What's your favorite gaming story?

[Wik]

Funk: We had something similar happen in our STAP game, a while back. The group was dying - half of them were in the negatives, in a fight against a big... something. I cna't quite remember, but it was a climactic encounter, I think against a demon or something. Only the goliath fighter and the dwarven dragon shaman were in the fight - everyone else was bleeding to death.

"alright" I say, knowing next round is going to be vicious. "About the only way you can win this is if you get a critical hit."

And he did. And the next round, the dragon shaman got one. And the goliath got another one.

***

I have so many favourites, though. Favourite scenes (Chase scenes in a snowy forest), fight scenes (A running gunfight through a corporation hallway), and whatnot.

I do enjoy the time I played a mage among a new group of players, and cast sleep on some larger monsters that were attacking us. Turns out that in my own groups, we ignored the fact that sleep can affect PCs. And since the monsters had more Hit Dice than my own teammates, I merely succeeded in knocking out our entire front line.

It's great when you the mage says "uh, ooops..." and the cleric says "Oh no." And the three bugbears look at you and say "Yummy."

Amazingly, we survived (Cleric took on all three, fighting on total defense, and I was able to take the cleric, and two bugbears, down with a sleep spell as my companions woke up).

Things turned around really quickly.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

My favorite story took place over almost a year... I was running an adventure sometimes dubbed "Survivor D&D" and sometimes "The Australia Game" because the PCs had been marooned on a prison colony sort of island. They had no access to high enough level clerics to raise dead, but there was a slightly insane druid npc who could reincarnate. So the Frenzied Berserker gets killed and I let the player know that he can be reincarnated as an animal or make a new character. Rather than using the normal reincarnate chart (3.0 so it still had animals) I make a list of all the animals and dire animals with rage/frenzy sorts of abilities for him to roll on. He rolls the wolverine. Increases to all physical stats, natural armor (very valuable since it was a low equipment game) all kinds of good stuff. I figured if he was willing to come back as an animal, he should be happy with this. (I mean it was the best result he could have gotten short of a very slim chance for the dires.)

Instead, the player grows increasingly annoyed with the character. Particularly the kind of animal. "I'm a rat." "It's just a big skunk." For various reasons the campaign petered out, and I never did figure out at that time what was so bad about being a wolverine.

About a year passes. That player and I become romantically involved, move in together, get engaged. One of the things I discover early on in the relationship is that he's a huge Notre Dame fan. I've never followed sports, particularly college sports, so all the "rivalries" and such are new info. Then, one day, he's talking about the Michigan game and all the sudden this lightbulb goes on in my head.

Me "Hang on.... that time when your character got reincarnated..."

Him "Yeah?"

Me "All that moping and whining about being a rat.... That was all because you came back as the mascot of a team you hate?!?!?!?"

Him "...."

Me "You had a +6 to str and natural armor and you were pouting because of MICHIGAN????"

Him "It's the principle of the thing!!!!"

Me *headdesk*

 

[Ry]

I have one that's gold, although it's somewhat meta.

Party of 4 characters, essentially a strong guy, a tough guy, a determined guy, and a smart guy (Maccai). Maccai had frequently made awesome rolls to notice small details that amounted to hints for how to proceed, or realized something about a situation before anyone else did.

The party was in a complex situation where a bunch of underpaid and underfed mercenaries are about to riot, and they have multiple reasons not to want that (an incoming army being one of the big ones). There wasn't enough food, there wasn't enough supplies, and there was basically no command structure. I turn to the players and say "So what do you do?"

The players put their heads together (literally - they basically went into a huddle). A minute later I said "Guys?"

The response: "We're working on Maccai's brilliant idea. Hold on."

When the enemy arrived, they were ready.

 

[Wik]

Kahuna - that's a brilliant story.

***

I have one more.

For a long time, I wanted to play the Polyhedron Omega World mini-game. I loved the idea of generating mutant animals, and running them in a (slightly silly) post-apocalyptic world.

I tried and tried to introduce this game to my friends, and most everyone gave it a shrug and a "hey, I suppose I'll play it" sort of attitude, except for my best friend, who was strongly against the idea.

"I can have a mutant with lobster claws!? No way. That's too stupid."

So it went on for almost a year, until my birthday came up, and I was able to convince everyone that we should do this. Because, hey, it's my birthday. I turned to my friend and said: "yeah, you can get lobster claws. But it's a 1 in 100 chance. It'll be fun."

We go to make characters, and you can guess which mutation he rolled up. Lobster Pincers. We laughed for a good ten minutes, before we let him re-roll his character ("bad form" in Omega World, but the game would've fallen apart without it).

Oh, and interesting footnote - he's now a huge supporter of Omega World, and all of us love the mini-game, and the expanded ruleset I wrote for it.

lotsa fun.

