumped out of the airship (60' to the ground) got back up again and started running.

Wackiness ensued, as the party (with exactly zero experience in piloting airships) had a difficult time chasing down one man, on foot, in the open and empty plains of Kansas. Many bullets were fired, and the mad scientist finally dropped.

The party recovered the body, to collect the reward. The party doctor looks him over, and realizes 1) this guy could jump 60' down and still run away, and 2) there was no blood from his recent bullet wounds. Very worried, they decide to put a shotgun to his (apparently dead) head...

...at which point they discover that he's an UNDEAD acid-gun wielding mad scientist (who was playing dead). The bad guy, handcuffed, manages to roll over to where they'd tossed his acid gun, and trigger it, spraying acid all over the inner hull of the airship gondola (they are some 100' in the air at this point).

More wackiness ensued as they had a gunfight in a disintegrating airship. Did I mention that the airship was filled with hydrogen, and might not react well to bullets?

 

[Raven Crowking]

The world will end in less than ninety days.

EDIT: Just to be clear, this is not a "save the world" plot, or a "and then there was a sudden reprieve" plot. The characters have less than 90 days to figure a way to escape the world (plane-jumping, world-hopping, whatever), or they will die.

 

[Rel]

Did I mention that the airship was filled with helium, and might not react well to bullets?

Do you mean Hydrogen? I think Helium and bullets get along swell.


The only game I'm actively running right now is the Savage Worlds Fantasy game for my wife and (9 year old) daughter. I've been converting old 3e materials to use for it and they just entered the Forge of Fury.

They managed to find their way in via the underwater entrance through the swamp, which completely took me off guard and was awesome. Thus far they've encountered and defeated many of the rat-men (whom I've substituted for the Duergar), encountered the undead smith Durgeddin and successfully avoided combat through diplomacy (!) and now they've discovered the door into the Glitterhame.

Actually I've stolen some stuff from The Sunken Citadel in this too! Somewhere in the caverns within the mountain is the Gulthias Tree, which is being nurtured by a Drow Druidess at the urgings of the leader of the rat-men, Skitter. By deciphering* a couple of notes from Skitter left in a secret drop box, the PC's have discovered that Skitter is duping the Druidess and the Gulthias Tree will soon be beyond her ability to control.

*One cool thing I've incorporated into this game is using a couple of fantasy fonts and printing out notes in these "foreign languages". My wife really likes this kind of stuff and with a smaller group it's ok for her to take 5 minutes at the table to decipher them.

 

[Umbran]

Do you mean Hydrogen? I think Helium and bullets get along swell.

Yes. This is what I get for writing posts while context-switching reading news items about theories of stellar development.

 

[somax]

Both of our groups are playing D&D4e, and I'm the DM.

Group 1 is investigating the Grand Cathedral under Gloamnull, City of Rain, in order to understand what's happening to the city and its visitors, and trying to get help from them for a war between an endless horde of elemental mercenaries and the army of their native empire in the material plane.

Group 2 has recently discovered a rakhasha's cult in a colossal volcanic complex, which defiled a Deva's sacred place and used the recently reborn Devas as sacrifices for the summoning of a dark creature. They attacked the cultists during the summoning, though, and it failed, freeing an Elder Volcanic Dragon that was imprisoned after the Dawn War under the volcano. The Dragon escaped, and he's now ravaging the land, while the party is chasing him for afar, waiting for the arrival of a cosair airship they are thinking to use to even the odds against the beast.

 

[Stumblewyk]

Wow. After reading through this thread so far, I've determined I run a far less fantastical game than most people. Not a commentary on anyone else's game - just my own. Self-realization and all. Anywho...

(Also, speaking of conversions of the Forge of Fury...)

-- the party is currently seeking a magical tome from the temple of my world's "creator" god, at the behest of a wizard who "uncovered" some knowledge about the book while excavating ruins on a recently explored "new" continent.

-- one of the PCs *may* have finally found his family after being orphaned into the priesthood of this creator god. He'll know for sure once he acquires proof of his being orphaned and discovered in the frozen wastes of the northlands.

--the PCs just entered the Forge of Fury's Khundrukar via the Mountain Door on the way to the creator god's temple, nearly lost 2 PCs on the rope bridge (technically should have, except for some fancy rope work on the part of the Invoker and Sorcerer), barely survived their forced entrance, and were nearly killed twice after being temporarily sucked into Souragne in a brief Halloween holiday jaunt to Ravenloft (Night of the Walking Dead).

--after being deposited back in "the real world" they woke up to find themselves bound and tied by the henchmen of a minor noble they'd run afoul of a few weeks earlier. They were trailed for weeks, and after falling asleep and being transported by the Mists, the two henchmen were finally able to catch up to them.