 

[Zankafen]

I've got an interesting one... I'm not quite sure what inspired me to take the actions I took but they came out in an interesting way.

My character (a Gnome Warmage) was sneaking into a keep along with the party Rogue. We came to a split in the corridor and decided to split up. I wandered down the hall, not really trying to sneak, and came across a deserted harem. I'm not sure why but I took one of the big, heavy cushions. I kept it in hand all the way down the hall. When I was nearing the end a guard walks out of a door to my right. I have the surprise. I can either drop the cushion and draw my morning star, wasting the turn and giving him the chance to sound the alarm, or hit him with the cushion. The choice seemed obvious. I swung the cushion with all my might against his head. Two 20s followed, and max damage. It turns out the guard was only a 1st level warrior. The DM proclaimed that the blow sent his head careening into the wall and split his skull against a corner.

Good Times.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

The game was first ed D&D. It was 1986 (well before Drizzt), A new GM started a closed ended game, and wanted mid/high level characters. We were to investigate a Dwarven nation that everyone had lost contact with. I didn't have a character of approriate level so the GM let me build one. Out came Obsidian- Drow fighter, but he was raised by Dwarves, from the age of a few weeks old. He was Lawful Good, and though of himself as a Dwarf. Now, this world knew about Drow, so he was hated/hunted, reviled and such, and always felt like an outsider, even at home.
We get to the town which became our home base and there was a statue to a local demigod in the town square, overlooking the main inn and general store. He had ascended, and this area had been his home in mortality. There was a legend that if somehow you could get inside the statue, you would find the "greatest treasure ever known". This Demigod was a half orc/half elf.

The adventure happens. A rather exciting mystery, but does not bear on my story. After we had ascertained the problem, and why, we were headed out to leave, but got lost in the Dwarven caves, and after hours of searching came upon a door to a small suite of rooms. A chapel, bed, and study. In the study were two windows, that when we looked out of them, we saw the villiage inn and store. We realized that we had found our way into the statue. At this point everyone starts ransacking the place looking for the treasure. Obsidian just looks out the window. The GM, taking each of us in turn telling us what we find- nothing. Obsidian keeps looking out the window, and the GM with a small smile keeps describing the interaction of the people, families moving about and such...
One of the other players, frustrated, cries "Where is this Greatest Treasure Even Know", and Obsidian (adopted Drow child of Dwarves) said "Right here." and gestured out the window. He turned and said "This is the greatest treasure, acceptance by your fellow man & family. This god was a half orc, half elf- everyone reviled him, everyone was disgusted by him. That is what is here- community".
All the other players looked disgusted.

Possibly my greatest moment as a player. I had a true sense of transcendence of self- much like the one or two times doing theater in school when everything just came together. It is part of why I play.

As a postcript, we found a chapel to the demigod later, who gave everyone a minor wish. Obsidian wished for and recieved a grand, silver, bushy beard. >

 

[Lord Mhoram]

And one where I GMed, and my wife was the player:


Set up:
The game was 1st edition D&D, but we had a bunch of house rules, including taking XP penalties to gain special abilities of other classes (loosely based on an old Dragon Article for basic D&D, and the second edition XP Pen thing for clerics). We had also seen Darksun, and liked the idea of added classes (changing the Avignon to something a little less weird), and I had been working on taking the Saint template in Dragon and making it one of those added classes. In the game we ran that Elves had a culture that was Asian - a mix of Chinese imperial approach, and Japanese honor system - they were the people that used Katanas, and had samurai and ninja and monks. The wife's PC was an Elven Paladin, and he had done some XP penalities for some samuria and kensai abilities (Paladins of Athena, god of Tactics and Defensive war - and Athena is at war with Ares).

So the character is somewhere around low twenties in level (the solo game had been running from '85 to the mid nineties. The wife played the perfect paladin - never made a wrong moral choice, always followed code, was pleasant to strangers, gave money to the needed, kicked evil's butt... And the wife comes up and says "I want to run a fallen paladin plot with Thonolan"

I just sat there stunned.

The Story:

Fallen Paladin? With this character? So I think about it for a while, and come up with something that I think will work. I run an adventure that puts the Paladin into one of those circumstances that petty GMs love to put Paladins in - there were only two choices, and both of them would make him lose his Paladinhood. So he does the right thing, and loses his Paladinhood. He goes to atone, and is told by the Cleric that the Goddess won't do it - the spell doesn't work - he goes into the center temple to talk to her statue, which can animate and talk back with a bit of her consciousness (20+ level paladin, he has before). Nothing.
So he goes Mercenary. Very despondent - he was a paladin of a Virgin Goddess, and lets himself do things he hasn't done that way before, becomes something of a drunkard (he felt that his goddess turned her back on him), and the mercenary company he hooks up with are a big mix of alignments. The leader is evil.
So the wife plays him through this for a number of levels, lost his paladin abilities, but is still a fighter, and still has a number of his XP Pen stuff that makes him much tougher than just his level would indicate.
There are tensions between the leader and Thonolan, and factions develop, with a number of the group wanting Thonolan to take over. He is thinking about it. He's also drifted fairly Neutral (with good tendencies). The leader of the group is got a huge contract. They go to the meeting place - a temple of Ares. They were hired to do some atrocities. Thonolan balked. The leader faced him down. Thonolan fought him. New leader. The cleric in the group healed Thonolan.
Thonolan turned to the priest and told him the deal was off. The priest then wanted the seed money he had paid (a lot of money) to be paid back, instantly. The previous leader had kept that (which annoyed some of his old supporters). The group didn't have the cash. They said so, the priest started casting a spell, and was slaughtered by the group en mass.
His dying breath he called on his God to appear.

He did.

We used the 1st ed DDG writeups for the god's avatars. And we ran that if a god's avatar was killed, he couldn't physically manifest on that plane for 101 years. So actual manifestations were fairly rare.

Ares turns towards Thonolan, and tells him that he will forgive the killing of the priest if he joins him and becomes an Anti-paladin at his current level.(yes I presaged the whole blackgaurd idea from third edition). Thonolan actually thinks about it for a while, then tells him, in a firm voice no. Never. He holds onto that much of his previous attitude. So Ares goes a little berserk (as is his wont) and says "Then you die"* The fight happens. Rolled in the open, and Ares is focused on killing Thonolan, so doesn't use his teleport powers, he wants to beat him down. Thonolan uses great tactics, and very good use of his extra abilities. Meanwhile the rest of the company is fighting off the rest of the temple staff and guards. And the cleric does hit Thonolan with one Heal in the middle of the fight.

He ends up killing Ares.

Ares is dead as is everyone at the temple, and about half the mercenary company (surprisingly the "evil half" hmmm). Ares cannot manifest on this plane for 101 years. Huge deal. Thonolan is at single digit hit points.

Athena appears. And walks over to Thonolan with pride in her face, and small tears in her eyes. She then tells him her plan - She knew that if one her major paladins fell, Ares would try to recruit him. So she caused this in his life, so that he could get close enough to Ares to kill him (Goddess of Tactics, this kind of thing fit perfectly with her abilities). She was immensely proud, that although it looked as if she was abandoning him, he remained true to his faith. Thonolan, an amazing tactician himself sees exactly what she did. She restores his Paladinhood personally, but he cannot advance as a Paladin anymore, he is now a Saint (using the rules ideas we were working on that I mentioned earlier).

The wife roleplaying his fall into despair, and acceptance of his new lot in life was amazing to behold, and the joy the character felt when his god returned to him was one of the best moments I've seen played.



* Okay so I was channeling Star Wars.

 

[Lord Ipplepop]

My current group had not been together that long, and were only starting their 3rd or 4th adventure together. We had:
Human Bard
Halfling Thief
Dwarven Barbarian Cleric
Elven Mage (wizard, whatever)
Half-orc Fighter
Human Fighter

Well, in a bar, the halfling thief started a bar brawl, and while the ale mugs flew, and punches were exchanged, he sat under the table eating the Dwarf's chicken, and drinking from whichever mug he happened to grab, and sat back under the table.
After the battle was over, the Dwarf realized his chicken was gone and glared at the halfling who demanded, "what?". This same halfling stole the Dwarf's chicken on a couple of more occasions, which caused us to dub him the Dwarven Chicken Thief... and the phrase, "what?" with the innocently outstretched hands became a part of our lexicon.

 

[QuaziquestGM]

So, I'd never been shopping in D&D before, this being my first game, and we got paid. So I start thumbing though the equipment section and came to trade goods.....


This is where you need to know that this was a 1/2 orc with wis and int as dump stats.

Food is a priority for this guy.

Our next assignment is to guard a bridge, and we break up to go shopping before hand. My guy finishes first.

The rest of the party arrives at the bridge to find the 1/2 orc fishing with his new tackle, which he stores on his pack cow. What? He wanted a source of fresh milk.

The 1/2 orc was also carrying a magic bow, I think of brilliant energy, that they had recovered from the boss of the last mission.
...(ooo, not feeling well....I'll edit to finish this later...)

 

[Rechan]

This happened to a friend of mine.

It's Saturday, and her roommate declares, "We're going to play something. Anything, I don't care. I'm going to reach out, grab two random books, and that's our campaign." The roommate turns to this shelf packed to the gills with GURPS books. (You must understand, GURPs has come up with books for EVERY genre and setting).

He reaches out, grabs two books at random, and slaps them down on the table.

The books?

Bunnies & Burrows (playing rabbits), and Call of Chtulu.