 

[NMcCoy]

Our party started off normal-ish at the start of our campaign; now we have:
1: A time mage wielding the embodiment of the concept of dividing as a weapon (in convenient sword form)...
2: A drow lich shardmind (made of solidified dreams) mind-mage (who has recently duplicated his mind into a robot body as a backup)...
3: A cleric (her god/husband died)/shaman/Necromancer who is/contains a fragment of a shattered death god. (The last capital-N Necromancer is what caused the Empire's calendar to reset)...
4: My character, a dragonborn who has been appointed by the sun god as his successor, and is pretty clearly manifesting it.
5: No longer traveling with us, a tiefling bard who threw a rock concert so awesome that it resurrected his dead boyfriend, completely restructured the social order of the city, and created a new god.

With my party's invaluable assistance (which entailed developing a way to turn matter into energy, devising a new application of interplanar teleportation using lightning gates, and addressing a surprise guest reappearance of a hostile hole in reality), my character just created a new race of elementals as a self-administering cure to combat a major outbreak of the big bad Lovecraftian virus that is threatening our campaign world. To do so he had to sacrifice the fallen star that was the remains of his slain familiar (who turned out to be a god), and inadvertently killed himself due to channeling all his lifeforce into the spell. Oops. (Fortunately, with the timely intervention of a party member, he got better.) And thus we saved the lives of 100,000 innocent orcs who we otherwise would have had to annihilate with a necromantic nuke in order to forestall the infectious potential of 100,000 rampaging, shapeshifting orcs.

Now we're level 13, and things are about to get much more exciting.

 

[godfear]

The crown of horns is one of five relics being actively sought by some big evil organization for the raising of a new god or perhaps bringing an old one back from the dead. It's unclear, but all the relics have ties to dead gods.

The party is currently taking a detour from seeking the crown of horns, said to be held in a yuan-ti fortress in the Underdark. We had to cut a deal with an old mind flayer in a subterranean metropolis to get the location in the first place, which involved taking out a beholder-lich crime lord and the majority of his gang.

En route to the fortress, we entered a massive underground bone forest. Things took a turn when the elven circle dancer's magical map started showing us relevant (read: treasure-worthy) locations in the forest. We're bound for the lair of a dracolich whose hoard we intend to loot. You know, for the greater good. Dracoliches are bad, right?

 

[LostSoul]

What's going on goes back to the choices the players made in the first game:
-Decided to go after gnolls at level 1.
-Got killed/captured by gnolls.
-New PCs headed out to rescue the captured PCs.
-New PCs got captured by bandits.
-New PCs built strength to retrieve their captured PCs from the bandits.
-Made a deal with doppelgangers for aid against the gnolls.
-Made a deal with a necromancer for aid against the bandits.
-Made a deal with the bandits to take out the necromancer.
-Killed the necromancer, taking over the town alongside the bandits, then ran from the necromancer's creations.
-Took out the gnolls with the aid of the doppelgangers, losing 4 of the shape-changers in the process.
-Found an artefact that stirred up a blood cult.
-Learned that the necromancer's creations have re-taken the town.
-Killed the necromancer's creations.
-Drank a potion that reduced a PC Fighter's Strength to 3.
-Murdered one of the bandit leaders for his Gauntlets of Ogre Power, then fled town with a bounty on her head.
-Learned that they are being spied on and hunted by the blood cult.
-Spotted the necromancer's powerful slave-trading robber baron brother flying around on a griffon.
-Learned that they have only a few days to repay the doppelgangers for their aid - or else they'll pay for it in blood.
-Learned that a town has been overrun by blood cultists.
-Struggling to make it to the doppelganger lair, where they'll have to take out a cult of Zehir.

I don't think the story is all that great, but the gameplay is very satisfying: I present the setting, the PCs make choices, and I play up the consequences.

 

[turnip]

In my current campaign, we're a low-level (lvl 3) duo consisting of a shifter barbarian (me) and a tiefling bard.

While resting to recover from a fight involving a mound of goblins, the bard failed his perception check while on watch (this is a recurring theme in our campaign...we haven't spent a night where one of us hasn't failed a perception check and fallen asleep while on guard) and we were attacked by a pair of dire boars. So, we get up and face them across from our campfire, which was built on top of a high bluff.

I should mention that direboars are written in my character's fluff as "things he really @!#$* hates."

So, instead of doing anything smart, I throw down my greataxe and grapple the boar's tusks, and we get involved in an epic, multi-round struggle where I attempt to pin him down in our campfire and make pork roast. Meanwhile, the bard is soundly thrashed by the second boar, and in an attempt to get rid of him, tries the whole "get him to charge while standing on the edge of the cliff, and then quickly dodge out of the way" trick. Didn't work, and they both tumbled off the cliff.

I finally manage to get the boar into the fire, he finally shrugs me off, and attacks and knocks me prone at the edge of the cliff. Once again, defying ALL martial training, I grab his little piggy feet and manage to roll over and hurl him off the cliff, and go searching for my bardic friend.

While searching for him, I come upon the corpse of the boar I killed, with a madly pulsing belly. Cut it open, and yep, there's a baby direboar. Through a few rolls of a d4 (one for kill/let live and one for leave/take) I end up with a pet piglet.

Now Im a barbarian with a pet baby direboar that does nothing but squeal and consume massive amounts of food.